Tag Archives: Peel

Health

Something Awesome Happens When You Use Banana Peel as an Ingredient : ScienceAlert

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Every time you peel a banana and dispose of the skin, you’re throwing away a tasty, nutritious snack.

A recent study has shown if banana peels are blanched, dried, and ground into a flour, they can be turned into baked goods that taste just as nice, if not better than wheat-based products.

Unless you’re a devoted reader of vegan cooking blogs or a Nigella Lawson fan, you’ve probably never considered cooking with a banana peel. But not only is it perfectly safe, but scientists also demonstrated it really is good for you.

When their experiments products were taste-tested, consumers reported they were just as happy with the flavors as they were with peel-free sugar cookies.

You’ll even get a generous helping of minerals and cancer-fighting nutrients. Enriched with banana peels, for instance, the sugar cookies made in the study contained much more fiber, magnesium, potassium, and antioxidant compounds.

On the downside, adding too much banana peel flour did result in cookies that were somewhat brown and hard, possibly from all the extra fiber. But when batches were made with flour containing 7.5 percent banana peel, the texture of the cookies hit a far more appealing balance.

As a bonus, the goods also kept well on the shell for three months at room temperature.

While the study only looked at the consequences of adding banana peels to baked cookies, the results suggest using banana peel flour in breads, cakes, and pasta might also be worth considering.

Last year, for instance, a study on banana peel cake found the yellow skin of the fruit provides a natural food color to the baked product as well as a nutritional boost.

A 2016 study, meanwhile, found that substituting up to 10 percent of wheat flour with banana peel flour can enrich baked bread with higher protein, carbohydrate, and fat contents.

Not into baking? Nigella Lawson has used banana peels in curry, and vegan bloggers have recently popularized the idea of banana peel bacon and pulled peel ‘pork’.

Eating the skin of this fruit isn’t just a healthy option, it can help reduce food waste. Around 40 percent of a banana’s weight is in its peel, and most of the time, this nutrition-packed skin is simply thrown away.

Sure, banana peels are pretty useless when raw. But if they are prepared right, they can actually taste pretty darn good. They can possibly even extend the shelf life of some products as the peels have antioxidant and antimicrobial properties.

The same goes for other fruit peels, too, like mango skin, which was also found to boost a cake’s antioxidant properties and improve its flavor.

So the next time you strip down a banana for the fruit inside, consider keeping the skin. Your belly might thank you later.

The study was published in ACS Food Science & Technology.

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Science

New quantum gravity sensor could someday peel away the surfaces of other worlds

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To find features like groundwater under Earth‘s surface — or under the surface of another world — scientists can sense the subtle marks those features leave in the planet’s gravitational field.

But those measurements aren’t easy to get; you need very sensitive instruments, and even the slightest vibrations can throw off the measurements. Now, a group of physicists has demonstrated an hourglass-like gravity-measuring device that they say helps to overcome this challenge. 

Gravity-measuring devices, called gravimeters, themselves aren’t new. They’re used for everything from probing physical constants to mapping rugged landscapes. Modern, cutting-edge gravimeters use atoms. If you pulse two atoms with lasers and send them out to different points, a gravitational field will affect the two in slightly different ways. You can measure that gravitational field by overlapping those two atoms and puzzling out the differences in their quantum properties. 

Related: 10 mind-boggling things you should know about quantum physics

But when physicists try to boost the resolution in attempts to see objects the size of a few meters, such as pipes and passages underground, conventional gravity sensors hit a wall. Ground variations, temperature shifts and even slight magnetic fields can throw them off.

So the new sensor takes a different approach. The researchers call it an hourglass; each “bulb” contains a cloud of rubidium atoms trapped in a magnetic cage, pulsed through with a laser. The dual clouds mean that that device effectively has two separate gravimeters. As a result, the researchers can not only measure a gravitational field but also measure it at two different heights.

It’s not the most sensitive quantum gravity sensor in the world, but it is one of the first to leave the lab. In a real-world test, this hourglass-like gravimeter detected a utility tunnel buried under a road in Birmingham, England.

“As far as we know, our instrument has been the first to detect a real underground target of relevance to civil engineering outside of the laboratory environment,” study co-author Kai Bongs, a physicist at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, told Space.com. “This is really a breakthrough in making quantum technology practical.”

The new gravimeter could become a wonderful tool for mapping built-up features underground. 

And these gravimeters aren’t limited to use on Earth. In fact, the European Space Agency (ESA) is already interested in taking them to the launchpad. ESA’s next generation of Earth observation satellites might carry sensors like these, measuring things like underground water, the circulation of the world’s oceans and how these things are being affected by climate change.

“This might be extended to the exploration of other planets in the solar system, understanding more about their inner structure,” Bongs told Space.com.

Sending gravimeters to study other worlds isn’t new. In 2012, NASA’s GRAIL mission sent a pair of spacecraft to map the moon’s gravitational field and peel away its surface. That mission probed the layers of the moon’s interior with unprecedented accuracy, studied the material under impact basins and found what might be the signatures of underground caverns.

Now, if ESA’s interest is any indication, these next-generation gravimeters could be used to find underground water on the moon — or on other worlds, like Mars.

The researchers published their work Feb. 23 in the journal Nature.

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Health

‘Rare’ reaction to COVID-19 vaccine likely caused man’s skin to swell, peel, doctor says

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A Virginia man is rebounding from a days-long hospital stay after suffering a severe skin reaction to what his doctors believe was the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. Richard Terrell has since made a full recovery, and one of his doctors told Fox News that he remains thankful to have received the shot.

