OBESITY kills, everyone knows that. But is it possible that we've been looking at the problem in the wrong way? It seems getting fatter may be part of your body's defence against the worst effects of unhealthy eating, rather than their direct cause.
This curious insight comes at the same time as several studies distancing obesity itself from a host of diseases it has long been blamed for, including heart disease and diabetes.
Instead, these studies point the finger at excess fat in the bloodstream, either when the fat cells of obese people finally get overloaded or when lean people who can't store a lot of fat eat too much. This seems to have a destructive effect by provoking the body's immune response.
None of this changes the fact that too much rich food and too little exercise is bad for you. But viewing obesity as a symptom of an unhealthy diet, rather than the direct cause of disease and death, plus a better appreciation of the immune system's reaction to fat, should radically change our understanding of what is shaping up to be one of modern society's biggest health scourges. The findings also point to new ways to treat diabetes, heart disease and other diet-linked conditions.
In recent years, most rich countries, and some poorer ones, have seen a massive rise in so-called "metabolic syndrome", whose symptoms can include insulin resistance, high blood cholesterol and an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke. That the syndrome goes hand in hand with obesity is well known, but exactly how all these conditions are linked is unclear.
In an attempt to determine the effects of obesity itself, diabetes researchers Roger Unger and Philipp Scherer, both at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, reviewed several recent studies of the role of fat cells in humans and mice.
In particular, the pair looked at the fates of people with a genetic condition that means they can't make their own fat cells and mice genetically engineered to have low supplies of these cells and fed a diet that would make normal mice obese. They found that, despite not being obese, both tend to develop metabolic syndrome earlier on in life than their overweight, overfed counterparts.
This led Unger and Scherer to conclude that obesity protects the body from the effects of overeating by providing somewhere safe to deposit the dietary deluge of fat and sugar, which in excess is toxic to many body tissues (Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, DOI: 10.1016/j.tem.2010.01.009).
Only when the body's fat cells, or adipocytes, are crammed to capacity do the problems of metabolic syndrome begin. The fully engorged adipocytes begin to die and leak their contents into the bloodstream, including saturated fatty acids such as palmitic acid. Such fats then accumulate in tissues such as the liver, pancreas and heart, where they may prompt the symptoms of metabolic syndrome.
The theory is certainly plausible, says Gökhan Hotamisligil, a diabetes and obesity researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, who was not involved in the study. "When fat cells break, it's like an oil tanker being hit," he says. "It unloads this toxic cargo, almost like an oil slick."
It also fits with what we know about age-related obesity. Leptin, a hormone produced by fat cells, directs surplus dietary fat into adipocytes and orders other cells to burn off any fat. Unger and Scherer point to rodent studies showing that leptin's ability to do this drops off with age. The researchers conclude that fats locked safely away in adipocytes get released as we age, and that this could explain why older people who are obese are more at risk of metabolic syndrome.
By shifting the blame from fat to food, Unger and Scherer's hypothesis also helps to explain why not all overweight people develop metabolic syndrome and some lean people do. In 2008, a study found that half of overweight and a third of obese Americans had healthy metabolic profiles, whereas a quarter of "lean" people had signs of metabolic syndrome (Archives of Internal Medicine, vol 168, p 1617).
So why is fat a problem when it breaks free of the protective adipocytes? The answer, it seems, lies with the immune system.
Preeti Kishore and her colleagues at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, injected the amount of fat typically found in a large beefburger into the blood of 30 volunteers. The volunteers' bodies responded by producing 3 to 5 times as much as normal of a hormone called plasminogen activator inhibitor-1.
"We were surprised by the magnitude of the rise in PAI-1," says Kishore. The researchers suggest that this increase in PAI-1 leads to metabolic syndrome. This makes sense as we already know that PAI-1 aggravates the symptoms of diabetes by making cells less responsive to insulin, which regulates blood concentrations of glucose. It is also involved in blood clotting, and blood clots can lead to strokes and heart attacks.
