Lethal Build-Up Of Ozone Poses Threat To UK

(Photo from NASA)

From The Guardian:

Scientists call for global measures amid warnings that the gas damages health and the environment

Britain is ignoring the dangers posed by one of the world's worst air pollutants: ozone. Researchers say that levels of the gas - a powerful contributor to global warming and the cause of hundreds of deaths a year from respiratory illnesses - are rising at an alarming rate.

They have also warned that measures to curtail the gas are failing. As a result, ozone-related deaths, of which there are about 1,500 a year in the UK, could rise by 50 per cent over the next decade. Stronger international treaties need to be set up to counter the threat, they insist.

'A lot more interest needs to be taken in ozone - not only as a cause of global warming but as an immediate threat to human health and to the environment,' said Professor Piers Foster of Leeds University, an author of the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 'It could have a significant impact on the planet.'

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Offshore Wind May Power the Future

OFFSHORE WIND: Placing turbines in deep waters offshore could provide a bonanza of power while keeping turbines out of sight--if technical hurdles can be overcome. ©Hans Laubel/istockphoto.com

From Scientific American:

The waters of the Jersey Shore may soon become home to the nation's first deepwater wind turbines. New Jersey officials recently announced the state would help fund an initiative by Garden State Offshore Energy to build a 350-megawatt wind farm 16 miles (26 kilometers) offshore. The state wants by 2020 many more of these parks, at least 3,000 megawatts worth, or about 13 percent of the state's total electricity needs.

"This is probably the first of many ambitious goals to be set by states," says Greg Watson, a senior advisor on clean energy technology to the governor of Massachusetts. "Three thousand megawatts is significant. With that you're able to offset or even prevent fossil fuel plants from being built."

The federal government is about to open up to wind energy development vast swaths of deep ocean waters, and states and wind park developers are vying to be the first to seize the new frontier. Wind parks in these waters can generate more energy than nearshore and onshore sites, they don't ruin seascape views, and they don't interfere as much with other ocean activities.

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VIDEO: Ancient Temples Found In Peru -- National Geographic

The link to the video is HERE.

'Western' Diet Increases Heart Attack Risk Globally

From E! Science News:

The typical Western diet — fried foods, salty snacks and meat — accounts for about 30 percent of heart attack risk across the world, according to a study of dietary patterns in 52 countries reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. Researchers identified three dietary patterns in the world:

* Oriental: higher intake of tofu, soy and other sauces;
* Prudent: higher intake of fruits and vegetables; and
* Western: higher intake of fried foods, salty snacks, eggs and meat.

The Prudent diet was associated with a lower heart attack risk than the Oriental, researchers said.

"The objective of this study was to understand the modifiable risk factors of heart attacks at a global level," said Salim Yusuf, D.Phil., the study's senior author.

Previous studies have reached similar conclusions about the Prudent and Western diet in the United States and Europe. This study broadens those findings and identifies a unique dietary pattern that researchers labeled "Oriental" (because of a higher content of food items typical of an Oriental diet.) The dietary pattern recommended by the American Heart Association is similar to the Prudent diet described in this study.

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Current Mass Extinction Spurs Major Study Of Which Plants To Save

From E! Science News:

The Earth is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of both plants and animals, with nearly 50 percent of all species disappearing, scientists say. Because of the current crisis, biologists at UC Santa Barbara are working day and night to determine which species must be saved. Their international study of grassland ecosystems, with flowering plants, is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The current extinction event is due to human activity, paving the planet, creating pollution, many of the things that we are doing today," said co-author Bradley J. Cardinale, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology (EEMB) at UC Santa Barbara. "The Earth might well lose half of its species in our lifetime. We want to know which ones deserve the highest priority for conservation."

He explained that the last mass extinction near the current level was 65 million years ago, called the Cretaceous Tertiary extinction event, and was probably the result of a meteor hitting the Earth. It is best known for the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, but massive amounts of plant species became extinct at that time as well.

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'Junk' DNA May Have Important Role In Gene Regulation

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 20, 2008) — For about 15 years, scientists have known that certain "junk" DNA -- repetitive DNA segments previously thought to have no function -- could evolve into exons, which are the building blocks for protein-coding genes in higher organisms like animals and plants. Now, a University of Iowa study has found evidence that a significant number of exons created from junk DNA seem to play a role in gene regulation.

The findings, which increase understanding of how humans differ from other animals, including non-human primates, appear Oct. 17 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.

