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It's been a fascinating
week. First the Japanese appear to be bucking
the trend to confuse food with medicine, then we discover that
drug side effects are killing
the aged, next that there's a new tool to produce realistic-looking
prototypes.
Then, just as Gordon Brown
tried to pre-empt debate on Adair Turner's report into the UK
pension crisis, we found out how much we will need for a
comfortable old age (more than you think, surprise, surprise.)
But we might be able to do it if we stop trying to reinvent
ourselves, says a Kent researcher.
On a completely trivial
note, but one with massive potential for those involved, we
discovered that soon we may be able to swop
Colgate for Wrigley's as the mainstay supplier of our mouth
hygiene programme.
Slim
times ahead
Just as the idea of eating
your way to health and beauty takes off in the West, Japanese
market researcher Fuji Keizai reports that its home market for
health and beauty-oriented food products will drop about 7% from
2004 to 1.2 trillion yen ($9.8bn) in 2005 and further to 1.15
trillion yen ($9.6bn) in 2006.
The big sector drops are in
life-style related disease prevention and multi-balance food
products. But it expects growth in diet, nutritional balance and
cavity prevention.
Specifically, the diet
sector will reach 63.5bn yen ($530m) in 2006, up 53.8% from 2004;
the nutritional sector will expand to 70.5bn yen ($590m) in 2006,
up 7.2% from 2004; and the cavity prevention sector will rise to
79bn yen ($660m) in 2006, up 4.8% from 2004. (See Watch
out Colgate! Here comes Wrigley's.)
DNA
testers start to prey
Two stories this week
suggest that private DNA tests are going to be big, and never mind
the ethics.
Under the headline Drug
Side Effects Kill Tens of Thousands of Seniors Annually, US-based
Genelex Corporation announced a 10% discount on DNA-based drug
reaction tests for 55s and older.
It quoted research
published in JAMA saying adverse drug reactions are thought
to cause more than 100,000 deaths and two million "serious
events" every year. It went on to say that oldies are more at
risk because 90% of plus-65 year-olds have at least one
prescription, 40% five or more and 12% 10 or more.
It put up "a new, free
Internet site" www.genemedrx.com
where folks can see if DNA tests could them help evaluate their
responses to the medicines they are taking. The software program
also checks for interactions between certain foods,
over-the-counter medicines, and natural remedies with prescription
drugs.
Tests for each of four drug
metabolism pathways cost $250, or $800 for all four, with a 10%
discount for seniors and the military.
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The other DNA story
concerns a Newcastle University skin cancer expert. Together with
a chain of cosmetic surgery clinics the professor has set up to
test for sun damage to the skin cells' DNA.
For GBP250 you receive a
consultation where you fill in a lifestyle questionnaire and take
the test. Three weeks later at a second consultation they give you
the results and personalised advice on how to look after your
skin.
The professor is currently
"developing the next generation of sun creams", and no doubt
you will also be advised how surgery can undo the ageing effects
of the sun.
Curiously, the test won't
reveal if you have skin cancer, currently the fastest-growing
cancer type in the UK.
WYSIWYG
What you see is what you
get. That's the idea behind a database that records the
qualities of materials and how they look and behave. Combining
this data with a 3D computer-aided design produces a photo-real
image of the planned product.
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| Illustration: ESA |
The system had its road
test picturing an ion drive engine that will go into the European
Space Agency's SMART-1 mission to the Moon.
News'Uproduction, a
French start-up company which developed the program, has attracted
more money from ESA's European Space Incubator to push its
development.
Chief executive Jean-Luc
Atteleyn aims to produce photo-quality images and animations of
industrial items while they are still in design.
They use standards defined
by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) to describe
visual appearance. The database stores the optical behaviour and
visual appearance of materials together with other characteristics
and physical properties.
Users can then see the
optical behaviour of a material in normal pre-defined conditions,
and it lets them modify the visual appearance of an object by
changing the composition of the material.
New materials could be
specified using criteria such as lighting, colour and iridescence,
or mechanical properties such as water and thermal resistance,
hardness and durability. This "material composer" could meet
industrial needs to combine several end-product requirements with
final appearance, says the company.
Marc van Eesbeek, head of
ESA's materials physics and chemistry section, reckons that in
future developers could define the thermal-optical properties of
materials in the UV and infrared frequency band, or simulate the
temperature and lifetime consequences on structures, and maybe
find new potential solutions via their materials database.
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Still on databases is news
of The History of European Food Composition Databases, which outlines the many uses and users of food
composition tables, and some of the key events in the development
of these handy databases.
Copies of the 62-page
paperback, which is published by the British Nutrition Foundation
in association with the EuroFIR project, are available free from
c.musgrove@nutrition.org.uk.
Bunny-huggers
rejoice!
Here at innOvations we
applaud all efforts to reduce unnecessary pain and suffering
anywhere, any time. So we were happy to hear that scientists at
the Technische Universitaet Dresden in Germany are helping to
develop BioSim, a computer model that will allow drug
researchers to test the effects of new drugs without using as many
living creatures as before.
The five-year 10.7m euro EU
project hopes to develop a model of drug metabolism as well as
approaches to the biosimulation of diabetes, cardiac arrhythmia,
neurologic/psychiatric disorders and tumour diseases.
