Weekly Science Headlines

[LMNO]

Missing Link Dinosaur Discovered
from BBC News Online

Researchers have discovered a fossil skeleton that appears to link the earliest dinosaurs with the large plant-eating sauropods. This could help to bridge an evolutionary gap between the two-legged common ancestors of dinosaurs and the four-legged giants, such as diplodocus.

The remarkably complete skeleton shows that the creature was bipedal but occasionally walked on all four legs. The team reports its discovery in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.

"What we have is a big, short-footed, barrel-chested, long-necked, small-headed dinosaur," explained Adam Yates, the scientist from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg who led the research.

http://snipr.com/t78kw








Vatican Looks to Heavens for Signs of Alien Life
from the Tampa Tribune

VATICAN CITY (Associated Press) -- E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

"The questions of life's origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration," said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology--the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.

http://snipr.com/t78no

I'd suggest the Vatican make a few pronouncements on Terrestrial life, first.

[Kai]

Yeah, the winnowing back into previous opinions about evolution is a recent and stupid development.

[Iason Ouabache]

Headlines, The Science - November 12, 2009

Missing Link Dinosaur Discovered
from BBC News Online

Researchers have discovered a fossil skeleton that appears to link the earliest dinosaurs with the large plant-eating sauropods. This could help to bridge an evolutionary gap between the two-legged common ancestors of dinosaurs and the four-legged giants, such as diplodocus.

The remarkably complete skeleton shows that the creature was bipedal but occasionally walked on all four legs. The team reports its discovery in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.

"What we have is a big, short-footed, barrel-chested, long-necked, small-headed dinosaur," explained Adam Yates, the scientist from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg who led the research.

http://snipr.com/t78kw

I SWEAR TO GOD I AM GOING TO GUT THE NEXT JOURNALIST THAT MISUSES THE PHRASE "MISSING LINK"!!!1!!   

[Iason Ouabache]

Yeah, the winnowing back into previous opinions about evolution is a recent and stupid development.

They are doing better than many of the Protestant denominations.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hf92aHEwYT87J1XPP4JrIusKBT-AD9BSTO1G1

Earlier this year, the Vatican also sponsored a conference on evolution to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species."

The event snubbed proponents of alternative theories, like creationism and intelligent design, which see a higher being rather than the undirected process of natural selection behind the evolution of species.

[Kai]

Headlines, The Science - November 12, 2009

Missing Link Dinosaur Discovered
from BBC News Online

Researchers have discovered a fossil skeleton that appears to link the earliest dinosaurs with the large plant-eating sauropods. This could help to bridge an evolutionary gap between the two-legged common ancestors of dinosaurs and the four-legged giants, such as diplodocus.

The remarkably complete skeleton shows that the creature was bipedal but occasionally walked on all four legs. The team reports its discovery in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.

"What we have is a big, short-footed, barrel-chested, long-necked, small-headed dinosaur," explained Adam Yates, the scientist from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg who led the research.

http://snipr.com/t78kw

I SWEAR TO GOD I AM GOING TO GUT THE NEXT JOURNALIST THAT MISUSES THE PHRASE "MISSING LINK"!!!1!!   

They're ALL intermediate species! 

[Thurnez Isa]

A week ago they finally found water on the moon... sure you could several articles

I for one can't wait to taste some of that delicious moon water

[The Good Reverend Roger]

A week ago they finally found water on the moon... sure you could several articles

I for one can't wait to taste some of that delicious moon water

It will be bottled, one day.  Trust me.

[Kai]

A week ago they finally found water on the moon... sure you could several articles

I for one can't wait to taste some of that delicious moon water

It will be bottled, one day.  Trust me.

It will be bottled, labeled, and distributed by Pepsi Co to gas stations and drugstores.

[Jasper]

To be totally realistic about it, unless we make a space elevator, there won't be much shipping between Earth and other places.

[Reginald Ret]

since we are talking shipping from the moon to the earth all we need is a space elevatorish contraption on the moon.
factoring the moon's low gravity a strong slingshot would do.
one rocket with a robotminer and a big rubber band.
is not that expensive that sales wont cover the expenses.

