World warned over killer flu pandemic

Sorry for being MIA for some time again.

Anyway, here's an article from Focus Information Agency:

"World warned over killer flu pandemic

London. The world is failing to guard against the inevitable spread of a devastating flu pandemic which could kill 50 million people and wreak massive disruption around the globe, the Government has warned, cited by The Independent Daily.

The British Government's evidence appeared in a highly critical report from the Lords Intergovernmental Organisations Committee, which attacked the World Health Organisation (WHO) as "dysfunctional" and criticised the international response to the threat of an outbreak of disease which could sweep across the globe.

Peers joined ministers calling for urgent action to build up early warning systems across the Third World that can identify and neutralise outbreaks of potentially deadly new strains of disease before they are swept across the globe by modern trade and travel. Peers also called for new action to monitor animal diseases, warning of the potentially disastrous effects of conditions such as the H5N1 bird flu virus jumping to humans and demanded that Britain step up funding for the WHO to tackle the threat.

With international tourist journeys now reaching 800 million a year, giving unprecedented potential for epidemics to spread across borders, and many cities rapidly growing in developing countries, which would provide "fertile ground" to spread disease, peers on the committee warned that conditions such as Sars, avian influenza and ebola "have the potential to cause rapid and devastating sickness and death across much of the world if they are not detected and checked in time". "

Hmmm..well it's really a matter of "when" and not "if". Which many researchers have already mentioned. And I got this feeling that it might come in a few years later, in other words: soon.

The world is failing to guard against the inevitable spread of a devastating flu pandemic which could kill 50 million people and wreak massive disruption around the globe, the Government has warned.

Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and Earthquake in China

I'm sure many of you should have been aware by now, the recent disasters that have occurred in Asia.

Firstly, there was a cyclone that hit Myanmar last week.

"Cyclone Nargis hit five divisions and states -- Yangon, Bago, Ayeyawaddy, Kayin and Mon on May 2 and 3, of which Ayeyawaddy and Yangon sustained the heaviest casualties and infrastructural damage.

The death toll of Myanmar's cyclone disaster kept rising with 3,480 more people killed, bringing the total to 31,938, according to a news report of the state radio Monday evening. "

For the full article, click this link: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2008-05/13/content_6679171.htm

Then, just yesterday morning, a major quake struck China, the epicentre in the province of Sichuan, and the death toll had already exceeded 12,000.

"More than 18,000 people were still trapped in the rubble of Sichuan's second city today as Chinese troops battled through the disaster zone to devastated towns and villages cut off by yesterday's earthquake

As the official death toll climbed past 12,000, the official Xinhua agency reported that 3,639 people had been killed in Mianyang, a city near the epicentre of the 7.9-magnitude quake. A further 18,645 were still buried in the debris of collapsed buildings, beyond the reach of rescue teams, it said.

In another town, Beichuan, where 5,000 are feared dead, the old town had been almost completely buried by a landslide, residents said. In the new town, built on the banks of a river, the casualty toll was also expected to be high after the earthquake sent hundreds of buildings slipping into the water below.

The area has been hit by wave after wave of aftershocks, including a particularly violent tremor today measuring 6.1 that sent thousands of office workers in Chengdu rushing out into the open. Tens of thousands of people were already standing on the pavements huddling under umbrellas and makeshift plastic covers, sheltering from the rain, reluctant to return to their homes.

One said: "We are just too afraid that our homes will fall down."

