Month: September 2016

Despite appearances, not everyone heads to Starbucks for their morning caffeine fix. For well over 150 years, Folgers has been delivering ground, whole-bean, instant, and home-brew coffees to millions of sleepy consumers. Check out some facts on the company’s history, from their origins in whaling to some unfortunate run-ins with Charles Manson and snapping turtles.

1. THE FAMILY WAS NAME-DROPPED IN MOBY-DICK.

For centuries, the Folger clan of Nantucket was renowned for their whaling efforts. (Oil from whale blubber was often used for lamps until kerosene grew in popularity.) They were so well known that author Herman Melville referred to “a long line of Folgers and harpooneers” in his classic Moby-Dick.

2. THE COMPANY WAS FOUNDED THANKS TO THE GOLD RUSH.

James Folger was just 15 years old when his parents dispatched him and two older brothers to San Francisco to mine for gold in 1849. As plans go, it wasn’t a great one: the Folger boys didn’t have enough money to travel to the mining areas, so James stayed behind to earn some cash. He wound up working for the Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills company, which was marketing an early, commercially roasted ground coffee. Two decades later, James returned—this time with more cash—and bought the business, renaming it J.A. Folger & Co. in 1872.

3. MAXWELL HOUSE WAS AN EARLY NEMESIS.

After decades of being a regional favorite, Folgers was purchased by Procter & Gamble in 1963 and quickly became part of the national competition for store-bought coffee brands. Wary of giving up any ground, Maxwell House formed an in-house “Folgers Defense Team” in 1971. The result: Horizon, a coffee that came in a red can similar to Folgers, and a television commercial character named Aunt Cora (played by Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz). Cora was meant to be a take on Folgers’ Mrs. Olson (see below), with the hope that if Maxwell House ran the commercials in regions early enough, Olson would seem like a second-rate take-off. Folgers was forced to lower their price from $1.20 to 87 cents per can just to remain competitive. By 1979, however, they had taken over 26.5 percent of the market share, well ahead of Maxwell House’s 22.3 percent.

4. EARLY COMMERCIALS WERE NOT VERY PC.

While Folgers has a history of memorable television spots, their most enduring ad campaign revolved around a Swedish character named Mrs. Olson, who appeared to keep busy by introducing Folgers coffee to her overworked neighbors in a series of pretty sexist ads in the 1950s and 1960s. (Folgers conducted research into how petulant the onscreen husbands could get and found housewives considered any kind of verbal abuse so typical as to be acceptable.) Virginia Christine, who portrayed Olson for 21 years, was born in Stanton, Iowa in 1920. When the ads grew popular, the town renovated its trademark water tower so it resembled a coffee pot in her honor.

5. THEY HAVE A LINK TO THE MANSON MURDERS.

One of the 20^th century’s most infamous crimes was the murder of Sharon Tate and four of her houseguests in 1969 by disciples of cult leader Charles Manson. Among the victims: Abigail Folger, the 25-year-old Folger fortune heiress, daughter of Peter Folger and great-granddaughter of founder James Folger.  (Manson and his cohorts were convicted of first-degree murder in 1971.)

6. THE “PETER” COMMERCIAL RAN FOR OVER 17 YEARS.

You’ll know it when you see it: in the 1986 television spot, a college student named Peter gets dropped off at the family home in a Volkswagen Beetle and surreptitiously makes coffee for his sleeping parents with the help of his younger sister. It’s a cozy little bit, and consumers responded so strongly that Folgers ran the ad for 17 consecutive years. Greg Wrangler, who played the coffee-making intruder, told BrandLandUSA.com in 2008 that producers wanted it to be timeless. “I remember they were really concerned about the look of the spot,” he said. “I’m referring to their choices on wardrobe … the Irish wool sweater, the VW Beetle that drops me off … they didn’t want it to be dated … which I think was a big factor in their ability to run it for so long.”

7. A WOMAN FOUND A SNAPPING TURTLE IN ONE CAN.

A lot of coffee comes into the United States via New Orleans, which is why 2005’s Hurricane Katrina resulted in a marked disruption of supply. The natural disaster may have had other side effects: According to the Associated Press, Marjorie Morris of Ainsworth, Iowa found a dead baby snapping turtle in her can of Folgers. While no harm came to Morris, she was dismayed by her timing: the 77-year-old had been using the can for a month before spotting the added ingredient.

