Without a troublesome pattern in the South Pacific, there is no influence to upset a normal summer pattern in the Southern Hemisphere. The winter warmth will surely be translated into summer heat. This will tend to provide a good base for the regular heat low, usually called the Barotse Low, to form early and drift gradually westward by the mid-summer. This area marks the regular base of operations for the ITCZ in southern Africa. Developing waves, after the Sahel pattern, drift westward and stagnate in the Etosha area.
The effect of the warm belt of water, offshore the West Coast, will be key. Increased warmth can bring, by insolation, even warmer waters offshore. A heat low coupling with such a favourable situation can foster a rainfall event that can last for some two to three weeks. Two such events, across January to March, will mean a wet year. The drift eastward, in tandem with a suitable cold front and upper trough, moves the rain area eastward across those areas on the eastern fringe of the previous wet zone, eventually to cross the southern subcontinent. The Congo Air factor means rains of intensity become widespread. The ready ability for Congo air to be brought southward, we have already witnessed twice during the usually unfavourable winter months. The heat low affords an attraction for the moist air circulating round the surface anticyclones to be advected inland towards the vortex: another favourable aspect.
But what about the persistent subtropical High-pressure belt? Surely, cells of this system will drift across the subcontinent some few times during the range of November through to April. The winter pattern has indicated a duration of weeks during the most favourable period (Cooler land/warmer seas). The summer season sees these cores following a more southerly track. The likelihood of our far north and northeast being consistently on the moist periphery of these cores provides a further optimistic note.
Excessive oceanic warmth can lead to two events: one very favourable for rain, the other unfavourable. The Benguela (El) Nino recurs approximately mid-decade. The cause or causes are improperly understood, but links with the Gulf of Guinea have been cited as a likely cause. Economically and ecologically, this event means turmoil and disaster. The rainfall benefits are usually plentiful. The last event peaked during February 1995. The Indian Ocean is a warm ocean by any standard. It hosts the tropical revolving storm known as a Cyclone. These storms usually develop around the Mauritius area and northward. Their tracks include the coastal waters of Madagascar and into the Mozambique Channel, on occasions.
Just occasionally, these storms make landfall and head up the Limpopo valley. They do bring considerable falls of rain to the areas in their path. But these storms are surrounded by ring of descending air (what goes up must come down syndrome) this means a zone of dry, rainless weather. People with longer memories may recall such names as Domoina and Imboia which made their dry mark during January and February 1984. The potential for these storms to drift inland as opposed to tracking southward down the Mozambique Channel is dependent upon the individual events. The Global Warming factor and its influence upon such potential is not known. A storm penetrating to the Makarikari area of Botswana will throttle active convection across northern and eastern Namibia comprehensively.
The ability to peer into the weather future is best measured in hours, rather than days. The time requirement really means months or even half a year. Much capable effort is being put into climatic forecasting. This provides percentage possibilities, across the summer month ranges, of monthly rainfall totals. In our type of climate, these efforts provide little of day-to-day practical value. When we with all our "press two buttons" capabilities have learnt to read nature and follow the preparatory signs of natural life preparing for the next season, we will be several worthy steps down the road of long-term, seasonal forecasting.
This outlook may sound very promising, or at least optimistic. The causes for this have been looked at. The dismal alternatives do not show up in the foreground. The likelihood of a dramatic, rapid turnaround of the state of the Pacific Ocean is not an event with any record. As on occasions in the past, it is an overall wait-and-see scenario.
John Olszewski
Windhoek
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Monday, October 17, 2005
Another Bird Link Found to Dinosaurs
Paleontologists working in northwestern Patagonia have unearthed the nearly complete skeleton of a small dinosaur whose bird-like appearance suggests that flight may have evolved twice -- not only in birds but also among the prehistoric raptors of the southern hemisphere.
The newly discovered fossil, of a rooster-sized carnivore known as a dromaeosaur, lived 95 million years ago and is the oldest raptor ever found in the southern continents. Its discovery may signal that dromaeosaurs are much older than previously thought.
"We're really just scratching the surface," said Peter Makovicky, dinosaur curator of Chicago's Field Museum and lead author of a report on the find published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "The evidence is that we have a distinct (dromaeosaurs) lineage -- the southern lineage."
Makovicky and a team of Argentine paleontologists led by Sebastian Apesteguia, of Argentina's Natural History Foundation, collected the fossil from a well-known site known as La Buitrera, "The Vulture's Nest," in Rio Negro province, about 700 miles southeast of Buenos Aires. The team named the new creature Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, after brothers Fabian and Jorge Gonzalez, who found the fossil.
Before Buitreraptor, a few teeth and other bone fragments were the only dromaeosaur remains known in the southern hemisphere. This scarcity contrasted sharply with the relatively abundant deposits in North America and Asia of such well known dromaeosaurs as velociraptor, Utahraptor and smaller species unearthed in China.
Paleontologists generally regard the northern raptors, especially the Chinese fossils, as part of the evolutionary lineage that produced modern birds. Archaeopteryx, regarded as the first true bird, is about 145 million years old, while the feathered raptors of Liaoning, China, are dated at 130 million years.
While Buitreraptor is considerably younger, its location deep in South America's southern cone suggests that dromaeosaurs generally may be 180 million years old, dating to the time when Earth's single land mass split into northern and southern pieces.
"To say dromaeosaurs are 180 million years old is not a stretch at all," said paleontologist Matthew Lamanna, of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in Pittsburgh. "You look at the fossil record and see Archaeopteryx is 150 million years old, so dromaeosaurs should already be around."
Makovicky noted, however, that, unlike northern dromaeosaurs, Buitreraptor has a long, heron-like skull and teeth without serrated edges, like a steak knife. "These are unusual features, and we think we have a predator of small prey," he said, possibly one that dined on small snakes prevalent in the region.
Lamanna said that the differences between the northern and southern species also come as no surprise. Once researchers established that dromaeosaurs were evolving on two separate super- continents, "the fact that they come to be different is what we would expect."
On the other hand, Makovicky said Buitreraptor is clearly a dromaeosaur, displaying many typical characteristics, including a spiked middle toe for gutting prey, heavy hind limbs for fast running, a long tail and powerful forelimbs -- but not powerful enough to fly.
Makovicky and the research team also noticed that Buitreraptor also shared characteristics with an unusual 65-million-year-old fossil from Madagascar known as Rahonavis -- thought to have been a primitive, long-tailed bird.
By Guy Gugliotta
The newly discovered fossil, of a rooster-sized carnivore known as a dromaeosaur, lived 95 million years ago and is the oldest raptor ever found in the southern continents. Its discovery may signal that dromaeosaurs are much older than previously thought.
"We're really just scratching the surface," said Peter Makovicky, dinosaur curator of Chicago's Field Museum and lead author of a report on the find published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "The evidence is that we have a distinct (dromaeosaurs) lineage -- the southern lineage."
Makovicky and a team of Argentine paleontologists led by Sebastian Apesteguia, of Argentina's Natural History Foundation, collected the fossil from a well-known site known as La Buitrera, "The Vulture's Nest," in Rio Negro province, about 700 miles southeast of Buenos Aires. The team named the new creature Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, after brothers Fabian and Jorge Gonzalez, who found the fossil.
Before Buitreraptor, a few teeth and other bone fragments were the only dromaeosaur remains known in the southern hemisphere. This scarcity contrasted sharply with the relatively abundant deposits in North America and Asia of such well known dromaeosaurs as velociraptor, Utahraptor and smaller species unearthed in China.
Paleontologists generally regard the northern raptors, especially the Chinese fossils, as part of the evolutionary lineage that produced modern birds. Archaeopteryx, regarded as the first true bird, is about 145 million years old, while the feathered raptors of Liaoning, China, are dated at 130 million years.
While Buitreraptor is considerably younger, its location deep in South America's southern cone suggests that dromaeosaurs generally may be 180 million years old, dating to the time when Earth's single land mass split into northern and southern pieces.
