Researchers closer to development of drug to prevent deadly immune response

Researchers have isolated a molecule, small enough to be used as a drug, that can shut down a dysfunctional immune response that causes deadly hemorrhagic shock, results in delayed death of heart attack patients, promotes rejection of transplanted organs and destroys joints in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, according to a paper published in Molecular Immunology.  …

The complement system is one of the oldest surviving remnants of the earliest life forms and exists in almost identical from in everything from seagulls to starfish.

It developed during millions of years in which the deadliest threat to all life forms, including humans, was not car accidents, heart attacks or the rejection of transplanted organs but infectious disease.

A complex cascade of dozens of biochemical reactions is designed to launch an attack that destroys the membranes of cells damaged by infection.

After trauma has left cells without oxygen for too long, the complement system kicks in when oxygen returns and lays waste to damaged cells that might otherwise survive. This is known as a reperfusion injury, and in some case occurs over a series of days.

In heart attacks, the death of heart cells during reperfusion can be irreversible and lethal. Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome caused by reperfusion injury is the leading cause of death in surgical patients and in trauma patients who survive the first 24 hours.

The inflammatory response also plays a major role in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.

In earlier published research, the authors showed that the introduction of the harmless protein shell that encases the astrovirus, which causes pediatric diarrhea, shuts down two of the three methods used by the complement system to destroy damaged cells, but doesn’t interfere with the part of complement reaction that can offer protection from invading pathogens.

The molecule that modulated the complement cascade, however, was relatively large, consisting of 787 amino acids, too sizable to be used therapeutically.

By meticulously testing smaller shards of the shell, researchers found and then modified a shard consisting of just 30 amino acids that actually was more effective than the larger molecule. That smaller segment, a modified peptide dubbed E23A, makes it a viable candidate for in-vitro testing of the compound.

“In-vitro testing is a significant step toward developing a drug that can be used therapeutically,” says Dr. Krishna.

via Researchers closer to development of drug to prevent deadly immune response.

Artificial enzyme removes natural poison

While studying for her PhD in chemistry at the University of Copenhagen Dr. Jeannette Bjerre showed how a novel so-called chemzyme was able to decompose glycoside esculin, a toxin found in horse-chestnuts.

For the first time ever, a completely man-made chemical enzyme has been successfully used to neutralise a toxin found naturally in fruits and vegetables.

Proof of concept for artificial enzymes

Chemzymes are designed molecules emulating the targeting and efficiency of naturally occurring enzymes and the recently graduated Dr. Bjerre is pleased about her results.

“Showing that these molecules are capable of decomposing toxins required vast amounts of work and time. But it’s been worth every minute because it proves the general point that it’s possible to design artificial enzymes for this class of task”, explains Bjerre.

via Artificial enzyme removes natural poison – University of Copenhagen.

Ants ahead of humans in antibiotic use

Research led by Dr Matt Hutchings and published today in the journal BMC Biology shows that ants use the antibiotics to inhibit the growth of unwanted fungi and bacteria in their fungus cultures which they use to feed their larvae and queen.

These antibiotics are produced by actinomycete bacteria that live on the ants in a mutual symbiosis.

Although these ants have been studied for more than 100 years this is the first demonstration that a single ant colony uses multiple antibiotics and is reminiscent of the use of multidrug therapy to treat infections in humans.

The work, which was funded by the UK Medical Research Council, has also identified a new antibiotic that could be used to treat fungal infections.

Fungiculture in the insect world is practiced by ants, termites, beetles and gall midges.

Dr Hutchings’ research investigates the Acromyrmex octospinosus leaf cutter ant, endemic in South and Central America and the southern US. These ants form the largest and most complex animal societies on earth with colonies of up to several million individuals. The garden worker ants researched were collected from three colonies in Trinidad and Tobago.

Dr Hutchings said: “This was really a fun project which started with a PhD student, Joerg Barke, streaking leaf-cutting ants onto agar plates to isolate antibiotic producing bacteria. Joerg, with his colleagues Ryan Seipke and Sabine Gruschow, really pushed this project forwards and made these major discoveries. They really deserve most of the credit for this work.”

“We found a new antifungal compound that is related to a clinically important antifungal named nystatin so we’re excited about the potential of these ants and other insects to provide us with new antibiotics for medical use.

“It’s also very exciting that ants not only evolved agriculture before humans but also combination therapy with natural antibiotics. Humans are just starting to realise that this is one way to slow down the rise of drug resistant bacteria – the so called superbugs.”

