‘Scientists at the University of Rochester and the J. Craig Venter Institute have discovered a copy of the entire genome of a bacterial parasite residing inside the genome of its host species.
The finding, reported in Science August 30, suggests that lateral gene transfer–the movement of genes between unrelated species–may happen much more frequently between bacteria and multicellular organisms than scientists previously believed, posing dramatic implications for evolution.
Such large-scale heritable gene transfers may allow species to acquire new genes and functions extremely quickly, says Jack Werren, a principle investigator of the study.
The results also have serious repercussions for genome-sequencing projects. Bacterial DNA is routinely discarded when scientists are assembling invertebrate genomes, yet these genes may very well be part of the organism’s genome, and might even be responsible for functioning traits.’
‘A Double Bay man got more than he bargained for when he took his highly agitated kitten to a veterinary clinic after it had been accidentally locked in a cupboard overnight – only to discover it was high on cocaine and benzodiazepines from a wild weekend dinner party. [..]
The eight-month-old Himalayan cat arrived at the Double Bay clinic on a Monday morning with dilated pupils and a racing heart. The owner said it had trouble walking and was easily startled, said a report in this month’s edition of the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. [..]
The vets rang the owner’s wife, who admitted the cat could have licked “plates of cocaine”, which had been served at a dinner party two days earlier. A drug screen then revealed the cat also had benzodiazepines in its system.’
‘Whatever the reason for the experiment, it almost immediately went awry. Tusko reacted to the shot as if a bee had stung him. He trumpeted around his pen for a few minutes, and then keeled over on his side. Horrified, the researchers tried to revive him, but about an hour later he was dead. The three scientists sheepishly concluded that, “It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD.”‘
‘In 1999, when Rob was 13, his parents sent him to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, located in Canton, Massachusetts, 20 miles outside Boston. The facility, which calls itself a “special needs school,” takes in all kinds of troubled kids—severely autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar, emotionally disturbed—and attempts to change their behavior with a complex system of rewards and punishments, including painful electric shocks to the torso and limbs. Of the 234 current residents, about half are wired to receive shocks, including some as young as nine or ten. [..]
The Rotenberg Center is the only facility in the country that disciplines students by shocking them, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers or child molesters or any of the 2.2 million inmates now incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons. Over its 36-year history, six children have died in its care, prompting numerous lawsuits and government investigations. Last year, New York state investigators filed a blistering report that made the place sound like a high school version of Abu Ghraib. [..]’
‘A man who was impaled by a metal post said he was walking on his own the day after it was removed from his body.
James Graham, a truck driver, was seriously injured on Aug. 16 when a 10-foot pole went through the driver’s side door and into his body after he crashed his 18-wheeler into a chain-link fence.
Graham said he remembered the crash, but doesn’t remember the pole going through his body.
“I didn’t even know I was stuck until a bypasser got up on the truck and said, ‘Oh man, you’ve been stabbed with a pole,”‘ Graham said. “I was like, ‘What?'”‘
‘Actor Owen Wilson was taken to a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., Sunday, reportedly after attempting suicide.
Wilson was transported to St. John’s Hospital. Citing sources, The National Enquirer and Star magazine said the star of “Wedding Crashers” and “Starsky & Hutch” had cut his left wrist and taken an undetermined amount of pills.
He was found by a family member who called for help.
Santa Monica police confirmed only that the actor had been taken to a hospital, TMZ.com reported.’
‘Rockets can help power robotic arms, which could help lead to “better, stronger, faster” bionic limbs, research now reveals.
A new prototype rocket-powered mechanical arm can lift about 20 to 25 pounds—three to four times more than current commercial prosthetic arms—and can do so three to four times faster.
“Our design does not have superhuman strength or capability, but it is closer in terms of function and power to a human arm than any previous prosthetic device that is self-powered and weighs about the same as a natural arm,” said researcher Michael Goldfarb, a roboticist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
“It has about 10 times as much power as other [robotic] arms,” Goldfarb said.’
‘Lose a game of chess to a computer, and you could bruise your ego. Lose an arm-wrestling match to a Japanese arcade machine, and you could break your arm.
Distributor Atlus said Tuesday it will remove all 150 Arm Spirit arm wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms grappling with the machine’s mechanized appendage.
“The machine isn’t that strong, much less so than a muscular man. Even women should be able to beat it,” said Atlus spokeswoman Ayano Sakiyama, calling the recall “a precaution.”
“We think that maybe some players get overexcited and twist their arms in an unnatural way,” she said. The company was investigating the incidents and checking the machines for any signs of malfunction.’
‘In what critics call a dangerous power grab, the Monsanto Company is seeking wide-ranging control over swine reproduction methods in the form of patents which, if granted, would give the corporation economic rights over any offspring produced using those techniques.Documents obtained by Christoph Then, a Germany-based researcher for Greenpeace, show Monsanto’s attempts to secure broad intellectual property protection for swine herds. [..]
Monsanto spokesperson Chris Horner said that the company merely wants protection for its selective breeding processes, including the means to identify specific genes in pigs and use of a specialized insemination device. [..]
