Scientists make cancer cells vanish

Scottish scientists have made cancer tumours vanish within 10 days by sending DNA to seek and destroy the cells.

The system, developed at Strathclyde and Glasgow universities, is being hailed as a breakthrough because it appears to eradicate tumours without causing harmful side-effects. A leading medical journal has described the results so far as remarkable, while Cancer Research UK said they were encouraging.

Dr Christine Dufes, a lecturer at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences and leader of the research, said: “The tumours were completely gone within 10 days. It is fantastic. When you talk about 10 days that is the time frame for curing a cold. Imagine if within 10 days you could completely make a tumour disappear.”

Researchers around the world are trying to find ways to use genes as a cancer treatment, but one problem is ensuring they attack the tumour without destroying healthy tissue.

In laboratory experiments the Strathclyde research team used a plasma protein called transferrin, which carries iron through the blood, to deliver the therapeutic DNA to the right spot. Once in situ the DNA produced a protein that attacked the tumour cells.

The findings have been published in the Journal of Controlled Release, with an accompanying comment from editor Professor Kinam Park, of Purdue University, Indiana, saying other attempts to target genes at cancer cells have “seldom shown complete disappearance of tumours”.

The research was initially supported with a grant from charity Tenovus Scotland, which supports the work of young scientists to help their ideas get off the ground.

via Scientists make cancer cells vanish – Herald Scotland | News | Health.

These stories always end the same way. “Researchers cautioned that at least a million years of testing would be required before the cure could be attempted with real human subjects.”

Dinosaurs killed off by sudden drop in temperature

Dinosaurs were wiped off the face of the Earth by a sudden drop in temperature and not by a comet striking the planet, scientists claimed today.

Researchers studying fossils in Norway have discovered that the world’s seas plummeted 9C from 13C to just 4C around 137 million years ago.

They believe this was caused by a sudden change in the Atlantic Gulf Stream – a phenomenon many experts fear is about to happen again.

The temperature drop during the Cretaceous period would almost certainly have wiped out an ‘abundance’ of the world’s dinosaurs.

The scientists behind the ground-breaking study claim this would have been the first major step dinosaurs took on their eventual road to extinction.Some experts believe the creatures were wiped out by one cataclysmic event 65million years ago – such as a meteor hitting the planet.

But the new research suggests they were wiped out by a series of environmental changes – starting with a drop in sea temperatures.

The study was conducted by a team of scientists, led by Dr Gregory Price of Plymouth University, who examined fossils and minerals from Arctic Svalbard in Norway.

Dr Price found the drop in temperatures was so severe that numerous species of dinosaur previously living in warm, shallow seas, land and swamps would have died out.

He said the team’s research showed the drop in temperature happened when the Earth was in a ‘greenhouse’ climate – similar to now.

‘The drop in temperatures may well have been caused by a change in ocean circulation, much like what is being predicted for the Gulf Stream,’ he said.

‘In the Cretaceous period, the Atlantic was much narrower but it would have featured a similar, northerly-flowing current.

‘If it had stopped working it could have resulted in the melting of the ice caps, causing a sudden drop in temperatures.

‘We believe dinosaurs were most likely to be cold-blooded creatures and would have needed the warmth to keep them alive. If they were unable to migrate south they could have been wiped out.

‘Climate change is now very much on the agenda in trying to determine how the dinosaurs became extinct.

‘We now believe that they died out gradually and it is very possible that this could have been caused by a series of climatic changes.’

The drop in temperature is thought to have occurred because high levels of CO2 were in the atmosphere which caused global temperatures to rise and polar ice to melt – a phenomenon currently predicted for Earth.

It is the equivalent of the predicted shut-down of the Gulf Stream ‘conveyor belt’ – which scientists have warned could take Europe into another ice age.

Dr Price has been visiting the Svalbard since 2005, collecting fossils and samples in an area famed for a number of palaeontological discoveries, including giant marine reptiles such as pliosaurs and icthyosaurs.

He added: ‘The flourishing of the dinosaurs and a range of other data indicates that the Cretaceous period was considerably warmer and boasted a high degree of CO2 in the atmosphere.

