What Is Aortic Valve Replacement Surgery?

Robin Williams: The comedian is scheduled to have aortic valve replacement surgery.
FLICKR/CHARLES HAYNES

From Scientific American:

Comedian and actor Robin Williams, 57, last week postponed a planned 80-city tour of his one-man show, "Weapons of Self-Destruction" to undergo aortic valve replacement surgery. His announcement came just days after 83-year-old former first lady Barbara Bush left a Houston hospital after undergoing the same procedure.

The aortic valve is what keeps oxygenated blood flowing from our heart into the aorta, the largest artery in our body, and prevents it from washing back into the heart with each pump cycle. But as we age, the tricuspid (three-leafed) valve tends harden and thicken, forcing the heart work harder to keep blood flowing smoothly. Open-heart surgery is typically required to replace the valve if it thickens so much that it causes aortic stenosis, an abnormal narrowing and stiffening of the valve.

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Sea Levels To Surge 'At Least A Metre' By Century End

Sunset is seen over the sea. Months before make-or-break climate negotiations, a conclave of scientists warned Tuesday that the impact of global warming was accelerating beyond a forecast made by UN experts two years ago. (AFP/File/Adek Berry)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Months before make-or-break climate negotiations, a conclave of scientists warned Tuesday that the impact of global warming was accelerating beyond a forecast made by UN experts two years ago.

Sea levels this century may rise several times higher than predictions made in 2007 that form the scientific foundation for policymakers today, the meeting heard.

In March 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that global warming, if unchecked, would lead to a devastating amalgam of floods, drought, disease and extreme weather by the century end.

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Phoenix Mars Lander Found Liquid Water, Some Scientists Think

This color image was acquired by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager on the 20th day of the mission, or Sol 19 (June 13, 2008), after the May 25, 2008, landing. This image shows one trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks" after two digs. White material, possibly ice, is located only at the upper portion of the trench. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

From Science Daily:

During its more than five-month stint on Mars last year, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander found evidence that liquid water existed at the spacecraft's landing site, some Phoenix team members say.

Water is key to all forms of life as we know it and the discovery of liquid water would suggest a greater opportunity for biology on the red planet.

The new but controversial conclusion comes from observations of a set of "little globules" attached to struts on the lander's legs that were photographed by Phoenix's robotic arm camera over the course of the mission, as first reported at Spaceflight Now.

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Why Dreams Are So Difficult To Remember: Precise Communication Discovered Across Brain Areas During Sleep

New research points to how memories are formed, transferred, and ultimately stored in the brain--and how that process varies throughout the various stages of sleep. (Credit: iStockphoto/Diane Diederich)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 9, 2009) — By listening in on the chatter between neurons in various parts of the brain, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have taken steps toward fully understanding just how memories are formed, transferred, and ultimately stored in the brain--and how that process varies throughout the various stages of sleep.

Their findings may someday even help scientists understand why dreams are so difficult to remember.

Scientists have long known that memories are formed in the brain's hippocampus, but are stored elsewhere--most likely in the neocortex, the outer layer of the brain. Transferring memories from one part of the brain to the other requires changing the strength of the connections between neurons and is thought to depend on the precise timing of the firing of brain cells.

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Hot Weather 'Can Trigger A Migraine'

Many migraine sufferers find that their pain can be triggered
by changes in the weather Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Hot weather can trigger migraines and other debilitating types of head pain, a new study suggests.

Researchers have also found that changes in air pressure can increase the chance of developing a painful headache.

Many migraine sufferers find that their pain can be triggered by changes in the weather, but previously there was little scientific evidence that that was the case.

The study looked at 7,054 patients who went to their hospital's casualty department complaining of severe head pain over a period of seven years.

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Not So Sweet: Over-Consumption Of Sugar Linked To Aging

Three-dimensional model of a glucose molecule.
(Credit: Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 9, 2009) — We know that lifespan can be extended in animals by restricting calories such as sugar intake. Now, according to a study published in the journal PLoS Genetics, Université de Montréal scientists have discovered that it's not sugar itself that is important in this process but the ability of cells to sense its presence.

Aging is a complex phenomenon and the mechanisms underlying aging are yet to be explained. What researchers do know is that there is a clear relationship between aging and calorie intake. For example, mice fed with half the calories they usually eat can live 40 percent longer. How does this work?

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The 300-Year History of Internet Dating

From Live Science:

Almost everyone these days can name a couple they know that met on the Internet, though it wasn't so long ago that skimming the online personals for love was considered strange, even a bit desperate.

