Researchers are experimenting with technology that will substitute cell phones for microscopes.  According to an article in Discover Magazine, the CellScope can snap magnified pictures of disease samples and transmit them to medical labs across the country or even around the world.  This technology literally enables a doctor “on call”.   The upgraded phone will be able to take magnified pictures of disease samples and transmit them to medical labs for examination.

…Such a simple solution to a vast problem.

Discover reports, “the goal is to use mobile communications networks as a cost-effective way for medical personnel to screen for hematologic and infectious diseases in areas that lack access to advanced micro­scopic equipment.”

Ozcan Research Group at U.C.L.A.

Adapted from the New York Times online

Icy Remains by Thompson 2009

Recent field studies portrayed in ScienceNews states that Tanzania’s African peak has lost more than a quarter of the ice cover from 200 to 2007.  It is up for debate as to why melting is occurring: whether it’s  due to global warming or from the direct evaporation of ice  due to a climate “shift that starved the peak of precipitation.”

Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Center in Columbus, estimates that at this rate of melting, ice fields will disappear from Kilimanjaro by 2022.

It’s hard to determine what future generations will think of these majestic mountaintops.  What’s left, remains in pictures.

Adapted from Mount Kenya Climbing

Initially, according to infectious disease experts, the answer was no.

Tuesday, National Public Radio reported that a 13-year-old cat caught the virus, probably from its human owners who presented flu-like symptoms.  The humans weren’t tested but the cat was, and tested positive.

Previously to this case, cats have been known to contract certain flu viruses. For example, big zoo animals in Thiland have tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Should I fear the worst for Mojo? Probably if she’s exposed to my mother, who as I previously reported, tested positive for the virus.

Other species that tested positive for the swine flu virus, according to the American Veterinary Medicine Association, are pigs in Minnesota, Indiana, Alberta, swine herds in Argentina, Iceland, Singapore, Northern Ireland, Norway and Japan and turkeys in Turkeys in Canada and Chile.  They conclude to say that ferrets are particularly suseptable to the virus.

The viruses are most probably contracted from human contact.  To protect pets from the virus, it’s important to wash hands and distance animals from coughing and sneezing.

Currently my mother, a pediatric nurse, is suffering from congestion, fits of coughing and inability to feel alert because of the dreaded influenza.  She insists that I get the vaccine but I, on the other hand, am worried about the side-effects that are associated with the vaccination.

So, should I get the vaccine?

Taken From CDC

PCR diagnostic test to detect novel H1N1 virus

Unless I leave school, it seems impossible. The scheduled vaccination was cancelled due to limited resources, which means that:

1. it’s highly sought and therefore trustworthy?
2. those considered to be at high risk may suffer deadly consequences from the shortage and,
3. that maybe it’s positive and that my mother’s nagging won’t lead me to uncertain side-effects.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), target groups who should first receive the H1N1 vaccination include,

1. pregnant women,
2. people who care or live with children younger than 6 months,
3. those in the healthcare field,
4. people between 6 months and 24 years old
5. and people ages 25 through 64 because of chronic disorders or compromised immune systems.

This includes both my mother and myself.

With the 1976 emergence of the swine flu, came the introduction of a vaccination that caused a neuromuscular disorder that lead to paralysis in some that received the vaccination; 25 people died from Guillain-Barré disorder and 500 others were diagnosed.

We can only hope that with evolution of technological advances, this year’s vaccine is safe.

CDC’s spokesperson, Tom Skinner, reports that the FDA has taken extra steps to protect the public, including the implementation of  the Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting System (VAERS); a mechanism that allows the public to report and monitor adverse reactions to inoculations.

Skinner says the only expected side effects include soreness at the injection site and mild body aches, which are normal after receiving vaccinations.

An article in Forbes offers a contradicting viewpoint, from Yanzhong Andrew Huang, an infectious disease specialist and director of the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University’s Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations, who says it’s too early to tell what effects the vaccine will have.

Huang suggests that the swine influenza might also mutate later in the year making the vaccine incomparable.  ”We’ve been told that the second viral wave might be more lethal, and that would make the vaccine less effective,” he says.

Essential it’s up to you to decide if the benefits outweigh the risks.  However, according to an article in Science Daily, which focuses on the virus and pregnancy, 100 pregnant women have been hospitalized in intensive care united in the United States and 28 pregnant women have died.