For full article, click here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3921520.ece?token=null&offset=12

~~~

It is just so sad, whenever any disaster happens, that people can lose their lives in just a matter of seconds because of the uncontrollable force of Mother Nature. Let's hope that they would all be able to rebuild their lives again and move on. May God be with them always. If you can, please pray for all those affected by these devastating disasters too.

The PCR song

I've recently received a link from my school about the PCR song from bio-rad.

The song is so cute!

For those who don't know what PCR is, it's short form for polymerase chain reaction. It is a technique used to amplify a piece of DNA to produce more copies of it for further testing. It's an amazing technique used for many purposes such as genetic fingerprinting or genetic analysis.

Here's the music video:



Here are the lyrics:


There was a time when to amplify DNA,
You had to grow tons and tons of tiny cells.

Then along came a guy named Dr. Kary Mullis,
Said you can amplify in vitro just as well.

Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers,
Nucleotides and polymerases, too.

Denaturing, annealing, and extending.
Well it’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do.

Chorus:
PCR, when you need to detect mutations.
PCR, when you need to recombine.
PCR, when you need to find out who the daddy is.
PCR, when you need to solve a crime.
(repeat chorus)



Thanks Bio-Rad for such a cute and wonderful song (:

Experiment - Blood type and Rhesus testing

As a timid person, pain terrifies me.

Before the experiment yesterday I knew that someone from the group would have to "sacrifice" to donate a little blood from his/her finger to do the blood type testing experiment in genetics class.

The objective was to demonstrate the principles of blood grouping and mendelian genetics. And to check out how testing can be done.

Even though there was a guy in my group, I didn't know what my blood group was, so I thought I should volunteer. Apparently, up till my batch, we no longer have to test our blood group for our identification card, and there was also no record of my blood group on my birth certificate, plus being in a single parent family, I know my mum's an O, which means I will definitely inherit one of her Os, but I dunnoe what's the blood grp of my dad. So I prepared myself for the experiment.

I was so freaking out before the experiment, as the teacher was explaining the procedure.

I looked away as my friend pricked my middle finger on my left hand with the lancet. I kept telling myself as I was looking away that it's just going to be like an ant's bite. An ant's bite. Nope, it felt more like a cut. Which it really was. Seeing as I used to work in a pharmacy and got myself lots of cuts from packing medications, it felt like another work accident. But it was quite painful though.

My friend then drew blood that came out blob-like (I had to squeeze my finger so that she can draw using the micropipette). Interestingly though, I gave more than was required. I was afraid there might not be enough or like in case something happens. I won't want to prick my finger again.

We did two kinds of testing too, a blood group testing and rhesus testing. And with two different methods, one that was fast and another that would take an hour.

It was cool at the end of it actually. Coz I found out what's my blood group and rhesus! Saves me a trip to the doc plus I felt much braver after that too.

Thank God He gave me that courage (:

Results are in!

Let's take a look at our results from the lab:

1. My hand imprint




As you can see, even though I've washed my hands before I did this, there is still a mixed colony of bacteria. But at least still clean because it's not a lot.

2. Serial dilution

I will only show dilution 10^(-2) plate and dilution 10^(-5) plate for comparison:






10^(-2)

10^(-5)

As you can see, the colonies on 10^(-5) look easier to count. But we'll only be counting them in the next lab session.

3. Streaking

The streaking was done pretty well by my friend, as isolated colonies were observed:

4. Gram staining

Sadly, I haven't gotten the gram staining pics from my other friend who took the photos, but I will post them once I get them.

I am really satisfied with the results and can't wait for the next session (:

Lab experiment with Staphylococcus auerus

I had a very interesting lab session in school last night.

There were four experiments conducted during the session:

1. I volunteered for the first one where I had to imprint my fingers onto the nutrient agar to kind of culture and see the different kinds of bacteria that were on my fingers. The agar was to be incubated at 37 degrees C, for 24 hours.

2. The second experiment was to do a serial dilution using a Staphylococcus aureus culture and then do a spread plate from the dilution tubes 10^(-5), 10^(-4), 10^(-3) and 10^(-2).

The way to do dilution is to firstly pipette 1ml of pure culture from a sample of S. aureus and then transfer that to another tube containing 9ml of water. This tube will be labelled as 10^(-1). From this 10^(-1) tube, another 1 ml of this mixture is drawn and placed in a new tube containing 9ml of water, this tube will be labelled as 10^(-2).

The same method continues until a 10^(-5) tube is obtained. So from tubes 10^(-2) to 10^(-5), 1 ml from each tube is drawn and expelled onto a nutrient agar plate each, and using a hockey stick (not the big one used for playing, but a small one that looks kind of like a straw that is bent at the top), the mixture is spread around the plate and they will again be incubated at 37 degrees C, for 24 hours.

The purpose of dilution is so as to make the colonies so called "countable" because if you spread and grow the undiluted culture, there will be too many colonies to count. But if you dilute them step by step, it makes them more countable. And after the colonies are counted, calculations will be done to estimate the number of bacterial/ml in the sample. This is known as bacteria enumeration.

3. The third experiment of the session was to do a streak plate. Streaking is a method used to isolate separate bacterial colonies from a culture. This is somewhat similar to dilution. There must first be a primary innoculation site, where a culture is taken using a sterilised loop and streaked many times on one part of the agar plate, another sterilised loop is used to draw abt 3-4 lines from the primary innoculation site (the plate turned 90 degrees), and another sterilised loop will draw another 3-4 lines from those 3-4 lines, the last part will be to use another sterilised loop to do a streak from the previous 3-4 lines, care must be taken not to touch the primary innoculation site. The same loop can be used but has to be sterilised using the aseptic technique of flaming the loop. But for my class, we used plastic sterilised loops, so we didn't have to flame them, or they might melt haha.

The difference between serial dilution and streaking is that serial dilution is used to estimate the number of bacteria per ml in the culture while streaking is used to isolate a single colony.

4. The last experiment of the session was to do gram staining, this experiment is one of the coolest i've ever done because gram staining, stains the bacteria to show what type it is (is it gram positive (purple) or gram negative (pink)?), and the shape, size and how they group together. Since the bacteria used last night was Staphylococcus aureus, Staph actually means cluster, and coccus is like grape-shaped, and since it is a gram positive bacteria, it should also be purple colour. And what we saw was indeed, grape-shaped purple bacteria clustered in groups.

When we did it the first time, we couldn't see anything under the microscope, probably coz I placed too little an amount onto the slide, so it could have been all washed off when we did the staining. So we tried again, and I was so happy and excited that we could actually see them, lol, believe me, all of us took turns to try and focus here and there but couldn't see anything (except probably the hair from someone that fell onto the slide haha), and finally when we could, it was like a Eureka moment. lol.


Anyway, all these would sound more exciting if there were pictures, but i'll only be going back to check on them on Friday. So be sure to check back here after Friday for the photos and further explanations!

Oh yeah, this is actually for a developing professional skills module, and so we learnt the various techniques related to microbiology work.

I am also taking the microbiology module this term, and let me tell you, the lab was even more exciting. But again, we will only have the chance to check on our plates in the next session, so I will blog about them when the time comes. The micro-organisms we used that time was more than just Staphylococcus aureus. We also used Saccharomyces cerevisiae (or baker's yeast), Bacillus cereus (close family with Bacillus anthracis [causes anthrax]. They produce endospores which are harmful to us), and also Klebsiella pneumoniae. For that session, one experiment allowed us to choose one of these micro-organisms to learn streaking, and I chose K. pneumoniae, I shall take a picture and post it here if it looks ok, haha, after I take a look at the plate.

Hailstones + 2nd announcement:promotion

It was pretty scary.

I was at home two days ago during a very intense thunderstorm.

Hailstones were supposed to be really rare in such a tropical hot country like Singapore.