Taboo or not, the practice certainly isn't new. Personal ads have a history going back at least 300 years, according to a new book on the subject entitled "Classified: The Secret History of the Personal Column" (Random House Books, 2009).

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Man Who Co-Discovered HIV Virus Accused Of Stealing Rights To Aids Cure

From The Telegraph:

A Nobel prize-winning French researcher who co-discovered the virus that leads to Aids but sparked controversy after his colleague said he had claimed all the glory, has now been accused of stealing the rights to a revolutionary invention that may provide a cure to the disease, it emerged yesterday.

Prof Luc Montagnier is locked in a legal battle with inventor Bruno Robert over the intellectual property rights to a technique whereby the Aids virus and other serious ailments, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, can be pinpointed by their electromagnetic "signatures".

The hope is that once identified, the diseases can be blocked or neutralised with an opposite electromagnetic signal.

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The Secret Of Long Life? It's All Down To How Fast You React

Live long and prosper - if you have a speedy response time

From The Daily Mail:

People's reaction times are a far better indicator of their chances of living a long life than their blood pressure, exercise levels or weight, researchers have discovered.

Men and women with the most sluggish response times are more than twice as likely to die prematurely.

Edinburgh University and the Medical Research Council in Glasgow tracked 7,414 people nationwide over 20 years in a study which appears to confirm the adage that a healthy mind means a healthy body.

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How Scientifically Accurate Is Watchmen?

WHY SO BLUE? Dr. Manhattan's color and (some of) his powers can be explained by quantum mechanics, thanks to your (self-proclaimed) "friendly neighborhood physics professor," Jim Kakalios. WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT

From Scientific American:

The anticipated film Watchmen, based on the 1980s DC Comics 12-part comic book series (later adapted as a graphic novel), hits theaters tomorrow. Die-hard fans of the original publication may fret over its faithfulness to the series, but studio execs also worried about their movie's faithfulness to science. To set their minds at ease, they placed a call to Jim Kakalios, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota.

Kakalios, 50, began advising the film's makers in the summer of 2007 on everything from the quantum mechanics of Dr. Manhattan (one of the superheroes of the story) down to the details in the laboratories. "They wanted to know what was around the corner at the end of the long corridor, even if the audience wasn't going to see it," he says.

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Could Technology Repair Earth’s Climate?

Color dark-field micrograph of green algae, which absorbs carbon dioxide.
(RoLand Birke/NEWSCOM)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

EarthTalk: Scientists study ways to pull greenhouse gases out of our atmosphere, but the idea is controversial.

Q: What are some of the leading proposed technological fixes for staving off global warming, and how feasible are they?
– James Harris, Columbus, Ohio

A: While most of the world fixates on how to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere, scientists and engineers worldwide are working on various geoengineering technologies – many of which are highly theoretical – to mitigate global warming and its effects. Many scientists oppose using new technology to fix problems created by old technology, but others view it as a quick and relatively inexpensive way to help solve our most vexing environmental problem.

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Boston Globe Asks: Where’s The Global Warming?

From Watts Up With That?

For those too young to remember (such as Jim Hansen’s coal protesters in Washington this past week), Clara Peller, pictured above, started a national catchphrase with “Where’s the beef?” that even made it into the 1984 presidential campaign. Today, the Boston Globe asks: where’s the global warming?

Watch the original commercial that started the catchphrase. It seems applicable today. - Anthony

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Geeks May Be Chic, But Negative Nerd Stereotype Still Exists, Professor Says

Lori Kendall, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, says despite the increased popularity of geek culture and the ubiquity of computers, the geek’s close cousin, the nerd, still suffers from a negative stereotype in popular culture. Kendall holds a familiar tool of the nerd: a slide rule. (Credit: Photo by L. Brian Stauffer)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2009) — Despite the increased popularity of geek culture – movies based on comic books, videogames, virtual worlds – and the ubiquity of computers, the geek’s close cousin, the nerd, still suffers from a negative stereotype in popular culture.

This may help explain why women and minorities are increasingly shying away from careers in information technology, says Lori Kendall, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The popular stereotype of the nerd as the sartorially challenged, anti-social white male hasn’t faded from our collective cultural consciousness, and is more prevalent than ever as a stock character in television shows, movies and advertisements.

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NASA: Wednesday Night Shuttle Launch Is Official

The STS-119 Shuttle Discovery crew members gather on Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in January 2009 before beginning their emergency egress training. After four launch delays, NASA says it now believes the space shuttle Discovery could be sent on a mission to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) by mid-March. (AFP/NASA-HO)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – It's official: NASA has finally settled on a Wednesday night launch for space shuttle Discovery.

