Weekly Science Headlines

[Kai]

Thank you. I was on a roll last night and as much as I hate writing, it just seemed to come out Joycean style. This is the sort of thing I think about in the late hours of the night. Note I wrote this 1 am eastern time. Afterwards I spent an hour just looking at the drawings in Wiggins' book. If you want it for Verriwung it needs some cleaning up because I refer to the above posts.

@ Zero: I don't think endosymbiont is the right word for what you are considering. Endosymbiont is a biological term that describes an organism that lives within  another organism but there is either benefit for both parties or neither is harmed (as opposed to parasitic relationships). For example, the algae (phycobiont) portion of lichens (the other portion being the fungus, the mycobiont) is an endosymbiont.

What I think you are refering to is some type of dependent system, but its social in nature so I don't think biological terms would work. In biology, a symbiontic relationship would be termed 'obligate'.


The bactera in our intestines, the gut fauna in genera, is another mutualist relationship like the above. I'm not really sure what you are asking I guess. Symbiotic relationships are pretty much confined to biology by definition.

[Kai]

December 8, 2008

Lack of Sleep Has Genetic Link with Type 2 Diabetes
from Science News

Sleep is a mystery. Although no one knows exactly why, it's required for good health. But now, scientists have found a surprisingly clear connection between sleep and a healthy body: the regulation of sugar levels in the blood.

The new studies, all online December 7 in Nature Genetics, describe the first genetic link between sleep and type 2 diabetes, a disease marked by high blood sugar levels.

... The investigations by three international teams of researchers suggest the trends of rising diabetes and falling sleep are linked via a protein that senses the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. The research places bodily rhythms, including the clock that sets human sleep cycles, squarely in the blood sugar business.

http://snipurl.com/7nigh


Large Hadron Collider to Get Helium Leak Warning System
from the Times (London)

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is to have an early-warning system installed to guard against a repeat of the catastrophic fault that caused the world's largest atom-smasher to break down nine days after it was switched on in September.

CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, is to fit the accelerator with 100 miles (160km) of cables and 2,000 crates of electronic monitors, so that engineers will be alerted to potentially hazardous abnormalities before they can cause serious damage.

The £4 billion "big bang machine," which was switched on to global acclaim on September 10, was shut down after a huge helium leak caused extensive damage to many of its magnets.

http://snipurl.com/7nhy9 


Religious 'Shun Nanotechnology'
from BBC News Online

Attitudes to nanotechnology may be determined by religious and cultural beliefs, suggest researchers writing in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

They say religious people tend to view nanotechnology in a negative light. The researchers compared attitudes in Europe and the US and looked at religious and cultural backgrounds.

They say the findings have implications for scientists and politicians making policy decisions to regulate the use of nanotechnology. The researchers compared attitudes to nanotechnology in 12 European countries and the US.

http://snipurl.com/7nhv5


Study: Poverty Dramatically Affects Children's Brains
from USA Today

A new study finds that certain brain functions of some low-income 9- and 10-year-olds pale in comparison with those of wealthy children and that the difference is almost equivalent to the damage from a stroke.

"It is a similar pattern to what's seen in patients with strokes that have led to lesions in their prefrontal cortex," which controls higher-order thinking and problem solving, says lead researcher Mark Kishiyama, a cognitive psychologist at the University of California-Berkeley. "It suggests that in these kids, prefrontal function is reduced or disrupted in some way."

The study adds to a growing body of evidence that shows how poverty afflicts children's brains. Researchers have long pointed to the ravages of malnutrition, stress, illiteracy and toxic environments in low-income children's lives. Research has shown that the neural systems of poor children develop differently from those of middle-class children ...

http://snipurl.com/7nhrg


Pre-Columbian Tribes Had BBQs, Parties on Grave Sites
from National Geographic News

Some pre-Hispanic cultures in South America had elaborate celebrations at their cemeteries, complete with feasting and drinking grounds much like modern barbecue pits, according to a new archaeological study.