"To say dromaeosaurs are 180 million years old is not a stretch at all," said paleontologist Matthew Lamanna, of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in Pittsburgh. "You look at the fossil record and see Archaeopteryx is 150 million years old, so dromaeosaurs should already be around."
Makovicky noted, however, that, unlike northern dromaeosaurs, Buitreraptor has a long, heron-like skull and teeth without serrated edges, like a steak knife. "These are unusual features, and we think we have a predator of small prey," he said, possibly one that dined on small snakes prevalent in the region.
Lamanna said that the differences between the northern and southern species also come as no surprise. Once researchers established that dromaeosaurs were evolving on two separate super- continents, "the fact that they come to be different is what we would expect."
On the other hand, Makovicky said Buitreraptor is clearly a dromaeosaur, displaying many typical characteristics, including a spiked middle toe for gutting prey, heavy hind limbs for fast running, a long tail and powerful forelimbs -- but not powerful enough to fly.
Makovicky and the research team also noticed that Buitreraptor also shared characteristics with an unusual 65-million-year-old fossil from Madagascar known as Rahonavis -- thought to have been a primitive, long-tailed bird.
By Guy Gugliotta
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Genetics Links Whale to Two Different Oceans
For the first time ever, a genetic study has followed a single humpback whale from one ocean basin to another, adding to traditional notions of the migratory patterns of these majestic marine mammals in the process, according to researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and New York University. In the most recent Royal Society’s Biology Letters, a male humpback whale that was first sighted in Madagascar’s Antongil Bay in 2000 was found in 2002 swimming off the coast of Loango National Park in Gabon—on the other side of the African continent.
“While the movement of whales from one ocean to another has always been a possibility, it’s quite difficult to track in the wild,” said WCS researcher Dr. Cristina Pomilla, lead author of the study. “This study demonstrates the ability of molecular technologies to confirm the movements of an individual whale between ocean basins.”
The study examined DNA samples extracted from skin biopsies collected from whales in the wintering grounds of both the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans for evidence of inter-oceanic exchange of individuals. Using a method of genetic capture-recapture of genotypes constructed of microsatellite markers, the researchers identified an individual whale sampled in Gabonese waters in 2002 that had been first seen (and sampled) with its mother in Madagascar waters in 2000. Pomilla and her colleague, Dr. Howard Rosenbaum of WCS and AMNH, suspect that the whale could have been a three- to four-year old juvenile at the time of the second encounter with researchers.
The only other documentation of individual humpback whales moving from one ocean basin to another dates back to when the species still was hunted commercially. Two whales that were marked off western Australia (in the Indian Ocean basin) were later killed off the coast of eastern Australian, in the Pacific Ocean.
The identification of individual whales moving between ocean basins will help inform a number of conservation activities relating to humpback whales, including how these populations are defined, studied and managed. Humpback whales were hunted commercially until the International Whaling Commission protected the species globally in 1966.
“These findings will help us improve our understanding of how populations of whales are connected, both genetically and even culturally, in the form of the haunting songs that this species is well-known for,” added Rosenbaum. “In particular, inter-oceanic migration data will help us to better evaluate the current international management procedures for humpback whales.”
Libraries
Science News Keywords
HUMPBACK WHALE GENETICS
Contact Information
Available for logged-in reporters only
Description
For the first time ever, a genetic study has followed a single humpback whale from one ocean basin to another, adding to traditional notions of the migratory patterns of these majestic marine mammals in the process, according to researchers.
“While the movement of whales from one ocean to another has always been a possibility, it’s quite difficult to track in the wild,” said WCS researcher Dr. Cristina Pomilla, lead author of the study. “This study demonstrates the ability of molecular technologies to confirm the movements of an individual whale between ocean basins.”
The study examined DNA samples extracted from skin biopsies collected from whales in the wintering grounds of both the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans for evidence of inter-oceanic exchange of individuals. Using a method of genetic capture-recapture of genotypes constructed of microsatellite markers, the researchers identified an individual whale sampled in Gabonese waters in 2002 that had been first seen (and sampled) with its mother in Madagascar waters in 2000. Pomilla and her colleague, Dr. Howard Rosenbaum of WCS and AMNH, suspect that the whale could have been a three- to four-year old juvenile at the time of the second encounter with researchers.
The only other documentation of individual humpback whales moving from one ocean basin to another dates back to when the species still was hunted commercially. Two whales that were marked off western Australia (in the Indian Ocean basin) were later killed off the coast of eastern Australian, in the Pacific Ocean.
The identification of individual whales moving between ocean basins will help inform a number of conservation activities relating to humpback whales, including how these populations are defined, studied and managed. Humpback whales were hunted commercially until the International Whaling Commission protected the species globally in 1966.
“These findings will help us improve our understanding of how populations of whales are connected, both genetically and even culturally, in the form of the haunting songs that this species is well-known for,” added Rosenbaum. “In particular, inter-oceanic migration data will help us to better evaluate the current international management procedures for humpback whales.”
Libraries
Science News Keywords
HUMPBACK WHALE GENETICS
Contact Information
Available for logged-in reporters only
Description
For the first time ever, a genetic study has followed a single humpback whale from one ocean basin to another, adding to traditional notions of the migratory patterns of these majestic marine mammals in the process, according to researchers.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Mysteries of garlic are revealed
University of California scientists have determined garlic's active ingredients work the same in the same way as the chemicals in chili peppers and wasabi.
Researchers at the University of California-San Francisco's Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology said garlic's pungent aroma and its effects on the body, such as dilating blood vessels, are due to a variety of sulfur-based chemicals, especially allicin.
Little is known about how those compounds produce their effects on a molecular level, but researchers David Julius and colleagues demonstrated garlic extracts, as well as purified allicin, excite a subset of sensory pain neurons from rats by activating a cell membrane channel called TRPA1. The excited neurons then release brain chemicals stimulating blood vessel dilation and inflammation in rats.
Interestingly, the scientists said, both capsaicin -- found in chili peppers -- and allyl isothiocyanate -- found in mustard plants -- also activate the TRP channel pathway, suggesting the different plant species have developed convergent strategies of chemical irritation.
The study appears in this week's online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers at the University of California-San Francisco's Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology said garlic's pungent aroma and its effects on the body, such as dilating blood vessels, are due to a variety of sulfur-based chemicals, especially allicin.
Little is known about how those compounds produce their effects on a molecular level, but researchers David Julius and colleagues demonstrated garlic extracts, as well as purified allicin, excite a subset of sensory pain neurons from rats by activating a cell membrane channel called TRPA1. The excited neurons then release brain chemicals stimulating blood vessel dilation and inflammation in rats.
Interestingly, the scientists said, both capsaicin -- found in chili peppers -- and allyl isothiocyanate -- found in mustard plants -- also activate the TRP channel pathway, suggesting the different plant species have developed convergent strategies of chemical irritation.
The study appears in this week's online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Before Watson and Crick
The first half of 20th-century science belonged to physics, with the general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, and nuclear fission. The second half would belong to biology. In the post-war world, the secret of the gene—how hereditary characteristics pass from one generation to another—was the hottest topic in science.
For a number of physicists who had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, the post-war shift into biology was a stark exchange of the science of death for the science of life. But their conversion was as much intellectual as ideological. Biology was now where the action lay. The war had interrupted a line of investigation leading towards understanding the chemical basis of heredity.
Seeking the genetic messenger
That physical features are passed on by discrete units (later called genes) had been discovered in 1865 by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel in his experiments with garden peas. Each gene determined a single characteristic, such as height or color, in the next generation of plant. By 1905 it had been learned that within living cells the genes are strung together like beads on the chromosomes, which copy themselves and separate. But how does the genetic information get from the old chromosome to the new?
