Monday, February 3, 2014

5 things you need to know about Ehou maki

Ehou Maki (恵方巻き) is a type of sushi roll whose name means "lucky direction roll". As a Japanese, it's really natural for us to buy one when it gets February 3rd (or some pre-order it at a shop beforehand). We can buy it everywhere like a supermarket, convenience store or even at a place like kiosk! But hey, all humans may wonder, why do we eat it? Who the hell decide "the lucky direction?" Why sushi roll, not sandwich? and why on this date when we call Setsu-bun(節分)? Let's find out...


1. Who the hell decide “the lucky direction?”
 This “lucky direction” is determined based on where “the god of happiness” called Toshitoku-jin(歳徳神) is located and it changes every year. Huh so, who can see which direction this god of happiness is? – It’s based on what we call Oriental Zodiac.

乙か庚の年(when the last number of year is 0 or 5)→庚の方位(west-southwest)
丙か辛の年(when the last number of year is 1 or 6)→丙の方位(south-southeast)
丁か壬の年(when the last number of year is 2 or 7)→壬の方位(north-northwest)
戊か癸の年(when the last number of year is 3 or 8)→丙の方位(south-southeast)
甲か己の年(when the last number of year is 4 or 9)→甲の方位(east-northeast)

 So it’s not like the god changes from places to places, the direction is rather “calculated” based on the old fortune telling kinda system.

2. Why it has to be this thick big sushi roll?
 This seems to be “depends on where we live” thing. Some eat big thick sushi roll, some eat thin sushi roll. However, the reason why it has to be sushi roll is because they need to put some ingredients inside something. You must have noticed there are lots of ingredients rolled up inside it and they all are believed to bring lucks. Since it sounds nicer to have all lucks “at one bite,” they put all ingredients together inside a sushi roll and MUNCH MUNCH!

3. Why we are not allowed to talk while eating it?
 Not to allow your happiness to go away from your body. So it’s simple, if you want to have more happiness then shut up and eat it. That is what they say at least.

4. When did we start doing this kind of non-sense?
 The origin of this Ehou-maki roll can be tracked back to Edo-period when people in a town in Osaka started eating a sushi roll with 7 ingredients which represent all Seven Deities of Good Fortune(七福神). And they were eating it by heading the “happy direction” where the god of happiness is. Everything is FOR GOOD LUCK.
However, the main reason why we do eat this roll these days is all thanks to a marketing policy of 7/11(convenience store). It’s said to have become popular after a convenience store in Hiroshima started selling the lucky direction roll in 1989.

5. Why on February 3rd?
 You will see the reason if you know the meaning of this “Setsubun”(節分) thing. It literally means "seasonal division." And the new season was felt to be a time when the spirit world became close to the physical world. Therefore there are lots of things have been done on the day before the season to be changed into another one.



Referrence
60秒でわかる恵方巻講座 by Google+

恵方巻きの方角の決め方は?法則を覚えてあなたも即答!


Ehoumaki (ehou maki): Lucky long sushi roll for Setsubun no hi

STAP (stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency) cells

Embryonic stem cells_Reuters.jpg

Stem cells can transform into any tissue and are already being trialed for healing the eye, heart and brain. The latest development, published in the journal Nature, could make the technology cheaper, faster and safer.

The human body is built of a lot of kinds of cells, each with a specific role - nerve cell, liver cell, muscle cell – and for each cell, the role is determined and cannot be changed. However, stem cells can become any other type of cell, and they have become a major field of research in medicine for their potential to regenerate the body.

So what makes a heart cell different from a liver cell? The two cells express different sets of genes. Likewise, a stem cell turns on specific sets of genes to differentiate into another cell. For this reason, it has been thought to be impossible to reprogram a differentiated cell and revert it back to a stem cell.

 However, in January 2014, a female Japanese researcher made it happen.


[Who discovered?]
Dr Haruko Obokata, a 30-yrs-old woman researcher from the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology in Japan.

Dr Haruko Obokata explains how she nearly gave up on the project
when fellow researchers didn't believe what she had found
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25917270




[How could they find this?]
[How is it different from older discoveries?]

 In making STAP cells, body cells can "be reset" or reverted back to a stem cell just by applying strong stimuli. Such transformation is known to occur in plants, but the team’s researchers have shown that animal cells possess the same ability.
In her research, Dr Haruko Obokata let body cells pass through a very narrow pipe. And she miraculously discovered that some body cells have turned into stem-cell-like-state.

That was when she thought cells can be reverted back to a stem cell by applying stimuli somehow. So she soaked some cells in acid and half-killed them in order to apply some stimuli. Then 20-30mins later, cells have changed and reset.

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0000987502
In their previous researches, they all reprogrammed body cell into stem cell by using something else. For example, Yamanaka’s IPS cell’s, they used a virus to deliver four stem cell factors into skin cells, causing the differentiated stem cells to go into an embryonic-stem-cell-like state. This simply means, we put something from outer world into body cell and created a system to “reset the cell.”


But in STAP cells’ case, we put body cells into an environment where these body cells get stressed. Then, these stressed body cells lose its function as a body cell and turns back into a state of stem cell. In this case, we force body cell to “reset itself.”


[How we can utilize this technology]

Once scientists can create differentiated cells from stem cells, then there are many possibilities for their use, such as drug testing and cell-based therapies. Added in the future...


[Referrence]
Stem cell 'major discovery' claimed


STAP cell discovery overturns common beliefs in biology