[Kai]

November 19, 2009






Large Hadron Collider Ready to Restart
from the Telegraph (UK)

Scientists have repaired the world's largest atom smasher and plan by this weekend to restart the fault-ridden Large Hadron Collider. The 'Big Bang' machine was launched with great fanfare last year before its spectacular failure from a bad electrical connection.

This time the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is taking a cautious approach with the super-sophisticated equipment, said James Gillies, a spokesman. It cost about $10 billion, with contributions from many governments and universities around the world.

Scientists expect to send beams of protons around the 17-mile circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, but they have refrained from setting a date. That stands in stark contrast with the hype of the September 10, 2008, launch, when the startup was televised globally.

http://snipr.com/tbf12




Oceans Said to Absorb Fewer Emissions
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The Earth's oceans, which have absorbed carbon dioxide from fuel emissions since the dawn of the industrial era, have recently grown less efficient at sopping it up, new research suggests.

Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels began soaring in the 1950s, and oceans largely kept up, scientists say. But the growth in the intake rate has slowed since the 1980s, and markedly so since 2000, the authors of a study write in a report in Thursday's issue of Nature.

The research suggests that the seas cannot indefinitely be considered a reliable "carbon sink" as humans generate heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. The slowdown in the rise of the absorption rate resulted from a gradual change in the oceans' chemistry, the study found.

http://snipr.com/tbec8




'Temporary' Heart Pumps Could Become Permanent
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Mechanical pumps originally designed to supplement the pumping action of a failing heart and keep the patient alive until a transplant could be found have taken a major step toward becoming a permanent treatment -- a development that could expand their use to tens of thousands of patients in the United States alone.

Results presented Tuesday at the Orlando, Fla., meeting of the American Heart Assn. showed that a new type of device more than doubled the two-year survival rate among heart failure patients. The key was the development of a smaller, quieter, more reliable pump that is less likely to break down and need replacement, an outcome that requires the patient to undergo a second major surgery.

The pumps are called left ventricular assist devices, or LVADs. They are not meant to replace the entire heart, only to assist in the pumping of the left ventricle, which pushes blood out through the aorta to the body.

http://snipr.com/tbecz




In Battle to Save Hemlocks, Hope Rests on a Beetle
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

Armed with a Wiffle Ball bat and a canvas sheet, entomologist David Mausel is scouring forests across New England for an ally. That ally - a small jet-black beetle - feasts on the even tinier but voracious hemlock woolly adelgid, which is ravaging the region's hemlocks. The adelgids latch onto twigs, feeding on the trees until their needles yellow and fall and the trees die.

Mausel has been in cahoots with these beetles since 2007, when he began collecting a small army of them in Idaho and brought them back East to release at specific study sites.

Now, he is beginning to revisit those plots to determine whether the beetles have begun to establish themselves - and to begin to answer the bigger question of whether they are reducing the adelgid population and saving hemlocks. Mausel, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, calls it "finding a beetle in a haystack."

http://snipr.com/tbedd




A Glut of Mercury Raises Fears
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Over the past decade, environmental groups have pressured U.S. chlorine plants to stop spewing mercury, the toxic heavy metal that settles in water and makes its way into the food chain by contaminating fish and shellfish.

In the past four years, five such plants converted to mercury-free technology, cutting the industry's mercury emissions by 88 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But this success has created a new environmental problem. Hundreds of tons of mercury acquired for use by the plants may be on the global market, where it could ultimately be used in small-scale unregulated "artisanal" gold mining. Such activity might create environmental and health hazards in developing countries.

http://snipr.com/tbedn




Bristlecone's Growth May Reflect Global Warming
from the San Francisco Chronicle

Bristlecone pines, those ancient and iconic trees on many of California's mountaintops, reflect the impact of global warming in a curious way - not by dying off like coral reefs in the world's oceans, but by growing faster than at any time in the past thousands of years, scientists have discovered.