Protein was the obvious candidate. By the 1920s it was thought that genes were made of protein. The other main ingredient in the chromosome is deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. DNA, a substance of high molecular weight, was identified in 1871 by a young Swiss scientist, Friedrich Miescher. (There is, in fact, a second kind of nucleic acid in the cell, called RNA, with a slightly different chemical composition.) The "D" in DNA stands for "deoxy"—a prefix often spelled as "des" in Rosalind's day, a usage now obsolete—which identifies it as the ribonucleic acid with one fewer hydroxyl group. But as RNA exists in cells mainly outside the nucleus, it was unlikely to be the genetic vehicle.
Protein was far more interesting to geneticists than DNA because there was a lot more of it and also because each protein molecule is a long chain of chemicals, of which 20 kinds occur in living things. DNA, in contrast, contains only four kinds of the repeating units called nucleotides. Hence it seemed too simple to carry the complex instructions required to specify the distinct form of each of the infinite variety of cells that constitute living matter.
In 1936, at the Rockefeller Institute on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a microbiologist called Oswald Avery wondered aloud if the "transforming principle"—that is, the carrier of the genetic information from old chromosomes to new—might not be the nucleic acid, DNA. No one took much notice. DNA seemed just a boring binding agent for the protein in the cell.
During the pre-war years, in Britain, J.D. Bernal at Cambridge and William Astbury at Leeds, both crystallographers, began using X-rays to determine the structure of molecules in crystals. Astbury, interested in very large biological molecules, had taken hundreds of X-ray diffraction pictures of fibers prepared from DNA. From the diffraction patterns obtained, Astbury tried building a model of DNA. With metal plates and rods, he put together a Meccano-like model suggesting how DNA's components—bases, sugars, phosphates—might fit together. Astbury concluded—correctly, as it turned out—that the bases lay flat, stacked on each other like a pile of pennies spaced 3.4 Ångströms apart. [An Ångström equals one ten-billionth of a meter.] This "3.4 Å" was no gratuituous detail. Published with other measurements in an Astbury paper in Nature in 1938, it was to remain constant throughout all the attempts to solve DNA's structure that were to come.
Avery’s discovery has been called worth two Nobel Prizes, but he never got even one.
But Astbury made serious errors, his work was tentative, and he had no clear idea of the way forward. By the time of the Second World War, no one knew that genes were composed entirely of DNA.
The gene's genie
In 1943, Avery, at 67, was too old for military service. Still working at the Rockefeller Institute and building on an experiment with pneumococcus (bacteria that cause pneumonia) done by the English physician Frederick Griffith in 1928, he made a revolutionary discovery. He found that when DNA was transferred from a dead strain of pneumoccocus to a living strain, it brought with it the hereditary attributes of the donor.
Was the "transforming principle" so simple then—purely DNA? In science, where many grab for glory, there are some who thrust glory from them. Avery, a shy bachelor who wore a pince-nez, was one of those too modest for his own good. His discovery has been called worth two Nobel Prizes, but he never got even one—perhaps because, rather than rushing into print, he put his findings in a letter to his brother Roy, a medical bacteriologist at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville. "I have not published anything about it—indeed have discussed it only with a few," he said, "because I am not yet convinced that we have (as yet) sufficient evidence."
A year later, however, Avery, with two colleagues, wrote out their research. In what became a classic paper, they described an intricate series of experiments using the two forms of pneumococcus, virulent and nonvirulent. When they freed a purified form of DNA from heat-killed virulent pneumococcus bacteria and injected it into a live, nonvirulent strain, they found that it produced a permanent heritable change in the DNA of the recipient cells. Thus the fact was established—at least for the readers of The Journal of Experimental Medicine—that the nucleic acid DNA and not the protein was the genetic message-carrier.
The essential mystery remained. How could a monotonous substance such as DNA, like an alphabet with only four letters, convey enough specific information to produce the enormous variety of living things, from daisies to dinosaurs? The answer must lie in the way the molecule was put together. Avery and his co-authors, Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty, could say no more than that "nucleic acids must be regarded as possessing biological specificity the chemical basis of which is as yet undetermined."
Biophysics is born
In 1943, another scientist at one remove from the world conflict (because he had been offered a haven in neutral Ireland) gave a series of lectures in Dublin, called provocatively "What is Life?" An audience of 400 for every lecture suggested that his supposedly difficult subject was of great general interest.
Erwin Schrödinger, a Viennese, had shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1933 for laying the foundations of wave mechanics. That same year he left Berlin, where he had been working, because, although not himself Jewish, he would not remain in Germany when persecution of the Jews became national policy. A long odyssey through Europe brought him, in 1940, to Dublin at the invitation of Eamon de Valera, Ireland's premier. De Valera had been a mathematician before he became a revolutionary, then a politician; in 1940 he set up the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. Schrödinger found Ireland "paradise," not least because it allowed him the detachment to think about a very big question.
In his Dublin lectures, Schrödinger addressed what puzzled many students—why biology was treated as a subject completely separate from physics and chemistry: frogs, fruit flies, and cells on one side, atoms and molecules, electricity and magnetism, on the other. The time had come, Schrödinger declared from his Irish platform, to think of living organisms in terms of their molecular and atomic structure. There was no great divide between the living and nonliving; they all obey the same laws of physics and chemistry.
He put a physicist's question to biology. If entropy is (according to the second law of thermodynamics) things falling apart, the natural disintegration of order into disorder, why don't genes decay? Why are they instead passed intact from generation to generation?
What Is Life? was the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of biology—a small book that started a revolution.
He gave his own answer. "Life" is matter that is doing something. The technical term is metabolism—"eating, drinking, breathing, assimilating, replicating, avoiding entropy." To Schrödinger, life could be defined as "negative entropy"—something not falling into chaos and approaching "the dangerous state of maximum entropy, which is death." Genes preserve their structure because the chromosome that carries them is an irregular crystal. The arrangement of units within the crystal constitutes the hereditary code.
The lectures were published as a book the following year, ready for physicists to read as the war ended and they looked for new frontiers to explore. To the molecular biologist and scientific historian Gunther Stent of the University of California at Berkeley, What Is Life? was the Uncle Tom's Cabin of biology—a small book that started a revolution. For post-war physicists, suffering from professional malaise, "When one of the inventors of quantum mechanics [could] ask 'What is life?,'" Stent declared, "they were confronted with a fundamental problem worthy of their mettle." Biological problems could now be tackled with their own language, physics.
Research into the new field of biophysics inched forward in the late 1940s. In 1949 another Austrian refugee scientist, Erwin Chargaff, working at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, was one of the very few who took Avery's results to heart and changed his research program in consequence. He analyzed the proportions of the four bases of DNA and found a curious correspondence. The numbers of molecules present of the two bases, adenine and guanine, called purines, were always equal to the total amount of thymine and cytosine, the other two bases, called pyrimidines. This neat ratio, found in all forms of DNA, cried out for explanation, but Chargaff could not think what it might be.
That is where things stood when Rosalind Franklin arrived at King's College London on 5 January 1951. Leaving coal research to work on DNA, moving from the crystal structure of inanimate substances to that of biological molecules, she had crossed the border between nonliving and living. Coal does not make more coal, but genes make more genes.
by Brenda Maddox
For a number of physicists who had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, the post-war shift into biology was a stark exchange of the science of death for the science of life. But their conversion was as much intellectual as ideological. Biology was now where the action lay. The war had interrupted a line of investigation leading towards understanding the chemical basis of heredity.
That physical features are passed on by discrete units (later called genes) had been discovered in 1865 by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel in his experiments with garden peas. Each gene determined a single characteristic, such as height or color, in the next generation of plant. By 1905 it had been learned that within living cells the genes are strung together like beads on the chromosomes, which copy themselves and separate. But how does the genetic information get from the old chromosome to the new?
