Floral Wordy Wednesday

Gut flora predominates this week, as prompted by an article in Diabetes Forecast. This article explored the connection between intestinal bacteria and obesity, Type 2, and Type 1. Let's get to know two phyla in particular. (Need a refresher on biological classification? I did.)

The Firmicutes: a phylum of bacteria, mostly Gram-positive. You might recognize such genera as Bacilli, order Lactobacillales (think yogurt); and Clostridia (think botulism). 

The Bacteriodetes: another phylum, comprising the classes Bacteroidetes, Sphingobacteria, and Flavobacteria, which are not as much fun as they sound.
What's the significance of these two broad groups? Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis leads the pack in showing that obese and lean animals and humans have different Firmicute/Bacteroidete ratios. Specifically, obese mice have more firmicutes and fewer bacteroidetes. Similarly, obesity in humans is associated with altered gut flora and decreased bacterial diversity.

The difference, according to the DF article, is because firmicutes more efficiently ferment indigestible polysaccharides to produce short-chain fatty acids. That is to say, the firmicutes can digest starches we can't and make energy for us to use better than bacteroidetes can. Better energy extraction leads to more fat storage leads to gaining weight more easily.

As if that weren't enough, gut microbiota changes after gastric bypass surgery, the latter of which has profound effects on Type 2 diabetes. "Profound" as in "goes into remission." Gut flora strikes again.

There's still more: in a small study published in Nature, children who went on to develop Type 1 diabetes saw a decline in firmicutes and an increase in bacteroidetes, while their case-controlled match saw the opposite trend. Furthermore, the healthy children had more abundant bacteria overall. This study is too small to draw firm conclusions about the hygiene and/or leaky gut hypotheses, but it's fascinating nonetheless. And props to Giongo et al. for quoting Tolstoy.

Glutinous Wordy Wednesday

gluten /’glōōtn/ ►n. a substance present in cereal grains, esp. wheat, that is responsible for the elastic texture of dough [16^th C.: via Fr. from L., lit. ‘glue.’]

More technically, gluten is a protein composed of a prolamin (high in the amino acid proline) and a glutelin. In wheat, these are gliadin and glutenin. In barley, the prolamin is hordein; in rye, secalin.

(a) gluten = (b) elastic glutenin + (c) viscous gliadin.
(From H. Charley and C. Weaver. Foods: A Scientific Approach, 3rd ed., 187. 1998.)

These specific peptides (sequences of amino acids that make up a protein) cause all the trouble for those with Celiac’s disease. According to Krause’s Food and Nutrition Therapy, these peptides resist gastrointestinal enzymes and are not completely digested. Thus they are free to set off an autoimmune inflammatory response in a susceptible person, leading to all sorts of ‘mals’: malabsortption, malnutrition, malignancy, not to mention villous atrophy.

I suspect a phrase in that last paragraph jumped out at some of you: “not completely digested.” You’ve been vaguely suspicious of gluten for a while now. Does it really skulk around in our GI tract, dodging digestion?

Apparently, yes. According to the UCSD Wm. K. Warren Medical Research Center for Celiac Disease, “Gluten is resistant to proteolytic [protein-cutting] digestion… This is because there is a relative lack of enzymes with prolyl endopeptidase activity in human small intestine [remember how gluten’s proline-rich?].” In fact, scientists are investigating bacterial endopeptidases that destroy the triggering amino acid sequence in gliadin with hopes of developing an oral supplement, similar to lactase pills.

Does this mean you should extirpate gluten from your diet? I wouldn't say so. However, I have no great love for grains. Whole has a nutrient edge over refined, of course, but a baked potato trumps even brown rice, spaghetti squash beats whole wheat spaghetti, and so on. In caloric terms, a PB&J will have more calories than my childhood favorite, peanut butter on a spoon, even if you dot it with raisins.


Bottom line: Eat more vegetables, substituting them for grains when probable.

Definition from The Oxford College Dictionary, 2nd ed., 2007.

Seed-Saving Wordy Wednesday

My Year of Meats. I snickered when I saw the title of Ruth L. Ozeki's debut novel. A colleague (can I call the assistant director of the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Institute that, now that I've graduated?) had mentioned Ozeki's work, which includes her second title, All Over Creation.

