Bactieria to eat toxic and possibly cancer causing explosive pollution

Scientists at the University of York have uncovered the structure of an unusual enzyme which can be used to reverse the contamination of land by explosives.

The discovery, by scientists in the York Structural Biology Laboratory and the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products, will support the development of plants that can help tackle pollution caused by royal demolition explosive, also known as RDX.

Researchers at York have identified bacteria that use RDX as a food source and used that knowledge to develop transgenic plants that can draw pollutants out of the soil and break them down.

The latest findings, published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, focus on the XplA enzyme which plays an important role in that process.

Dr Gideon Grogan, from the York Structural Biology Laboratory, said: “The biological process for tackling the pollution caused by RDX already exists but we need to find ways of making it work faster and on the scale required.

“This research significantly improves our understanding of the structure of this enzyme and is therefore an important step towards exploiting its unusual properties.”

Professor Neil Bruce, from the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products, said: “RDX is toxic and a possible carcinogen so it is important to identify ways of stopping it polluting land and water supplies.

“We have already had significant success in engineering plants that can perform this task and this research will help further refine that technique.”

The research is funded by the Centre of Excellence for Biocatalysis, Biotransformations and Biocatalytic Manufacture (CoEBio3), Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) of the US Department of Defense.

- via york

Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, also known as RDX, cyclonite, hexogen, and T4, is an explosive nitroamine widely used in military and industrial applications. Nomenclature variants include cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine and cyclotrimethylene trinitramine.

In its pure, synthesized state RDX is a white, crystalline solid. As an explosive, it is usually used in mixtures with other explosives and plasticizers, phlegmatizers or desensitizers. It is stable in storage and is considered one of the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives.^[1]

- wikipedia

Because civilized explosives only kill quickly.

Common herbicides and fibrates block nutrient-sensing receptor found in gut and pancreas

According to new research from the Monell Center and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, certain common herbicides and lipid-lowering fibrate drugs act in humans to block T1R3, a nutrient-sensing taste receptor also present in intestine and pancreas.

Commonly used in agriculture and medicine, these chemical compounds were not previously known to act on the T1R3 receptor.

The T1R3 receptor is a critical component of both the sweet taste receptor and the umami (amino acid) taste receptor. First identified on the tongue, emerging evidence indicates that T1R3 and related taste receptors also are located on hormone-producing cells in the intestine and pancreas.

These internal taste receptors detect nutrients in the gut and trigger the release of hormones involved in the regulation of glucose homeostasis and energy metabolism.

“Compounds that either activate or block T1R3 receptors could have significant metabolic effects, potentially influencing diseases such as obesity, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome,” noted Monell geneticist and study leader Bedrich Mosinger, M.D., Ph.D.

In the study, published online in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, researchers tested the ability of two classes of chemical compounds to block the T1R3 receptor. The compounds – fibrates and phenoxy-herbicides – were selected based on their strong structural similarity to lactisole, a sweet taste inhibitor that exerts its taste effects by blocking T1R3.

Fibrates are a class of drugs frequently used to treat lipid disorders such as high blood cholesterol and triglycerides. Phenoxy-herbicides are used in agriculture to control broad-leaf weeds; the best known, 2,4-D, is one of the most extensively used herbicides worldwide.

Using an in vitro preparation, the researchers found that both classes of compounds potently blocked activation of the human sweet taste receptor, acting at micromolar concentrations to inhibit binding of sugars to the T1R3 component of the receptor.

Additional testing revealed that the inhibitory effect of both fibrates and phenoxy-herbicides on the T1R3 receptor is specific to humans. That is, the ability of these compounds to block the receptor did not generalize across species to the rodent form of the receptor. …

via Common herbicides and fibrates block nutrient-sensing receptor found in gut and pancreas.

This is another important reminder that testing on mice and rats does not always show the real damage chemicals can do to humans.  Perhaps people with type II diabetes can be helped by avoiding common herbicides and fibrates?

Moon the Balloon?

There’s a giant blimp, white with three tail fins, hanging over the city these days and it’s causing a stir among Kandaharis who believe the Americans are using it to spy on them.And it could be they’re right.

“Many people believe it’s a spy blimp that can see through walls to look at our women,” said Ghulam Ghami, a local fixer attuned to the buzz in coffee shops and kebab stands.

While that notion is outlandish, the U.S. is developing a $400-million blimp-like surveillance airship. It is expected to be deployed in Afghanistan by 2011.