Nearly half of human DNA consists of repetitive DNA, including transposons, which can "transpose" or move around to different positions within the genome. A type of transposon called retrotransposons are transcribed into RNA and then reintegrated into the genomic DNA. The most common form of retrotransposons in the human genome are Alu elements, which have more than one million copies and occupy approximately 10 percent of the human genome.

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The Coming Clean Water Shortage

Photo: This 4-year-old girl in Ghana walks 2 1/2 miles twice each day to carry water for her family.

Thirsty World: Desperate Quest For Water -- CNN

The following is an excerpt from "What Matters," the latest book by "Day in the Life" series creator David Elliot Cohen. For more information, see whatmattersonline.com

Water is the key to life. It is fundamental to all human activities. Water grows the food we eat, generates the energy that supports our modern economies and maintains the ecological services on which we all depend. Yet billions of people worldwide still lack access to the most basic human right: safe, clean, adequate water.

As you would expect, the vast majority of these people are among the poorest in the world, living in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia.

Brent Stirton's images tell many stories if you know how to read them -- from the tragedy brought by lack of safe water or too much water, to the joy and life-changing effects that a new water system can offer.

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Africa Needs Disease Warning Systems

From Cosmos Magazine:

BARCELONA: Africa needs early warning systems to deal with the increased threat of disease spreading from wild animals to humans caused by climate change, health experts say.

Speaking at the International Union for Conservation of Nature congress in Barcelona, Spain, the scientists said that many wildlife pathogens, such as Ebola, may spread as a result of changing temperatures and precipitation caused by climate change

Monitoring patterns

"Building warning systems and undertaking disease surveillance in places like the Congo Basin would be cheaper than building expensive machines to control an outbreak," said William Karesh, head of the Field Veterinary Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

The early warning systems he suggested include monitoring disease patterns in wild animals, and monitoring environmental changes and how these affect the behaviour of wild animals and pathogens.

According to Karesh, these offer both fertile ground for building early warning systems and areas for future research. "Wild animals are more susceptible to new diseases than domesticated animals, and are good indicators of an impending outbreak," he said.

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Hi-Tech Brings Families Together

From the BBC:

Technology is helping families stay in touch like never before, says a report.

Instead of driving people apart, mobile phones and the net are helping them maintain social ties, says the Pew Internet report.

Families are also among the keenest users of technology, the survey of 2,252 Americans revealed.

It found that using the net was often a social activity within families, with 51% of parents saying they browsed the web with their children.

"Some analysts have worried that new technologies hurt family togetherness, but we see that technology allows for new kinds of connectedness built around cell phones and the internet," said Tracy Kennedy of the University of Toronto who helped to write the Networked Families report.

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My Comment: My mom (who is 82) loves her iChat .... specially when her grandkids are online.

Volcanoes May Be Original Womb Of Life

Close view of Stromboli Volcano erupting incandescent molten lava fragments.
Credit: USGS and B. Chouet in December 1969

From Live Science:

Fifty years ago, a chemist named Stanley Miller conducted a famous experiment to investigate how life could have started on Earth.

Recently, scientists re-analyzed his results using modern technology and found a new implication: The original sparks for life on our planet could have come from volcanic eruptions.

The 1950s experiment was designed to test how the ingredients necessary for life could arise.

Miller and his University of Chicago mentor Harold Urey used a system of closed flasks containing water and a gas of simple molecules thought to be common in Earth's early atmosphere. They zapped the gas with an electric spark (representing lightning on ancient Earth), and found that after a couple of weeks the water turned brown. It turned out that amino acids, the complex molecules that make up proteins, had formed from the simple materials in the flasks.

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A New Class of Antibiotics Could Offer Hope Against TB

Indian Tuberculosis (TB) patients stand in a queue for sputum collection at a Tuberculosis Treatment Centre in New Delhi. Manan Vatsyayana / AFP / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Eighty years after the discovery of penicillin, researchers say they are on the verge of developing a new class of antibiotics.

Publishing in the Oct. 17 issue of the journal Cell, scientists at Rutgers University describe a group of antibiotic compounds, first isolated decades ago from naturally occurring antibacterial substances in soil. Among them, researchers say, is a compound called myxopyronin that shows great promise. It has been synthesized in the lab and shown to be safe in animal trials, and although the drug hasn't been tested in humans yet, cell-based experiments suggest that it is potent enough to kill a wide range of stubborn bugs, including drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis and the deadly type of staph known as MRSA.

