pain goes another step down the food chain

Posted on May 6, 2003 by agnieszka

It’s long been thought that fish don’t feel pain, but in a study released last week by the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, researchers say they have conclusive proof that they do. Scientists from the University of Edinburgh and the Roslin Institute injected either bee venom or acetic acid into the lips of rainbow trout. The fish showed “rocking” motions, similar to the kind of motion seen in higher animals in pain. The trout injected with acetic acid rubbed their lips on the gravel of their tank and on the tank walls. According to Lynne Sneddon, the leader of the team, “These do not appear to be reflex responses.” The injected fish also took three times longer to resume feeding compared to the fish in the control group. The team also found that the trout had nociceptors — receptors that responded to tissue-damaging stimuli — in their heads. It’s the first time that these receptors — similar to those found in amphibians, birds, and mammals — have been found in fish. “Our research demonstrates nociception and suggests that noxious stimulation in the rainbow trout has adverse behavioral and physiological effects,” Sneddon said. “This fulfills the criteria for animal pain.”

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/06/2003.
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anthrax genome decoded

Posted on May 6, 2003 by agnieszka

Researchers have sequenced the genome of the bacterium that causes anthrax, reports the May 1 Nature. Anthrax is found naturally in farm animals and other mammals, and gained notoriety when it was maliciously used to kill people through the US mail in 2001. The sequencing will help provide targets for vaccine and drug development. The researchers discovered that just a few genes make the difference between deadly anthrax and the bacterium’s close, relatively harmless relatives, bacillus cereus and bacillus thurigiensis. They also found that bacillus anthracis contained an excess of genes for digesting protein, suggesting that its ancestors preyed on the bodies of insects and other animals. Bacillus anthracis contains more than 5,000 genes, with many different functions, suggesting that it can survive in many different environments. Anthrax bacteria ”are constantly ready and exquisitely able to adapt to and exploit any environmental or pathogenic niche that presents itself,” said Julian Parkhill of the Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK, and Colin Berry of Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK, in an accompanying article.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/06/2003.
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were einstein and newton autistic?

Posted on May 6, 2003 by agnieszka

While acknowledging that firm diagnosis on the dead is impossible, autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University, UK, thinks Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton showed signs of Asperger syndrome, a form of autism that doesn’t cause learning problems, reported New Scientist last week. Baron-Cohen assessed their personality traits based on biographical information and said that the scientists exhibited the three key symptoms of Asperger’s — obsessive interests, difficulty in social relationships, and problems communicating. Others are not convinced. Psychiatrist Glen Elliott of the University of California at San Francisco points out that any behavior can have various causes. “One can imagine geniuses who are socially inept and yet not remotely autistic.”

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/06/2003.
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from the mouths of babes

Posted on April 29, 2003 by agnieszka

The tooth fairy had better start coughing up: Baby teeth may be worth a whole lot more than some spare change under the pillow. They’ve been found to contain a rich supply of stem cells, the powerful precursor cells of the body, which can evolve into any type of cell. According to a report published online last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the National Institutes of Health have used the pulp inside shed baby teeth to successfully grow cells of nerves, fat and teeth. The stem cells also seem to grow faster and have more potential to differentiate into other cell types than adult stem cells. Dr. Songtao Shi, the senior author of the paper, stated in a press release: “Doctors have successfully harvested stem cells from umbilical cord blood for years. Our finding is similar in some ways, in that the stem cells in the tooth are likely latent remnants of an early developmental process.”

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 4/29/2003.
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hitting DNA pay dirt

Posted on April 29, 2003 by agnieszka

If scientists want to study ancient DNA, they usually extract it from fossils, the remains of ancient plants and animals. But molecular biologists from the University of Copenhagen found DNA in dirt instead. They drilled cores up to 100 feet deep in the Siberian permafrost, analyzed the frozen soil, and hit a jackpot of DNA fragments. As they report in the April 18 Science, they found the oldest authenticated plant DNA and the DNA of animals, some long extinct. The permafrost contained DNA from woolly mammoth, bison, reindeer, and musk ox, dating back 30,000 years, as well as the DNA of herbs, mosses, trees, and shrubs, some of which lived nearly 400,000 years ago — the oldest yet found. Much of the plant DNA is probably from roots, which would have been well protected underground, and the animal DNA is thought to come from cells sloughed off in their feces. The team also looked at samples of silt from New Zealand, and again were able to recover DNA from various plants and animals, showing that soil does not need to be frozen to obtain identifiable DNA. The new technique of analyzing soil may help reconstruct past ecosystems, helping researchers gain a better picture of the prehistoric world.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 4/29/2003.
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hungry sheep make early lambs

