fitness
sa smith | April 15, 2014Via John Wilkins and John Farrell:
A Simple Visualization of How Species Evolve
This is basically my dissertation, animated. LOL!!
What are you looking at?
Every pixel in that square is a genetic sequence. Some of those sequences confer a higher fitness advantage (the red colored peaks) or disadvantage (below the plane). The Blue color is neutral.
The grey dots are individual organisms within a population (the swarm of grey dots). The population does not explore every inch of the landscape at the same time (not every human alive right now represents all potential human DNA combinations). But…
milhayser | March 2, 2014Solar cells made with bismuth vanadate achieve a surface area of 32 square meters per gram. This compound can be paired with cheap oxides to split water molecules (and make hydrogen) with record efficiency.
Short-term geoengineering could postpone global warming, only to have it happen more quickly in the future.
Carotenoids tinge blackbird bills a deep orange, signalling fitness; birds with oranger bills are "are heavier and larger, have less blood parasites and pair with females in better condition than males with yellow bills."
Fibroblasts can extrude a tidy biological scaffold for stem-…
sa smith | May 15, 2011Amanda Marcotte, big internet name in skepticism and feminism just put up an article on The Guardian blag:
The soft underbelly of the right's hard abs
...
...
... I dont get it.
Or rather, I 'get it', but I find it distasteful, and I dont 'get' why she thought it was appropriate for her to post that.
At first, the June cover of Men's Health seems par for the course for a magazine that aims to stoke male anxieties about physical perfection to sell products to men the same way that the beauty industry has done to women for decades:
Umm... Its not a magazine about knitting or fly fishing. Its a…
sa smith | February 24, 2011Here at ERV, Ive talked about all kinds of pathogens and all kinds of vaccination strategies against those pathogens and cancers how our immune systems respond to these pathogens and vaccines and cancers and blah blah blah.
When you think 'immunology' you think 'your body protecting itself', or if you watch 'House', you think of an autoimmune diseases like lupus.
You dont think "I feel fine, and Im not infected with anything, and I dont have an autoimmune disease... but my immune system is still FREAKING OUT."
But you should be. Because that is obesity, and how/why people develop Type II…
sa smith | February 23, 2011"If we're supposed to go out and eat nothing, if we're supposed to eat roots and berries and tree bark, show us how...
... The problem is, and dare I say this, it doesn't look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice. And then we hear that she's out eating ribs at 1,500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat per serving...I'm trying to say that our First Lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you."
Huh. Overweight, out of…
grrlscientist | May 4, 2010tags: New Fitness Craze: White Women's Workout, exercise, fitness, racism, social observation, humor, funny, satire, fucking hilarious, Godfrey, Ty Bowman, streaming video
I know that many Americans want to lose weight, and here's a novel new workout craze to help you do just that! Combining racial stereotypes with exercise techniques, exercise guru Ty Bowman has created Southern Cali's latest workout craze...The White Women's Workout. As a NYCer, I think this will work well in certain neighborhoods in the Bronx!
[Comedian, Godfrey, plays Fitness Guru, Ty Bowman.]
sa smith | March 16, 2010Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons two totally different ways:
1. NEWSFLASH! Gabourey Sidibe is fat!
Boy I never noticed that before! I bet you all didnt either! I bet this is like, a divine revelation for Ms Sidibe, too. Thank goodness this fact is pointed out to all of us!
Look, Gabourey knows her own damn weight. If she ever wants to drop some of it, I hope she does it in a healthy way. THE WRONG WAY to try to lose weight is using stupid supplements. Stupid supplements like 'AcaiSupply.com': FLUSH THE POUNDS AND LOSE THE WEIGHT (pdf)
This 'news' is all over the place--…
sa smith | March 9, 2010LOL!
We finally got Obesity Panacea on ScienceBlogs! YAY!
Now. *squints eyes* I gotta question for Travis and Peter as a blogwarming gift :P
Whats the deal with BMI?
Weve talked about it a lot on SciBlogs, but now weve got some Real Life obesity/exercise professionals in the house, so I wanna get the usefulness of BMI clarified.
I am under the impression that BMI is a useful tool for Average Joes/Janes to monitor their weight. Is 150 lbs healthy? Is that weight okay if you are 5 feet tall? What if youre 6 feet tall? How is Average Joe/Jane supposed to know? BMI. Certainly regular body…
sa smith | January 31, 2010For the new year, lots of blogs and blags are posting great intros for beginners.
1-- If you are real new to weight-lifting, please check out Lyle McDonalds 'Beginning Weight Training' series.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
2-- If you are a dude, especially a young dude with dreams of 22-inch guns, John Barban has figured out The Secret (**SPOILER** Its steroids).