The flight to the international space station was originally set for mid-February, but was delayed four times because of concern over critical shuttle valves. On Friday, senior NASA managers meeting at Kennedy Space Center put the valve issue to rest for Discovery and cleared the shuttle for flight.

Seven astronauts will ride Discovery into orbit, taking with them one final set of solar wings for the space station.

Launch director Mike Leinbach said spirits are much higher now than they were when the flight kept being put off.

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Bad Marriages Strain Women's Hearts, But Not Men's

From Live Science:

An unhappy marriage can weigh heavily on anyone's heart, but apparently women may suffer the most ill health effects related to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Women who felt depressed in strained marriages faced a boosted risk of hypertension, waistline obesity, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low levels of "good cholesterol" HDL – five factors of metabolic syndrome. Male spouses who felt similarly down in the dumps did not see similar risks.

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My Comment: As a male .... I disagree.

Drug Blocks Two Of World's Deadliest Emerging Viruses

Image: Hendra virus has a growing family tree. Pic courtesy CSIRO.

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2009) — Two highly lethal viruses that have emerged in recent outbreaks are susceptible to chloroquine, an established drug used to prevent and treat malaria, according to a new basic science study by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in the Journal of Virology.*

The two henipaviruses that are the subject of the study -- Hendra Virus (HeV) and Nipah Virus (NiV) -- emerged during the 1990s in Australia and Southeast Asia. Harbored by fruit bats, they cause potentially fatal encephalitis and respiratory disease in humans, with a devastating 75 percent fatality rate. More recently, NiV outbreaks in Bangladesh involving human-to-human transmission have focused attention on NiV as a global health concern.

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Horse Domestication Traced To Ancient Central Asian Culture

A horse's tooth found at an ancient settlement in Kazakhstan displays parallel bands of wear (at left) typically produced by bits held in the mouths of bridled animals, researchers say. Credit: Science/AAAS

From Science News:

Bone and chemical analyses indicate horses were harnessed and even milked more than 5,000 years ago in central Asia

Central Asia’s vast grasslands hosted a prehistoric revolution in transportation, communication and warfare, thanks to the humble horse. Remains from Kazakhstan’s more than 5,000-year-old Botai culture have yielded the earliest direct evidence for domestication of these versatile beasts, scientists report.

The Botai people were hunter-gatherers who lived in large settlements for months or years. Their culture lasted from 5,600 to 5,100 years ago. Researchers have long suspected that the Botai rode domesticated horses while hunting for wild horses to eat but did not domesticate other animals or cultivate crops.

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Daylight Saving Time Facts

Electric Time Company employee Walter Rodriguez cleans the face of an 84-inch (213-centimeter) Wegman clock at the firm's plant in Medfield, Massachusetts, on October 30, 2008. For most people in the United States, daylight saving time begins in the wee hours of March 8, 2009, with clocks turned forward one hour. Photograph courtesy AP Photo/Elise Amendola

From The National Geographic:

Daylight saving time in most of the United States starts this year in the early hours of March 8. The "spring forward" marks the second time the country has observed the switch in March rather than April since changes to the system were adopted in 2007.

Contrary to popular belief, no federal rule mandates that states or territories observe daylight saving time.

Most U.S. residents set their clocks one hour forward in spring and one hour back in fall. But people in Hawaii and most of Arizona—along with the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands—will do nothing. Those locales never deviate from standard time within their particular time zones.

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The World's Hardest-Working Telescope

Dinoj Surendran, Microsoft Research, and Mark Subbarao, Adler
Planetarium/KICP/University of Chicago

From Discover:

By precisely mapping a volume of space 5 billion light-years in diameter, the Sloan telescope is answering some of the universe's biggest questions.

Located 9,200 feet above sea level, atop the Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope cannot match the incredibly sharp vision of the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits above Earth’s blurring atmosphere. And, at a modest 2.5 meters (8 feet) across, the Sloan telescope’s main mirror cannot see the incredibly dim objects that the 10-meter (33-foot) Keck telescopes in Hawaii can. What the Sloan telescope does have in spades is a voracious appetite for sky—an appetite that is producing some of the most amazing discoveries in astronomy.

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'Vampire' Discovered In Mass Grave

To stop the "vampires" supposedly chewing shrouds and spreading disease, grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of plague victims (Image: Matteo Borrini)

From New Scientist:

A SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents.

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth (see right) while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice (see second image here).

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires" which, rather than drinking people's blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

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