Freaky Clean: Chemical in antibacterial soap weakens muscle function

Freaky Clean: Chemical in antibacterial soap weakens muscle function
Aug 15, 2012 | Alexandra Sifferlin

It turns out antibacterial soaps aren't so "clean" after all. A common chemical in antibacterial products, triclosan - which can be found soaps, toothpastes and mouthwashes - was found to impair muscle function in lab and animal tests.

Originally, the chemical, developed in the 1960s, was used in hospitals to prevent bacterial infections. Since then, it's been used in countless household products, and several studies - mostly in animals - have hinted that the effects of triclosan may not be entirely beneficial.

According to a recent Smithsonian article:

Studies have shown that the chemical can disrupt the endocrine systems of several different animals, binding to receptor sites in the body, which prevents the thyroid hormone from functioning normally. Additionally, triclosan penetrates the skin and enters the bloodstream more easily than previously thought, and has turned up everywhere from aquatic environments to human breast milk in troubling quantities. 

Now, in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of California, Davis, found that triclosan also interferes with muscle function. In the lab, they exposed human muscle cells, from the heart and elsewhere, to triclosan and discovered that the chemical interrupted cellular communication necessary for muscle contraction. Then the researchers exposed mice and fathead minnows to the chemical to see what would happen: after a single dose, the exposed mice showed 25% reduced heart muscle function and 18% reduced grip strength. In the fish, which were exposed to as much triclosan as would be expected in a week in the wild, the chemical led to poor performance in swimming tests that simulated escape from a predator.

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Rare Particle Find May Cast Doubt on Popular Physics Theory

Rare Particle Find May Cast Doubt on Popular Physics Theory
Nov 12, 2012 | Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer

This diagram illustrates the collision of two protons inside
the Large Hadron Collider, creating a spray of other particles,
including a B_s meson (blue) that decays into two muons (purple).
CREDIT: LHCb

An extremely rare particle measurement from the world's largest atom smasher could cast doubt on a popular theory about the fundamental building blocks of the universe, including dark matter.

Physicists from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland have measured a particular type of particle transformation for the first time, and found that it happens just about as often as predicted by the dominant theory of particle physics, called the Standard Model.

The measurement is just preliminary — the researchers haven't collected enough data to be positive what they're seeing isn't just a random occurrence. Still, the fact that the initial observations correspond so well with the Standard Model predictions isn't a hopeful sign for what scientists call "new physics," such as new particles not predicted by the Standard Model.

One of the most popular theories of new physics is the idea of "supersymmetry" — that all of the known subatomic particles have "superpartner" particles that haven't yet been observed. If these superpartners exist, they could help explain some persistent physics mysteries, such as the nature of dark matter, an invisible substance thought to make up a quarter of the universe. Scientists think dark matter may in fact be composed of supersymmetric particles that haven't yet been detected.

Read more..

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FTF Films - The Magic of Fractals

FTF Films - The Magic of Fractals
Nov 11, 2012 | FTF1R3F1LM5

Oxitec Release Creates Millions of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes

© Natural Society

Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Release in the Millions with No Risk Assessment
Nov 10, 2012 | Mike Barrett

In case you didn’t know, genetically modified mosquitoes have been unleashed numerous times on planet Earth. Thus far, millions mosquitoes were released in various locations; Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Brazil. Now, the GM mosquito creator Oxitec may release millions of genetically modified mosquitoes in the fields of crops, including olives, citrus fruits, cabbage, tomatoes, and cotton.

A UK-based company, Oxitec is the maker of all genetically modified insects. The company’s goal is to create a global market, where GM insects will be released around the world in order to take over natural insect populations. With the replacement of natural insects, the company hopes to wipe out disease carried by insects as well as those insects feeding on farmers’ crops. As scary as it might sound, thousands of insect species could be genetically altered in the near future.

Interestingly, Oxitec is supported by and very close with multinational pesticide and seed company, Syngenta. Syngenta, in addition to providing the world with destructive pesticides, has also been charged with covering up the deaths of many animals consuming the company’s GM corn. Being mainly interested in the market for GM agricultural pests, Syngenta as well as Oxitec are planning to commercialize GM insects around the world.

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What’s especially scary about the release and future modification of thousands of species is that all of this will be done with little risk assessment. Not to mention not knowing of the vast number of negative outcomes that could occur from genetically modifying parts the biosphere.

Dr Helen Wallace, Director of GeneWatch UK said “The public will be shocked to learn that GM insects can be released into the environment without any proper oversight. Conflicts-of-interest should be removed from all decision-making processes to ensure the public have a proper say about these plans.”

