Day: 4 December 2006

Discovery: How Folic Acid is Absorbed

Scientists have discovered how the vitamin folate is absorbed in the intestinal tract.  The discovery may lead to being able to test infants that cannot absorb this important nutrient.folic acid_1.jpg

Folate, also known as folic acid or vitamin B9, is important for growth and gene expression in the fetus.  Babies who are deficient in it, or cannot absorb it, may have mental retardation, seizures, severe infections, or anemia.

Until now, scientists were not sure what mechanism the body used to absorb folate.  This vitamin is water soluble, therefore not easily penetrating fatty cell membranes.  Recent research at the Albert Einstein Cancer Center in New York concludes that a membrane protein called PCFT/HCP1 transports folate into intestinal cells.

This discovery may help cure hereditary folate malabsorption in babies.

Psiphon Fights Censorship

Earlier this year we covered that Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto was creating some software called Psiphon that lets people bypass firewalls. Psiphone is designed to let people access sites that are blocked for censorship reasons like in China where there is a lot of online censorship.

“psiphon is a censorship circumvention solution that allows users to access blocked sites in countries where the Internet is censored. psiphon turns a regular home computer into a personal, encrypted server capable of retrieving and displaying web pages anywhere.”