Our Preferred Poison

A little mercury is all that humans need to do away with themselves quietly, slowly, and surely
By Karen Wright Illustration by Don Foley
DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 03 March 2005 Biology & Medicine

Let’s start with a straightforward fact:
Mercury is unimaginably toxic and dangerous.
A single drop on a human hand can be irreversibly fatal.
A single drop in a large lake can make all
the fish in it unsafe to eat.

Often referred to as quicksilver, mercury is the only common metal that is liquid at room temperature. Alchemists, including the young Sir Isaac Newton, believed it was the source of gold. In the modern era, it became a common ingredient of paints, diuretics, pesticides, batteries, fluorescent lightbulbs, skin creams, antifungal agents, vaccines for children, and of course, thermometers. There is probably some in your mouth right now...


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Debate over vaccines and autism continues

Parents, scientists disagree over vaccine-autism link
Tuesday, June 28, 2005; Posted: 9:27 a.m. EDT (13:27 GMT)

Dinner was late. His cup held water, not soda. Strangers had stolen his mother's attention all afternoon. It is too much for the 9-year-old autistic child to bear. He begins to flap his arms and shriek, working himself into murderous screams that shatter his suburban home and all hope of a normal life.

His mother, the Rev. Lisa Sykes, has her own rage, against the demon she blames for Wesley's condition. It is thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative....


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France Wins Nuclear Fusion Plant

France will host the experimental ITER nuclear fusion reactor, a multi-billion-euro project designed to emulate the sun's power, the six partners in the project agreed in Moscow on Tuesday, after Japan withdrew its bid.

The construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will be a little like trying to build a star on earth. The technology is daunting, but if it works, scientists say the world will benefit from a source of energy that will...


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Risk Factors for Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Marburg hemorrhagic fever (MHF) is a severe illness caused by Marburg virus, a member of the Filoviridae family. MHF was first described in 1967 during outbreaks in Germany and the former Yugoslavia that were linked to monkeys imported from Uganda. Since then, only a few sporadic cases in East Africa and southern Africa and one laboratory infection have been identified. Serosurveys for Marburg antibodies in the general population generally have shown prevalences of <2%, indicating it to be a rare and highly lethal disease.

The largest outbreak of MHF recorded to date began in late 1998 in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Although the remoteness of the area and the civil war in eastern DRC delayed access and evaluation, in May 1999 a team of international investigators identified 73 cases...


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Controlling the Marburg outbreak in Angola

International and local experts are working in the African country of Angola to control the largest ever recorded outbreak of Marburg haemorrhagic fever. Marburg fever is a rare but fatal disease caused by a virus from the same family as the Ebola virus.

Experts from the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network are currently in Uige Province – the epicenter of the outbreak – and surrounding areas. They are working to control the outbreak through infection control, surveillance of new cases, and tracing and management of people who may have been in contact with someone with Marburg.

They have also been focused on training teachers and health workers, together with community education and involvement aimed at raising awareness of the disease among...


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Scientists: Mad cow in U.S. very rare

Despite case of disease in U.S. cow, experts insist beef is safe
Saturday, June 25, 2005; Posted: 2:09 p.m. EDT (18:09 GMT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- The newly identified case of mad cow disease in an animal from an American herd shouldn't worry consumers, experts said, because the condition appears to be very rare and safeguards are in place to protect the food supply.

"It certainly is a minor concern" compared with ordinary food-borne diseases like salmonella and E. coli, said Dr. Richard Johnson of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, an authority on mad-cow-like diseases in animals and...


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Commonly Asked Questions About BSE in Products Regulated by FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN)

What is "Mad Cow Disease" (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy/BSE)?

Mad Cow Disease is the commonly used name for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), a slowly progressive, degenerative, fatal disease affecting the central nervous system of adult cattle. Since 1990, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has conducted aggressive surveillance of the highest risk cattle going to slaughter in the United States. To date, the only cow that has been found to be affected with BSE was the one diagnosed with BSE in December 2003.

What causes BSE?

The exact cause of BSE is not known but it is generally accepted by the scientific community that the likely cause is infectious forms of a type of protein, prions, normally found in animals cause BSE. In cattle with BSE, these abnormal prions initially occur in the small intestines...


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Heavy rice stands tall

Emma Marris

Genetic techniques guide natural breeding process.


Biologists say they have built a better rice plant: one that is heavy with seeds, but not so tall that it will fall over in the rain.