3-- Peter and Travis of Obesity Panacea have some basic tips for beginners, like What Not To Wear, and Who Not To Be.
Heres a few things I want to add:
You know how people always say "Oh, dont be embarrassed! Everybodys been a…
sa smith | January 16, 2010The 'fitness' news this week has been all about STEROIDS!
Pals went on a grand adventures with an anti-aging wooer (Train Wreck 1, Train Wreck 2, Train Wreck 3-- holy crap!).
Well, dont feel bad, Pal. There is no question in my mind that this guy 'has issues', because I get 'Life Extension' magazine. The guy who lived in my apt before me got it, and he never changed his address. 'Life Extension' is a beautiful glossy magazine that sells pages and pages and pages of snake oil and vitamins. Theyll have an article on how to 'REVERSE mitochondrial damage!!', then 3 pages later, there are full…
milhayser | January 12, 2010
Resolutions are one thing, but change doesn't happen overnight. If you find yourself not living up to your goals, don't put them off for another year; regardless of the date on the calendar, every day is a chance to get something right. There is a growing buzz here on ScienceBlogs about health and fitness, and we invite all our readers and bloggers to join the discussion. ERV kicks things off, wondering why there aren't more scientific voices to guide those on the quest for personal health through the "minefield of woo" that promises miraculous ways to get in shape. Ethan Siegel responds on…
sa smith | January 10, 2010
I actually have a couple EXERGAMES for mah Wii.
I wouldnt buy a Wii for these games, but they do make me sweat when the weather/timing keeps me from getting to the gym:
Golds Gym Cardio Workout-- This is basically 'Guitar Hero' with jabs/upper-cuts/hooks/ducks/blocks/etc. It can get pretty damn hard, and is def an underrated EXERGAME for Wii. The controls are a bit frustrating at times (you do a move, it counts it as a 'MISS!'), but the routines that are strictly punching are great. Music is crappy, but I just turn it down to the minimum to catch the beat and listen to a couple episodes…
sa smith | January 9, 2010Since last weeks post on fitness (or lack of it) on SciBlogs*, blag brother Ethan suggested a blag-wide fitness event-- lets all talk about our personal 'fitness'. What we do, why we do it, mistakes we made along the way, even though we are totally amateurs :P
Heres his pretty post :)
My post is going to be primarily directed towards women, but it applies to men too. Doesnt matter whether you want to get big, get small, or just get healthy. *clears throat*
LIFT WEIGHTS.
A long time ago in a galaxy right here, I worked out like a Generic Woman. Treadmill. Eliptical. Bike. Aerobics…
milhayser | January 5, 2010
With the new year hot out of the gates, ScienceBlogs wishes everyone a wonderful 2010. Dr. Isis on On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess shares a study with us waistline watchers, comparing two approaches to calorie reduction. One group of overweight individuals consumed 25% fewer calories while the other group ate only 12.5% less but burned the other 12.5% through exercise. Both groups lost the same amount of weight, but only the exercisers "improved their fitness, saw a decline in diastolic blood pressure and LDL and improved insulin sensitivity." Getting in shape is well and good…
sa smith | January 2, 2010[rant on]
There are holes in SciBlogs*.
I usually dont notice them until I have a question that SciBlogs cant answer. I mean, we have a ton of super smart, super skeptical people here on just about every topic.
What I love about 'our people' is that we dont have to be experts on everything. I know a lot about viruses. I dont have to know a lot about global warming. Other people have that base covered. I dont have to know everything about developmental biology. I dont have to know everything about astronomy. The concept of 'I dunno, I dont study ___' totally baffles Creationists.
The…
edyong | November 10, 2009The question of whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded is one of the most enduring in palaeontology. Did they generate their own body heat like today's mammals; was their temperature more influenced by their environment like today's reptiles; or did they use a mixture of both strategies? Scientists have put forward a slew of arguments for all of these alternatives, but Herman Pontzer from Washington University has a new take on things which suggests that many dinosaurs were indeed warm-blooded.
Based on our knowledge of living animals, Pontzer worked out the energy that 14…
sb admin | December 17, 2007 There are many brain fitness software products available these days so when I was offered a copy of Core Learning's program Mind Builder, I agreed to check it out. It offers a series of test questions similar to America's SAT, while Mind Builder Pro is a fuller package that also incorporates IQ, career and aptitude tests intended to be "fun mental exercises." Unlike some similarly-marketed software there were no unproven claims of preventing age-related cognitive decline or improving processing speed. There were vague promises like "get smart, stay smart" and "build brain power" - whatever…