Saturday, September 24, 2005
sorry
haven't blog for quite long as I'm having exams so I'll post after my exams finishes..around oct 4th maybe..
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Problem with posting but nevertheless..
Seems I have a problem posting a long article but not with a short article. So I shall make do with it then. Here's the website of the article that I would want to comment about. Oh yea and sorry for not updating for so long. Here's the website http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7950&print=true . My comment about it: I agree strongly to the statement "The research is a setback for stem cell science and contradicts an earlier study which found no significant changes to the genomes of lab-cultured stem cells" The moment I read the first paragraph, this statement had alreadi been formed in my mind. Well, I guess nothing is perfect in the world, including human stem cells. In my opinion, I thk that yes there might be a problem with the medium(as mentioned in this article) and there might also be a problem with the genetic make-up of the cells when they are cultured. The mutations could already have been there and the cells may also have a problem carrying out apoptosis. So the mutations remain and develop.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Does e-mail make you dumber?
Sorry for not updating my blog for so long..have been really busy and stressed. Anyway..this is a rather interesting article from Discover, August: If you feel like a zombie at work, perhaps you’re suffering from infomania, the term the Hewlett-Packard affiliate in Britain coined for people addicted to e-mail, instant messaging, and text messages.
A recent study for the company found that British workers’ IQ test scores drop temporarily by an average of 10 points when juggling phones, e-mails, and other electronic messages—more of an IQ drop than occurs after smoking marijuana or losing a night’s sleep. “This is a very real and widespread phenomenon,” said Glenn Wilson of the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, who conducted the tests on some 1,100 volunteers. Just how long it takes to recover is unclear.
The study found that modern-day communications have become addictive: Sixty-two percent of adults check work messages after office hours and on vacation. Half of those surveyed reply to an e-mail immediately or within 60 minutes. About 20 percent were “happy” to interrupt a business or social meeting to respond to a telephone or e-mail message. Yet 89 percent of those surveyed found it rude for colleagues to do so.
Whether infomaniacs are less intelligent is another question. “It didn’t affect their IQ at all; it affected their performance on an IQ test,” says Bob Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard University. “When you’re taking an IQ test, you probably want to be really focused. That’s the antithesis of the state you get into when you do a lot of multitasking.”
The human brain has evolved different modes for concentrating on a single thing versus jumping from one thing to another. “The reason we have these systems that quickly shift between each other is because what’s right for you now might not be right later,” Stickgold says. “There are basic brain-stem mechanisms that will cause you to shift and focus your attention on a change in stimulus.”
Whether that change is a saber-toothed tiger popping out of the woods or a phone ringing suddenly, the consequences are the same. “The switch signal comes fast and powerfully. This system knows at a moment like this that what’s important is to shift your state quickly, and damn the cost. And the cost is that it takes several minutes to shift back,” says Stickgold. “That’s the way we’re wired.”
haha..well..I would agree that yes, e-mailing, instant messaging and text messaging can be addictive (considering the fact that I was addicted to it before but now a little too busy with my life that I'm not that addicted now..lol). But I guess it's a means of communicating with our family and friends in a more closer way? I mean..when we speak face-to-face we may not have the courage to say things but through means of communicating through the net and phone we may actually say more things than we want to and may also be more closer that when we meet for lunch or something,a conversation could be so easily started, it just with communication. Sometimes the prospect of recieving e-mails, instant messsaing with friends after a busy day and text messaging just makes them addictive.
A recent study for the company found that British workers’ IQ test scores drop temporarily by an average of 10 points when juggling phones, e-mails, and other electronic messages—more of an IQ drop than occurs after smoking marijuana or losing a night’s sleep. “This is a very real and widespread phenomenon,” said Glenn Wilson of the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, who conducted the tests on some 1,100 volunteers. Just how long it takes to recover is unclear.
The study found that modern-day communications have become addictive: Sixty-two percent of adults check work messages after office hours and on vacation. Half of those surveyed reply to an e-mail immediately or within 60 minutes. About 20 percent were “happy” to interrupt a business or social meeting to respond to a telephone or e-mail message. Yet 89 percent of those surveyed found it rude for colleagues to do so.
Whether infomaniacs are less intelligent is another question. “It didn’t affect their IQ at all; it affected their performance on an IQ test,” says Bob Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard University. “When you’re taking an IQ test, you probably want to be really focused. That’s the antithesis of the state you get into when you do a lot of multitasking.”
The human brain has evolved different modes for concentrating on a single thing versus jumping from one thing to another. “The reason we have these systems that quickly shift between each other is because what’s right for you now might not be right later,” Stickgold says. “There are basic brain-stem mechanisms that will cause you to shift and focus your attention on a change in stimulus.”
Whether that change is a saber-toothed tiger popping out of the woods or a phone ringing suddenly, the consequences are the same. “The switch signal comes fast and powerfully. This system knows at a moment like this that what’s important is to shift your state quickly, and damn the cost. And the cost is that it takes several minutes to shift back,” says Stickgold. “That’s the way we’re wired.”
haha..well..I would agree that yes, e-mailing, instant messaging and text messaging can be addictive (considering the fact that I was addicted to it before but now a little too busy with my life that I'm not that addicted now..lol). But I guess it's a means of communicating with our family and friends in a more closer way? I mean..when we speak face-to-face we may not have the courage to say things but through means of communicating through the net and phone we may actually say more things than we want to and may also be more closer that when we meet for lunch or something,a conversation could be so easily started, it just with communication. Sometimes the prospect of recieving e-mails, instant messsaing with friends after a busy day and text messaging just makes them addictive.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Climate warning as Siberia melts
Sorry for not updating for a week again..have been realli busy...Anyway, this article is a pretty urgent news I just read in NewScientist . Details: "The world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.
The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.
The news of the dramatic transformation of one of the world's least visited landscapes comes from Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Tomsk State University, Russia, and Judith Marquand at the University of Oxford.
Kirpotin describes an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He says that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt, and this "has all happened in the last three or four years".
What was until recently a featureless expanse of frozen peat is turning into a watery landscape of lakes, some more than a kilometre across. Kirpotin suspects that some unknown critical threshold has been crossed, triggering the melting.
Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, with an increase in average temperatures of some 3 °C in the last 40 years. The warming is believed to be a combination of man-made climate change, a cyclical change in atmospheric circulation known as the Arctic oscillation, plus feedbacks caused by melting ice, which exposes bare ground and ocean. These absorb more solar heat than white ice and snow.
Similar warming has also been taking place in Alaska: earlier this summer Jon Pelletier of the University of Arizona in Tucson reported a major expansion of lakes on the North Slope fringing the Arctic Ocean.
The findings from western Siberia follow a report two months ago that thousands of lakes in eastern Siberia have disappeared in the last 30 years, also because of climate change (New Scientist, 11 June, p 16). This apparent contradiction arises because the two events represent opposite end of the same process, known as thermokarsk.
In this process, rising air temperatures first create "frost-heave", which turns the flat permafrost into a series of hollows and hummocks known as salsas. Then as the permafrost begins to melt, water collects on the surface, forming ponds that are prevented from draining away by the frozen bog beneath. The ponds coalesce into ever larger lakes until, finally, the last permafrost melts and the lakes drain away underground.
Siberia's peat bogs formed around 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. Since then they have been generating methane, most of which has been trapped within the permafrost, and sometimes deeper in ice-like structures known as clathrates. Larry Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles, estimates that the west Siberian bog alone contains some 70 billion tonnes of methane, a quarter of all the methane stored on the land surface worldwide.
His colleague Karen Frey says if the bogs dry out as they warm, the methane will oxidise and escape into the air as carbon dioxide. But if the bogs remain wet, as is the case in western Siberia today, then the methane will be released straight into the atmosphere. Methane is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.
In May this year, Katey Walter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks told a meeting in Washington of the Arctic Research Consortium of the US that she had found methane hotspots in eastern Siberia, where the gas was bubbling from thawing permafrost so fast it was preventing the surface from freezing, even in the midst of winter.
An international research partnership known as the Global Carbon Project earlier this year identified melting permafrost as a major source of feedbacks that could accelerate climate change by releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. "Several hundred billion tonnes of carbon could be released," said the project's chief scientist, Pep Canadell of the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research in Canberra, Australia."
I was reading this article and omg-ing all the way..it's realli shocking and this is one evidence showing that climate warming is going to get worse with the release of so much methane. It's getting more and more serious now. And I think it was on wednesday, I watched the news and it reported that it was snowing in Melbourne and Tasmania and probably moving to Queensland..I was shocked..I just found an article about it: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1434243.htm . Here it says "Snow is falling in low-lying areas of Victoria and Tasmania for the first time in up to 50 years, as a cold snap hits south-eastern Australia.", "Stephanie Jones from the newsagency at Korumburra south-east of Melbourne says it was snowing when she drove to work at 5:30 this morning.
"It's horrible," she said. "It's snowing and raining and wet and cold. It stuck around about 25 minutes, then it started to rain and then about 8:30am it started to snow again.
"It looks like it's set - it's snowing now, it's covering the road white." It's realli weird for it to be raining and then snowing..and it's like supposed to be summer now..how can it be snowing? Even Autumm doesn't have snow.
The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.
The news of the dramatic transformation of one of the world's least visited landscapes comes from Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Tomsk State University, Russia, and Judith Marquand at the University of Oxford.
Kirpotin describes an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He says that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt, and this "has all happened in the last three or four years".
What was until recently a featureless expanse of frozen peat is turning into a watery landscape of lakes, some more than a kilometre across. Kirpotin suspects that some unknown critical threshold has been crossed, triggering the melting.
Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, with an increase in average temperatures of some 3 °C in the last 40 years. The warming is believed to be a combination of man-made climate change, a cyclical change in atmospheric circulation known as the Arctic oscillation, plus feedbacks caused by melting ice, which exposes bare ground and ocean. These absorb more solar heat than white ice and snow.
Similar warming has also been taking place in Alaska: earlier this summer Jon Pelletier of the University of Arizona in Tucson reported a major expansion of lakes on the North Slope fringing the Arctic Ocean.
The findings from western Siberia follow a report two months ago that thousands of lakes in eastern Siberia have disappeared in the last 30 years, also because of climate change (New Scientist, 11 June, p 16). This apparent contradiction arises because the two events represent opposite end of the same process, known as thermokarsk.
In this process, rising air temperatures first create "frost-heave", which turns the flat permafrost into a series of hollows and hummocks known as salsas. Then as the permafrost begins to melt, water collects on the surface, forming ponds that are prevented from draining away by the frozen bog beneath. The ponds coalesce into ever larger lakes until, finally, the last permafrost melts and the lakes drain away underground.
Siberia's peat bogs formed around 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. Since then they have been generating methane, most of which has been trapped within the permafrost, and sometimes deeper in ice-like structures known as clathrates. Larry Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles, estimates that the west Siberian bog alone contains some 70 billion tonnes of methane, a quarter of all the methane stored on the land surface worldwide.
His colleague Karen Frey says if the bogs dry out as they warm, the methane will oxidise and escape into the air as carbon dioxide. But if the bogs remain wet, as is the case in western Siberia today, then the methane will be released straight into the atmosphere. Methane is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.
In May this year, Katey Walter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks told a meeting in Washington of the Arctic Research Consortium of the US that she had found methane hotspots in eastern Siberia, where the gas was bubbling from thawing permafrost so fast it was preventing the surface from freezing, even in the midst of winter.
An international research partnership known as the Global Carbon Project earlier this year identified melting permafrost as a major source of feedbacks that could accelerate climate change by releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. "Several hundred billion tonnes of carbon could be released," said the project's chief scientist, Pep Canadell of the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research in Canberra, Australia."
I was reading this article and omg-ing all the way..it's realli shocking and this is one evidence showing that climate warming is going to get worse with the release of so much methane. It's getting more and more serious now. And I think it was on wednesday, I watched the news and it reported that it was snowing in Melbourne and Tasmania and probably moving to Queensland..I was shocked..I just found an article about it: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1434243.htm . Here it says "Snow is falling in low-lying areas of Victoria and Tasmania for the first time in up to 50 years, as a cold snap hits south-eastern Australia.", "Stephanie Jones from the newsagency at Korumburra south-east of Melbourne says it was snowing when she drove to work at 5:30 this morning.
"It's horrible," she said. "It's snowing and raining and wet and cold. It stuck around about 25 minutes, then it started to rain and then about 8:30am it started to snow again.
"It looks like it's set - it's snowing now, it's covering the road white." It's realli weird for it to be raining and then snowing..and it's like supposed to be summer now..how can it be snowing? Even Autumm doesn't have snow.
Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere else on
the planet, with an increase in average temperatures of some 3 °C in the last 40 years.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
World not set to deal with flu
Sorry for not blogging for so long..have been really busy..Anyway..I've found that article about the diagnostic kit thing..but I'll first talk about this article since it's a more urgent problem. Well this is a rather long article so I'll cut it short. For the full article go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/30/AR2005073001429.html . Well, I heard about this report on a news radio station this morning so I went to look for this article and I found this similar to the one on the radio and it's rather scary to know somehow : "Public health officials preparing to battle what they view as an inevitable influenza pandemic say the world lacks the medical weapons to fight the disease effectively, and will not have them anytime soon.
Public health specialists and manufacturers are working frantically to develop vaccines, drugs, strategies for quarantining and treating the ill, and plans for international cooperation, but these efforts will take years. Meanwhile, the most dangerous strain of influenza to appear in decades -- the H5N1 "bird flu" in Asia -- is showing up in new populations of birds, and occasionally people, almost by the month, global health officials say.
If the virus were to start spreading in the next year, the world would have only a relative handful of doses of an experimental vaccine to defend against a disease that, history shows, could potentially kill millions. If the vaccine proved effective and every flu vaccine factory in the world started making it, the first doses would not be ready for four months. By then, the pathogen would probably be on every continent.
The public, conditioned to believe in the power of modern medicine, has heard little of how poorly prepared the world is to confront a flu pandemic, which is an epidemic that strikes several continents simultaneously and infects a substantial portion of the population.
The secretary or the chief of staff -- we have a discussion about flu almost every day," said Bruce Gellin, head of HHS's National Vaccine Program Office. This week, a committee is scheduled to deliver to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt an updated plan for confronting a pandemic.
Despite these efforts, the world's lack of readiness to meet the threat is huge, experts say.
In hopes of slowing a pandemic's spread, public health specialists have been debating proposals for unprecedented countermeasures. These could include vaccinating only children, who are statistically most likely to spread the contagion; mandatory closing of schools or office buildings; and imposing "snow day" quarantines on infected families -- prohibiting them from leaving their homes.
Other measures would go well beyond the conventional boundaries of public health: restricting international travel, shutting down transit systems or nationalizing supplies of critical medical equipment, such as surgical masks.
But Osterholm argues that such measures would fall far short. He predicts that a pandemic would cause widespread shutdowns of factories, transportation and other essential industries. To prepare, he says, authorities should identify and stockpile a list of perhaps 100 crucial products and resources that are essential to keep society functioning until the pandemic recedes and the survivors go back to work.
Pandemics are caused by strains of virus that are highly contagious and to which people have no immunity. Such strains are rare. They arise from the chance scrambling and recombination of an animal flu virus and a human one, resulting in a strain whose molecular identity is wholly new.
The microbe called influenza A/H5N1 appeared in East Asia in 1996 and has flared periodically since. It is highly contagious and lethal in chickens, but it can be carried without symptoms in some ducks -- a combination that helps keep it in circulation.
Birds occasionally infect humans, and scientists recently found evidence that the virus is sometimes passed person to person. That form of transmission is now difficult and rare, but the virus could evolve so that it becomes easy and common.
If H5N1 never becomes easily transmissible in human beings, it will never become a pandemic. If it does become transmissible, the consequences are difficult to imagine. But history provides some clues.
The "Spanish flu" in 1918 and 1919 was the biggest and, along with AIDS, the most important infectious disease outbreak of the 20th century. It is on the short list of great disasters in human history.
At least 50 million people, and possibly as many as 100 million, died when the world's population was 1.9 billion people, one-third its current size.
Tests are underway at three U.S. hospitals on an experimental vaccine against H5N1. But it is not the first H5N1 vaccine.
As the first, small hedge against disaster, the government last fall ordered 2 million doses of H5N1 vaccine from Sanofi Pasteur, one of the country's three flu vaccine makers, even though nobody yet knows whether it works.
A half-dozen other countries are also working on pandemic vaccines. But making enough to fight an outbreak is a tall order.
About 300 million flu shots are made worldwide each year. The vaccine protects against three flu strains. If the global production capacity were directed to make only H5N1 vaccine, the output could be 900 million shots.
Can the world produce more flu shots? Not easily.
In theory, even a modest amount of vaccine might be useful. Fighting disease outbreaks is like fighting fires. You do not have to hose down the whole world to put the fire out, but you do have to hose down the perimeter to keep it from spreading. It might be possible to contain an H5N1 outbreak at its source if the surrounding population were immediately vaccinated.
In the absence of a vaccine, the only pharmaceutical bulwark against H5N1 is oseltamivir. It can shorten the illness's duration, and if taken immediately after exposure, it can even prevent infection. But the world's supply of the drug is limited.
Sold as Tamiflu, it is manufactured by just one company, the Swiss giant Roche, in a laborious, expensive process that takes eight months.
Would having lots of vaccine or oseltamivir make a difference?
In a study published last year, Ira M. Longini Jr. of Emory University ran a mathematical model of what might happen if a pandemic such as the 1957 Asian flu, which was caused by a virus far milder than bird flu, hit the United States.
He and his colleagues estimated that with no vaccine or antiviral drugs, there would be 93 million cases and 164,000 deaths. Vaccinating 80 percent of people younger than 19 -- the group most responsible for spreading the virus -- "would reduce the epidemic to just 6 million total cases and 15,000 total deaths in the country."
Giving that group eight weeks of oseltamivir would have the same effect, at least temporarily. But it would take the equivalent of 190 million courses of treatment -- more than anyone thinks the country will have in the next few years.
Somewhat more realistic is deploying the drug to where the outbreak begins. One researcher, Neil M. Ferguson of Imperial College in London, said in an interview that results of his not-yet-published mathematical modeling "are encouraging."
But unless antiviral drugs squelch a pandemic at the outset, their ultimate usefulness will be small. Without widespread immunity through vaccination or infection, the virus will simply move into a population when the drugs run out."
I remembered watching this show on channelnewsasia, it's like a documentary from national geographic..it's called "End Day" or sth liddat..It's a show whereby they show four different endings in the same day and they are all predicted by scientists. I missed the first part of the show and i thk it showed the ending like in the movie "the day after tmr" . Anyway so I watched the second part of it on Tuesday and they showed an ending whereby there was a flu epidemic and the flu strain was highly contagious that many people contracted it and it looks pretty bad..Yep..so..what if it really happens? It's realli hard to imagine..*sigh* Anyway, I'll post the article abt the diagnostic kit next time as i'm rather busy now and I'm having dinner soon too. Remember..for this full article go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/30/AR2005073001429.html .
Public health specialists and manufacturers are working frantically to develop vaccines, drugs, strategies for quarantining and treating the ill, and plans for international cooperation, but these efforts will take years. Meanwhile, the most dangerous strain of influenza to appear in decades -- the H5N1 "bird flu" in Asia -- is showing up in new populations of birds, and occasionally people, almost by the month, global health officials say.
If the virus were to start spreading in the next year, the world would have only a relative handful of doses of an experimental vaccine to defend against a disease that, history shows, could potentially kill millions. If the vaccine proved effective and every flu vaccine factory in the world started making it, the first doses would not be ready for four months. By then, the pathogen would probably be on every continent.
The public, conditioned to believe in the power of modern medicine, has heard little of how poorly prepared the world is to confront a flu pandemic, which is an epidemic that strikes several continents simultaneously and infects a substantial portion of the population.
The secretary or the chief of staff -- we have a discussion about flu almost every day," said Bruce Gellin, head of HHS's National Vaccine Program Office. This week, a committee is scheduled to deliver to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt an updated plan for confronting a pandemic.
Despite these efforts, the world's lack of readiness to meet the threat is huge, experts say.
In hopes of slowing a pandemic's spread, public health specialists have been debating proposals for unprecedented countermeasures. These could include vaccinating only children, who are statistically most likely to spread the contagion; mandatory closing of schools or office buildings; and imposing "snow day" quarantines on infected families -- prohibiting them from leaving their homes.
Other measures would go well beyond the conventional boundaries of public health: restricting international travel, shutting down transit systems or nationalizing supplies of critical medical equipment, such as surgical masks.
But Osterholm argues that such measures would fall far short. He predicts that a pandemic would cause widespread shutdowns of factories, transportation and other essential industries. To prepare, he says, authorities should identify and stockpile a list of perhaps 100 crucial products and resources that are essential to keep society functioning until the pandemic recedes and the survivors go back to work.
Pandemics are caused by strains of virus that are highly contagious and to which people have no immunity. Such strains are rare. They arise from the chance scrambling and recombination of an animal flu virus and a human one, resulting in a strain whose molecular identity is wholly new.
The microbe called influenza A/H5N1 appeared in East Asia in 1996 and has flared periodically since. It is highly contagious and lethal in chickens, but it can be carried without symptoms in some ducks -- a combination that helps keep it in circulation.
Birds occasionally infect humans, and scientists recently found evidence that the virus is sometimes passed person to person. That form of transmission is now difficult and rare, but the virus could evolve so that it becomes easy and common.
If H5N1 never becomes easily transmissible in human beings, it will never become a pandemic. If it does become transmissible, the consequences are difficult to imagine. But history provides some clues.
The "Spanish flu" in 1918 and 1919 was the biggest and, along with AIDS, the most important infectious disease outbreak of the 20th century. It is on the short list of great disasters in human history.
At least 50 million people, and possibly as many as 100 million, died when the world's population was 1.9 billion people, one-third its current size.
Tests are underway at three U.S. hospitals on an experimental vaccine against H5N1. But it is not the first H5N1 vaccine.
As the first, small hedge against disaster, the government last fall ordered 2 million doses of H5N1 vaccine from Sanofi Pasteur, one of the country's three flu vaccine makers, even though nobody yet knows whether it works.
A half-dozen other countries are also working on pandemic vaccines. But making enough to fight an outbreak is a tall order.
About 300 million flu shots are made worldwide each year. The vaccine protects against three flu strains. If the global production capacity were directed to make only H5N1 vaccine, the output could be 900 million shots.
Can the world produce more flu shots? Not easily.
In theory, even a modest amount of vaccine might be useful. Fighting disease outbreaks is like fighting fires. You do not have to hose down the whole world to put the fire out, but you do have to hose down the perimeter to keep it from spreading. It might be possible to contain an H5N1 outbreak at its source if the surrounding population were immediately vaccinated.
In the absence of a vaccine, the only pharmaceutical bulwark against H5N1 is oseltamivir. It can shorten the illness's duration, and if taken immediately after exposure, it can even prevent infection. But the world's supply of the drug is limited.
Sold as Tamiflu, it is manufactured by just one company, the Swiss giant Roche, in a laborious, expensive process that takes eight months.
Would having lots of vaccine or oseltamivir make a difference?
In a study published last year, Ira M. Longini Jr. of Emory University ran a mathematical model of what might happen if a pandemic such as the 1957 Asian flu, which was caused by a virus far milder than bird flu, hit the United States.
He and his colleagues estimated that with no vaccine or antiviral drugs, there would be 93 million cases and 164,000 deaths. Vaccinating 80 percent of people younger than 19 -- the group most responsible for spreading the virus -- "would reduce the epidemic to just 6 million total cases and 15,000 total deaths in the country."
Giving that group eight weeks of oseltamivir would have the same effect, at least temporarily. But it would take the equivalent of 190 million courses of treatment -- more than anyone thinks the country will have in the next few years.
Somewhat more realistic is deploying the drug to where the outbreak begins. One researcher, Neil M. Ferguson of Imperial College in London, said in an interview that results of his not-yet-published mathematical modeling "are encouraging."
But unless antiviral drugs squelch a pandemic at the outset, their ultimate usefulness will be small. Without widespread immunity through vaccination or infection, the virus will simply move into a population when the drugs run out."
I remembered watching this show on channelnewsasia, it's like a documentary from national geographic..it's called "End Day" or sth liddat..It's a show whereby they show four different endings in the same day and they are all predicted by scientists. I missed the first part of the show and i thk it showed the ending like in the movie "the day after tmr" . Anyway so I watched the second part of it on Tuesday and they showed an ending whereby there was a flu epidemic and the flu strain was highly contagious that many people contracted it and it looks pretty bad..Yep..so..what if it really happens? It's realli hard to imagine..*sigh* Anyway, I'll post the article abt the diagnostic kit next time as i'm rather busy now and I'm having dinner soon too. Remember..for this full article go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/30/AR2005073001429.html .
Friday, July 29, 2005
Genes predict cancer spread
This is an article from Health24.com, 28th July stating that researchers have discovered a set of genes which could help tremendously in predicting if breast cancer would spread to the lungs and how serious it will be:
"Researchers have identified a set of genes that seems to predict if breast cancer will spread to the lungs and how serious the disease will be.