Lockheed Martin’s long endurance multi-intelligence vehicle (LEMV), as it’s named, will be 250-feet (76-metre) long, and able to float at up to 20,000 feet for three weeks at a time. As for its surveillance capabilities, a 40-foot-long (12 m.) stretch behind the cockpit will house a selection of spy gear, including a motion sensor and radar.

While the LEMV has yet to be built — the contract will be awarded this month — Lockheed Martin has already produced a prototype: the P-791.

The P-791, which flew six times in 2006, is half the planned length of the LEMV. In test flights, the P-791 showed itself capable of carrying heavy loads and executing sharp turns

Could the blimp over Kandahar actually be an eye-in-the-sky P-791? It’s plainly visible to the naked eye, and looks spectacular lit up at night. That seems counter to the notion of spying as a furtive, clandestine pursuit.

Calls to the U.S. Defence Department were not returned.

Might the blimp be a weather balloon of sorts, used to gather scientific data for research purposes? Possibly, but most weather develops over water, and Afghanistan is land locked.

Whatever it is, the blimp is making locals uneasy.

“People don’t like it,” said Ghami. “Some are saying they are going to shoot at it.”

The LEMV is sure to be an imposing sight when it is test deployed in Afghanistan in 2011.

As a hybrid airship, the LEMV is heavier than air but will get some of its buoyancy from gas compartments. It will feature turbines on its underside to help launch it into the air and will require a short runway.

In the early 20th century, airships were used in warfare, with dirigibles being employed for bombing and for intelligence gathering. However, the advent of airplanes and horrific disasters such as the Hindenburg fire put an end to the airship as a war weapon.

Now airships are poised to make a return to the battle front. The LEMV will be used primarily for intelligence gathering on such area as the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Annoyed Kandaharis could consider borrowing a tactic from the people of Sarnia, Ont. About 70 people there dropped their pants to “moon the balloon.”

It was a protest against a spy balloon that a U.S. company began using over the summer to monitor the border, including their town. …

- via Edmonton

This is obviously just a flock of pelicans, not a spy balloon.

Obama is surprise winner of Nobel Peace Prize

Video here.

Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision that honored the first-year U.S. president more for promise than achievement and drew both praise and skepticism around the world.

The bestowal of one of the world’s top accolades on a president less than nine months in office, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo.

Obama said he felt humbled and unworthy of being counted in the company of the “transformative figures” of history who had won the prize.

“I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather an affirmation of American leadership,” he said, speaking in the White House Rose Garden. “I will accept this award as a call to action.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” citing his fledgling push for nuclear disarmament and his outreach to the Muslim world.

Obama has been widely credited with improving America’s global image after the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, who alienated both friends and foes with go-it-alone policies like the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

But critics called the Nobel’s committee’s decision premature, given that Obama so far has made little tangible headway as he grapples with challenges ranging from the war in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea.

The White House had no idea the Nobel announcement was coming. Obama, who got the news of the prize in a pre-dawn call from his press secretary, now also has the burden of living up to its expectations.

The first African-American to hold his country’s highest office, Obama, 48, has struggled with a slew of foreign policy problems bequeathed to him by Bush, while taking a more multilateral approach than his predecessor.

Despite troubles at home including a struggling economy that have eroded his once-lofty approval ratings, the Democratic U.S. president is still widely seen around the world as an inspirational figure.

via Obama is surprise winner of Nobel Peace Prize | Reuters.

I found an article on reason.com titled How to Win a Nobel Peace Prize informative:

1. Be a famous humanitarian. This is the obvious approach. It is also the hardest. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Albert Schweitzer, who built hospitals in Africa; to Norman Borlaug, who developed high-yield strains of wheat; to Muhammed Yunus, who devised a new method of giving loans to low-income entrepreneurs; and to the Dalai Lama, who…actually, I’m not sure what the Dalai Lama does, but evidently it impresses a lot of people.

Does your achievement need to be related to peace? It can—as with, say, Linus Pauling, who capped off an impressive scientific career with a crusade against above-ground nuclear testing. But the peace angle isn’t necessary. It isn’t even strictly necessary that your accomplishments be as impressive in practice as they are in your intentions. (You’ll note that Gore has not actually stopped global warming.) The best way to get credit in Oslo is to conduct your humanitarian pursuits while working with some vast global agency. Indeed, if you don’t think you have the chops to, say, revolutionize Third World agriculture, you can always get a Peace Prize the next way:

2. Start an international organization. Or, if you can swing it, be an international organization. Over the years, the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, the UN’s International Labor Organization, and the Red Cross.