But around 3.15 in the afternoon, there was a thunderstorm, and as I sat on my bed tidying up some photos, I heard knocking sounds on my windows, as though someone was throwing stones at it. Seeing as I'm staying on the 30-something floor, I don't think any human being can throw stones that high up. I looked out of the window but couldn't see anything because the rain was just too heavy, it was like a blank white picture outside. But the knocking sounds continued and I suspected it could really be hailstones. I was quite afraid that my windows were going to break with the constant knocking, plus I couldn't tell what size they were.

Turns out, they were hailstones. Apparently, the storm was that intense that in the presence of a strong downdraft, the hailstones were most likely brought to the ground rapidly without melting.

Check out the news report here: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/337625/1/.html

Luckily, they were about the size of a five cents coin, too small to cause much damage.

Aside from that I have a second announcement from my E-book site:

I am now having a special opening one-week promotion for my E-book!

Instead of the introductory price of $6.95 for the E-book (worth $19.95),

You can now get the E-book for only $2.95!

Hurry! Go to http://www.search-effectively.com/ and grab a copy now!

Promotion lasts till 4th April!

Unlocking Secrets of the Search Engine E-book

Finally, I've finished my E-book "Unlocking Secrets of the Search Engine".

You might be wondering what this book is about. Well, in short, it shows you how you can search the internet for information more effectively. Gives you tips and tricks on how you should pick your words so that you get relevant results from your search engine.

It includes a free bonus report: "Unlocking the secret to having fun researching on the internet, the scientific way." and a free bonus interview with Brad Callen (search engine optimization expert) on some key things you must take note when creating a website, especially if you're new to it and where you can get help regarding search engine optimization for your website.

For more information on the book, check out the website at http://www.search-effectively.com/ or click the banner in the sidebar.

It's been a long time

Wow, I didn't realize it's been 3 months since I've posted anything here. Really sorry about it.

Here's an interesting article from NewScientist.com:

Stressed parents equals sick kids

STRESSED parents aren't just damaging their own health - they may also be making their children more vulnerable to illness.

Stress is well known to affect a person's own physical health, but the effect on their children's health was unclear. To investigate, Mary Caserta and her colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York asked the parents of 169 children aged between 5 and 10 to monitor their child's health over three years, recording symptoms of illnesses and taking their temperatures.

Every six months, the parents took a test designed to assess their own psychiatric health, noting markers of stress such as anxiety or depression.

Caserta's team found that the total number of illnesses, both with and without fever, was significantly higher in the children of parents who reported high levels of emotional stress. The team also measured the levels of immune cells in the children, and found those with highly stressed parents were much more likely to have heightened immune activity - a sign that they were working hard to fend off infection (Brain, Behavior and Immunity, DOI: 10.1016/j.bbi.2008.01.007)

David Jessop at the University of Bristol in the UK calls the results fascinating, and thinks that future studies should aim discover which stress factors have the biggest impact on children's immunity.

[Acknowledgement: Newscientist.com]

This is quite interesting isn't it? But I thinks its quite ironic, in a sense that, sometimes, it's the children that gives the parents stress because maybe they are naughty, they don't do their homework etc..plus the stress that parents get from work..but the children in turn become sick. Another thing is that, probably when the parents are around their children, the children's mirror neurons are at work, so they "feel" what their parents are feeling. And as stress lowers our immune system, it may have caused them to fall ill more easily.

For more information on the mirror neurons, click here to read the article i posted.

another year

how time flies. I've not blogged here for a long time, and another year is starting. I rmbed starting this year with a look back at the weirdest science of 2006. Hmm..this year, maybe i'll post this video about the top 5 science videos of 2007 in newscientist. (you'll need a shockwave player)

Live Earth

I'm sure most of you must have heard of "live earth" on the 7/7/7 by now.

You can show your support by wearing green on 7/7 and 8/7.

Here's the website:

http://www.liveearth.org/

It provides many resourses on how you can help in the fight against global warming and to protect our Earth.

Please take some time to look at how you can help. The Earth needs us now!

Belief in reincarnation tied to memory errors

I noe I've not been blogging for more than a month. really sorry. Shall post this really interesting article:

"People who believe they have lived past lives as, say, Indian princesses or battlefield commanders are more likely to make certain types of memory errors, according to a new study.

The propensity to make these mistakes could, in part, explain why people cling to implausible reincarnation claims in the first place.

Researchers recruited people who, after undergoing hypnotic therapy, had come to believe that they had past lives.

Subjects were asked to read aloud a list of 40 non-famous names, and then, after a two-hour wait, told that they were going to see a list consisting of three types of names: non-famous names they had already seen (from the earlier list), famous names, and names of non-famous people that they had not previously seen. Their task was to identify which names were famous.

The researchers found that, compared to control subjects who dismissed the idea of reincarnation, past-life believers were almost twice as likely to misidentify names. In particular, their tendency was to wrongly identify as famous the non-famous names they had seen in the first task. This kind of error, called a source-monitoring error, indicates that a person has difficulty recognizing where a memory came from.

Power of suggestion
People who are likely to make these kinds of errors might end up convincing themselves of things that aren’t true, said lead researcher Maarten Peters of Maastricht University in The Netherlands. When people who are prone to making these mistakes undergo hypnosis and are repeatedly asked to talk about a potential idea — like a past life — they might, as they grow more familiar with it, eventually convert the idea into a full-blown false memory.

This is because they can’t distinguish between things that have really happened and things that have been suggested to them, Peters told LiveScience.

Past life memories are not the only type of implausible memories that have been studied in this manner. Richard McNally, a clinical psychologist at Harvard University, has found that self-proclaimed alien abductees are also twice as likely to commit source monitoring errors.

Creative minds
As for what might make people more prone to committing such errors to begin with, McNally says that it could be the byproduct of especially vivid imagery skills. He has found that people who commonly make source-monitoring errors respond to and imagine experiences more strongly than the average person, and they also tend to be more creative.

“It might be harder to discriminate between a vivid image that you’d generated yourself and the memory of a perception of something you actually saw,” he said in a telephone interview.

Peters also found in his study, detailed in the March issue of Consciousness and Cognition, that people with implausible memories are also more likely to be depressed and to experience sleep problems, and this could also make them more prone to memory mistakes.

And once people make this kind of mistake, they might be inclined to stick to their guns for spiritual reasons, McNally said. “It may be a variant expression of certain religious impulses,” he said. “We suspect that this might be kind of a psychological buffering mechanism against the fear of death.” "

Lab disaster may lead to new cancer drug

Ok, i noe its been a looonng time since i last posted sth. I've started working so sometimes i just feel too tired to post. Even my own blog has shorter entries nowadays coz i usually end up been so tired i forgot what i intended to blog abt. But i do still read articles from various sources i subscribe to just that yeah, just tired. I'll try to post as much as i can (: Here's one that's quite recent and i thk it's good news for many cancer patients.

"WASHINGTON - Her carefully cultured cells were dead and Katherine Schaefer was annoyed, but just a few minutes later, the researcher realized she had stumbled onto a potential new cancer treatment.

Schaefer and colleagues at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York believe they have discovered a new way to attack tumors that have learned how to evade existing drugs.

Tests in mice suggest the compound helps break down the cell walls of tumors, almost like destroying a tumor cell’s “skeleton”.

The researchers will test the new compound for safety and hope they can develop it to treat cancers such as colon cancer, esophageal cancer, liver and skin cancers.

“I was using these cancer cells as models of the normal intestine,” Schaefer said in a telephone interview.