Anyone who has hiked and climbed high in the White Mountains along the Nevada border has seen and marveled at the bristlecones - some still verdant after countless centuries, but many wind-battered, twisted and nearly naked with stunted trunks lying almost flat against the barren ground - but still alive.

Now these stubborn trees that cling to life at elevations above 12,000 feet are a clear symbol of climate change, according to seven years of field research by Matthew Salzer of the University of Arizona and his colleagues.

http://snipr.com/tbedy




Tiny Chip Could Diagnose Disease
from BBC News Online

Researchers have demonstrated a tiny chip based on silicon that could be used to diagnose dozens of diseases. A tiny drop of blood is drawn through the chip, where disease markers are caught and show up under light.

The device uses the tendency of a fluid to travel through small channels under its own force, instead of using pumps. The design is simpler, requires less blood be taken, and works more quickly than existing "lab on a chip" designs, the team report in Lab on a Chip. It has a flexible design so that it could be used for a wide range of diagnostics.

Much research in recent years has focused on the chemical and medical possibilities of so-called microfluidic devices at the heart of lab-on-a-chip designs. These microfluidics contain between dozens and thousands of tiny channels through which fluids can flow, and as micro-manufacturing methods have advanced, so has the potential complexity of microfluidics.

http://snipr.com/tbee7




"Shangri-La" Caves Yield Treasures, Skeletons
from National Geographic News

A treasure trove of Tibetan art and manuscripts uncovered in "sky high" Himalayan caves could be linked to the storybook paradise of Shangri-La, says the team that made the discovery. The 15th-century religious texts and wall paintings were found in caves carved into sheer cliffs in the ancient kingdom of Mustang--today part of Nepal.

Few have been able to explore the mysterious caves, since Upper Mustang is a restricted area of Nepal that was long closed to outsiders. Today only a thousand foreigners a year are allowed into the region.

In 2007 a team co-led by U.S. researcher and Himalaya expert Broughton Coburn and veteran mountaineer Pete Athans scaled the crumbling cliffs on a mission to explore the human-made caves.

http://snipr.com/tbeej




Surprising Gamma-Ray Source
from Science News

Some 30,000 light-years from Earth, a tiny gravitational monster is tearing material from a companion star, blasting X-rays into space and sporadically hurling out jets of radio-wave-emitting blobs at close to the speed of light.

Known as Cygnus X-3, this mercurial star system -- thought to be either a small black hole or a neutron star orbiting an ordinary partner -- has fascinated astronomers for more than four decades with its surprisingly bright X-ray emissions.

Now, two teams of researchers have made the first definitive detection of high-energy gamma rays, the most powerful type of electromagnetic radiation, from this small but nearby stellar system. The findings may provide a new window on how this beast accelerates charged particles to enormous energies ....

http://snipr.com/tbefj




10 Bioscapes Photo Contest Winners Revealed
from Scientific American

We are approaching the millennial anniversary of the first meaningful written description of how lenses and light could be used to magnify objects. It was in 1011 that Arab scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) began writing the Book of Optics, which described the properties of a magnifying glass, principles that later led to the invention of the microscope.

The entrants in the 2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition provide fitting tribute to nearly 1,000 years of making the invisible visible.

Optical microscopy, energized by generation after generation of technological advance, continues to furnish dazzling proof that beyond the resolution of the human eye resides a sweepingly large world of small things, both around and within us.

http://snipr.com/tbefw

[Kai]

November 20, 2009




Guidelines Push Back Age for Cervical Cancer Tests
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

New guidelines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first Pap test until age 21, and be screened less often than recommended in the past.

The advice, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is meant to decrease unnecessary testing and potentially harmful treatment, particularly in teenagers and young women. The group's previous guidelines had recommended yearly testing for young women, starting within three years of their first sexual intercourse, but no later than age 21.

Arriving on the heels of hotly disputed guidelines calling for less use of mammography, the new recommendations might seem like part of a larger plan to slash cancer screening for women. But the timing was coincidental, said Dr. Cheryl B. Iglesia, the chairwoman of a panel in the obstetricians' group that developed the Pap smear guidelines.

http://snipr.com/tbw46




Five "Oddball" Crocs Discovered, Including Dinosaur-Eater
from National Geographic News

A "saber-toothed cat in armor" and a pancake-shaped predator are among the strange crocodile cousins whose bones have been found beneath the windswept dunes of the Sahara, archaeologists say.

