Researchers from the University of California, Davis, recently published a study claiming that beer helps to prevent osteoporosis. Published in the Journal of the Sciences of Food and Agriculture, the study found that certain kinds of beer are rich in dietary silicon that keeps bones strong and wards off bone diseases like osteoporosis.

Charles Bamforth, lead author of the study, noted that not all beers have the same levels of silicon. "Beers containing high levels of malted barley and hops are richest in silicon," he said. After studying 100 different commercial beers, Bamforth and his team found that beers made from wheat and corn had the lowest levels of dietary silicon.

"Wheat contains less silicon than barley because it is the husk of the barley that is rich in this element," he noted, adding that beers brewed with the grain husks extract silicon into the beer.

You Are What You Eat

When you eat or drink things that are stored in plastic, taste it, smell it, wear it, sit on it, and so on, plastic is incorporated into you. In fact, the plastic gets into the food and food gets into the plastic and you. So, quite literally, you are what you eat[1]. . . drink. . . and breathe - plastic! These plastics are called "Food Contact Substances" by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but until April 2002, they were called "Indirect Food Additives."[2] The new name is cleansed of the implication that plastic gets into your food. In spite of this semantic deception, migration is a key assumption of the FDA.

According to Dr. George Pauli, Associate Director of Science Policy, FDA Office of Food Additive Safety, the regulations mandated in 1958 assume that all plastics migrate toxins into the food they contact. Migration is the movement of free toxins from plastic into the substances they contact - in this case it's your food. The manufacturer must "prove" that the migrations fall within an acceptable range.[3] I agree with the assumption of migration from all plastics, but I find a critical disparity between the level of science employed by the regulations and the current scientific knowledge regarding the levels at which they migrate and the effects they can have. In particular, I am more concerned with extremely low concentrations. There is also a conflict of interest in allowing the manufacturer to submit its own testing to the FDA as proof of anything. We invite the fox into the hen house and are surprised when there's nothing left but eggshells and feathers.

A new study, "Thimerosal Exposure & Increasing Trends of Premature Puberty in the Vaccine Safety Datalink", published in the most recent issue of the peer-reviewed Indian Journal of Medical Research, confirms a significant association in American children between an increasing rates of premature puberty and increasing exposure to mercury from Thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines.

Premature puberty (or precocious puberty) is characterized by sexual developmental before the age of eight in girls, and age 10 in boys. While the early onset of puberty may seem fairly benign, in fact, it can cause problems when hormones trigger changes in growth patterns. Further, children with the condition may feel rejected by their friends and socially isolated. Many of these children, especially the boys, are much more aggressive than others of their own age, leading to behavioral problems both at home and at school.

During the past decade, possible advancement in timing of puberty has been reported in the US. Recently, attention has been paid to the possible role of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on the timing of puberty. The US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that mercury is a known endocrine disruptor and it adversely affects the steroid synthesis pathway in animals and humans.

Russia has started the annual Days of Defence against Environmental Hazards from the 15th of April to the 5th of June with the announcement of sensational results of an independent work of research. Scientists have proved that Genetically Modified Organisms are harmful for mammals. The researchers discovered that animals that eat GM foodstuffs lose their ability to reproduce. Campbell hamsters that have a fast reproduction rate were fed for two years with ordinary soya beans, which are widely used in agriculture and those contain different percentages of GM organisms. Another group of hamsters, the control group, was fed with pure soya, which was found with great difficulty in Serbia because 95 percent of soya in the world is transgenic.

Concerning the experiment carried out jointly by the National Association for Gene Security and the Institute of Ecological and Evolutional Problems, Dr. Alexei Surov has this to say. "We selected several groups of hamsters, kept them in pairs in cells and gave them ordinary food as always," says Alexei Surov. "We did not add anything for one group but the other was fed with soya that contained no GM components, while the third group with some content of Genetically Modified Organisms and the fourth one with increased amount of GMO. We monitored their behavior and how they gain weight and when they give birth to their cubs. Originally, everything went smoothly. However, we noticed quite a serious effect when we selected new pairs from their cubs and continued to feed them as before. These pairs' growth rate was slower and reached their sexual maturity slowly. When we got some of their cubs we formed the new pairs of the third generation. We failed to get cubs from these pairs, which were fed with GM foodstuffs. It was proved that these pairs lost their ability to give birth to their cubs," Dr. Alexei Surov said.

Men eat much more processed meat than women and are less likely to know that processed meat consumption has been linked to bowel (colorectal) cancer, according to a poll conducted for the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF).

"The evidence that eating processed meat increases bowel cancer risk is convincing and this is why we recommend people avoid eating it," said the WCRF's Rachel Thompson. "But despite the strength of the evidence, awareness levels are low and this seems to especially be the case in men. This is a concern because, as men eat roughly double the amount of processed meat as women do, they could make a bigger difference to their cancer risk by cutting down."

