How nicotine helps cancer grow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Acknowledgement: Newscientist]

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

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

Kyoto promises are nothing but hot air

Check out this article from NewScientist, 22 June. It's quite disappointing.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025574.000?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19025574.000

Many governments, including some that claim to be leading the fight against global warming, are harbouring a dirty little secret. These countries are emitting far more greenhouse gas than they say they are, a fact that threatens to undermine not only the shaky Kyoto protocol but also the new multibillion-dollar market in carbon trading.

A revealing reflection

Ok..I noe...I haven't updated for nearly a month..haha. Have been really busy. Right..this time, I'll be talking about sth really interesting. It somehow answers our common question of "Why is yawning and laughing contagious?". This article is from Scientific American Mind April/May issue (I haven't gotten the June/July yet. If I do, I'll find some interesting ones :)). Ok..so anyway..This article talks about how the discovery of mirror neurons provide stunning insights into everything from how we learn to walk to how we empathise with others. This article is really long, so I'll just type a few here and there:

"These neurons have been studied in the past for their roles in movement and other functions. Now, however, researchers are examining them intensely for what seems to be an additional function - the way they fire in response to something observed. The discovery of this mechanism, made about a decade ago, suggests that everything we watch someone else do, we do as well - in our minds. At its most basic, this finding means we mentally rehearse or imitate every action we witness, whether it is a somersault or a subtle smile. It explains much about how we learn to smile, talk, walk, dance, or play tennis. At a deeper level, it suggests a biological dynamic for our understanding of others, the complex exchange of ideas we call culture, and psychosocial dysfunctions ranging from lack of emphathy to autism. Comprehending mirror neurons helps us make sense of everything from why yawns are contagious to why, watching Lawrence Olivier fall to his knees, we share Hamlet's grief for Ophelia."

"The researchers have learned, for instance, that mirror neurons do not just fire when an animal is watching someone else perform an action. Mirror neurons also fire if a monkey hears the sound of someone doing something it has experienced - say, tearing a piece of paper. And as the scientists began studying humans (using brain imaging rather then electrodes), they found groups of mirror neurons in higher numbers and in more places than occur in monkeys. Mirror neurons revealed themselves in the premotor cortex and the inferior parietal areas - associated with movement and perception - as well as in the posterior parietal lobe, the superior temporal sulabilities to comprehend someone else's feelings, understand intention and use language.

Unlike monkeys, humans also use mirror neurons to directly imitate actions and to understand their meanings. It appears we use mirror neurons to learn everything from our first smiles and steps to our most sauve expressions and graceful dance moves. We also use them to appreciate these things, to feel the meaning behind a smile or to enjoy - in a sense by doing it at a premotor neural level - the thrill of hitting a tennis ball as we watch a Pete Sampras backhand. (and just adding sth on my own - probably the thrill of kicking a soccer ball as we watch the world cup lol)"

" Another major insight relates to our understanding of other people's intentions and emotions. Several studies have demonstrated the dynamics of empathy, two with particular elegance. One, described by Iacoboni in 2005, shows that our mirror neurons work in elaborate sets. We possess a basic set of mirror neurons corresponding to an action's most essential form - reaching, for instance - that is supplemented by other groups of mirror neurons that selectively fire according to the action's percieved purpose. Iacoboni had volunteers watch films of people reaching for various objects within a teatime setting - a teapot, a mug, a pitcher of cream, a plate of pastries, napkins - in different contexts. In every instance, a basic collection of "reaching" mirror neurons would also fire depending on what expected action was suggested by various details in the scene. If the viewer saw a neatly set table and expected the hand to pick up a teacup to drink, one array fired; if the viewer saw a messy table and expected the hand to pick up a cup to clear it away, another group fired. Thus, mirror neurons seem to play a key role in percieving intentions - the first step in understanding others and also in building social relations and feeling empathy."

Here are two captions from two pictures:
"Contagion: When we see another person yawn, mirror neurons in primal brain regions tell us to do the same. Group laughter can be catching, too."
"Empathy: Theatregoers feel the pain of an actress spurned because their mirror neurons fire as if they were experiencing their own rejection firsthand."

[Acknowledgement: Scientific American Mind]

Wow with so much typing..my hands are getting tired already as I just updated my blog too heh. Anyway, I think that's really probably how we learn what we learnt with the mirror neurons being the backstage crew of our lifestages. It's really interesting isn't it? Such breakthrough..as mentioned in the last para: " If their enormous explanatory power is backed by more robust results, they might indeed become regarded as the DNA of neuroscience" Oh yes I'd have to agree with that. Such a wonderful thing for a better understanding of life should be researched into more; producing even more intriguing results (:

Contagion: When we see another person yawn, mirror neurons in primal brain regions tell us to do the same. Group laughter can be catching, too.

The 2% Difference

This article is from Discover, April and it is about the 2% difference between chimps and us humans; what those differences are. I'll not post the whole article but the most interesting part about the difference in our brains and theirs: "...That all makes sense. Still, chimps and humans have very different brains. So which are the brain-specific genes that have evolved in very different directions? It turns out that there are hardly any that fit that bill. This, too, makes a great deal of sense. Examine a neuron from a human brain under a microscope, then do the same with a neuron from the brain of a chimp, a rat, a frog, or a sea slug. The neurons all look the same: fibrous dendrites at one end, an axonal cable at the other. They all run on the same basic mechanism: channels and pumps that move sodium, potassium, calcium around, triggering a wave of excitation called an action potential. They all have a similar complement of neurotransmitters: serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, and so on. They're all the same basic building blocks. The main difference is the sheer number of neurons. The human brain has 100 million times the number of neurons a sea slug's brain has. Where do these differences in quantity come from? At some point in their development, all embryos - whether human, chimp, rat, frog, or slug - must have a single first cell committed toward generating neurons. That cell divides and gives rise to 2 cells; those divide into 4, then 8, then 16. After a dozen rounds of cell division, you've got roughly enough neurons to run a slug. Go another 25 rounds or so and you've got a human brain. Stop a couple rounds short of that and, at about one-third the size of a human brain, you've got one for a chimp. Vastly different outcomes, but relatively few genes regulate the number of rounds of cell division in the nervous system before calling a halt. And it's precisely some of those genes, the ones involved in neural development, that appear on the list of differences between the chimp and human genomes.