Kishore's team was equally surprised to discover that PAI-1 was not produced by fat cells, as had been assumed, but immune cells called macrophages lodged in fat tissue. Fatty acids and fat cells both needed to be present to trigger the production by macrophages of PAI-1 (Science Translational Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3000292). Kishore says drugs that block PAI-1 or mop up free fatty acids might help prevent metabolic syndrome.
Meanwhile, the link between metabolic syndrome and the immune system has been further confirmed by Hotamisligil and his colleagues. When they fed mice a fat-rich diet, the animals rapidly became obese, insulin-resistant and developed other symptoms of metabolic syndrome. But mice lacking a gene called PKR stayed lean and healthy on the same diet (Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.01.001).
It seems that PKR activates a "gang" of other genes responsible for inflammation, insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction. "PKR is a high-ranking officer in this destruction," says Hotamisligil, who adds that blocking the activation of PKR might be a way to fight both obesity and metabolic syndrome.
Unger stresses that the best way to prevent metabolic syndrome is eating less and exercising more. Still, drugs based on a greater understanding of the immune system's role in the condition could be a useful last resort.
Editorial: Learn to love your fat
That fatty foods, not body fat per se, are harmful is becoming clearer (see main story). But just how bad are the worst culprits and how do we best reduce their consumption?
Eating too much fatty food is well known to raise the risk of diabetes and heart disease. But consumption of sugary soft drinks, which has soared over recent decades
To find out how harmful these drinks are, Litsa Lambrakos of the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues analysed data from several major US studies. They estimate that between 1990 and 2000, sugary drinks contributed to 130,000 new cases of diabetes, 14,000 new cases of coronary heart disease, a total of 50,000 years of incapacitation due to coronary disease, and 6000 extra deaths overall. Lambrakos presented the results at a recent Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention conference in San Francisco. "The impact is substantial," she says.
Lambrakos is now investigating whether a calorie tax would discourage consumption of sugary drinks, and there is already evidence that this might work.
Assessing the impact of price hikes on junk food is tough as such food has tended to become less and less expensive in real terms. However, Barry Popkin's team at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill used the eating habits of 5115 young adults over 20 years to determine a relationship between the price of various foods and consumption, which they then applied to hypothetical price hikes.
They conclude that an 18 per cent tax on soda drinks would reduce the weight of the average US citizen aged 18 to 30 by 2.25 kilograms per year (Archives of Internal Medicine, vol 170, p 420). A 10 per cent increase in the cost of soda would decrease consumption by 7 per cent, while a similar tax on pizza would reduce consumption by 11 per cent.
Additional reporting by Ewen Callaway
HEALTHY SEAFOOD
Jika kita berbicara soal seafood, yang ada di pikiran kita tentunya akan ada tiga hal besar yang menghalangi kita menikmati makanan sehat ini. Pertama jelas alergi yang tidak mungkin dihindari, karena tidak semua orang dapat bertahan menikmati makanan dari laut ini. Kedua tentunya kita memikirkan bagaimana bahan makanan tadi diambil, kondisi laut yang sudah tercemar, dan tentunya yang ketiga, kolesterol.
Kandungan kolesterol di beberapa bahan makanan seafood ternyata sangatlah tinggi, dan cukup membuat orang berpikir dua kali menikmati makanan dari laut ini. Tapi ternyata, dari sekian banyak makanan laut yang mungkin bisa memberi dampak kurang menyenangkan, ada beberapa yang sangat bisa Anda nikmati dengan aman, karena ternyata beberapa jenis makanan dari laut di bawah ini luar biasa sehat, apalagi penuh dengan mineral dan asam lemak omega 3 yang sangat membantu kesehatan kita.
Sardin
(c) sustainablesushi
Ikan ini adalah salah satu makanan yang kaya dengan nutrisi. Mengandung banyak sekali asam lemak omega-3, yang menurut American Heart Association akan membantu mengatur dan menurunkan kolesterol dalam darah dan memperbaiki kesehatan darah. Sardin juga adalah makanan yang baik bagi otak, omega-3 akan membantu memperbaiki fungsi otak dan memori.
