Computer scientists from the University of Bonn, in conjunction with the birdsong archives of Berlin’s Humboldt University, have developed a helping device for birds.
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Current Magazine
Bacteria Linked to Obesity!
-By Nikita Kaushal
There was an article a while back in GeoJunior called the Power of Friendly Bacteria which said that bacteria doesn’t necessarily cause diseases but some of them are in fact essential to the process of digestion in the body. Along the same lines some scientists from Finland carried out a study on a group of bacteria found in the Digestive Tract of seven-year-old children and found that overweight infants had a different species of bacteria living in their intestines than did normal weight kids.
Obesity in children is becoming increasingly of concern today. The usual conclusion is that this obesity is due to our current lifestyle — preference of junk food, television, video games, over healthy food and playing outside. This childhood obesity is more of a concern because several health problems of the adult such as diabetes and high blood pressure have been traced back to obesity in children. But new studies have shown that this obesity in children can be linked to bacteria!
As babies, you would get these bacteria in your body from your mothers and a little longer during your growth with Mother’s milk. Now the scientists studied this bacteria found in the children, first as babies and then in the same children when they grew up to be seven-years-old. They found that the children who had a normal weight had high-levels of a species called Bifidobacterium in their intestines as babies. They also showed low level of other bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus. The exact opposite pattern was found in the over-weight seven-year-olds.
