Hurricane Ike: Raw Video: Dramatic Helicopter Rescue

The U.S. Coast Guard just completed one of the first rescue missions during Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Texas. The incident was caught-on-tape.

Some people point out that people had over a weeks notice that they had to leave or face certain death. So, they stayed … “ridin’ out the storm” drinking at this bar… and had to be rescued.

Strict Mediterranean diet offers big health boost

Sticking strictly to a Mediterranean diet rich in fruits and vegetables offers substantial protection against cancer, heart disease and other major chronic illnesses, Italian researchers said on Friday. People who did this had a 9 percent drop in death from heart disease, a 13 percent reduction in incidence of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease and a 6 percent reduction in cancer compared to those who were not as diligent, their study found. “These results seem to be clinically relevant for public health, particularly for encouraging a Mediterranean-like dietary pattern for primary prevention of major chronic diseases,” wrote Francesco Sofi, a clinical nutrition researcher, and colleagues at the University of Florence. The traditional Mediterranean diet is full of vegetables, fish and healthy fats such as olive oil, and low in red meat, dairy products and alcohol. – reuters

The wine industry likes the Mediterranean diet to include wine. Is it really healthy? I just eat grapes.

Most red wine may not be as good for the heart as media reports have suggested and may even be harmful, according to a review presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions. John Folts, a professor of cardiovascular medicine and nutritional science and an expert on the cardiovascular benefits of grape flavonoids, presented the findings.

“For 20 years, scientific research describing the heart-healthy benefits of consuming red wine has found its way into the lay press. Many people think that drinking red wine will reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke,” Folts says. “And that may be true, but probably only if you drink the expensive stuff.” Folts’ comments are based on a review of his own and others’ research.

Red wine contains polyphenolic compounds called flavonoids, which have been shown in many studies to reduce a wide variety of cardiac risk factors and, in some population studies, to reduce the risk of actually having a heart attack, he says.

“But what is often overlooked,” Folts notes, “is that it also contains alcohol, which is a pro-inflammatory and pro-oxidant substance, and which may increase risk factors for heart disease. The ratio of the amount of flavonoids to alcohol in red wine very likely determines if the wine is going to be heart-healthy, neutral or possibly harmful.”

Research suggests that if the red wine contains a large amount of flavonoids, they overcome the negative effects of alcohol and result in a net health benefit. However, many red wines do not contain enough flavonoids to overcome the negative effects. Thus, there may be little or no benefit to gain from consuming these red wines. – wisc

GOOGLE RAISING NEWSPAPER MORGUES FROM THE DEAD

Google is making searchable, digital copies of old newspapers available online through partnerships with their publishers, the company said Monday. The results of Google’s project initially will be available through the Google News Archive site, Soni said. “Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we’ll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you’ll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well,” he said.   …

Google didn’t reveal which publishers are partners except the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph and two organizations, ProQuest and Heritage Microfilm. However, examples of the service showed pages from The Evening Independent of St. Petersburg, Fla., the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, The Tryon (N.C.) News, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The project expands on an earlier partnership to digitize content from The New York Times and The Washington Post, Google said. – cnet

NYC’S 911 SYSTEM UPGRADED TO ACCEPT PHOTOS, VIDEO

Tipsters can now send images from computers and Web-enabled cell phones and PDAs to the city’s 911 and non-emergency hot lines to report crimes and quality-of-life issues. …

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the technology’s ability to deliver information instantaneously to the city’s 911 operators, who handle 11 million calls annually.

“By upgrading 911 and 311 to accept photos and video, we are bringing government accountability–and crime-fighting–to a whole new level,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “If your cell phone is equipped with a camera–and many are these days–you might be able to get a picture of something that will help the police solve a crime.” – cnet

An aerial tour of the Galveston area as Ike nears

houston news video

Also see this video:

Reporter gets a bit too close to the waves from Ike crashing over the Galveston Seawall

Stroking reveals pleasure nerve

A new touch-sensitive nerve fibre responsible for the sense of pleasure experienced during stroking has been described at a UK conference today.

The nerves tap into a human’s reward pathways, and could help explain why we enjoy grooming and a good hug, a neuroscientist has explained.

His team used a stroking machine to reveal the optimal speed and pressure for the most enjoyable caress. …

In order to isolate the touch-sensitive nerves responsible for the pleasure experienced during stroking, Professor McGlone designed a “rotary tactile stimulator” – a high-tech stroking machine. “We have built some very sophisticated equipment, so the stimulus [of stroking] is very repeatable.

“We stroke the skin [of the forearm, foreleg, and face] with a brush at different velocities, and then asked the volunteers to rate how they liked it,” he explained. He also inserted microelectrodes through the skin, into a nerve, to record the neural signals running from the skin to the brain.