He began experiencing itchiness on his body about three to four days after receiving the jab. The symptoms eventually progressed to discomfort, and by the time the 74-year-old landed at VCU Medical Center, the rash covered his body from head to toe, his legs were swollen and his skin began peeling.

“It was stinging, burning and itching,” Terrell told 8News. “Whenever I bent my arms or legs, like the inside of my knee, it was very painful where the skin was swollen and was rubbing against itself.”

PFIZER, MODERNA VACCINES CUT INFECTION RISK BY 90%, CDC STUDY FINDS

One of his dermatologists, Dr. FNU Nutan, told Fox News that while his case is rare, and possibly the first reported instance of such a reaction to the Johnson & Johnson shot, it is not unusual for vaccines or medications – including everyday ones — to cause skin reactions.

Nutan said the team worked diligently to eliminate other potential triggers for the reaction before concluding that the vaccine was a likely cause.

“Lots of patients come in and say ‘I got the vaccine, here’s what happened, I’m sure it’s the vaccine,’” Nutan told Fox News. “We’re very careful when we see such patients, we want to make sure we have ruled out the more common causes of the reaction – most commonly it would be antibiotics or something he took, even over-the-counter.”  

Terrell was tested for viral illnesses, chlamydia, coronavirus, adenovirus but all came back negative. His kidneys, liver and heart were monitored and tested to ensure the reaction did not have further implications. Nutan said the extremely rare reaction is likely due to his genetic makeup and the way the vaccine is made, but not enough data is available about such instances.

COVID-19 VACCINES ARE SAFE AND EFFECTIVE IN PREGNANCY, STUDY SHOWS

He was treated over several days in the hospital with steroids, fluids, creams and bandages and the team submitted his case to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

While the team did not discover any other instances of such a reaction in existing literature, Nutan said that does not necessarily mean that it has not occurred elsewhere.

“This is something we should all be aware of but we shouldn’t be scared of it,” she said. “We know how to manage it, what we don’t know how to manage are the severely sick patients with COVID-19 who our team has seen over the last year. It’s harder to manage the infection than it is the reaction to the vaccine.”

Nutan said she has come forward with the case with the intent of being open, but that she remains a large proponent of vaccines.

“This is probably the first time we’re seeing [the reaction] – it’s very, very rare but it’s not rare to me because I see it all the time,” she said. “I see patients who have such a reaction to other medications not on the radar or in the media, even Tylenol can cause it. If you look at the risk-benefit – if you look at the risk of getting the virus versus the benefit of getting the vaccine, the risk-benefit is still highly in favor of the vaccine.”

She said that the more people who get the vaccine the more likely it is for a rare reaction to occur, as is the case with most population studies.

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“Should that stop people from taking the vaccine? I don’t think so because vaccines are really, really helpful and we can take care of the reaction, it’s very controlled versus if you get the infection we still don’t have a foolproof way of making sure people don’t die from COVID-19,” she said.

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World

Western Australia lockdown: Single Covid case leads to lockdown in Perth metropolitan area and the Peel and South West regions

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The Perth metropolitan area and the Peel and South West regions of the Australian state are now under “full lockdown,” Premier Mark McGowan announced Sunday, with residents only able to leave their homes for essential shopping, medical needs, exercise, and for jobs that cannot be done at home or remotely.

Schools, most businesses, entertainment venues and places of worship are all closed, and restaurants restricted to takeaway only.

“This is a very serious situation and each and every one of us has to do everything we personally can to help stop the spread in the community,” McGowan said.

The Perth metropolitan area and the Peel and South West regions have a combined population of more than 2 million people, with the vast majority living in the state capital Perth.

The drastic measures come after a man in his twenties who worked as a security guard at the Sheraton Four Points, a hotel quarantine facility, tested positive for the coronavirus. Of the four active cases at the hotel while the man was on shift, two were carrying the United Kingdom strain and one the South African strain of the virus, which are believed to be more contagious than other variants.

“We are told the guard was working on the same floor, as a positive UK variant case,” McGowan said. As the man had worked two 12-hour shifts on January 26 and 27, it was possible he had contracted the UK strain, the Premier added, though he said “exactly how the infection was acquired remains under investigation.”

Officials are calling on all people who visited a specified list of venues on a certain date to get tested. All close contacts of the man are required to quarantine for 14 days.

“Western Australians have done so well for so long but this week it is absolutely crucial that we stay home, maintain physical distancing and personal hygiene and get tested if you have symptoms,” McGowan said.

With a population of around 2.76 million, Western Australia has recorded 902 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, though it currently only has 12 active cases, according to the state’s health department. Over 800 of the state’s confirmed cases are among international travelers and people who arrived by cruise or other vessel, with less than 100 locally-transmitted cases in total.

Australia has recorded a total of 28,811 cases, with 909 deaths, the majority of which occurred in the southeastern states of Victoria and New South Wales. The country has shown success in controlling the coronavirus through stringent lockdowns and tight border controls, with all international visitors required to undergo testing and quarantine.

Last year, the southern state of Victoria was placed under tight lockdown for almost two months in order to contain an outbreak around the city of Melbourne.

But while the broader measures were effective, officials in the state faced criticism for a “hard lockdown” that was enforced against nine public housing towers in Melbourne. Around 3,000 residents of the towers were not given advance warning of the lockdown, which prevented them from leaving their homes for any reason for over five days.

Last month, an official investigation into the restrictions found they “breached human rights,” and were not based on direct health advice.

CNN’s Jessie Yeung and James Griffiths contributed reporting.

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