… 3. Kill a lot of people, then stop. In 1973, the Nobel Peace Prize was shared by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. Kissinger’s CV included the “secret” bombing of Cambodia and the “Christmas” bombing of North Vietnam; just a month before his prize was announced, he was complicit in the coup that installed a brutal dictatorship in Chile. So why did he win? Because he and Tho had reached a truce to end the Vietnam War. Tho wasn’t a particularly peaceful man either, but at least he had the common courtesy to refuse the award.

More recently, the prize went to Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat, a man whose career to that point had been spent arranging terrorist assaults on civilians. He shared the award with Israel’s Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin; the three of them, like Kissinger and Tho, had negotiated an end to a war. In this case the peace agreement didn’t hold, and both the state of Israel and various Palestinian groups went on to produce many more corpses. So don’t worry if you develop a taste for blood during the initial stage of your Peace Prize campaign: You’re free to resume killing once Mr. Nobel’s money is safely in your hands.

By this method, the prize could conceivably go next year to Dick Cheney, the Janjaweed, or anyone else in a position to bring a war to a temporary stop.

What really happened is that Bush and Cheney were so incredibly, so preposterously, so monsterously un-peaceful, that Obama is getting a prize for displacing them. Overthrowing Bush and Cheney is seriously one of the most stabilizing things that could have happened in world politics. Obama has already accomplished this, and so, the award is justified.

NASA spacecraft crashes into the moon

On Friday morning, NASA successfully rammed the LCROSS satellite and its booster rocket into a crater near the south pole of the moon in an attempt to search for hidden pockets of ice.

The Centaur booster rocket hit the Cabeus crater at 4:31 a.m. PT and the LCROSS satellite followed at 4:36 a.m. PT.

Although the flash from LCROSS didn’t produce spectacular fireworks as many had hoped, it can be seen as a small flash northwest of center in this image. A zoom is at bottom left and an even larger image of the flash is at bottom right. NASA’s live coverage went blank just as the impacts occurred but the space agency says their instruments were working. – zdnet

Take that, moon!NASA smacked two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed four minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash.

But the big live public splash people anticipated didn’t quite happen. Screens got fuzz and no immediate pictures of the crash or the six-mile plume of lunar dust that the mission was all about. The public, which followed the crashes on the Internet and at observatories, seemed puzzled.

NASA officials touted loads of data from the probe and telescopes around the world and in orbit. But most of the photos they showed during a Friday morning press conference were from before the crash. The crash photos and videos were few and showed little more than a fuzzy white flash.

Still, NASA scientists were happy.

“This is so cool,” said Jennifer Heldmann, coordinator for NASA’s observation campaign. “We’re thrilled.”

“This is going to change the way we look at the moon,” NASA chief lunar scientist Michael Wargo said at the news conference.

Expectations by the public for live plume video were probably too high and based on pre-crash animations, some of which were not by NASA, project manager Dan Andrews told The Associated Press Friday morning 80 minutes after impact.

Another issue, one NASA thought was a good possibility going into Friday, was that the lighting was bad and work needs to be done on images to make them easier to see, Andrews said. Experts said the images could be essentially “gray against black,” he said. – ap

Not much to see in the way of fireworks. It seems pretty obvious that the moon had been warned NASA was attacking. Who tipped it off? Perhaps it was an Earth woman who felt violated by this attack, or perhaps it was Bill F, who said:

The moon is a huge water balloon. If they pop it with a bomb it’ll burst, the water will fall into Earth’s atmosphere, heat up on entry and turn to steam, which will cook us all. Please stop NASA.

Now the ball is in the moon’s court. What type of counter attack, if any, will it launch upon the Earth? Time will tell.

Last time carbon dioxide levels were this high: 15 million years ago, scientists report

You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science.

“The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland,” said the paper’s lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

“Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, and geological observations that we now have for the last 20 million years lend strong support to the idea that carbon dioxide is an important agent for driving climate change throughout Earth’s history,” she said.

By analyzing the chemistry of bubbles of ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice, scientists have been able to determine the composition of Earth’s atmosphere going back as far as 800,000 years, and they have developed a good understanding of how carbon dioxide levels have varied in the atmosphere since that time. But there has been little agreement before this study on how to reconstruct carbon dioxide levels prior to 800,000 years ago.

Tripati, before joining UCLA’s faculty, was part of a research team at England’s University of Cambridge that developed a new technique to assess carbon dioxide levels in the much more distant past — by studying the ratio of the chemical element boron to calcium in the shells of ancient single-celled marine algae. Tripati has now used this method to determine the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere as far back as 20 million years ago.