‘But over a period of a few hundred or a few thousand years, ocean temperatures fell from an average of 13 degrees centigrade to between eight and four degrees.’via Dinosaurs killed off by sudden drop in temperature | Mail Online.

Side note: Volcanoes are not the cause of global warming and they don’t put out more CO2 than humans:

Measurements of CO₂ levels over the past 50 years do not show any significant rises after eruptions. Total emissions from volcanoes on land are estimated to average just 0.3 Gt of CO₂ each year – about a hundredth of human emissions (pdf document).

This is going to baffle some folks. We are heating up the planet, and therefore, we may all freeze to death. Wha? Yes, you heard correctly. The price for our lack of understanding may be our near or total extinction. (Alternately, enough of us have to “get it” to take meaningful action, if we even can.

The earth is a very big dynamic system that responds to changes.   We put more CO2 into the air and this greenhouse gas warms the surface. This causes ice to melt. The cold melted water from melting cracking ice shelves runs to the sea. Since sea temperature differences drive the gulf stream, the new cold water could shut the system down. This would bring about a rapid planet wide change in temperature according to the theory.

Yes, the earth did have climate change before us. Yes, this time, we are to blame. But I agree with the global warming deniers on one thing: Even if we do everything right, even if we reverse 100% man made global warming,  one of the past causes of global climate change could still hit us.

Will we cook or freeze? Will it all balance out leaving us with a few thousand more years of good times like the present? Time will tell.

Deadly strain of airborne fungus spreading among healthy people and animals, scientists warn

A deadly strain of fungus is quietly spreading among animals and people in the U.S. and Canada, scientists have warned.

The airborne Cryptococcus gattii usually only infects transplant and Aids patients and others with weak immune systems.

But researchers have raised concerns as the new strain is genetically different, meaning healthy people are at risk.

Over the past 11 years there have been about 220 cases reported in British Columbia while since 2004, doctors in Washington and Oregon have reported about 50.

Among the total 270 cases, 40 people have died from overwhelming infections of the lungs and brain.

However, researchers have suggested the bug is changing possibly due to climate change.

Scientists are now warning C. gattii, which has been found in Western North America and the Canadian province of British Columbia, could spread further.

Edmond Byrnes of Duke University in North Carolina, who led the study which was published today, said: ‘This novel fungus is worrisome because it appears to be a threat to otherwise healthy people.

‘The findings presented here document that the outbreak of C. gattii in Western North America is continuing to expand throughout this temperate region.

‘Our findings suggest further expansion into neighbouring regions is likely to occur and aim to increase disease awareness in the region.’

The fungus is usually found in forests, on trees and in soil. Those who have got sick usually work in jobs such as forestry or construction.

Symptoms – a cough lasting for weeks, sharp chest pain, shortness of breath, headache, fever, nighttime sweats and weight loss – usually take up to six months to develop after exposure.

Dr Julie Harris, a specialist in fungal diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, said: ‘This makes it very challenging for us to find out what the most important exposure was.

‘Often we’ll be able to tell if a patient was exposed, for example, to salmonella.

‘They’ll get sick the next day, and they can remember what they ate the day before. But with this disease, we’re really challenged. It can take from two months up to a year for the disease to manifest itself.’

Researchers are also concerned by the number of different animals species getting infected.

Domestic cats and dogs lead the list, but there have been confirmed reports in sheep, goats and horses, in elk and llamas, even in porpoises and dolphins whose infected corpses have washed up on beaches.

The report added: ‘From 1999 through 2003, the cases were largely restricted to Vancouver Island.

‘Between 2003 and 2006, the outbreak expanded into neighbouring mainland British Columbia and then into Washington and Oregon from 2005 to 2009.

‘Based on this historical trajectory of expansion, the outbreak may continue to expand into the neighboring region of Northern California, and possibly further.’

via Deadly strain of airborne fungus spreading among healthy people and animals, scientists warn | Mail Online.

If you were keeping a watchful eye on the news feeds on Friday, you probably heard about a new strain of deadly fungus called Cryptococcus gattii that has emerged in Oregon and Washington, and is threatening to spread into California. If you’re like me, you are also probably confused about how worried you should — or shouldn’t — be about this killer pathogen.

