A Sweet Deal for Antibiotics

Before the days of antibiotics, honey was a popular and powerful cure-all used to treat numerous ailments since the ancient Egyptians. With the development of modern medicines in the last century, though, honey went out a fashion and it’s antibacterial powers fell by the wayside. Now, according to researchers at the University of Whales Institute, honey may be on the verge of making a medical comeback.
A recent study headed by microbiologist Rose Cooper has found that even a small amount of Manuka honey can help fight the notoriously –drug resistant bacteria MRSA, as well as other drug-resistant strains. The special type of honey made specifically from nectar of New Zealand’s native Manuka tree has been shown to make super-tough MRSA more sensitive to antibiotics, essentially reversing the drug resistance. Wait before you hit the honey pot, though – Cooper’s team thus far has only been tested in a petri dish; humans and animal’s aren’t quite in the picture – yet. While the ultimate goal of this promising discovery is to make a therapeutic wound cream, research is still in the preliminary stages and a final product is years away. And a word of caution to overzealous honey fans: while some types of honey to have the healing capabilities of decreasing the pH of skin injuries, draining wounds, and killing bacteria, others have spores that can infect wounds and lead to a nasty gangrene infection. So save the honey for your tea and leave the healing to the professionals, for now at least.

-EM

The Perfect Bracket

Every March, the NCAA pits the best 68 (previously 65) college basketball teams in a tournament that has come to be known as "March Madness." To basketball purists, it's a month of quality basketball to be dissected and analysed. For everyone else, there's the thrill of making a bracket and watching it fall apart as underdog teams pull off the craziest upsets. (How bout them Bulldogs of Butler University?)

This past March, 5.9 million people submitted brackets to ESPN's NCAA Basketball Tournament Bracket Challenge. Out of the 5.9 million, only 2 people correctly guessed the final four. Nobody was even close to the ever elusive perfect bracket. It got me thinking - what's the probability of a perfect bracket?

Intuitively, the probability of getting a perfect bracket is dependent of a person's knowledge of basketball. A person who is more familiar with the college game is more likely than a person with no knowledge to guess every game correct. But let us forget about that for now. Let's simplify the problem - what's the probability of a perfect bracket is every winner is chosen randomly?

Currently, there are 68 teams competing in the tournament. However, because ESPN doesn't require participants to pick the first round games, the bracket really consists of 64 teams.

If the bracket contains only 2 teams (Team A and B), then there is 1 game and 2 possible outcomes (A wins or B wins). If the bracket contains 4 teams (A, B, C, D), then there are 3 games (A vs B, C vs D, winner of AB vs winner of CD) and 8 possible outcomes (A over C in championship game, C over A, A over D, D over A, B over C, B over D, C over B, D over B). As you can see, the number of total possible outcomes increases drastically.

If there are n teams (where n is a power of 2), then there will be n-1 total games played. This makes sense, because every game eliminates a team from the tournament, and in the end, there is only one winner, so the other n-1 teams are all eliminated in the n-1 games played. In each game played, there are two possible winners, so the total number of outcomes will be 2^(n-1). Thus, your chance of getting a perfect bracket with n teams (where n is a power of 2) by randomly choosing the winner will be 1 out of 2^(n-1).

Thus, for the ESPN Bracket Challenge, where you pick out of 64 teams, the number of total possible brackets is 2^63 = 9.223 x 10^18. Since we’re picking teams randomly, every outcome is equally likely. Thus, the probability of a perfect bracket by choosing random teams is 1 divided by that figure, which is about 1.084 x 10^-19. Even with 5.9 million entries that ESPN received, the probability that someone getting a perfect bracket (assuming every entry is unique) is a laughable 6.397 x 10^-13. That’s astronomically low.

Of course, we’re assuming that winners are being picked randomly. That’s an awful assumption, because many people do not make picks randomly. They spend hours of research in order to make an educated pick. Thus, the probability of predicting a game correctly is not ½, but something higher. Thus, not every outcome is equally likely. This will require much more advanced and rigorous calculations. Check back next March….

Nuclear Crisis in Japan

Picture from National Geographic website

On March 11, Japan was hit by an earthquake and tsunami 9.0 in magnitude that killed thousands of people and left many more missing. This disaster created a chain of events that is heavily influencing people's lives around the world.

The Japanese yen hit an all-time high right after the disaster. This rise in the yen is probably due to Japanese households and investors selling foreign currencies to buy yen after the tsunami. A stronger yen hurts the Japanese economy because consumers abroad have less buying power, making Japanese exports seem more expensive, therefore producing a decline in sales for Japanese manufacturers.

To combat this phenomenon, many nations have joined together in a coalition in hopes of decreasing the volatility of the yen. The nations involved are members of the G7, a group of seven industrialized nations whose finance ministers meet several times a year to discuss economic policy. The members are the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and Canada. Through a combined effort, the G7 hopes to facilitate Japan to a faster recovery.

A more pressing issue facing the Japanese government is the potential meltdown of six nuclear reactors in Japan. A nuclear reactor contains water and nuclear fuel that create a controlled reaction that heats the water to 550 degrees Fahrenheit to generate electricity. When a natural disaster occurs, the nuclear reactors are designed to shut down the reaction and backup generators would then pump water into the reactor to cool the fuel. The problem caused by the earthquake and tsunami is that the backup generators do not have enough power to pump water through the reactor. So the fuel rods boil off the water and overheat, causing explosions like the ones at Reactors 1 and 3.