8. THEY CAME UP WITH SOME PRETTY CLEVER MANHOLE COVER ADS.

In 2006, Folgers garnered some positive PR when they used foot-proof signage to cover manholes in New York City and made them resemble hot cups of coffee, complete with steam emitting from holes in the cover. While clever, the stunt had an unintended side effect: the aroma from the sewers was not what you’d normally associate with coffee. 

9. THEY’RE PRETTY TIGHT WITH DUNKIN’.

Folgers was acquired by the J.M. Smucker company in 2008, putting it under the same corporate umbrella as the Dunkin’ Donuts retail license. Together, the two home coffee brands made $577 million for the company in the second quarter of 2016 alone.

It’s not all white coats and Erlenmeyer flasks. Scientists risk their shoes, their pants, and often their lives in the field in order to get the data they need. This week they’re sharing some of their worst “Oh god, I’m going to die tonight,” fieldwork moments on Twitter. 

Wildlife biologist and cartoonist Arjun Srivathsa wasn’t the only one heeding the call of the wild:

Taking a dump in the ravines & a striped hyena creeps up on you. Shitting bricks got a whole new meaning. #FieldWorkScares

— Arjun Srivathsa (@arjun_srivathsa) September 29, 2016

Dani Rabaiotti studies climate change and has witnessed some strange weather …

#FieldWorkScares thinking it has started raining, turning to look to find A HOARD OF ARMY ANTS RAINING FROM THE TREES

— Dani Rabaiotti (@DaniRabaiotti) September 28, 2016

… and rude awakenings

#FieldWorkScares being woken up in the African bush by a dikdik sitting on my head

— Dani Rabaiotti (@DaniRabaiotti) September 28, 2016

What scares scientists the most? A few themes have begun to emerge.

There are snakes:

#FieldWorkScares: chasing a snake for a photo, to find out it’s the only poisonous spp in Southern Angola (did I mention I’m a marine bio?)

— Romina Henriques (@HenriquesRo) September 29, 2016

When the blue monkeys stare down at your feet and start their snake alarm call and you see nothing #FieldWorkScares

— Kris Sabbi (@KrisSabbi) September 29, 2016

Volunteer’s dog is bitten twice by a rattlesnake. I’m the only one who can drive him out. Three hours to the closest vet. #FieldWorkScares

— Brian Switek (@Laelaps) September 29, 2016

The field itself:

Getting lost in the desert in southern Angola with the car full of students and no cell reception… #FieldWorkScares

— Romina Henriques (@HenriquesRo) September 29, 2016

#FieldWorkScares bushwhacking thru Rhododendron thickets in remote Scotland, fell thru mulch and branch covered pit 4′ deep. 2hrs to get out

— Jack McLachlan (@JMcL14) September 29, 2016

#FieldWorkScares: ran out of water on a desert island during hot summer + rough seas = water eventually delivery by the Mexican navy

— Manuela Gonzalez (@MGS_tweets) September 29, 2016

But a consensus is building: fieldwork hell is other people.

You read #FieldWorkScares looking for tales of adventure- like escaping bears.

But the reality is it’s escaping horrible people.

— Kiron Mukherjee (@kironcmukherjee) September 29, 2016

#UrbanEcology #FieldWorkScares 3am. Two dudes in car stop. Ask what we’re doing. Then offer us cocaine. Response? Politest #nothankyou EVER

— Cylita Guy (@CylitaGuy) September 29, 2016

When border patrol agents ask if you’ve seen two men near remote field site… then tell you not to worry as they jog away #fieldworkscares

— Sarah Supp (@srsupp) September 29, 2016

#FieldWorkScares Casually running into a drug handover between dealers when searching for birds at night time. They had machetes #fieldwork

— Aurelie MT L. (@amtlabbe) September 29, 2016

Head of gun club: “I don’t think you’d ever be safe around me, Hun”, after I asked about hunting safety on sampling site. #FieldWorkScares

— Beth Ansaldi (@AWomaninSTEM) September 29, 2016

Here’s to the brave researchers putting themselves out there for science’s sake. Stay safe out there, y’all.

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The love affair between dogs and people is an old one indeed, stretching back at least 15,000 years. Dogs are our coworkers, guides, companions, and family members. But how did they get that way? A new paper published in Scientific Reports proposes an intriguing possibility: dogs have a genetic predisposition to crave human companionship.

