This story, once again, reaffirms why I hate rapping. Tie those knots, and wear a helmet.

Some good reads

Brains & Brawn
Everything you know about fitness is a lie.

Antioxidant supplements curb exercise benefits?

Blurb in the NYtimes today covering some recent research suggesting that antioxidant supplementation may prevent some of the exercise-induced benefits of exercise (specifically, improvements in insulin sensitivity).

I haven't had a chance to read the research paper yet, but it is available via OpenAccess here.

The Evolutionary Search for Our Perfect Past

A thoughtful essay by Marlene Zuk in the NYTimes.

Did our cave-dwelling forebears feel nostalgia for the days before they were bipedal? Were hunter-gatherers convinced that swiping a gazelle from a lion was superior to that newfangled business of running it down yourself? And why stop there? Why not long to be aquatic, since life arose in the sea? For that matter, it might be nice to be unicellular: after all, cancer arises because our differentiated tissues run amok. Single cells don’t get cancer.

Reflections on an Oyster

A great post over at Olivia Judson's blog at the NYTimes.

At 85, More Peaks to Conquer and Adventures to Seek

Short piece in the NYTimes today on Fred Beckey as he prepares for his next ascent.

Born to Run? Your Genetic Advantage

Interesting article in today's NYTimes.

What to do when stalled on the Texas Method

Sooner or later you're gonna find out that you can't keep adding weight to the barbell every week. So, what are you supposed to do when progress stalls? Some great thoughts on working through stalls from Glenn Pendlay (who wrote the Texas Method) in this thread on the Crossfit boards. There's also more good stuff in this interview with Rippetoe, where Pendlay covers some history, training theory and various periodization concepts. Good stuff.

How fast could Usain Bolt have run?

A group of physicists make some predictions (via New Scientist):Find the full text arXiv.org: Velocity dispersions in a cluster of stars: How fast could Usain Bolt have run?, H. K. Eriksen, J. R. Kristiansen, O. Langangen, I. K. Wehus.

Chuck the Nalgenes?

So there's been a lot of fuss lately about bisphenol A (BPA) in polycarbonate bottles. Just to add to the confusion, the FDA deemed that an adequate margin of safety existed for exposure to BPA from food contact uses. Here's the executive summary from the draft assessment released on the 14th:

This document describes the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) safety assessment of Bisphenol A (BPA) as it relates to exposure through use in food contact materials. This assessment is particularly focused on the concerns for developmental toxicity identified in recent assessments of BPA, including those of the National Toxicology Program and their expert panel. BPA is an impurity in FDA-regulated food additives, including epoxy-based food can liners and polycarbonate baby bottles. FDA estimates that BPA exposure from use in food contact materials in infants and adults is 2.42 μg/kg bw/day and 0.185 μg/kg bw/day, respectively. FDA has determined the appropriate no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) for its assessment of BPA to be the NOAEL for systemic toxicity of 5 mg/kg bw/day (5000 μg/kg bw/day) derived from two multigenerational rodent studies. This NOAEL results in adequate margins of safety of approximately 2,000 and 27,000 for infants and adults, respectively. The data reviewed on highlighted endpoints, such as the prostate gland and developmental neural and behavioral toxicity, were insufficient to provide a basis to alter the NOAEL used to calculate the margins of safety. FDA has concluded that an adequate margin of safety exists for BPA at current levels of exposure from food contact uses. At a later date, FDA will publish a separate document that provides a safety assessment of BPA exposure from other FDA-regulated products.

More interesting information from the National Toxicology Program's (NTP) draft report on BPA (a major scientific review underlying the FDA report) can be found here.

Is that Brian?

Photo (c) Fox News
When I first saw this new story I was sure all those longing looks that Brian gives buildings around the city had finally driven him over the edge... but then it became clear that the climber wasn't sporting pants anywhere near as cool as Brian's chinos. Interestingly the idea of climbing the New York Times building apparently became a fad. Alain Robert as the first. Renaldo Clarke couldn't help following. Of course the real reason Brian wasn't third becomes apparent when you look at the interior shots: this climb isn't even a 5.8 but it is sustained.

