Chris and I just completed the website for our technology consulting company, Rikuni. The website development served many purposes: I learned more about PHP, JavaScript, and JQuery, while Chris and I worked on our Agile Development techniques. A good experience for both of us. See if you can figure out why we named the company Rikuni – it’s hidden on the home page.
We recently spent a memorable 3 hours learning how to cook chicken curry, seasoned rice, daal, and rice pudding from our good friend Jung Singh. I have published the cookbook with pictures as a pdf, enjoy! (Download here)
In case you didn’t already guess from the title, one thing that really gets me going is when people or companies claim that a dietary supplement or alternative therapy is ’safe’ because it’s ‘natural.’ Not only can dietary supplements be ineffective, but they could actually be harmful. The problem is that these compounds are not regulated by any oversight agency in the United States. Any yahoo can bottle an herb and write pretty much whatever they want on that bottle’s label. A recent article published in Nature got me going on this topic. Titled Buyer Beware, the article ran through a case-study of the so-called anti-ageing miracle drug, reservatrol. It started when some well-meaning researchers published preliminary results that reservatrol (isolated from grape skins) may improve and extend the lives of some lab animals. Since we’re all looking for the fountain of youth, the media ran with it. A decade later, the true effects of reservatrol on lifespan and other health issues is still not certain and its role in the complex aging process is not understood. But this didn’t stop unscrupulous individuals and companies from leaping on this opportunity to market a new anti-aging miracle. To make it worse, the FDA (the agency that regulates drug manufacturers to (usually) make sure their products are safe and effective) is under congressional mandate to NOT regulate the dietary supplement/vitamin industry. In a perfect example of strategic naming of a bill to hide its true purpose (see the PATRIOT act), the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 actually prevented the FDA from regulating the dietary supplement/vitamin industry. So that means not only can companies market products with false/unproven claims, there is no watchdog there making sure these same products are even safe. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a press release about triclosan – an ubiquitous antibiotic found in tons of personal care products, including deodorant, toothpaste, hand and facial cleansers, mouthwash, and other household cleaners. I have long tried to avoid purchasing products like this that were spiked with antibiotics – just on a gut instinct that it can’t be good for our environment to be flushing lots of antibiotics down the drain. Read the rest of this entry »
Many people are vaguely familiar with the basic concepts concerning DNA: it is the genetic material in every one of our cells that make us who we are. We inherit our DNA from our parents, who in turn inherited it from their parents, etc etc. Most people also understand the basic structure of DNA: it is a very LONG sequence of nucleotides, referred to as C, G, T, A. If we think of DNA as a necklace, and the C, G, T, and A as beads on this necklace, it is the specific sequence of these C’s, G’s, T’s, and A’s on this necklace that makes us all unique. This may be where many non-scientists’ understanding of DNA ends. Read the rest of this entry »