FDA issues rules for genetically modified animals

Two featherless chickens peck around in some grass May 22, 2002 at the Hebrew University in Rehovot.

REUTERS/Havakuk Levison

Genetically engineered animals moved closer to the dinner table on Thursday as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made the process it will use to review new proposals public.

The FDA published proposed detailed guidelines that producers of genetically engineered animals would have to follow to determine whether there are any risks to humans, the environment and the animals themselves.

The guidelines bring the decades-old technology of genetic engineering for animals one step closer to the market.

Genetically modified cattle, pigs, fish and goats are being produced for a variety of uses. Some produce pharmaceuticals in their milk or blood. Others are resistant to diseases such as mad cow or produce healthier meat or milk.

“Many kinds of genetically engineered animals are in development, although none has yet been approved by the agency for marketing,” FDA Deputy Commissioner Randall Lutter said.

It was important to formalize procedures the FDA uses to regulate genetically engineered animals, Lutter said, “because the technology has evolved to a point where commercialization of these animals is no longer over the horizon.” – reuters

I find this disgusting and cruel. Rooters without feathers to flap will not be able to mate. Also, these chickens will get cold and they will be subject to more pests and to sunburns.

Nearly Invisible Galaxy Found Orbiting Milky Way

Astronomers have identified the least luminous galaxy known, but it’s surprisingly massive.

The reason: It is loaded with invisible matter. Dark matter is mysterious, unseen stuff that permeates the universe. Astronomers know it’s there because of the gravity it creates. Without invoking dark matter, theories can’t explain how galaxies stay together. The galaxy, called Segue 1, is one of about two dozen small satellite galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way galaxy. A separate study last month, reported in the journal Science, found that all the known satellite galaxies are loaded with dark matter.

But among them, Segue 1 is special. It is a billion times less bright than the Milky Way. Yet it’s nearly a thousand times more massive than its star light would suggest. … “Segue 1 is the most extreme example of a galaxy that contains only a few hundred stars, yet has a relatively large mass,” said study leader Marla Geha, an assistant professor of astronomy at Yale University. -fox

New Iguana Species Found in Fiji

A new iguana has been discovered in the central regions of Fiji.

The species, Brachylophus bulabula, joins only two other living Pacific iguana species, one of which is critically endangered.

The scientific name “bulabula” is a doubling of “bula,” the Fijian word for “hello.”

Pacific iguanas generally are endangered. Two species were eaten to extinction after people arrived nearly 3,000 years ago.

The three living Brachylophus iguana species face threats from loss and alteration of their habitat, as well as from feral cats, mongooses and goats that eat iguanas or their food source.- fox

DNA-Based Neanderthal Face Unveiled

Meet Wilma?named for the redheaded Flintstones character?the first model of a Neanderthal based in part on ancient DNA evidence.

Artists and scientists created Wilma (shown in a photo released yesterday) using analysis of DNA from 43,000-year-old bones that had been cannibalized. Announced in October 2007, the findings had suggested that at least some Neanderthals would have had red hair, pale skin, and possibly freckles.

Created for an October 2008 National Geographic magazine article, Wilma has a skeleton made from replicas of pelvis and skull bones from Neanderthal females. Copies of male Neanderthal bones?resized to female dimensions?filled in the gaps.

(The National Geographic Society owns both National Geographic News and National Geographic magazine.)

“For the first time, anthropologists can go beyond fossils and peer into the actual genes of an extinct species of human,” said National Geographic’s senior science editor, Jamie Shreeve, who oversaw the project.

“We saw an opportunity to literally embody this new science in a full-size Neanderthal female, reconstructed using the latest information from genetics, fossil evidence, and archaeology.”- natgeo

Virginia town tries to prove existence of ‘ghost cats’

Like some other residents of this small town, Mary Elizabeth Goodwyn doesn’t go outside after dark much anymore. Goodwyn, 81, used to welcome the dusk under a red maple tree in her front yard every evening, but that was before cougars started showing up in Blackstone — at least in the local newspaper.

Since 2003, the Courier-Record has run at least 15 stories on cougar sightings in town and in the neighboring 41,000-acre Army National Guard training base.

Wildlife officials say that except for a known population of 100 in Florida, the large cats — also called mountain lions, pumas, panthers and the fitting “ghost cats” — were wiped out in the eastern United States by 1900. They claim sightings most likely are cases of mistaken identity — perhaps a bobcat, deer or even a Labrador retriever.

“The sense I get is there are a number of game commission people laughing, and that bothers me a bit because we’ve got good people here who aren’t crazy,” said Billy Coleburn, who as editor of the paper wrote most of the stories. – ss

BPA study: Plastic chemical is unhealthy for children and other living things

New research shows that a controversial chemical in plastic baby and water bottles, cups and food containers may be linked to heart disease and diabetes, prompting new fears about the ingredient. 

Bisphenol A (BPA), the subject of much scientific debate this year over its potential health effects, was associated with type 2 diabetes, angina, coronary heart disease and heart attack in adults with elevated levels of the chemical. The results, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, are based on urine samples from 1,455 participants in a government health survey.