Excavations of 12th- and 13th-century burial mounds in the highlands of Brazil and Argentina revealed numerous earthen ovens. The finds suggest that the graves were also sites of regular festivals held to commemorate the death of the community's chief.

"After they buried an important person on the burial grounds, they feasted on meat that had been steamed in the earth ovens and drank maize beer," said archaeologist and study co-author José Iriarte.

http://snipurl.com/7nimi 


Termites Show Complexity of Biofuel Work
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

Researchers have scooped soil near the Quabbin Reservoir, visited a Russian volcano, and scoured the bottom of the sea looking for microbes that hold the key to new biofuels. Now, they are investigating deeper into the belly of termites.

The otherwise dreaded insect is a model bug bioreactor, adept at the difficult task of breaking down wood and turning it into fuel. Learning the secret of that skill could open the door to creating a new class of plant-based fuels to offset the nation's reliance on petroleum products. What scientists have learned so far, however, suggests it won't be easy to duplicate nature.

Over the past year, several studies elucidating termite innards have appeared in mainstream science journals. And last month, Japanese researchers added their own report on just how termites digest wood. A key, they said, can be found within termites' bodies like nested Russian dolls—a bacteria that lives within a microorganism that lives within the termite gut.

http://snipurl.com/7nhng


Self-Injury on the Rise Among Young People
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The revelation was shocking enough. That a growing number of teenagers and young adults deliberately embed needles, paper clips or staples in their skin may have seemed unthinkable before an Ohio radiologist presented disturbing proof at a medical meeting Wednesday.

Even more disturbing than his X-rays and accompanying report, however, could be the size and pervasiveness of the trend from which it derives—self-injury. Cutting, burning and biting one's body is a habit increasingly taken up by young people who find themselves simply unable to cope with stress. Embedding appears to represent a more extreme form of the disorder.

"We always saw a little bit of this, but it was in people already identified as having a psychiatric disorder," says Janis Whitlock, a prominent researcher on self-injury at Cornell University. "What doesn't seem to make much sense is why we're seeing it so much in seemingly healthy kids."

http://snipurl.com/7nhjd


Brain of 'Most Studied' Amnesiac Will Be Evaluated
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

Henry Gustav Molaison, who died Sunday at the age of 82, will be remembered as the man who could not remember.

Better known by his initials, H.M., Molaison was unable to form new memories. Every face, every event was experienced anew. His amnesia—the unforeseen consequence of brain surgery—made him "the most studied individual in the history of science," said Dr. James Brewer, a neurologist at University of California San Diego.

Over the course of half a century, H.M. (initials were used to protect his privacy) was the object of hundreds of studies, some of which fundamentally changed science's understanding of brain structure, memory function and neurological disease. Even after his death, that work will continue.

http://snipurl.com/7nib7 


What Happens When Silicon Can Shrink No More?
from New Scientist

In 1965, a year before the first pocket calculator was invented, a young physicist from Silicon Valley, Gordon Moore, made a daring prediction. He claimed that the number of components squeezed onto a single silicon chip would double about every two years. And double, and double and continue to double. If he had been right, the best silicon chips today would contain an unbelievable 100 million single components.

The true figure is more like 2 billion: Moore had underestimated how fast the shrinking trend would take off. Since the mid-1970s, though, his "law" has been a bankable certainty, influencing economic, social and scientific developments in ways that are hard to overstate.

... Can the trend go on? Reports of the imminent death of Moore's law have been around almost as long as the law itself, and have always proved exaggerated. But now there is concrete cause for concern. The smallest features on today's state-of-the-art chips are just a few nanometres across. At the current rate of shrinking, they will reach the size of a few silicon atoms by about 2020.

http://snipurl.com/7nip6 


In Defense of Teasing
from the New York Times Magazine (Registration Required)

... Today teasing has been all but banished from the lives of many children. In recent years, high-profile school shootings and teenage suicides have inspired a wave of "zero tolerance" movements in our schools.