Protein was the obvious candidate. By the 1920s it was thought that genes were made of protein. The other main ingredient in the chromosome is deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. DNA, a substance of high molecular weight, was identified in 1871 by a young Swiss scientist, Friedrich Miescher. (There is, in fact, a second kind of nucleic acid in the cell, called RNA, with a slightly different chemical composition.) The "D" in DNA stands for "deoxy"—a prefix often spelled as "des" in Rosalind's day, a usage now obsolete—which identifies it as the ribonucleic acid with one fewer hydroxyl group. But as RNA exists in cells mainly outside the nucleus, it was unlikely to be the genetic vehicle.
Protein was far more interesting to geneticists than DNA because there was a lot more of it and also because each protein molecule is a long chain of chemicals, of which 20 kinds occur in living things. DNA, in contrast, contains only four kinds of the repeating units called nucleotides. Hence it seemed too simple to carry the complex instructions required to specify the distinct form of each of the infinite variety of cells that constitute living matter.
In 1936, at the Rockefeller Institute on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a microbiologist called Oswald Avery wondered aloud if the "transforming principle"—that is, the carrier of the genetic information from old chromosomes to new—might not be the nucleic acid, DNA. No one took much notice. DNA seemed just a boring binding agent for the protein in the cell.
During the pre-war years, in Britain, J.D. Bernal at Cambridge and William Astbury at Leeds, both crystallographers, began using X-rays to determine the structure of molecules in crystals. Astbury, interested in very large biological molecules, had taken hundreds of X-ray diffraction pictures of fibers prepared from DNA. From the diffraction patterns obtained, Astbury tried building a model of DNA. With metal plates and rods, he put together a Meccano-like model suggesting how DNA's components—bases, sugars, phosphates—might fit together. Astbury concluded—correctly, as it turned out—that the bases lay flat, stacked on each other like a pile of pennies spaced 3.4 Ångströms apart. [An Ångström equals one ten-billionth of a meter.] This "3.4 Å" was no gratuituous detail. Published with other measurements in an Astbury paper in Nature in 1938, it was to remain constant throughout all the attempts to solve DNA's structure that were to come.
Avery’s discovery has been called worth two Nobel Prizes, but he never got even one.
But Astbury made serious errors, his work was tentative, and he had no clear idea of the way forward. By the time of the Second World War, no one knew that genes were composed entirely of DNA.
In 1943, Avery, at 67, was too old for military service. Still working at the Rockefeller Institute and building on an experiment with pneumococcus (bacteria that cause pneumonia) done by the English physician Frederick Griffith in 1928, he made a revolutionary discovery. He found that when DNA was transferred from a dead strain of pneumoccocus to a living strain, it brought with it the hereditary attributes of the donor.
Was the "transforming principle" so simple then—purely DNA? In science, where many grab for glory, there are some who thrust glory from them. Avery, a shy bachelor who wore a pince-nez, was one of those too modest for his own good. His discovery has been called worth two Nobel Prizes, but he never got even one—perhaps because, rather than rushing into print, he put his findings in a letter to his brother Roy, a medical bacteriologist at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville. "I have not published anything about it—indeed have discussed it only with a few," he said, "because I am not yet convinced that we have (as yet) sufficient evidence."
A year later, however, Avery, with two colleagues, wrote out their research. In what became a classic paper, they described an intricate series of experiments using the two forms of pneumococcus, virulent and nonvirulent. When they freed a purified form of DNA from heat-killed virulent pneumococcus bacteria and injected it into a live, nonvirulent strain, they found that it produced a permanent heritable change in the DNA of the recipient cells. Thus the fact was established—at least for the readers of The Journal of Experimental Medicine—that the nucleic acid DNA and not the protein was the genetic message-carrier.
The essential mystery remained. How could a monotonous substance such as DNA, like an alphabet with only four letters, convey enough specific information to produce the enormous variety of living things, from daisies to dinosaurs? The answer must lie in the way the molecule was put together. Avery and his co-authors, Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty, could say no more than that "nucleic acids must be regarded as possessing biological specificity the chemical basis of which is as yet undetermined."
In 1943, another scientist at one remove from the world conflict (because he had been offered a haven in neutral Ireland) gave a series of lectures in Dublin, called provocatively "What is Life?" An audience of 400 for every lecture suggested that his supposedly difficult subject was of great general interest.
Erwin Schrödinger, a Viennese, had shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1933 for laying the foundations of wave mechanics. That same year he left Berlin, where he had been working, because, although not himself Jewish, he would not remain in Germany when persecution of the Jews became national policy. A long odyssey through Europe brought him, in 1940, to Dublin at the invitation of Eamon de Valera, Ireland's premier. De Valera had been a mathematician before he became a revolutionary, then a politician; in 1940 he set up the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. Schrödinger found Ireland "paradise," not least because it allowed him the detachment to think about a very big question.
In his Dublin lectures, Schrödinger addressed what puzzled many students—why biology was treated as a subject completely separate from physics and chemistry: frogs, fruit flies, and cells on one side, atoms and molecules, electricity and magnetism, on the other. The time had come, Schrödinger declared from his Irish platform, to think of living organisms in terms of their molecular and atomic structure. There was no great divide between the living and nonliving; they all obey the same laws of physics and chemistry.
He put a physicist's question to biology. If entropy is (according to the second law of thermodynamics) things falling apart, the natural disintegration of order into disorder, why don't genes decay? Why are they instead passed intact from generation to generation?
He gave his own answer. "Life" is matter that is doing something. The technical term is metabolism—"eating, drinking, breathing, assimilating, replicating, avoiding entropy." To Schrödinger, life could be defined as "negative entropy"—something not falling into chaos and approaching "the dangerous state of maximum entropy, which is death." Genes preserve their structure because the chromosome that carries them is an irregular crystal. The arrangement of units within the crystal constitutes the hereditary code.
The lectures were published as a book the following year, ready for physicists to read as the war ended and they looked for new frontiers to explore. To the molecular biologist and scientific historian Gunther Stent of the University of California at Berkeley, What Is Life? was the Uncle Tom's Cabin of biology—a small book that started a revolution. For post-war physicists, suffering from professional malaise, "When one of the inventors of quantum mechanics [could] ask 'What is life?,'" Stent declared, "they were confronted with a fundamental problem worthy of their mettle." Biological problems could now be tackled with their own language, physics.
Research into the new field of biophysics inched forward in the late 1940s. In 1949 another Austrian refugee scientist, Erwin Chargaff, working at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, was one of the very few who took Avery's results to heart and changed his research program in consequence. He analyzed the proportions of the four bases of DNA and found a curious correspondence. The numbers of molecules present of the two bases, adenine and guanine, called purines, were always equal to the total amount of thymine and cytosine, the other two bases, called pyrimidines. This neat ratio, found in all forms of DNA, cried out for explanation, but Chargaff could not think what it might be.
That is where things stood when Rosalind Franklin arrived at King's College London on 5 January 1951. Leaving coal research to work on DNA, moving from the crystal structure of inanimate substances to that of biological molecules, she had crossed the border between nonliving and living. Coal does not make more coal, but genes make more genes.
by Brenda Maddox
Researchers Pinpoint Source of Poison Frogs' Deadly Defenses
The poison frogs of Central and South America are as deadly as they are beautiful, thanks to chemicals called alkaloids that they secrete through their skin. Indeed, the venom from a single golden poison frog, for example, can kill 10 humans. Now researchers have unlocked the secrets of their counterparts in Madagascar and found that they employ the same method of acquiring thier toxins: through careful food consumption.
Studies of these frogs in the Neotropics indicated that a diet rich in ants provided the alkaloids, but whether the same held true for Malagasy populations was unknown. Now Valerie Clark of Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and her colleagues have resolved the mystery. By analyzing three poison frog species from Madagascar and their potential food sources, the team found that ants--including one species not previously known to impart poisonous alkaloids--provide the Malagasy frogs with the chemicals that comprise their toxic secretions. Three of the chemicals are unique to creature living in Madagascar.