The diverse menagerie of reptiles ruled Gondwana--a landmass that later broke up into the southern continents--about a hundred million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.

"There's an entire croc world brewing in Africa that we really had only an inkling about before," said Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and leader of a new study. "We knew about SuperCroc, the titan of all crocs, but we didn't have quite an idea of what existed in the shadows of the Cretaceous...."

http://snipr.com/tbw4n




Maize Genome Mapped
from Nature News

Plant biologists have something special to be thankful for this US Thanksgiving Day. The genome of maize (corn)--a staple crop first introduced by Native Americans to the European settlers centuries ago--has finally been sequenced.

The genetic secrets of maize, one of the world's most widely grown grains, should accelerate efforts to develop improved crop varieties to meet the world's growing hunger for food, animal feed and fuel.

The genome "is really a tremendous resource," says John Doebley, a maize geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the project. "It gives us a tool for mapping genes that we didn't have before."

http://snipr.com/tbw4t




IBM Reveals the Biggest Artificial Brain of All Time
from Popular Mechanics

San Jose, Calif. -- Scientists at IBM's Almaden research center have built the biggest artificial brain ever--a cell-by-cell simulation of the human visual cortex: 1.6 billion virtual neurons connected by 9 trillion synapses. This computer simulation, as large as a cat's brain, blows away the previous record--a simulated rat's brain with 55 million neurons--built by the same team two years ago.

"This is a Hubble Telescope of the mind, a linear accelerator of the brain," says Dharmendra Modha, the Almaden computer scientist who will announce the feat at the Supercomputing 2009 conference in Portland, Ore. In other words, in the realm of computer science, the team's undertaking is grand.

... Modha hopes the simulation, assembled using neuroscience data from rats, cats, monkeys and humans, will help scientists better understand how the brain works--and, in particular, how the cortical microcolumn manages to perform such a wide range of tasks.

http://snipr.com/tbw4z




Scientists Zero in on Reason for Mammoths' Demise
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

About 15,000 years ago, North America was home to an astonishing number of large plant-eating mammals--giant sloths, mastodons, mammoths. A thousand years later, they were all gone, wiped from the face of the Earth with sudden finality.

Scientists have floated a variety of possible explanations for this mass die-off, from climate change to a cataclysmic asteroid impact. But now a team of American researchers may be closing in on the answer, hidden in the thousands-year-old muck of an Indiana lake.

... The research focused on the amounts of the fungus Sporormiella present in the sediments, according to Jacquelyn Gill, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a co-author of the paper appearing in today's issue of the journal Science.

http://snipr.com/tbw5h




The Secrets Within Cosmic Dust
from Smithsonian Magazine

At the threshold of a sterile lab at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, I pull on a white clean-room suit, a surgical cap and mask, booties and latex gloves. My host, a mineralogist named Mike Zolensky, swabs my digital voice recorder with alcohol to remove flakes of skin and pocket lint. He doesn't want any detritus to contaminate the precious dust in the room.

Once inside, Zolensky retrieves a palm-size glass box from a cabinet. The box holds a rectangular chunk, less than two inches across, of eerily translucent material. I lean in and squint at it but can't quite focus on anything. Zolensky turns off the lights and hands me a laser pointer. The red beam reveals thin streaks in the chunk that start at its surface and penetrate fractions of an inch, like the traces of tiny bullets. "Those are the comet impacts," he says. "It's beautiful to look at."

The tracks were made during the world's first--and only--attempt to chase a comet and bring a bit of it home. The NASA mission, called Stardust, sent a spacecraft to Comet Wild 2 (pronounced "VILT-too") on a seven-year journey that ended in 2006. It brought back the only material--other than moon rocks--taken directly from an extraterrestrial body.

http://snipr.com/tbw5s




Why Web Widgets Will Invade Your TV
from the Christian Science Monitor

The Internet revolution may finally be televised. Innocuous little software applications, popularly known as "widgets," may turn out to be the back door to your TV screen that Internet companies have been waiting for.

