TKF Science Writing

There is a new chocolate bar that was recently launched by Mars called Fling. Gentleman, trust me when I say this, if you see your wife, girlfriend buying this product, run and get flowers, eat oysters, communicate better, whatever, just do something.

One website described it as a new chocolate finger that is playfully flirtatious. If you go to their actual website, flingchocolate.com, the background is pink and pictured are ladies who look like they are looking for a fling. The kicker is that they are 85 calories per finger…not per bar, per finger! Some other doozy phrases describing the product are that sometimes you need to be a little naughty to taste the sweetness and “lick the wrapper”.

The actual bar itself (I am refraining from calling it a finger) is a meringue base with truffle layered on top and then surrounded by chocolate. There are three flavors available, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and hazelnut.

It is available in California for now but you can also order it online. Again, if you see your wives or girlfriends eating Fling, you could end up flung.

SEO or search engine optimization is very important for any on-line business. Without it, chances are your website will never be found by the general public. The majority of people who need to find information or a product to purchase, use search engines. This makes it important to consider search engine optimization when writing articles or a blog.

When writing a blog post or an on-line article, content is key and so keep these tips in mind:

Title - Your title should contain your pertinent keyword or at the very least, wording that is in close proximity to it.

First Paragraph - If you are writing about a new brand of red wine that is about to hit the market, introduce that keyword in the first sentence. Using the keyword in the last sentence of this first paragraph is a good idea as well in terms of seo.

Main Body - Ideally, your article or blog post will be 300-500 words long and your keyword placement should have a frequency of about 2-5%. Any more than this is dangerous because it can lower your search engine rankings. Overusage of keywords will penalize you in the eyes of search engines who can flag your website as spam.

Subheadings - Use these to further your seo density. Include your keyword here as well.

Last paragraph - It is very important to style your last paragraph similar to the first one in terms of keyword usage.

This is just the basics of seo writing. The best practices are constantly changing due to the ever dynamic algorithms used by search engines. Stay tuned for more detailed information in future posts.

A researcher at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU has hypothesized that two glasses of red wine a day will help reduce fatty deposits in the liver. It has been in the media for a long while that two glasses of red wine were healthy, especially for middle aged men. It is thought that consuming red wine daily kept the heart from aging too rapidly.

The culprit of this phenomenom is a compound called reservatrol. Reservatrol has antioxidative properties and is found in the skins of red grapes, muscadines, red wine, natural grape juice, and tea. Similar to other antioxidents, reservatrol is thought to protect against certain forms of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and dementia.

Reservatrol is a polyphenol phyochemical. Polyphenols are long chains of phenol compounds strung together. In chemistry terms, a phenol is a six membered ring with a -OH (hydroxyl) group attached. In your mind’s eye, picture a stop sign as the basic structure and then attach an oxygen atom to one corner of the hexagon and then attach one hyrdrogen atom to the oxygen. Poly is a prefix meaning many so just string together a few of these structures and you end up with a polyphenolic compound.

Phytochemicals appear in plants and are considered to have disease fighting qualities. These are the compounds that are considered to have anti-oxidative benefits to humans. By helping to fight the damage to cells that oxygen creates, polyphenols fall into this class of compounds.

The author of the thesis is Ms Elizabeth Hijona Muruamendiaraz and her report is found in ScienceDaily’s website published May 13th, 2009. The aim of the study was to determine whether the compound reservatrol reduced esteatosis (fatty liver) in rats. Three groups of rats were used:

· Group 1 had access to food and water.

· Group 2 was affected by esteatosis and was fed a high carbohydrate/fat free diet along with a period of fasting.

· Group 3 also had estatosis and had the same diet as group 2 but was also given a daily 10mg dose of reservratrol.

What Ms. Muruamendiaraz found was that members of group 3 had fewer cells with fatty liver deposits than group 2 members. She also found that group 3 had less naturally occuring oxidative substances than those in group 2. Furthermore, due to the fact that there were less oxidative substances in the reservratrol group, the livers from the rats of that group were able to conserve some of their anti-oxidants. She went on to conclude that reservratrol is beneficial in maintaining the balance between oxidative and anti-oxidative substances.