That's it; that's the 2 percent solution. What's shocking is the simplicity of it. Humans, to be human, don't need to have evolved unique genes that code for entirely novel types of neurons or neurotransmitters, or a more complex hippocampus (with resulting improvements in memory), or a more complex frontal cortex (from which we gain the ability to postpone gratification). Instead, our braininess as a species arises from having humongous numbers of just a few types of off-the-rack neurons and from the exponentially greater number of interactions between them. The difference is sheer quantity: Qualitative distinctions emerge from large numbers. Genes may have something to do with that quantity, and thus with the complexity of the quality that emerges. Yet no gene or genome can ever tell us what sorts of qualities those will be. Remember that when you and the chimp are eyeball to eyeball, trying to make sense of why the other seems vaguely familiar."

[Acknowledgement: Discover Magazine]

That was only like 1/3 of the whole article yet it is really fascinating to know that the number of neurons actually makes us so different from the chimps. There was a picture of the foot of a chimpanzee and it resembles so much like our limbs with the lines and everything. There were other differences mentioned in the article for example that "chimps have a great many more genes related to olfaction than we do; they've got a better sense of smell because we've lost many of those genes. The 2% distinction also involves an unusually large fraction of genes related to the immune system, parasite vulnerability, and infectious diseases; chimps are resistant to malaria, and we aren't; we handle tuberculosis better than they do. Another important fraction of that 2% involves genes related to reproduction - the sorts of anatomical difference that split a species in two and keep them from breeding." They make a whole lot of difference don't they.

Examine a neuron from a human brain under a microscope, then do the same with a neuron from the brain of a chimp, a rat, a frog, or a sea slug. The neurons all look the same: fibrous dendrites at one end, an axonal cable at the other.

Prisoner's dilemma

Sorry about the stagnatation.Here's the Prisoner's dilemma as I've promised. This is mentioned in a chapter in Matt Ridley's "The Origins of Virtue: Human instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation" It is actually a game, the most famous game in all of game theory which has been central to one of the most exciting scientific discoveries of recent years - nothing less than an understanding of why people are nice to each other. It applies whenever there is a conflict between self-interest and the common good. The game is called the prisoner's dilemma because the commonest anecdote to illustrate it describes two prisoners each faced with the choise of giving evidence against the other and so reducing his own sentence. The dilemma arises because if neither defects on the other, the polive can convict them both only on a lesser charge, so both would be better off if they stayed silent, but each is individually better off it he defects.

There is another sophisticated version of it known as the stag hunt and a modern version of the stag hunt - the wolf's dilemma. In the wolf's dillema: "Twenty people sit, each in a cubicle, with their fingers on buttons. Each person will get $1,000 after ten minutes, unless someone pushes his button, in which case the person who pushed the button will get $100 and everybody else will get nothing. If you are clever you do not push the button and collect $1000 but if you are very clever, you see that there is a tiny chance that somebody will be stupid enough to push his or her button, in which case you are better off pushing yours first, and if you are very, very clever you see that the very clever people will deduce this and will push their buttons, so you, too, had better push yours. As in the prisoner's dilemma, true logic leads you into collective disaster"

There are many other versions, explanations and etc. elaborated in the chapter. But on reading and understanding the prisoner's and wolf's dilemma alone, it seems quite true when illustrating humans co-operation with each other. For example, in the wolf' dilemma, if everyone collaborated at the start to not push the button together, there is still somehow a normal natural instinct in them that one of them will push the button and all will end up with nth except the person who pushed the button..it is probably a human nature in all of us to think like so.

In the later part of the the chaper, there is actually another game called tit-for-tat which is predicted to be a mechanism for generating co-operation between unrelated individuals. It has got something to do with reciprocity in society. But it is a little too long to elaborate. Anyway, all this is definitely something worth thinking about.

[Acknowledgement: Ridley, Matt.1996.The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Co-operation. 3:53-55, 63.]

Next update

Really sorry abt not updating for at least 2 weeks.I'm having my exams next week..so I'll probably update next weekend thereafter. I've also thought of creating a new section at the side-bar for latest bird-flu articles/updates so I can talk about more interesting stuff or news ;) yeps.

Bird flu arrives in Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and Slovenia

This is an article from irishexaminer.com, I had already seen this in the news yesterday and it is that the deadly H5N1 has been detected in Greece, Italy Bulgaria and Slovenia. So far no human cases have been found in these places. For the full article this is the website: http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/world/Full_Story/did-sgynF8r3r4ybcsg0aewFBADppk.asp I will not be commenting too much on this because I would like to talk about something more interesting. Something called "The prisoner's dilemma" or another version of it: the "wolf's dilemma". This has got something to do with the evolution of cooperation. But I shall only discuss this in my next post. Going for dinner now and quite tired after running 10 rounds of the school track.

H5N1 bird flu reaches Africa

This is quite a major news, I shall post the article first from NewScientist, 9th Feb: "The H5N1 bird flu virus has been confirmed in north-central Nigeria. Scientists had feared the virus would reach Africa, where human poverty and disease could combine with millions of highly susceptible backyard poultry to produce many human infections, and potentially a human pandemic virus.