For more than a decade, businesses have been trying to make the Internet available on the largest screen in most homes. In 1996, Time Warner offered WebTV, which failed to find an audience and folded. Even today, projects like Hewlett Packard's MediaSmart (2006) and Apple TV (2007) have yet to win over large numbers of viewers, hampered by complicated setups or limited programming choices.

Widgets promise to bring the perks of the Internet to TV screens, using a familiar remote control instead of a computer mouse. All indications are that widgets are going to "move very quickly to a great many of the TVs being sold in the next few years--if not all of them," says Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst at Parks Associates, a market research firm in Dallas that specializes in emerging consumer technologies.

http://snipr.com/tbw69




"Study Ethics, NIH!"
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

The government agency tasked with funding crucial life science research needs to focus more attention on ethical quandaries and nefarious business practices that often obscure the path from discovery to public benefit, says a strongly worded letter to Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), signed by more than 100 biomedical researchers, journal editors, and health care administrators in the US.

"...we ask that you acknowledge the research gap on the effect of conflicts of interest and commercial influence on medical decision making," the letter reads, "and set in motion a process that leads to recognition of the importance of funding studies on research ethics, the beliefs and behaviors of researchers and clinicians, and the effects of industry-academic relationships on the generation and dissemination of medical knowledge."

"It would be great to raise [the NIH's] awareness, and maybe have them actually do an RFA [request for applications] on this," said Adriane Fugh-Berman, director of PharmedOut, a group seeking to educate physicians on how the pharmaceutical industry influences prescribing practices, which spearheaded the writing and dissemination of the letter.

http://snipr.com/tbw74




Scuba Diving to the Depths of Human History
from New Scientist

Kitted out with the latest scuba gear, Garry Momber peers through the murky water to the seabed below. It's dark--Momber is 11 metres below the water's surface and the black peat of the seabed absorbs what little light reaches the bottom. Then the tide turns, and as clearer water flows in from the open seas, the decaying remains of an ancient forest emerge from the gloom.

Working quickly, he records details of the exposed material before the strengthening current forces him away from the site. This is all in a day's work for Momber, who is director of the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology in Southampton, UK.

His job is to search for clues to a prehistoric world lost beneath the waves in the channel that separates the Isle of Wight from the south coast of England .... Momber's work is just part of a growing trend for searching the deep for clues to our distant past.

http://snipr.com/tbw7g




Mystery of HIV Carriers Who Don't Contract AIDS
from Scientific American

More than half a million people in the U.S. have died from HIV infection, and more than a million currently live with the virus, but a relative handful of people infected with HIV never get treatment for it and never get sick from it. The immune systems of this small population--perhaps 50,000 Americans--somehow control the virus for long periods of time.

Of course, there is typically a bell curve of response to any disease, but figuring out how these people control the virus is one of the most vexing mysteries of the AIDS pandemic. Solving it might unlock new ways to prevent and treat HIV infection, and now several research teams are going after the answer.

... "Long-term nonprogressors" is a category of persons whose disease progresses less rapidly than average. Researchers originally used the term broadly but now they have been able to tease out two subsets of patients within a hierarchy...

http://snipr.com/tbw8q

[Kai]

 November 18, 2009




Breaching a Barrier to Fight Brain Cancer
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Dr. Howard Riina threaded a slender tube through a maze of arteries in Dennis Sugrue's brain, watching X-ray images on a monitor to track his progress. At the site where a previous operation had removed a malignant tumor, he infused a drug called mannitol and unleashed a flood of the cancer drug Avastin.

... It was an experiment. Mr. Sugrue, 50, who works for a hedge fund and has two teenage children, was in a study for people with glioblastoma--the same type of brain tumor that killed Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts in August--and was only the second person ever to have Avastin sprayed directly into his brain.

