DIRTY FEET...

Every once in a while you have to do very little on a blog to create an impact!

This is one of those posts. A great and engaging infographic, with colour, attraction and loaded with information. Enjoy.

Global Carbon Footprint infographic

CHOCOLATE MICE..

Two important news items almost slipped me by this month.

Chocolate is good for you. We all know that already - it releases feelgood chemicals in the brain and makes life happier, not counting the benefits of sharing chocolates with your friends which it turns out builds up social capital and goodwill - note to friends: I will love you more if you share with me!

A recent research study exercised mice and measured their fitness levels.  A control group were fed small chunks of dark chocolate over the same period and they appeared to have the same if not better levels of fitness as the runners. Here's the link if you don't believe me.. onlinelibrary

Don't get too excited though, a second run of the experiment was undertaken on middle aged mice and the group that ran and had chocolate too did better than the couch-mice who sat around all day (well, I say sit.. but that's quite hard for a mouse to do properly? more like lay around) eating chocolate.

The second is the not so surprising revelation that Cadbury's, purveyors of fine boxes of chocolates that have seen me through many a stressful report writing time, is reducing the number of chocolates in the tin just ahead of the busy Christmas buying period..

No real surprise given the continual reducing size of various chocolate bars over the past years (and don't get me started on cakes!!!  see my December 2010 blog on that one here), but I bet they won't reduce the size of the tin they come in. Oh no. How many people are going to be duped into buying what they think are the same number of chocolates?

You know who I think the real culprits are? The stores that continually offer tins of chocolates as loss leaders to draw people in - stacks and stacks of them greeted me last time I walked into Tesco at 'half price' allegedly.  Who would pay £10 for a tin? And our local Co-op never seems to have an end to the 2 for £8 offers on Roses tins?  If the stores are offering the discounted product, then you can bet they have been squeezing the manufacturer on cost.  The manufacturer is then only able to maintain their required profits by doing two things.

The first is to substitute cheaper raw materials into the mix - not something advised in the UK chocolate market which is dominated by only a few brands and where any reduction in quality, if perceived by the customer, would lead to mass switching of brand loyalty and significant pain to the business.

The second option open to manufacturers is to reduce the number of chocolates in the tins.  This latest reduction sees Roses down to 1 lb 14 oz from 2 lb 2 oz.  That's a reduction from 964g to 850g for metric-heads.  Equivalent to an 11.8% reduction.  Not a small graudal amount in anybody's book???  Cadbury's Heroes - always and unexplainedly a slightly more expensive purchase for a less luxurious set of chocolates I think you'd agree? - go down from 936g to 794g, a whopping reduction of 15.2%...

Not much we can do about it - except switch brand or get wise and stop buying the Heroes on rational economics grounds. Cadbury's Roses were always my favourite anyhow.
 

CUCUMBERS... (AGAIN)

It has been a while since I substantially blogged.  So, I thought I'd return to one of my favourite pet/hate topics. Cucumbers.

They have been in the news recently due to the possible link between cucumbers and the European E.Coli outbreak which appeared to start in Germany.  The German authorities very quickly centred on cucumbers as being the culprits.  In error as it happens, but not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. Any adverse publicity for the slimey green things the better I say!

Cucumbers. Blood pathogens. Bean sprouts.  Who would have thought it?

Well, actually, much as I'd like to condemn all cucumbers to the untimely death they received when discarded and shredded recently (see pictures), in the final event they were not to blame. boo!

The E.coli outbreak in Germany during May 2011 was actually caused by the humble bean sprout.  Well, technically this isn't true either.  The outbreak was most lilkely caused by poor hand hygiene.

Somebody that had a virulent strain of E.coli after eating bean sprouts failed to wash their hands sufficiently and prepared food for others which then became the carrier for the spread of the outbreak.  3,000 people were affected but not all 3,000 ate the originally contaminated bean sprouts, so humans largely had themselves to blame.  A common cause of mankind's problems I think?

So, onto E.coli itself.  A magnificent all-conquering bacteria in many ways..

Escherichia coli is named after Theodor Escherich who first identified the bacteria in 1885.

E.coli falls in the family 'Enterobacteria', which means that they live and thrive in the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals. Human babies are born without these bacteria but tests have shown that they populate the human intestines in less than 2 days of being born, passed to the child in water and foodstuffs.  When we say 'a' bacteria this is technically wrong.  E.coli bacteria come in very many flavours (though I wouldn't advise you tasting any of them for obvious reasons!).

The most feared strain of E.coli is called strain 0157. This produces the Shiga toxin, released locally in the gut to damage the cells that line the intestine. 0157 has been responsible for some very large outbreaks of food poisoning all over the world in the last decade, involving hundreds of thousands of people. This is the strain at the centre of the German outbreak.

E.coli are not all bad.  We have them in our guts to help with the balance of digestive enzymes and, somewhat ironically, to protect us from other pathogenic bacteria. Only some, thankfully quite rare, strains of the bacteria cause damage to humans and other warm blooded animals.

There are 5 main 'nasty types' of E.coli, all produce the runs (diarrhea) of some form or another. Some cause only mild diarrhea (with or without fever), others diarrhea with potentially lethal damage to kidneys or the urinary system.  Two types are exclusive to humans only; enteroinvasive E.coli and enteroaggregative E.coli.  The most common form, enterotoxigenic E.coli (ETEC) causes more than 200 million cases of diarrhea and 380,000 deaths a year, mostly in children in developing countries and travellers.

For me the most interesting points about E.coli infections relate to their genetic characteristics.  E.coli bacteria per se are not bad.  As above, they live in our bodies and help us.  The nasty strains are bad because they have taken on parts of DNA from other bacterium.  They acquire extra genes and these genes code for toxins or proteins which turn the useful E.coli bad in the same way as you should never allow a Gremlin out in the daytime.

Another genetic trait is once turned bad, the bad strains of the bacteria not only 'give birth' to more nasty bacteria (the usual route through which say a virus or other infection spreads) but they can also pass on their genetic code horizontally across an existing population of otherwise harmless bacteria (through the same process that turned them bad in the first place). This is known as bacterial conjugation or transformation.  Once a few get into your system, they turn the existing population against you as well as multiply their own. Nasty!

So, a few pictures?  They are quite beautiful in their own micro-biological way..

Pretty huh?

So, what of the German outbreak?  After back-tracking on their cucumber story, German health officials say a woman working in a kitchen of a catering company near Frankfurt became infected with the bacterium after eating bean sprouts and then passed it on to 20 people she prepared food for. These 20 people passed it on in turn.

 
Cases began appearing at the start of May 2011 and the outbreak swelled to crisis level over the next three weeks causing 39 deaths and affecting almost 3,000 people.  The city of Hamburg became the outbreak epicentre.

Now, PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS!
    

BANG!

 

The picture says it all.

We had a free pie this weekend, courtesy of a bag full of Blackberries
from around and about these parts and a box of apples from a friends
tree at their stables.

And with pie must come custard!

But it got me to thinking about the explosive nature of custard.

Well, not the custard so much as the cornflour in it that thickens the custard
on heating.  Like any fine sifted flour it has ignitive properties.

If you have a flour mill anywhere near you try getting close enough to take a peek.
You'll find warning signs all over the place and a massive earthing strap around the
building to stop any build up of static electricity inside.  Contractors that get called to
work inside the buildings are specially vetted and have to use special tools that
won't spark (plastic or rubber covered spanners and hammers etc - same as in
an oil refinery).

Just imagine the bang from one of these 3Kg commercial custard bags emptied
into a large steel drum!? Now there's a thought for another weekend's experiments!

                          Weird but true!