But New Scientist can reveal that the location of Africa’s first reported outbreak should not come as a surprise. The region affected is right beside a major wintering ground for two relatively common species of duck. Those ducks shared breeding grounds in Siberia last summer with birds that winter in Turkey and around the Black Sea, where the virus also appeared recently.

“We are facing a serious international crisis,” said Samuel Jutzi, head of animal health at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, Italy. He is pleading for any further die-offs of poultry in the region to be reported immediately.

The World Animal Health Organization (OIE) in Paris, France, reported on Wednesday that 40,000 poultry, mainly laying hens, have died since 10 January at a commercial farm near Igabi in Kaduna state, a small town 150 kilometres south of the northern city of Kano. The owners initially tried antibiotics.

But the cause has now been confirmed as highly pathogenic H5N1 by the OIE’s collaborating centre for bird flu in Padua, Italy. Moreover, it is the same strain that appeared in wild birds at Qinghai Lake in China in spring 2005, and has since travelled across Siberia to Turkey and the Black Sea.

Summer breeding grounds
As it has everywhere it has gone, the virus is devastating poultry in the region, with Nigerian agricultural authorities reporting the death of 150,000 birds in Kano and Kaduna states, and more outbreaks reported in other parts of Nigeria.

Furthermore, Kano is near the Hadejia-Nguru inland river delta, which is a major wintering location for Northern pintail and garganey ducks. These species summer in breeding grounds across Siberia, where the Qinghai strain of H5N1 infected poultry and wild birds in summer 2005. They then winter in Turkey, around the Black Sea, and in West Africa. The Qinghai strain has already broken out in Turkey and around the Black Sea, apparently carried by migrants.

The authoritative 1996 Atlas of Anatidae [ducks, geese and swans] Populations of Africa and Western Europe says the Northern pintail wintering in the Black Sea and Mediterranean basins “are lumped with those wintering in West Africa as a single large population”. On average, 18,000 pintails winter each year at Hadejia-Nguru. Similar numbers of garganey ducks follow the same migration and 500,000 of each species winter at nearby Lake Chad.

Some of the Northern pintail wintering now in Britain and along Europe’s North Sea and Atlantic coasts also spent last summer on the same breeding grounds as the pintail that subsequently flew to the Black Sea, Turkey and West Africa."

I first heard, or rather, saw this news when I was having my break in the canteen. There was then, news being reported on the tv in the canteen and as I read the headlines scrolling across at the bottom I saw something like "the bird flu that has been spreading in Turkey has spread to Africa" and I was like omg...and I told my friends the news..but they don't seem to be worrying about the pandemic if it really happens. But I told another friend though and she got into the same worrying level as me. So, I guess we're both like scared..heh. Anyway, it seems the probability is really getting even higher, It's now a matter of how soon. I think the whole world should be on the alert mode now, so all of us better be prepared. Remember to wash your hands frequently with soap and to practise good hygiene. Oh, and also remember to cook any poultry or eggs thoroughly with high heat to ensure that any viruses or microorganisms will be killed.

Scientists had feared the virus would reach Africa, where human poverty and disease could combine with millions of highly susceptible backyard poultry to produce many human infections, and potentially a human pandemic virus.

“We are facing a serious international crisis,” said Samuel Jutzi, head of animal health at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, Italy.

Avian flu

I had an intuitive fear after watching the news yesterday and today. Yesterday, there were some bird flu cases discovered in Iraq; today, it seemed the bird flu has resurfaced in Hong Kong somehow.It seems to have gone from Turkey to Iraq to Hong Kong..where is it going next? Somehow as I listened and watched the news closely and carefully, it sparked a fear in me that I think the pandemic is getting nearer and nearer i.e. it's highly possible that it may happen quite soon....this year maybe. Of course I'm not some expert or anything, but seeing the news as it is.. it seemed possible. very possible. Just be on the alert... I hope I'm wrong of course..

Sweets for Stress

This is a rather interesting article from sciencentral.com which I found when I was browsing the site:"For some people sweets offer a treat or a little pick-me-up.

"It boosts my mood, makes me a little happier and then I can get through my day," says Leanne Mercadante a student in New York. "I feel happy, a little more relaxed."

For others it's more of an obsession.

"It's just comfortable, just total comfort food," explains Mika De Young, a self-confessed chocoholic. "It makes you happy."

"People that are stressed out, have any kind of anxiety, will definitely look to candy for relief," explains Kris Minkstein who meets many a sweet-lover while working at Dylan's Candy Bar in New York City. "When, a lot of times, a customer's had a long day… they'll pretty much indulge. They'll buy a lot of candy."

To those of us with our hands in the candy jar, here's some sweet news. Scientists have now shown that sugar can calm the nerves, at least in rats.

As reported on ScientificAmerican.com, brain researchers studied rats that were given water sweetened with sucrose — another name for sugar — twice a day for two weeks, as part of their regular nutritionally balanced diet, and compared them to rats that were not.

"We found that if they drink small amounts of sucrose it will reduce the amount of stress hormone produced during stress… relative to the rats that did not have access to sucrose," says stress neurobiologist Yvonne Ulrich-Lai from the University of Cincinnati's department of psychiatry.

During stress, signals are sent to a particular region of the brain that tells the body to release stress hormones, called glucocorticoids, from the adrenal gland. The researchers found that sugar reduces this hormonal response by about 25 percent, which may be why many of us feel more relaxed after eating sweets.

"Glucocorticoids are a type of stress hormone that are produced here in the body as the name implies during stress episodes. And in the short term they can help for survival during stress but excessive levels or levels that are high for too long can have detrimental side effects," Ulrich-Lai says.

These stress hormones help make sure that energy is available to the body during the fight or flight response and they can also help maintain blood pressure levels.