... And we are phasing out teasing in many other corners of social life as well. Sexual-harassment courses advise work colleagues not to tease or joke. Marriage counselors encourage direct criticism over playful provocation. No-taunting rules have even arisen in the N.B.A. and the N.F.L. to discourage "trash talking."

The reason teasing is viewed as inherently damaging is that it is too often confused with bullying. But bullying is something different; it's aggression, pure and simple. ... By contrast, teasing is a mode of play, no doubt with a sharp edge, in which we provoke to negotiate life's ambiguities and conflicts. And it is essential to making us fully human.

http://snipurl.com/7nhfk

[Iason Ouabache]

Religious 'Shun Nanotechnology'
from BBC News Online

Attitudes to nanotechnology may be determined by religious and cultural beliefs, suggest researchers writing in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

They say religious people tend to view nanotechnology in a negative light. The researchers compared attitudes in Europe and the US and looked at religious and cultural backgrounds.

They say the findings have implications for scientists and politicians making policy decisions to regulate the use of nanotechnology. The researchers compared attitudes to nanotechnology in 12 European countries and the US.

http://snipurl.com/7nhv5

  Do you ever get the feeling that shortly after the discovery of fire that there was a religious person there telling the whole tribe about how evil this new-fangled fire thing was and how it would completely destroy all of humanity?

[Triple Zero]

Thank you. I was on a roll last night and as much as I hate writing, it just seemed to come out Joycean style. This is the sort of thing I think about in the late hours of the night. Note I wrote this 1 am eastern time. Afterwards I spent an hour just looking at the drawings in Wiggins' book. If you want it for Verriwung it needs some cleaning up because I refer to the above posts.

@ Zero: I don't think endosymbiont is the right word for what you are considering. Endosymbiont is a biological term that describes an organism that lives within  another organism but there is either benefit for both parties or neither is harmed (as opposed to parasitic relationships). For example, the algae (phycobiont) portion of lichens (the other portion being the fungus, the mycobiont) is an endosymbiont.

What I think you are refering to is some type of dependent system, but its social in nature so I don't think biological terms would work. In biology, a symbiontic relationship would be termed 'obligate'.


The bactera in our intestines, the gut fauna in genera, is another mutualist relationship like the above. I'm not really sure what you are asking I guess. Symbiotic relationships are pretty much confined to biology by definition.

ok cause the question wasn't so much about terminology, as it was about the future of the human race.

i can see corporations or nations or some super-human structure become sort of organisms. where, in the long run, human individuality (or freedom, or happiness, something) becomes second to the survival of this organism. it's already happening, if you listen to our rants about the Machine.
i see some kind of parallel with the kind of symbiosis present with intestinal bacteria, or mitochondria, or multicellular organisms for that matter. it seems to be a natural way of things, creating larger structures out of smaller elements. emergence. i'm not sure if i'd like to see humans end up that way, but i wonder if our self-conscious thought, being able to realize if it would happen, could make us be different?
it's a bit far-fetched, i know, but you know me, i wonder about these things at night ...

[Kai]

Ants.

[Triple Zero]

yeah, so do you want to be an ant?

(heh, "waking life" reference)

ETA: do you want your far-offspring to be an ant?

[Kai]

yeah, so do you want to be an ant?

(heh, "waking life" reference)

ETA: do you want your far-offspring to be an ant?

No. Then again, it would take a drastic change in human physiology to support such perfect communal behavior. Ants, bees, wasps, termites, and other social insects do it with pheromones that essentially control the workers.  I guess if you could  find a way to absolutely control people it would happen, but I don't think humans would enter by choice, not all of them anyway.

[Golden Applesauce]

Religious 'Shun Nanotechnology'
from BBC News Online

Attitudes to nanotechnology may be determined by religious and cultural beliefs, suggest researchers writing in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

They say religious people tend to view nanotechnology in a negative light. The researchers compared attitudes in Europe and the US and looked at religious and cultural backgrounds.