Makanan sehat ini adalah salah satu ikan yang dapat dimakan seluruhnya, sehingga akan memberikan kalsium, zat besi, dan vitamin D yang bagus untuk kesehatan tulang. Sardin juga mengandung ko-enzym Q10 (CoQ10) yang membantu memperbaiki kesehatan peredaran darah dan energi fisik. Kandungan merkuri dan pestisida atau bahan kimia berbahaya dalam tubuh ikan ini sangat kecil, karena ukuran badan yang kecil dan usia mereka yang tidak terlalu tinggi, maka ikan ini hanya menyerap sedikit sekali bahan berbahaya.
Jika Anda memilih jenis sardin dalam kaleng, usahakan pilih tipe sardin dalam air atau saus tomat, hindari jenis sardin yang dikalengkan dalam minyak.
Mackerel 
(c) alibaba
Ikan kecil ini diam-diam banyak sekali mengandung nutrisi luar biasa. Ikan ini adalah sumber terbaik asam lemak omega-3 (dua kali lipat kandungan asam lemak omega-3 dalam Salmon) dan Mackerel adalah sumber selenium (yang membantu sistem kekebalan tubuh) secara luar biasa.
Selenium bekerja sama dengan protein dalam tubuh untuk membentuk enzym antioksidan dan dapat melindungi tubuh dari efek merkuri. Rasa dari ikan ini juga membuatnya sangat mudah dimasak dalam berbagai cara, baik di panggang atau bahkan dapat dipotong mentah sebagai sashimi. Usahakan memilih ikan Mackerel kecil karena semakin besar ikan Mackerel, kemungkinan tercemar merkuri semakin tinggi.
Tilapia
(c) fishingcy
Tilapia adalah ikan yang mudah didapat di mana-mana, sedangkan rasa dan harganya juga tidak mengecewakan. Selain itu, ternyata ikan ini sangat sehat! Ikan ini tumbuh dengan sangat cepat dan usianya pendek, sehingga tidak terlalu banyak menyerap merkuri.
Jumlah kolesterol dalam dagingnya rendah, demikian juga kandungan natrium dan lemak jenuh yang ada. Tilapia juga mengandung asam lemak omega 3 yang baik bagi kesehatan jantung, peredaran dan tekanan darah darah, serta perkembangan mental dan otak. Jika mungkin, pilih ikan tilapia yang berasal dari alam liar, dan bukan dari tambak ikan.
Haddock
(c) omegafish
Jika Anda pernah mendengar menu fish and chips ala Inggris, hampir bisa dipastikan ikan yang digunakan adalah ikan haddock ini. Ikan ini ternyata sangat populer dengan kandungan magnesium, vitamin B6 dan niacin yang sangat tinggi. Ikan ini juga memiliki kandungan fosfor yang tidak bisa diremehkan, dan merupakan komponen utama pembentukan tulang dan gigi. Selain itu, fosfor juga akan membantu dalam penyediaan energi tubuh, jadi fosfor akan ditemukan di tulang, saraf, baik dalam aktivitas oksigen maupun tanpa aktivitas oksigen.
Fosfor juga akan membantu tubuh untuk menggunakan vitamin larut lemak seperti vitamin A, D, E dan K. Dengan kata lain, ikan haddock ini adalah pengganti daging sapi yang jauh lebih murah, tapi mampu memberikan protein yang hampir sama seperti daging sapi.
Jika dibandingkan, dalam jumlah yang sama, 200 gram daging sapi mengandung 18% protein, dan 80 kalori, sedangkan daging ikan haddock memiliki jumlah protein yang sama, dengan jumlah kalori yang jauh lebih sedikit. Untuk ikan ini, usahakan pilih yang dimatangkan dengan cara rendah lemak seperti dipanggang, dan bukan digoreng.