Right now, workers at the plants are pumping seawater into the nuclear reactors to prevent a complete meltdown which would release radioactive substances. Although the reactors seem to have stabilized by the seawater pumping, traces of radioactive iodine have been found in milk from a farm close to the plant in Fukushima as well as in tap water in Tokyo. The half life of radioactive iodine is short but if absorbed, the radioactive iodine may pose health risks to the human body.

The First Digit Law

Pick up an almanac, the Guinness Book of World Records or any newspaper and write down all the numbers that you find. Most people would expect that the first digits of these numbers would be uniformly distributed from one to nine. However, amazingly, you are likely to find that 30% of these numbers begin with the digit 1!

This unusual phenomenon is known as Benford's Law, which is not a rigid mathematical law, but more of an observation. Rather than an equal 11% chance of each digit appearing as the first digit in a set of real-world data, the distribution is matches more with a logarithmic scale, with a 30.1% chance that the digit one appears as the first digit of a data point and only a 4.6% chance that the digit nine appears as the first digit of a data point.

There are reasons for Benford's Law, but here are some logical reasons. If we take a random number and list the numbers less than it, the digit 1 will always appear the most. For example, 40% of the numbers less than 3,000,000 start with the digit 1 and while this percentage gets smaller as the number you choose gets larger, it will at the least equal that of the numbers. Another reason is that the percentage change between numbers gets smaller as you use bigger and bigger numbers. If a stock price was at 100, it would take a 100% increase to get to 200. However, if the stock was at 800, it would only take a 12.5% increase to get to 900. Thus numbers in data tend to stay within the range of numbers that start with one the most often.

Benford's Law also has some great practical applications. It can be used to show whether a set of real-world data is authentic or not. In fact, it was used to detect fraud in the 2009 Iranian elections, where the data did not quite match up with the distribution given by Benford's Law. So the next time someone shoves a bunch of statistics at you, don't just gobble it up. It is simple enough to count the numbers and see whether the data could possibly be authentic.

Umami! The Fifth Taste

When one first thinks of taste: the four tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, and salty) immediately come to mind. However, for most umami does not.

So, what is exactly is umami? Umami, also known as savoriness, was first recognized at the 1985 Umami International Symposium in Hawaii to describe the taste of glutamates and nucleotides and has become widely accepted as the 5^th basic taste.

Most people don’t recognize umami but it is key to making food taste delicious. The taste is subtle and blends with other tastes to “expand and round out flavors.” Umami is often described as pleasant “brothy” or “meaty” taste with long lasting, mouthwatering and coating sensation over the tongue. Umami occurs naturally in many foods including meat, fish, vegetables and dairy products.

If one is ever in Los Angeles, one can try an Umami Burger that caters specifically to this “taste.” Umami Burgers were featured in Food Network’s The Best Thing I Ever ate!

http://umamiburger.com/

Unconscious Eating and Nutrition

"You are what you eat."

But what if we don’t know what we’re eating and how we are eating?

Many of us undoubtedly have some poor nutritional habits. Some of us are not aware of our environment when we eat, and thus may often overeat. Others do not know what we are putting into our mouths, due to the increased amount of chemicals on foods going into grocery stores.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) recently compiled a list of cleanest and dirtiest produce after studying 100,000 produce pesticide reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Topping the charts for dirtiest include: celery, which contains on average 13 pesticides per stalk, peaches, laced with 67 different chemicals, strawberries, apples, blueberries, cherries, spinach, kale, collard greens, and potatoes. These fruits and vegetables either require high maintenance to ward off insects or have skin that cannot protect themselves from harmful pesticides.

Besides not being conscious of what we are eating, many people do not pay attention to how we are eating. Recent studies show that eating in a setting with bright colors and upbeat, loud music causes people to eat more quickly and thus eat more. However, people tend to eat more slowly and less food when they are placed in a darker setting with calmer music. Furthermore, the shapes and sizes of the plates and utensils we use to eat affect people’s consumption behaviors. For example, many people hesitate to pile food up to the rims of plates, thus they eat less food on plates of same size but with bigger rims. Similarly, people served with smaller utensils often eat less than do people using bigger serving spoons. Finally, eating in front of the TV does, in fact, cause people to space out and overeat.

By knowing what foods to avoid (or to buy organic) and knowing how exactly we should settle ourselves before eating a meal, we can develop good nutritional habits that will keep us healthy.

-SL

The Perfect Child

Imagine being able to pre-determine the height , intelligence and eye color of an unborn child. Though this seems implausible, scientific advancements will soon make it possible for parents to tailor the physical appearance of their offspring. This new technology involves pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which is done on the developing embryo. The resulting creation has been coined a “designer baby,” an infant whose genetic makeup has been screened or altered in hopes of influencing the appearance of certain traits. Though this technology was previously used to screen for diseases, a new wave of scientific advancement reveals to what length parents will go to in order to develop the “perfect child.”

One of the first medical advocates for genetic tailoring was a Los Angeles fertility clinic in Los Angeles, which allowed parents to provide input regarding the external appearance of their existing embryos. Though the clinic shut down on March 2 due to outrage from the medical community, it still had many supporters.PGD is a highly debated issue with both supporters and critics having valid arguments to substantiate their claims. Arguably, designer babies with an improved genome can potentially lead more successful lives. However, the seemingly speculative consequences addressed should still be taken seriously.