Because neither the frogs nor the ants from the two regions are closely related, the results indicate that the ability to utilize ants both as food and as the source of a defense weapon against danger developed independently in two diverse regions of the world. In a paper published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers posit that the earlier convergent evolution of ants containing the proper chemicals may have been the critical prerequisite for the development of poison frogs in distant locales. --
Sarah Graham
Studies of these frogs in the Neotropics indicated that a diet rich in ants provided the alkaloids, but whether the same held true for Malagasy populations was unknown. Now Valerie Clark of Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and her colleagues have resolved the mystery. By analyzing three poison frog species from Madagascar and their potential food sources, the team found that ants--including one species not previously known to impart poisonous alkaloids--provide the Malagasy frogs with the chemicals that comprise their toxic secretions. Three of the chemicals are unique to creature living in Madagascar.
Because neither the frogs nor the ants from the two regions are closely related, the results indicate that the ability to utilize ants both as food and as the source of a defense weapon against danger developed independently in two diverse regions of the world. In a paper published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers posit that the earlier convergent evolution of ants containing the proper chemicals may have been the critical prerequisite for the development of poison frogs in distant locales. --
Sarah Graham
Monday, August 01, 2005
Get the KAT Purring along and Local Science will win
Astronomy: South Africa's bid to become a leader in the development of international astronomy and space projects will take a step forward with the construction of a new telescope to be built in the Karoo.
The Karoo Array Telescope (KAT) could ultimately be a component of the euro 1bn Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a global radio telescope which will span continents and probe the secrets of space . Argentina, Australia, China and SA are participants in the SKA project but are also bidding against each other to become the main site for the project. Final bid documents are due for submission by December but the winner is expected to be announced only in mid-2007.
Though SA has many geographic and weather advantages over its rivals, high telecommunications costs and uncertain regulation could well scupper its bid.
The KAT is emerging as highly strategic in SA's space science agenda. It is integral to the SKA bid and, as part of the growing network of telescopes in Southern Africa (which include those in Sutherland, Namibia and Hartebeesthoek), it will encourage scientific research in this region.
"KAT will enable us to contribute to the study of the evolution of the universe," says SKA project manager Bernie Fanaroff. "It will not be able to see as far back into the history of the universe as the SKA will allow, but we should be able to map the galaxies as they were billions of years ago, when the universe and galaxies were still quite young."
KAT will also serve as a showcase for SA technologies that are expected to be critical to the SKA project. "If we get the technology right for KAT, our participating universities and industry have a good chance of being major suppliers for the whole project, even if SA does not win the bid to host the array," says Fanaroff.
In addition, the advanced technologies that will result from the KAT project will have a positive impact on SA's ability to compete in the global high-technology marketplace.
The KAT will be an array made up of 20 dishes, each 15 m in diameter, spread out over a kilometre in the Karoo.
The project team is in the research, development and costing phase and requests for information are being sent to local, Russian, German and Chinese companies in the scientific software, digital signal processing and structural steel industries, among others.
The KAT project is also benefiting from collaboration with the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester and the University of California at Berkeley as well as the Australian National Telescope Facility and the Astronomical Institute in the Netherlands. "We have benefited from their experience and learning, which has allowed us to move quickly into cutting-edge development," says Fanaroff.
For instance, SA is collaborating on new focal-plane phased arrays that will allow the KAT to generate up to 40 beams from each dish. "It is equivalent to looking in 40 different directions at the same time ."
Though SA is competing with Australia to host the core of the SKA, the two countries are collaborating over the design of the smaller demonstrator telescopes. Australia is building its own KAT, named the Extended New Technology Demonstrator, to a different design. Both telescopes will be built by 2009, an extraordinarily tight time-frame.
These telescopes don't come cheap. The Southern African Large Telescope in Sutherland, the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere, cost government and other investors about US$30m.
Meanwhile, much work remains for the SKA bid team.
SA has completed its studies into the troposphere - the lowest layer of the atmosphere, where most clouds and water vapour are located. In the dry Northern Cape, there is not enough water in the atmosphere to absorb and disturb radio waves at high frequencies.
And the ionosphere - the region of charged particles in the upper atmosphere which can disturb radio waves occurring at lower frequencies - is stable above SA.
Outstanding issues include the technology and costing details for the data network.
The SKA - which is really a supercomputer with eyes into the heavens - will produce and transmit more data than the rest of SA combined. "We will need a network capable of speeds of 4 Tbit/s from the core [8,4m times faster than Telkom's fastest ADSL broadband connection] and 100 Gbit/s from the outlying areas [200 000 times faster than Telkom's best ]," says Fanaroff.
Exactly how this will be achieved has not been decided. What is certain is that cost will count. Data transmission tariffs will be one of the biggest costs in the SKA. An interesting example is the European Union's Géant network. In this case a consortium of partners built a network backbone capable of gigabit speeds to meet the research needs of 26 national research and education networks across Europe.
Today the network is connected to countries around the world - including, in the near future, SA. "Part of the capacity in some of the countries is used by commercial customers, which subsidise the costs of the research institutions," says Fanaroff.
Another outstanding worry is that of preserving radio quietness around the core of the SKA as well as the many small antennas that will make up the receiving surface of the telescope.
The SKA, if it is built in Southern Africa, will have its core in the Northern Cape and stations in Botswana, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Kenya and Ghana.
In each of these countries the antennas will have to be sheltered from radio interference. "The SKA uses frequencies that extend beyond the spectrum explicitly reserved by the International Telecommunications Union for radio astronomy."
The SKA project team has been in discussions with SA's own regulator, Icasa, as well as those of the neighbouring countries. The Australian team recently made a significant move when its regulator issued a moratorium on new transmissions in the zone around their proposed site.
SA is still talking to Icasa to find ways to create a radio quiet zone around the core of the telescope, which is the most sensitive to radio interference.
In April the international SKA site spectrum monitoring team arrived in SA to conduct radio frequency interference studies at the core site . These confirmed the SA site as a very quiet area for radio interference. The team must now study China, Australia and Argentina.
As the December deadline looms, the KAT project team will continue working on new prototypes for digital receiver technology, digital beam-formers and low-cost designs for the telescope dishes.
SA's increasingly visible prowess in the space science industry has also resulted in a number of foreign institutions expressing an interest in building their own infrastructure here.
By Sasha Planting
SA is making progress in its bid for a euro 1bn global space project
The Karoo Array Telescope (KAT) could ultimately be a component of the euro 1bn Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a global radio telescope which will span continents and probe the secrets of space . Argentina, Australia, China and SA are participants in the SKA project but are also bidding against each other to become the main site for the project. Final bid documents are due for submission by December but the winner is expected to be announced only in mid-2007.
Though SA has many geographic and weather advantages over its rivals, high telecommunications costs and uncertain regulation could well scupper its bid.
The KAT is emerging as highly strategic in SA's space science agenda. It is integral to the SKA bid and, as part of the growing network of telescopes in Southern Africa (which include those in Sutherland, Namibia and Hartebeesthoek), it will encourage scientific research in this region.
"KAT will enable us to contribute to the study of the evolution of the universe," says SKA project manager Bernie Fanaroff. "It will not be able to see as far back into the history of the universe as the SKA will allow, but we should be able to map the galaxies as they were billions of years ago, when the universe and galaxies were still quite young."
KAT will also serve as a showcase for SA technologies that are expected to be critical to the SKA project. "If we get the technology right for KAT, our participating universities and industry have a good chance of being major suppliers for the whole project, even if SA does not win the bid to host the array," says Fanaroff.
In addition, the advanced technologies that will result from the KAT project will have a positive impact on SA's ability to compete in the global high-technology marketplace.
The KAT will be an array made up of 20 dishes, each 15 m in diameter, spread out over a kilometre in the Karoo.