The finding could eventually help doctors to predict whose disease will become aggressive and spread, and potentially help them to better target treatments. The lungs and the bones are frequent sites for cancer that spreads from the breast. And cancer that spreads from the breast to organs such as the lungs accounts for the majority of breast cancer-related deaths, research has shown.
"We are the first to identify a clinically relevant set of genes that can predict metastases (spread) of breast cancer to the lungs," said study co-author Gaorav Gupta, a graduate student and researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York City.
A report on the finding appears in the July 28 issue of Nature.
How the study was conducted(sub-title)
The researchers began with a set of cancer cell lines from 82 human breast cancer tumours. "We used a mouse model to mimic metastases," Gupta said. "We take these cells and inject them into a special type of mouse that allows you to inject human cells into them. We allowed lung metastases to form. We took out the lung metastases and took the cells and asked, 'What is special about these cells that will allow them to create the metastases?' "
To answer the question, the researchers used a "microarray" technique that allowed them to look at 22 000 genes all at once. Then they identified the genes that created the cancer spread to the lungs, and then put the genes back into the original cells to verify they were responsible.
Then they took another look at the human tumours. "We asked, of these 82 tumours, which ones expressed our genes (identified as those responsible for the spread). We found a subgroup that expressed the genes and these patients were much more likely to develop lung metastasis."
Next, said Gupta, the research team hopes to repeat the findings in a larger group of patients, "to be certain this isn't just something unique about the cohort we selected."
If patients with these genes can be identified, the next avenue of research would be to figure out if there are specific drugs that could prevent the lung tumours from forming. Certain "inhibitor" drugs have already been shown to suppress the genes identified in the new study, Gupta said.
May be of great value in managing breast cancer patients (sub-title)
William C. Phelps, scientific programme director of the research department for the American Cancer Society, praised the new study, saying, "Being able to identify a patient with a higher probability of developing metastasis would be of tremendous importance in terms of managing these patients."
The severity and course of cancer, even the same type, can be very different from patient to patient, Phelps said. "One of the decisions to struggle with is what (treatment) to give to which patients," he said. "Obviously, if you know cells in a particular tumour will be more likely to spread to the lung or bone, you would treat these patients more aggressively."
The identification of the gene pattern is a first step, he said. "If we can identify those genes, the next step may be to target the genes for therapy to prevent the spread of the tumours." – (HealthDayNews) "
This is realli good news as doctors can now be more accurate in their diagnosis and need not worry about whether the medication is given in the right dose or not. Anyway, my bio lecturer today mentioned that in Singapore, some diagnostic kit that could detect viruses like the H5N1 strain, has been created and is fast and accurate unlike the conventional method, so I might comment about it if the newspaper is not taken home by my uncle. Even if it is, I'll probably just wait for my mum to come back from overseas so I could go home and take the newspaper.
"Researchers have identified a set of genes that seems to predict if breast cancer will spread to the lungs and how serious the disease will be.
The finding could eventually help doctors to predict whose disease will become aggressive and spread, and potentially help them to better target treatments. The lungs and the bones are frequent sites for cancer that spreads from the breast. And cancer that spreads from the breast to organs such as the lungs accounts for the majority of breast cancer-related deaths, research has shown.
"We are the first to identify a clinically relevant set of genes that can predict metastases (spread) of breast cancer to the lungs," said study co-author Gaorav Gupta, a graduate student and researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York City.
A report on the finding appears in the July 28 issue of Nature.
How the study was conducted(sub-title)
The researchers began with a set of cancer cell lines from 82 human breast cancer tumours. "We used a mouse model to mimic metastases," Gupta said. "We take these cells and inject them into a special type of mouse that allows you to inject human cells into them. We allowed lung metastases to form. We took out the lung metastases and took the cells and asked, 'What is special about these cells that will allow them to create the metastases?' "
To answer the question, the researchers used a "microarray" technique that allowed them to look at 22 000 genes all at once. Then they identified the genes that created the cancer spread to the lungs, and then put the genes back into the original cells to verify they were responsible.
Then they took another look at the human tumours. "We asked, of these 82 tumours, which ones expressed our genes (identified as those responsible for the spread). We found a subgroup that expressed the genes and these patients were much more likely to develop lung metastasis."
Next, said Gupta, the research team hopes to repeat the findings in a larger group of patients, "to be certain this isn't just something unique about the cohort we selected."
If patients with these genes can be identified, the next avenue of research would be to figure out if there are specific drugs that could prevent the lung tumours from forming. Certain "inhibitor" drugs have already been shown to suppress the genes identified in the new study, Gupta said.
May be of great value in managing breast cancer patients (sub-title)
William C. Phelps, scientific programme director of the research department for the American Cancer Society, praised the new study, saying, "Being able to identify a patient with a higher probability of developing metastasis would be of tremendous importance in terms of managing these patients."
The severity and course of cancer, even the same type, can be very different from patient to patient, Phelps said. "One of the decisions to struggle with is what (treatment) to give to which patients," he said. "Obviously, if you know cells in a particular tumour will be more likely to spread to the lung or bone, you would treat these patients more aggressively."
The identification of the gene pattern is a first step, he said. "If we can identify those genes, the next step may be to target the genes for therapy to prevent the spread of the tumours." – (HealthDayNews) "
This is realli good news as doctors can now be more accurate in their diagnosis and need not worry about whether the medication is given in the right dose or not. Anyway, my bio lecturer today mentioned that in Singapore, some diagnostic kit that could detect viruses like the H5N1 strain, has been created and is fast and accurate unlike the conventional method, so I might comment about it if the newspaper is not taken home by my uncle. Even if it is, I'll probably just wait for my mum to come back from overseas so I could go home and take the newspaper.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
High heels can drive you crazy
This is a very interesting article from News24.com, 25th July . It's a relation between wearing high heel shoes and schizophrenia. (There are some rather long and profound medical terms) : "Malmo - Verifying what many women have known for years, a scientist in Sweden says wearing high heels can drive you crazy, and he has drawn alarming parallels between heels and schizophrenia among women.
Jarl Flensmark of Malmo says high heels cause their wearers to tense their calves in a way that normal walking never does. That could prevent neuro-receptors in the calf muscles from triggering release of dopamine, a compound necessary for mental well-being.
"During walking, synchronised stimuli from mechanoreceptors in the lower extremities increase activity in cerebellothalamo-cortico- cerebellar loops through their action on NMDA-receptors," Flensmark wrote in a recent paper in the journal Medical Hypotheses.
Increased schizophrenia prevalence (sub-title)
"Using heeled shoes leads to weaker stimulation of the loops. Reduced cortical activity changes dopaminergic function, which involves the basal gangliathalamo-cortical-nigro-basal ganglia loops," he said.
Long-term wearing of high heels could conceivably explain why Western societies have higher rates of schizophrenia among women then do other societies where high heels are rarely worn.
"Heeled footwear," he writes, "began to be used more than 1 000 years ago, and led to the occurrence of the first cases of schizophrenia. Industrialisation of shoe production increased schizophrenia prevalence.
"Mechanisation of the production started in Massachusetts, spread from there to England and Germany, and then to the rest of Western Europe. A remarkable increase in schizophrenia prevalence followed the same pattern."
"The oldest depiction of a heeled shoe comes from Mesopotamia, and in this part of the world we also find the first institutions making provisions for mental disorders In the beginning, schizophrenia appears to be more common in the upper classes."
Upper classes the hardest hit (sub-title)
He cites evidence from other parts of the world, too - Turkey, Taiwan, the Balkans, Ireland, Italy, Ghana, Greenland, the Caribbean and elsewhere. He then cites studies from India and elsewhere, which seem to confirm "schizophrenia first affects the upper classes".
From these two streams of evidence - the rise of heels and the increase in documented cases of schizophrenia - Flensmark divines a strong connection.
He modestly implies he is not the first to do so. In the year 1740, he writes, "the Danish-French anatomist Jakob Winslow warned against the wearing of heeled shoes, expecting it to be the cause of certain infirmities which appear not to have any relation to it".
Flensmark boils the matter into a damning statement: "After heeled shoes are introduced into a population, the first cases of schizophrenia appear and then the increase in prevalence of schizophrenia follows the increase in use of heeled shoes.
"I have," he writes, "not been able to find any contradictory data." - Sapa-dpa "
Hmm it does sound a little scary to me, I mean, I wear high heel shoes most of the time when i go out (when I do not have school and also when I have the time, haha) so it does sort of shock me for a while. I've read some news last year, that wearing high heel shoes hurt your tendons if u do not message your ankles after you take them off. So, after I wear them, I'll always sort of message my ankles, it does make them feel better. But, wow, now it's linked to schizophrenia..maybe I shouldn't wear them that often then.
Jarl Flensmark of Malmo says high heels cause their wearers to tense their calves in a way that normal walking never does. That could prevent neuro-receptors in the calf muscles from triggering release of dopamine, a compound necessary for mental well-being.
"During walking, synchronised stimuli from mechanoreceptors in the lower extremities increase activity in cerebellothalamo-cortico- cerebellar loops through their action on NMDA-receptors," Flensmark wrote in a recent paper in the journal Medical Hypotheses.
Increased schizophrenia prevalence (sub-title)
"Using heeled shoes leads to weaker stimulation of the loops. Reduced cortical activity changes dopaminergic function, which involves the basal gangliathalamo-cortical-nigro-basal ganglia loops," he said.
Long-term wearing of high heels could conceivably explain why Western societies have higher rates of schizophrenia among women then do other societies where high heels are rarely worn.
"Heeled footwear," he writes, "began to be used more than 1 000 years ago, and led to the occurrence of the first cases of schizophrenia. Industrialisation of shoe production increased schizophrenia prevalence.
"Mechanisation of the production started in Massachusetts, spread from there to England and Germany, and then to the rest of Western Europe. A remarkable increase in schizophrenia prevalence followed the same pattern."
"The oldest depiction of a heeled shoe comes from Mesopotamia, and in this part of the world we also find the first institutions making provisions for mental disorders In the beginning, schizophrenia appears to be more common in the upper classes."
Upper classes the hardest hit (sub-title)
He cites evidence from other parts of the world, too - Turkey, Taiwan, the Balkans, Ireland, Italy, Ghana, Greenland, the Caribbean and elsewhere. He then cites studies from India and elsewhere, which seem to confirm "schizophrenia first affects the upper classes".
From these two streams of evidence - the rise of heels and the increase in documented cases of schizophrenia - Flensmark divines a strong connection.
He modestly implies he is not the first to do so. In the year 1740, he writes, "the Danish-French anatomist Jakob Winslow warned against the wearing of heeled shoes, expecting it to be the cause of certain infirmities which appear not to have any relation to it".
Flensmark boils the matter into a damning statement: "After heeled shoes are introduced into a population, the first cases of schizophrenia appear and then the increase in prevalence of schizophrenia follows the increase in use of heeled shoes.
"I have," he writes, "not been able to find any contradictory data." - Sapa-dpa "
Hmm it does sound a little scary to me, I mean, I wear high heel shoes most of the time when i go out (when I do not have school and also when I have the time, haha) so it does sort of shock me for a while. I've read some news last year, that wearing high heel shoes hurt your tendons if u do not message your ankles after you take them off. So, after I wear them, I'll always sort of message my ankles, it does make them feel better. But, wow, now it's linked to schizophrenia..maybe I shouldn't wear them that often then.
Long-term wearing of high heels could conceivably explain why Western
societies have higher rates of schizophrenia among women then do other societies where high heels are rarely worn.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Showers 'may damage your brain'
This piece of article was from news24. com . It reported: "Traces of magnesium found in household water could be sufficient to cause permanent brain damage to those who take a regular shower, according to a report published in the US journal Medical Hypotheses.
John Spangler of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina and his team suggested that breathing in vapour containing manganese salts could be dangerous over the longer term.
"Inhaling manganese, rather than eating or drinking it, is far more efficient at delivering manganese to the brain. The nerve cells involved in smell are a direct pathway for toxins to enter the brain," Spangler wrote.
The team used animal studies aimed at showing how much a person who showered for 10 minutes a day would absorb.
The effects are dependent on the levels of manganese in household water. In the United States, a limit of 0.5 milligrams a litre of water is imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, while in the European Union, an upper level of just a 10th of that was set only in 1998.
Spangler suggested that even levels below the US upper limit could lead to brain damage.
Ten years of showering in water containing concentrations of manganese around the US limit would expose young people to levels three times higher than that found to leave deposits in rats' brains.
The longer the exposure, the worse the risk.
Manganese poisoning leads to tremors in sufferers - much like Parkinson's disease.