To help release the GM insects, Oxitec is influencing regulation around the world. One example of influence revolves around the European Food Safety Authority, established to help the risk assessment of GM insects. As reported by FarmWars, there seems to be numerous instances of conflict of interested, which includes experts with links to Oxitec. The connection of those in EFSA and Oxitec is very similar to that of the Monsanto-FDA connection, where several government officials have hard-links to biotech giant Monsanto.

The draft Guidance on risk assessment of GM insects shows some significant deficiencies: for example it does not consider the impacts of GM insects on the food chain. Oxitec’s GM insects are genetically engineered to die mostly at the larval stage so dead GM larvae will enter the food chain inside food crops such as olives, cabbages and tomatoes. Living GM insects could also be transported on crops to other farms or different countries. EFSA has excluded any consideration of these important issues from its draft guidance. Many other issues are not properly addressed.

A briefing shows how Oxitec is trying to influence regulatory processes for GM insects. Oxitec:

• Doesn’t want to be liable for any complications.

• Tries to avoid any regulation of GM agricultural pests on crops appearing in the food chain.

• Excludes important issues from risk assessments, such as the impact on human immunity and disease, and the possible outcomes arising from surviving GM mosquitoes.

• Releases large amount of GM mosquitoes prior to regulations.

• Attempts to define ‘biological containment’ of the insects (which are programmed to die at the larval stage) as contained use, by-passing requirements for risk assessments and consultation on decisions to release GM insects into the environment.

• Undermining the requirement to obtain informed consent for experiments involving insect species which transmit disease.

• Ignores any labeling using products produced from GM insects and how insects can be contained where released.

Additional Sources:
The Briefing: Genetically-Modified Insects: Under Whose Control?

#OccupySandy Get Involved!

#OccupySandy Get Involved!
Nov 10, 2012 | LibertyPlazaRev



Occupy Sandy Relief NYC is a community relief effort organized by Occupiers to help residents in the hardest hit areas of NYC recover from Hurricane Sandy.

http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/

https://www.wepay.com/donations/occupy-sandy-cleanup-volunteers

Comet collisions every 6 secs unlock 17-year-old stellar mystery

Comet collisions every 6 secs unlock 17-year-old stellar mystery
Nov 10, 2012 | Zeenew.com

Comets have been colliding with one another every six seconds for millions of years near a star in the constellation Cetus called 49 CETI, which is visible to the naked eye.

Over the past three decades, astronomers have discovered hundreds of dusty disks around stars, but only two - 49 CETI is one - have been found that also have large amounts of gas orbiting them.

Young stars, about a million years old, have a disk of both dust and gas orbiting them, but the gas tends to dissipate within a few million years and almost always within about 10 million years.

Yet 49 CETI, which is thought to be considerably older, is still being orbited by a tremendous quantity of gas in the form of carbon monoxide molecules, long after that gas should have dissipated.

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"We now believe that 49 CETI is 40 million years old, and the mystery is how in the world can there be this much gas around an otherwise ordinary star that is this old," Benjamin Zuckerman, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and co-author of the research, said.

"This is the oldest star we know of with so much gas," he said. Zuckerman and his co-author Inseok Song, a University of Georgia assistant professor of physics and astronomy, propose that the mysterious gas comes from a very massive disk-shaped region around 49 CETI that is similar to the sun's Kuiper Belt, which lies beyond the orbit of Neptune.

The total mass of the various objects that make up the Kuiper Belt, including the dwarf planet Pluto, is about one-tenth the mass of the Earth. But back when the Earth was forming, astronomers say, the Kuiper Belt likely had a mass that was approximately 40 times larger than the Earth's; most of that initial mass has been lost in the last 4.5 billion years.

By contrast, the Kuiper Belt analogue that orbits around 49 CETI now has a mass of about 400 Earth masses - 4,000 times the current mass of the Kuiper Belt.

"Hundreds of trillions of comets orbit around 49 CETI and one other star whose age is about 30 million years. Imagine so many trillions of comets, each the size of the UCLA campus - approximately 1 mile in diameter - orbiting around 49 CETI and bashing into one another," Zuckerman said.

"These young comets likely contain more carbon monoxide than typical comets in our solar system. When they collide, the carbon monoxide escapes as a gas. The gas seen around these two stars is the result of the incredible number of collisions among these comets.

"We calculate that comets collide around these two stars about every six seconds," he said. "I was absolutely amazed when we calculated this rapid rate. I would not have dreamt it in a million years. We think these collisions have been occurring for 10 million years or so," he added.