The project team is in the research, development and costing phase and requests for information are being sent to local, Russian, German and Chinese companies in the scientific software, digital signal processing and structural steel industries, among others.
The KAT project is also benefiting from collaboration with the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester and the University of California at Berkeley as well as the Australian National Telescope Facility and the Astronomical Institute in the Netherlands. "We have benefited from their experience and learning, which has allowed us to move quickly into cutting-edge development," says Fanaroff.
For instance, SA is collaborating on new focal-plane phased arrays that will allow the KAT to generate up to 40 beams from each dish. "It is equivalent to looking in 40 different directions at the same time ."
Though SA is competing with Australia to host the core of the SKA, the two countries are collaborating over the design of the smaller demonstrator telescopes. Australia is building its own KAT, named the Extended New Technology Demonstrator, to a different design. Both telescopes will be built by 2009, an extraordinarily tight time-frame.
These telescopes don't come cheap. The Southern African Large Telescope in Sutherland, the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere, cost government and other investors about US$30m.
Meanwhile, much work remains for the SKA bid team.
SA has completed its studies into the troposphere - the lowest layer of the atmosphere, where most clouds and water vapour are located. In the dry Northern Cape, there is not enough water in the atmosphere to absorb and disturb radio waves at high frequencies.
And the ionosphere - the region of charged particles in the upper atmosphere which can disturb radio waves occurring at lower frequencies - is stable above SA.
Outstanding issues include the technology and costing details for the data network.
The SKA - which is really a supercomputer with eyes into the heavens - will produce and transmit more data than the rest of SA combined. "We will need a network capable of speeds of 4 Tbit/s from the core [8,4m times faster than Telkom's fastest ADSL broadband connection] and 100 Gbit/s from the outlying areas [200 000 times faster than Telkom's best ]," says Fanaroff.
Exactly how this will be achieved has not been decided. What is certain is that cost will count. Data transmission tariffs will be one of the biggest costs in the SKA. An interesting example is the European Union's Géant network. In this case a consortium of partners built a network backbone capable of gigabit speeds to meet the research needs of 26 national research and education networks across Europe.
Today the network is connected to countries around the world - including, in the near future, SA. "Part of the capacity in some of the countries is used by commercial customers, which subsidise the costs of the research institutions," says Fanaroff.
Another outstanding worry is that of preserving radio quietness around the core of the SKA as well as the many small antennas that will make up the receiving surface of the telescope.
The SKA, if it is built in Southern Africa, will have its core in the Northern Cape and stations in Botswana, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Kenya and Ghana.
In each of these countries the antennas will have to be sheltered from radio interference. "The SKA uses frequencies that extend beyond the spectrum explicitly reserved by the International Telecommunications Union for radio astronomy."
The SKA project team has been in discussions with SA's own regulator, Icasa, as well as those of the neighbouring countries. The Australian team recently made a significant move when its regulator issued a moratorium on new transmissions in the zone around their proposed site.
SA is still talking to Icasa to find ways to create a radio quiet zone around the core of the telescope, which is the most sensitive to radio interference.
In April the international SKA site spectrum monitoring team arrived in SA to conduct radio frequency interference studies at the core site . These confirmed the SA site as a very quiet area for radio interference. The team must now study China, Australia and Argentina.
As the December deadline looms, the KAT project team will continue working on new prototypes for digital receiver technology, digital beam-formers and low-cost designs for the telescope dishes.
SA's increasingly visible prowess in the space science industry has also resulted in a number of foreign institutions expressing an interest in building their own infrastructure here.
By Sasha Planting
SA is making progress in its bid for a euro 1bn global space project
Sunday, July 31, 2005
European Database Planned After Spate Of Zoo Thefts
PARIS, July 31 (AFP) - European zoo authorities say they plan to set up an international database to register animals that are being stolen in growing numbers to feed demand from private collectors and unscrupulous dealers in the exotic pet trade.
The call for a Europe-wide computerised inventory follows a spate of thefts of animals in France over the last year including flamingoes, parrots, wallabies, monkeys, birds of prey and even penguins.
In 2004 several British zoos were targeted by thieves looking for small monkeys such as marmosets and tamarinds. Some 40 animals were taken before the break-ins abruptly stopped -- giving rise to speculation that the criminals were filling an order from an anonymous mastermind.
Statistics due out next week from the Amsterdam-based European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) are expected to confirm that zoo thefts are an increasing concern among its 290 members in 34 countries in Europe and the Middle East.
"This is the first time we have carried out a comprehensive survey, and it's in response to growing awareness that this is an international phenomenon. There is clearly a need for a permanent database to keep tabs on cross-border trafficking," said EAZA director Koen Brouwer.
In one recent theft in northeast France, 12 pink flamingoes were taken from the Amneville zoo by intruders who broke in at night using heavy wire-cutters and then tore off the roof of the birds' hut.
"What makes me angry is not the financial loss but the damage to the animals," said the zoo's owner Michel Louis.
"It is inconceivable that some of the birds did not break a leg or suffer heart failure because of the shock of the experience. We think that the thieves get an order for a certain number of animals, but take many more because they know some will die."
Fourteen pink flamingoes were also taken from Amiens zoo in June in what zoo director Christine Morrier said was certainly a commissioned theft.
"Right next to them were rare species like Humboldt penguins, but the thieves left them alone. I reckon the birds were taken out of the country straightaway," she said.
At the Beauval animal park in central France the theft of three wallabies and a marmoset in May came after the loss of a vulture and several parrots; the Sables d'Olonne zoo was relieved of two penguins; Thoiry lost five pygmy marmosets; and parrots and monkeys were taken from Aix-en-Provence.
Zoo officials and police agree that the thefts are motivated by the high prices offered for exotic breeds on the black market. A flamingo can sell for up to 3,000 euros (3,600 dollars), and a tamarind for up to 7,000 euros. The tiny Madagascar tortoise can fetch 10,000 euros.
Since the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) came into effect 30 years ago, it is against the law for European dealers to import animals caught in the wild.
In recent years customs officials have become increasingly active against the trade -- which has made zoos an obvious next target.
"It is so much easier to nick a parrot in a French zoo - and it's a lot cheaper to carry off. No plane ticket, no intermediaries, no-one to bribe. And the collectors are more and more numerous with more and more exotic demands," said Louis.
"The illegal trade in exotic animals is just like the one in arts and antiques.
There are relatively few operators but they are real specialists," said John Hayward, British coordinator of the National Theft Register for Exotic Animals.
"I wouldn't want to climb into a monkey-house if I didn't know exactly what I was doing. You can end up being badly bitten or coming away with the wrong species," he said.
Britain is the only country in Europe to maintain a database of stolen zoo animals, and Hayward has offered to help the EAZA to set up a pan-European version. In addition to the 40 small monkeys stolen last year, the most common thefts in Britain are of cockatoos and macaws, rare tortoises and koy carp.
"The motive is either to feed into the local or international pet trade, or for breeding -- a clutch of rare tortoise eggs could make you very rich -- or to answer the call of someone with a lot of money. The Mona Lisa for these collectors is the hyacinth macaw, which can get 10,000 pounds (15,000 euros)," he said.
Greater international coordination between police and zoo authorities is required to stop the thefts, said Hayward, but so is tighter security in zoos. Most are now aware of the danger and many have installed cameras, alarms and nightwatchmen.
In addition zoo owners are being urged to identify all animals with microchips and to take photographs.
"They may all look alike to the untrained eye, but every animal has some distinguishing feature like a spot on a beak or a twisted toe. A picture can make all the difference in an investigation," said Hayward.
The call for a Europe-wide computerised inventory follows a spate of thefts of animals in France over the last year including flamingoes, parrots, wallabies, monkeys, birds of prey and even penguins.