Apart from natural sources in ground water, manganese is sometimes added to petrol. This also finds its way ultimately into drinking water. "
Sounds rather scary, luckily i dun take more than 30 mins in the shower..usually abt 10-15. Anyway..I tot at first it might onli apply to the waters in US but I've checked up the public utilities board website in singapore and they do add manganese (about < 0.05 mg) so...well.. I guess a possible solution to prevent the effect and still be able to take regular showers is to either take away tt manganese and/or substitute it with a safer element.
John Spangler of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina and his team suggested that breathing in vapour containing manganese salts could be dangerous over the longer term.
"Inhaling manganese, rather than eating or drinking it, is far more efficient at delivering manganese to the brain. The nerve cells involved in smell are a direct pathway for toxins to enter the brain," Spangler wrote.
The team used animal studies aimed at showing how much a person who showered for 10 minutes a day would absorb.
The effects are dependent on the levels of manganese in household water. In the United States, a limit of 0.5 milligrams a litre of water is imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, while in the European Union, an upper level of just a 10th of that was set only in 1998.
Spangler suggested that even levels below the US upper limit could lead to brain damage.
Ten years of showering in water containing concentrations of manganese around the US limit would expose young people to levels three times higher than that found to leave deposits in rats' brains.
The longer the exposure, the worse the risk.
Manganese poisoning leads to tremors in sufferers - much like Parkinson's disease.
Apart from natural sources in ground water, manganese is sometimes added to petrol. This also finds its way ultimately into drinking water. "
Sounds rather scary, luckily i dun take more than 30 mins in the shower..usually abt 10-15. Anyway..I tot at first it might onli apply to the waters in US but I've checked up the public utilities board website in singapore and they do add manganese (about < 0.05 mg) so...well.. I guess a possible solution to prevent the effect and still be able to take regular showers is to either take away tt manganese and/or substitute it with a safer element.
"Traces of magnesium found in household water could be sufficient to cause permanent brain damage to those who take a regular shower"
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Cars develop killer heat, even on cooler days
I am so super sorry...i've not updated this blog for like a week? haha..okay..so i've found this rather informative article in NewScientist, 05 July It's title is "Cars develop killer heat, even on cooler days" It's quite important actually especially for parents who drives and usually leave their kids in the car for a while: "Sunlight can heat car interiors to lethal temperatures in just 30 minutes, even if the weather is relatively cool, a new US study has found. The researchers strongly urge parents not to leave children alone in parked cars, no matter how mild the weather.
“Even on relatively mild-temperature days, the internal temperature of a vehicle left in the sun quickly gets very warm – the average rise in one hour is 22°C," says lead author Catherine McLaren at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. "My guess is that parents would be surprised that leaving children in the car is very much like leaving them in a sauna.”
In 2004, 35 children died of heat stroke in the US after being left unattended in a parked car. Previous research has shown that when ambient temperatures rise above 35°C, sealed cars reach a suffocating 65°C in just 15 minutes.
But research on car heating has all been conducted on hot days – never less than 28°C. So McLaren and her colleagues wanted to test how hot cars could get on cooler days, when the dangers of enclosed vehicles might not be as obvious to parents.
Open windows (sub-heading)
On 16 cloud-free days in Northern California, the team measured a car’s inside temperature at 5 minute intervals for one hour post-parking. Ambient temperatures on the study days ranged from 22°C to 35°C.
They found that, regardless of outside air temperature, the car heated up at a similar rate – gaining 80% of its final temperature within 30 minutes. Cars that started out comfortable 22°C, for example, rocketed to over 47°C after 60 minutes in the sun. And keeping the windows open a crack hardly slowed the rise at all.
Young children and infants are much more susceptible to heat illnesses than adults, write the authors, meaning that such temperatures could prove dangerous. Toddlers’ body temperatures rise faster and they lose proportionally more water than adults in hot weather, for example.
The team suggest that laws against leaving kids in cars could help to raise awareness of the danger. But they note that because these heat-related deaths are mostly unintentional, additional public education is probably the best way to decrease the number of these preventable tragedies. "
Hmm..This is quite serious, especially for Singapore, where it is a tropical and warm country.Sometimes when my mum leaves me in the car for a while to get something, I do feel realli realli warm even with the door open on my side or with the window open. So, yea,there should be additional public education for this in every country to raise awareness.
“Even on relatively mild-temperature days, the internal temperature of a vehicle left in the sun quickly gets very warm – the average rise in one hour is 22°C," says lead author Catherine McLaren at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. "My guess is that parents would be surprised that leaving children in the car is very much like leaving them in a sauna.”
In 2004, 35 children died of heat stroke in the US after being left unattended in a parked car. Previous research has shown that when ambient temperatures rise above 35°C, sealed cars reach a suffocating 65°C in just 15 minutes.
But research on car heating has all been conducted on hot days – never less than 28°C. So McLaren and her colleagues wanted to test how hot cars could get on cooler days, when the dangers of enclosed vehicles might not be as obvious to parents.
Open windows (sub-heading)
On 16 cloud-free days in Northern California, the team measured a car’s inside temperature at 5 minute intervals for one hour post-parking. Ambient temperatures on the study days ranged from 22°C to 35°C.
They found that, regardless of outside air temperature, the car heated up at a similar rate – gaining 80% of its final temperature within 30 minutes. Cars that started out comfortable 22°C, for example, rocketed to over 47°C after 60 minutes in the sun. And keeping the windows open a crack hardly slowed the rise at all.
Young children and infants are much more susceptible to heat illnesses than adults, write the authors, meaning that such temperatures could prove dangerous. Toddlers’ body temperatures rise faster and they lose proportionally more water than adults in hot weather, for example.
The team suggest that laws against leaving kids in cars could help to raise awareness of the danger. But they note that because these heat-related deaths are mostly unintentional, additional public education is probably the best way to decrease the number of these preventable tragedies. "
Hmm..This is quite serious, especially for Singapore, where it is a tropical and warm country.Sometimes when my mum leaves me in the car for a while to get something, I do feel realli realli warm even with the door open on my side or with the window open. So, yea,there should be additional public education for this in every country to raise awareness.
Researchers strongly urge parents not to leave children alone in parked
cars, no matter how mild the weather.
Saturday, July 02, 2005
How olive oil helps fight breast cancer
Sorry for not updating for a few days..have been studying for my biology exam..Well, I found this article in Discover, June rather helpful and interesting for those of you who like olive oil, heh. So, here goes:
"For decades, epidemiologists have collected evidence showing that a mediterranean diet rich in olive oil offers protection against breast cancer. But they never understood why. Javier Menendez of the Northwestern University School of Medicine recently figured out how it works.
Olive oil is a rich mixture of fatty acids, chiefly oleic acid. When Menendez bathed human breast cancer cells with purified oleic acid, the cells cut production of a cancer-causing gene, HER2, by nearly 50 percent. The fatty acid also increased the effectiveness of Herceptin, a drug made from antibodies that latch onto HER2 proteins and trigger the death of cancer cells.
The HER2 gene is overactive in more than one-fifth of all breast cancer and operates in a host of other tumors that may prove vulnerable to oleic acid. So far, menendez and his collegues have discovered the fatty acid cuts the expression of the gene in ovarian, stomach and colon cancer cell lines. "It will probably turn out to be a universal effect," he says.
The researchers also found that other dietary fatty acids, like the omega-3 fatty acids in fish, can block HER2. It may mean there is an "ultimate molecular mechanism" by which fatty acids in food prevent cancer. Menendez suspects the compounds help the malevolent cells survive and grow, "but when you are getting fatty acids from the diet, the cancer cells fatty-acid factory gets blocked."
Prevention comes in relatively small doses: Olive-oils researchers and health experts recommended 40 to 50 grams of olive oil a day (four to six tablespoons) to help stave off cancers and reduce risk of heart disease. "You can get that very easily in a salad," Menendez says. More of the oil might be necessary to help beat existing breast tumors and other cancers, he says, although just how much is not yet known."
Well, that's a really good discovery. Slowly, as years go by and more and more cancer cures/preventions are discovered, we might not be so afraid of it anymore. The main message is still to have a healthy diet. =)
"For decades, epidemiologists have collected evidence showing that a mediterranean diet rich in olive oil offers protection against breast cancer. But they never understood why. Javier Menendez of the Northwestern University School of Medicine recently figured out how it works.
Olive oil is a rich mixture of fatty acids, chiefly oleic acid. When Menendez bathed human breast cancer cells with purified oleic acid, the cells cut production of a cancer-causing gene, HER2, by nearly 50 percent. The fatty acid also increased the effectiveness of Herceptin, a drug made from antibodies that latch onto HER2 proteins and trigger the death of cancer cells.
The HER2 gene is overactive in more than one-fifth of all breast cancer and operates in a host of other tumors that may prove vulnerable to oleic acid. So far, menendez and his collegues have discovered the fatty acid cuts the expression of the gene in ovarian, stomach and colon cancer cell lines. "It will probably turn out to be a universal effect," he says.
The researchers also found that other dietary fatty acids, like the omega-3 fatty acids in fish, can block HER2. It may mean there is an "ultimate molecular mechanism" by which fatty acids in food prevent cancer. Menendez suspects the compounds help the malevolent cells survive and grow, "but when you are getting fatty acids from the diet, the cancer cells fatty-acid factory gets blocked."
Prevention comes in relatively small doses: Olive-oils researchers and health experts recommended 40 to 50 grams of olive oil a day (four to six tablespoons) to help stave off cancers and reduce risk of heart disease. "You can get that very easily in a salad," Menendez says. More of the oil might be necessary to help beat existing breast tumors and other cancers, he says, although just how much is not yet known."
Well, that's a really good discovery. Slowly, as years go by and more and more cancer cures/preventions are discovered, we might not be so afraid of it anymore. The main message is still to have a healthy diet. =)
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Harmless Virus May Kill Cancer Cells
This is a June 24th article from webMDhealth it's quite interesting and it is quite a breakthrough as well: "A common virus may have the potential to become a powerful cancer fighter.
Laboratory tests showed that the virus, known as adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV2), kills many types of cancer cells without harming healthy cells.
"We believe that AAV2 recognizes that the cancer cells are abnormal and destroys them. This suggests that AAV2 has great potential to be developed as an anticancer agent," says researcher Craig Meyers, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology at Penn State College of Medicine, in a news release.
Meyers presented the results this week at the 24th annual meeting of the American Society for Virology held at Penn State in University Park.
Virus May Lead to New Cancer Treatments
AAV2 is considered a harmless virus and infects the majority of the population. The virus normally resides in epithelial cells, which form the outermost layer of tissues.
For unknown reasons, people who carry the virus are less likely to develop human papillomavirus (HPV), some strains of which are associated with cervical cancer.
Researchers say AAV2 usually requires a second, helper virus, such as HPV, to become activated. When it finds a helper virus, AAV2 replicates and causes infected cells to die.
In the study, researchers examined the effects of AAV2 on normal human epithelial cells and cells infected with HPV or cancer.
In one test, researchers combined cells infected with both HPV and AAV2 and found that after six days all HPV-infected cells had died.
Similar tests showed that the AAV2 virus killed four different types of cancer cells (cervical, breast, prostate, and squamous cells) within six days of treatment without affecting healthy cells. It did so without the presence of a second, helper virus.
"One of the most compelling findings is that AAV2 appears to have no pathologic effects on healthy cells," says Meyers. "So many cancer therapies are as poisonous to healthy cells as they are to cancer cells. A therapy that is able to distinguish between healthy and cancer cells could be less difficult to endure for those with cancer."
Researchers say future studies are needed to determine exactly how AAV2 causes cancer cell death and how the virus might be developed to more aggressively target and treat cancers."
This is realli great, once the drug or medication is out, it's gonna help mankind in a very big way. Hmm, well at first I thought isn't viruses suppose to be harmful? I mean they will infect a host cell and then exploit it's machinery(ribosomes, enzymes, etc) But like it said, for unknown reasons, it actually helped in preventing or treating cervival cancer with the help of another virus, and the treatment lasts only six days even for other common cancer like breast and prostate cancer, which do not need a helper virus. Oh, by the way, squamous cells are flat, scalelike cells found in epithelial tissue. Cancers that originate in these cells are called squamous cell carcinomas. Hopefully, more viruses like AAV2 which is not harmful, could be discovered quickly so that many cancer patients need not have to suffer anymore.
Laboratory tests showed that the virus, known as adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV2), kills many types of cancer cells without harming healthy cells.
"We believe that AAV2 recognizes that the cancer cells are abnormal and destroys them. This suggests that AAV2 has great potential to be developed as an anticancer agent," says researcher Craig Meyers, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology at Penn State College of Medicine, in a news release.
Meyers presented the results this week at the 24th annual meeting of the American Society for Virology held at Penn State in University Park.
Virus May Lead to New Cancer Treatments
AAV2 is considered a harmless virus and infects the majority of the population. The virus normally resides in epithelial cells, which form the outermost layer of tissues.