The research team stressed the rats using two different types of stressful stimuli. "One of them we referred to as 'restraint stress.' So, that is analogous to a person being in a well-lit well-ventilated crawl space for a long or short period of time," she explains. "The other stress that we use we term 'hypoxia,' and it's going into an environment with a slightly lower oxygen level, so it's the equivalent to a person being at a high altitude for a short period of time."

However, she says, that at this point they don't know to what extent these results might apply to people. Future work will need to be done to establish that.

Co-author of the study James Herman agrees that it's too soon to rush to the candy store just yet.

"People can, and animals can, essentially use sucrose as an anti-stress mechanism, and whether that is beneficial in the long run or contributes to things like obesity and diabetes and things along those lines, we don’t really know," says Herman, professor of psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati.

In the meantime, a sweet snack on a rough day may not be so bad.

They say that interestingly, artificial sweeteners also reduced stress levels, although not as much as the real thing.

This work was featured on ScientificAmerican.com on November 16, 2005 and was presented at the 2005 annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C.. The work was funded by a Diabetes and Disorders grant from the National Institutes of Health. "

Well, at least that might answer the question as to why sometimes we feel better after eating sweets. haha. And sometimes I do crave for sweets when I'm feeling down or stressed. I could feel my mood getting better. And last time when I have panic attacks, I turn to sweets as well. So they were the must-haves in my bag. Now, I still have them in my bags so that I can eat them when I'm feeling hungry or panicky. Some paediatric doctors give their patients sweets as well, to calm some of them down. But the long-term effect,when one eats too much is obesity and diabetes, especially diabetes. Some might wonder how eating too much sugar will cause diabetes. Well, I remembered in one of my notes or sth, it mentioned that overeating of sugary foods for a long period of time causes the repeated stimluation of the pancreas, secreting high levels of insulin and this in turn will desensitise the cells' response to insulin. And so glucose remains in the blood causing diabetes. Yep. That's why parents always tell their kids not to eat too much sweets as besides the possibilty of tooth cavities, there is also diabetes. I used to disbelieve that until I studied it, heh. So..just eat in moderate amounts >0<

Top 10 Health Stories of 2005

Happy new year everyone!! Sry abt not updating for a month, been reali busy. To start the year, here's the website for the top 10 health stories of 2005 picked by webMD editors: http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/116/112251.htm?pagenumber=1
It has five pages, so just slowly read through. Well, i browsed through an article in the newspaper today and it said that the number of suspected bird-flu cases in turkey has reached at least 30 - in unusual clusters which raise the possibility that the virus is becoming more contagious to humans. And I think I do rmb the news mentioning sth abt this too - that there might be a possibility of it being in the city. So after reading that i was quite afraid that if the pandemic is getting nearer, is there enough time for us to prepare?

Scientists discover how cancer spreads

Well, I came across this article today and thought it was realli a breakthrough: "LONDON - Scientists have discovered how cancer spreads from a primary site to other places in the body in a finding that could open doors for new ways of treating and preventing advanced disease.

Instead of a cell just breaking off from a tumor and traveling through the bloodstream to another organ where it forms a secondary tumour, or metastasis, researchers in the United States have shown that the cancer sends out envoys to prepare the new site.

Intercepting those envoys, or blocking their action with drugs, might help to prevent the spread of cancer or to treat it in patients in which it has already occurred.

"We are basically looking at all the earlier steps that are involved in metastasis that we weren't previously aware of. It is complex but we are opening the door to all these things that occur before the tumor cell implants itself," said Professor David Lyden, of Cornell University in New York.

"It is a map to where the metastasis will occur," he added in an interview.

Landing site for cancer cells
Cancer's ability to colonize other organs is what makes the disease so deadly. Once the cancer has spread beyond its original site it is much more difficult to treat.

In research reported in the journal Nature, Lyden and his colleagues describe what happens before the arrival of the cancerous cells at the new site.

"The authors show that tumor cells can mobilize normal bone marrow cells, causing them to migrate to particular regions and change the local environment so as to attract and support a developing metastasis," Patricia Steeg, of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a commentary.

Cells at the site of the metastasis multiply and produce a protein called fibronectin, which acts like a glue to attract and trap the bone marrow cells to create a landing pad or nest for the cancer cells.

"These nests provide attachment factors for the tumor cells to implant and nurture them. It causes them not only to bind but to proliferate. Once that all takes place we have a fully formed metastatic site or secondary tumor," said Lyden.

"This is the first time anyone has discovered what we call the pre-metastatic niche."

Without the landing pad, the cancerous cell could not colonize the organ. In animal and laboratory studies, the scientists looked at how breast, lung and oesophageal cancer spread. The envoys from the tumor determine the site of the secondary site.

Lyden said measuring the number of special bone marrow cells circulating in the body could help to determine whether a cancer is likely to spread.

"This opens up the door to new concepts of how metastasis is taking place. If we can understand all these multiple processes we can develop new drugs that block each step. That way we have a much better future than just trying to treat the tumor cell, which is almost like a last step in this process," he added. "

[acknowledgement: Reuters ]

I agree with Prof. Lyden that "If we can understand all these multiple processes we can develop new drugs that block each step. That way we have a much better future than just trying to treat the tumor cell, which is almost like a last step in this process" There is always hope for everything, now that this had been discovered. This is just like finding something more complicated than the primary data. At first, it was discovered that cancer cells spread through the bloodstream. But now, we are able to determine the mechanism behind it. But I was thinking, the drug might be hard to develop as more time is needed to know more about this and to come up with something to fight it. I read about something in Discover and a link from this article about how nanotech can be used to treat cancer. I might post it the next time.