They say the findings have implications for scientists and politicians making policy decisions to regulate the use of nanotechnology. The researchers compared attitudes to nanotechnology in 12 European countries and the US.

http://snipurl.com/7nhv5

  Do you ever get the feeling that shortly after the discovery of fire that there was a religious person there telling the whole tribe about how evil this new-fangled fire thing was and how it would completely destroy all of humanity?

Well, they were right, now weren't they?

[fomenter]

bad source, big jump to reach conclusion in title, interesting topic
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3660141/Men-under-threat-from-gender-bending-chemicals.html

By Urmee Khan
Last Updated: 8:48AM GMT 08 Dec 2008

Scientists are warning that manmade pollutants which have escaped into the environment mimic the female sex hormone oestrogen.

The males of species including fish, amphibians, birds, and reptiles have been feminised by exposure to sex hormone disrupting chemicals and have been found to be abnormally making egg yolk protein, normally made by females, according to the report by Chem Trust, environmental group.

The authors claim that the chemicals found in food packaging, cleaning products, plastics, sewage and paint cause genital deformities, reduce sperm count and "feminise" males.

Fish have been specifically affected by the gender changing chemicals. In one study, half the male fish in British lowland rivers had signs of being feminised - as chemicals which block the male hormone androgen had been released- leading to the development of eggs in their testes.

Although the report only looked at the impact of gender bending chemicals on the animal world, its authors say the findings have disturbing implications for human health.

[Kai]

December 10, 2008



Mystery Pyramid Built by Newfound Ancient Culture?
from National Geographic News

Several stone sculptures recently found in central Mexico point to a previously unknown culture that likely built a mysterious pyramid in the region, archaeologists say.

Archaeologists first found the objects about 15 years ago in the valley of Tulancingo, a major canyon that drops off into Mexico's Gulf Coast.

Most of the 41 artifacts "do not fit into any of the known cultures of the Valley of Tulancingo, or the highlands of central Mexico," said Carlos Hernández, an archaeologist at Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History in the central state of Hidalgo.

http://snipurl.com/7p5ex


Vitamins 'Do Not Cut Cancer Risk'
from BBC News Online

Taking vitamin C or E does not reduce the risk of prostate cancers—or other forms of the disease, two large US studies suggest.

Both trials were set up following some evidence that taking supplements might have a positive effect.

But one study of 35,533 men, and a second of 15,000 doctors, found no evidence that cancer rates were any lower in those taking supplements. Both studies feature in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

http://snipurl.com/7qis6 


Crashless Cars: Making Driving Safer
from Scientific American

... Within a few decades, experts say, many advanced cars will be able to avoid most crashes. At some point, in fact, they will drive themselves.

The main motivations for these innovations are clear enough. Some six million motor vehicle traffic accidents occurred in the U.S. in 2006, according to the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

... In the meantime, despite continuing calls for greater investment in mass transit, American roads are only growing more crowded. Similar circumstances prevail in the rest of the world, particularly in developing nations, where auto ownership is skyrocketing. Accident statistics indicate that driver error is the main cause of safety problems on the road ...

http://snipurl.com/7p5my


Malaria Vaccine Closer to Reality
from Science News

Firing new shots in the malaria war, a vaccine still in the testing stage is now a step closer to becoming a public health reality.

Two new reports, from Kenya and Tanzania, show that the vaccine halves a child's risk of getting malaria, setting the stage for an even larger trial that researchers hope will provide the definitive evidence needed for approval of what would be the first vaccine for the disease. The new studies appear in the Dec. 11 New England Journal of Medicine.

"This is the only malaria vaccine to have reached this level of testing. It's remarkable," says William Collins, a malaria researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "I think this justifies the usefulness of moving on to the more large-scale trial."

http://snipurl.com/7p5p7 


Researchers Put a Microscope on Food Allergies
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

CHICAGO—For 5-year-old Sean Batson, even a grandmother's kiss is to be feared. "My mother was wearing lipstick, and when she kissed Sean's cheek, it broke out in hives," said his mother, Jennifer Batson.