Getting drugs into the brain has always been a major challenge in treating tumors and other neurological diseases, because the blood-brain barrier, a natural defense system, keeps many drugs out.

http://snipr.com/taltj




Uninsured Trauma Patients Are Much More Likely to Die
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Patients who lack health insurance are more likely to die from car accidents and other traumatic injuries than people who belong to a health plan--even though emergency rooms are required to care for all comers regardless of ability to pay, according to a study published today.

An analysis of 687,091 patients who visited trauma centers nationwide from 2002 to 2006 found that the odds of dying from injuries were almost twice as high for the uninsured than for patients with private insurance, researchers reported in Archives of Surgery.

Trauma physicians said they were surprised by the findings, even though a slew of studies had previously documented the ill effects of going without health coverage.

http://snipr.com/taluv




Birth of New Species Witnessed by Scientists
from Wired

On one of the Galapagos islands whose finches shaped the theories of a young Charles Darwin, biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two.

In many ways, the split followed predictable patterns, requiring a hybrid newcomer who'd already taken baby steps down a new evolutionary path. But playing an unexpected part was chance, and the newcomer singing his own special song.

This miniature evolutionary saga is described in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It's authored by Peter and Rosemary Grant, a husband-and-wife team who have spent much of the last 36 years studying a group of bird species known collectively as Darwin's finches.

http://snipr.com/talvp




Ketamine Drug Use 'Harms Memory'
from BBC News Online

Frequent use of ketamine--a drug popular with clubbers--is being linked with memory problems, researchers say. The University College London team carried out a range of memory and psychological tests on 120 people.

They found frequent users performed poorly on skills such as recalling names, conversations and patterns. Previous studies said the drug might cause kidney and bladder damage. The London team and charity Drugscope said users should be aware of the risks.

Ketamine--or Special K as it has been dubbed--acts as a stimulant and induces hallucinations. It has been increasing in popularity, particularly as an alternative to ecstasy among clubbers, as the price has fallen over recent years.

http://snipr.com/talx6




Could Jupiter Moon Harbor Fish-Size Life?
from National Geographic News

In the oceans of a moon hundreds of millions of miles from the sun, something fishy may be alive--right now. Below its icy crust Jupiter's moon Europa is believed to host a global ocean up to a hundred miles deep, with no land to speak of at the surface.

And the extraterrestrial ocean is currently being fed more than a hundred times more oxygen than previous models had suggested, according to provocative new research.

That amount of oxygen would be enough to support more than just microscopic life-forms: At least three million tons of fishlike creatures could theoretically live and breathe on Europa, said study author Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

http://snipr.com/talxv




Family Versus Science
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

The pressures of family obligations and child-rearing are pushing young female researchers out of science, according to a new study released this month by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank based in Washington, DC.

The report provides a contrast to an earlier report by the National Academies of Sciences that focused on dissecting the subtle biases against women in science.

CAP, together with the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law surveyed some 25,000 University of California postdocs and graduate students for the report. They found that married women with children were 35% less likely to get a tenure-track position than married men with children and 33% less likely to do so than single women without children.

http://snipr.com/talyw




4 Percent of U.S. Children Have Food Allergies
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The number of children who have food allergies is not only increasing, it now encompasses 4% of all kids in the United States, according to an analysis of four large, national surveys published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

The study--the first to make a broad estimate about the prevalence of food allergies among U.S. children--supports previous studies suggesting that allergy rates are rising rapidly, for reasons that are unclear.

Government researchers found that self-reported food allergies increased 18% between 1997 and 2007. Healthcare visits for food allergies in children nearly tripled between two time periods studied: 1992 through 1997 and 2003 through 2006. In the later period, U.S. children had an average of 317,000 visits to healthcare settings per year for food allergies.

http://snipr.com/talzm




Vaccines on Horizon for AIDS, Alzheimer's, Herpes
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

MARIETTA, Pa. (Associated Press) -- Malaria. Tuberculosis. Alzheimer's disease. AIDS. Pandemic flu. Genital herpes. Urinary tract infections. Grass allergies. Traveler's diarrhea. You name it, the pharmaceutical industry is working on a vaccine to prevent it.