For unknown reasons, people who carry the virus are less likely to develop human papillomavirus (HPV), some strains of which are associated with cervical cancer.
Researchers say AAV2 usually requires a second, helper virus, such as HPV, to become activated. When it finds a helper virus, AAV2 replicates and causes infected cells to die.
In the study, researchers examined the effects of AAV2 on normal human epithelial cells and cells infected with HPV or cancer.
In one test, researchers combined cells infected with both HPV and AAV2 and found that after six days all HPV-infected cells had died.
Similar tests showed that the AAV2 virus killed four different types of cancer cells (cervical, breast, prostate, and squamous cells) within six days of treatment without affecting healthy cells. It did so without the presence of a second, helper virus.
"One of the most compelling findings is that AAV2 appears to have no pathologic effects on healthy cells," says Meyers. "So many cancer therapies are as poisonous to healthy cells as they are to cancer cells. A therapy that is able to distinguish between healthy and cancer cells could be less difficult to endure for those with cancer."
Researchers say future studies are needed to determine exactly how AAV2 causes cancer cell death and how the virus might be developed to more aggressively target and treat cancers."
This is realli great, once the drug or medication is out, it's gonna help mankind in a very big way. Hmm, well at first I thought isn't viruses suppose to be harmful? I mean they will infect a host cell and then exploit it's machinery(ribosomes, enzymes, etc) But like it said, for unknown reasons, it actually helped in preventing or treating cervival cancer with the help of another virus, and the treatment lasts only six days even for other common cancer like breast and prostate cancer, which do not need a helper virus. Oh, by the way, squamous cells are flat, scalelike cells found in epithelial tissue. Cancers that originate in these cells are called squamous cell carcinomas. Hopefully, more viruses like AAV2 which is not harmful, could be discovered quickly so that many cancer patients need not have to suffer anymore.
AAV2 virus killed four different types of cancer cells (cervical, breast,
prostate, and squamous cells) within six days of treatment without affecting
healthy cells. It did so without the presence of a second, helper virus.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
The burden of a lasting memory
This is a pretty interesting article I read in NewScientist website, altho' this is a 28th of May 2005 article, it's still quite recent, heh. The study was done on fruit flies but the results might be the same for humans too. Here's the article:
"If you are forever forgetting people's names or family birthdays, take heart. Forming permanent memories is so physiologically expensive it can result in early death - at least for fruit flies.
When fruit flies form lasting memories, their neurons must make new proteins. Now Frederic Mery and Tadeusz Kawecki at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland have shown that this extra work takes its toll on the flies' ability to survive.
They trained one group of flies to associate a jolt with a bad-smelling mixture of two alcohols, while other flies were subjected either to jolts only or to jolts and odours, but not at the same time. When the flies were subsequently deprived of food and water, the group that had learned the link died an average of 4 hours, or 20 per cent, earlier than the others (Science, vol 308, p 1148).
The study suggests that there is a cost to memory and learning, raising the question of whether humans lost other qualities when they evolved superior intelligence. "We have such an extraordinary memory and learning capacity, we must have paid for it," says Kawecki"
Hmm, yes we must have paid for it. Who knows, people who have short-term memory might have a longer life than people who have long-term memory. Although, I think people who have long-term memory should have more advantage since they are able to remember more things. But ya, they'll need to make more cells to remember more things and etch them inside too. Well, We'll just leave it to more studies then.
"If you are forever forgetting people's names or family birthdays, take heart. Forming permanent memories is so physiologically expensive it can result in early death - at least for fruit flies.
When fruit flies form lasting memories, their neurons must make new proteins. Now Frederic Mery and Tadeusz Kawecki at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland have shown that this extra work takes its toll on the flies' ability to survive.
They trained one group of flies to associate a jolt with a bad-smelling mixture of two alcohols, while other flies were subjected either to jolts only or to jolts and odours, but not at the same time. When the flies were subsequently deprived of food and water, the group that had learned the link died an average of 4 hours, or 20 per cent, earlier than the others (Science, vol 308, p 1148).
The study suggests that there is a cost to memory and learning, raising the question of whether humans lost other qualities when they evolved superior intelligence. "We have such an extraordinary memory and learning capacity, we must have paid for it," says Kawecki"
Hmm, yes we must have paid for it. Who knows, people who have short-term memory might have a longer life than people who have long-term memory. Although, I think people who have long-term memory should have more advantage since they are able to remember more things. But ya, they'll need to make more cells to remember more things and etch them inside too. Well, We'll just leave it to more studies then.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Bear the heat
Now, it's about the heat wave, Climate change models did predict more fatal heat waves, altho' it does happen every year, it just gets worst. And freak weathers are happening around the world, like a report updated by AFP at 05:21 today titled: "Freak storms hit Europe, hundreds of houses flooded" . It says that a violent electrical storm struck the Paris region, flooding hundreds of houses, disrupting two lines on the metro system and causing delays at the city's two main airports. Elsewhere, lightning struck an electrical center in Switzerland, blocking about 100 trains in the second major breakdown to hit the Swiss railway system in two days. Luckily, no casualties were reported, but a motorcyclist had to be rescued when he was engulfed by water under a Paris road tunnel. In addition, South Asia is not the only one under the sufferings of the heat wave. France and other countries like Portugal, Spain, Nepal, and many more are also in the heat. Just from the South Asia heat wave alone, at least 375(yesterday was 200) people have died from sunstroke and dehydration in a month-long heat wave sweeping India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, as it endures one of its hottest summers on record, authorities said. From the report: "Temperatures hit 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in some parts of South Asia this week, parching fields, emptying dams and drying river beds ahead of the annual monsoon.
Freak weather extended as far as northern China, where the heat set off explosives at a chemical plant in Shanxi province that injured hundreds. In central Chongqing city, authorities opened old bomb shelters so people can cool off.
Worst hit was India's impoverished eastern state of Orissa, where almost 100 people were reported killed from the heat.
Streets in the region emptied and many cities and villages resembled ghost towns as residents stayed indoors to avoid the sun. The state ordered government offices to close before noon.
"The heat wave along with occasional power-cuts had made life miserable here," said Lingaraj Panda, a local resident.
Officials reported drinking water shortages in the giant Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh as ponds and lakes dried up and villagers were forced to travel 10km to 15km to fetch water from deep wells.
Beer sales in New Delhi hit a record high with nearly 6 million bottles being sold in the first three weeks of this month as temperatures hit 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit).
India's weather department says the June-September rains got off to a weak start, but initial showers are now being reported across southern India and Bombay.
The month-long heatwave also killed more than 100 people in neighbouring Bangladesh, while in Pakistan more than 65 people died in the past week, including at least 24 believed killed over the last 24 hours from the heat, authorities said.
Villagers in Bangladesh held prayers in mosques and temples for rain -- though not too much rain. Last year, devastating floods caused by monsoon rains in July-September killed more than 1,000 people and left about 10 million homeless.
"The monsoon is playing truant this year in Bangladesh as well as in India, scorching farmland and killing people," one weather official said.
Tahir Ali Javed, Health Minister of Pakistan's central Punjab province told Reuters all the fatalities have come in the province where temperatures soared to 46 degrees Celsius (115 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday.
Temperatures shot up to 44 degree Celsius (111.2 Fahrenheit) in Pakistan's capital Islamabad on Tuesday - a four-year record.
At least 11 people have died in neighbouring Nepal, a local media report said, but monsoon rains had now begun in most parts of the country." Well, at least some rain did fall in some parts of some country but it's not gonna be enough to help cool of this heat.
About the heat wave in France: "France was on a heat-wave alert yesterday as the government released its new emergency plan to avoid a repeat of the nearly 15,000 deaths attributed to the scorching temperatures during the summer of 2003.
As the mercury climbed above 30 degrees in parts of France during the past two days, Health Minister Xavier Bertrand released the new heat-wave plan including measures to bolster emergency services and to care for elderly people living on their own.
Meanwhile, extreme or severe drought has gripped 79 per cent of Portugal, the government's water institute said yesterday. The country has slashed the wheat-harvest forecast by as much as 70 per cent.
In neighbouring Spain, farmers also expect huge losses. Environment Ministry data show Spain's water reserves stand at 56 per cent of capacity." Hopefully, the heat wave incident in 2003 could be totally avoided. This, again, shows an obvious consequence - drier countries get drier, wetter countries get wetter.
Freak weather extended as far as northern China, where the heat set off explosives at a chemical plant in Shanxi province that injured hundreds. In central Chongqing city, authorities opened old bomb shelters so people can cool off.
Worst hit was India's impoverished eastern state of Orissa, where almost 100 people were reported killed from the heat.
Streets in the region emptied and many cities and villages resembled ghost towns as residents stayed indoors to avoid the sun. The state ordered government offices to close before noon.
"The heat wave along with occasional power-cuts had made life miserable here," said Lingaraj Panda, a local resident.
Officials reported drinking water shortages in the giant Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh as ponds and lakes dried up and villagers were forced to travel 10km to 15km to fetch water from deep wells.
Beer sales in New Delhi hit a record high with nearly 6 million bottles being sold in the first three weeks of this month as temperatures hit 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit).
India's weather department says the June-September rains got off to a weak start, but initial showers are now being reported across southern India and Bombay.
The month-long heatwave also killed more than 100 people in neighbouring Bangladesh, while in Pakistan more than 65 people died in the past week, including at least 24 believed killed over the last 24 hours from the heat, authorities said.
Villagers in Bangladesh held prayers in mosques and temples for rain -- though not too much rain. Last year, devastating floods caused by monsoon rains in July-September killed more than 1,000 people and left about 10 million homeless.
"The monsoon is playing truant this year in Bangladesh as well as in India, scorching farmland and killing people," one weather official said.
Tahir Ali Javed, Health Minister of Pakistan's central Punjab province told Reuters all the fatalities have come in the province where temperatures soared to 46 degrees Celsius (115 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday.
Temperatures shot up to 44 degree Celsius (111.2 Fahrenheit) in Pakistan's capital Islamabad on Tuesday - a four-year record.
At least 11 people have died in neighbouring Nepal, a local media report said, but monsoon rains had now begun in most parts of the country." Well, at least some rain did fall in some parts of some country but it's not gonna be enough to help cool of this heat.
About the heat wave in France: "France was on a heat-wave alert yesterday as the government released its new emergency plan to avoid a repeat of the nearly 15,000 deaths attributed to the scorching temperatures during the summer of 2003.
As the mercury climbed above 30 degrees in parts of France during the past two days, Health Minister Xavier Bertrand released the new heat-wave plan including measures to bolster emergency services and to care for elderly people living on their own.
Meanwhile, extreme or severe drought has gripped 79 per cent of Portugal, the government's water institute said yesterday. The country has slashed the wheat-harvest forecast by as much as 70 per cent.
In neighbouring Spain, farmers also expect huge losses. Environment Ministry data show Spain's water reserves stand at 56 per cent of capacity." Hopefully, the heat wave incident in 2003 could be totally avoided. This, again, shows an obvious consequence - drier countries get drier, wetter countries get wetter.
"The monsoon is playing truant this year in Bangladesh as well as in India,
scorching farmland and killing people,"
China floods kill 536 this year, worse to come
I watched the news yesterday on Channel 8 and they reported about the China floods and the heat wave around the world. I shall talk about the China floods first. I went to check out Reuters this morning and it reported : "flooding and landslides across China have killed 536 people and caused nearly 20.4 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) in losses this year, scores in the last week alone, and worse is expected on Friday(which is today). In the past few days, at least 97 people had been killed and 41 were missing in southern China, where days of torrential rain had pushed rivers past their breaking points and sparked mudslides, Xinhua news agency said.
Some 1.4 million people have been evacuated in six provinces, with floodwaters climbing up to four stories tall in the industrial city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region, one of the worst-hit areas(Yesterday is was three stories high). State television showed pictures of rushing, turbid waters crashing through villages and cities alike and rescuers pulling children to safety. With floods peaking in some areas, worse is to come in others. "More than 100,000 people and soldiers are now bracing themselves for the worst peak of the floods on the river as it passes Guangxi," the China Daily quoted an official from the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters as saying, referring to the Xijiang River that runs through Wuzhou. " I didn't put in the whole report but most of it is here. Not only that..I forgot to mention that the main reason why the fatalities due to the floods in 1998 in China is the highest should be because that year, 1998 was the warmest year in record as well and the 1990s was the warmest decade. Just look at what Global warming can do to us.