In 2004 several British zoos were targeted by thieves looking for small monkeys such as marmosets and tamarinds. Some 40 animals were taken before the break-ins abruptly stopped -- giving rise to speculation that the criminals were filling an order from an anonymous mastermind.
Statistics due out next week from the Amsterdam-based European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) are expected to confirm that zoo thefts are an increasing concern among its 290 members in 34 countries in Europe and the Middle East.
"This is the first time we have carried out a comprehensive survey, and it's in response to growing awareness that this is an international phenomenon. There is clearly a need for a permanent database to keep tabs on cross-border trafficking," said EAZA director Koen Brouwer.
In one recent theft in northeast France, 12 pink flamingoes were taken from the Amneville zoo by intruders who broke in at night using heavy wire-cutters and then tore off the roof of the birds' hut.
"What makes me angry is not the financial loss but the damage to the animals," said the zoo's owner Michel Louis.
"It is inconceivable that some of the birds did not break a leg or suffer heart failure because of the shock of the experience. We think that the thieves get an order for a certain number of animals, but take many more because they know some will die."
Fourteen pink flamingoes were also taken from Amiens zoo in June in what zoo director Christine Morrier said was certainly a commissioned theft.
"Right next to them were rare species like Humboldt penguins, but the thieves left them alone. I reckon the birds were taken out of the country straightaway," she said.
At the Beauval animal park in central France the theft of three wallabies and a marmoset in May came after the loss of a vulture and several parrots; the Sables d'Olonne zoo was relieved of two penguins; Thoiry lost five pygmy marmosets; and parrots and monkeys were taken from Aix-en-Provence.
Zoo officials and police agree that the thefts are motivated by the high prices offered for exotic breeds on the black market. A flamingo can sell for up to 3,000 euros (3,600 dollars), and a tamarind for up to 7,000 euros. The tiny Madagascar tortoise can fetch 10,000 euros.
Since the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) came into effect 30 years ago, it is against the law for European dealers to import animals caught in the wild.
In recent years customs officials have become increasingly active against the trade -- which has made zoos an obvious next target.
"It is so much easier to nick a parrot in a French zoo - and it's a lot cheaper to carry off. No plane ticket, no intermediaries, no-one to bribe. And the collectors are more and more numerous with more and more exotic demands," said Louis.
"The illegal trade in exotic animals is just like the one in arts and antiques.
There are relatively few operators but they are real specialists," said John Hayward, British coordinator of the National Theft Register for Exotic Animals.
"I wouldn't want to climb into a monkey-house if I didn't know exactly what I was doing. You can end up being badly bitten or coming away with the wrong species," he said.
Britain is the only country in Europe to maintain a database of stolen zoo animals, and Hayward has offered to help the EAZA to set up a pan-European version. In addition to the 40 small monkeys stolen last year, the most common thefts in Britain are of cockatoos and macaws, rare tortoises and koy carp.
"The motive is either to feed into the local or international pet trade, or for breeding -- a clutch of rare tortoise eggs could make you very rich -- or to answer the call of someone with a lot of money. The Mona Lisa for these collectors is the hyacinth macaw, which can get 10,000 pounds (15,000 euros)," he said.
Greater international coordination between police and zoo authorities is required to stop the thefts, said Hayward, but so is tighter security in zoos. Most are now aware of the danger and many have installed cameras, alarms and nightwatchmen.
In addition zoo owners are being urged to identify all animals with microchips and to take photographs.
"They may all look alike to the untrained eye, but every animal has some distinguishing feature like a spot on a beak or a twisted toe. A picture can make all the difference in an investigation," said Hayward.
US scientists announce discovery of possible '10th planet'
If confirmed, the discovery by Mike Brown of the respected California Institute of Technology would be the first of a planet since Pluto was identified in 1930 and shatter the notion that nine planets circle the sun.
"Get out your pens. Start re-writing textbooks today," said Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy, announcing what he called "the 10th planet of the solar system," one that is larger than Pluto.
"It's the farthest object ever discovered to orbit around the sun," Brown said in a conference call of the planet that is covered in methane ice and lies nearly 15 billion kilometers (nine billion miles) from Earth.
"I'd say it's probably one and a half times the size of Pluto," he said from CalTech, based in Pasadena, near Los Angeles, referring to what until now has been the most distant planet in earth's solar system.
Currently about 97 times further from the sun than the Earth, the celestial body tentatively called "2003-UB313" is the farthest known object in the solar system, and the third brightest of the Kuiper belt objects.
It is a typical member of the Kuiper belt, but its sheer size in relation to the nine known planets means that it can only be classified as a planet, Brown said.
The astronomer conceded he and his team did not know the exact size of the new planet, but its brightness and distance tell them that it is at least as large as Pluto, which measures 2,302 kilometers (1,438 miles) in diameter.
The size of an object in the solar system object can be inferred by its brightness, just as the size of a faraway light bulb can be calculated if one knows its wattage, he explained.
"We are 100 percent confident that this is the first object bigger than Pluto ever found in the outer solar system."
But Brown conceded that the discovery would likely rekindle debate over the definition of the term "planet" and whether Pluto should still be regarded as one.
Critics have long questioned whether Pluto, which resembles objects in the Kuiper belt, is actually a planet.
Brown discovered what could be a new addition to the universe known to man along with colleagues Chad Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and David Rabinowitz, of Yale University, on January 8.
The planet was first spotted on October 31, 2003 with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California.
But it was so far away that its motion was not detected until the scientists reanalysed the data earlier this year, Brown said.
The astronomers have proposed a name for the "planet" to the science's governing body, the International Astronomical Union, and are awaiting the decision of this body before announcing it.
The planet has not been noticed previously because its orbit is at a 45 degree angle to the rest of the solar system, he said.
"We found it because we've looked everywhere else. Nobody looks way up that high. It's tilted way out of plane," he added.
The new planet, which Brown said looks very much like Pluto, will be visible over the next six months and is currently almost directly overhead in the early-morning eastern sky, in the Cetus constellation.
News of the discovery was announced earlier than expected after hackers broke into Brown's website and stole news of it, he charged.
The team had planned to keep the news secret until their research was completed, but a Spanish team said Thursday it had identified a large, bright object in the Kuiper belt surrounding the solar system.
Brown said "somebody with more cleverness than scruples" had uncovered what had been under wraps: that astronomers had discovered 2003-UB313 as well as another bright object in the Kuiper belt, forcing a public announcement.
The announcement, resulting from a study partially funded by NASA, ironically came two days after the US space agency grounded its space shuttle fleet, after a piece of foam insulation broke off a fuel tank of the Discovery on lift-off earlier this week.
The same problem led to the disintegration of the last shuttle to blast into space in 2003, killing seven astronauts.
A US astronomer said Friday he had discovered a 10th planet in the outer reaches of the solar system that could force scientists to redraw the astronomical map.
"Get out your pens. Start re-writing textbooks today," said Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy, announcing what he called "the 10th planet of the solar system," one that is larger than Pluto.
"It's the farthest object ever discovered to orbit around the sun," Brown said in a conference call of the planet that is covered in methane ice and lies nearly 15 billion kilometers (nine billion miles) from Earth.
"I'd say it's probably one and a half times the size of Pluto," he said from CalTech, based in Pasadena, near Los Angeles, referring to what until now has been the most distant planet in earth's solar system.
Currently about 97 times further from the sun than the Earth, the celestial body tentatively called "2003-UB313" is the farthest known object in the solar system, and the third brightest of the Kuiper belt objects.
It is a typical member of the Kuiper belt, but its sheer size in relation to the nine known planets means that it can only be classified as a planet, Brown said.
The astronomer conceded he and his team did not know the exact size of the new planet, but its brightness and distance tell them that it is at least as large as Pluto, which measures 2,302 kilometers (1,438 miles) in diameter.
The size of an object in the solar system object can be inferred by its brightness, just as the size of a faraway light bulb can be calculated if one knows its wattage, he explained.