The Rutgers research reflects a much-needed, if slow, renewal of scientific interest in antibiotics development. The last two decades of the 20th century saw nearly zero progress, and in those years several disease-causing bacteria evolved resistance to commonly used drugs. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 40% of staph infections in the U.S. in 2006 were MRSA — a bug that now kills more Americans a year than AIDS. Today, the first line of treatment against MRSA is vancomycin, a formidable antibiotic that has been around since the 1950s and is otherwise typically considered a drug of last resort. In the developing world, health workers report a proliferation of XDR (extensively drug-resistant) and MDR (multidrug-resistant) tuberculosis, against which the current first-line antibiotics, rifamycins, developed in the 1960s, have also become useless.

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NASA Launches Probe To Study Edge Of Solar System

File picture shows shows an ultraviolet image of the sun in something approaching "true color". NASA on Sunday launched a probe into space on a two-year mission to study the distant edge of the solar system. (AFP/NASA/File/Michael Benson)

From Yahoo News/AP:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – NASA on Sunday launched a probe into orbit high above earth to study the distant edge of the solar system where hot solar winds crash into the cold outer space.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) was launched at 1745 GMT, according to images broadcast live by the US space agency.

The small probe was deployed on a Pegasus rocket which dropped from the bay doors of a Lockheed L-1011 jet flying at 12,000 meters (40,000 feet) over the southern Pacific Ocean near the Marshall Islands.

"The count went really smooth... and everything appears to be going well," NASA assistant launch manager Omar Baez said shortly after the launch.

The IBEX is on a two-year mission to take pictures and chart the mysterious confines of the solar system -- including areas billions of kilometers (miles) from earth.

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Black And White TV Generation Have Monochrome Dreams

From The Telegraph/Science:

Do you dream in black and white? If so, the chances are you are over 55 and were brought up watching a monochrome television set.

New research suggests that the type of television you watched as a child has a profound effect on the colour of your dreams.

While almost all under 25s dream in colour, thousands of over 55s, all of whom were brought up with black and white sets, often dream in monchrome - even now.

The findings suggest that the moment when Dorothy passes out of monochrome Kansas and awakes in Technicolor Oz may have had more significance for our subconscious than we literally ever dreamed of.

Eva Murzyn, a psychology student at Dundee University who carried out the study, said: "It is a fascinating hypothesis.

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The Passenger Jet That Just Missed Colliding With A UFO 22,000ft Above Kent

From Daily Mail:

As the captain of Flight AZ 284 began his descent into Heathrow, he saw something alarming overhead.

Shaped like a missile, the object suddenly veered across the airliner's path causing the pilot to shout 'Look out!' as he attempted to avert a mid-air collision 22,000ft above the Kent countryside.

Travelling at an estimated 120mph, it passed less than 1,000ft from the passenger jet before disappearing from radar screens, leaving the pilot and accident investigators baffled.

Secret documents released for the first time reveal that Ministry of Defence staff accept that an Unidentified Flying Object zooming above Lydd caused the nearmiss.

The incident took place at 7.58pm on April 21, 1991, and was investigated by the Civil Aviation Authority and military experts.

Having ruled out the possibility of it being a missile, weather balloon or space rocket, the MoD was forced to conclude that it was a genuine UFO and close the inquiry.

The unexplained close encounter is one of many recounted in military UFO documents released today by the National Archives.

The Alitalia aircraft was on a routine flight from Milan to Heathrow with 57 people on board when the ten-foot long object, which had no exhaust flame, was spotted by pilot Achille Zaghetti.

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More Problems With Hubble

Hubble Telescope

From Science News:

Hubble’s resurrection is suspended while engineers examine two anomalies
Two anomalies onboard the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, which stopped transmitting data on September 27, caused engineers to suspend re-activation of Hubble’s science equipment. Engineers encountered problems following an intricate maneuver to circumvent a piece of failed hardware. Hubble is currently orbiting Earth in a dormant “safe mode” while the malfunctions are assessed.

In an October 17 teleconference, NASA scientists said that it is too soon to know the details of the failures. “We are in the early stages of going through a mountain of data that has been downloaded,” said Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Systems Management Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., at the teleconference. “This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

These latest anomalies came at a critical time, during the team’s attempt on October 16 to wake up all of Hubble’s science equipment and restore the orbiting telescope to full science capabilities.

The late September failure in Hubble’s science data formatting unit halted all science data communications to Earth. Since then, Hubble has been orbiting Earth silently, performing only basic health and safety functions, with almost all of its science observations suspended.