Some 1.4 million people have been evacuated in six provinces, with floodwaters climbing up to four stories tall in the industrial city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region, one of the worst-hit areas(Yesterday is was three stories high). State television showed pictures of rushing, turbid waters crashing through villages and cities alike and rescuers pulling children to safety. With floods peaking in some areas, worse is to come in others. "More than 100,000 people and soldiers are now bracing themselves for the worst peak of the floods on the river as it passes Guangxi," the China Daily quoted an official from the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters as saying, referring to the Xijiang River that runs through Wuzhou. " I didn't put in the whole report but most of it is here. Not only that..I forgot to mention that the main reason why the fatalities due to the floods in 1998 in China is the highest should be because that year, 1998 was the warmest year in record as well and the 1990s was the warmest decade. Just look at what Global warming can do to us.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
A link between tofu and male infertility?
I just found this article in The Straits Times..I guess I didn't notice it just now when I first read it..This is rather interesting..I think I'll post the heatwave article tomorrow coz anyway..it's a rather long one..Okay..so researchers in copenhagen has discovered a link between soya products and sperms in male..here's how it goes: "A plant chemical found in soya, tofu and legumes could potentially damage sperm and affect male fertility, a British researcher says.
Professor Lynn Fraser of King's College, London, has shown that genistein, which can mimic the effect of the female hormone oestrogen, affects sperm in mice.But it seems to have an even stronger impact on human sperm.In laboratory tests, Prof Fraser found that small amounts of the chemical can cause human sperm to 'burn out' and lose fertility.'Human sperm proved to be even more responsive than mouse sperm to genistein,' Prof Fraser said at a recent fertility meeting.She said that if women eat soya and foods high in genistein it might have a bigger impact on male fertility because the chemical is likely to affect sperm when it is in the female, preparing to fertilise an egg.'Maternal exposure to the compounds is probably more important than paternal exposure,' she said.Although it is very preliminary research, Prof Fraser speculated that the findings could have an impact on women trying to conceive.'On the basis of what we have seen, it might be a practical thing to do if you are in the habit of eating lots of soya-based products to restrict your diet for a short time over the window of ovulation,' she told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.Professor Richard Sharpe of Edinburgh University, in Scotland, described the research as interesting and the results as surprising.But Prof Sharpe added that oriental societies that traditionally eat a soya-rich diet show no signs of reduced fertility that he is aware of.The effects on sperm in the laboratory may not be directly related to what happens in real life.Dr Allan Pacey of the University of Sheffield said: 'It's early days, but clearly if what happens in the laboratory also occurs in the woman's fallopian tube as the sperm make their way to the egg, then there would be the potential for fertilisation to fail.' " Well..maybe researchers could think of how to develop contraceptives from soya products then?
Professor Lynn Fraser of King's College, London, has shown that genistein, which can mimic the effect of the female hormone oestrogen, affects sperm in mice.But it seems to have an even stronger impact on human sperm.In laboratory tests, Prof Fraser found that small amounts of the chemical can cause human sperm to 'burn out' and lose fertility.'Human sperm proved to be even more responsive than mouse sperm to genistein,' Prof Fraser said at a recent fertility meeting.She said that if women eat soya and foods high in genistein it might have a bigger impact on male fertility because the chemical is likely to affect sperm when it is in the female, preparing to fertilise an egg.'Maternal exposure to the compounds is probably more important than paternal exposure,' she said.Although it is very preliminary research, Prof Fraser speculated that the findings could have an impact on women trying to conceive.'On the basis of what we have seen, it might be a practical thing to do if you are in the habit of eating lots of soya-based products to restrict your diet for a short time over the window of ovulation,' she told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.Professor Richard Sharpe of Edinburgh University, in Scotland, described the research as interesting and the results as surprising.But Prof Sharpe added that oriental societies that traditionally eat a soya-rich diet show no signs of reduced fertility that he is aware of.The effects on sperm in the laboratory may not be directly related to what happens in real life.Dr Allan Pacey of the University of Sheffield said: 'It's early days, but clearly if what happens in the laboratory also occurs in the woman's fallopian tube as the sperm make their way to the egg, then there would be the potential for fertilisation to fail.' " Well..maybe researchers could think of how to develop contraceptives from soya products then?
40 killed and 300,000 flee worsening floods, landslides
I just saw this article in The Straits Times.. This is about the flooding in Southern parts of China, I'll highlight the more important parts in red: "Floods and landslides triggered by torrential rain killed more than 40 people in Southern China and forced the evacuation of more than 300,000 in a mountaineous region. In response to the rapidly worsening situation, China Premier Wen Jiabao called for an "all-out effort" to combat floods.The reported death toll from heavy rains and floods in China since last month is now more than 400. In the south-west Guangxi region, the worst hit area in recent days, around 333,000 people have been evacuated from flooding prone areas, reported Xinhuan news agency. 27 people were confirmed dead and 20 others missing there, the regional disaster relief headquarters said. About 100,000 residents in low-lying areas of Wuzhou were evacuated overnight, state media said. It was the industrial city's worst flooding in 100 years. Notices about the mass evacuation were posted on walls, warning sirens blared in the night and residents loaded up cars, trucks and carts with valuables and fled the area for higher ground. Along the Wuzhou River, 8.5m above its danger level, thousands worked to fortify its banks and dams with sandbags, state broadcaster CCTV said. The water reached as high as the thirdflood of buildings in some areas. In south-eastern Fujian province, floods and landslides killed 12 people and left five missing. In Guangdong province, just north of Hong Kong, 10 people were reportedly killed, while more than half a million were affected by the bad weather, the China News Service said. Rainstorms in eastern parts of Guangdong caused cave-ins on part of the Beijing-Kowloon railway line. Dozens of trains were forced to delay or turn back while repairs were made. In the South-western municipality of Chongqing, around 30,000 residents were evacuated after rising waters endangered peoples lives, Xinhua said. Thousands of people perish every year from floods, land-slides and mudflows in China, with millions left homeless. Officials said this year's floods could be worse than usual." adding on another paragraph from Reuters: "While the south is suffering a deluge, much of northern China is sweating through a heat wave, which has driven temperatures to nearly 40 C in the capital Beijing and convinced Chongqing to open air raid shelters to provide shade. " Comments: The green numbers are from Reuters..it was originally 24 and 23..but I just went to check reuters and the death toll went up to 27. About the blue highlighted sentence, the thing i'd want to say is that yes thousands of people perish every year from floods and all that in China..but the thing is..it might get worse this year because of Global Warming..this is the second time that one side of the country is raining heavily while the other side is so hot..it just happened in February this year...which is somewhat the nearing end of winter..It can't be that hot during winter right.. I've also just checked out the flood data of China for last year, 2004..In total..about 1,343 people were killed by the floods. In late july, the death toll was 439..It's only june now and it's alreadi 400..*sigh*..It also mentioned: "While the annual rains and floods usually strike hardest in rural areas, this year(2004) big cities like Beijing and Shanghai have felt the effects with both experiencing freak weather."The country has witnessed extreme weather recently in big cities, such as Beijing's unprecedented rainstorm earlier this month, which paralyzed local transportation," Wang was quoted as saying by China Daily."The rainstorm in Shanghai on July 12 can be said to be a very rare disaster which happens only once a century." The storm claimed seven lives. Look at the hailstorm that just happened recently in Beijing..it's rare. But one good thing..The death toll did decrease over the years..with the worst in 1998 at 4,000 to 1,900 in 2003 and continue to decrease to 1,343 in 2004.. Another point is that it said that in 2004 it was the worst flood in decades...but this year is century..look at the difference.And last year..there was also this pattern whereby "while central and southern China were awash with water, northern and eastern regions were suffering severe drought or scorching temperatures.The provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the north are all parched with rain only starting to fall in July, several months later than normal, the newspaper said.Meanwhile, the cities of Shanghai and Hangzhou in the east and Chongqing and Chengdu in the southwest are sizzling in temperatures of up to 38 degrees C. "(tenses were changed because it's already in the past) Anyway..if you see the last sentence..the maximum temperature was at least till 38 C..but this year it went up to 40 C. Looking back at the article from Straits Times..the last sentence said that officials said this year's flood could be worse than usual.See. Talking about the heatwave in Northern China..I'll post an article from The Straits Times later about the heatwave in India happening now. I'm off for brunch now..
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Fingering the Answers
This is from the June issue of discover, it's pretty cool: 'Don’t judge a man by his handshake; look at his fingers instead. Psychologist Peter Hurd of the University of Alberta in Canada compared the second and fourth fingers, that is, the index and ring fingers, of 300 university students and found males with the longest ring fingers were most likely to get in fights.“A longer ring-to-index finger ratio has been correlated with higher levels of prenatal testosterone exposure,” says Hurd. Previous studies suggest that men with longer ring fingers are better when it comes to sports and have especially developed male-pattern visuospatial skills. “We originally started this study just to have fun,” says Hurd, who is now looking at the fingers and penalty records of professional hockey players to see if they confirm his results. But assessing a potential mate by his fingers would be premature. “Finger length explains only 5 percent of the variation in physically aggressive behavior between individuals,” says Hurd. “But it does suggest more of our personalities are determined in the womb than we thought.” ' It's quite interesting and also quite agreeable that we shouldn't be assessing a potential mate by his fingers. At least..well..the girls may just know if their partner is agressive or not. Something relating to this..I remembered my biology lecturer mentioning that the reason why twins do not have similar fingerprints is by the different way in which they clasp their hands in the womb..that applies to us too..that's y all of us have different fingerprints.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Patagonia-Evidence of Climate Change(video from Greenpeace)
Patagonia has one of the largest ice fields in the Southern Hemisphere outside Antartica..I just watched this video and seeing the ice melt is really astonishing.. I've linked them here: Quicktime, Real Player, Windows Media Player. I've also found some images from the Artic in the Greenpeace website: click here
Brain study links negative emotions and lowered immunity
This is another article from the archive in newscientist, 02 september 2003. It can be said it is more "recent" than my previous post worriers prone to cancer. This is about how the study of the brain has linked negative emotions with lowered immunity: "Brain activity linking negative emotions to a lower immune response against disease has been revealed for the first time, claim researchers.Many previous studies have shown that emotions and stress can adversely affect the immune system. But this effect had not been directly correlated with activity in the brain, says study leader Richard Davidson, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the US.
The part of the brain the team studied, the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is associated with depression. People who had the greatest activity in the right PFC when asked to dwell on distressing episodes in their life had a markedly lower antibody levels after an influenza vaccination. In contrast, those showing exceptional activity in the left PFC when recalling happy times developed high antibody levels.Davidson says emotions play an important role in regulating systems in the body that influence health. "This study establishes that people with a pattern of brain activity that has been associated with positive [emotions] are also the ones to show the best response to the flu vaccine.""It begins to suggest a mechanism for why subjects with a more positive emotional disposition may be healthier," he says. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, an expert on stress and immunity at Ohio State University, told the New York Times that the study represents "some of the best evidence we've seen to date."
Intense sadness (Sub-title):Davidson, with colleagues at Wisconsin and Princeton University, New Jersey, asked 52 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin in 1957 to recount both the best and worst events in their lives on paper.For their best experiences, the subjects were asked to write about an event where they experienced "intense happiness or joy". And for their worst experience they were asked to remember an event causing "the most intense sadness, fear, or anger".During this autobiographical task, the electrical activity of the brain was measured. The subjects were then given flu shots and their antibody levels were measured after two weeks, four weeks and six months. The researcher found a clear link between strong activity in the left PFC and a large rise in antibodies, and vice versa. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1534743100).However, the study could not explain exactly how having a positive attitude boosts the immune system. The researchers say some evidence exists to suggest a link between the PFC and the immune system via a complex hormonal system governed by the hypothalamic, pituitary and adrenal glands.Another study by Italian and UK researchers, also published on Monday, reveals that depressed elderly people have fewer lymphocytes and T-cells - white blood cells crucial for fighting disease. This study is published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (vol 72, p 253)" So..here's another evidence that being depressed is not a very good thing. So let's all be happy and stress-free :)
The part of the brain the team studied, the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is associated with depression. People who had the greatest activity in the right PFC when asked to dwell on distressing episodes in their life had a markedly lower antibody levels after an influenza vaccination. In contrast, those showing exceptional activity in the left PFC when recalling happy times developed high antibody levels.Davidson says emotions play an important role in regulating systems in the body that influence health. "This study establishes that people with a pattern of brain activity that has been associated with positive [emotions] are also the ones to show the best response to the flu vaccine.""It begins to suggest a mechanism for why subjects with a more positive emotional disposition may be healthier," he says. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, an expert on stress and immunity at Ohio State University, told the New York Times that the study represents "some of the best evidence we've seen to date."
