SCIENCE NEWS - Dark roasted coffees may produce a compound that reduces acid production

The discovery may explain why dark roasted brews are gentler on the stomach than their lighter peers, and could lead to a new generation of tummy-friendly coffees. Roasting coffee beans doesn’t just impart bold, rich flavor. It also creates a compound that helps dial down production of stomach acid, according to research presented on March 21.

To explore the science behind these gentler brews, researchers used water and three other solvents to extract compounds from regular commercial coffee blends. Each solvent extracted a different profile of compounds, including caffeine and  N-methylpyridinium (NMP), a ringed compound that doesn’t appear in green coffee beans but is created in the roasting process. Stomach cells exposed to each suite of compounds upped their acid secretion, except for the cells exposed to the extract containing NMP. The team then compared the chemical profiles of a dark roasted and light roasted brew made with regular roasted and steam-treated beans. Both versions of the dark roasted coffee had more than 30 milligrams per liter of NMP, as compared with the lighter roast, which had 22 mg/l. The light roast that was subjected to steam treatment, a technique thought to weaken coffee’s stomach-provoking powers, had a mere 5 mg/l of NMP.

How NMP acts on the gastric system isn’t well understood. Acid secretion didn’t change noticeably in stomach cells treated with NMP alone. The friendlier darker brews also had less caffeine than their  lighter-brewed counterparts. This lower caffeine may also contribute to the darker roasts’ antacid powers.

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SCIENCE NEWS - Oils from human skin fight off Ozone but at a cost!!!

Ozone is a chemical that can be both friend and foe to human beings — depending on where it is. In the atmosphere, high overhead, ozone protects Earth from harmful radiation that comes from the sun. But at Earth’s surface, ozone is better known as air pollution, and breathing it can be dangerous. Inside a building, levels are much lower than outside because ozone changes when it runs into something like furniture. A new study identified yet another layer of protection that keeps ozone out of our bodies — human skin.

Skin contains many different kinds of oils.When ozone in the air meets the oils in human skin, there is a chemical reaction. That means that the molecules of ozone — and possibly the molecules of oil — change. For the new study, the scientists gathered information about the dust in the bedrooms of 500 children who live on the Danish island of Fyn. This dust, the scientists found, contained many different chemicals. One was a phthalate but they were surprised to find large amounts of cholesterol and squalene (Squalene is a fat that makes up about 10 percent of the oil in human skin.). Then the researchers realized that both of these things can be found in human skin. The human body regrows its outer layer of skin every two to four weeks, and bits and pieces of the old skin break off — to become dust. In this study, the researchers determined that skin flakes on surfaces were covering those surfaces with squalene, thus making those windows, doors or couches break up ozone as well as skin does.

It may seem like good news that human skin helps indoor spaces fight off dangerous ozone.In a different experiment, scientists in Austria mixed together ozone and skin oils in the laboratory. They found that, even though this mixing gets rid of ozone, it also creates new kinds of pollution. One in particular, called 4-oxopentanal (or 4-OPA), might be particularly dangerous. 

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SCIENCE NEWS - Multicelled animals may live oxygen-free

Until now, biologists had expected only one-celled organisms such as bacteria to thrive in oxygen-depleted places. Multicellular animals were known to pass through or hunker down temporarily in environments without oxygen, but in all cases needed to have it in some way at some time.

But marine biologists seem open to the idea that multicellular animals can live without oxygen though the evidence is indirect. Three species of loriciferan appear to go their whole lives without oxygen, researchers report in BMC Biology. Pulled out of a briny, sulfurous hellhole 3.5 kilometers below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, the newly found creatures look like tiny cups with tentacles sticking out. Loriciferans are real, multicellular animals though, so different from other creatures that the tiny marine oddballs have their own phylum on a par with mollusks and arthropods. Following molecular tests and microscope work, the scientists who found the three species propose that the loriciferans in the muck aren’t just visiting down there but are full-time residents.

Three research expeditions — in 1998, 2005 and 2008 — have found loriciferans in core samples from the basin. When researchers first found the animals, they thought they were cadavers. To see if the loriciferans had just wafted down after dying elsewhere, researchers brought up more sediment cores and tested them on ship in nitrogen-filled incubators protected from oxygen. In molecular tests, the animals appeared to be alive and metabolizing. The presence of cast-off skins also suggests that the loriciferans are growing on location. They may be reproducing there too -Two individuals had eggs.

Also, the loriciferans aren’t even a millimeter long and have limited mobility, so it’s unlikely that they’d move through the 50 meters of oxygen-free water above them. Thus, the researchers argue, it’s most likely the basin is their full-time home. Their cells don’t appear to have mitochondria, which use oxygen to generate energy. Instead, images of loriciferan tissue reveal what look like hydrogenosomes, organelles that power some anaerobic single-celled creatures.

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