The work is expected to help increase yields of rice, which is the staple grain for the majority of the world's population. The many-seeded variety is less likely than others to bend double in high winds or rain, and this keeps the tops out of the water and reduces their chance of rotting.

The new plant was made possible through a mix of modern and old-fashioned techniques. First, the recent availability of the rice genome allowed the researchers to investigate areas of the plant's DNA that influence productivity. Motoyuki Ashikari of Nagoya University and Hitoshi Sakakibara of RIKEN in Yokohama, along with their colleagues...


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Neutrino ripples spotted in space

Mark Peplow

Universal lumpiness is imprinted in mysterious particles.

Astronomers have spotted a signature of neutrinos created just seconds after the Big Bang. The find supports current models of the origins of our Universe, and may provide a glimpse of its birth.The fundamental particles called neutrinos are difficult to study, because they interact so weakly with normal matter - trillions whizz straight through your body every second. But Roberto Trotta, an astrophysicist from Oxford University, UK, and his colleague Alessandro Melchiorri of the University of Rome 'La Sapienza', Italy, say that the signature of primordial neutrinos is written in the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

These microwaves are the remnants of light that shone 300,000 years after the Big Bang...


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WHO: Number of 2005 polio cases jumps

Wednesday, June 22, 2005; Posted: 10:27 a.m. EDT (14:27 GMT)

In 1988, The World Health Organization launched a drive to eradicate polio globally through massive immunization efforts.

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- The number of confirmed polio cases has reached 243 in Yemen, a country that was once believed to have been free of the disease, the chief of the World Health Organization said.

Yemen accounts for nearly half of the 533 cases in the world this year as of June 15, said Dr. Lee Jong-wook, the agency's director-general. A recent outbreak in Indonesia has brought the number of cases there to 51, he said.

"The threat of a polio importation is a real and continuing one," Lee said Tuesday. "The recent importation to Yemen and Indonesia...


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Q: What is the deadliest disease in the world?

World health Organization
22 June 2005

A: The results of ranking the leading causes of death are subject to the cause categories used. The broader the cause categories used, the more likely they will rank among the top leading causes of death.

According to the estimates in The world health report 2004, there were 57 million deaths in the world in 2002. The broad category of all "noncommunicable diseases" killed 33.5 million people; communicable diseases, maternal and perinatal conditions, and nutritional conditions...


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Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus from Pet Rodents

Rodents, such as mice, hamsters and guinea pigs, are popular as pets in many households. However, not all rodents that enter homes are intended as pets: some rodents are brought into homes as feed for other animals (e.g., pet snakes), and others, such as the house mouse, are pests that find their own way into homes. This fact sheet is intended to provide information about lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), which can be transmitted to humans by rodents, including wild and pet mice, hamsters, and, on occasion, guinea pigs.

What is LCMV?

LCMV is carried by rodents and can be passed to humans. Not all people who are exposed to the virus become ill. Signs and symptoms of LCMV infection are similar to those for influenza and include fever, stiff neck, malaise, anorexia (lack of appetite),...

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Common virus 'kills cancer'

Wednesday, June 22, 2005; Posted: 9:17 a.m. EDT (13:17 GMT)

The virus targets cancer cells, but does not harm normal cells, researchers said.

WASHINGTON -- A common virus that is harmless to people can destroy cancerous cells in the body and might be developed into a new cancer therapy, US researchers said.
The virus, called adeno-associated virus type 2, or AAV-2, infects an estimated 80 percent of the population.

"Our results suggest that adeno-associated virus type 2, which infects the majority of the population but has no known ill effects, kills multiple types of cancer cells yet has no effect on healthy cells," said Craig Meyers, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Penn State College of Medicine...

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Study: Extra folic acid may protect brain

Tuesday, June 21, 2005; Posted: 10:17 a.m. EDT (14:17 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- High-dose folic acid pills -- providing as much of the nutrient as 2.5 pounds of strawberries -- might help slow the cognitive decline of aging.

So says a Dutch study that's the first to show a vitamin could really improve memory.
The research, unveiled Monday at a meeting of Alzheimer's researchers, adds to mounting evidence that a diet higher in folate is important for a variety of health effects. It's already proven to reduce birth defects, and research suggests it helps ward off heart disease and strokes, too.