The paper, entitled ‘A mixed community of actinomycetes produce multiple antibiotics for the fungus farming ant Acromyrmex octospinosus’ is published in BMC Biology.

via Ants found to use multiple antibiotics as weed killers – University of East Anglia (UEA).

Shape-shifting robot plane

The EUREKA E! 3931 ASARP project has developed a small and cheap-to-build unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) intended to cut the cost of maritime search-and-rescue missions and reduce risks to material and human lives. The seaplane uses shape-changing technology to improve flight stability, enabling the plane to fly in severe weather conditions. The resulting craft has an endurance of 4.5 hours with a payload of up to 40 kg. It is equipped with state-of-the-art avionics and onboard cameras. And it is linked wirelessly to the command centre from where the pilot can control the UAV. A prototype is currently undergoing final trials in Cyprus and the design is already attracting interest from governmental and civil rescue and surveillance organisations.

Maritime search and rescue is often hampered by severe weather, posing a major risk to helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft and their crews. The cost in material and human life can prove high. ASARP set out to design a UAV to undertake such rescue missions more effectively.

Counteracting effect of wind

“The main problem is that UAVs are small, light and affected by extreme weather,” explains project coordinator Dr Michael Amprikidis of engineering consultancy GGD. ASARP tackled this by using reactive shape-changing control surfaces. The shape-changing elements of the plane: aeroservoelastic trim tabs, can be vibrated in counterphase to wind gusts to reduce loads by as much 25%, allowing the UAV to fly in severe weather. On-board sensors monitor stability and provide constant feedback to the ailerons.

“Aeroservoelastic technology makes it possible to use wind speed and the structural mechanics of the system to our advantage,” says Dr Amprikidis. The technology was the subject of a previous project in which he evaluated design concepts involving aeroelastic deformation of the airframe enabling aircraft to withstand heavy winds. Optimum efficiency was obtained through continual adjustment of the aircraft shape.

“Several technologies were used, including aeroservoelastic trim tabs,” he says. This involves three deformable surfaces used in conjunction with the flight controls and able to move at high frequencies. “A tab can have very high oscillation frequency; traditional flight surfaces cannot match these frequencies, leading to up-and-down movement of aircraft during turbulence.”

via showsuccessstory – EUREKA.

Image is a different shape shifting plane:

By 2020 the U.S. military plans to release Switchblade, an unmanned, shape-changing plane concept under development by Northrop Grumman.

Ring! It’s Gmail’s new voice feature calling

Google announced Wednesday it is offering the ability to make phone calls over the Internet via its popular Gmail service.

Unlike Google’s nearly two-year-old Gmail voice and video chat, which gives users an audio and visual experience online, the new calling feature allows users to dial phone numbers. With this move, Google is competing with Skype , which has long dominated this area.

“Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail ,” wrote Robin Schriebman, a Google software engineer in a blog post . “We’ve been testing this feature internally and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant, to placing a call when you’re in an area with bad reception.”

Schriebman explained that making a phone call through Gmail works just like a normal phone. Users can click “Call phone” at the top of their chat list and enter a number or a contact name. She added that calls to anyone in the U.S. and Canada will be free “at least for the rest of the year.” She said “very low rates” have been set up for calls to other countries .

So, does Google have the muscle to make Gmail a Skype killer?

Skype, a 7-year-old company, is used by individuals and companies to make video and voice calls over the Internet. According to Skype, its users made 6.4 billion minutes of calls in the first half of 2010.

While Google may be starting out behind in this competition, it has the benefit of its large Gmail user base.

“Skype could get hurt by this,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “Skype has been offering the ability to call land lines and cell phones for years now. But having it integrated into Google’s Gmail and, assumedly, their other offerings down the road, is quite an extension for Google.”

via Ring! It’s Gmail’s new voice feature calling | Reuters.

Skyscraper near Empire State Building wins backing

A new 67-storey skyscraper has won the approval of the New York authorities despite efforts to stop the construction by the owner of the Empire State Building.

The full city council backed the 15 Penn Plaza by a 47-1 vote.

The office building will stand nearly as tall as the 102-storey Empire State Building (ESB), two blocks away.

ESB owner Anthony Malkin had argued the new building would ruin the “uniqueness” of the city’s skyline.

