Cycling the calcium away

Is cycling bad for the bones? A number of intriguing studies published in the past 18 months, including Smathers', have raised that possibility -- an issue that has special resonance now, with this weekend’s start of the 2009 Tour de France. . .

In his study, the bone density of 32 male, competitive bike riders, most in their late 20s and early 30s, was compared to that of age-matched controls, men who were active but not competitive athletes. Bone scans showed that almost all of the cyclists had significantly less bone density in the spine than the control group. Some of the racers, young men in their 20s, had osteopenia in their spines, a medical condition only one step below full-blown osteoporosis."To find guys in their twenties with osteopenia was surprising and pretty disturbing," Smathers says.

From the NY Times.

I'm not totally surprised by this. Competitive cycling is one of the toughest sports imaginable, one that really takes its toll -- even without the added issue of doping and its side effects. As the article notes, serious cyclists routinely lose prodigious volumes of sweat while burning more calories than they can consume. It's a form of starvation, and what remains to be seen is if better nutrition will be enough to set things right.

But no reason to worry for anyone other than hard-core cyclists. As the article notes, "In another study, triathletes added moderately to their bone mass over the course of a season." And, intriguingly:

Some researchers theorize that calcium must be taken during exercise to be most effective. A 2004 laboratory study of cyclists who were given either tap water or calcium-enriched water during a 50-minute, stationary-bicycle ride found that the riders drinking the tap water had much higher levels of blood chemicals related to bone loss than did the riders swigging the calcium.

Gatorade, the old standby, contains potassium and sodium but not calcium. After reading this, I may start taking at least some of my usual daily calcium supplements right before a workout.

New dinosaur discoveries Down Under

Australian palaeontologists say they have discovered three new dinosaur species after examining fossils dug up in Queensland.

Writing in the journal PLOS One, they describe one of the creatures as a fearsome predator with three large slashing claws on each hand.

The other two were herbivores: one a tall giraffe-like creature, the other of stocky build like a hippopotamus.

From the BBC.

Grow your own bike

On the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, next year's crop of bicycles is being watered by Benjamin Banda.

"We planted this bamboo last year," he says, "and now the stems are taller than me. When it's ready we'll cut it, cure it and then turn it into frames."

Mr Banda, is the caretaker for Zambikes, a company set up by two Californians and two Zambians which aimed to build bikes tough enough to handle the local terrain.

From the BBC.

Meet your new masters, Earthlings

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

Uh oh.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the 'Californian large', extends over 900km along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

Full article here.

Nuclear blimpicide

I wouldn't have thought it was necessary to detonate a 19 kiloton nuclear weapon to see what it would do to an airship, but that's just what the US Department of Energy did on 7 August 1957. . .

In 1960, the Bureau of Naval Weapons issued a report on the airship tests, entitled "Structural Response and Gas Dynamics of an Airship Exposed to a Nuclear Detonation". The abstract reveals that the aim was to see how an airship employed on anti-submarine duties -- the USN was still using these into the 1960s -- would fare after dropping a nuclear depth charge.

Full story here.