The new study doesn't show folic acid could prevent Alzheimer's _ the people who tested the vitamin
didn't have symptoms of that disease.

But as people age, some decline in memory and other brain functions...


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CNN: Scientists find early signs of Alzheimer's

Research concentrates on first regions of brain affected

Monday, June 20, 2005; Posted: 9:57 a.m. EDT (13:57 GMT)

Lead researcher Lisa Mosconi said the hippocamus seems to be affected first by Alzheimer's.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A subtle change in a memory-making brain region seems to predict who will get Alzheimer's disease nine years before symptoms appear, scientists reported Sunday.

The finding is part of a wave of research aimed at early detection of the deadly dementia -- and one day perhaps even preventing it.

Researchers scanned the brains of middle-aged and older people while they were still healthy. They discovered that lower energy usage in a part of the brain called the hippocampus correctly signaled who would get Alzheimer's...


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CNN: Researchers identify new species

Researchers identify new species
Catfish found in Mexico has ancient characteristics
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 Posted: 9:18 PM EDT (0118 GMT)

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- Mexican and U.S. researchers said they believe an ancient-looking, rarely seen fish in a Mexican river represents a new species of catfish -- and an entirely new taxonomic family.

It would be only the third new family of fish found in the last 60 years and could offer scientists a view into the distant past, a Mexican scientist said Tuesday.

The new species was dubbed Lacantunia enigmatica, of the family Lacantuniidae, in an article published in the online scientific journal Zootaxa.

The names are derived from the fish's habitat in the Lacantun river of southern Chiapas state, a tributary of the Usumacinta river, which marks the boundary between ...

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The Antimatter Factory

The Antimatter Factory
(by Django Manglunki)

Over the past 20 years scientists at CERN(Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire - European Organization for Nuclear Research) have been using antiparticles in many different ways for their daily work.
Antiparticles can be generated by colliding subatomic particles. Before being delivered to the various physics experiments, they must be isolated, collected and stored in order to tune their energy to the appropriate level.

Until now, each of these steps has been carried out by a dedicated machine with the main purpose of providing high energy antiparticles.

But now the first "self-contained antiproton factory", the Antiproton Decelerator (or AD), is operational at CERN . It will produce the low energy antiprotons needed for a range of studies, including the synthesis of antihydrogen atoms - the creation of antimatter.

What is the AD?

The Antiproton Decelerator is a very special machine compared to what already exists at CERN and other laboratories around the world. So far, an "antiparticle factory" consisted of a chain of several ...


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Discover Magazine : Sex, Ys, and Platypuses

Sex, Ys, and Platypuses
By Jocelyn Selim
April 25, 2005 Biology & Medicine


For mammals, gender is usually a simple affair. From mice to elephants, a single pair of chromosomes control sex—inheriting double Xs makes females, while inheriting a Y makes males. But for the platypus, the story is a bit more complicated.


Unable to locate a single Y chromosome in the platypus, researchers had long considered its gender-determining genes a mystery. By using fluorescent labeling to track platypus chromosomes during cell division, Frank Gruetzner, a molecular biologist at the Australian National University, solved the puzzle. Instead of a single pair of sex chromosomes, the platypus has five—a record for vertebrates. “It’s not as confusing as it might be,” Gruetzner says. “The sex chromosomes link up in a chain, so a male platypus is always XYXYXYXYXY.”


Even more intriguing, one of the platypus’s Y chromosomes shares genes with the ZZ/ZW sex chromosomes found in birds, which are thought to have evolved separately. “We’re not certain exactly how the two are related...

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Astronomers: Earth's 'bigger cousin' detected

CNN : Astronomers: Earth's 'bigger cousin' detected
By Michael SchirberSPACE.com
Monday, June 13, 2005 Posted: 3:17 PM EDT (1917 GMT)

National Science Foundation (NSF)
Astronomy
University of California Santa Cruz
Carnegie Institution of Washington

(SPACE.com) -- Astronomers announced Monday the discovery of the smallest planet so far found outside of our solar system.
About seven-and-a-half times as massive as Earth, and about twice as wide, this new extrasolar planet may be the first rocky world ever found orbiting a star similar to our own.
"This is the smallest extrasolar planet yet detected and the first of a new class of rocky terrestrial planets," said team member Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "It's like Earth's bigger cousin."
Currently around 150 extrasolar planets are known, and the number continues to grow. But most of these far-off worlds are large gas giants ...

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