I read them both, one after the other, in a rush to find out if the infertile women get a baby in the end, if the public realizes what American meat/potato production is all about, if the minor character finds happiness, how the main character deals with her Japanese heritage.

And along the way, I ran across some unfamiliar words. The following are from All Over Creation, a novel that deals with Russet Burbank potato farming and seed-saving in Idaho.

Imagine you are a seed... And then imagine the triumphant moment when you crack the crumbly crust, poke your wan and wobbling plumule head through the surface and start to unfurl..." (3, 4)

A plumule is the rudimentary bud of an embryonic plant. The 3,000 acres of Lloyd Fuller's farm would look pretty vast to such a structure. Later, said Lloyd Fuller helps his wife, Momoko, pollinate her squash.

Momoko located one of the taped [male squash flowers] and plucked it, severing the stem several inches down the peduncle... Lloyd watched as the [untaped female] flower began to unfurl, a blooming in slow motion, but of course it wasn't slow at all. Just the opposite, because the wrinkled petals, once freed, spread far more eagerly and rapidly than was normal in nature and within minutes had billowed into a raggedy-edged corolla. Inside, revealed, were the plump quadrant lobes of the stigma, sticky and receptive. Lloyd was transfixed." (115-6)

A peduncle is a stem that supports flowers. Clear enough. And a corolla is, collectively, the petals of a flower. Corolla is Latin for "little crown" and was selected as the name for a line of Toyota's compact cars because of the tradition of using variations of "crown" for their primary models, according to Wikipedia.

This procedure was carried out before "Momoko's garden was nothing but spectral stumps and stalks and mounds of tumular snow, like the site of ancient burial" (81). Latin tumulus, meaning "mound." I see of lot of that in the Twin Cities right now.

red, white, and black
Originally uploaded by mosippy

Mineral-based Wordy Wednesday

Joseph and I attended my brother's art opening at Kopplin's Coffee this Monday. All of the exquisite photos depicted Nature - save one.


"Grrr" is a close up of a stone dog outside a Japanese shrine. I singled it out by saying that most of Brian's photography was of carbon-based objects, except the dog. Joseph doubted that stone wasn't carbon-based. A lively discussion ensued, concluding with me loudly declaring that I had a degree in science and ought to know what was and wasn't carbon-based.

Thus, I present you with several mineral-based examples, taken from Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, translated from the Italian by William Weaver, and defined by Oxford Dictionaries Online.

I should now list the wares that can profitably be bought here: agate, onyx, chrysoprase, and other varieties of chalcedony. (12)

chrysoprase: an apple-green variety of chalcedony containing nickel, used as a gemstone.
chalcedony: a microcrystalline type of quartz occurring in several different forms, including onyx, agate, and jasper

...everything that moves in the sunlight is driven by the lapping wave enclosed beneath the rock's calcareous sky. (20)

calcareous: containing calcium carbonate; chalky.

I climbed the porphyry steps of the palace with the highest domes, I crossed six tiled courtyards with fountains." (47)

porphyry: a hard igneous rock containing crystals, usually of feldspar, in a fine-grained, typically reddish groundmass.

This city which cannot be expunged from the mind is like an armature, a honey-comb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remember... (15)

armature: a metal framework on which a sculpture is molded with clay or a similar material.

Armature study: Boston Terrier
Originally uploaded by egenerica

Wordy Wednesday - It's a long road

I stayed up later than I should have last night, reading Keith Stewart’s It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life. Stewart put together an informative and entertaining collection of essays about nearly every aspect of his farm in New York that you could think of, from “The Driveway Rabbits” to “The Unweeded Garden” to “A Man and His Tractor.” He also uses some big words. Help from Merriam Webster and the Online Etymology Dictionary.

From “Working Man’s Mesculin:”

The leaves that don’t pass muster are thrown to our flock of chickens, who devour them with much clicking and gallinaceous enthusiasm.

gallinaceous: of or relating to an order (Galliformes) of heavy-bodied largely terrestrial birds including the pheasants, turkeys, grouse, and the common domestic chicken.