“We are able, for the first time, to accurately reproduce the ice-core record for the last 800,000 years — the record of atmospheric C02 based on measurements of carbon dioxide in gas bubbles in ice,” Tripati said. “This suggests that the technique we are using is valid.

“We then applied this technique to study the history of carbon dioxide from 800,000 years ago to 20 million years ago,” she said. “We report evidence for a very close coupling between carbon dioxide levels and climate. When there is evidence for the growth of a large ice sheet on Antarctica or on Greenland or the growth of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, we see evidence for a dramatic change in carbon dioxide levels over the last 20 million years.

“A slightly shocking finding,” Tripati said, “is that the only time in the last 20 million years that we find evidence for carbon dioxide levels similar to the modern level of 387 parts per million was 15 to 20 million years ago, when the planet was dramatically different.”

Levels of carbon dioxide have varied only between 180 and 300 parts per million over the last 800,000 years — until recent decades, said Tripati, who is also a member of UCLA’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. It has been known that modern-day levels of carbon dioxide are unprecedented over the last 800,000 years, but the finding that modern levels have not been reached in the last 15 million years is new. …

via Last time carbon dioxide levels were this high: 15 million years ago, scientists report.

Inside the first bird, surprising signs of a dinosaur

The raptor-like Archaeopteryx has long been viewed as the archetypal first bird, but new research reveals that it was actually a lot less “bird-like” than scientists had believed.

In fact, the landmark study led by paleobiologist Gregory M. Erickson of The Florida State University has upended the iconic first-known-bird image of Archaeopteryx (from the Greek for “ancient wing”), which lived 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period in what is now Germany. Instead, the animal has been recast as more of a feathered dinosaur — bird on the outside, dinosaur on the inside.

That’s because new, microscopic images of the ancient cells and blood vessels inside the bones of the winged, feathered, claw-handed creature show unexpectedly slow growth and maturation that took years, similar to that found in dinosaurs, from which birds evolved. In contrast, living birds grow rapidly and mature in a matter of weeks.

Also groundbreaking is the finding that the rapid bone growth common to all living birds but surprisingly absent from the Archaeopteryx was not necessary for avian dinosaur flight.

The study is published in the Oct. 9, 2009, issue of the journal PLoS One . In addition to Erickson, an associate professor in Florida State’s Department of Biological Science and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, co-authors include Florida State University biologist Brian D. Inouye and other U.S. scientists, as well as researchers from Germany and China.

“Living birds mature very quickly,” Erickson said. “That’s why we rarely see baby birds among flocks of invariably identical-size pigeons. Slow-growing animals such as Archaeopteryx would look foreign to contemporary bird-watchers.”

Erickson said evidence already confirms that birds are, in fact, dinosaurs. “But just how dinosaur-like — or even bird-like — was the first bird?” he asked. “Almost nothing had been known of Archaeopteryx biology. There has been debate as to how well it flew, if at all. Some have suggested that early bird physiology may have been very different from living birds, but no one had tested fossils that were close to the base of bird ancestry.”

Fossilized remains of Archaeopteryx were found in Germany in 1860, one year after Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was published. With its combination of bird-like features, including feathers and a wishbone, and reptilian ones — teeth, three-fingered hands, a long bony tail — the skeleton made evolutionary theory more credible. The 1860s evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley saw the Archaeopteryx as a perfect transition between birds and reptiles. Erickson calls it “the poster child for evolution.”

via Inside the first bird, surprising signs of a dinosaur.

So, you evolution deniers, what do you think? Do you really believe that the devil put the seven (7) different Archeopteryx fossils in the ground to confuse people about the bible?

Liver cells grown from patients’ skin cells

Image: These are liver cells generated from skin that are shown to make human liver proteins Albumin in green and HNF4 in red.

Scientists at The Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee have successfully produced liver cells from patients’ skin cells opening the possibility of treating a wide range of diseases that affect liver function. The study was led by Stephen A. Duncan, D. Phil., Marcus Professor in Human and Molecular Genetics, and professor of cell biology, neurobiology and anatomy, along with postdoctoral fellow Karim Si-Tayeb, Ph.D., and graduate student Ms. Fallon Noto.

“This is a crucial step forward towards developing therapies that can potentially replace the need for scarce liver transplants, currently the only treatment for most advanced liver disease,” says Dr. Duncan.

Liver disease is the fourth leading cause of death among middle aged adults in the United States. Loss of liver function can be caused by several factors, including genetic mutations, infections with hepatitis viruses, by excessive alcohol consumption, or chronic use of some prescription drugs. When liver function goes awry it can result in a wide variety of disorders including diabetes and atherosclerosis and in many cases is fatal.

