We’re Number 1! We’re Number 1!
w00t! I just finished Week 2 of my course with a 100% on the quiz (eh, it was seven multiple choice questions and I take cracking good notes). After which, they shared some extra reading…all of which looks to be in the public domain, so I share it with you.
‘Animated Life: Seeing the Invisible’ – a short animated biography of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. I am a huge fan of Leeuwenhoek so I expected to like this, but it was produced by the New York Times so it was an insultingly puerile puppet show with paper cutouts on sticks and strings. Yes really.
This was more fun: The Chemistry of Body Odours – Sweat, Halitosis, Flatulence & Cheesy Feet. Money quote:
As part of the research, 16 subjects were fed 200g of pinto beans, then had their ‘samples’ collected via the use of a ‘rectal tube’. It gets better. These rectal tubes were then handed over to two judges, who had previously ‘proved their ability to identify’ the different sulfur-containing gases. The study relates how these judges ‘3cm from their noses, slowly ejected the gas, taking several sniffs’. They then rated the odour on a scale from 1 (no odour), to 8 (very offensive). Pleasant work…
An interesting observation of this study was the difference between the farts of men and women. Though the small sample size means it isn’t possible to draw definite conclusions, they noted that the women in the study emitted a significantly higher concentration of hydrogen sulfide, and the judges both ascribed to them a significantly worse odour. They also noted that men tended to generate ‘a greater volume of gas per passage’. Now we know.
Bolding mine. WE’RE NUMBER 1! WE’RE NUMBER 1!
Erm. That’s as far as I’ve read tonight. The other articles are:
The Human Microbiome: A True Story about You and Trillions of Your Closest (Microscopic) Friends
Learn.Genetic’s The Human Microbiome
Integrating ‘-omics’ and natural product discovery platforms to investigate metabolic exchange in microbiomes
‘Omics’ of the mammalian gut – new insights into function
“Omics” refers to four branches of the study of microbes: genomics (the genes of microbes), transcriptomics (which ones are replicated to make useful proteins), proteomics (what proteins are they making) and metabolomics (what metabolites are left over when they’re done). Oh, and one more I found reading the discussion forums: What Does a Three Day Cleanse Do to your Gut Microbiome?
Onward to Week Three!
May 25, 2017 — 8:50 pm
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