Normal human cells are difficult to grow and study in the lab, because they tend to die. But cancer cells live much longer and are harder to kill, so scientists often use them.

Schaefer was looking for drugs to treat the inflammation seen in Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, both of which cause pain and diarrhea.

She was testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator. It would never normally have been thought of as a cancer drug, or in fact a drug of any kind.

“I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died,” Schaefer said.

A colleague overheard her complaining. “The co-author on my paper said,’ Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?’ I said ‘Oh’, and took a closer look.”

They ran several tests and found the compound killed ”pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen,” Schaefer said. Epithelial cells line organs such as the colon, and also make up skin.

It also killed colon tumors in mice without making the mice sick, they reported in the journal International Cancer Research.

Targets cells
The compound works in much the same way as the taxane drugs, including Taxol, which were originally derived from Pacific yew trees.

“It targets part of the cell cytoskeleton called tubulin,” Schaefer said. Tubulin is used to build microtubules, which in turn make up the cell’s structure.

Destroying it kills the cell, but cancer cells eventually evolve mechanisms to pump out the drugs that do this, a problem called resistance.

“Resistance to anti-tubulin therapies is a huge problem in many cancers. We see this as another way to get to the tubulin,” Schaefer said.

The PPAR-gamma compound does this in a different way from the taxanes, which might mean it could overcome the resistance that tumor cells often develop to chemotherapy.

“Most of the drugs like Taxol affect the ability of tubulin to forms into microtubules. This doesn’t do that -- it causes the tubulin itself to disappear. We do not know why.”

Schaefer’s team plans more safety tests in mice. As the compound is already patented, her team will probably have to design something slightly different to be able to patent it as a new drug.

Taxol, developed by U.S. National Cancer Institute researchers and manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb in 1993, had annual sales of $1.6 billion at its peak in 2000."

[Acknowlegement: Reuters; Msnbc]

Yep, i thk its really amazing and i hope that everything will go well in creating the new drug.

Report: Amniotic fluid yields stem cells

This is such a breakthrough!

Here's the article:

"Stem cell researchers reacted with enthusiasm and reservations to a report that scientists have found stem cells in amniotic fluid, a discovery that would allow them to sidestep the controversy over destroying embryos for research.

Researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard University reported Sunday that the stem cells they drew from amniotic fluid donated by pregnant women hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells.

They reported they were able to extract the stem cells from the fluid, which cushions babies in the womb, without harm to mother or fetus and turn their discovery into several different tissue cell types, including brain, liver and bone.

But Dr. Anthony Atala, head of Wake Forest’s regenerative medicine institute and the senior researcher on the project, said the scientists still don’t know exactly how many different cell types can be made from the stem cells found in amniotic fluid. The scientists said preliminary tests in patients are years away.

The cells from amniotic fluid “can clearly generate a broad range of important cell types, but they may not do as many tricks as embryonic stem cells,” said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientist at the stem cell company Advanced Cell Technology. “Either way, I think this work represents a giant step forward for stem cell research.”

Dr. George Daley, a Harvard University stem cell researcher, said the finding raises the possibility that someday expectant parents can freeze amnio stem cells for future tissue replacement in a sick child without fear of immune rejection.

Nonetheless, Daley said, the discovery shouldn’t be used as a replacement for human embryonic stem cell research.

“While they are fascinating subjects of study in their own right, they are not a substitute for human embryonic stem cells, which allow scientists to address a host of other interesting questions in early human development,” said Daley, who began work last year to clone human embryos to produce stem cells.

Atala said the research reported in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology expands far beyond similar work.

At a heart research conference in November, Swiss researcher Simon Hoerstrup said he managed to turn amniotic fluid stem cells into heart cells that could be grown into replacement valves. Hoerstrup has yet to publish his work in a scientific journal.

“Our hope is that these cells will provide a valuable resource for tissue repair and for engineered organs as well,” Atala said.

It took Atala’s team some seven years of research to determine the cells they found were truly stem cells that “can be used to produce a broad range of cells that may be valuable for therapy.”

Atala said the new research has found even more promising stem cells with the potential to turn into many more medically useful replacement parts.

“We have other cell lines cooking,” Atala said.

The hallmark of human embryonic stem cells, which are created in the first days after conception, is the ability to turn into any of the more than 220 cell types that make up the human body. Researchers are hopeful they can train these primordial cells to repair damaged organs in need of healthy cells.

However, many people, including President Bush, oppose the destruction of embryos for any reason. The Bush administration has restricted federal funding for the embryo work since 2001, leading many scientists to search for alternative stem cell sources.

The advance is the latest in the so-called regenerative medicine field that has sprung from Atala’s lab in Winston-Salem, N.C.

No substitute for embryonic cells
In April, Atala and his colleagues rebuilt bladders for seven young patients using live tissue grown in the lab.

In the latest work, Atala’s team extracted a small number of stem cells swimming among the many other cell types in the amniotic fluid.

One of the more promising aspects of the research is that some of the DNA of the amnio stem cells contained Y chromosomes, which means the cells came from the babies rather than the pregnant moms.

Dr. George Daley, a Harvard University stem cell researcher, said that finding raises the possibility that someday expectant parents can freeze amnio stem cells for future tissue replacement in a sick child without fear of immune rejection.

Nonetheless, Daley said the discovery shouldn’t be used as a replacement for human embryonic stem cell research.

“While they are fascinating subjects of study in their own right, they are not a substitute for human embryonic stem cells, which allow scientists to address a host of other interesting questions in early human development,” said Daley, who began work last year to clone human embryos to produce stem cells."

[Acknowledgements: Associated press; Msnbc health]

Well although they are not a substitute for human embryonic stem cells, at least it is another path to which stem cells may be extracted and used to generate different types of organs or tissues etc. Much safer than using human embryos.

Stem cell researchers reacted with enthusiasm and reservations to a report
that scientists have found stem cells in amniotic fluid, a discovery that would allow them to sidestep the controversy over destroying embryos for
research.

A new year!

Happy New Year everyone! Should have posted a last entry for 2006, but oh well, now i shall post the first entry of 2007. haha.

Let's look back at the weirdest science stories of 2006:

1st up:
Whales found to speak in dialects

We could blame our accents and different dialects on self-imposed borders -- but that doesn’t explain why animals from different regions speak in dialects. Using underwater microphones, scientists eavesdropped on whale talk and found that the blue whales off the Pacific Northwest sound different than those living in the western Pacific Ocean or near Chile. The reason? Still unknown.

2nd in line:
The Red Sea parts again

It parted once. It parted twice. And this time scientists are watching the whole thing. Satellite images show the Arabian tectonic plate and the African Plate are moving away from each other and parting the southern end of the Red Sea. This growing rift, which is tearing the northeast of Ethiopia and Eritrea from the rest of Africa, could eventually create a whole new sea.

the 3rd:
A new wave: Scientists write on water

Using wave generators, scientists were able to write on water. The Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin (AMOEBA)-- a circular tank created by researchers -- can form the Roman alphabets and some Japanese characters. The device could soon find its way to your nearest amusement park.

4th:
Spider cries out while mating

When mating, female Physocylus globosus squeak to tell their men what they should be doing. The cries are in response to being excited by males rhythmically squeezing their genitalia inside the female. The more a male squeezes, the greater the chance that it will be his sperm that sires her offspring.

5th:
Rats born to mice

