The Model Gut

The IFR Model Gut is a “state of the art” in-vitro system that simulates human digestion for the first time from a true physiological perspective. It is the only model developed to combine emerging knowledge of the physical, mechanical, and biochemical environments experienced during digestion.

The model is built on a modular design and includes a simulation of the main body of the stomach, a region with a specific inhomogeneous mixing behaviour, followed by a unique emptying routine. Digesta from the main body of the stomach ‘empties’ into a model of the antrum (the lower part of the stomach). Here the digesta is subjected to high shear, forcing mechanical breakdown of the food structure. The final stage of the model is designed to simulate the conditions found in the duodenum (the first section of the small intestines).

IFR model digestive system innovations are:

• Able to process both real foods and pharmaceutical preparations under conditions based on current knowledge of human digestion
• Access for sampling digesta at all stages allowing real time collection at any point during digestion
• Modular design and construction of the technology provides the opportunity of easy adaptation of The Model for specific customer needs
• Integration of gastro-intestinal mixing dynamics, hydration patterns, breakdown forces & diffusion profiles all validated against measured in vivo human data
• Physiologically relevant additions of digestive enzymes, acid, bicarbonate, phospholipids and bile
• Computer control by state-of-the-art software which includes monitoring of all parts of The Model in real time

The IFR model Gut offers a physiologically relevant screening tool that will provide valuable data for evaluating novel and existing foodstuffs, diets and pharmaceutical preparations. The Model provides an accurate and meaningful method for predicting the fate of compounds, nutrients and formulae prior to absorption and therefore will become an invaluable tool for mechanistic, stability and bioaccessability studies during product development in the following fields:

• Food safety
• Oral drug development
• Novel, functional & specialist food characterisation
• Screening of active components
• Food structure studies

For More information visit the Institue for Food Research

Save Our Bees!

Up to £10million is to be invested to help identify the main threats to bees and other insect pollinators, under a major project announced today.



Pollinators – including honey and bumble bees, butterflies and moths – play an essential role in putting food on our tables through the pollination of many vital crops. These insects are susceptible to a variety of disease and environmental threats, some of which have increased significantly over the last five to ten years. Climate change, in particular warmer winters and wetter summers, has had a major impact on pollinators.

As a result, the numbers of pollinators have been declining steadily in recent years, with the number of bees in the UK alone falling by between 10 and 15 per cent over the last two years.

To gain a better understanding of why this is happening, some of the UK’s major research funders have joined together to launch an important new research programme.

The biggest challenge will be to develop a better understanding of the complex relationships between biological and environmental factors which affect the health and lifespan of pollinators.

The funding will be made available to research teams across the UK under the Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership, the major initiative by UK funders to help the UK respond effectively to changes to our environment. This is a joint initiative from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Defra, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Wellcome Trust and the Scottish Government.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said:

"Aristotle identified bees as the most hard working of insects, and with one in three mouthfuls coming from insect-pollinated crops, we need to support bees and other pollinators.

"I announced in January that Defra would put an extra £2M into research funding, and I am delighted our partners have agreed to boost this to up to £10M.

"This funding will give some of Britain’s world-class researchers the chance to identify the causes of the decline we’re seeing in bee numbers, and that will help us to take the right action to help."

Read More here

UK 'superscope' gets first signals from space

A super-powerful new radio telescope network - which will allow astronomers to carry out three years worth of observations in a single day - has received its first signals from space at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory.

Engineers and astronomers at the famous Cheshire site have seen 'first light' with e-MERLIN, successfully processing signals from two of the telescopes in the seven-telescope network.

e-MERLIN is designed to make detailed radio images of stars and galaxies using seven telescopes spread up to 217 km apart across the UK.The radio signals collected by the telescopes are brought back to Jodrell Bank using 600 km of high-speed optical fibre cables laid by Fujitsu UK and operated by Global Crossing.

Professor Simon Garrington, Director of e-MERLIN, said:

"The new optical fibre network, together with new electronics at each telescope and a powerful new 'correlator' which combines the signals at Jodrell Bank, will make the telescope one of the most powerful of its type in the world.