DNA restriction enzyme analysis workshop

Looking at the title, you might have wondered whether am I holding it or sth. lol. no.. In fact, I went to it last Friday, 18th nov. It was held in the Singapore Science Centre. I thk I can roughly remember the details of it:

Introduction: This workshop is mainly about restriction enzyme analysis and gel electrophoresis. In restriction enzyme analysis, specific enzymes are used to digest DNA, thus resulting in banding pattterns for comparisons and analysis. Gel electrophoresis separates the digested DNA fragments in an electric field to produce bands of DNA ( you can try guessing: DNA moves to the +ve or -ve side of the field?) . This technique is also the basis of DNA fingerprinting - often used in screening for diseases and solving criminal and paternity cases

09:30 - 11:30 a.m.: The workshop starts. Of course, the trainer introduces herself and went to introduce some facts abt DNA and also the micropipette and other apparatus in the lab. One micropipette costs abt S$500 and a bottle of agarose powder costs I thk S$800 if I'm not wrong. Ok, so then, we sort of practise with all the apparatus especially the micropipette. We did a run on sample dyes to get bands and we do case studies. After all that, we started on the real thing coz time will be needed for incubation in 37 degrees celsius environment in which that time will be our break. Okay, so it was like a case study thing again in which lots of bottles restriction enzymes were broken but onli 4 bottles were unbroken and we have to analyse and identify each restriction enzyme in the bottles. The 4 different restriction enzymes used by the company in the case study are EcoRI, HindIII, BamHI and NcoI. Lambda DNA (it's a bacteriophage which is a bacterial virus) was used as it is only 48, 502 bair-pair long, so is good for analysis. So four microtubes were labelled 1-4 and inside were different restriction enzymes. But of course, we have to make the agarose gel first. After the agarose was done, we have to wait for it to set. So in the mean time, we prepared the digestion mixture which is a mixture of the restriction enzymes, dye and DNA. The tubes were centrifuged to ensue that all the liquid in the tube settles to the bottom of the tube. And the tubes were placed in a 37 degrees celcius incubator/ water bath (I thk it's incubator) and time was also given to the enzymes for them to digest. Then, time for break.

11:30 - 13:30 p.m.: Break-time. Me and my friends had lunch at Macdonalds' and explored the science center. It was realli cool. I mean, its been like 4/5 years since I've been there haha. There was this human body exhibition, some physical science exhibition and of course we explored a little of the DNA trail since we had to go back for the workshop.

13:30 - 15:30 p.m.: The workshop continues. Now, the samples are ready for gel electrophoresis. 10 micro litres of each samples were loaded into four different wells in the agarose gel. We had to let it run for 45 min. In the mean time, we have to interpret restriction maps and calculate the sizes of the different fragments that each restriction enzyme will cut at specific sites of the lambda DNA. Then we did a drawing on the positions of the DNA fragments on a diagram of an agarose gel as these will be seens as bands on the actual agarose gel after it has been appropriately stained with ethidium bromide (highly mutagenic substance, must be handled very carefully and appropriately) and viewed. We watched some videos and very soon, the 45 mins were up. The gels were then taken for staining by the instructors and in the mean time, we did some more case studies. Soon after, the results of each group were printed and the enzymes were identified. The first tube is just the DNA sample with no digestion coz there was actually no enzyme inside. The second tube contains EcoRI, the third - HindIII and the last one is a mixture of EcoRI and HindIII. Yep. Then we did a group survey and it was the end of the workshop.

15:30-16:30 p.m.: One hour of exploration once again before it was time to leave for school.

It was a really fun and enjoyable experience althogether especially with the handling of the micropipette and other apparatus although I've handled a micropipette before when I was in secondary school, this time, I had longer time with it and more usage too. Not only that, I gain more knowledge about DNA profiling from the case studies. The case studies were realli interesting too. The videos shown were also very educational and enriching for us. This workshop reinforces my skills and knowledge in this area and not one minute was wasted ;). It was realli cool to be in the lab and wear the lab coat as well, makes all of us feel like scientists, haha.

High IQ in childhood tied to longer life

This is quite an interesting article as read from the title alone. It was from MSNBC health but they got it from Reuter so its essentially from Reuter. Anyway, so here it is: " NEW YORK - Smarter children may enjoy longer lives, the results of a new study suggest.

The study, which followed elderly adults deemed gifted by childhood IQ tests, found that the higher their early IQs were, the longer they lived -- up to a point, at least. The survival advantage began to plateau after a childhood IQ of 163, an intelligence level few people reach.

Dr. Laurie T. Martin and Laura D. Kubzansky of the Harvard School of Public Health report these findings in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Though the reasons for the link between IQ and longevity are not clear, it does not appear to be merely a reflection of income and social position. As children, the participants were from affluent families and most were white. Yet childhood IQ was still a factor in their lifespan.

Similarly, in an earlier study of Americans with more varied childhood IQs and family incomes, Martin found that IQ was related to health problems independently of socioeconomics.

This, she told Reuters Health, suggests that IQ affects longevity among lower-income people as well.

As research has already linked IQ to mortality, the current study, according to Martin, was in part an attempt to see how far the IQ-health advantage extends. The researchers expected there to be a cutoff at which a high IQ no longer brought any extra health benefits.

And there was. But, Martin said, they were surprised at how high that cutoff turned out to be.

IQs of 163 or higher are not often seen; the average IQ score in the general population is 100 (by definition), and children who score above 130 are considered “gifted.”

Smarter children, healthier habits
The current study is based on data from 862 men and women followed since childhood, starting in 1922, until 1986. All had childhood IQs of 135 or higher, with the average being 151.

The researchers found that, up to the cutoff point of 163, participants’ risk of dying during a given period decreased as their IQ increased; for example, those with a childhood IQ of 150 had a 44 percent lower risk of death than those with an IQ of 135.

