AgroBiotech Initiative

  It is the size of a large vitamin pill but can do far more good for a patient.  When swallowed, this tiny camera helps doctors to diagnose illnesses by transmitting close-up images of the digestive tract.  Patients can get on with their lives as the £300 device, which is about an inch long and less than half an inch across, passes naturally through the body and is discarded.  The battery-powered digital video camera has its own set of lightemitting diodes and a transmitter. It relays pictures to a data recorder - which looks like a personal stereo and worn on a belt around the waist - at the rate of two frames a second for about eight hours.  Doctors download information from the recorder on to a computer to get a close-up of a patient's digestive tract without the need for a hospital stay. Experts say the camera will make it faster and easier to diagnose life-threatening conditions such as stomach and bowel cancer, as well as ailments ...

Find out what’s beneath your feet with SoilMapp, an app for iPad. SoilMapp taps into the best available soil information from Australia’s national soil databases and is a joint project with the Australian Collaborative Land Evaluation Program and the Grains Research and Development Corporation. Download SoilMapp now so you can have soil information at your fingertips. Find out what's beneath your feet with SoilMapp which taps into the best available soil information from Australia’s national soil databases. You can find out about the likely types of soil near you or you can look anywhere across the country. Discover the soil’s secrets, how it holds water, its clay content, acidity and other attributes related to agricultural productivity and land management. Australia's soils are one of the country's most valuable natural assets, critical to sustainable food production, biodiversity conservation, water quality and human health. Having access to the ...

  Food technology includes functional foods, modified foods and nutraceuticals. Functional foods are foods or dietary components that may provide an additional function (such as health benefits or disease prevention) beyond basic nutrition. These may be enhancements to naturally occurring benefits in conventional foods, such as increased omega-3 fatty acids in salmon and increasing the fibre in oat bran, or ingredients added to foods during processing to provide benefits that promote optimal health. Nutraceuticals, a subset of functional foods, are derived from food sources and taken as supplements to provide extra health benefits. Modified foods such as folate-enriched breads and foods formulated with bioactive ingredients such as fish oils, plant sterol esters or lutein may play an important role in promoting health. They can further enhance a diet made up primarily of conventional foods with functional properties such as fruits, vegetables, nuts and whole grains...

  Stem cell-based therapies are showing potential to work at the source of many diseases including diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and certain cancers. Should the regenerative properties of stem cells be fully harnessed, there is potential to repair damaged regions of organs including the heart and brain and re-grow blood vessels. Stem cells may offer the possibility of treating disease and disability that has remained stubbornly off-limits to intervention and may now become treatable. Spinal cord damage could be corrected, and the clock could finally be wound back on neurodegenerative diseases. Although the clinical application of stem cells can be traced back to the 1950s when the first bone marrow transplants were performed, there has been an explosion in stem cell research since then. Significant advancements in research have been made in the 15 years that have passed since the human embryonic stem cell (hESC) was first described. Stem cell exploration h...

Metabolism. It’s the set of life-sustaining chemical transformations within the cells of living organisms. It’s such a big concept that you might believe you’re at the mercy of it. Well, you are! It’s thermodynamics at work, after all. But there are a bunch of simple — even easy — things you can do to boost your metabolism and make your body run more efficiently. Make tomorrow a great day by learning from the common metabolism mistakes you probably made today. 1. You didn’t get a good night’s sleep  If you're chronically sleep deprived, don’t be surprised if you gain a few pounds without eating a morsel of extra food. “A lack of sleep can cause several metabolic problems,” says nutritionist Seth Santoro. “It can cause you to burn fewer calories, lack appetite control and experience an increase in cortisol levels, which stores fat.” Lack of sufficient sleep — which experts say is 7 to 9 hours a night for most people — also leads to impaired glucose tolerance, ...

Is Coconut Oil Worth the Hype? Have you heard about the new “miracle food”? Oh, you’ve got to try it. Did you know it cures cancer? And whitens your teeth? And prevents Alzheimer’s? It also reduces inflammation and improves your memory. It even clears your skin! What am I talking about? Why, coconut oil, of course. Coconut oil is being hailed as the next big thing, and its purported benefits seem never-ending. Perhaps you've read about coconut oil’s miraculous properties on the internet, or maybe a family member or friend espoused its greatness. But is coconut oil the real deal, or is this another case of a trendy health food getting overblown? STACK investigates.     Coconut Oil Nutrition Facts   Before we talk about the benefits of coconut oil, let’s look at its basic nutrition facts. One tablespoon of coconut oil delivers 117 calories, 14 grams of fat, 12...