Using a radio telescope in the Sierra Nevada mountains of southern Spain in 1995, Zuckerman and two colleagues discovered the gas that orbits 49 CETI, but the origin of the gas had remained unexplained for 17 years, until now.

The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Fracking linked to hundreds of earthquakes

Fracking linked to hundreds of earthquakes
Nov 8, 2012 | RT.com

Weird-Looking, Meat-Eating Sponge Found In Deep Sea

This photograph of the recently discovered
carnivorous harp sponge, Chondrocladia lyra,
was taken in Monterey Canyon, off the coast of
California, at a depth of about 11,500 feet (3,500 meters).
CREDIT: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
(MBARI)

Weird-Looking, Meat-Eating Sponge Found In Deep Sea
Nov 8, 2012 | Becky Oskin

A new carnivore shaped like a candelabra has been spotted in deep ocean waters off California's Monterey Bay.

The meat-eating species was dubbed the "harp sponge," so-called because its structure resembles a harp or lyre turned on its side.

A team from the Monterey Bay Research Aquarium Institute in Moss Landing, Calif., discovered the sponge in 2000 while exploring with a remotely operated vehicle. The sponges live nearly 2 miles (3.5 kilometers) beneath the ocean's surface.

"We were just amazed. No one had ever seen this animal with their own eyes before," said Lonny Lundsten, an invertebrate biologist at the research institute and one of the first to see the harp sponge. [The World's Freakiest Looking Animals]

Researchers later collected two sponges and made video observations of 10 more. Comparison with other carnivorous sponges confirmed that Chondrocladia lyra, the sponge's scientific name, was a new species and revealed some interesting insights into the sponge's life cycle. The results of the analysis were published Oct. 18 in the journal Invertebrate Biology.

Catching a meal

Velcro-like barbed hooks cover the sponge's branching limbs, snaring crustaceans as they are swept into its branches by deep-sea currents.Once the harp sponge has its meal, it envelops the animal in a thin membrane, and then slowly begins to digest its prey.

The sponges cling to soft, muddy sediment on the ocean floor with root-like "rhizoids," living among other mysterious creatures. The first harp sponges scientists found had only two branches, called vanes. Additional remote-vehicle dives revealed creatures with up to six vanes, Lundsten told OurAmazingPlanet. The biggest were 14 inches (36 centimeters) tall. The team believes the harp sponge evolved this elaborate, candelabra-like structure to increase the surface area it exposes to currents so it can capture more prey.



The harp sponge is one of four new species Lundsten has helped identify. "We've seen only 1 percent of Monterey Bay and it's still one of the most well-studied regions of Earth in deep water," he said. "I can look out over the waters from MBARI and imagine thousands of species out there yet to be discovered."

Sponge sex

Scientists first discovered sponges can be carnivores less than 20 years ago. Most live in the deep ocean, which makes it difficult to fully understand their lifestyle.

The harp sponges collected by MBARI scientists mark the first time researchers observed the complete cycle of a carnivorous sponge's unique approach to sexual reproduction.

Most sponges release actively swimming sperm into the surrounding seawater, but it appears that all carnivorous sponges transfer sperm in condensed packages (spermatophores), the researchers report.
The swollen balls at the tip of the harp sponge's upright branches hold the sperm packets. The balls release the spermatophores into passing currents, and other nearby sponges capture the packets on fine filaments along their branches. The sperm then works its way from the packets into the host sponge to fertilize its eggs, according to the research scientists.

How Earth's oceans plunged the planet into a catastrophic big freeze - and it wasn't caused by humans

How Earth's oceans plunged the planet into a catastrophic big freeze - and it wasn't caused by humans
Nov 7, 2012 | Damien Gayle

The planet's last major cold spell 13,000 years ago was caused by a catastrophic deluge of frigid fresh water from north-west Canada into the Arctic ocean, a new study suggests. Detailed computer simulations show meltwater from the enormous Laurentide Ice Sheet halted the sinking of very dense, saltier, colder water in the North Atlantic.

Detailed: A new model of flood waters from
the melting Laurentide Ice Sheet shows how
water first flowed north-west into the Arctic,
weakening deep ocean circulation and
leading to the Earth's last major cold period

 That stopped the large scale ocean circulation - the so-called thermohaline circulation - that transports heat to Europe and North America, causing the continents to dramatically freeze. The findings offer a new explanation for the cause of this last big chill, which scientists had thought was caused by freshwater flowing into the Atlantic through Canada's Gulf of St Lawrence.

It led to a cold spell lasting more than 1,000 years known as the Younger Dryas or 'Big Freeze', during which temperatures in parts of the northern hemisphere fell to about 10 degrees C colder than they are today.