But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Manhattan should embrace new investments, adding: “Anybody that builds a building in New York City changes its skyline.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

This is not about banning tall buildings, but about preserving the very uniqueness of the New York City skyline”

End Quote Anthony Malkin, Owner Empire State Building

“We don’t have to run around to every other owner and apologize,” Mr Bloomberg told a news conference.

“One guy owns a building, and he’d like to have it be the only tall building. I’m sorry that’s not the real world,” he added.

A spokesman for the building’s developer said the building would be an “an outstanding addition to New York’s skyline”.

In a statement, Mr Malkin said: “This is not about banning tall buildings, but about preserving the very uniqueness of the New York City skyline.”

The Empire State Building, which stands 1,250ft (381m), was the tallest building in New York City until the construction of the World Trade Center in Manhattan’s Financial District in 1970.

The building, built in 1931, once again held the title following the 9/11 attacks. …

via BBC News – Skyscraper near Empire State Building wins backing.

No, I don’t think Anthony Malkin was behind 9/11 in order to make his building the tallest again.

No arrests yet in theft of gold bar from museum

Authorities Friday were checking fingerprints and clarifying video images showing the theft of a $550,000 gold bar from a museum in Key West, Florida.

For 25 years, visitors to the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida, had the opportunity to lift the glittery piece of treasure in a special display case.

“It was touching something that came off the ocean floor,” said Melissa Kendrick, the museum’s executive director.

On Wednesday, two thieves got the gold bar and walked out, having accomplished their brazen theft in just a few minutes, Kendrick said.

Key West Police and the FBI are trying to identify the two men who walked into the gallery room around 5:10 p.m. No visitors or security guards were present, but a video camera was.

Police had no suspects Friday afternoon, department spokeswoman Alyson Crean told CNN. “There’s been progress but no changes.”

Detectives believe one of the men served as a lookout in the small gallery room, she said. Investigators also are looking at fingerprints on the display case, but they may be of visitors unconnected to the heist.

The bar was recovered by treasure hunter Mel Fisher and his crew in 1980 from the shipwreck of the Santa Margarita, which sank 25 miles west of Key West. The Santa Margarita is the sister ship of the storied galleon Atocha, also worked by Fisher.

Between them, the vessels carried 250,000 silver coins, according to the museum. They went down during a storm.

Crean said the case has generated a lot of interest. “Mel Fisher was such a dream builder,” she said.

The museum’s insurance company has offered a $10,000 reward for the return of the 16.5-karat gold bar, which weighs 74.85 ounces. The uniqueness of the piece places the bar’s value at $550,000, Kendrick said.

“Having the money [insurance] in its place would not be a winner for me,” Kendrick told CNN on Thursday night.

Fisher, who died in 1998, loved having the bar in a special reach-in case because it allowed visitors to make a connection with the find, Kendrick said.

The director said the bar, if recovered, will be returned to the case — with a few security modifications.

Police said the modern-day pirates might find it difficult to sell the gold bar.

via No arrests yet in theft of gold bar from museum – CNN.com.

Looks like they cut the plastic with a mini torch. You can get a cheap one for $15.  I’d suspect they did tests so if they weren’t careful the feds could look and see who ordered or googled similar materials to what the security  case was made out of.

Frog the size of a pea discovered in Borneo

Microhyla nepenthicola, which was named after a plant on the island, is the smallest frog discovered in Asia, Africa or Europe.

Adult males of the new micro-species range in size from 10.6 and 12.8 millimetres, according to the taxonomy magazine Zootaxa.

Indraneil Das of the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak said the sub-species had originally been mis-identified in museums.

“Scientists presumably thought they were juveniles of other species, but it turns out they are adults of this newly-discovered micro species,” he said.

Mr Das published the paper with Alexander Haas of the Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum of Hamburg, Germany.

The tiny frogs were found on the edge of a road leading to the summit of the Gunung Serapi mountain in the Kubah National Park in the Malaysian state of Sarawak.

The scientists said they tracked the frogs by their call, a series of “harsh rasping notes” that started at sundown.

They then made the frogs jump onto a piece of white cloth to study them.

The find was part of a global search being undertaken by Conservation International and International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Amphibian Specialist Group to “rediscover” 100 species of lost amphibians.

The world’s smallest frog is believed to be the Eleutherodactylus iberia, which can be found in southern Cuba. Adult males have a snout vent length of just 9.8 mm; females are 10.5 mm.

via Frog the size of a pea discovered in Borneo – Telegraph.