The news reports have managed simultaneously to raise the alarm about the new bug while warning people off undue hysteria. Consider this ABC News headline “Fatal Fungus Cryptococcus Gattii: Experts Say Fears Overblown,” which strangely dismisses a fear of its own making. And then there’s an article on Health.com that details the rise of the deadly new strain, then exhorts readers not to worry: “Besides, there’s not much you can do to protect yourself from it in the meantime.” …

here’s what you really need to know: “These infections are still rare, and from an overall health perspective, I don’t think anyone should be concerned, but should just be aware that it is increasing geographically and incidence-wise in [the Pacific Northwest],” says Byrnes. “For the average person, I don’t think this is anything to be too worried about.”C. gatti is normally found in tropical climates in South America, Australia and Papua New Guinea. In these endemic regions, it tends to favor eucalyptus trees and, according to Julie Harris, an epidemiologist in the mycotic diseases branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rates of infection among people are relatively low.

The fungus was somehow carried from the southern hemisphere to North America, where it was found on Vancouver Island in 1999. (It was rare — at its peak, between 2002 and 2005, there were 36 cases per million population per year in the region reported to health officials.) One of the new strains of highly virulent C. gattii was determined to have originated on Vancouver Island; the other is thought to have emerged in Oregon, possibly from a strain that had spread south from British Columbia. In lab animals, Byrnes reports, these two strains are 100% lethal, causing death within three weeks. That’s reason for concern from a scientific standpoint, he says, since other known strains of the fungus are not as deadly. But, again, the fungus is so rare in the real-world, that from a public-health perspective, there’s no need for alarm.  …

WHOI scientists find ancient asphalt domes off California coast

Some 700 feet deep in the waters off California’s jewel of a coastal resort, Santa Barbara, sits a group of football-field-sized asphalt domes unlike any other underwater features known to exist.

About 35,000 years ago, a series of apparent undersea volcanoes deposited massive flows of petroleum 10 miles offshore. The deposits hardened into domes that were discovered recently by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UC Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Their report—co-authored with researchers from UC Davis, the University of Sydney and the University of Rhode Island—appears online today (April 25) in the Journal Nature Geoscience. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy and the Seaver Institute.

“It was an amazing experience, driving along…and all of a sudden, this mountain is staring you in the face,” said Christopher M. Reddy, director of WHOI’s Coastal Ocean Institute and one of the study’s senior authors, as he described the discovery of the domes using the deep submersible vehicle Alvin. Moreover, the dome was teeming with undersea life. “It was essentially an oasis,” he said, “almost like an artificial reef.”

What really piqued the interest of Reddy—a marine geochemist who studies oil spills—was the chemical composition of the dome: “very unusual asphalt material,” he said. “There aren’t that many opportunities to study oil that’s been sitting around on the bottom of the ocean for 35,000 years.”

Reddy’s unique chance came courtesy of UCSB earth scientist and lead author David L. Valentine, who first came upon the largest of the structures—named Il Duomo—and brought back a chunk of the brittle, black material in 2007 from an initial dive in Alvin, which WHOI operates for the US Navy. Valentine and Reddy were on a cruise aboard the WHOI-operated research vessel Atlantis, following up on undersea mapping survey by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and the work of UCSB earth scientist Ed Keller.

“The largest [dome] is about the size of two football fields, side by side and as tall as a six-story building,” Valentine said. Alvin’s robotic arm snapped off a piece of the unusual formation, secured it in a basket and delivered it to Reddy aboard Atlantis.

“I was sleeping,” Reddy chuckled. “Somebody woke me up and wanted me to look at the rocks and test them.”

It turned out to be quite an awakening. “I was amazed at how easy it was to break,” Reddy recalls, “which confirmed it wasn’t solid rock” and lent credence to Keller’s theory that these structures might be made of asphalt.

Without access to the sophisticated equipment in his Woods Hole lab, Reddy employed a “25-cent glass tube, the back of a Bic pen and a little nail polish remover” to analyze the crusty substance. He used the crude tools like a mortar and pestle to grind the rock, “and literally within several minutes, it became a thick oil.”

“This immediately said to me that this was asphalt,” Reddy said. “And I remember turning to Dave [Valentine] and saying, ‘We’ve got to back. Please take me back there’” to the dome.