Scientists produced healthy offspring from the cells of another species for the first time by taking rat stem cells involved in sperm production and implanting them in mice testicles. In the future, researchers hope to grow sperm of livestock or endangered species in mice or other lab animals.

6th:
Stingray kills 'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin

In a tragic and unusual accident, the much loved and popular Australian television personality and conservationist,Steve Irwin, was killed by a stingray while filming off the Great Barrier Reef. Stingrays sport a tail with an 8-inch spear that stiffens when faced with a threat. Although the spear packs venom that alters heart rate and respiration, it rarely kills humans. The Crocodile Hunter was probably killed because the stingray's spear pierced his heart.

7th:
Scientists create cloak of partial invisibility

Writer H.G. Wells imagined it in his writing in the late 1800’s, and this year scientists inched closer to creating an invisible man. Duke University researchers created a cloaking device that can make objects invisible to microwave light. The device works by rerouting microwaves beam around it the way boulders in a stream divert flowing water.

8th:
Penis transplant removed

Chinese doctors removed the transplanted penis of a 44-year-old man who had lost his own in an accident. The organ was removed two weeks after the transplant because of psychological problems encountered by the man and his wife.

9th (quite interesting):
Coins don't smell -- you do

That metallic odor you smell after handling change? It's created by the breakdown of oils in skin after touching objects that contain iron. The chemical reaction has most of us running to wash our hands to get that musty scent out

last one:
Amazon River flowed backwards

The Amazon River apparently changed its mind a few times in history. South America’s majestic waterway currently flows east into the Atlantic Ocean. But scientists found this year that millions of years ago, the great river flowed east to west and at one time went in both directions at once.

[Acknowledgement: LiveScience and msnbc ]

Some of these are quite interesting so hope it ends 2006..weirdly enough. lol.

Most Chicken Harbors Harmful Bacteria

I felt this was a very important article indeed:

"Dec. 4, 2006 -- Even if you go for the more expensive organic or antibiotic-free chicken, the chicken you buy at the grocery store probably contains bacteria that can make you sick.

But safe handling and proper cooking can reduce the risk.

A startling 83% of the chickens tested in a recent Consumer Reports investigation were contaminated with one or both of the leading bacterial causes of food-borne disease -- salmonella and campylobacter.

That is up from 49% in 2003, when the group last reported on contamination in chickens.

However, the results are similar to the contamination found in 1997, when almost three-fourths of the broilers Consumer Reports tested were positive for salmonella or campylobacter.

In their new report, "Dirty Birds," investigators with Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, concluded that paying more for a chicken does not increase your chances of getting one free of illness-causing bacteria.

"Overall, chickens labeled as organic or raised without antibiotics and costing $3 to $5 per pound were more likely to harbor salmonella than were conventionally produced broilers that cost more like $1 a pound," they wrote.

Jean Halloran of Consumers Union tells WebMD that fewer than one if five birds tested (17%) were free of both pathogens, the lowest percentage of clean birds recorded since the group began testing chickens eight years ago.

Antibiotic Resistance High
Investigators for the independent consumer group tested 525 whole broiler chickens from leading brands like Perdue, Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride, and Foster Farms, as well as organic and other brands raised without antibiotics.

The chickens were purchased at supermarkets, mass retailers, gourmet shops, and natural food stores in 23 states last spring.

Among the findings:

• 15% of chickens tested were contaminated with salmonella, compared to the 12% reported by Consumers Union in 2003.
• 81% harbored campylobacter, up from 42% in 2003. This bug is the main identified cause of bacterial diarrhea illness in the world.
• 13% of chickens were contaminated with both bacteria, up from 5% in 2003.
• 84% of the salmonella organisms analyzed and 67% of the campylobacter were resistant to one or more antibiotics. In the 2003 report, 34% of the salmonella and 90% of campylobacter were resistant.

"The problem of antibiotic resistance is related to both the widespread use of antibiotics in animal feed to promote growth and the widespread use in humans," Halloran says.

Major brands tested did not show better results than smaller brands, overall, based on tests of 78 chickens from each brand.

Among major brands, salmonella contamination ranged from a low of 3% in Foster Farms chickens to a high of 17% in chickens processed by Perdue.

But Perdue had the lowest level of campylobacter-contaminated chickens, with 74%; Tyson had the highest, at 89%.

Chicken Producers Respond
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) requires chicken producers to test for salmonella, but not campylobacter. The agency will begin collecting data on campylobacter soon, but it is not clear if it will set federal limits or require routine testing.

Halloran says it is clear routine testing is needed.

"81% [campylobacter] contamination is intolerable, in our view," she says.

Richard L. Lobb, a chicken industry spokesman, agrees that 81% would be unacceptable, but he argues that far fewer chickens are contaminated with the bacteria.

Lobb is director of communications for the National Chicken Council. He cites a recent, larger study by USDA researchers, in conjunction with the 10 major chicken processors, which found campylobacter bacteria in 26% of the processed chickens tested.

"How they could get from 26% to 81% just blows my mind," Lobb tells WebMD.
He adds that the chicken industry does not oppose testing for campylobacter, and says chicken is both a safe and healthy food.

"Consumer Reports says what every cook already knows -- that fresh poultry may carry naturally occurring bacteria and should be properly handled and cooked," says Lobb.

"The Consumer Reports story, as far as we know, contains nothing new and should not be cause for alarm to anyone," he says.

What Can You Do?
All agree proper handling and cooking can greatly reduce and even eliminate the risk of illness from chickens harboring salmonella or campylobacter bacteria.

That means always cooking chicken thoroughly, to the point where there are no red juices.
"Chicken needs to be cooked to at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit," Halloran says. "The best thing to do is test it with a meat thermometer. And if you are in a restaurant and you cut into chicken that doesn't look done, send it back."

Other suggestions for reducing risk include:

• At the grocery store, make chicken one of the last things you pick up before heading to the check-out line.
• Store and thaw chicken in the refrigerator, making sure its juices are contained and cannot contaminate other foods. Placing it on a plate, in a bowl, or inside a plastic bag is a good way to do this.
• When preparing chicken, wash your hands with soap and water after contact, and immediately clean cutting boards, knives, and anything else the chicken touches in hot, soapy water.
• Never return cooked meat to the plate that held it raw without washing the plate first.
  Washing chicken and removing its skin before cooking does not ensure it is free of bacteria.
  

"Consumers now have to realize that most chickens contain disease-causing bacteria, and that means they have to act appropriately," Halloran says. "They can't take chances.""

[Acknowledgement: WebMD]

"Consumers now have to realize that most chickens contain disease-causing bacteria, and that means they have to act appropriately," Halloran says. "They can't take chances."

And I agree with him.

Cell phones don’t cause cancer, huge study says

This is interesting, after many debates abt what cell phones can do to us, the debate is still continuing.

"WASHINGTON - A huge study from Denmark offers the latest reassurance that cell phones don’t trigger cancer.

Scientists tracked 420,000 Danish cell phone users, including 52,000 who had gabbed on the gadgets for 10 years or more, and some who started using them 21 years ago.

They matched phone records to the famed Danish Cancer Registry that records every citizen who gets the disease — and reported Tuesday that cell-phone callers are no more likely than anyone else to suffer a range of cancer types.

The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is the largest yet to find no bad news about the safety of cell phones and the radiofrequency energy they emit.

No end to the debate
But even the lead researcher doubts it will end the debate.

“There’s really no biological basis for you to be concerned about radio waves,” said John Boice, a Vanderbilt University professor and scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Md. “Nonetheless, people are.”

So Boice and colleagues at Copenhagen’s Danish Cancer Society plan to continue tracking the Danish callers until at least some have used the phones for 30 years.

This so-called Danish cohort “is probably the strongest study out there because of the outstanding registries they keep,” said Joshua Muscat of Pennsylvania State University, who also has studied cell phones and cancer.