Though it’s not clear why childhood IQ itself might affect a person’s lifetime health, Martin and Kubzansky point to several possibilities. For one, these children may be more likely to take up healthy habits like regular exercise, while shunning health risks like smoking. They are also more likely to get high-paying, prominent jobs as adults, with all the advantages that confers.

And in general, Martin noted, IQ scores reflect a “set of skills,” like reasoning, planning and communication, that affect how people manage their health -- from talking with their doctors to dealing with a complex healthcare system.

Understanding exactly why IQ affects longevity, according to Martin, could ultimately help improve health and healthcare for everyone."

Yep, this is a rather cool article. But from what I think, to me, it just seemed to be an incentive for the very high IQs. For the average, their lifespan are average too. While those with high IQ live longer. If they are those genius kind, at least living longer means they can contribute to the society more too since they are cleverer than the average and they are independant of their socioeconomic status. So its quite fair. And anyway, some high IQ ones are those born with it so its somewhat genetic and if its genetic then probably the genes are "tougher" and so they live longer. Oh yea, and I watched this documentary yesterday on Channelnewsasia, and its abt "Global dimming", its actually happening now and the most impt point that they mentioned is that if we dun control global warming, if warm temp sort of overrides the cool temp, then by 2030 (from one of the models) , the world will warm by 4 degrees and by then, all the ice sheets from Greenland could melt, tropical rain forests could wither and burn from the heat, there'll be heat stroke and many more. By 2100, the world might warm by 10 degrees. So unless we do something, these predictions might be true. [ all the info should be like that, I was quite engrossed in the show to catch some of the words] The documentary called "A species' odyssey" is just great too. It's about the evolution of men and I think it started from Australopithecus anamensis (I didnt realli catch the name) yep and it was in two parts, and it went all the way to Homo Sapiens. Its one of the best documentaries I've watched so far.

Scientists look to DNA for personalized diets

Firstly, I'll like to thank all the comments that was posted so far and in the future if any. I'll try and improve this blog in anyway I can. Okay, so back to this. I chanced upon this article while searching for articles for my general paper. This is from MSNBC heath and I thk it's realli cool:

"NEW YORK - As a registered dietitian, Ruth DeBusk has eaten a healthy diet for a long time. As a geneticist, she wondered if she could do better.

So earlier this year, she had her DNA tested by a company that gives personalized nutrition advice based on genetics. The results indicated she needed more folate.

So DeBusk doubled her minimum amount of folate, a B vitamin found in leafy greens and citrus.

“I’m more diligent about being sure that I get it every day if possible, because it really matters,” said DeBusk, who has a private practice in Tallahassee, Fla., and has written a book on nutrition and genetics.

“I’ll actually make an effort to drink a glass of orange juice or eat an extra big salad in the evening, being aware it hasn’t been one of my better folate days.”

Personalized dietary advice
That’s the way it’s supposed to work in a field called nutritional genomics or nutrigenomics. The basic idea is this: There are genes that affect the risk of getting illnesses like heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis and diabetes, and the impact of those genes can be modified by what you eat. Everybody carries one version or another of each of those genes. So why not find out what gene versions you have and base dietary advice on that?

“Every time we go to the supermarket we’re using educated guesses about what we should eat and what we shouldn’t eat,” says Raymond Rodriguez, director of the National Center of Excellence for Nutritional Genomics at the University of California, Davis.

In the future, more of that guesswork may be replaced with accurate, personal DNA-based dietary advice, which Rodriguez says is “rapidly emerging on the horizon.”

But that time isn’t here yet, most experts say. Nutrigenomics is still in its infancy, with plenty to be learned, and it’s not yet clear what role it may play in standard medical practice.

Most of the research targets heart disease and cancer, and scientists may be ready to deliver personalized diet recommendations in those areas within five years, said Jose Ordovas, director of the nutrition and genomics laboratory at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Nutrition Research Center at Tufts University in Boston.

“We have scientific evidence that the concept is right, that we can provide something along those lines in the future,” Ordovas said. “We are not there yet.”

DNA test kit
No? You can walk into some pharmacies or grocery stores right now and pay $99 for a DNA test kit that will get you personalized diet advice for heart health, bone health, or any of three other areas. It’s from Sciona Inc., a small company based in Boulder, Colo., that started offering DNA-based diet advice in 2001. Such tests are also available by mail order and on the Internet.

Sciona customers collect their own DNA with a cheek swab, complete a diet and lifestyle questionnaire and send it all in for analysis. Sciona encourages customers to review its advice with a doctor.

The company acknowledges that some scientists say it’s too soon to offer such a service, but says its testing is based on solid research. Current testing focuses on 19 genes and the company is studying others, said Rosalynn Gill-Garrison, chief scientific officer and a company founder.

Sciona’s approach basically starts with standard healthy-eating recommendations and modifies them when genetic analysis indicates a need for something more, Gill-Garrison said.
After a DNA test, Sciona may recommend steps like eating more broccoli or omega-3 fatty acids, she said, or limiting caffeine to protect against bone loss.

Gill-Garrison said studies show that people with a certain version of a gene called MTHFR tend to have high blood levels of a substance called homocysteine, which has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. Studies also show that people with this gene version can reduce their homocysteine levels by taking in more folate, she said. So that’s the advice Sciona customers with that gene version get.

High levels of homocysteine also can be spotted with a standard blood test at a doctor’s office.

A work in process
Ordovas said the trouble with anybody providing gene-based dietary advice now is that scientists don’t yet have the whole picture of what genes should be considered. With current tests, it’s like trying to size up a landscape by looking through a keyhole, he said. You can’t tell what you’re not seeing.

“At least in that very narrow region of our genome that they are looking, they have potential that they may provide some valuable information, and it could benefit some people,” he said. But advice based on current tests “can also be misleading because you are ignoring pieces that are very important,” he said.