Wrestling with a Disability

(c) The Inquirer
A high school wrestler from Ohio made it to the state championships this year. With almost no arms or legs. Quite a remarkable story and an amazing athlete. An article in The Inquirer (with more available if you search). YouTube

The Temple of Pain

You can have all the money in the world but you can’t buy a body. That makes me feel good. If the rich guys could buy fitness, they would buy it. They’d leave us with nothing.

-Julien Spencer

Great article in the Times today.

Make sure to rest up

Good reminder in the Times Magazine today.

Watch that tuna intake

You may be surprised by the mercury levels found in tuna in NYC. Seem to be a bit higher than I expected. Gotta start shopping at Fairway!

Junk food monkeys

A humorous anecdote by Robert Sapolsky (the embedded viewer is not great, see a better version here):

Read this doc on Scribd: Junk food monkeys by Robert Sapolsky

Thought provocation

Gary Taubes
The (Political) Science of Salt

Don Kates and Gary Mauser
Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?

Steven Pinker
In defense of dangerous ideas
A history of violence
Subsequent TED|talk: A brief history of violence

Ross Kemp On Gangs - El Salvador:
Parts 2,3,4,5 (jaw dropping scene at ~3:20),6

Swim. Bike. Run. Shoot. Kill.

Interesting article on the recruit pool for the Navy SEALs.

Turning back the clock

Figure 1 from a recent paper by Melov et al. (2007) studying gene expression profiles in older adults following resistance training. This figure is not particularly useful, and I included because it looks cool (hmmmm). Don't worry though, the results are actually pretty interesting. Melov et al. were interested in how resistance training alters gene expression profiles in skeletal muscle, and whether any of these changes were consistent with a reversal of age-related muscular impairments. They used microarray technology to map the transcription profiles in skeletal muscle of older adults (~70yo) before and after 6 months of full-body resistance training. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a bunch of genes are differentially expressed when older untrained adults are compared to sedentary younger adults, including some associated with mitochondrial function (see also Zahn et al., 2006). However, after 6 months of resistance training (which resulted in significant strength gains), the gene expression profile for older adults was markedly different. A subset of the genes that showed an age-related difference also showed a change in expression due to exercise. Notably, those genes that were expressed at a level lower than young adults were upregulated while those genes that were expressed at a level higher than young adults were downregulated. As the authors put it, the transcriptional signature of aging was reversed back to that of younger levels. Now, I don't have a good sense of how to interpret expression levels, and the authors tended to plot their data on relative scales, so I can't assess the magnitude of these results, but it's an interesting application of gene profiling technology. Unfortunately, there was no individual level correlation of strength gains with changes in gene expression profile (in those genes significantly associated with age and exercise), although this may be a power issue (I guess people aren't jumping for the chance to get repeated muscle biopsies with a 5mm diameter needle!?).

Melov S, Tarnopolsky MA, Beckman K, Felkey K, Hubbard A (2007) Resistance Exercise Reverses Aging in Human Skeletal Muscle. PLoS ONE 2(5): e465 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000465

Zahn JM, Sonu R, Vogel H, Crane E, Mazan-Mamczarz K, et al. (2006) Transcriptional Profiling of Aging in Human Muscle Reveals a Common Aging Signature. PLoS Genet 2(7): e115 doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0020115

Fat states

From this article courtesy of the CalorieLab.

Maybe it has something to do with this:CNN coverage of this recent article. Go figure, kids prefer food wrapped in a McDonald's wrapper... Well, it's not quite the right experiment, but you get the idea.

Interestingly, the National Broadcasting Commission of Thailand is about to finalize restrictions on junk food ads for children. The proposed measures include a ban on junk food ads during children's programmes; prohibiting the use of children, cartoon characters, entertainers or celebrities as ad presenters; prohibiting marketing promotions using giveaways and lucky draws; and requiring ads to warn against consuming the products more than twice a day. Source

Edited (082207) to add a link:
What is the Right Way to Think About the Obesity ‘Epidemic’?
and the World Fatness Chart:
Check out other awesome illustrations by Wellington Grey.