Rumput Laut 
(c) wordpress
Pasti Anda mengenal makanan ini sebagai salah satu komponen utama dalam maki sushi (sushi yang dibungkus). Rumput laut kaya vitamin C, seng dan yodium. Rumput laut Red Dulse, yang banyak ditemukan di lautan Atlantik Utara, dapat memberikan 100% kebutuhan vitamin B6, zat besi dan fluorida yang dibutuhkan oleh tubuh dan gigi yang kuat.
Demikian juga untuk kalsium untuk tulang yang sehat, dapat ditemukan dalam jumlah yang berlimpah di rumput laut ini. Anda mungkin tidak akan menyangka bahwa kandungan protein yang ada dalam rumput laut ini tinggi sekali. Karbohidrat kompleks yang berada di angka 40% dari berat total rumput laut ini berarti bahwa Anda akan mendapat energi cepat tapi dengan angka indeks glikemik yang rendah. Anda juga akan relatif lebih lama kenyang karena rumput laut karena kandungan serat yang tinggi, sehingga sangat baik bagi pencernaan dan diet.
Jadi setelah membaca beberapa jenis makanan laut tadi, apakah Anda masih ragu menikmati seafood? Kekayaan ikan Indonesia siap menanti Anda dan menyumbangkan kesehatan kepada Anda! Tunggu apa lagi?
The rapid growth of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) sector was demonstrated at the recent Paris Air Show, where a number of new vehicles were launched, and further underlined by Boeing's announcement in June 2009 that it was launching a new unmanned airborne systems division to group the company's drone projects to better compete for military contracts.
Boeing estimates the UAV market could be worth $160bn over the next ten years and plans to become a major player in the sector. Meanwhile Northrop Grumman estimates that in the skies over Iraq alone, the number of these robotic aircraft has jumped to more than 1,000 in the past few years.
US aerospace giants such as Northrop Grumman and General Atomics currently dominate the UAV sector with systems such as Global Hawk and Predator, and Israeli firms including Israel Aerospace Industries and Elbit Systems have also been successful. But some of the most interesting developments in the sector are emerging at small companies.
Aeroart of France, a startup company focused on the design and manufacture of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), officially launched the Featherlite, a low-cost and high-safety UAS, at the Paris Air Show in June. The Featherlite system, including the aircraft, ground control station and payload such as a video camera, costs just €7,900 and weighs only 1.5kg. Aeroart business development director Serge Versillé says interest in Featherlite systems has been much greater than Aeroart anticipated, with much of it coming from the civilian sector, although Featherlite does have military potential in terms of providing a low-cost training solution for operators.
Versillé says Featherlite has a wide range of civil applications in areas such as agriculture (the UAS is able to monitor crops and animals) and mining. The vehicle can also be used for firefighting. Critically, not only is Featherlite cheap, it is also safe, according to Versillé. He says even if the aircraft does crash, its low speed and weight mean it is unlikely to cause much damage.
Featherlite has almost certainly opened up new markets for unmanned aircraft, particularly in the civilian sector, where it may have fuelled interest in very low-cost and light vehicles.
Military potential
In the military sector, the pace of technological progress is just as astonishing. In April 2009, Californian company Aerovironment said the US Defense Department had extended its research contract to design and build a flying prototype for the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) programme. In June, Aerovironment said its Mercury NAV, a demonstrator that imitates winged creatures, had accomplished a technical first: the controlled hovering flight of an air vehicle system with two flapping wings that carries its own energy source and uses only flapping wings for propulsion and control.
The NAV programme is focused on developing an extremely small (less than 7.5cm), ultra-lightweight (less than 10g) air vehicle system with the potential to perform indoor and outdoor military missions, such as military reconnaissance in urban environments. Aerovironment's small UAS products, including Dragon Eye, Raven, Wasp and Puma, are already used by the US military.