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Space Expectations

THE MIND OF WERNHER VON BRAUN: In the October 18, 1952, issue of Collier's, von Braun sketched out the 190-foot- (58-meter-) tall "orbit-to-orbit space ship," which he designed to transport people from a space station to lunar orbit.

From Scientific American:

German rocket physicist and astronautics engineer Wernher von Braun played a crucial role in developing the rocket technology, including the Saturn 5 , that put U.S. astronauts on the surface of the moon in 1969. Just 17 years earlier, when spaceflight was little more than a dream, von Braun worked for the U.S. Army building ballistic missiles. It was during this time that the future and first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., would share his vision of manned space exploration. A series of articles published in Collier's magazine in the early 1950s revealed many ideas that later became reality (including space stations, lunar missions and satellites) and some that never got off the ground (a rocket operated by three rhesus monkeys).

Von Braun's sketches for the magazine's illustrations are up for bid by U.K. auctioneers Bonhams Wednesday. The auction house, which expected the lot of 35 drawings and letters to fetch up to $25,000, was pleasantly surprised with the winning bid came in at $132,000.

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Genetic-based Human Diseases Are An Ancient Evolutionary Legacy, Research Suggests

Artistic illustration of a phylostratigraphy.
(Credit: Irena Andreic, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb)

From Space Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2008) — Tomislav Domazet-Lošo and Diethard Tautz from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, have systematically analysed the time of emergence for a large number of genes - genes which can also initiate diseases. Their studies show for the first time that the majority of these genes were already in existence at the origin of the first cells.

The search for further genes, particularly those which are involved in diseases caused by several genetic causes, is thus facilitated. Furthermore, the research results confirm that the basic interconnections are to be found in the function of genes - causing the onset of diseases - can also be found in model organisms (Molecular Biology and Evolution).

The Human Genome Project that deciphered the human genetic code, uncovered thousands of genes that, if mutated, are involved in human genetic diseases. The genomes of many other organisms were deciphered in parallel. This now allows the evolution of these disease associated genes to be systematically studied.

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Monopoly Brings Out the Worst in People

From Live Science:

Last weekend we had some folks over to play Monopoly. There were four adults and three kids, and we all wanted some family fun.

It's always chancy playing board games with good friends because people with dice in their hands, even very nice, mild mannered people, often turn cutthroat.

With this group, it started as the parents set up the board and the kids ran around.

Half the parents, it seemed, wanted to make sure our fiscally innocent children were protected from unscrupulous players. "Let's let the kids win," said one mother.

But the other parents didn’t give a hoot about the kids. "It's their fault if they don't understand economics. Let's take them for all they've got," said one father.

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Men's Reactions Peak At Age 39

From Live Science:

This explains everything.

Scientists asked 72 men, ranging in age from 23 to 80, to tap their index fingers as fast as they could for 10 seconds. The researchers also did brain scans to measure in each subject the amount of myelin — a fatty sheath of insulation that coats nerve axons and allows for signaling bursts in our brains.

Both the tapping speed and the amount of myelin was found to decline "with an accelerating trajectory" after age 39.

Study leader George Bartzokis, professor of psychiatry at UCLA, called the results "pretty striking" and said: "That may well be why, besides achy joints and arthritis, even the fittest athletes retire and all older people move slower than they did when they were younger."

The myelination of brain circuits was known to peak in middle age. Bartzokis and others have long argued that brain aging might be primarily related to the myelin breakdown.

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Could Solar Power Satellites Beam Down Gigawatts of Energy?

Image from NASA

From Treehugger:

How pie-in-the-sky is Ben Bova's space satellite scheme? Mr. Bova, the president emeritus of the National Space Society and a prolific science fiction author, penned a column in last Sunday's Washington Post calling on the next president to build an armada of solar power satellites (SPS) -- basically large accumulations of solar cells -- to help meet a substantial chunk of our energy needs. The idea of building orbiting solar systems in space is nothing new (see my posts about Japan's Space Solar Power Systems and India's space plans); the concept, as described by its creator, aerospace engineer Peter Glaser, would be a satellite in high orbit (where sunshine is always present) that would use microwave transmission to beam solar power to receiving stations on Earth.

The obvious benefit: a continuous 24-hour, 365-day supply of solar energy. Powered by solar energy itself, a single SPS could generate up to 10 gigawatts of power continually, according to Bova. If that's even remotely true, just imagine how much continuous power a group of these SPSs could provide.

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