Reassurance ... for now
“As the body of evidence accumulates, people can become more reassured that these devices are safe, but the final word is not there yet,” Muscat added.

Cell phones beam radiofrequency energy that can penetrate the brain’s outer edge, raising questions about cancers of the head and neck, brain tumors or leukemia. Most research has found no risk, but a few studies have raised questions. And while U.S. health officials insist the evidence shows no real reason for concern, they don’t give the phones a definitive clean bill of health, either, pending long-term data on slow-growing cancers.

For the latest study, personal identification numbers assigned to each Dane at birth allowed researchers to match people who began using cell phones between 1982 and 1995 with cancer records.

Among 420,000 callers tracked through 2002, there were 14,249 cancers diagnosed — fewer than the 15,001 predicted from national cancer rates. Nor did the study find increased risks for any specific tumor type."

[Acknowledgement: Associated Press]

"As the body of evidence accumulates, people can become more reassured that these devices are safe, but the final word is not there yet"

Eating red meat may raise breast cancer risk

Here's what I just read:

"CHICAGO - Eating red meat may raise a woman’s risk of a common type of breast cancer, and vitamin supplements will do little if anything to protect her heart, two new studies suggest.

Women who ate more than 1½ servings of red meat per day were almost twice as likely to develop hormone-related breast cancer as those who ate fewer than three portions per week, one study found.

The other — one of the longest and largest tests of whether supplements of various vitamins can prevent heart problems and strokes in high-risk women — found that the popular pills do no good, although there were hints that women with the highest risk might get some benefit from vitamin C.

The meat study was published in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine. The vitamin study was presented at an American Heart Association conference in Chicago. Both were led by doctors at Harvard Medical School and were aimed at two diseases women most fear and want to prevent.

Antioxidants like vitamins C and E attach to substances that can damage cells. Scientists have been testing them for preventing such diseases as Alzheimer’s and cancer.

This is the first large study to test vitamin C alone, not in combination with E or other vitamins, for heart health, said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who led the research.

More than 8,000 women were randomly assigned to take vitamin C, E or beta carotene alone or in various combinations for nearly a decade. An additional 5,442 women took folic acid and B vitamin supplements for more than seven years.

“Overall, there was minimal evidence of any cardiovascular benefit of any of these antioxidants,” and people should not start or continue taking them for that purpose, Manson said.

Among the 3,000 women in the study who had no prior heart disease but three or more risk factors for it, those who received vitamin C alone or in combination had a 42 percent lower risk of stroke. Smokers taking C also had a 48 percent lower risk.

Vitamin E could help a little
Vitamin E may give very small benefits for some women, the study suggests. Those with prior heart disease had a 12 percent reduction in the risk of new heart problems, Manson said.

“Many of these subgroup findings are intriguing. However, they need to be confirmed in other studies,” Manson said. “We don’t want this to be interpreted as a conclusive finding.”

What does appear conclusive is that folic acid and B vitamins “are not effective as preventive agents,” said Dr. Christine Albert, who presented that portion of the study at the heart meeting on Monday. These nutrients lower homocysteine, a blood substance thought to increase heart disease risk, but many studies now call the importance of that into question.

The meat study was based on observation rather than an experiment. The Nurses’ Health Study tracked the diets and health of more than 90,000 women who were 26 to 46 years old when they enrolled roughly two decades ago.

They filled out diet questionnaires in 1991, 1995 and 1999, and were divided into five groups based on how much red meat they said they ate. Researchers checked on their health for 12 years on average and confirmed breast cancer diagnoses with medical records.

Meat consumption was linked to a risk of developing tumors whose growth was fueled by estrogen or progesterone — the most common type — but not to tumors that grow independently of these hormones.

The women who ate more red meat were more likely to smoke and be overweight, but when the researchers took those factors into account, they still saw that red meat was linked with an increased risk of breast cancer.

Red meat also raises risk of colorectal cancer
Earlier studies have found that obesity raises the risk of breast cancer and that red meat raises the risk of colorectal cancer.

“Our study may give another motivation to reduce red meat intake,” said study co-author Eunyoung Cho.

However, Dr. Anne McTiernan of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle cautioned that the findings rely on women’s recall of what they ate — an inexact way to measure diet.

“A 16-ounce steak and a three-ounce piece of meat are counted the same. People are horrible at determining what is a real serving,” said McTiernan, author of “Breast Fitness,” a book on reducing cancer risk.

It may be wise to cut down on red meat because of its fat and calorie content, McTiernan said, but “this isn’t a reason to become a vegetarian if you weren’t planning to do that already.”"

[Acknowledgement: Associated Press]

Happy people catch fewer colds

Here's an article that's really interesting. Now there's another reason to be happy! (:

"Happy people are healthier people, research suggests.

People who are happy, lively, calm or exhibit other positive emotions are less likely to catch colds and report fewer symptoms of the illness when they are under the weather.

The new finding held true regardless of personality traits such as optimism, extraversion and self-esteem. A person’s age, race, gender, education and body mass also did not make a difference.

Researchers interviewed 193 volunteers, aged 21 to 55, over several weeks to assess their moods and overall emotional states, and then infected them with either a rhinovirus, known to cause the common cold, or an influenza virus, responsible for the basic flu.

The volunteers were then quarantined to see if they came down with a cold or the flu. While the study found happiness is associated with boosted health, it suggests the opposite might not be true.

People who reported more negative emotions, such as depression, anxiety and anger, were not any more likely to catch colds than normal controls, the study found.

The study, led by psychologist Stephen Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University, will be detailed online in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. "

[acknowledgement: Livescience.com]

An Inconvenient Truth

Ok, So I've watched it. And I'd give it a 4/5.

Firstly, the statistics were real and enough to prove a lot. Indeed, temperature do have a correlation with the amount of carbon dioxide.

The whole film was somewhat an in-between thing between one of his lectures on global warming and his life revolving around saving the planet. The illustrations he gave were easily digestible. Especially the one about the frog in a beaker of water that was slowly boiling. The images that he has shown were amazing and astonishing as well.

It's an inspirational film that will encourage you to save the planet now before it's too late. You can reduce your carbon emissions to as much as 0%. And by other ways we can do, we can reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the air to as low as the level in 1970.

Anyway, if you love your planet, there's no harm watching it.

You can visit the official site at www.climatecrisis.net on how you can start saving the Earth.

Watching "An Inconvenient Truth" tmr

I am so excited. I'll be watching this documentary movie/film tmr and really just watching the trailer is already quite scary. Not the horror gore kind of scary but the oh-my-god-this-is-actually-happening kind of scary. As I blog most of the time about global warming, I know most of these effects. But just watching it all as once will really remind one the importance of saving the environment. Global warming is real. It's already happening and by 10 years time if we don't do anything, the effects are really too vast and horrifying to describe. I've seen some images in the trailer and those are real from pictures I myself have seen. It's a movie that should not be missed. Even if you're not an environmental person, you should not miss this chance seriously. But still, I haven't watched it, haha. So I shall rate and review it tmr. So be sure to check back tmr. Right now, I will list down these global warming facts from the official site of the movie:


"WHAT IS GLOBAL WARMING?

Carbon dioxide and other gases warm the surface of the planet naturally by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. This is a good thing because it keeps our planet habitable. However, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and clearing forests we have dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere and temperatures are rising.

The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is real, it’s already happening and that it is the result of our activities and not a natural occurrence.(1) The evidence is overwhelming and undeniable.