“It is like tapping a single phone-line and listening for the chatter that comes down that line,” he told the conference. … The Liverpool-based researcher showed that stroking speeds of about 5cm per second, while applying 2g of pressure per square cm is optimal, and gave the volunteers most pleasure.

He explained that the pleasure messages are conveyed from the skin to the brain, by similar types of nerve fibres as those that transmit the sensation of pain. “This is interesting as we often rub a pain to try to alleviate it,” he said. …

Stroking could be used to treat chronic pain, he suggests. – bbc

5cm per second, with 2g of pressure per square cm, eh? That’s slow. According to this research, max pleasure happens at a slow rate of a few seconds per inch with about the weight of a pencil.

A pencil weighs about 2 grams.

Odd trivia: A human soul weighs 21 grams, according to one questionable study.

Researchers develop nano-sized ‘cargo ships’ to target and destroy tumors

Scientists have developed nanometer-sized ‘cargo ships’ that can sail throughout the body via the bloodstream without immediate detection from the body’s immune radar system and ferry their cargo of anti-cancer drugs and markers into tumors that might otherwise go untreated or undetected. … The researchers designed the hull of the ships to evade detection by constructing them of specially modified lipids–a primary component of the surface of natural cells. The lipids were modified in such a way as to enable them to circulate in the bloodstream for many hours before being eliminated. This was demonstrated by the researchers in a series of experiments with mice.

The researchers also designed the material of the hull to be strong enough to prevent accidental release of its cargo while circulating through the bloodstream. Tethered to the surface of the hull is a protein called F3, a molecule that sticks to cancer cells. Prepared in the laboratory of Erkki Ruoslahti, a cell biologist and professor at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research at UC Santa Barbara, F3 was engineered to specifically home in on tumor cell surfaces and then transport itself into their nuclei.

“We are now constructing the next generation of smart tumor-targeting nanodevices,” said Ruoslahti. “We hope that these devices will improve the diagnostic imaging of cancer and allow pinpoint targeting of treatments into cancerous tumors.” -physorg

Ancient Giant Killer Salamander Found

When the world’s land was congealed in one supercontinent 240 million years ago, Antarctica wasn’t the forbiddingly icy place it is now. But paleontologists have found a previously unknown amphibious predator species that probably still made it less than hospitable.

The species, named Kryostega collinsoni, is a temnospondyl, a prehistoric amphibian distantly related to modern salamanders and frogs. K. collinsoni resembled a modern crocodile, and probably was about 15 feet in length with a long and wide skull even flatter than a crocodile’s.

In addition to large upper and lower teeth at the edge of the mouth, temnospondyls often had tiny teeth on the roof of the palate. However, fossil evidence shows the teeth on the roof of the mouth of the newly found species were probably as large as those at the edge of the mouth.

“Its teeth, compared to other amphibians, were just enormous. It leads us to believe this animal was a predator taking down large prey,” said Christian Sidor, a University of Washington associate professor of biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the UW. – physorg

Tiny Water Bears Triumph Over Outer Space

K. Ingemar Jonsson of Kristianstad University in Sweden and colleagues shipped two species of tardigrades aboard a 2007 European Space Agency mission that reached low-Earth orbit, about 160 miles up. Some of the water bears were exposed to the vacuum of space only, while others were exposed to vacuum and ultraviolet radiation.

As the researchers describe in Current Biology, the tardigrades survived vacuum-only conditions quite well. This is perhaps not surprising, since water bears are able to deal with extreme dehydration. In fact, the specimens used in the experiment were already thoroughly desiccated, and upon re-entry they were rehydrated and revived.

But even a few of the specimens exposed to the full spectrum and intensity of ultraviolet radiation — about 1,000 times as intense as that on Earth — survived. Thus the water bears join some lichens and bacteria as the only species known to be able to cope, unprotected, with both vacuum and solar radiation in space. – nyt

New Nanotechnology Paints For Hospitals Could Kill Superbugs

New nanotechnology paints for walls, ceilings, and surfaces could be used to kill hospital superbugs when fluorescent lights are switched on, scientists heard at the Society for General Microbiology’s Autumn meeting being held this week at Trinity College, Dublin.

The new paints contain tiny particles of titanium dioxide, which is the dazzling white compound often used as a brightener in commercial paints. It will also be familiar to tennis fans as the powder used for the white lines to mark out the courts at Wimbledon.

Scientists have discovered that extremely small, nanoparticle-sized forms of titanium dioxide can kill bacteria and destroy dirt when they absorb ultraviolet light (UV) energy from the sun. They produce active molecules which clean up the painted surfaces. …

“However, other common additives in paints, such as calcium carbonate, silica or talc decreased the antibacterial efficiency of the paint. If calcium carbonate was present the kill rate dropped by up to 80%,” said Lucia Caballero. “Our tests on a commercially available paint showed that the ability of the paint to inactivate bacteria was massively reduced compared with a paint formulation which did not contain such additives.” – mnt