Other scientists and doctors remain sceptical of the results however and advise against drinking 14 glasses of wine a week. Some say that the build up of concentrated fructose in wine will cause fatty deposits in the liver. The jury may still be out and I’m sure more long term testing is underway about the health benefits of red wine.

In the meantime, reservratol sure does taste good.

We have all heard about the health virtues of honey and how it is a good alternative to sugar. We put it in tea, on toast, and pair it with peanut butter instead of jelly.

Due to the limited supply of honey and its high price, some beekeepers and traders have been known to add cheap sugar syrup substitutes to natural honey. The most common additions are corn syrups, inverted syrups and high fructose corn syrup. An inverted syrup is basically a product formed from the breakdown of sucrose into its components, glucose and fructose. All of these syrups are made up of different sugars which can be manipulated to resemble the carbohydrate profile of honey.

Researchers at the University of Lyon in France have proposed a chromatography technique to detect the possiblities of added sugar in honey. In a study published in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry, these researchers are trying to detect the presence of corn syrup polysaccharides in honey.

Polysaccharides are complex carbohydrates made up of chains of monosaccharide and/or disaccharide units. Cellulose, glucose, and starch all fall into this category. This study focused on the addition of a particular group of polysaccharides found in high fructose corn syrup.

To do this, three pure samples of honey were used and then doped with 1% corn syrup. The researchers found that they were successfully able to indicate the presence of corn syrup polysaccharides through chromatograph separation techniques.

The researchers hope that this technique could be used as a standard tool to measure the quality of honey being delivered to grocery store shelves. It also could have ramifications for other products such as juices and maple syrup as well.

Melamine is an important compound in organic chemistry. It is used in many different industries due to its versatility in different environments (temperature, acidity, etc.). There is a dark side to this compound which lead to massive infant sickness and death in China. Researchers are finding that long term complications are being seen in infants who consume melamine contaminated milk powder.

Melamine is described as a white, solid-like structure that is semi-soluble in water. It has a chemical formula of C3N3(NH2)3. In industry, it is primarily used to make a resin which is heat and fire tolerant. Whiteboards, floor tiles, kitchenware, fire retardant fabrics, formica countertops, and commercial filters are produced from the resin. The resin is produced by mixing urea with formaldehyde. When this combo is heated, it is easily moldable into desired shapes making this compound a versatile starting material for various products.

In 2008, China had a serious problem with melamine contamination in infant milk formulations. The chemical appeared to have been added to the milk to increase its protein content. Chinese food companies have been adding this compound to wheat flour. Usually the nitrogen content of a food is the marker used to measure the protein content. High protein foods are in high demand given the world’s protein demand and so economically, the strategy made sense.

The effects that the addition of melamine would have on health was not studied well enough. According to researchers, melamine, in high doses, can cause kidney stones and kidney failure in small animals. Because melamine is a crystalline structure, the urea in the body won’t effectively dissolve it all. The undissolved portions accumulate in the kidneys which can lead to kidney stones and kidney failure. Approximately 300,000 infants were sickened by melamine in China.

According to a study by the World Health Organization in October of 2008, melamine, when combined with cyanuric acid (also found in infant formula), forms crystals in the kidneys. Many companies and laboratories are now working on ways to detect melamine tainted products.

Since milk is an essential part of the human diet, especially in infants, the FDA guided its efforts to try and isolate the melamine-cyanuric acid complex. Milk is 88% water with the remaining 12% consisting of proteins, fats, and sugars. The additional vitamins and minerals such as calcium and potassium make it easy for melamine to disguise itself when contaminated. Scientists would first “clean-up” the milk sample by removing unwanted items. In theory, this should leave the analyte of interest (melamine). Scientists found that, by lowering or raising the pH level, the toxic melamine-cyanuric acid complex can be broken. This complex is held together by hydrogen bonds, which are relatively weak so by changing the system (acid or base) that this compound sits in, allows researchers to isolate the analyte. Once the sample is cleaned up, a technique called chromatography, or more precisely, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) allows researchers to purify the compound as much as possible.

According to the FDA website, it has contacted infant formula production companies and found that there is no melamine threat to infant formulas produced in the United States. These companies are reporting that they do not use imported formulas from China. For further information, you can log on to the FDA website and search for melamine which will bring you to a list of products that the FDA advises consumers not to ingest due to a possible melamine contamination.