Saturday is Read Comics in Public Day

This Saturday, across the globe, I and hordes of my fellow comics readers will take our passion to the streets. And the parks. And the trains, buses and subways. And the bars.

If I know my people, the bars will figure largely.

We will grab a stack of comics and go forth into the wide world. Brave will we be. Powerful, expressionless, serene. We will brook no jeering, and fear no bullies. We will walk with our shoulders back and un-punched. Will hold our un-noogied heads high.

We will find a place amid the hurly-burly to sit. And there…we will sit. And we will read comics.

via Saturday is Read Comics in Public Day: Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are : Monkey See : NPR.

Grandfather’s ghost story leads to mysterious mass grave

“This is a mass grave,” Bill Watson said as he led the way through the thick Pennsylvania woods in a suburb about 30 miles from Philadelphia.

“Duffy’s Cut,” as it’s now called, is a short walk from a suburban cul-de-sac in Malvern, an affluent town off the fabled Main Line. Twin brothers Bill and Frank Watson believe 57 Irish immigrants met violent deaths there after a cholera epidemic struck in 1832.

They suspect foul play.

“This is a murder mystery from 178 years ago, and it’s finally coming to the light of day,” Frank Watson said.

The brothers first heard about Duffy’s Cut from their grandfather, a railroad worker, who told the ghost story to his family every Thanksgiving. According to local legend, memorialized in a file kept by the Pennsylvania Railroad, a man walking home from a tavern reported seeing blue and green ghosts dancing in the mist on a warm September night in 1909.

“I saw with my own eyes, the ghosts of the Irishmen who died with the cholera a month ago, a-dancing around the big trench where they were buried; it’s true, mister, it was awful,” the documents quote the unnamed man as saying. “Why, they looked as if they were a kind of green and blue fire and they were a-hopping and bobbing on their graves… I had heard the Irishmen were haunting the place because they were buried without the benefit of clergy.”

When Frank inherited the file of his grandfather’s old railroad papers, the brothers began to believe the ghost stories were real. They suspected that the files contained clues to the location of a mass grave.

“One of the pieces of correspondence in this file told us ‘X marks the spot,’” said Frank. He added that the document suggested that the men “were buried where they were making the fill, which is the original railroad bridge.”

In 2002, the brothers began digging and searching. They found forks and remnants of a shanty and, in 2005, what Bill Watson calls the “Holy Grail” — a pipe with an Irish flag on it.

They knew they were close, but Bill said they knew they needed “hard science” to get them to the next step.

The science came from Tim Bechtel, a geophysicist, who learned about the project from a colleague at the University of Pennsylvania who had heard the Watson brothers speak. The friend knew Bechtel could provide the missing link in the brothers’ excavation efforts.

Bechtel’s work included earth scans, which can help detect what’s underground without digging or drilling.

By shooting electrical current through the slope, Bechtel said he learned there were “oddball areas” or places where the current wouldn’t pass through. “We saw areas in the slope that were very electrically resistant,” Bechtel recalled.

This was an initial indicator something might lie beneath the surface. After further digging, Bechtel and the Watsons detected “air bubbles above the coffins,” he said.

Bechtel helped pinpoint key areas to dig and on March 20, 2009, Bill Watson said the team made a startling discovery.

“One of my students came running over at about 2 in the afternoon with something that was a clearly discernable human bone,” Bechtel said.

It was just the beginning of the many puzzle pieces to surface at Duffy’s Cut. The pieces led them to suspect that something other than cholera was responsible for the deaths. …

“This skull has a little divot on what would have been the side bone of the skull,” she said, holding it up. “That little divot is something that didn’t happen when they excavated it out of the ground.”

With just one divot on one skull, she was reluctant to jump to conclusions. But as more skulls surfaced, a pattern started to form. Holding the second skull, Monge said with confidence: “This person was clunked on the head at around the time of death.”

Two weeks ago, a new piece of evidence came up from the ground at Duffy’s Cut: A skull with a perforation that could be a bullet hole. “In fact, we can see some nice cracked edges that do look very much like a bullet hole,” Monge observed.

Monge and the team will soon test the skull for the presence of lead. The source could be a bullet or an ax. Either way, she said, “If they had cholera, it didn’t kill them. I would say something else killed them, but they might have had cholera, too.” …

via Grandfather’s ghost story leads to mysterious mass grave – CNN.com.