"The e-MERLIN fibre network will carry as much data as the rest of the UK Internet combined, enabling astronomers to see in a single day what would have previously taken us three years of observations."

e-MERLIN is the UK's national facility for radio astronomy. Its combination of widely separated telescopes provides astronomers with a powerful "zoom lens" with which they can study details of astronomical events out towards the edge of the observable universe.

Once fully functional in early 2010, e-MERLIN's unique combination of sharpness of view and sensitivity will allow astronomers to address key questions relating to the origin and evolution of galaxies, stars and planets.

For more information visit the Jodrell Bank website

Cool pictures of Mars

Thanks to the Bad Astronomy blog for posting these.

These images were taken by a camera called HiRISE, on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This picture shows a huge impact depression 2700 km across.

Helping the UK cope with climate change (in the countryside)

Research supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Defra is helping the UK to meet the challenges of climate change.

The latest research from scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council at North Wyke Research has found for the first time that the rate at which a dried soil is rewetted impacts on the amount of phosphorus lost from the soil into surface water and subsequently into the surrounding environment.

Crop growth, drinking water and recreational water sports could all be adversely affected if predicted changes in rainfall patterns over the coming years prove true, according to the research publishd this month in Biology and Fertility of Soils.


Some of the other research carried out by scientists to tackle climate change requires the study of fundamental processes in the life of plants. Under even mild environmental stress, plant cells may stop dividing, so the plant stops growing.

Research on the regulation of cell division, at the University of Cambridge, together with studies on plant growth at Rothamsted Research, is revealing how this response works. Once scientists can identify the genes that equip plants to tolerate and continue to grow under extreme climates, they can begin to breed them into commercial crop varieties. This approach is being used in East Anglia where drought is likely to be a worsening problem for sugar beet growers. Yields of sugar beet are predicted to decline by half in areas that are already experiencing difficulties. Scientists at Broom’s Barn are working with an international seed company to develop drought-resistant varieties.

Warmer wetter winters in the UK will make cereal crops more prone to fungal diseases such as Fusarium ear blight. At Rothamsted Research, scientists are exploring new crop management systems, including using natural predators, to control the fungus. They are also trying to find genes that confer natural resistance, so that these could be bred into wheat to make it less susceptible to Fusarium.

Using controlled environment chambers at the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology at Bangor, scientists from the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER) have modelled how temperature, atmospheric carbon dioxide and management practices affect grass yield and composition. They can predict grass growth and quality under different conditions, including the climate change scenarios identified by the UK Climate Impacts Programme.

For more info on this topic check out this pdf report: http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/publications/corporate/bioscience_behind_climate.pdf

and: http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/media/releases/2009/090415_changing_climate_phosphorus_soil.html

Satellites show how Earth moved during Italy quake

Studying satellite radar data from the European Space Agency’s Envisat and the Italian Space Agency’s COSMO-SkyMed satellites, scientists have begun analysing the movement of Earth during and after the 6.3 earthquake that shook the medieval town of L’Aquila in central Italy on 6 April 2009.


Image from European Space Agency (www.esa.int)

Italian scientists are studying data from these satellites to map surface movements after the earthquake and the numerous aftershocks that have followed.

The scientists are using a technique known as SAR Interferometry (InSAR), a sophisticated version of 'spot the difference'. InSAR involves combining two or more radar images of the same ground location in such a way that very precise measurements – down to a scale of a few millimetres – can be made of any ground motion taking place between image acquisitions.

The InSAR technique merges data acquired before and after the earthquake to generate 'interferogram' images that appear as rainbow-coloured interference patterns. A complete set of coloured bands, called ‘fringes’, represents ground movement relative to the spacecraft of half a wavelength, which is 2.8 cm in the case of Envisat's ASAR.

"We produced an interferogram just a few hours after the Envisat acquisition by combining these data with data acquired before the earthquake on 1 February. We were pleased that we were able to immediately see the pattern of the earthquake," said Riccardo Lanari of IREA-CNR in Naples, Italy.

The Envisat interferogram shows nine fringes surrounding a maximum displacement area located midway between L’Aquila and Fossa, where the ground moved as much as 25 cm.

Read more: European Space Agency

You are only 10% human...

This is a great video of a lecture about bacteria.

(link to video: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/509 )