UAVs are already playing a critical role supporting ground forces in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the next few years, however, their use is likely to become even more widespread. The US Navy rolled out its first combat UAV earlier in 2009. The ability of UAVs to provide 24-hour reconnaissance is clearly as appealing to the US Navy as it is to the US Army and Marines. UAVs will provide another layer of protection to the Navy's carriers and enable carrier-borne aircraft to strike targets much further away.
Meanwhile, the US's next-generation heavy bomber is likely to be a UAV. The 2018 Bomber, now being developed by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, will be a long-range penetrating aircraft that is flown autonomously by ground personnel. Such a bomber will have obvious advantages in terms of avoiding pilot fatigue. Development of the 2018 Bomber will continue under a bill passed in July 2009 by the Senate Armed Services Committee, despite the Obama administration's plan to end the programme.
In the military sector, air-to-air combat appears to be the only area where the subject of UAVs remains taboo. Given the rapid pace of technological change in this area, it cannot be long before UAVs that are able to outfly and outfight piloted aircraft are in the skies. Predictions that human pilots will soon be obsolete have been around for decades. The rise of the UAV suggests that the dawn of pilotless flight has already broken.
Apa-an sih Combi Brake itu?
Combi Brake adalah suatu teknologi mekanis untuk mendistribusikan kekuatan pengereman antara roda depan dan roda belakang dengan hanya menekan satu tuas rem sebelah kiri saja.
Dengan teknologi Combi Brake ini, sepeda motor akan berhenti dengan jarak pengereman yang lebih pendek secara lebih maksimal dengan pengereman yang merata pada kedua roda depan dan belakang secara bersama-sama. Intinya Bobot kekuatan pengereman akan terbagi secara otomatis antara roda depan dan belakang sesuai kebutuhan pengereman pada motor.
Nah Combi Brake ini sangat cocok digunakan oleh pengendara pemula maupun kaum hawa. Dimana dengan adanya teknologi Combi Brake ini akan membantu pengendara pemula untuk melakukan pengereman layaknya pengendara motor yang sudah Pro. Combi Brake akan mengambil alih kemampuan pengendara yang pro pada saat melakukan distribusi pengereman pada roda depan dan belakang, sehingga pengendara pemula-pun akan sangat terbantu oleh Combi Brake.
Bagaimana cara Combi Brake bekerja ?
Nah Intinya justru ada di mekanisme Equalizer yang akan mendistribusikan gaya berdasarkan momen gaya akibat adanya perbedaan panjang lengan tuas kabel di equlizer.
Dengan segala kelebihan Combi Brake tadi, apakah lantas Combi Brake sangat ampuh dan tidak memiliki kekurangan sama sekali? tentu saja tetap ada kelemahannya, yaitu penyetelan rem belakang (drum brake) yang harus bener-benar PAS agar Combi Brake dapat benar-benar bekerja dengan baik.
Nah, jika di Thailand motor Matic Honda sudah menggunakan Combi Brake mengapa justru motor Matic Honda Indonesia tidak ada yang mengadopsi sistem yang bagus ini?
Apa alasan AHM melepas fitur ini pada motor Matic Honda yang beredar di Indonesia? Pertama mungkin alasan menekan harga. Kedua mungkin AHM menganggap biker-biker di Indonesia sudah dianggap canggih dan Pro, jadi gak perlu lagi perlindungan sistem pengereman yang canggih ini lagi.
Kalau masih belum puas dengan kedua jawaban di atas, mari kita bikin Combi Brake sendiri aja setelah tahu cara kerjanya. gampang kok!!! Bahkan bisa diterapin di Vario, Beat, maupun product matic di luar Honda macam Mio, Soul, Spin dan Sky-Wave.
Beli Minuman Dengan Menggunakan Sidik Jari
IT IS one of the biggest mysteries in human evolution. Why did we humans evolve such big brains, making us the unrivalled rulers of the world?