Taken from CDC

A preliminary analysis of blood samples taken 21 days post-vaccination from a subgroup of 50 pregnant women participating in the trial shows the following:

• In 25 women who received a single 15-microgram dose of the vaccine, the H1N1 flu vaccine elicited an immune response likely to be protective in 92 percent, or 23 of 25, of these women.
• In 25 women who received a single 30-microgram dose of the vaccine, the H1N1 flu vaccine elicited an immune response likely to be protective in 96 percent, or 24 of 25, of these women.

… this proves to be hopeful.

In June, the swine flu was declared an epidemic by the World Health Organization.  By late August, the organization claimed that there were more than 200 thousand cases of the flu and about two thousand deaths world-wide.

Currently the CDC reports that  Oct. 18 through Oct. 24, influenza activity continued to increase in the United States as reported in FluView.  Flu activity is now widespread in 48 states.

Nationally, visits to doctors for influenza-like-illness continue to increase steeply and are now higher than what is seen at the peak of many regular flu seasons.

And so, the question for me remains.  If the vaccine does in fact become available, would I be more likely to face possible death because I am part of the target group or paralysis that spurs from the implementation of an irregularly used vaccine?

But exactly why do fall leaves tumble to aide in hours of pile-jumping?

A common misconception lies within the name of the season; fall!  A breeze sweeps through the trees and wiggles loose leaves that have been dried by the cold.

According to a report by National Public Radio, the tree itself is in fact responsible for the dropping of the leaves.  They shed their leaves by using their own personal “scissors”.

Around this time of the year, the drop in temperature triggers a change in hormones in certain trees that are accustomed to dropping their leaves.  The hormone sends a chemical message to the leaf telling it that it’s time to fall.

According to Peter Raven, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden and a renowned botanist, once the message is received, abscission cells appear at the place where the leave stem meets the branch.  Within a few weeks, or days, a line of cells push the leaf from the branch and send it falling to cover the ground beneath it.

University of Wisconsin Plant Image Teaching Collection

The “scissor” cells are stained red.

In the spirit of Halloween, doesn’t it make you think; if trees have a mind of their own, what else does?

Optical Illusions

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Someday it might be said that this was the beginning of the end of cosmic loneliness, said Dennis Overbye, a reporter for the New York Times. 

Kepler Spacecraft taken from Ball Aerospace and Technologies Group.

The “beginning,” according to Overbye, refers to the anticipated launch of Kepler, a spacecraft that is designed to determine if there is life on other planets.  

After numerous delays, the rocket is scheduled to lift off from Florida on Friday evening at 10:50 p.m.  Kepler’s mission is to try and discover planets that resemble our own.  In other words, life-supporting planets that orbit other starts.  

All other extrasolar planets that have been detected up until this point have been about the size of Jupiter.  To the naked eye Jupiter may appear small, however, Kepler will search for planets 30 to 600 times smaller than Jupiter.  

The Kepler satalite, named for the German astronomer who in 1609 published laws of planetary motion that now bear his name, is equipped with a 55-inch-diameter telescope and a 95-million-pixel digital camera that has a field of view about the size of two open palms.  

Kepler will use a method known as the transit method of planet finding, which is a measurement of a planet’s shadow.  A small fraction of light is blocked from a parent star  when a planet passes over it.  With this passing, the planet is transiting the star.  Repeated transits prove the existence of a planet.  The brightness change indicates the size of the planet and time intervals between transits indicate the size of the planets orbit as well as an estimation of the planets temperature.  All of these factors would tell astronomers if the planet is “Earth-like”.

According to NASA, the spacecraft is designed to continuously and simultaneously monitor brightness of 10,000 stars brighter than 14th the magnitude in the constellations Caygnus and Lyrae.  To detect a life-supporting planet, Kepler must be able to sense a drop in brightness of only 1/100 of a percent.  The equivalent is sensing a drop in brightness when

 a fly passes by a car’s headlight.  

The point of the mission is not to find a particular planet but to determine exactly how rare planets like earth really are.  

Who, or what, else is really out there? 

References: 

In a Lonely Cosmos, a Hunt for Worlds Like Ours

A Nutshell Description of the Kepler Mission

Kepler Spacecraft bus. 

Assembled Photometer.

Photometer installed on spacecraft. 

*All Photos from Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. 

New evidence from Germany disproves this theory.  Scientists report that they have reconstructed  the genome of the Neanderthal.  The analysis inferred that there is no significant trace of Neanderthal genes in modern humans.  

The Neanderthal genome is expected to shed light on human evolution in two ways.  First, when modern humans split from chimpanzees and  secondly changes in the human line after Homo Sapiens diverged from the Neanderthal.  