Intense sadness (Sub-title):Davidson, with colleagues at Wisconsin and Princeton University, New Jersey, asked 52 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin in 1957 to recount both the best and worst events in their lives on paper.For their best experiences, the subjects were asked to write about an event where they experienced "intense happiness or joy". And for their worst experience they were asked to remember an event causing "the most intense sadness, fear, or anger".During this autobiographical task, the electrical activity of the brain was measured. The subjects were then given flu shots and their antibody levels were measured after two weeks, four weeks and six months. The researcher found a clear link between strong activity in the left PFC and a large rise in antibodies, and vice versa. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1534743100).However, the study could not explain exactly how having a positive attitude boosts the immune system. The researchers say some evidence exists to suggest a link between the PFC and the immune system via a complex hormonal system governed by the hypothalamic, pituitary and adrenal glands.Another study by Italian and UK researchers, also published on Monday, reveals that depressed elderly people have fewer lymphocytes and T-cells - white blood cells crucial for fighting disease. This study is published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (vol 72, p 253)" So..here's another evidence that being depressed is not a very good thing. So let's all be happy and stress-free :)
Worriers more prone to cancer
This was from an archive in newscientist, 28 May 2003.. it may be quite old but research these days have also been passing on similar messages.. So this article is called Worriers more prone to cancer.. I would highlight the more important parts in red: "It is not the kind of news that will help matters. A study involving over 60,000 people suggests that people prone to anxiety are more likely to get cancer.The findings will add to the controversy over whether purely psychological factors such as stress, anxiety and depression can trigger cancer. Part of the problem with this kind of study is that it is hard to exclude with certainty the influence of behavioural factors, such as lack of self-care, poor diet and smoking.A team of psychiatrists led by Arnstein Mykletun at the University of Bergen in Norway followed up 62,591 people who took part in a massive medical survey of people living in one county in Norway during 1995 to 1997. The Norway National Cancer Registry was used to identify participants in the survey who had developed cancers or premalignancies - abnormal cells that can turn cancerous.Those who scored highly in an anxiety test in 1995 were about 25 per cent more likely to have premalignancies, the team told a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco last week.
Inconsistent results (Sub-title):Previous studies of the link between mind and cancer have produced inconsistent results, Susanne Oksbjeg Dalton's team at the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen, Denmark, concluded in the most recent review. But two studies did find an association between psychological stress and two specific types of tumours, lymphomas and malignant melanomas.These results are intriguing, as lymphomas and melanomas are linked with immune system dysfunction. One theory is that psychological states like stress, anxiety or depression lower immune activity, compromising the body's constant surveillance for premalignant or cancerous cells, and thus allowing cancers to grow.Support for this theory comes from another study presented at the San Francisco meeting. Sandra Nunes's team at the State University of Londrina in Brazil compared 40 depressed adults who were not on medication with 34 healthy controls. In the depressed patients, there were dramatic reductions in immune functions, including white blood cell activity and antibody responses. However, Mykletun's team did not find a statistically significant link between depression and premalignancies in the Norwegian study, as they did with anxiety. Dalton also points out that it is vital that factors like smoking are adequately controlled for in research of this type. People suffering psychological stress are more likely to smoke, greatly increasing their risk of cancer. Mykletun's team did try to take this into account, but screening for smokers and determining how much they smoke is difficult in large studies like the Norwegian one.
The debate looks set to run and run. Until it is resolved, anxious people will have one more thing to worry about." Well.. at least it is quite clear that being depressed lowers your immune system greatly and so the body is more likely get cancer. I do find the sentence in blue quite interesting..anxious people do have one more thing to worry about..heh..
Inconsistent results (Sub-title):Previous studies of the link between mind and cancer have produced inconsistent results, Susanne Oksbjeg Dalton's team at the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen, Denmark, concluded in the most recent review. But two studies did find an association between psychological stress and two specific types of tumours, lymphomas and malignant melanomas.These results are intriguing, as lymphomas and melanomas are linked with immune system dysfunction. One theory is that psychological states like stress, anxiety or depression lower immune activity, compromising the body's constant surveillance for premalignant or cancerous cells, and thus allowing cancers to grow.Support for this theory comes from another study presented at the San Francisco meeting. Sandra Nunes's team at the State University of Londrina in Brazil compared 40 depressed adults who were not on medication with 34 healthy controls. In the depressed patients, there were dramatic reductions in immune functions, including white blood cell activity and antibody responses. However, Mykletun's team did not find a statistically significant link between depression and premalignancies in the Norwegian study, as they did with anxiety. Dalton also points out that it is vital that factors like smoking are adequately controlled for in research of this type. People suffering psychological stress are more likely to smoke, greatly increasing their risk of cancer. Mykletun's team did try to take this into account, but screening for smokers and determining how much they smoke is difficult in large studies like the Norwegian one.
The debate looks set to run and run. Until it is resolved, anxious people will have one more thing to worry about." Well.. at least it is quite clear that being depressed lowers your immune system greatly and so the body is more likely get cancer. I do find the sentence in blue quite interesting..anxious people do have one more thing to worry about..heh..
Sunday, June 12, 2005
rise in ocean temperatures
I just saw this small information in the "flash" section of Discover magazine, May. It says: "Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography say a rise in ocean temperatures shows global warming is well underway. Meanwhile, former Secretary of State James Barker, a close ally of the president, calls for "gradual and orderly transition" away from fossil fuels." I went to the website for a more in-depth story...so i've got out the more important parts: '"This is perhaps the most compelling evidence yet that global warming is happening right now and it shows that we can successfully simulate its past and likely future evolution," said Tim Barnett, a research marine physicist in the Climate Research Division at Scripps. Barnett says he was "stunned" by the results because the computer models reproduced the penetration of the warming signal in all the oceans. "The statistical significance of these results is far too strong to be merely dismissed and should wipe out much of the uncertainty about the reality of global warming." Yes i would strongly agree with the one i highlighted in red.. "According to Barnett, the climate mechanisms behind the ocean study will produce broad-scale changes across the atmosphere and land. In the decades immediately ahead, the changes will be felt in regional water supplies, including areas impacted by accelerated glacier melting in the South American Andes and in western China, putting millions of people at risk without adequate summertime water. Similarly, recent research by Barnett and his colleagues with the Accelerated Climate Prediction Initiative analyzed climate warming impacts on the western United States using one of the models involved in the new study. The earlier study concluded that climate warming will likely alter western snow pack resources and the region's hydrological cycle, posing a water crisis in the western U.S. within 20 years. "The new ocean study, taken together with the numerous validations of the same models in the atmosphere, portends far broader changes," said Barnett. "Other parts of the world will face similar problems to those expected--and being observed now--in the western U.S. The skill demonstrated by the climate models in handling the changing planetary heat budget suggests that these scenarios have a high enough probability of actually happening that they need to be taken seriously by decision makers." In the new study, Barnett and his colleagues used computer models of climate to calculate human-produced warming over the last 40 years in the world's oceans. In all of the ocean basins, the warming signal found in the upper 700 meters predicted by the models corresponded to the measurements obtained at sea with confidence exceeding 95 percent. The correspondence was especially strong in the upper 500 meters of the water column. It is this high degree of visual agreement and statistical significance that leads Barnett to conclude that the warming is the product of human influence. Efforts to explain the ocean changes through naturally occurring variations in the climate or external forces- such as solar or volcanic factors--did not come close to reproducing the observed warming" So..we'd better stop all the fossil fuels burning and come up with alternative resources.. and also be prepared for what may be happening real soon.. for full article..click here
Friday, June 10, 2005
Global warming is a 'clear and increasing threat'
I was reading the online newsletter posted to my hotmail by NewScienctist and I saw this title and was like "ha!finally.." So the title is of course "Global warming is a 'clear and increasing threat' " I'll post the whole article since every part is as important: "Eleven of the world's most influential science academies warned world leaders that the threat of global climate change "is clear and increasing" and that they must act immediately to begin addressing its causes and consequences. The stark warning came on Tuesday in an unprecedented joint statement from the heads of the science academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US. The statement, issued ahead of the G8 economic summit in Gleneagles, UK, in July, outlines the strong evidence for global warming. "The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems," the statement says, adding that most recent warming is likely to have been caused by human activity. Majour put-down(sub title):That the US National Academy of Sciences, the key scientific adviser to Congress, has signed the document is seen as a major put-down to the global warming naysayers in the Bush administration, which has refused to sign up to the Kyoto protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions.Following a meeting in Washington DC between President George Bush and UK prime minister Tony Blair on Tuesday, Bush conceded that climate change is a "major long-term problem" and cited US research into hydrogen-powered cars and low-pollution coal as moves already under way to help combat it. But there was no change to his opposition to the Kyoto protocol. Nevertheless, Blair intends to make tackling climate change a central plank of the G8 summit he will be hosting. "We need to be thinking about how we move beyond a situation where there are huge emissions of greenhouse gases from present energy consumption," he said. Environmental group Friends of the Earth welcomed the joint statement but complained that it lacks targets and a timetable for action. "G8 countries must accept their historic responsibility in creating the problem, and show genuine leadership through annual reductions in emissions," says Catherine Pearce, climate expert at Friends of the Earth. " The first part of the article before the sub title is the most important part of everything..Yes, i would really totally agree that they must act immediately before everything is too late!! look at what is happening to the weather pattern prior to the fact about changing global temperature..Well, at least finally something is said..
Eleven of the world's most influential science academies warned world leaders
that the threat of global climate change "is clear and increasing" and that they
must act immediately to begin addressing its causes and consequences.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Please read: Important
I am sooo sorry..made a mistake about tt article abt ice in China..it was not ice but hailstones...guess i saw the word "bing bao" and tot it was ice since it had bing in it meaning ice but later realised when i went to check out in the English-Chinese dictionary that hailstone in chinese means bing bao...I am so so sorry...But anyway since hailstones are made of ice so it's actually the same...heh..so there is still "ice" raining in China just that the word for it is hailstones..so tt post still matters...anyway..I JUST FOUND THE ARTICLE!!!Okay..here's what it says:
'BEIJING, June 1 -- Car owners in Beijing were carefully examining their precious vehicles yesterday after hailstones the size of golfballs tumbled from the sky. Traffic was brought to a near-standstill in the heart of Beijing when millions of unseasonable ic crystals pierced the humid skies and caused minor damage pock-marks to paintwork. The hailstorm only lasted for about 10 minutes but it sent pedestrians scurrying for cover as they used handbags and briefcases to shield them from the heavenly artillery. "Hailstones hit parked cars and left small dents," said a witness. Thunderstorms and downpours also struck the capital. Zhou Qingliang, an expert with the Central Meteorological Observatory, said the weather front should have hit western parts of Northeast China's Liaoning Province and parts of Hebei Province neighbouring Beijing. "Thunderstorms with probable hails are likely to go on over the next two to three days in those areas," he said. In downtown areas, many people rushed to open parking areas to check on their cars, only to find most imprinted by the hailstones. Some bicycle riders in rain coats protected their heads with one hand while cycling home. Some residents had their windows broken by hailstones' The wild weather helped cool the sweltering temperature, however.
(Source: China Daily)' Finally i found it! Searched 'hailstones' instead of 'ice' in search buttons and found it easily...Anyway..well look at the damage the stones have done..it was even said as wild weather so you could see how rare it actually is..i thk it could even be the first time the capital has it..hmm I've also found a picture over here:
This is, in my opinion, just the start of the damage.
'BEIJING, June 1 -- Car owners in Beijing were carefully examining their precious vehicles yesterday after hailstones the size of golfballs tumbled from the sky. Traffic was brought to a near-standstill in the heart of Beijing when millions of unseasonable ic crystals pierced the humid skies and caused minor damage pock-marks to paintwork. The hailstorm only lasted for about 10 minutes but it sent pedestrians scurrying for cover as they used handbags and briefcases to shield them from the heavenly artillery. "Hailstones hit parked cars and left small dents," said a witness. Thunderstorms and downpours also struck the capital. Zhou Qingliang, an expert with the Central Meteorological Observatory, said the weather front should have hit western parts of Northeast China's Liaoning Province and parts of Hebei Province neighbouring Beijing. "Thunderstorms with probable hails are likely to go on over the next two to three days in those areas," he said. In downtown areas, many people rushed to open parking areas to check on their cars, only to find most imprinted by the hailstones. Some bicycle riders in rain coats protected their heads with one hand while cycling home. Some residents had their windows broken by hailstones' The wild weather helped cool the sweltering temperature, however.
(Source: China Daily)' Finally i found it! Searched 'hailstones' instead of 'ice' in search buttons and found it easily...Anyway..well look at the damage the stones have done..it was even said as wild weather so you could see how rare it actually is..i thk it could even be the first time the capital has it..hmm I've also found a picture over here:
This is, in my opinion, just the start of the damage.