Posted on April 29, 2003 by agnieszka

Sheep may help shed light on why some human births are premature. Researchers have long suspected that a mother’s nutrition plays a key role in gestation length but, until now, a link hadn’t been shown. According to a study in the April 25 Science, Frank Bloomfield of the University of Auckland in New Zealand and his colleagues have proved that female sheep who were intentionally undernourished around the time of conception carried their lambs for a shorter period of time than well-nourished sheep. Being undernourished can trigger an early surge of hormones in the fetus and lead to premature birth. The study notes: “If these findings are applicable to human pregnancy, then a focus on events around the time of conception may hold the key to prevention of one of the major causes of preterm birth.”

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 4/29/2003.
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new on television: the secret behind the secret of life

Posted on April 22, 2003 by agnieszka

With all the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of the momentous discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA — the secret of life — by James Watson and Francis Crick, it’s good to know that a relatively unsung contributor is getting some attention, too. Tonight, in “Secret of Photo 51,” Nova profiles scientist Rosalind Franklin and her unwitting collaboration in the breakthrough: Her data and notes were used without her permission or knowledge. Continue reading →

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the lord of the gourd

Posted on April 22, 2003 by agnieszka

Archeologists have discovered the oldest known depiction of a deity found in the Americas, a 4,000-year-old gourd fragment incised with an image of the Staff God, a principal god in the South American pantheon. The Staff God, a fanged, splay-footed creature, is usually portrayed with a staff in its hand (hence the name). It remained, in various incarnations, an important deity for thousands of years, until Europeans overthrew the Inca empire in the 16th century. Jonathan Haas of Chicago’s Field Museum and his colleagues unearthed the fragment at a burial site along the coast of Peru. “Like the cross, the Staff God is a clearly recognizable religious icon,” Haas stated in a press release. The fragment bearing the simply drawn, 3 -inch figure has been carbon dated to 2250 BC. “It indicates,” Haas said, “that organized religion began in the Andes more than 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.”

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 4/22/2003.
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length does matter

Posted on April 22, 2003 by agnieszka

A study by biologists at Tufts University has found that female fireflies prefer males with longer-lasting flashes. It seems that a longer flash is related to the quality of the “nuptial gift” he can give to his mate, report Sara Lewis and Christopher Cratsley in the January-February issue of Behavioral Ecology. When fireflies mate, not only do males give the females their sperm, but they also provide a spermatophore, a high-protein nutritional package that females eat and use to provide for their offspring. By measuring the duration of a male’s flashes and comparing them to spermatophore size, the researchers discovered that the length of a male firefly’s flash can predict the quality of the nuptial gift he can deliver.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 4/22/2003.
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the perfect typhoon

Posted on April 22, 2003 by agnieszka

According to meteorologists, typhoons never occur near the equator. Why? Because the Coriolis effect, which gives spin to the wind due to the rotation of the Earth, is weakest there. That spin helps form the violent, swirling, circular wind-driven thunderstorms called hurricanes, typhoons, or tropical cyclones, depending on what part of the world you’re from. But in December 2001, Typhoon Vamei formed just 100 miles away from the equator, the closest ever recorded. A recent study of the storm published by meteorologists from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., has helped clear up the mystery. The researchers conclude that Vamei formed due to a rare combination of a strong, warm, slow-moving storm system colliding with an equally strong surge of cold monsoon winds from the north. The unusually long-lasting interaction of the two powerful systems over the warm South China Sea generated the turning that created the typhoon. According to the study’s authors, “the probability of a similar equatorial development is estimated to be once every 100 to 400 years.”

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 4/22/2003.
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