Previous studies have suggested a genetic component to the domestication of dogs. To further test that hypothesis, five researchers from Linköping University in Sweden assembled an enormous group of 437 laboratory-raised beagles and gave each one an impossible test. Each dog was brought to a room containing a box with three dishes, and each dish held a treat. To get the treat, the beagle needed to figure out how to slide the cover off the container. But there was a catch: one of the containers was covered with transparent Plexiglas and would not yield its treat no matter what the confused beagle did.

The dog was not alone in the testing room; each was accompanied by a seated researcher, who looked away while the dog wrestled with the puzzle box. The real test came when each dog realized it could not retrieve the last treat. At this point, some dogs gave up and started walking around the room. But others—many others—looked to or approached the researcher for help, a behavior that demonstrated their interest in people.

Each dog’s test was videotaped and its reactions coded and quantified. The researchers then identified the 95 most sociable dogs and the 95 least sociable dogs, and sequenced their genomes, looking for trends.

They found them. The most sociable dogs showed activation in two highly specific genomic regions. The presence of a single marker on the 26th chromosome of the SEZ6L gene was a significant indication that a beagle would have spent more time near and physically touching the researcher during the test. Another two markers on chromosome 26 of the ARVCF gene were strongly associated with seeking out human contact.

These genomic regions are not unique to dogs and, the researchers say, their role in socialization may not be either. Studies in humans have found a relationship between changes in SEZ6L and autism. ARVCF has been linked to schizophrenia, as have COMT and TXNRD2, which both hail from the same genetic neighborhood.

“This is, to our knowledge, the first genome-wide study presenting candidate genomic regions for dog sociability and inter-species communication,” the authors write. They acknowledge that more research is needed to validate their findings. Still, they say, “these results contribute to a greater insight into the genetic basis of dog-human communicative behaviors and sociability, increasing our understanding of the domestication process, and could potentially aid knowledge relating to human social behavioral disorders.”
 

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When your partner goes out of town, sometimes you just need some special one-on-one with your pets. At least that was the case for Chase Stout, whose girlfriend recently went out of town, reminding him not to forget to feed their new kitten. Stout did one better, and made Mr. Wilson a fancy brunch of teeny-tiny pancakes, as we spotted over on The Daily Dot. 

Stout tweeted pictures of the meal, along with the text he sent to his girlfriend, but he assured BuzzFeed that the chocolate part was just a joke—he does know that chocolate is terrible for animals, yes. 

When your girlfriend goes out of town and tells you “don’t forget to feed our cat.” pic.twitter.com/cJk1VRVzUQ

— Chase Stout (@ChaserStout) September 26, 2016

Chocolate chips or not, Mr. Wilson did seem to enjoy his pancakes. No word on whether this will become a weekend tradition. 

[h/t The Daily Dot]

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Sure, you could use polls to predict the outcome of the presidential election. Or you could look to these five predictors, which are as quirky as they are accurate.

THE COOKIE CONTEST

Since 1992, Family Circle magazine has been pitting the potential First Spouses against one another—or at least, their recipes. In 1992, Hillary Clinton ruffled some feathers by answering criticism about being a working mom with a statement that didn’t sit too well with stay-at-home mothers: “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.”

Family Circle capitalized on the controversy and asked each potential First Lady—Clinton and Barbara Bush—to submit a family cookie recipe. Readers voted on the recipe they liked best, and the Commander-in-Chief-of-Cookies was crowned: Clinton’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies beat Bush’s plain chocolate chips.

The winner of the cookie competition usually goes on to take up residence in the White House—it’s been right 5 out of 6 times, The Washington Post reports. The exception happened in 2008, when Cindy McCain’s oatmeal butterscotch cookies beat Michelle Obama’s shortbread cookies.

The winner of the 2016 election: Clinton. The Clinton Family Chocolate Chip Cookies (the same recipe submitted in 1992), have approximately 1500 votes, while Melania Trump’s star-shaped sour cream sugar cookies have just over 500 votes. You can cast your vote until October 4.

HALLOWEEN MASK SALES

When the Spirit Halloween chain, the largest Halloween chain in the U.S., started keeping track of political mask sales in 1996, the company found that the most popular mask indicated the winner of the election. It may be unorthodox, but the method has accuracy on its side: So far, it has been 100 percent accurate.

The winner of the 2016 election: TBD. Halloween sales are in full swing now; Spirit Halloween has traditionally released its numbers closer to the end of October.

