Weekly Science Headlines

[fomenter]

http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2009/01/climbing_catfish_found_named.php Climbing catfish!

a fish with legs, fun for all creationists

[Vene]

Kai, you're gonna love this one:
Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life

[Kai]

Kai, you're gonna love this one:
Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life

yeah yeah yeah! As you get closer and closer to LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor), the 'tree' becomes a mess of gene exchange between species.

the tree (or better yet, bush) analogy works for the apomorphic Eukaryota, but for Archaea, Bacteria, and the basal common ancestors you really can't resolve any sort of tree like structure, and as the article says this is because of things like horizontal gene transfer.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;284/5423/2124 This article has some awesome clarification of all this stuff.

This.



Compared with this.

[Vene]

Yeah, but creotards and IDiots are still going to take it completely out of context.

[Kai]

Yeah, but creotards and IDiots are still going to take it completely out of context.

Fuck those worthless bags of shit. Let them have bloodletting and leeches.

Kai,

Has absolutely no sympathy for purposefully ignorant fucks right now.

[Vene]

  I approve of this attitude.

[Vene]

I'm bored, so it's cancer time.

Cancer-causing gene discovery suggests new therapies

When the protein myc is broken it can cause cancer.  For a while research has focused on it's effect on transcription, but researchers at the University of California, San Fransisco have shown that it can effect the final stages of protein synthesis.  This may allow for new methods for treating cancer, or more accurately, using old methods to treat cancer.

[Kai]

January 29, 2009



Peanut Product Recall Grows in Salmonella Scare
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON--One of the largest food contamination scares in the nation's history grew far larger on Wednesday as a Georgia peanut plant that federal regulators said knowingly shipped contaminated food recalled even more products.

Already, more than 400 consumer products, including Jenny Craig nutritional bars and Keebler Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers, have been recalled after eight people died and more than 500 people in 43 states, half of them children, were sickened by salmonella poisoning.

On Wednesday, the Peanut Corporation of America, whose plant in Blakely, Ga., is the source of the contamination, expanded its recall from all products made since July to all those made since Jan. 1, 2007. The company supplied some of the largest food makers in the nation.

http://snipr.com/axzoc



Are Doctors Minimizing Side Effects of Statins?
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

Doctors who prescribe an increasingly popular family of drugs to prevent strokes and heart attacks may be downplaying the wide range of side effects, said a UCSD researcher who helped analyze nearly 900 studies of cholesterol-lowering statins.

Physicians who fail to recognize those complications--willfully or through ignorance--could put patients at risk of developing more serious health problems, according to the review, published yesterday by the American Journal of Cardiovascular Drugs.

Memory loss, insomnia, numbness in the fingers and toes, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, vision impairment and several dozen other conditions that surfaced in the studies are rarely blamed on statins when they occur outside clinical trials, the report said. Muscle and liver damage are the best-known side effects. But even then, too many doctors dismiss muscle soreness, pain and weakness as symptoms linked to other factors such as aging, the review concluded.

http://snipr.com/axzqh



Feb. 17 Digital TV Conversion Is Still on After House Vote
from the Seattle Times

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)--Bucking the Obama administration, House Republicans on Wednesday defeated a bill to postpone the upcoming transition from analog to digital television broadcasting to June 12--leaving the current Feb. 17 deadline intact for now.

The 258-168 vote failed to clear the two-thirds threshold needed for passage. It's a victory for the GOP members, who warn that postponing the transition would confuse consumers.

The House Republicans say a delay also would burden wireless companies and public safety agencies waiting for the spectrum that will be vacated by the switchover, and create added costs for television stations that would have to continue broadcasting both analog and digital signals for four more months.

http://snipr.com/axzsk



Birth of Octuplets Rattles Fertility Experts
from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

Even as the birth of octuplets at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center drew attention and applause from around the country, questions arose Tuesday about whether the mother's doctors did enough to prevent such a risky pregnancy.

The chances that the eight babies born Monday were conceived naturally are infinitesimal, infertility specialists and doctors in maternal-fetal medicine say. Today's reproductive experts have the tools and the know-how to avoid such high-risk pregnancies--and often try desperately to do so.

"When we see something like this in the general fertility world, it gives us the heebie-jeebies," said Michael Tucker, a clinical embryologist in Atlanta and a leading researcher in infertility treatment. Tucker added that in his opinion, "if a medical practitioner had anything to do with it, there's some degree of inappropriate medical therapy there."

http://snipr.com/axzui



One Concussion Enough: Sports Study
from the Toronto Star

A single head blow during their playing days can leave athletes with significant physical and mental problems three decades after they've hung up their equipment, a new Canadian study says.

In the longest-term look ever at concussions in sports, University of Montreal researchers showed that athletes who had suffered even one minor bell ringing on the ice or football field had measurable brain and body reflex impairments 30 years later.

"You don't need to be knocked out or lose consciousness. A ding is enough to make these brain changes," said senior study author Maryse Lassonde, a University of Montreal neuropsychologist. "If you see stars, that's enough ... and we can see the effects many years later," said Lassonde, who has been neuropsychologist for the Montreal Canadiens for 11 years. The research was published online Tuesday by the journal Brain.

http://snipr.com/axzvu



Primate Dialects Recorded in South America--A First
from National Geographic News

The accents and dialects that add so much variety--and sometimes confusion--to everyday life are not unique to humans, and they may be more common in primates than previously thought.