The Medical College research team generated patient–specific liver cells by first repeating the work of James Thomson and colleagues at University of Wisconsin-Madison who showed that skin cells can be reprogrammed to become cells that resemble embryonic stem cells. They then tricked the skin–derived pluripotent stem cells into forming liver cells by mimicking the normal processes through which liver cells are made during embryonic development. Pluripotent stem cells are so named because of their capacity to develop into any one of eh more than 200 cell types in the human body.

At the end of this process, the researchers found that they were able to very easily produce large numbers of relatively pure liver cells in laboratory culture dishes. “We were excited to discover that the liver cells produced from human skin cells were able to perform many of the activities associated with healthy adult liver function and that the cells could be injected into mouse livers where they integrated and were capable of making human liver proteins,” says Dr. Duncan.

Several studies have shown that liver cells generated from embryonic stem cells could potentially be used for therapy. However, the possible use of such cells is limited by ethical considerations associated with the generation of embryonic stem cells from preimplantation embryos and the fact that embryonic stem cells do not have the same genetic make-up as the patient.

via Liver cells grown from patients’ skin cells.

This stuff is so exciting because I believe we are, step by step, consciously taking over the process of our own evolution.

Capone’s Wisconsin hideout sells for $2.6 million

The one-time gangster’s house is built of stone with 18-inch thick walls and protected with guard towers, just in case G-men or goons with machine guns inside violin cases come calling.

Chicago mobster Al Capone, local legend says, used the 37-acre lake nearby for seaplanes carrying shipments of bootleg alcohol, before they were loaded onto trucks bound for the speakeasies of Chicago in the days of Prohibition.

Capone’s hideout, 407 acres of wooded property in northern Wisconsin about 150 miles northwest of Wausau, is owned now by the bank that foreclosed on it more than a year ago after no other bidders emerged at the $2.6 million floor price.

But Chippewa Valley Bank, which bought the site for the minimum bid during a five-minute sheriff’s sale Thursday in Hayward, doesn’t want to own it for long. So what the lender describes as a “very private and pristine” property with some notorious gangster history is still on the block.

Other parties are certainly interested, the bank’s Vice President Joe Kinnear said — but for something less than $2.6 million.

He said at least four people want to buy the property, perhaps to restore it to what it once was — a restaurant, museum and tourist area.

“It looks like we are going to have our hands full trying to get rid of it to these other individuals,” Kinnear said. “We will market it and sell it. Somebody will buy it.”

He hopes that happens within 90 days.

Capone — nicknamed “Scarface” — owned the land in the late 1920s and early 1930s during Prohibition, the bank said. The two guard towers on the property reportedly were manned with machine guns whenever he visited.

The bank acquired the property after foreclosing in April 2008 on owner Guy Houston and his company The Hideout Inc., according to court records. The Houston family bought the property in the 1950s from Capone’s estate and had operated it as a seasonal bar and restaurant, known for its prime rib, and offered guided tours focusing on the Capone lore.

Kinnear said Houston still has until Oct. 28 to settle his debt with the bank before the title is officially transferred.

Houston’s attorney, Todd A. Smith of Rice Lake, did not immediately return a telephone message Thursday.

Capone headed a massive bootlegging, gambling and prostitution operation during Prohibition and raked in tens of millions of dollars. He was widely suspected in several murders but never charged.

via Capone’s Wisconsin hideout sells for $2.6 million – Yahoo! News.

… In the heat of a summer night, in the land of the dollar bill, when the town of Chicago died, and they talk about it still. When a man named Al Capone, (huh) tried to make that town his own, (huh) and he called his gang to war, (huh) against the forces of the law. – The night Chicago Died.

7-foot-long dog could be record holder

Boomer may be a buster: Measuring 3 feet tall at the shoulders and 7 feet long from nose to destructive wagging tail, he might be the world’s tallest living dog.

Owner Caryn Weber says her 3-year-old Landseer Newfoundland keeps all four paws on the floor when he drinks from the kitchen faucet in her family’s eastern North Dakota farm house.

Boomer stares into car windows eye to eye with drivers.

A 20-pound bag of dry dog food lasts the 180-pound canine a couple of weeks.

Weber says her furry black and white dog “comes into the house and his tail is so high everything gets knocked around.”

Weber plans to send Boomer’s measurements to Guinness World Records.

The previous record holder was a nearly 4-foot-tall Great Dane that died this summer.

via ND woman’s 7-foot-long dog could be record holder – Yahoo! News.