Some 2.5 million years ago, our ancestors' brains expanded from a mere 600 cubic centimetres to about a litre. Two new studies suggest it is no fluke that this brain boom coincided with the onset of an ice age. Cooler heads, it seems, allowed ancient human brains to let off steam and grow.
Cooler heads, it seems, allowed ancient human brains to let off steam and grow
For all its advantages, the modern human brain is a huge energy glutton, accounting for nearly half of our resting metabolic rate. About a decade ago, biologists David Schwartzman and George Middendorf of Howard University in Washington DC hypothesised that our modern brain could not have evolved until the Quaternary ice age started, about 2.5 million years ago. They reckoned such a large brain would have generated heat faster than it could dissipate it in the warmer climate of earlier times, but they lacked evidence to back their hypothesis.
Now hints of that evidence are beginning to emerge. Climate researcher Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, modelled present-day temperature, humidity and wind conditions around the world using an Earth-systems computer model. He used these factors to predict the maximum rate at which a modern human brain can lose heat in different regions. He found that, even today, the ability to dissipate heat should restrict the activity of people in many tropical regions (Climatic Change, vol 95, p 405).
If keeping cool is a problem now, Kleidon says, it would have been even more challenging - perhaps too challenging - 2 or 3 million years ago when temperatures were a few degrees warmer than today and air-conditioning units were harder to come by.
A new study by Schwartzman and Middendorf suggests that a small drop in global temperatures may have made a big difference. The pair used basic equations of heat loss to estimate how fast the small-brained Homo habilis would have been able to cool off. Assuming overheating limited the size of H. habilis's brain, they then calculated what drop in air temperature would have been needed for Homo erectus to be able to support its bigger brain
Given the timescales involved, it may be near-impossible to match definitively the onset of an ice age with speciation, but a 1.5 °C drop is consistent with the cooling climate of the time, says Middendorf.
"In principle, I'm receptive to the hypothesis," says Dean Falk, a palaeoanthropologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, "but I need the data." She says that if measurements showed that people living in tropical countries today have smaller brains relative to their body size than people in temperate climates, this would go against expectation and lend support to Kleidon's model.
Being able to cool bigger brains can only be part of the story, however. It would have lifted the brakes on expansion, says psychologist David Geary at the University of Missouri in Columbia, but there has to be something driving the increase.
Over the years, researchers have come up with three broad reasons why bigger brains might have been advantageous: to give their owners the ability to cope with changing climates by exploiting technologies such as shelter, fire and clothing; to deal with the cognitive demands of hunting and gathering; or to help people outsmart their neighbours.
To help narrow this down, Geary collected data from 175 fossil hominin skulls, from 1.9 million to 10,000 years old. Then he looked to see whether brain size was best correlated with climatic variability - a crude measure of biodiversity which could indicate the complexity of hunting and gathering - or the human population size at the time, which could reflect the complexity of social interactions.
Geary's analysis found that population size was the best predictor of brain size, suggesting that our ancestors' need to outcompete their neighbours in order to survive may have been the strongest driver of brain growth (Human Nature, vol 20, p 67).
The case is far from closed - Geary's study does not demonstrate cause and effect, for one thing - but the picture beginning to emerge suggests that an ice age set the stage for a socially driven brain boom. And from that time on, it was the brainiacs who stole the show.
If global cooling allowed humans to evolve their big brains, will today's global warming take them away again? "I'd hate to think that a difference of 1.5 °C might mean the end of humans because our brains cook," says George Middendorf of Howard University in Washington DC, "but I guess it's a scenario that might play out."
It probably won't, though, thanks to what those big human brains made possible: culture.
"When culture comes in, it layers itself on top of the biological constraints," says Tyler Volk, an Earth-systems expert at New York University. Thanks to culture and technology, we now have ways of buffering ourselves against hot climates, not only with air conditioning, but also with basic tools such as fans, thick-walled buildings and reservoirs to ensure we have plenty of water.
Only one thing could destroy that buffer - a total breakdown of society.