THE REDSKINS RULE

This untraditional predictor goes all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt. If the Washington Redskins win their last home game prior to the election, the incumbent party will win. If Washington loses, the incumbent party loses. It’s not 100 percent accurate, but it’s pretty impressive: The first time the rule was proved wrong was 2012; however, an addendum to the rule had to be added in 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College:

“Redskins Rule 2.0 established that when the popular vote winner does not win the election, the impact of the Redskins game on the subsequent presidential election gets flipped.”

Steve Hirdt, director of information for ESPN’s Monday Night Football, discovered the correlation in 2000 when he was looking for an interesting graphic to put up on Monday Night Football.

The winner of the 2016 election: TBD. Their last home game is against the Eagles on October 16. As of September 29, the Eagles are 3-0 and the Redskins are 1-2.

The NBA FINALS

Starting with John F. Kennedy in 1960, every time a Democrat has been elected, an Eastern Conference team has won the NBA Finals. Now, those aren’t the only times the Eastern Conference has won—Eastern Conference teams have also won in years that a Republican candidate has been elected. But since JFK, no Western Conference team has won the same year a Democrat was elected.

The winner of the 2016 election: Clinton. The Eastern Conference’s Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Western Conference’s Golden State Warriors, 4 games to 3.

VIGO COUNTY, INDIANA

Since 1888, the people of Vigo County, Indiana, have only gotten the president pick wrong only twice. They voted for William Jennings Bryan over Taft in 1902, and in 1952, they chose Adlai Stevenson instead of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Indiana is known as the Crossroads of America, so perhaps they really do speak for the masses.

The winner of the 2016 election: Trump. We don’t know for sure yet, of course, but early polls suggested that Vigo County is very much in favor of Trump.

Feeling stressed about money? You’re not the only one. According to the American Psychological Association, money is the number one case of stress for Americans, with 67 percent of people ‘fessing up that they’re stressed about their finances and, according to a 2016 study from Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, more than a quarter of you worry about money every single day. This is no way to live.

Sure, paying the bills is stressful, but we’ve got some awesome ways to conquer the tension.

1. SEEK HELP.

Our society sends the message that talk of money should be quiet, but there are plenty of professionals who can help. A fiduciary financial professional can work in your best interest (find a financial planner here or a financial counselor or coach here). Or, if you suspect that the problems are more complex, and if you think your financial issues intertwine with emotions, insecurities, past experiences, or relationship conflicts, consider speaking with a financial therapist, says Megan Ford, a financial therapist at the University of Georgia and the president of the Financial Therapy Association.

2. OPEN SAVINGS ACCOUNTS (PLURAL).

You should have a minimum of two savings accounts, says Mary Bell Carlson, principal at Silverbell Solutions, LLC, a financial counseling and consulting firm. One should be your emergency fund, and you should strive to have three to six months of living expenses in this one, Carlson says.

Next, she recommends that clients have a life fund, which is a savings account for the things that are always due: insurance premiums, quarterly water bills, car maintenance, personal property taxes, and others. “This account is attached to your checking account, and allows you to transfer the funds when the bills come due, but it helps you save for these expenses throughout the year,” she says.

3. NOTICE WHEN YOUR STRESS PEAKS.

You may feel like you’re always stressed about money, but start to pay attention to when your stress is the strongest, says Anne Malec, a financial therapist in Chicago at Symmetry Counseling. For example, if your money stress is at its peak when a stack of bills is sitting on the counter or in your email inbox, commit to making a habit of opening bills as they arrive, and keep a running tally of what will be owed at the end of the month, or decide to pay specific bills before the last day of the month, she says.

“The goal is to maintain awareness of monthly debts so that you are not overwhelmed by their totality at month’s end,” Malec says. The point is that if you can figure out when exactly the money stress is hitting you, then you can figure out how to combat it. “Try to see the stress as a warning sign that your finances need more attention,” Malec says.

4. SET A SMALL GOAL.

Small, manageable goals are easier to achieve than long-shot goals, Malec says. “If you feel you are behind in saving for retirement, and this causes you stress, commit to change to get serious about savings, which will mean reducing your spending or increasing your income or both,” she says.

First, spend time on your budget to determine where you can cut, and get creative. Bring your lunch to work, cut back on Uber trips, put your health club membership on hold, cut back on restaurants. “It will be an adjustment, but your future self will be grateful,” Malec says.

