Image via WikipediaLarge-scale study reveals major decline in bumble bees in US

Large-Scale Study Reveals Major Decline in Bumble Bees in US

ScienceDaily (Jan. 3, 2011) — The first in-depth national study of wild bees in the U.S. has uncovered major losses in the relative abundance of several bumble bee species and declines in their geographic range since record-keeping began in the late 1800s.

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Plants & Animals

• New Species
• Extinction
• Mating and Breeding

Earth & Climate

• Exotic Species
• Environmental Policy
• Geography

Reference

• Africanized bee
• Pollination management
• Bee
• Beekeeping

The researchers report that declining bumble bee populations have lower genetic diversity than bumble bee species with healthy populations and are more likely to be infected withNosema bombi, an intracellular parasite known to afflict some species of bumble bees in Europe.

The new study appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We have 50 species of bumble bees in North America. We've studied eight of them and four of these are significantly in trouble," said University of Illinois entomology professor Sydney Cameron, who led the study. "They could potentially recover; some of them might. But we only studied eight. This could be the tip of the iceberg," she said.

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How hybrids work

Image via WikipediaHow hybrids work: "Here's an animated explanation of how hybrid cars save fuel and protect the environment."

Telling a little white lie may on occasion soothe ruffled social feathers, but covering up a murder plot or withholding information on terrorist cells can devastate individuals and society at large. Yet detecting deception often stumps the most experienced police officers, judges, customs officials and other forensic professionals. Research has shown that even agents from the FBI, CIA and Drug Enforcement Agency don't do much better than chance in telling liars from truth-tellers.

For example, a recent, as yet unpublished meta-analysis of 253 studies of people distinguishing truths from lies revealed overall accuracy was just 53 percent--not much better than flipping a coin, note the authors, psychologists Charles Bond, PhD, of Texas Christian University, and Bella DePaulo, PhD, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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Living Earth Simulator Aims To Simulate Everything - Slashdot

Image by electric8sheep via FlickrLiving Earth Simulator Aims To Simulate Everything - Slashdot

"An international group of scientists are aiming to create a simulator — nicknamed The Living Earth Simulator — that will collect data from billions of sources and use it to replicate everything happening on Earth, from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or congestion on highways. The project aims to advance the scientific understanding of what is taking place on the planet, encapsulating the human actions that shape societies and the environmental forces that define the physical world. Perhaps this is Asimov's concept of Psychohistory come to fruition."

Image via Wikipedia

Eugene Goldwasser, Discoverer of EPO

December 18, 2010

By GoozNews

Eugene Goldwasser, the University of Chicago biochemist whose agonizingly long but ultimately successful search for a single protein helped launch the biotechnology industry, died Friday in Chicago after a brief illness. He was 88.
The immediate cause of death was renal failure associated with advancing prostate cancer, which he’d lived with for over 20 years. When his kidneys began to fail shortly after Thanksgiving, Goldwasser opted for hospice care instead of dialysis, a procedure revolutionized by his discovery.
Goldwasser, whose government-funded research began as a Cold War experiment to cure radiation sickness, found and purified erythropoietin, or EPO, which is a naturally-occurring hormone produced by the kidneys to stimulate new red blood cell production. Today, genetically-engineered versions of EPO cure anemia in dialysis and cancer patients and generate billions of dollars in sales for Amgen, Johnson & Johnson and Roche.
Unlike its discoverer, EPO has generated numerous headlines over the years. Its high price, which like Goldwasser’s long quest is mostly paid by the government, has generated anger and intense lobbying on Capitol Hill and at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It has been used illegally by athletes like Tour de France bicyclists to provide more energy by expanding oxygen-carrying capacity. And, more recently, regulators have issued warnings against EPO overuse after clinical trials showed overdosing raises the risk of heart attacks and strokes in chronic kidney disease patients and premature death in cancer patients.
But none of that was foreseen by Goldwasser when he decided in 1980 to provide California-based Applied Molecular Genetics, later Amgen, with the world’s sole supply of purified EPO, which it had taken him nearly a quarter century to find. Though he disclosed his findings to the University of Chicago as required by his federal funders, the university never patented the discovery.

That decision allowed Amgen scientists to identify the gene that produced EPO, patent its use, and manufacture the protein using the then new technology of recombinant engineering. The company also financed the clinical trials in dialysis patients that led to Food and Drug Administration approval of the first EPO product – Epogen – in 1989.
But as far as Goldwasser’s long search for EPO that predated those efforts, “private companies rarely support that kind of research. It takes too long, and the odds of success are even longer,” I wrote in 2004 in “The $800 Million Pill,” whose first chapter documented the biochemist’s quest. “The Goldwasser-Amgen story provides an excellent opening snapshot of the complicated relationship between basic and applied research in the public and private sectors and shows how private firms rely on public research to come up with important new drugs.”Read more »

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Limit Your Exposure to Cell Phone Radiation | Environmental Working Group

Technorati Tags: cell phones,radiation,brain tumers,salivary gland

Limit Your Exposure To
Cell Phone Radiation

New cell phones in 2010 are loaded with new features. For some models, like Motorola’s Droid, Blackberry Bold 9700, LG Chocolate Touch and HTC Nexus One by Google, consumers pay a hidden price: exposure to the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation. You can see for yourself by looking the radiation levels for new 2010 cell phones.

Other new phones emit significantly less radiation.

Which is which? You won’t find out from those pricey ad campaigns or even the labels. Makers and vendors aren’t required to disclose their products’ radiation output at point of sale.

That’s why EWG has created a user-friendly interactive cell phone radiation list and database, covering more than 1,000 phones now on the market. We’ve updated it with the wireless industry’s latest and greatest offerings for the 2010 market.

We at Environmental Working Group can’t be pried from our cell phones. But we’re troubled by recent studies that have found significantly higher risks for brain and salivary gland tumors among people using cell phones for 10 years or longer. More research is crucial.

In the meantime, we think it’s smart for consumers to buy phones with the lowest emissions. Before you buy, check out devices you’re considering for radiation output. Levels vary widely, from 0 .3 to 1.6, the legal limit, measured in watts per kilogram of body weight, also known as SAR (specific absorption rate), the amount of radiofrequency energy absorbed by the body when using a wireless device phone.

Limit Your Exposure to Cell Phone Radiation | Environmental Working Group