“The findings ? challenge the safety of BPA,” says an editorial that accompanies the study. The authors, biologists Frederick vom Saal and John Peterson Myers, blast the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for deeming the chemical as “safe” and write that federal regulators should follow the lead of Canada, which has banned baby bottles made with BPA.

The FDA said in a draft report last month that BPA is safe at current levels of exposure ? a call that contrasted with an April report by the National Toxicology Program citing “some concern” about the chemical. An FDA panel reviewed the agency’s draft report today, and Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley asked Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach to explain the criteria FDA is using to determine which studies it’s taking into account in its safety ruling.

“A margin of safety exists that is adequate to protect consumers, including infants and children, at the current levels of exposure,” FDA scientist Laura Tarantino told the panel, according to the Associated Press.

An FDA spokeswoman had no immediate response to how the agency would address Grassley’s request.

An industry group dismissed the new findings, insisting that the study “is not capable of establishing a cause and effect relationship between bisphenol A and these health effects” because the onset of the diseases would have occurred before the urine samples were taken. …Most Americans are likely exposed to more than the 50 micrograms-per-kilogram daily dose of BPA that federal environmental regulators consider safe, according to the JAMA study. Previous animal studies have associated BPA with obesity, liver problems and thyroid dysfunction, and human and animal research has shown that the chemical mimics estrogens. Some parents started feeding their babies with glass bottles this year after word spread about BPA’s possible health effects. – sciam

Dang. I’ve been drinking water from plastic bottles every day for years now.

To be certain that you are choosing a bottle that does not leach, check the recycling symbol on your bottle. If it is a #2 HDPE (high density polyethylene), or a #4 LDPE (low density polyethylene), or a #5 PP (polypropylene), your bottle is fine. The type of plastic bottle in which water is usually sold is usually a #1, and is only recommended for one time use. Do not refill it. Better to use a reusable water bottle, and fill it with your own filtered water from home and keep these single-use bottles out of the landfill. – trusted

Well, the most typical bottles are type #1, which I think is PET, which does not contain BPA(?). I’m still looking for verification of that. One thing you should never do is pour heated water into your plastic bottles:

Pouring boiling liquid into reusable water bottles or baby bottles made of polycarbonate plastic causes a much faster release of the estrogen-mimicking chemical bisphenol A, new research shows. University of Cincinnati researchers reported that exposure to boiling water caused polycarbonate drinking bottles to release bisphenol A (BPA) up to 55 times more rapidly than exposure to cool or temperate water. – webmd

Seedy but Speedy: Fungus Spews Spores at 55 Mph

In a finding that could help control harmful fungus, researchers have discovered a high-speed mechanism the germs use to project their spores into the air. Scientists from Miami University (M.U.) in Oxford, Ohio, and the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati report in the journal PLoS ONE that fungi may be one of the fastest land species, clocking speeds of up to 55 miles (88 kilometers) per hour and producing accelerations 180,000 times greater than gravity.

Fungi are the most common crop pathogens in the world. Most are fairly harmless to people, although like other allergens they sometimes exacerbate allergies and asthma. But certain varieties such as Stachybotrys chartarum, commonly referred to as black mold, that thrive in damp places like basements may also infect the lungs of people who have compromised immune systems or chronic bronchitis. Biologists once believed that mild air currents were enough to release fungi’s spores, but are increasingly finding that molds employ elaborate methods to spew their seeds away from the nest. Using ultrahigh-speed video, the researchers calculated that some fungi use their own natural water pressure like squirt guns to eject their spores.

“The beauty of the mechanism was a great surprise,” says lead study author Nicholas Money, a fungus biologist at M.U. “We were totally gobsmacked by these images.” … – sciam

Can Stem Cells Block Stroke Damage? Yes, but in a Surprising Way

Injecting stem cells into the brains of mice that recently suffered a stroke can reduce nerve cell (neuron) damage by up to 60 percent, according to new research.

But the stem cells do not simply replace damaged tissue as previously believed. Instead, the immature cells trigger adult brain cells to switch gears and block a stroke-induced immune response that causes nerve damage.

“It is a paradigm shift,” says Sean Savitz, a neurologist at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, who was not involved in the study. “The original idea is that you put cells in there and it would reconstruct the cells that died. ? The beauty of this is there’s not just one mechanism; they are acting in many different ways.”

Over the past 10 years, he says, research has shown that stem cells have the potential to reduce inflammation, morph into new nerve cells, and stimulate production of fresh blood vessels (to nourish cells) and axons (the long fingerlike projections that neurons use to send information to neighboring cells).

Study co-author Darwin Prockop, director of the Texas A&M University Health Science Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine, says that previous studies have shown that mesenchymal stromal cells (bone marrow stem cells) can reverse neurodegeneration in the brain caused by disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. But scientists were not quite sure how. – sciam

Hadron Collider halted for months

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) says.

Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure.

But a Cern spokesman said damage to the 3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated. The LHC is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang.  Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

Section damaged

On Friday, a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC’s super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C. The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva. – bbc

Shortest Man Meets Leggiest Woman

Russia’s Svetlana Pankratova, the world’s leggiest woman, poses with China’s He Pingping, the world’s smallest man, in London Sept. 16. Her legs are 4 feet, 4 inches long, and he stands at 2 feet and 5.37 inches tall. – aol

It would be interesting to work for Guinness World Records.