Researchers have found the first evidence for regional vocal differences in a South American primate, the pygmy marmoset. Marmoset groups in Ecuador were recorded using unique vocalizations when communicating over distances up to 64 feet.

"The variations could be linked to habitat, with different pitches and durations being useful in different densities of forest," said lead researcher Stella de la Torre, an ecologist at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. However, de la Torre suggests, it is also possible that the differences are the result of social interactions.

http://snipr.com/axzxi



Kidney Donors Have a Normal Life Span, Study Finds
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Potential kidney donors can stop worrying about the long-term effects such a donation might have on their health and longevity.

The first long-term study of kidney donors has found that people who give kidneys to others not only have a normal life span, they also have fewer kidney problems than the general population--perhaps because they are healthier to begin with.

"We've suspected all along that kidney donation is a safe practice, but there has never been a long-term study with large numbers of patients in the United States," said Dr. Hassan N. Ibrahim of the University of Minnesota Medical School, who led the study. The report published today in the New England Journal of Medicine analyzed the outcome for nearly 3,700 donors who were studied for as long as 40 years.

http://snipr.com/axzzf



Spent Nuclear Fuel: Deadly Trash Heap or Renewable Energy Source?
from Scientific American

... In 1987 Congress passed legislation that required the Department of Energy (DoE) to take possession of and properly store the spent fuel from the nation's 104 nuclear reactors by the then far-off date of February 1998. Now 11 years behind schedule, the DoE's primary response--to bury it deep within Yucca Mountain--is no closer to being a permanent solution.

The Energy Department last June finally applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) ... for a license to build the repository at Yucca. But taxpayers still spend roughly $1 billion a year in fines paid by the federal government to utilities to compensate them for the delay.

All told, the nuclear reactors in the U.S. produce more than 2,000 metric tons of radioactive waste a year, according to the DoE--and most of it ends up sitting on-site because there is nowhere else to put it. ... In 1972 General Electric Co. closed a building in Morris, Ill., that would have presented another alternative solution to the problem of nuclear waste: reprocessing.

http://snipr.com/ay026



Six Biggest Mysteries of Our Solar System
from New Scientist

Once upon a time, 4.6 billion years ago, something was brewing in an unremarkable backwater of the Milky Way. The ragbag of stuff that suffuses the inconsequential, in-between bits of all galaxies--hydrogen and helium gas with just a sprinkling of solid dust--had begun to condense and form molecules. Unable to resist its own weight, part of this newly formed molecular cloud collapsed in on itself. In the ensuing heat and confusion, a star was born--our sun.

We don't know exactly what kick-started this process. Perhaps, with pleasing symmetry, it was the shock wave from the explosive death throes of a nearby star. It was not, at any rate, a particularly unusual event. It had happened countless times since the Milky Way itself came into existence about 13 billion years ago, and in our telescopes we can see it still going on in distant parts of our galaxy today. As stars go, the sun is nothing out of the ordinary.

And yet, as far as we know, it is unique. From a thin disc of stuff left over from its birth, eight planets formed, trapped in orbit by its gravity. One of those planets settled into a peculiarly tranquil relationship with its star and its fellow planets. Eventually, creatures emerged on it that began to wonder how their neighbourhood came to be as it is--and could formulate six enduring mysteries of our familiar, and yet deeply mysterious, solar system.

http://snipr.com/ay03v



New Science Could Help Solve Climate Crisis
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

LONDON (Reuters)--A new science that seeks to fight climate change using methods like giant space mirrors might not work on its own, but when combined with cuts in greenhouse gases it may help reverse global warming, a research report said.

In the report published on Wednesday, researchers at Britain's University of East Anglia assessed the climate cooling potential of "geoengineering" schemes that also include pumping aerosol into the atmosphere and fertilizing the oceans with nutrients.

"We found that some geoengineering options could usefully complement mitigation, and together they could cool the climate, but geoengineering alone cannot solve the climate problem," said Professor Tim Lenton, the report's lead author. Geoengineering involves large-scale manipulation of the environment in an attempt to combat the potentially devastating effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels.

http://snipr.com/ay069



Been a while, hasn't it? Truth is, I get these from my adviser, and what with everything going on with him right now, he hasn't really had the time to pay attention I think.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well, that concussion thing is mildly alarming, as I've had perhaps three or four.

[Elder Iptuous]

Anyone see this one?
'An extinct animal has been brought back to life for the first time after being cloned from frozen tissue.'
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?action=post;topic=17231.270;num_replies=278
Died shortly after birth due to lung defects, but still significant, no?
next up..... Raptors!

[Kai]

I don't think that this is the link you are talking about....:/

[Kai]

http://whyfiles.org/shorties/276locust/

Legs Touching: Why locusts swarm.

srsly.

[Template]

Anyone see this one?
'An extinct animal has been brought back to life for the first time after being cloned from frozen tissue.'
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?action=post;topic=17231.270;num_replies=278
Died shortly after birth due to lung defects, but still significant, no?
next up..... Raptors!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4409958/Extinct-ibex-is-resurrected-by-cloning.html

Got that for ya

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I WANT TO TOUCH MY LEGS TO YOUR LEGS

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

There are delicious mammoths waiting to be brought back from extinction.