Rodriguez said he doubts anybody will be harmed by the current tests, and that they’re beneficial because they get people to think about diet and lifestyle. But he said they remind him of the first VCRs or CD players to hit the market.

“It is an expensive new technology ... and it will probably, in my estimation, become more efficient, more accurate and more affordable with time.”

DeBusk, who said she has no financial ties to any of the companies, figures the time for DNA-based diet advice has come.

“The scientist in me says we shouldn’t do this now, we need to wait another 20 years until many studies have been done,” she said. But her clients want to know what the best science is right now, and “it’s difficult to say, 'Come back in 20 years.' You can’t do that.

“Do we know everything we’d like to know? No. ... Do we know enough to start introducing this type of technology and start the long process of educating people? I would say yes.”"

Cool, isn't it? Personalised diets using DNA. Might be a great help to me since I need to gain a lot of weight, haha. Maybe I just lack in sth. Anyway,somehow I thk this technology seems a little dangerous. I mean, yea it's a new technology but just sth is missing, i thk. What if the genes that they are looking at indicated a person needs calcium but yet there is a gene undiscovered in the person that actually too much calcium could harm him so only a certain right amount is enough, not too much, not too little. So, yes, more studies should be done so that personalised diets become even safer and more accurate.

“At least in that very narrow region of our genome that they are looking,
they have potential that they may provide some valuable information, and it could benefit some people,”

But advice based on current tests “can also be misleading because you are
ignoring pieces that are very important,” he said.

Commentary

Today I won't post any articles but I will be commenting on events and disasters that has happened/are happening in the world today after the tsunami on Dec 26th 2004. First ,Dec 26th; tsunami; Coastal parts of Indonesia and some countries around the epicentre ;the effects of the tsunami could have been less pronounced if the mangrove swamps had not been cleared.

January 6th-13th, Heavy Weather; California to Pennsalvania;in California, a low-pressure system with drenching rains and heavy snows at higher elevations, dumped up to 11 inches of rain and caused a large mudslide in La Conchita, killing 10. Total storm-related deaths reached 25. Los Angeles has had 17 inches of rain since Dec. 27, 2004. The same system piled up more than 4 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevadas on Saturday, stranding an Amtrak train and closing roads and airports. Since the end of December, the Reno-Lake Tahoe area has up to 19 feet of snow, the most since 1916. In Arizona 7 people died from storms and 7 of 15 counties were declared states of emergency. More heavy weather from Indiana to Pittsburgh caused flooding all along the Ohio River where state emergencies have been declared for 56 of 88 counties in Ohio. Three people died in a Pittsburgh tug boat accident and 5 in Ohio from storm-related causes.

January 8th to 12th, wild storms; Europe; wild storms battered many European countries, leaving 19 dead; High winds and flooding left people without power and shut down ferries, trains, and highways.

January 22nd to 23rd, Snow storm; Eastern U.S. ; strong snow storms swept across the Midwest to the Atlantic coast, killing 20 people. A blizzard blanketed parts of the Northeast with snow depths up to 38 in north and south of Boston and the entire island of Nantucket lost power. By the end of January, Boston had the snowiest month on record with a total of 43.1 inches of snow.

February, Extreme winter weather; South-East Asia; extreme winter weather including cold, snowfall, avalanches, and flooding in Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan killed more than 1,400 people in the last month and a half; Due to the lack of communications actual numbers were hard to confirm.

March 18th-22nd, Heavy rains and melting snow; Afghanistan; more than 200 killed; thousands homeless; this followed what was already the worst winter in years that had killed several hundreds of people.

In June, there was flooding in Southern China; Many were killed; Rain not historic high but too heavy in such a short period of time. There was also a hailstorm in Beijing, someting rare indeed as it was summer. (A rainstorm on July 12 04' in Shanghai claimed 7 lives, a disaster which happens only once a century.)

July 7th, terrorist attack;London; four bombs exploded in three subway stations and on one double-decker bus during the morning rush hour, killing 52 people plus 4 bombers, and wounding more than 700.

On July 21st, terrorist attacks;London; four bombs partially detonated but did not explode on three trains and a bus in London exactly two weeks after the July 7th bombings.

July 26th, Monsoon;Mumbai; a record of 37 in of rain fell in Mumbai (Bombay) in a 24 hour period; the most ever recorded in India. A week of relentless monsoon rains left 1,000 dead in western India.

August 29th, Hurrican Katrina; Los Angeles, Missisipi, New orleans; Predicted to be a category 2 but ended up being a 5; devasting effects; the third deadliest hurrican in the U.S.; More than 1,200 killed .

September 1st-3rd, Typhoon Talim ; China; major flooding and landslides, extensive crop damage; killed at least 129 people.

September 6th-7th, Typhoon Nabi; Japan; killed at least 18 people.

September 24th, Hurrican Rita; Category 3; Strong storm surges and heavy winds caused major damage in the Louisiana and Texas coastal areas; Heavy rains also drenched New Orleans, causing the Industrial Canal levee to breach, re-flooding parts of the city.

September 20th-25th, typhoon Damrey; Philippines, China, Thailand, Nepal; killed at least 122, primarily from flooding.

October 1, terrorist bomdings; Bali; Three suicide bombers hit Bali restaurants in the resort beach area; killed 22 people.

The last few months , Dengue fever; Singapore and Malaysia; Dengue fever was (and still is) a major concern in these two states as the warm climates were perfect breeding places for them; Number of people infected was on record high in both states.

October 19th, Hurrican Wilma; Mexico; Wilma is the 12th hurricane of the Atlantic season, the largest number of hurricanes recorded since 1969.