Furthermore, processing the Neanderthal genome could increase the possibility of bringing the extinct species back to life.  It would cost 30 million with current technology to complete this procedure.  

Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzi, Germany, with a team of scientists conducted most of the research.  They used a new DNA decoding machine that works by analyzing millions of very small fragments of DNA in parallel.  

Dr. Pääbo extracted the first set of Neanderthal DNA ten years ago.  Obtaining Neanderthal DNA is very difficult because most bones have no recoverable DNA and the ones that do are covered in closely related human DNA from scientists and curators handling the bones.  

A Neanderthal skull (left) paired next to a modern human skull.

John Reader/Science Photo Library/Photo Researchers, Inc.

According to MedicineNet.com a genome is all of the genetic information, the entire genetic complement and all of the hereditary material possessed by an organism.

It is understandable why there would be some confusion on how cells posses different duties when all of the bodies cells, for example with the human genome, contain the exact same genome.   Two types of genomes actually make up the entire genome; the chromosomal genome, inside the nucleus, and mitochondrial genome, outside the nucleus.

Researchers are finding that a second layer of information is embedded in the special proteins that package the DNA of the genome.  The second layer is referred to as the epigenome and controls access to the genes.  The epigenome, epi- meaning “on”, “upon”, or “at”, not only allows each cell type to activate its own special genes but blocks off most of the rest and also controls when the accessible genes may be activated.

The epigenome controls many things and changes with age.  Any change is the epigenome can have devastating effects on the cell which may contribute to disease or cancer.

To put it into perspective, twins look and behave differently because of changes in their epigenome as they grow older.  A single person has only one genome but many different epigenomes.

According to an article in the New York Times, the epigenome may hold the key to the dream of regenerative medicine.

Regenerative medicine involves using the bodies own mechanisms to heal it, deriving safe and efficient replacement tissues from a patients own cells.

The epigenome is composed of many chemical modifications, or marks, along the material the makes up the chromosomes, or chromatin.  The chromatin, which is located in the nucleus, is a mass of genetic material composed of DNA and tightly woven proteins.  Chromatin regulator proteins recognize and preform the tasks indicated by the marks.

In some marked domains, regulator proteins cause the DNA to be so tightly wound that the genes are permanently inaccessible.  This gives reason as to why the cell can only preform certain functions.

Google Earth has now taken another leap to fill a data gap, adding the two-thirds of the globe that is covered by water.  What was previously blue, and black online will now be filled with our world’s oceans, seas, rivers and lakes. All of Google Earth’s previous images such as mountains, valleys, cities, plains, ice sheets were programmable because they all existed from an elevation of 0 up.

“We had this arbitrary distinction that if it was below sea level it didn’t count,” said John Hanke, the Internet entrepreneur who co-created the progenitor of Google Earth to the New York Times.

Because  oceans dive deeper under the sea level, they couldn’t be simulated until new upgrades that culminated today, Monday.  The new upgraded version of Google Earth can be downloaded free at earth.google.com and will include another feature called History Imagery that will do exactly what it sounds and allow the user to scroll back through past decades.  Also included is a function called, Touring, where users can simulate tours on land or above and below the sea surface.

http://www.votechusa.com/

Westchester County is taking a stand to help the environment with a new program.  There are seven vehicles in the county that now run solely on excess cooking oil produced from restaurants in the surrounding area.  There are also 125 vehicles that run on a mix of cooking oil and diesel fuel.  The program will look to take excess cooking oil from restaurants to run these vehicles.    

According to an article in the New York Times, for every 10,000 gallons of cooking oil collected, the county could save about $25,000 in diesel fuel costs.  Restaurants are also experiencing a cut in costs.  The county’s  program takes cooking oil off the hands of restaurants for free when normally  restaurants rely on private disposal services to take away frying oil that cannot be reused.  

Running vehicles on a mix of vegetable oil and diesel fuel is, first of all, a lot cheaper for the county and secondly, part of its initiative to reduce its impact on the environment.  

So, make way for the Veggie Van, one of the seven vehicles that are more environmentally friendly in Westchester, because not only is it cheap to use cooking oil, it’s relatively inexpensive to build processing systems for the oil.  The price averages out to be about $1,000 for each system and there are currently seven in the county.  

The program is relatively new and therefore Westchester is not certain on the number of restaurants that will participate.  But with benefits on both ends, the outlook is groovy.  

–

“Turning Cooking Oil into Fuel for the County”