The TU Dresden working
group recently demonstrated its novel approach in predicting drug
metabolism using the model drug compound chloramphenicol, an
antibiotic used to treat aerobic
bacteria, mycoplasma, Chlamydial organisms, and anaerobic
bacteria.
How
much is enough?
It's a tough question, to
which the answer usually is, it depends.
But brave souls at the
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have worked out
the minimum personal income needed for healthy retirement for the
first time. The scary thing is, a lot of us won't make it.
The researchers found that
a single person over 65, living independently in the community in
England and without a significant disability, needs a minimum of
GBP122.70 a week to live healthily, while a couple requires GBP192.60.
The current full basic
state pension in the UK is GBP82.05, but this varies with an
individual's circumstances.
The researchers' figures
include food, the costs associated with exercise (such as entry to
swimming baths), housing maintenance and repair costs, dental and
eye care costs, and membership costs of social clubs and the like,
but not rent or council tax payments, which have been accelerating
at double the rate of the consumer price index.
They reckon that to stay
healthy, over 65s need to spend GBP32.30 on average on good food,
but that those in the lowest 40% of income are spending only GBP23.40.
Although older people can
exercise for as little as GBP2.10 a week, over 90% of over 75s are
not meeting international guidelines of half an hour of moderate
intensity exercise at least five days a week.
The UK has nearly 8m aged
65 and over. The proportion over 85 rose from 0.7% in 1961 to 1.9%
in 2002 and is projected to rise to 3.8% in 2031.
The report's chairman,
Professor Jerry Morris says "While we are being urged to make
healthy choices in the way we lead our lives, older people on
government minimum fixed incomes are, on the team's analysis,
not able to meet these minimum costs for a healthy life."
Chancellor Gordon Brown has
already warned that whatever changes to the state pension strategy
that Adair Turner recommends next week should be "affordable".
Let's hope government-induced pet food for OAPs is not on the
menu.
We're
shopping for the emperor's new clothes
Of course, we might not
need a state pension if we respond appropriately to University of
Kent's Professor Anthony Elliott, who says shopping is ruining
us.
Elliott contends we are
addicted to reinventing ourselves and instant gratification. As a
result we are going broke fast.
Consumers are so bewitched
by seductive services, designer goods and hi-tech products that
they become addicted to spending, he says. This addiction is blind
to the economic and emotional costs of debt and the dangers of
insolvency.
"Those addicted to
shopping are increasingly reliant on easily available credit. But
the explosion in the number of Britons now with serious debt
indicates that the problem runs much deeper than easy credit.
"This goes to the core of
our quick-fix culture, and it is something that the government
needs to consider seriously if it wants to influence the way
people live now."
The Department of Trade and
Industry showed this month that Britons owe more than GBP1
trillion. Britons' personal debt is now rising at GBP1 million
every four minutes. The interest on that debt is around GBP6
billion a month, and 246 plastic-based transactions take place
every second in the UK. Personal bankruptcies have soared almost
50% to record levels.
Some economists argue that
credit-funded consumer spending has shielded Britain from
recession. But Elliott says globalisation creates new personal
vulnerabilities. "Employment is more fluid and everything moves
incredibly fast. (Apart from the threat to jobs that create wealth
as opposed to those that simply move it around), there is
increased pressure on people to be seen to try to 'improve'
and 'transform' themselves. Consumerism offers just such a
road to instant change."
Elliott argues that the
emotional costs of quick-fix consumerism are ruining lives. "In
some cases, the reinvention craze centred on compulsive
consumerism is actually eroding people's inner lives. Shopping
as means of transforming oneself is producing a kind of
self-mutilation of the psyche."
You can read more on this
in Elliott's new book The New Individualism: The Emotional
Costs of Globalization published by Routledge.
Tetra Pak seeks help
Tetra Pak has signed a
joint venture agreement with US-based sterilisation and
decontamination experts Steris.
The news come hot on the
heels of reports that its ink was responsible for contaminating
the infant milk packaging at the centre of the latest Nestle
scandal.
The JV aims "to support
the creation of customised sterilisation systems that address the
needs of the food and beverage industry."
Steris will provide
technical sterilisation technologies and related capabilities.
Tetra Pak will provide expertise in food and beverage production
and packaging and related products.
Watch
out Colgate! Here comes Wrigley.
Materials,
one of Nature's progeny, reports that protein-powered
chewing gum may replace the toothbrush for those on the move.
Primary target is the military, but the real market is anyone who
hates brushing their teeth, or who can't do it conveniently.
The gum, developed by US
Army researchers, contains a protein that attacks the bacteria
that cause plaque. Plaque can lead to gum infections and tooth
decay. The developers believe the gum will keep mouths
bacteria-free without the nasty side-effects found in competitive
products.
Apparently, untended mouth
problems have severe effects on soldiers' morale and hence
fighting capacity. Small wonder then in the Army's interest in
the gum's active ingredient, a protein fragment called KSL.
In the lab KSL kills
harmful mouth bacteria such as Streptococcus mutans by
targeting and attacking their cell membranes. The next step is
field trials.
Here's hoping they also
make the gum biodegrabable after use.
Until next time.
--
Ian Grant
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