After making some schedule changes, Valentine cleared the way for him and Reddy to take Alvin back to several sites in 2007. This work also set the stage for a follow-up study in September 2009, when the investigators returned to the domes with Alvin and the Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) Sentry to study the unique structures. They were joined by, among others, WHOI collaborators Dana Yoerger, Richard Camilli and Robert K. Nelson and Oscar Pizarro, now at the University of Sydney.

“With that combination, we were able to go in and do very detailed mapping of the site and very detailed sampling at the seafloor,” Valentine said. Using mass spectrometers and radiocarbon dating in their respective laboratories, the scientists were able to confirm the nature and age of the domes.

“To me, as an oil-spill chemist, this was very exciting,” said Reddy. “I got to find out what oil looks like after… 35,000 years.”

What it looked like was “incredibly weathered,” said Reddy. “That means nature had taken away a lot of compounds. These mounds of black material were the last remnants of oil that exploded up from below. To see nature doing this on its own was an unbelievable finding.”

A few asphalt-like undersea structures have been reported, says Valentine, “but not anything exactly like these…no large structures like we see here.” He estimates that the dome structures contain about 100,000 tons of residual asphalt and compares them to an underwater version of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, complete with the fossils of ancient animals.

The researchers are not sure exactly why sea life has taken up residence around the asphalt domes, but one possibility is that because the oil has become benign over the years that some creatures are able to actually feed off it and get energy from it. They may also be “thriving” on tiny holes in the dome areas that release minute amounts of methane gas, Reddy says.

The scientists plan to continue studying the domed structures. “We have some very fundamental questions that remain,” Valentine says. “It would be nice to know what is going on deep down under these things.

“One future direction is to try and actually drill into them,” he says. “We also need to turn it over to some geologists to figure out where this oil is really coming from. More fundamentally, we’re going to look at the actual degradation of the oil by microorganisms and maybe even see what organisms are trapped in this…very much like the La Brea Tar Pits.”

From a chemical point of view, Reddy says he will continue to probe the question of exactly which of the chemicals that make up the domes “stayed around” all these years.

“Instead of this taking place at a refinery, nature used a variety of its own tools,” he said, to manufacture the asphalt substance. With some heating and a few chemical tweaks, he added, this is essentially the same material that paves highways and parking lots. After all, it is California.

via WHOI scientists find ancient asphalt domes off California coast.

Brain-like computing on an organic molecular layer

Information processing circuits in digital computers are static. In our brains, information processing circuits—neurons—evolve continuously to solve complex problems. Now, an international research team from Japan and Michigan Technological University has created a similar process of circuit evolution in an organic molecular layer that can solve complex problems. This is the first time a brain-like “evolutionary circuit” has been realized.

This computer is massively parallel: The world’s fastest supercomputers can only process bits one at a time in each of their channels. Their circuit allows instantaneous changes of ~300 bits.

Their processor can produce solutions to problems for which algorithms on computers are unknown, like predictions of natural calamities and outbreaks of disease. To prove this unique feature, they have mimicked two natural phenomena in the molecular layer: heat diffusion and the evolution of cancer cells.

The monolayer has intelligence; it can solve many problems on the same grid.

Their molecular processor heals itself if there is a defect. This remarkable self-healing property comes from the self-organizing ability of the molecular monolayer. No existing man-made computer has this property, but our brain does: if a neuron dies, another neuron takes over its function.

The work is described in the Nature Physics paper “Massively parallel computing on an organic molecular layer.” It is coauthored by Ranjit Pati, of the Michigan Technological University Department of Physics. Lead author is Anirban Bandyopadhyay, National Institute for Materials Science, National Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Japan. …

via Brain-like computing on an organic molecular layer.

Mass rally in Japan against US base on Okinawa

Nearly 100,000 people have attended a rally in Japan’s southern island of Okinawa demanding that a US military base be moved off the island.

Under a 2006 agreement with the US, the US Marines’ Futenma base was to be moved from the centre to the coast.

But demonstrators want Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to stick to an election pledge to remove it completely.

The row over the base has undermined relations between his centre-left Government and the US.

The BBC’s Roland Buerk in Tokyo says Mr Hatoyama staked his job on resolving the issue by the end of May.