... The daily struggle of living with Sean's allergies to nearly unavoidable foods and food products—soy, eggs and milk, traces of which can turn up even in nonfoods like lipstick—prompted Mrs. Batson and her husband, Tim, to participate in a project that scientists are calling the most comprehensive food allergy study to date.

The international study, led by Dr. Xiaobin Wang and Dr. Jacqueline A. Pongracic of Children's Memorial Hospital here, is searching for causes of food allergy by looking at hundreds of families in Boston, Chicago and Anhui Province in China.

http://snipurl.com/7p65j


Top 10 Science Stories of 2008
from Time

The magazine presents its selection of the most significant science stories of the year. At the top of the list: Good news! The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—the massive particle accelerator straddling the Swiss-French border—didn't destroy the world! The bad news: The contraption didn't really work either.

In second place: the Phoenix Mars Lander. For all the times robot probes have orbited or landed on Mars, none had ever visited its polar region—where the greatest concentrations of ice and water (and arguably the most evidence of life) are to be found.

Third on the list: Living things don't get a whole lot humbler than a bacterium, with its few hundred thousand genetic base pairs and its stripped-down physical design. Still, you try inventing one. That's what geneticist J. Craig Venter—one of the two men credited with mapping the human genome—managed to do.

http://snipurl.com/7p6qy


Neanderthal Genome Already Giving Up Its Secrets
from New Scientist

Half the Neanderthal genome has been decoded and the rest should be sequenced by year's end, a scientist involved in the project told a human evolution conference last week.

Researchers will roll out a rough draft of the Neanderthal nuclear genome after their sequencers have read every letter in the genome on average once—"1x coverage" in genomics speak.

However, the fragmentary state of the DNA sample—from bones recovered in Czech Republic—means that the first draft will offer only a tantalizing glimpse of the genome to researchers who hope to better understand Neanderthal biology and human evolution. Some 38,000 years of decay has left the DNA in tatters and strewn with contamination from bacteria and human handlers.

http://snipurl.com/7ph1e


International Science Exam Shows Plateau in U.S. Performance
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

U.S. students are doing no better on an international science exam than they were a decade ago, a plateau in performance that leaves educators and policymakers worried about how schools are preparing students to compete in an increasingly global economy.

Results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), released Tuesday, show how fourth- and eighth-graders in the United States measure up to peers in dozens of countries. U.S. students showed gains in math at both grades. But average science performance, although still stronger than in many countries, has stagnated since 1995.

Students in Singapore, Taiwan and Japan outperformed U.S. fourth-graders in science. So did students in the Chinese region of Hong Kong, counted as a separate participant. The U.S. students had an average score of 539 on a 1,000-point scale, higher than peers in 25 countries.

http://snipurl.com/7ph6v


Put All Eggs in One Nest? Birds Factor in Climate, Location
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

For biologists, the question wasn't about priority—as in which came first, the chicken or the egg—but quantity: Why do some bird species lay just one egg per nest, while others produce them by the nestful?

In a novel study published Tuesday in the journal PLoS Biology, researchers say they might have an answer: It's all about prudence, as in not putting all of your eggs in one nest—only a lot more complicated.

Scientists at UCSD, Stanford University and Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany analyzed decades of data on the clutch size (the number of eggs typically laid in a nest) of 5,290 bird species, more than half of all the known bird species in the world.

http://snipurl.com/7phvd


Black Hole Confirmed in Milky Way
from BBC News Online

There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a study has confirmed.

German astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using two telescopes in Chile. The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal.

Black holes are objects whose gravity is so great that nothing—including light—can escape them. According to Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the results suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl forms around grit.

http://snipurl.com/7qijm

[Kai]

December 11, 2008

Survey Documents Popularity of Alternative Treatments
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

More than one-third of U.S. adults and nearly 12 percent of children use alternatives to traditional medicine, according to a large federal survey released today that documents how entrenched acupuncture, herbal remedies and other once-exotic therapies have become.