From “Kuri,” Stewart’s first and best loved dog:

In less than a year [of heartworm treatment], he was back in fine fettle, ranging across the fields, chasing raccoons and woodchucks, and generally exhibiting his great enthusiasm for life.

fettle: state or condition of health, fitness, wholesomeness, spirit, or form. From Old English fetel “a girdle, belt.”

Photo from Wikipedia.

Soil Improvement Wordy Wednesday

This week I am gearing up for a series of posts that will constitute the final project for my HECUA internship. Mhonpaj's Garden is certified through the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association, so I looked into what it takes to get certified. I was not prepared for the 16-page handbook, the 14-page Organic Producer Questionnaire, or the depth of management planning required, but slogged through them anyway.

One goal of my final project is to have a handle on the management techniques used by organic farmers, some of which the Organic Producer Questionnaire mentions. To jump-start that goal, I present this week's Wordy Wednesday, taken from Section 5: "Soil & Crop Fertility Management." Definitions of crops are taken from ATTRA's Overview of Cover Crops and Green Materials.

“The producer must implement a crop rotation including but not limited to sod, cover crops, green manure crops, and catch crops that provide the following functions that are applicable to the operation: maintain or improve soil organic matter content; provide for pest management in annual and perennial crops; manage deficient or excess plant nutrients and provide erosion control.”

Sod: a section of grass-covered surface soil held together by matted roots.

Cover crops: any crop grown to provide soil cover, to prevent soil erosion by wind or water. Try hairy vetch, rye, clover, medic (legume related to alfalfa), or field peas.

Green manure crop: any field or forage crop incorporated into soil while green or soon after flowering. Use legumes like cowpeas, soybeans, annual sweet clover, sesbania, guar, crotalaria, and velvet beans; or non-legumes like sorghum-sudangrass, millet, forage sorghum, and buckwheat. Green manuring will improve biomass, smother weeds, and improve soil tilth (physical structure).

Catch crops: a cover crop planted after the main crop’s been harvested with the intent of reducing nutrient leaching. Rye after corn, for example, helps “scavenge” leftover nitrogen, which could otherwise contaminate groundwater.

Picture of hairy vetch from Jarrett.

Wordy Wednesday in the Amazon

This week's Wordy Wednesday is a double-header because I won't be able to update next Wednesday. Today's theme is the Amazon, where my friend Ranelle will be spending some time this winter. Winter for us, that is. It'll be the middle of the summer for her. As before, this words are from Charles C. Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. I'm on the last section, which is about the Native American's ecological management, and I'm fascinated. Definitions brought to you today by the Oxford English Dictionary.

[Amazon terrain] is pullulatingly alive: howling insects, hot and humid as demon’s breath, perpetually shaded by mats of lianas and branches. (281)

pulluate: “2.b. To teem, swarm.” Latin pullulus young nestling or chick

liana: “The name given to the various climbing and twining plants which abound in tropical forests.”

Behind the canoe armada was a floating orchestra of horns, pipes, and rebecs like three-stringed lutes. (284)

rebec: “A musical instrument played with a bow and typically having three strings; an early form of the violin.” Probably after Middle French bec beak, on account of the shape of the instrument.

Like their confreres elsewhere in the Americas, Indian societies had built up a remarkable body of knowledge about how to manage and improve their environment. (286)

confrere: “A fellow-member of a fraternity, religious order, college, guild, etc.; a colleague in office.”

Amazonia was not a dead end where the environment ineluctably strangled cultures in their cradles. (297)

ineluctably: “irresistibly, so that one cannot escape from its grip.” Latin ineluctabilis to struggle out.

Like strawberries, peach palm throws out adventitious shoots. (303)

adventitious: “3. Nat. Hist. Appearing casually, or out of the normal or usual place, esp. in Bot. of roots, shoots, buds, etc. produced in unusual parts of the plant.”

There was the same cool green light from the canopy, the same refulgent smell, the same awe-inspiring sense of variety. (304)

refulgent: “2. Fig. and in extended us in various contexts: resplendent, glorious, illustrious, sumptuous, etc. Formerly freq. applied eulogistically to a woman.” Latin refulgere to radiate light, to shine with reflected light, to be conspicuous.

Dude’s reaching with this one. An illustrious smell? That's like C. S. Lewis's pale voice (name that chronicle!).