He is now under pressure because of his apparent dithering over the base, our correspondent adds.

His handling of the issue could be critical ahead of upper house polls in July.

Japanese have long been resentful of the massive US base on the island, which is home to more than half the 47,000 American troops based in Japan.

via BBC News – Mass rally in Japan against US base on Okinawa.

X-37B military spaceplane launches from Cape Canaveral

A prototype spaceplane developed for the US military has been launched into orbit from Florida.

The X-37B, which has been likened to a scaled-down space shuttle, blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1952 EDT (2352 GMT) on Thursday.

The military vehicle is unpiloted and will carry out the first autonomous re-entry and landing in the history of the US space programme.

The spacecraft can return experiments to Earth for inspection and analysis.

At 9m (29ft) long and with a 4.5m (15ft) wingspan, the reusable spaceplane is about one-quarter the size of the shuttle, with a large engine mounted at the rear of the ship for orbit changing.

And while the space shuttle uses a fuel-cell power-system, the military vehicle is powered by a solar array and lithium-ion batteries.

The precise objectives and cost of the programme are secret, but the first few flights will allow officials to evaluate the vehicle’s performance and ensure components and systems work the way they are supposed to.

“The top priority technology demonstration on this first flight is the vehicle itself,” Gary Payton, the US Air Force’s deputy under secretary for space programs, told journalists on a teleconference this week.

“Getting it into orbit, getting the payload bay doors open, the solar array deployed, learning about on-orbit attitude control and bringing it all back.”

The X-37B was launched vertically atop an Atlas V rocket. The Air Force (USAF) says the vehicle will be used to test advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics and high temperature structures and seals.

The Pentagon has not specified a duration for this mission, but the X-37B is designed to operate on orbit for up to 270 days: “In all honesty, we don’t know when it’s coming back for sure. It depends on the progress that we make with the on-orbit experiments, the on-orbit demonstrations,” said Mr Payton.

Once the mission is complete, a command will be sent from the ground prompting the 5,000kg (11,000lb) spaceplane to fire its engine to re-enter the atmosphere. …

via BBC News – X-37B military spaceplane launches from Cape Canaveral.

Question: Would an entire world of your clones have wars?

Xeno’s Clone World Thought Experiment:

If exact genetic copies of yourself were all seven billion people on the planet, what do you think would happen? Would there be descrimination in hiring for jobs? Would there be crime? (note: clones have slightly different fingerprints because the pattern is tied to nerve growth which is a somewhat umpredictable dynamic process during each person’s development.)

Would there be war? Would the laws change? How would you share world resources? Would you let the copies of yourself in Africa starve to death? Would there be different religions? How would you choose who becomes a doctor and who becomes a farmer? Would you have different countries? How would you choose leaders?

Italian woman with evidence she was impregnated by aliens

This is the most amazing abduction case I have ever heard with the most evidence you could have I think! Please send this to your friends that don’t believe as this one is very compelling.

English Subtitles: Another Jaime Maussan report. Italian lady who claims to have been abducted several times throughout her life and has a ton of physical evidence to prove it, including a real live alien fetus removed from her womb by doctors. Furthermore, she has taken both video and photographs of the ships and occupants in stunning clarity to further back up her story. This is an unbelievable case that warrants further investigation.

Warning, end of video shows a three fingered alien looking aborted fetus.

Woman goes on blow gun spree in Stevens Point

A 41-year-old woman is in jail after police say she went on a blow gun spree in downtown Stevens Point.

The Stevens Point Journal reports that police got a report at 9 p.m. Wednesday from a 25-year-old woman who said she was walking downtown when she felt something hit her chest. In the next half hour, three more people made similar reports. None were seriously injured.

One of the victims reported she saw the dart shot from a pipe sticking out the window of a black minivan. Police pulled the vehicle over at 9:30 p.m. and found a blow gun, a slingshot and a bucket of rocks inside.

Police arrested the van’s driver, Paula Wolf, and say she eventually admitted to shooting the pedestrians. She allegedly told an officer that she “liked to hear people say ouch.”

Wolf has been charged with recklessly endangering safety. She could not be reached for comment.

via Woman goes on blow gun spree in Stevens Point.