5. TRACK YOUR SPENDING.

A lot of financial stress is caused by simply not knowing where your money is going, Carlson says. “I call this the ostrich with its head in the sand syndrome,” she says. “Somehow, we think that if we ignore the financial problem, it will simply go away.” Carlson encourages clients to estimate their income and expenses before the month starts, then track their spending throughout the month to see how realistic their estimates were. “This helps the client know where their money is going, and helps them make active and engaged decisions on what changes need to be made,” Carlson says.

Jane Fonda was gone, and the exercise video craze had appeared to have left with her. The Oscar-winning actress who popularized aerobics with a series of video cassette tapes in the 1980s and helped usher in a national fitness focus that bordered on narcissism had returned to her acting career. None of her obvious heirs—Jake Steinfeld; Denise Austin; the sculpted, first-name-only Gilad—could seem to equal her cultural standing. Americans were faced with the prospect of going to an actual gym.

Where others saw a dead genre, Billy Blanks and Paul Monea saw opportunity. Blanks was a lifelong martial artist and low-budget film actor who had been refining a kickboxing cardio routine for decades; Monea was an infomercial king who made headlines with the Stimulator, a device that promised to cure backaches despite being little more than a barbecue grill igniter with finger grips.

In less than seven months, Blanks’s name would eventually surpass Fonda’s as a VHS exercise icon using a simple system that would be known the world over as Karobics.

When he found out Karobics was already trademarked, he renamed it Tae Bo.   

Karobics began in 1976, the year Bill Conti’s theme to Rocky became an anthem for anyone in a sweatsuit. Blanks, then 21 years old and a regular on the competition karate circuit, used it as a morale booster for workouts in his basement, shadowboxing and kicking into the air until he was exhausted.

After stints as a janitor and chemical plant worker, Blanks moved to Los Angeles in the late 1980s, intending to parlay his athletic physique into an action film career: He scored parts in video store staples like Bloodfist and The King of the Kick Boxers. At the same time, he wanted to propagate Karobics among the city’s image-obsessed population, opening a fitness studio in Sherman Oaks and earning the respect of celebrity clientele like boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, Ashley Judd, and Sinbad.

“It’s the best”, the comedian told the Chicago Tribune in 1996. “It’s the baddest.”

Tossing the Karobics name, Blanks embraced Tae Bo, a martial arts and dance regimen that promised to burn hundreds of calories per session. A hybrid of Tae Kwon Do and boxing, Blanks said it stood for “Total Awareness of Excellent Body Obedience.” Not wishing a repeat of Karobics, he trademarked it in 1992.

Having studied Fonda’s tapes and how to count beats in ballet classes, Blanks was optimistic his workout would have national appeal. One of the home video distributors he approached early on disagreed, insisting that a black male would have problems convincing a mostly white, mostly female demographic to buy his tapes. Irked, Blanks broke off talks and decided to side with Paul Monea, an Ohio-based producer who sensed Blanks had the kind of charisma that played well in the early morning infomercial hours.

Monea, however, wanted Blanks to peddle exercise equipment. After deliberation, Blanks convinced him that a Tae Bo instructional would prove more profitable. There were already numerous celebrities enrolled in his classes that would be willing to provide video testimonials at no charge.

Monea was convinced. In August 1998, commercials and half-hour spots for Tae Bo began airing. For $59.85, consumers could purchase four workout tapes led by Blanks urging them to leave a puddle of sweat on their living room floors.

The infomercial aired up to 2000 times a day across various markets, costing Monea $1.5 million a week in airtime purchases. But it proved to be a worthy investment: in less than a year, Tae Bo would gross $80 million. The tapes outsold every major home video release of 1999, including The Matrix and Saving Private Ryan.

Previously known only to his Sherman Oaks regulars and karate enthusiasts, Blanks was suddenly inundated with up to 80 calls an hour from news outlets. (He shunted them off to a publicist.) So many people made a pilgrimage to his studio that staff would have to turn most of them away. Bantam Books paid a reported $1.2 million advance for a fitness guide. Blanks was even installed on Oprah for a guest spot—for an entire week.

Like any success in the fitness industry, Tae Bo was besieged by copycats. Blanks’s legal team issued 60 cease and desist letters a week to regional gyms advertising classes using the name without permission. To avoid litigation, prospective Tae Bo instructors could take a certification class from Blanks for $995. Those that didn’t were forced to lead derivative classes like Gotham Box, which married (loose) self-defense maneuvers with a regimented workout.