China floods leave 200 dead, missing-resident
It seems i couldn't find the article anywhere about tt ice raining incident but i did find this in The Straits Times this morning while trying to find the article..It's from Reuters so i went there to find out more: 'BEIJING (Reuters) - Heavy rain has triggered floods and mudslides in southern China, leaving at least 200 people dead or missing, a resident and state media said on Wednesday. Torrential rain hit a mountainous region of Hunan province in the early hours on Wednesday and 22 people died in floods, the official Xinhua news agency said. Two officials were killed during rescue work. Thirty-five people, including five students, were missing, Xinhua said. However, a local resident with knowledge of the casualties and damage said at least 200 people died or were missing after torrential rains hit Xinshao and Lianyuan counties, Shaoyang city and three other cities in Hunan province since Tuesday. "Villagers, cadres and rescuers were washed away by floods," the resident, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters. "More than 10,000 people were left homeless after their homes were either washed away, flooded or toppled," he said. Mountain torrents in Xinshao were the worst in the county's history, Xinhua said. At least 47 villages were devastated by the torrents and 54,600 villagers affected, Xinhua quoted Shen Guirong, director of the county government's publicity department, as saying. About 3,560 homes were destroyed, Shen said, and electricity and telecommunications services were cut off in some villages. Crops, bridges and roads were destroyed. Taizimiao village was the worst hit and the local government scrambled to build temporary bridges to rescue stranded villagers, Shen said. A local official reached by telephone estimated damage to property at over 2 billion yuan ($240 million). People's Liberation Army soldiers were mobilized to help with rescue work, residents said. "We'll be working overtime all night," said a rescue center official in Taizimiao, who gave his surname as Zhu. A local weather bureau official reached by telephone said heavy rainfall caused the floods. "Rainfall in the first half of this year was not a historic high but it was too heavy in a short period of time," the official said. In southwestern Guizhou province, a thunderstorm triggered flooding and landslides killing 12 people and injuring dozens, state radio said. Parts of China are hit by summer floods annually. ' Okay..so it seems that 'China suffers widespread flooding and drought each year, causing huge loss of life. Earthquakes are common and typhoons roar ashore from the South China Sea in the summer,' according to Reuters..so that could explain this article but what about the ice raining thing still? Something must explain it.. You could read back on what i blogged about "as the world warms" there is this part at the start about the weather in Beijing too where it was raining like mad on one side and hot like the desert on the other.. I am still keeping a look-out for the article so if anyone happens to see it..could you tell me please? thanks.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Shocking
This is so shocking i just HAD to say it..I just saw Channel 8 news on tv and u noe what?In China, Beijing...it rained ICE THE SIZE OF PING PONG BALLS !!!I was totally staring at the screen with my mouth opened..not only tt..it was raining at the same time too..I'm trying to find if there's an article abt it on the net but i guess they probably may not post it yet or something..But I'll definitely post it here immediately after I find it..This is realli getting out of hand..It's like supposed to be summer soon in China..ICE during SUMMER??Anyway...let's just hope it's not the effects of global warming but just some strange phenomenon like in August 6, 2000:In Norfolk, England, It was raining fish from the sky. But..well this is not some fish or cat or dog but ice...something natural from the environment..Wonder what will happen next..Snow in Singapore? That might just happen ya noe..
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Why and how do lizards grow back separated tails?
Now this is another interesting one from May issue of Discover. It's realli quite a coincidence tt my last two posts is about animals too..hehe..The red ones are the more interesting ones..okay so here goes: "Losing a tail is a significant event in a lizard’s life. Herpetologists refer to the process as caudal autotomy (caudal relates to “tail” and autotomy to “casting off a body part”). It is considered an antipredatory adaptation since it is effective at confusing a predator. Although the chance of attacking the tail versus the head is often described as fifty-fifty, many species have brightly colored tails, and they will wag them back and forth to increase the likelihood that a predator will target the tail. When attacked, a lizard releases its tail either by direct trauma or sometimes before it is even touched. The detached tail wiggles with a nervous spasm, distracting the predator long enough for the lizard to escape. The specific mechanism that allows the tail to be released evolved early in the history of lizards. Lizard tail vertebrae have a perforated fracture plane encircling the bone. When a tail is broken, the vertebrae break along the fracture plane, and overlying muscle and connective tissue separate as the tail falls off. Over time, trauma to the vertebrae induces dormant cells to activate, and the tail will regenerate with an underlying tube of cartilage rather than separate vertebral bones. While the ability to lose and regenerate the tail may save a lizard’s life, it isn’t without costs. Should a lizard be attacked twice, it is advantageous to have a regrown appendage. However, tail regeneration is energetically expensive and can also result in lowered social status. Still, it is better than being someone’s dinner."
Saturday, May 14, 2005
How do flies walk on the ceiling?
Sorry for not posting anything..been quite busy..so now here's an interesting one from Discover :How do flies walk on the ceiling?" I would highlight some of the interesting points in red: 'In addition to tiny claws, flies have specialised adhensive pads on their feet called pulvilli. These are covered with minute hairs that are between 2/10,000 and 2/1,000 of an inch long, each with a flattened tip. Scientists speculated that because they were curved, flies' foot hairs must be tiny hooks, latching onto microscopic irregularities in surfaces. "Hairy" adhensives in other organisms such as beetles, spiders, and geckos were postulated to work the same way. Later, research showed that such hairs were flexible and didn't behave like hooks at all. Many animals adhered strongly to both smooth and rough surfaces. Scientists discovered that flies and beetles secret a sticky fluid over their feet, which seems to act like a glue. The feet of spiders and geckos, in contrast, are pefectly dry, which suggest these animals employ intermolecular forces to adhere to various surfaces. Such observations leave us with more questions. Why, for instance, would lightweight flies need glue to stick to the ceiling, which much heavier animals like geckos don't? And how do flies detach once they've "glued" themselves to a surface? We won't understand the true nature of how flies actually walk on the ceiling until these questions are answered.'
Monday, April 18, 2005
"Mosquito Barricade"
Sorry for not updating my blog..My browser was not working properly but now it's all perfectly fine now..Anyway, There is this interesting article on this month's issue of "Discover" . In summary, it is something like why mosquitoes like some people better than others. I would take out only the more interesting and more important part: " 'Mosquitoes find their victims by homing in on specific molecules emanating from human breath and skin,' says team leader Jennifer Mordue, 'and some people's particular blend or molecules is more attractive than others. ' After putting mosquitoes in the base of a y-shaped tube with different blends of human compounds at each end, Mordue watched whick fork the bugs preferred.
After repeated tests, Mordue isolated several compounds that were as powerful as commercial sprays at deterring mosquitoes. 'These compounds are only present normally in a fraction of people, preharps those who evolved a bit of extra resistance,' she says. Mordue suggests that rather than repelling mosquitoes , the compounds mask molecules that normally attract them. For example, the repellent deet doesn't harm insects; it just interferes with their ability to detect a specific molecule on human skin that acts as a powerful attractant." Tune in next week for more articles..
After repeated tests, Mordue isolated several compounds that were as powerful as commercial sprays at deterring mosquitoes. 'These compounds are only present normally in a fraction of people, preharps those who evolved a bit of extra resistance,' she says. Mordue suggests that rather than repelling mosquitoes , the compounds mask molecules that normally attract them. For example, the repellent deet doesn't harm insects; it just interferes with their ability to detect a specific molecule on human skin that acts as a powerful attractant." Tune in next week for more articles..
Monday, March 21, 2005
DNA model
Had a very fun biology pratical today.We had to make a model of a DNA. I guess mine was the longest since ihad finished it very fast :P but it wasn't very good i thk. I have taken a picture of mine and a model of my teacher's DNA model.
My teacher's model(above)
My model :) (above)
A little bit of infomation on the DNA..You should be able to see "coloured" nitrogen bases
held together like rungs of a ladder by the sugar phosphate backbone. Red and Blue is Adenine(red) and Thiamine (Blue) while Yellow and Green is Cytosine (Yellow) and Guanine (Green). Of course, in actual life our DNA has no colour.
My teacher's model(above)
My model :) (above)
A little bit of infomation on the DNA..You should be able to see "coloured" nitrogen bases
held together like rungs of a ladder by the sugar phosphate backbone. Red and Blue is Adenine(red) and Thiamine (Blue) while Yellow and Green is Cytosine (Yellow) and Guanine (Green). Of course, in actual life our DNA has no colour.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Spinach fights the flu
This article comes from the febrary issue of discover - "Spinach fights the flu" This is quite interesting: Spinach may soon be packing health benefits Mom never dreamed of. Molecular Biologists at Philadelphia's INB:Biotechnologies are using the vegetable to make vaccines against anthrax, influenza, even plague. The new vaccines are cheaper to produce than traditional ones made from animales - and could be quicker to make. Until now, biologists had long assumed that using plants to grow human vaccines was impossible. But INB found a way to trick spinach ( along with Swiss chard and Petunias) into producing harmless bits and pieces of common human pathogens that cause diseases like flu and plague. When these chopped-up, deactivated pathogens are injected into mammals, the animals acquire immunity, just as if they had been infected with a virulent version. " now that's cool i mean in the past no one thought that vaccines could come from vegetables it would be great because vegetables are easier to produce better than using animals which may be at a disadvantages especially if they come from chickens and they happen to have the bird flu. Stay tune for more articles.
Disaster upon disaster
This extract is from a very long article from The Straits Times Feb. 23..some of you may have read it but i would like to make a few comments about it. I would, however, only stress on two parts of this article and they are "Vicious Winter" and " Lethal storms". In the part "vicous winter", it said that "at least 180 children have died in Afghanistan's coldest winter in years, the Health Minister said yesterday, amid warnings that the final toll from the subzero temperature and heavy snow could run into the thousands" and in Kashmir "Heavy snow and low temperatures have gripped the Kashmir valley since last week. Avalanches and mudslides have buried entire villages and collasped houses across the state." Okie..look.. for these two countries it seemed that winter this year was the coldest that they ever had and it really does seem that there is something very wrong with the climate. For the part "Lethal Storms": "Mudslides trapped residents in their homes and forced others to flee as lethal storms continues to pound southern california for the fifth consecutive day, in what could prove to be the wettest rainfall season on record in Los Angeles" In the later part of this part: "There is also a possibility of severe thunderstorms and hailstorms in the coastal valleys and blizzard conditions in the mountains. "If it keeps raining like this, and it will, it'll break the record set more than 120 years ago," said Mr. Bill Patzert, a meteorologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada." okie so in this article it is obvious that it kept raining, yes, the thing is look at the phrase "it'll break the record set more than 120 years ago" it seemed to be similar to the first one " coldest winter in years" so therefore the climate is moving into the EXTREME. In singapore, we are now experiencing a dry spell though it's getting better now but two weeks ago it was so hot tt u could just cook an egg on the ground. Temperatures could go to 34, 35 and the Fire stations had received more bush fire cases compared to the last few years and it is said that it is the worst dry spell in the last 29 years. So, the conclusion is still the same thing. Global Warming.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
As the World Warms..
Well...i thk i sort of said i would post the article on some electron bond or sth..but i thk i need to address this issue again...as I've just got the new issue of Discover..I thk I've been stressing this from the start but I've got to say it again and that global warming is getting serious..I thk I remembered watching the news some weeks ago saying that one part of China was raining like cats and dogs and the weather was cold and the other part was hot like a desert. See? So..I'll talk about this article called "As the World Warms"..Firstly: "New Reports - from greenland to antartica - show rising temperatures at both poles and changing conditions in what were once stable, icebound regions." Well I thk it'll be best if i post the whole article because almost every part is important: - "Data from NASA, European, and Canadian satellites show a continuing impact from the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf in early 2002. Nearby glaciers along the Antartic Peninsula are now flowing into the open ocean three to eight times faster than when they were buttressed by the ice shelf, contributing significantly to rising sea levels. Additionally, NASA satellites found that some glaciers in the area have thinned by up to 125 feet.", "Populations of krill have declined by 80% in the Southern Ocean in the last 30 years. An international tean of oceanographers attributed the drop to a loss of winter sea ice that supports the algae on which young krill feed. Krill, small shrimp-like creatures, form a cornerstone of the southwest Atlantic food web." Can you imagine if that because of the decline in the Krill population..whales may become extinct..okie..continuing..." NASA satellites confirm that the rate of ice flow into the ocean from Greenland's Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier - the continent's fastest moving - has doubled between 1997 and 2003, increasing the rate of sea level rise by 4 % " , "Temperatures are going up twice as fast in the Arctic as in the rest of the world, according to an impact statement by the Arctic Council, a consortium of 14 countries and six organisations of indigenous peoples. Further, the group reports that polar snow cover declined 10 percent in 30 years, and the thaw of permafrost will likely creep hundreds of miles northward within this century. The council also predicts that by the end of the century the famously ice-locked Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean will become open water in summer." This is really quite scary though maybe the end of the world may not be fast enough..the fact is..IT IS POSSIBLE.
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