We’re already seeing changes. Glaciers are melting, plants and animals are being forced from their habitat, and the number of severe storms and droughts is increasing.

The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.(2)

Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level.(3)

The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade.(4)

At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles.(5)

If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences :

Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years -- to 300,000 people a year.(6)

Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.(7)

Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.

Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.

The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.(8)

More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.(9)

There is no doubt we can solve this problem. In fact, we have a moral obligation to do so. Small changes to your daily routine can add up to big differences in helping to stop global warming. The time to come together to solve this problem is now – TAKE ACTION

1 According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this era of global warming "is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin" and "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence of the global climate."

2 Emanuel, K. 2005. Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years. Nature 436: 686-688.

3 World Health Organization

4 Krabill, W., E. Hanna, P. Huybrechts, W. Abdalati, J. Cappelen, B. Csatho, E. Frefick, S. Manizade, C. Martin, J, Sonntag, R. Swift, R. Thomas and J. Yungel. 2004. Greenland Ice Sheet: Increased coastal thinning. Geophysical Research Letters 31.

5 Nature.

6 World Health Organization

7 Washington Post, "Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change," Juliet Eilperin, January 29, 2006, Page A1.

8 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. 2004. Impacts of a Warming Arctic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Also quoted in Time Magazine, Vicious Cycles, Missy Adams, March 26, 2006.

9 Time Magazine, Feeling the Heat, David Bjerklie, March 26, 2006.

The next section I'm posting is "about the film":


"Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.

If that sounds like a recipe for serious gloom and doom -- think again. From director Davis Guggenheim comes the Sundance Film Festival hit, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it. That man is former Vice President Al Gore, who, in the wake of defeat in the 2000 election, re-set the course of his life to focus on a last-ditch, all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change. In this eye-opening and poignant portrait of Gore and his "traveling global warming show," Gore also proves himself to be one of the most misunderstood characters in modern American public life. Here he is seen as never before in the media - funny, engaging, open and downright on fire about getting the surprisingly stirring truth about what he calls our "planetary emergency" out to ordinary citizens before it's too late.

With 2005, the worst storm season ever experienced in America just behind us, it seems we may be reaching a tipping point - and Gore pulls no punches in explaining the dire situation. Interspersed with the bracing facts and future predictions is the story of Gore's personal journey: from an idealistic college student who first saw a massive environmental crisis looming; to a young Senator facing a harrowing family tragedy that altered his perspective, to the man who almost became President but instead returned to the most important cause of his life - convinced that there is still time to make a difference.

With wit, smarts and hope, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH ultimately brings home Gore's persuasive argument that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue - rather, it is the biggest moral challenges facing our global civilization.

Paramount Classics and Participant Productions present a film directed by Davis Guggenheim, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. Featuring Al Gore, the film is produced by Laurie David, Lawrence Bender and Scott Z. Burns. Jeff Skoll and Davis Guggenheim are the executive producers and the co-producer is Leslie Chilcott. "


I've also got the trailer from Youtube so that all of you can watch it:

Why does eating feel so good? It’s in your head

I found this article in MSNBC health provided by Reuters. It's really interesting..

"WASHINGTON - Why does eating feel so good? The secret may lie in the head, not in the stomach, U.S. researchers reported.

Tests on rats show that the appetite hormone ghrelin acts on pleasure receptors in the brain.

The findings may help researchers develop better diet drugs.

“In mice and rats ghrelin triggers the same neurons as delicious food, sexual experience, and many recreational drugs; that is, neurons that provide the sensation of pleasure and the expectation of reward,” the researchers write in Friday’s issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

“These neurons produce dopamine and are located in a region of the brain known as the ventral tegmental area (VTA),” wrote the researchers, headed by Dr. Tamas Horvath of the Yale University School of Medicine in Connecticut.

Horvath’s team found that ghrelin, itself only discovered in the last decade, acts on a molecular structure on brain cells called the ghrelin receptor growth hormone secretagogue 1 receptor or GHSR for short.

When ghrelin was infused into this area of the rats’ brains, they ate as hungrily as they did after being kept hungry overnight, the researchers said.

Ghrelin is produced in the gut and triggers the brain to promote eating.

Several hormones are known to be involved in eating and appetite, and studies have shown that influencing them can affect weight gain in rats and mice. Influencing human eating behavior has proven far more difficult, however.

Horvath said it might be possible to design a drug that interferes with GHSR and thus help people with eating disorders."

[Acknowledgements: MSNBC health, Reuters]

'One degree and we're done for'

This article is from newscientist 27 sept , it's rather shocking and scary really:

""Further global warming of 1 °C defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know."'

So says Jim Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Hansen and colleagues have analysed global temperature records and found that surface temperatures have been increasing by an average of 0.2 °C every decade for the past 30 years. Warming is greatest in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, particularly in the sub-Arctic boreal forests of Siberia and North America. Here the melting of ice and snow is exposing darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, creating a positive feedback.

Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, and is within 1 °C of being its hottest for a million years, says Hansen's team. Another decade of business-as-usual carbon emissions will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the north from triggering runaway climate change, the study concludes (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p 14288).

The analysis reinforces a series of recent findings on accelerating environmental disruption in Siberia, northern Canada and Alaska, underlining a growing scientific consensus that these regions are pivotal to climate change. Earlier this month, NASA scientists reported that climate change was speeding up the melting of Arctic sea ice. Permanent sea ice has contracted by 14 per cent in the past two years (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 33, L17501). However, warming and melting have been just as dramatic on land in the far north.

A meeting on Siberian climate change held in Leicester, UK, last week confirmed that Siberia has become a hotspot of global climate change. Geographer Heiko Balzter, of the University of Leicester, said central Siberia has warmed by almost 2 °C since 1970 - that's three times the global average.

Meanwhile, Stuart Chapin of the University of Alaska Fairbanks this week reported that air temperatures in the Alaskan interior have risen by 2 °C since 1950, and permafrost temperatures have risen by 2.5 °C (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0606955103).

In Siberia the warming is especially pronounced in winter. "It has caused the onset of spring to advance by as much as one day a year since satellite observations began in 1982," says Balzter. Similarly, Alaskan springs now arrive two weeks earlier than in 1950, according to Chapin.

The Leicester meeting heard that the rising temperatures are causing ecological changes in the forests that ratchet up the warming still further. Vladimir Petko from the Russian Academy of Sciences Forest Research Institute in Krasnoyarsk says warm springs are triggering plagues of moths. "They can eat the needles of entire forest regions in one summer," he says. The trees die and then usually succumb to forest fires that in turn destroy soil vegetation and accelerate the melting of permafrost, Petko says.

In 2003 Siberia saw a record number of forest fires, losing 40,000 square kilometres according to Balzter, who has analysed remote sensing images of the region. Similar changes are occurring in Alaska. According to Chapin, warming there has shortened the life cycle of the bark beetle from two years to one, causing huge infestations and subsequent fires, which destroyed huge areas of forest in 2004. "The current boreal forest zone could be so dried out by 2090 that the trees will die off and be replaced by steppe," says Nadezhda Tchebakova, also at the institute in Krasnoyarsk.