Many could be on the market in five years or less. Contrast that with five years ago, when so many companies had abandoned the vaccine business that half the U.S. supply of flu shots was lost because of contamination at one of the two manufacturers left.

Vaccines are no longer a sleepy, low-profit niche in a booming drug industry. Today, they're starting to give ailing pharmaceutical makers a shot in the arm.

http://snipr.com/tam04




Ancients 'Had Heart Disease Too'
from BBC News Online

Hardening of the arteries has been found in Egyptian mummies--suggesting that the risk factors for heart disease may be ancient, researchers say. A team of US and Egyptian scientists carried out medical scans on 22 mummies from Cairo's Museum of Antiquities.

They found evidence of hardened arteries in three of them and possible heart disease in three more. All the mummies were of high socio-economic status and would have had a rich diet.

Details of the study by the University of California, the Mid America Heart Institute, Wisconsin Heart Hospital and Al Azhar Medical School in Cairo appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

http://snipr.com/tam0p




A Silent Killer in Bangladesh Wells
from ScienceNOW Daily News

Every day, millions of people in Bangladesh drink poisoned water. Wells all over the country tap into shallow aquifers with high concentrations of arsenic. Now researchers report that they've figured out the cause of this contamination.

About 30 years ago, international aid agencies and the government of Bangladesh started installing wells throughout the country. For good reason: The ponds and rivers where people used to get their water also contained sewage--and deadly pathogens.

But in the mid-1990s, other health problems started appearing. Those who drink the well water year after year develop lumps on their hands and feet and greatly increase their risk of cancer, especially lung cancer; epidemiologists say that drinking arsenic-contaminated well water is as bad as smoking.

http://snipr.com/tam2s

[Iason Ouabache]

Large Hadron Collider Ready to Restart
from the Telegraph (UK)

Scientists have repaired the world's largest atom smasher and plan by this weekend to restart the fault-ridden Large Hadron Collider. The 'Big Bang' machine was launched with great fanfare last year before its spectacular failure from a bad electrical connection.

This time the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is taking a cautious approach with the super-sophisticated equipment, said James Gillies, a spokesman. It cost about $10 billion, with contributions from many governments and universities around the world.

Scientists expect to send beams of protons around the 17-mile circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, but they have refrained from setting a date. That stands in stark contrast with the hype of the September 10, 2008, launch, when the startup was televised globally.

http://snipr.com/tbf12

I can't wait for them to start reporting their results.

Guidelines Push Back Age for Cervical Cancer Tests
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

New guidelines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first Pap test until age 21, and be screened less often than recommended in the past.

The advice, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is meant to decrease unnecessary testing and potentially harmful treatment, particularly in teenagers and young women. The group's previous guidelines had recommended yearly testing for young women, starting within three years of their first sexual intercourse, but no later than age 21.

Arriving on the heels of hotly disputed guidelines calling for less use of mammography, the new recommendations might seem like part of a larger plan to slash cancer screening for women. But the timing was coincidental, said Dr. Cheryl B. Iglesia, the chairwoman of a panel in the obstetricians' group that developed the Pap smear guidelines.

http://snipr.com/tbw46

The breast cancer guideline story sure was a touchy topic. It definitely brought out all of the crazies. Who knew breast cancer could be such a touchy topic?  Anyways, Orac and Rebbecca Watson both did very good jobs on covering it:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/11/really_rethinking_breast_cancer_screenin.php
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/11/obamas_makin_death_panels_for_your_mama.php
http://skepchick.org/blog/2009/11/no-ladies-the-new-breast-cancer-guidelines-arent-patronizing/

If you don't want to read all of those links the short version is: Screening for breast cancer in asymptomatic women in their 40s is more harmful than helpful because of false positives and unnecessary biopsies. No, this isn't patronizing or misogenistic. No, this has absolutely nothing with Obama. Yes, these guidelines are similar to what Europe and Canada has been recommending for years.

[Thurnez Isa]

That's what you think.
Truth is Obama's Muslim charm actually causes breast cancer.