'This episode was the last time the Earth underwent a major cooling, so understanding exactly what caused it is very important for understanding how our modern-day climate might change in the future,' said Alan Condron, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The cooling began after Lake Agassiz, at the southern edge of the Laurentide ice sheet covering much of the Canadian Arctic, broke through an ice dam and dumped thousands of cubic kilometers of cold water into the ocean.

© AP
Argentina's Patagonia ice-sheet: Much
of Europe and North America would have
looked like this after the meltwater from the
Laurentide Ice Sheet brought about a
dramatic global cooling

Using a high resolution, global, ocean-ice circulation model 10 to 20 times more powerful than previous ones, the researchers compared how meltwater from the two different drainage outlets affected ocean circulation.

The original hypothesis, proposed 1989 by Wally Broecker of Columbia University, suggested that Lake Aggasiz drained into the North Atlantic down the St Lawrence River.

But using the new model, Dr Condron, working with Peter Winsor of the University of Alaska, found that this proposed route would have weakened the oceans' thermohaline circulation by less than 15 per cent.

That level of weakening, they say, is unlikely to have accounted for the 1,000-year cold climate event that followed the flood.

Meltwater from the St Lawrence River actually ends up almost 1,900 miles south of the deep water formation regions, too far south to have any significant impact on the sinking of surface waters.

By contrast, Dr Condron and Dr Winsor's model shows that if the meltwater first drains into the Arctic Ocean, narrow coastal boundary currents efficiently deliver it to the deep water formation regions of the sub-polar north Atlantic, weakening the thermohaline circulation by more than 30 per cent.

They conclude that this scenario, showing meltwater discharged first into the Arctic rather than down the St. Lawrence valley, is 'more likely to have triggered the Younger Dryas cooling.'

Dr Condron and Dr Winsor ran their simulations on one of the world's top supercomputers at the National Energy Research Science Computing Centre in Berkeley, California.

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Reporting their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they wrote: 'With this higher resolution modelling, our ability to capture narrow ocean currents dramatically improves our understanding of where the fresh water may be going.'

Dr Condron added: 'The results we obtain are only possible by using a much higher computational power available with faster computers.

'Older models weren't powerful enough to model the different pathways because they contained too few data points to capture smaller-scale, faster-moving coastal currents.'

'Our results are particularly relevant for how we model the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice sheets now and in the future.

'It is apparent from our results that climate scientists are artificially introducing fresh water into their models over large parts of the ocean that freshwater would never have reached.

'In addition, our work points to the Arctic as a primary trigger for climate change. This is especially relevant considering the rapid changes that have been occurring in this region in the last 10 years.'

Why Quick Thinking Leads to Bad Decisions

CREDIT: Shutter / VLADGRIN

Why Quick Thinking Leads to Bad Decisions
Nov 7, 2012 | Live Science

When people make hasty decisions, they tend to make more mistakes. Now, a new study on monkeys explains why: Brain cells become hypersensitive to new information, even bad information, making us likelier to draw faulty conclusions.

"When we try to do things too quickly, we tend to make more errors and then when we slow down we tend to be more accurate," said study co-author Richard Heitz, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. "Your brain sees things differently when you're placed into a situation where you have to make snap decisions."

The findings, which are detailed in the Nov. 7 issue of the journal Neuron, could shed light on the faulty decision-making of people with schizophrenia or other mental disorders.

To explain the phenomenon, Heitz and his colleagues trained two macaque monkeys to play a game in which they had to pick out the letter L in a sea of Ts or vice versa.

Before each round, a colored circle flashed on the screen to indicate whether the macaques would be rewarded for speed or accuracy.

In the speed test, the monkeys only received a tasty squirt of juice if they found the right letter quickly. In the accuracy test, monkeys got a squirt of juice no matter how long it took for them to find the right letter, but had a "timeout" if they made a mistake.

The researchers then recorded the activity of neurons in the brain region responsible for higher reasoning, the prefrontal cortex.

When the monkeys learned the next trial would be a speed test, the electrical activity from those neurons increased even before starting the test, like cars revving their engines in preparation for a race. During the speed trials, the team found that neurons responsible for visual processing fired more strongly when the monkeys indicated they had found the right letter. The neurons were more sensitive, as if the objects on the screen actually appeared brighter to the brain when it had to make decisions quickly, Heitz told LiveScience.

That higher sensitivity may sound good, but "because they're amplified, you may react to them as if they're more important than they actually are," meaning even faulty answers could be seen as the correct ones, he said.