It was a flattering, if expensive, form of imitation. But Blanks was less charmed by litigation that started to bubble up from within his own inner circle. Sugar Ray Leonard, who had endorsed Tae Bo as a favor to his friend, filed a lawsuit against Monea for using his name without permission. Later, Blanks would struggle with Monea himself, alleging that his partner had cut him an unfavorable deal and had aligned Blanks’s own lawyers against him. (Monea denied the accusations: according to Cleveland Scene, the two settled out of court.)

The legal tussles took the fight out of Banks, who grew concerned the Tae Bo name was entering legally murky territory. By 2008, the tapes had slowed to a trickle, with Blanks in Japan marketing a new routine he dubbed Billy’s Boot Camp. (It sold one million copies overseas.) When he returned to the States, Tae Bo had been dethroned by new fitness trends: SoulCycle, CrossFit, and the higher-energy output of cardio sermons by the likes of Shaun T.

Now 60, Blanks continues to teach Tae Bo in both Sherman Oaks—his son now owns the school—and a location in Dana Point, California. New iterations dubbed Tae Bo Evolution and Tae Bo 2.0 promise to incorporate more equipment and variety. If instructors want to stick with a classic, they can be still be certified by Blanks personally—now for a more reasonable $250.

As scientists continue to find out more about the human microbiome, that ecosystem of bacteria that live on and inside us, it’s clear that influencing the type of bacteria that colonize your skin and gut can have tangible effects on your health and well-being. But just how to change the composition of your bacteria isn’t clear, and there’s still not enough research to show that the probiotics available now are effective at treating specific disorders. Gut bacterial colonies tend to be very stable even in the face of probiotic treatments, and studies have indicated that alterations in the gut bacteria in cases of fecal transplants tend to be temporary.

However, a new study finds that selecting the right bacterial strain for the gut environment can make a major difference in whether or not the probiotic can impact the microbiome. Published today in Cell Host & Microbe, the study was led by Jens Walter, an associate professor of nutrition, microbes, and gastrointestinal health at the University of Alberta.

The research team gave 23 volunteers a daily dose of the probiotic strain AH1206 of the bacteria Bifidobacterium longum, one of the most common species of bacteria found in the gut. Half took the bacteria dose for two weeks while the other half took a placebo, and then the two groups switched for a second two-week round. The researchers periodically checked their gut flora composition via fecal samples in the months that followed. A third of the volunteers who took the probiotic showed lasting changes to their gut microbiome, showing evidence of the strain’s colonization up to six months afterward. In the other two-thirds of the group, the bacteria had disappeared within a month.

These “persisters,” as the researchers call them, had slightly different microbiomes than the other volunteers at the outset of the study. They had lower levels of that particular species or species with similar genes. Essentially, the bacteria could only survive if it was filling a particular gap in the microbiome. If pre-existing bacterial strains had already colonized the gut, the new bacteria had to compete for the same resources, and usually didn’t survive.

With only 23 volunteers (and just eight “persisters”), this study is far from definitive, especially since the researchers didn’t control for volunteers’ different diets. But Walter likens the main idea back to Darwinism. “Competition in ecosystems is especially harsh amongst closely related species because they have the same resource requirements,” he explains in a press statement. But if someone has lost a particular strain of bacteria or their body never had it in the first place, it’s possible to repopulate the microbiome with that strain. By figuring out who would be a “persister,” researchers could potentially personalize probiotics to be more effective, the study indicates.

The study also suggests that the reason commercially available probiotics might be ineffective is that the strains they contain—if they even contain the type of bacteria claimed on the label—aren’t indigenous to the gut, and thus, perhaps unsurprisingly, aren’t very well adapted to survive there.

Come next spring, Trekkies will have a new reason to make a pilgrimage to Los Angeles. George Takei is donating his personal collection of art, artifacts, and Star Trek memorabilia to the Japanese American National Museum, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, the items will be the focus of a new exhibit debuting March 12, 2017.

Playing Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek series is one of many accomplishments the actor has achieved in his lifetime. During his 79 years, he’s advocated for gay rights, run marathons, raised awareness about the injustice of Japanese-American internment camps, and cultivated a powerful Facebook presence. The items in his collection span his entire career, including his 1973 bid for a seat on the L.A. City Council and his carrying of the Olympic torch leading up to the 1984 L.A. games.

The scripts, photos, sculptures, and Star Trek goodies that make up the gift will be the center of an exhibition titled “New Frontiers: The Many Worlds of George Takei.” In addition to serving on its board of trustees, Takei helped found the museum, and even had his wedding there in 2008. 

[h/t The Hollywood Reporter]

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