Now, fear of a bird flu pandemic; World;H5N1 strain might mutate into another form where human-human transmission will be high and widespread(for now it's from infected birds to humans) . It might cause deaths up to millions; Many drug companies are planning to produce large quantities of vaccines and medications like Tamiflu to fight the pandemic if it strikes; However, there was a sign that the strain might be resistant to Tamiflu, a powerful antiviral drug. Therefore, they are now currently working on a flu vaccine that can be inhaled.

"Experts consider the avian flu the single biggest threat to human health in the world today.
The H5N1 virus has killed and forced the destruction of tens of millions of birds and can on occasion be transmitted to people, often killing them.

A slight mutation would enable the virus to be passed easily from person to person and because it is such a new virus, experts believe it would sweep around the world, killing millions of people, if it is not stopped." (MSNBC health)

Latest from NewScientist(oct 18): Antarctic glaciers calving faster into the ocean; "The edges of the Antarctic ice sheets are slipping into the ocean at an unprecedented rate, raising fears of a global surge in sea levels, glaciologists warned on Monday.

The findings confound predictions made just four years ago, by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that Antarctica would not contribute significantly to sea level rise in the 21st century. In one area, around the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica, glaciers are dumping more than 110 cubic kilometres of ice into the ocean each year, Eric Rignot of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, US, told a meeting at the Royal Society in London, UK. This loss, which is increasing each year, is many times faster than the ice can be replaced by snowfall inland, he says.

The impending ice disaster centres on Pine Island Bay on the shores of the Amundsen Sea, where the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers enter the sea. These glaciers, like many in West Antarctica, are perched on underwater mountains. The meeting heard that warmer ocean waters are circulating beneath the ice and melting their bases at a rate of 50 metres a year.

As this happens, the glaciers float clear of the submarine mountains and slide into the ocean. According to Andy Shepherd at the University of Cambridge, UK, they are discharging ice three times faster than a decade ago.

These glaciers are being dubbed the “plug hole” of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. If the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers disappeared, they alone could raise sea levels worldwide by more than a metre, says Rignot.

Antarctic glaciers are much bigger than those in warmer climates. They are up to a kilometre thick, tens of kilometres wide and hundreds of kilometres long. Connected to inland ice tributaries, they drain the continent’s ice caps, which are the largest stores of frozen water on the planet.

In many places, the glaciologists reported that the recent acceleration in glacier flows has been triggered by the break-up of a series of floating ice shelves at the continent’s edge. These shelves acted like a cork in a bottle, holding back the glaciers.

After the Larsen B ice shelf – a 3000 square kilometre floating slab of ice – broke up over three days in 2002, glaciers behind it afterwards accelerated eight-fold. “The ice mass balance of Antarctica is controlled by these ice shelves,” says Rignot, who believes Antarctica is now responsible for the majority of global sea level rise.

Researchers also warned that the larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet is not as stable as thought. A recent study suggested that it might be accumulating snow in its high interior – possibly supporting the IPCC’s predictions – but it warned that little was known about events on the coast (Science, vol 308, p 1898).

Rignot revealed that several major coastal glaciers in the east are now known to be accelerating, like their counterparts to the west."

[Acknowlegdement: Infoplease.com(for most of the disasters I've listed), NewScientist, MSNBC health]

Comments: I''m sure many of us have watched "The Day after Tomorrow" and many have also said it will never happen because it is not possible. But looking at all these events around the world in just a year. The chance of being possible could have increased, maybe except for the ice-age part in the movie as I myself dun thk it's possible too. Global warming, a possible bird flu pandemic and terrorist attacks are now major concerns of everyone in the world now. And we definitely have to deal with each carefully.

Global Warming: In the movie, one of the characters mentioned "strongest hurricane, strongest typhoons, hailstorms, they all fit" Hasn't it all happened alreadi? Hurrican Katrina, typhoon Talim, extreme weather and the melting of glaciers; they are all because of Global Warming, because we did not take care of the environment well enough and it's either us or our children or grandchildren who is going to suffer and try to salvage everything. Is there anything? anything at all we can do? except to run, evacuate, save everything we could, help each other and to sacrifice sometimes. As for Earthquakes, sometimes there's just nothing we can do as well, except to wade them out and survive.

Terrorist attacks: The World is an uncertain place.Everyday is unpredictable. You could be on a train on the way to work/school and suddenly your whole world blanks out from a bomb which exploded on the train that you are taking. But no one really knows. How would you know that the guy who looks innocent, carrying a school bag, is actually carrying a bomb? It depends a lot on fate. If you are fated, you are just fated. However, You can't refuse to go anywhere because you are afraid of the world out there either. Even staying at home is unsafe too. Who knows, someone might plant a bomb in the lift when you are going downstairs. I'll be praying for World Peace.

Bird Flu: Bird flu used to be transmitted bird-bird but now there are cases of bird-human and soon, it will be human-human. The chance of it mutating is high and after mutation, its new strain is gonna be fatal and will cause a pandemic as predicted by many scientists, etc. The U.N. health agency has warned countries to prepare for a death toll of up to 7.4 million. 7.4 million; that's about 1/3 of the global population (I thk so, my math is not realli that good) and this is definitely a big figure.

If this generation of Homo Sapiens were to be extinct, will those who survive, evolve to be a new species of beings?(natural selection selects those who are able to survive and when they survive, they sometimes evolve because they grow stronger and are different). If all of our teachnology gets destructed with nothing except trees and stuff then its like starting all over again. We would have to start from the beginning, from scrap.I am currently still writing something about evolution, I dunnoe if I am going to blog it or not(most likely I'm not) but I did make some comments that early Homo Sapiens care for the Earth a lot, they let nature be nature but as we grow and change, we began to use its resources without replenishing it and even harming it with our waste. Are we able to reverse all these so that we may still survive? No one knows.

sorry

haven't blog for quite long as I'm having exams so I'll post after my exams finishes..around oct 4th maybe..

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 .

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.

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.

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.