The survey of more than 32,000 Americans in 2007, which for the first time included children, found that use of yoga, "probiotics," fish oil and other "complementary and alternative" therapies held steady among adults since the last national survey five years earlier, and that such treatments have become part of health care for many youngsters.

... The most commonly used are dietary supplements and herbal products such as echinacea, flax seed oil and ginseng, followed by deep breathing exercises, meditation, chiropractors, massage and yoga.

http://snipurl.com/7quez


Sun's Cycles Can Forecast Floods, Drought?
from National Geographic News

The sun's fluctuations can help predict extreme climatic events on Earth decades ahead of time, new research suggests. Solar cycles are 11-year phases during which the sun's activity ebbs and flows, accompanied by an increase in sunspots on the sun's surface.

The cycles, which are driven by the sun's magnetic turbulence, may influence weather systems on Earth, particularly the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a periodic climatic system associated with floods and droughts mostly in the Southern Hemisphere.

"The sun is the engine of our climate," said lead study author Robert Baker, of the University of New England in Australia. "It's like a vibrating string—its past vibrations can be used to predict future vibrations."

http://snipurl.com/7quws


Did Our Cosmos Exist Before the Big Bang?
from New Scientist

Abhay Ashtekar remembers his reaction the first time he saw the universe bounce. "I was taken aback," he says. He was watching a simulation of the universe rewind towards the big bang.

Mostly the universe behaved as expected, becoming smaller and denser as the galaxies converged. But then, instead of reaching the big bang "singularity," the universe bounced and started expanding again. What on earth was happening?

Ashtekar wanted to be sure of what he was seeing, so he asked his colleagues to sit on the result for six months before publishing it in 2006. And no wonder. The theory that the recycled universe was based on, called loop quantum cosmology (LQC), had managed to illuminate the very birth of the universe—something even Einstein's general theory of relativity fails to do.

http://snipurl.com/7qv2t


The Dirty Side of Clean Coal
from Scientific American

... Coal's benefits are considerable: cheap, plentiful energy that simultaneously injects cash into the poorest regions of the country. Coal holds such power that no U.S. administration—Republican or Democrat—has ever tried to stop mountaintop removal.

The full environmental cost is never tallied. No other energy source emits as much carbon dioxide when burned.

Coal is so cheap—and so plentiful—that experts generally agree global warming will never be contained until industrialized nations find a way to cap those emissions. And before coal burns, it has to be ripped from the ground.

http://snipurl.com/7qvbw


New Window on the High-Energy Universe
from Science News

VANCOUVER, Canada—Curtain up! Light the lights! In its first four months of monitoring the heavens from orbit, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope has unveiled the activity of celestial objects that emit powerful gamma rays—photons that pack 20 million to more than 300 billion times the energy of visible light.

The orbiting observatory features the first detectors in space capable of recording the most energetic of these photons. For now, Fermi's flurry of first findings—which include new discoveries about gamma-ray bursts as well as the energetic radiation emitted by rapidly spinning stellar corpses called pulsars, several never before recorded—poses new puzzles.

But ultimately the discoveries will offer new insight into the origin of these powerful emissions and the activity of some of the most enigmatic objects in the cosmos, says Peter Michelson of Stanford University ...

http://snipurl.com/7qvgg


WHO: Cancer to Be World's Top Killer by 2010
from USA Today

ATLANTA (Associated Press)—Cancer will overtake heart disease as the world's top killer by 2010, part of a trend that should more than double global cancer cases and deaths by 2030, international health experts said in a report released Tuesday.

Rising tobacco use in developing countries is believed to be a huge reason for the shift, particularly in China and India, where 40% of the world's smokers now live.