The researchers found that men in the United Kingdom eat approximately 50 grams (1.8 ounces) of processed meats such as bacon, ham, salami and sausage per day. In contrast, British women eat only 24 grams of processed meat per day.

The sharp turns, ups and downs, and high speeds of today's roller coasters could cause damage to your ears, say physicians at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

The case study offers the first reported link between the force of acceleration in roller coasters and a common ear injury - ear barotrauma - that occurs when there is a relatively quick change in pressure between the external environment, the ear drum and the pressure in the middle ear space.

In its extreme, ear barotrauma can lead to temporary hearing loss, and most commonly causes dizziness, ear discomfort or pain, or a sensation of having the ears "pop."

Since barotrauma from a roller coaster happens suddenly, it very difficult for the patient to equalize ear pressure by simply yawning or chewing gum.

Living in a high-crime neighborhood may worsen children's asthma, says a new study.

The study has been presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

To reach the conclusion, researchers conducted a study of 561 children ages 8-14 years in Chicago who had been diagnosed with asthma by a physician.

Investigators interviewed caregivers to determine their stress level and exposure to violence. They also reviewed data from the Chicago Police Department detailing the incidence of violent crime in the communities where the children lived.

Results showed that 41% of the children had moderate or severe asthma, and 59% had intermittent or mild asthma. After adjusting for the child's age, gender, family history of asthma and socioeconomic status, children were nearly twice as likely to have moderate/severe asthma if their caregivers reported high levels of stress or if the incidence of violent crime was high in their neighborhood. After adjusting for caregiver stress, a high incidence of violent crime still was associated with more severe asthma in children.

A new study led by a Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) environmental health expert came up with an unexpected conclusion. The researchers were investigating why women living in the northeastern United States are more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and they suspected they would find an association with air pollution. Instead, their research has raised the strong possibility that RA results from vitamin D deficiency due to not getting enough exposure to one of nature's most powerful healers -- sunlight.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that causes pain, swelling, stiffness and loss of function in the joints. Unlike osteoarthritis, the common arthritis that develops from wear and tear on joints and usually develops only as people age, RA can affect the young and old. The disease can cause enormous suffering -- it may attack the eyes, mouth and lungs as well as joints. According to the National Institutes of Health, there's no known cause for RA and treatments include steroids and other drugs that can have serious side effects.

The new research, which was just published online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that women in states like Vermont, New Hampshire and southern Maine were more likely to report being diagnosed with RA.

Fruits and veggies are an essential part of a healthy diet, but many conventional varieties contain pesticide residues.

And not all the pesticides used to kill bugs, grubs, or fungus on the farm washes off under the tap at home. Government tests show which fruits and vegetables, prepared typically at home, still have a pesticide residue.

You can reduce your exposure to pesticides by as much as 80% if you avoiding the most contaminated foods in the grocery store.

To do so, you need the latest info from the why the Environmental Working Group's "Dirty Dozen" list of foods most likely to have high pesticide residues. Since 1995, the organization has taken the government data and identified which type of produce has the most chemicals.

This year, celery takes the number one spot and both blueberries and spinach make an appearance (displacing lettuce and pears).

As regular SOTT and SOTT forum readers will be aware, Laura Knight-Jadczyk was scheduled to talk at the May 1st 2010 Nexus magazine conference in Amsterdam. As the only female in a six person line up, Laura was planning to give not just a woman's perspective but also the perspective of probably one of the few people alive today whose knowledge and insight spans and plumbs the depths of just about every one of the problems currently facing the human race. As Richard Dolan noted in his review of her book "High Strangeness":

I believe that Laura understands, better than probably anyone you will ever know, just how dire is the plight of our civilization - the plight of our species. She also understands that to change one's life, one must be willing to fight.

Initially when asked to attend, Laura suggested to the Nexus conference organizers that Richard Dolan (a friend and colleague of Laura's) would be a great addition to the line-up and was indeed willing to attend. The response from the organizers was that, unfortunately, they only had space for 6 speakers in one day.

We were therefore somewhat surprised when we checked the conference web site on Saturday 24th April and saw the announcement:

"Breaking News! Jim Humble is coming to Amsterdam!"

Not only that, but Jim Humble is now headlining the conference.

Apparently the Nexus conference organizers had managed to find extra space for another speaker. So, we, and Laura in particular, were rather disturbed by this development for a number of reasons. Richard Dolan is recognized as the pre-eminent UFO researcher in the world today. He is a very entertaining speaker and his talks are always fascinating. So could Jim Humble really have been so important a figure that he deserved being 'squeezed' in? Who is Jim Humble anyway?