Video: This Entire Orchestra Played With Vegetables on Zoom

The members of Vienna’s Vegetable Orchestra have been playing with their food for more than 20 years.

But when they do, it becomes a work of art. These musicians literally play freshly cut vegetables sourced from local markets. And who knew carrots, eggplants, red peppers and other veggies could sound so good?

This unique ensemble play a piece they composed just for us, all from their own homes. It’s called “Green Days.” Enjoy.

Watch video at You Tube (4:29 minutes) . . . . . .

Advertisement

Crispy Golden Chicken Balls

Ingredients

6 pcs spring roll wrappers
6 stalks garlic chives, soaked in hot water to soften

Filling

1/2 cup diced chicken
1 tbsp diced shiitake mushrooms
1 tbsp diced water chestnut
1 tbsp diced celery

Seasonings

1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp cornstarch

Method

1. Heat oil in a saucepan. Stir-fry diced chicken, shiitake mushrooms, water chestnuts and celery until cooked through.
2. Add seasonings and stir well. Set aside to cool for use as filling.
3. Lay flat one piece of spring roll wrapper. Scoop one spoonful of filling onto the centre.
4. Fold up the four corners of wrapper to form a ball.
5. Use garlic chives as string to tie up the ends. Repeat to make 6 balls.
6. Deep-fry over medium heat until golden. Drain oil and serve.

Makes 6 balls.

Source: Gourmet Do It Yourself

In Pictures: Food of Bo Innovation (廚魔) in Hong Kong

Modernised Chinese Cuisine

The 2020 Michelin 2-star Restaurant

We Feel Connected When We Move Together in Time with Music

Creating social bonds is essential for our health and well-being. In a new study conducted at Center for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University, Denmark, postdoctoral researcher Jan Stupacher and colleagues showed that music provides a unique context for social bonding.

The findings, which were published in Scientific Reports suggest that when moving together with music, synchronous movements between individuals increase social closeness.

Jan Stupacher explains:

“There is something sublime and affectionate in moving together with people in the crowd of a concert or in a music club. Even just watching people synchronize their movements in dance or when making music together can give us a feeling of harmony and affiliation. A friend just left the following comment on the paper, ‘My best friends are those whom I met at dance parties and electronic music festivals around the globe!

The time spent together dancing and laughing creates such a strong bond and feeling of comm(unity).’ This is in line with our general conclusion: The unique context provided by music can strengthen social bonds that connect people with different backgrounds – especially if these people move together in time with the beat and enjoy the same music.”

Stupacher and colleagues were especially interested in the questions how cultural familiarity with music and personal musical taste affect social bonding when moving in synchrony or asynchrony with another person. They created an online video-paradigm, which allowed investigating these effects with participants from all over the world. In three individual experiments, they showed that the influence of movement synchrony on social bonding is less affected by what music we are familiar with but more affected by what music we enjoy.

When the context-providing music was more enjoyed, social closeness increased strongly with a synchronized partner, but only weakly with an asynchronized partner. This interaction effect did not occur for musical familiarity: When the music was more familiar, social closeness was higher independent of movement synchrony.

Center leader, Professor Peter Vuust concludes:

“The current study goes to the heart of why human beings are musical creatures in the first place. It shows that the reason why music connects us is that it combines bodily synchronization with positive emotions. It indicates that if there is an evolutionary advantage of music, it is probably due to its ability to synchronize our movements, emotions and brains.”

Source : EurekAlert!

Superbug Impact on the Gut

Monash University researchers have discovered that the devastating bacterial superbug Clostridioides difficile hijacks the human wound healing system in order to cause serious and persistent disease, opening up the development of new therapies to treat the disease.

Clostridioides difficile is the most common hospital-acquired disease and causes persistent and life-threatening gut infections – particularly in elderly and immunocompromised patients.

The infection is very difficult to treat, and often repeatedly reoccurs in patients even after they have been given powerful and debilitating antibiotics for many months. C.difficile is also highly resistant to antibiotics, which greatly complicates treatment.

A team based in the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) found that C. difficile massively activates a human enzyme called plasminogen in order to destroy gut tissue and to help spread the infection throughout the patient. Ordinarily, plasminogen, and its active form plasmin, is deployed in a highly controlled fashion to break down scar tissue and help wounds heal.

“The results were a huge surprise, and revealed that the severe damage caused to the gut by C.difficile was actually caused by a human enzyme rather than a bacterial toxin,” said study co-leader and infectious disease expert Professor Dena Lyras.

Given their findings, the researchers decided to investigate whether potent antibodies developed by the team and that inhibited the plasminogen / plasmin system could be used to treat the disease.

“We found that an antibody that prevented plasminogen from being activated dramatically stalled the progress of infection and tissue damage,” said first author Dr Milena Awad.

The researchers now aim to commercialise their antibodies in order to treat a range of bacterial and inflammatory diseases.

An advantage of targeting a human protein in an infectious disease is that resistance to the therapy is far less likely to occur.

“The antibody could have broad utility, since the plasminogen / plasmin system is dysregulated in a range of different serious inflammatory and infectious diseases – for example, the plasminogen system most likely is a driver of the devastating lung damage seen in COVID-19,” said study co-leader and structural biologist Professor James Whisstock.

The study was published in the US journal Gastroenterology.

Source: Monash University

---

Today’s Comic