So is better diagnosing of cancer, along with the downward trend in infectious diseases that used to be the world's leading killers.

http://snipurl.com/7qwud


Water Found in Hot Planet's Orbit
from BBC News Online

Scientists say they have found evidence for water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet 63 light-years from Earth. The "hot Jupiter" planet's surface temperatures exceed 900C.

Writing in the journal Nature the scientists say their discovery may help find planets that can support life.

In a separate study, Nasa say they have found carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the same planet. The planet known as HD 189733b is classed as a hot Jupiter due to its fiery molten centre and heavily gaseous atmosphere, which mimics the atmosphere of Jupiter, the gas giant in our own galaxy.

http://snipurl.com/7qx11


Deal Struck on Forests in Climate Talks
from the Seattle Times

POZNAN, Poland (Associated Press)—Negotiators broke an impasse Wednesday on including forest conservation in a new climate change agreement, guaranteeing a voice for native peoples who live in forests and rewarding India and China for replanting depleted lands.

Environmentalists said the compromise text, agreed in a committee at the U.N. climate talks, was an important step that cleared the way to discuss politically sensitive questions on how countries will be compensated for protecting their woodlands.

Though activists said they were disappointed that four countries, including the United States, deleted any specific reference to the "rights" of indigenous people, the agreement recognizes "the full and effective participation" of local communities. Activists hope the reference will give indigenous people a say in the way forests are managed.

http://snipurl.com/7qxdf


Politics Choke Clean-Air Efforts
from the Philadelphia Inquirer

Death came to Donora, a small steel town in western Pennsylvania, in the form of a black fog. Trapped by unusual weather conditions in October 1948, a blanket of smokestack pollution killed 20 people and sickened thousands. Overwhelmed doctors scurried to fashion oxygen tents out of spare bedsheets.

... It was the nation's most dramatic evidence of the dangers of air pollution, and it spawned a cleanup effort so successful that, today, many people rarely give a thought to the air they breathe.

Yet in June 2005, a panel of scientists appointed by the Environmental Protection Agency determined that the air was still too dirty.

http://snipurl.com/7qy3d 


Cancer-Busting Protein Has Scientists' Attention
from the Detroit Free Press

WASHINGTON—It's a tiny molecule with a nondescript name—p53—but it has an awesome responsibility: preventing more than half of all human cancers. Some scientists call it the "guardian angel," "guardian of the genome" or the "dictator of life and death."

P53 is a protein, a string of 393 chemical units stored in the DNA of most of the body's cells. Normally, p53 works to suppress malignant tumors. When it's missing or mutated, however, it can't carry out its lifesaving mission and lets cancerous cells run amok.

Scientists are developing drugs to repair or restore damaged p53 in mice, but so far none of those drugs is ready to treat human cancers. Almost 50,000 papers about p53 have been published in scientific journals, but its workings are still not fully understood, and it's little known outside the worlds of biology and medicine.

http://snipurl.com/7qyf4

[Vene]

P53 is a protein, a string of 393 chemical units stored in the DNA of most of the body's cells.

There is so much wrong with this sentence that I have no option but to weep.

[Kai]

Yes. Ugh. Proteins are composed of ammino acids and they are not stored in DNA, and if they were they would be stored in ALL cells.

[Kai]

http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2008/12/over_1000_new_species_discover.php (NSFF&S)

Loads of new species from the Mekong River in Southeast Asia. The article talks briefly about something I discussed before, that species new to western science and newly described under the ICZN does not mean that they were previously unknown to people. Its somewhat semantics and somewhat the removal of western culturocentrism.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2008/12/over_1000_new_species_discover.php (NSFF&S)

Loads of new species from the Mekong River in Southeast Asia. The article talks briefly about something I discussed before, that species new to western science and newly described under the ICZN does not mean that they were previously unknown to people. Its somewhat semantics and somewhat the removal of western culturocentrism.

That's something I've found amusing in reading articles in the past... when Western biologists "discover" a new species which they found because the natives of the region described it and told them where to look.