But Then, who has been studying patents for a decade, said that there is really nothing new to the breeding processes of which Monsanto is seeking to claim exclusive ownership; rather, the patents attempt to privatize farming techniques already in existence for centuries.
“There’s no invention in this,” he said. “It’s just normal pig breeding.”‘
‘My senior year of college opened with the customary research projects, grad school applications, and the like. But that all changed two months ago. Some of you may have heard rumors of some bizarre accident that I was involved in. Here is the truth, unabridged, for those who actually want to know.
In the second week of school, the society of physics students held a roughly annual welcome back party. As tradition dictates, we made our own ice cream with liquid nitrogen, 77� Kelvin, as a refrigerant and aerator. We spilled a little liquid nitrogen onto a table and watched the tiny little drops dance around. Someone asked, “Why does it do that?” That may have been the point of no return.’
‘There’s a student in medical school who wants to specialize in sexual disorders, so he makes arrangements to visit the sexual disorder clinic.
The chief doctor is showing him around,discussing cases and the facility, when the student sees a patient masturbating right there in the hallway.
“What condition does he have?” the student asks. [..]’
‘Scientists have discovered that inorganic material can take on the characteristics of living organisms in space, a development that could transform views of alien life.
An international panel from the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Max Planck institute in Germany and the University of Sydney found that galactic dust could form spontaneously into helixes and double helixes and that the inorganic creations had memory and the power to reproduce themselves.
A similar rethinking of prospective alien life is being undertaken by the National Research Council, an advisory body to the US government. It says Nasa should start a search for what it describes as “weird life” – organisms that lack DNA or other molecules found in life on Earth.’
‘A man threw his seriously ill wife four stories to her death because he could no longer afford to pay for her medical care, prosecutors said in charging him with second-degree murder.
According to court documents filed Wednesday in Jackson County Circuit Court, Stanley Reimer walked his wife to the balcony of their apartment and kissed her before throwing her over. [..]
In the probable cause statement filed with the charges, police said Reimer was desperate because he could not pay the bills for his wife’s treatment for neurological problems and uterine cancer.
‘She Didn’t Jump’ Investigators said that Reimer was in the apartment when they arrived. He told them, “She didn’t jump,” but did not elaborate.’
‘The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday issued a public health advisory warning that breastfeeding mothers’ taking codeine could in rare cases kill their babies due to an overdose of morphine released to the breast milk.
The risk is associated with morphine, a metabolite of codeine. Some women who can rapidly metabolize codeine and release high levels of it into their breast milk, which could poison their babies.
The FDA advisory was issued after the federal agency noticed a fatal case of codeine-derived morphine poisoning in a 13-day old breastfed baby, which was reported last year in the August 2006 issue of Lancet, a British medical journal.’
‘A dairy farmer hoping to induce a woman he impregnated to miscarry gave her a soda containing a cattle hormone sometimes used to force abortions in cows, police said.
William Stanley Sutton III, 25, added ProstaMate last week to a soda he gave to 21-year-old Lauren Ashley Tucker, according to documents charging Sutton with reckless endangerment, assault and poisoning. [..]
ProstaMate is a hormone given to cows in the breeding process to bring all cows into heat at the same time. It can also be used to stimulate an early term abortion in a heifer that gets pregnant too young or a cow that mates with an undesired bull.’
‘About 40 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by water, air and soil pollution, concludes a Cornell researcher. Such environmental degradation, coupled with the growth in world population, are major causes behind the rapid increase in human diseases, which the World Health Organization has recently reported. Both factors contribute to the malnourishment and disease susceptibility of 3.7 billion people, he says. [..]
“We have serious environmental resource problems of water, land and energy, and these are now coming to bear on food production, malnutrition and the incidence of diseases,” said Pimentel.’
‘He survived against all the odds; now Peng Shulin has astounded doctors by learning to walk again.
When his body was cut in two by a lorry in 1995, it was little short of a medical miracle that he lived. [..]
Skin was grafted from his head to seal his torso – but the legless Mr Peng was left only 78cm (2ft 6in) tall. [..]
Doctors at the China Rehabilitation Research Centre in Beijing found out about Mr Peng’s plight late last year and devised a plan to get him up walking again.
They came up with an ingenious way to allow him to walk on his own, creating a sophisticated egg cup-like casing to hold his body with two bionic legs attached to it.’
see it here »
‘MIT scientists and colleagues have found a way to create in the lab large amounts of cancer stem cells, or cells that can initiate tumors. The work, reported in the August 13 issue of Cancer Cell, could be a boon to researchers who study these elusive cells. Labs could easily grow them for use in experiments.
The findings also contradict an assumption about the trajectory of cancer cells. According to current cancer models, any normal cell can evolve toward a malignant state through a series of alterations, including mutations. Given the right alterations, any cell could eventually acquire the ability to invade other tissues.
But the new study suggests that some normal cells are more prone to become tumor-initiating and have a higher potential to metastasize, or spread to other tissues.’
‘Malaysian police have arrested a man who practised as a dentist for 29 years although he had no medical training and treated patients at his home in a cast-off examining chair.