Melting permafrost in the boreal forests and further north in the Arctic tundra is also triggering the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from thick layers of thawing peat. First reports published exclusively in New Scientist last year (13 August 2005, p 12) were recently confirmed by US scientists (Nature, vol 443, p 71).

"Large amounts of greenhouse gases are currently locked in the permafrost and if released could accelerate the greenhouse effect," says Balzter. Hansen's paper concludes that the effects of this positive feedback could be huge. "In past eras, the release of methane from melting permafrost and destabilised sediments on continental shelves has probably been responsible for some of the largest warmings in the Earth's history," he says.

We could be close to unleashing similar events in the 21st century, Hansen argues. Although the feedbacks should remain modest as long as global temperatures remain within the range of recent interglacial periods of the past million years, outside that range - beyond a further warming of about 1 °C - the feedbacks could accelerate. Such changes may become inevitable if the world does not begin to curb greenhouse gas emissions within the next decade, Hansen says.

Meanwhile, another new study underlines that the boreal peat bogs, permafrost and pine forests are not just vital to the planet as a whole, they are major economic assets for the countries that host them. A detailed study of the northern boreal forests by environmental consultant Mark Anielski of Edmonton, Canada, puts the value of their "ecosystem services" at $250 billion a year, or $160 per hectare.

These benefits include flood control, water purification and pest control provided by forest birds, plus income from wilderness tourism and meat from wildlife such as caribou. Anielski presented his findings to Canada's National Forest Congress in Gatineau-Ottawa earlier this week.

The value of these ecosystem services is more than twice that of conventional resources taken from the region each year, such as timber, minerals, oil and hydroelectricity, Anielski says. "If they were counted in Canadian inventories of assets, they would amount to roughly 9 per cent of our gross domestic product - similar in value to our health and social services."

You can add to that figure the value of having such a huge volume of carbon locked away. "The boreal region is like a giant carbon bank account," he says. "At current prices in the European carbon emissions trading system, Canada's stored carbon alone would be worth $3.7 trillion."

And if Hansen is right that the carbon and methane stored in the boreal regions has the potential to transform the world into "another planet", then the boreal region may be worth a great deal more than that."

It's really scary that just one degree will trigger so many inextricably linked events because of the burning of fossil fuels, the emission of greenhouse gases etc. We have to really save the environment!Or we'll all perish from our own actions.

I've also subscribe to msn alerts that allows you to receive an update once I update this blog. I hope it'll work. If there's any problems do email me, and I'll see what can be done.

Further global warming of 1 °C defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know.

Embryonic stem cells without embryo death

Well, as I promised, the article. Sorry for the delay, heh. Have been really busy. After this article, I will only update either the end of this month or next month. Sorry everyone, coz I'm having my prelims this month and 'A' levels in november. Yep.

"You don’t have to destroy an embryo to create stem cells for medical research. An American biosciences company has succeeded in deriving the cells from embryos without killing them, raising hopes that President Bush will reconsider his veto on federal funding for such work.
Last year, Bob Lanza and his team from Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Massachusetts, demonstrated that stem cells could be harvested from mouse embryos without killing them (see Are all human embryos equal?). Now they have done the same in human embryos left over from IVF treatment.

The researchers employed a technique used in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in which a single cell or “blastomere” is removed from the ball of eight to 10 cells that comprise the early embryo. The researchers were able to grow a stem cell line from just one or two cells from an early embryo - leaving that embryo viable. The cells are “pluripotent”, meaning they can grow into the three major tissue types (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature05142).

Lanza hopes that because the method does not involve destroying embryos, it will lead to the lifting of the veto on federal funding for stem cell research. “We need to jump-start the field – it’s been crippled by a lack of funding,” he says. “This will hopefully solve the political impasse and bring the president on board, as no embryos will be harmed with this method.”

IVF embryos that have been biopsied for PGD have grown into normal babies, says Alison Murdoch of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. “However, it is not true to say the biopsy is not detrimental to the embryo,” she says. “Some embryos do not survive.”

Lanza says that until the safety issues have been examined more closely, the procedure should only be used on a cell already taken from an embryo for PGD."


This would be quite a good news to embryonic scientists throughout the world. With this technology, many controversies abt killing a life would be less critical and with safety issues examined by these scientists, there shouldn't really be much problem.

Update

Sry abt not updating for a month. Have been really busy. I will be updating soon I hope. And most probably on the recent research in embryonic stem cells.

How nicotine helps cancer grow

Sorry for not updating for some time. Right..this article is very suitable for all smokers out there or even non-smokers who have people around them that are smokers. The article is from newscientist 21 July :
"Nicotine influences a key cancer pathway in cells, which may explain how it speeds up cancer growth, says a new study. The researchers believe their results may help in the design of better anti-cancer drugs.

"We believe that these components can be targeted for cancer therapy," says Srikumar Chellappan of the University of South Florida, in Tampa, US, who led the study. "So we are quite excited about the new therapeutic avenues this study has revealed."

Rather than initiate cancer, nicotine seems to make existing cancers more aggressive, he says. Previous studies have found, for example, that breast cancer is more likely to spread to the lungs of patients who smoke than those who do not. And blocking the receptors for nicotine on the surface of aggressive cancer cells in a laboratory dish halts their growth (see Nicotine speeds the growth of lung cancers).

Cigarette smoking can nevertheless trigger the development of cancer, stresses Chellappan. By-products of nicotine and other compounds are to blame, though, rather than nicotine itself.

One pack a day
Although it was known that nicotine makes cancers more aggressive, relatively little is known about how it has this effect. To explore this question Chellappan and his colleagues looked at the specific molecules in cancer cells that interact with nicotine.

They exposed human lung cancer cells to an amount of nicotine equivalent to that present in the bloodstream of a person who smokes one pack of cigarettes a day. This stimulated the cells to replicate. A closer look revealed that nicotine caused a molecule called Raf-1 to bind to a key protein called Rb, which normally suppresses tumours.

This interference with the Rb protein's function could make the cancer spread faster, says Chellappan. Eight out of ten tumours examined by his group had abnormally high Raf-1 and Rb interactions, a finding that lends further support to this idea.

"One area of active research in our laboratory is to identify agents that can prevent the binding of Raf-1 and Rb," says Chellappan, adding that such drugs "could have potent anti-cancer activities".

[Acknowledgement: Newscientist]

Well, although a drug that may perform anti-cancer activities is under research..It'll still take quite a long time to be produced and trialled. That is why, every smoker should quit smoking. Every non-smoker should not smoke. Cigarettes should be banned while nicorette gums encouraged. This is also for the benefit of non-smokers because second hand smoke is potentially more dangerous than first hand. Smoking in public also affects many different people like pregnant women, the elderly and young children. They are innocent especially an unborn child. Therefore, one should always think before smoking. It not only affects you in the future but the people around you...at a faster rate than you think. If one cannot quit, he/she should always think about everyone that he/she cares about and after some time, of distractions and much nicorette gums, I'm sure a better life awaits. Smoking is bad for health so quit before it's too late; hesitate before addiction awaits.

A closer look revealed that nicotine caused a molecule called Raf-1 to bind to a key protein called Rb, which normally suppresses tumours.
This interference with the Rb protein's function could make the cancer spread faster