The impostor’s closest brush with the dental profession was during the years 1962 to 1978, when he assisted an army dentist by carrying his bag on visits to plantation workers’ homes, the New Straits Times reported.
“I watched the doctor diagnose and treat problems with teeth,” the paper quoted the unidentified man as saying when officials raided his home this week.
“I also saw how he would extract teeth and make models and measurements for dentures.”‘
‘A British clown has had the smile wiped off his face after being told he couldn’t use balloons in his act because children might be allergic to latex.
Barney Baloney said he was told by bosses at a supermarket where he was booked to appear that he should leave his balloons at home because of the potential for allergic reactions.
The 47-year-old entertainer, also known as Tony Turner, has previously had to ditch his bubble-making machine because he could not get public liability insurance as companies assessed that youngsters might slip and hurt themselves.
He said he was also told by one venue he could not twist balloons into the shape of guns for fear of encouraging youngsters to commit violence, although swords were deemed acceptable.’
‘An Italian doctor has reconstructed vaginas for two women born with a rare congenital deformation, using their own cells to build vaginal tissue in the lab for the first time.
Dr. Cinzia Marchese of Rome’s Policlinico Umberto I hospital, giving details of the operations on Wednesday, told Reuters a 28-year-old woman who underwent the first such operation a year ago now has a healthy vagina.
“She has got married and is living a normal life,” said Marchese, whose study has been published in the journal Human Reproduction. [..]
The two women had a condition called Mayer-Von Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome, or MRKHS for short, which affects an estimated one in 4,000 to 5,000 female infants.
Girls with the syndrome are born with no vagina. The patient often has a normal uterus, ovaries and external secondary sexual organs such as breasts, but cannot have sexual intercourse or give birth.’
‘Like any three-year-old, Tom Trueman is constantly at risk of taking a tumble.
But in his case every fall could prove fatal – which is why he wears a safety helmet every waking moment.
Tom, who has already had ten operations, had half of his skull removed after a hospital infection attacked most of the bones in his head.
He has astounded doctors with his progress since but, as his everwatchful parents know, a knock from a fall or a glancing blow from a stray football could cause permanent brain damage or prove fatal.’
see it here »
‘Take your breasts off at the door and sit down.’
(3.6meg Shockwave)
All sorts of stats about the world population.
‘All across America, a mysterious disease is wiping out bee colonies. This malady causes all the bees in a hive to seemingly vanish overnight, abandoning their brood in the nursery, as well as their stores of honey and pollen. Other bees and pests, which normally plunder deserted honey, shun these hives. This baffling die-off dealt a financial blow to commercial beekeepers this season and raised fears of environmental and economic disaster. For farmers, no bees means no pollination.
But pollination is happening like mad in Leah Fortin’s tiny yard in North Oakland, Calif. Busy little bee bodies cover the clumps of lavender, salvia and roses that line her driveway. More bees work the malaleucas on the parking strip, those trees with shaggy bark that look like giant Q-tips when they’re in bloom.’
‘Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.
For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.
Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.
“Something’s wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.’
‘A five-year-old boy is being treated in hospital after using a park slide smeared with a mixture of caustic soda and shampoo in Dysart, near Kirkcaldy.
He suffered extensive burns on his legs and bottom and is in Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children.
Three other youngsters had to undergo medical checks for similar, but not so serious, injuries.
It is believed the boy and his friends found the substance in a litter bin and rubbed it on the slide themselves.’
‘A painkiller used by 60,000 Australians has been ordered off the shelves after the deaths of two people.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration yesterday announced the urgent recall of the drug Prexige, used to treat osteoarthritis and acute pain. Patients using the drug, also known by its chemical name lumiracoxib, are advised to stop taking it immediately and ask their doctor for an alternative prescription.
The TGA made the decision after receiving reports of eight people who suffered serious liver reactions, including two deaths and two liver transplants. Six of the reports occurred since the beginning of July.’
‘A Morgantown man, his mother and his friend are suing McDonald’s for $10 million.
The man says he bit into a hamburger and had a severe allergic reaction to the cheese melted on it.
Jeromy Jackson, who is in his early 20s, says he clearly ordered two Quarter Pounders without cheese at the McDonald’s restaurant in Star City before heading to Clarksburg.
His mother Trela Jackson and friend Andrew Ellifritz are parties to the lawsuit because they say they risked their lives rushing Jeromy to United Hospital Center in Clarksburg.
The lawsuit alleges Jeromy “was only moments from death” or serious injury by the time he reached the hospital.’
‘Building boss Howard Shelley carried out the ultimate DIY conversion — by castrating himself so he could become a woman.
The 42-year-old dad of two decided on the drastic move after being told he would have to wait at least two years for a sex change on the NHS.
He found a website which gave a step-by-step guide to the eye-watering home surgery, then waited till wife Janet went out before setting to work with a kitchen knife in the loo. [..]
“In the end, I turned to the Net — it’s amazing what you can find. [..]
“The worst bit was steeling myself for the first cut. The whole thing took six minutes. It was agony, but I knew I couldn’t stop.”‘