"We are 100 percent confident that this is the first object bigger than Pluto ever found in the outer solar system."
But Brown conceded that the discovery would likely rekindle debate over the definition of the term "planet" and whether Pluto should still be regarded as one.
Critics have long questioned whether Pluto, which resembles objects in the Kuiper belt, is actually a planet.
Brown discovered what could be a new addition to the universe known to man along with colleagues Chad Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and David Rabinowitz, of Yale University, on January 8.
The planet was first spotted on October 31, 2003 with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California.
But it was so far away that its motion was not detected until the scientists reanalysed the data earlier this year, Brown said.
The astronomers have proposed a name for the "planet" to the science's governing body, the International Astronomical Union, and are awaiting the decision of this body before announcing it.
The planet has not been noticed previously because its orbit is at a 45 degree angle to the rest of the solar system, he said.
"We found it because we've looked everywhere else. Nobody looks way up that high. It's tilted way out of plane," he added.
The new planet, which Brown said looks very much like Pluto, will be visible over the next six months and is currently almost directly overhead in the early-morning eastern sky, in the Cetus constellation.
News of the discovery was announced earlier than expected after hackers broke into Brown's website and stole news of it, he charged.
The team had planned to keep the news secret until their research was completed, but a Spanish team said Thursday it had identified a large, bright object in the Kuiper belt surrounding the solar system.
Brown said "somebody with more cleverness than scruples" had uncovered what had been under wraps: that astronomers had discovered 2003-UB313 as well as another bright object in the Kuiper belt, forcing a public announcement.
The announcement, resulting from a study partially funded by NASA, ironically came two days after the US space agency grounded its space shuttle fleet, after a piece of foam insulation broke off a fuel tank of the Discovery on lift-off earlier this week.
The same problem led to the disintegration of the last shuttle to blast into space in 2003, killing seven astronauts.
A US astronomer said Friday he had discovered a 10th planet in the outer reaches of the solar system that could force scientists to redraw the astronomical map.
Dinosaur Embryos Reveal 'Ridiculous' Proportions
The oldest fossilized dinosaur embryos ever found reveal how the creatures grew from tiny hatchlings to become such giant land beasts.
The embryos, including one that was ready to hatch before being frozen in time, had no teeth. That is further evidence that at least some dinosaurs must have tended their young, scientists said today.
The embryos are 190 million years, dating from the beginning of the Jurassic Period.
"Most dinosaur embryos are from the Cretaceous period (146 to 65 millions years ago)," said biologist Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto at Mississauga. "The work on the embryo, its identification, and the fact we can see the detailed anatomy of the earliest known dinosaur embryo is extremely exciting."
'Ridiculous' proportions
The dinosaur is called Massospondylus. It was common in what is now South Africa.
A typical adult Massospondylus was 16 feet (5 meters) long. The best-preserved egg is just 2.4 inches (6 cm) long. The embryo, curled up inside, is about 6 inches (15 cm) in length.
An analysis of the embryos suggests they were born walking on four legs with short tails, long forelimbs and big heads. To morph into their adult shape -- walking on two legs with long tails, short forelimbs and small heads -- their various features must have grown at different rates.
"The proportions are just ridiculous," Reisz said.
There are no other examples of such well preserved embryos combined with adult skeletons among dinosaurs, Reisz said.
The lack of embryonic teeth points to hatchlings that could not possibly have fended for themselves.
"These embryos, which were clearly ready to hatch, had overall awkward body proportions and no mechanism for feeding themselves, which suggest they required parental care," said Reisz, who led the investigation. "If this interpretation is correct, we have here the oldest known indication of parental care in the fossil record."
More impications
The embryos were found in 1978 but only recently have they been exposed from the rock in which they were embedded. The results of the study are detailed in the July 29 issue of the journal Science.
The fossils are in fact the oldest examples of terrestrial vertebrate embryos.
The research indicates how larger dinosaurs later in the fossil record might have come about.
Massospondylus was a prosauropod. The group is thought to have later evolved to include giant sauropods that walked on four legs, including the gargantuan Seismosaurus.
Scientists once thought the group walked only on two legs, then simply dropped to four when they evolved into heavier beasts. But the new findings may challenge that assumption by showing that even prosauropods had some tendency to walk on four legs.
"Because the embryo of Massospondylus looks like a tiny sauropod with massive limbs and a quadrupedal gait," Reisz and his colleagues speculate that "the sauropod's gait probably evolved" by a process in which features present in an embryo and juvenile gradually become predominant in adults later in the evolutionary timeline.
"This would be significant because it means we might have to re-evaluate the origin of many features in sauropod skeletons we assumed had to do with weight support," said Western Illinois University researcher Matthew Bonnan in a separate article in the journal.
Birds of Prey: See Today's Dinosaurs
Avian Ancestors: Dinosaurs that Learned to Fly
Visit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and scientific inquiry with an original, provocative point of view. LiveScience reports amazing, real world breakthroughs, made simple and stimulating for people on the go. Check out our collection of Amazing Images, Image Galleries, Interactive Features, Trivia and more. Sign up for our free daily email newsletter today!
Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
LiveScience.com
The embryos, including one that was ready to hatch before being frozen in time, had no teeth. That is further evidence that at least some dinosaurs must have tended their young, scientists said today.
The embryos are 190 million years, dating from the beginning of the Jurassic Period.
"Most dinosaur embryos are from the Cretaceous period (146 to 65 millions years ago)," said biologist Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto at Mississauga. "The work on the embryo, its identification, and the fact we can see the detailed anatomy of the earliest known dinosaur embryo is extremely exciting."
'Ridiculous' proportions
The dinosaur is called Massospondylus. It was common in what is now South Africa.
A typical adult Massospondylus was 16 feet (5 meters) long. The best-preserved egg is just 2.4 inches (6 cm) long. The embryo, curled up inside, is about 6 inches (15 cm) in length.
An analysis of the embryos suggests they were born walking on four legs with short tails, long forelimbs and big heads. To morph into their adult shape -- walking on two legs with long tails, short forelimbs and small heads -- their various features must have grown at different rates.
"The proportions are just ridiculous," Reisz said.
There are no other examples of such well preserved embryos combined with adult skeletons among dinosaurs, Reisz said.
The lack of embryonic teeth points to hatchlings that could not possibly have fended for themselves.
"These embryos, which were clearly ready to hatch, had overall awkward body proportions and no mechanism for feeding themselves, which suggest they required parental care," said Reisz, who led the investigation. "If this interpretation is correct, we have here the oldest known indication of parental care in the fossil record."
More impications
The embryos were found in 1978 but only recently have they been exposed from the rock in which they were embedded. The results of the study are detailed in the July 29 issue of the journal Science.
The fossils are in fact the oldest examples of terrestrial vertebrate embryos.
The research indicates how larger dinosaurs later in the fossil record might have come about.
Massospondylus was a prosauropod. The group is thought to have later evolved to include giant sauropods that walked on four legs, including the gargantuan Seismosaurus.
Scientists once thought the group walked only on two legs, then simply dropped to four when they evolved into heavier beasts. But the new findings may challenge that assumption by showing that even prosauropods had some tendency to walk on four legs.
"Because the embryo of Massospondylus looks like a tiny sauropod with massive limbs and a quadrupedal gait," Reisz and his colleagues speculate that "the sauropod's gait probably evolved" by a process in which features present in an embryo and juvenile gradually become predominant in adults later in the evolutionary timeline.
"This would be significant because it means we might have to re-evaluate the origin of many features in sauropod skeletons we assumed had to do with weight support," said Western Illinois University researcher Matthew Bonnan in a separate article in the journal.
Birds of Prey: See Today's Dinosaurs
Avian Ancestors: Dinosaurs that Learned to Fly
Visit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and scientific inquiry with an original, provocative point of view. LiveScience reports amazing, real world breakthroughs, made simple and stimulating for people on the go. Check out our collection of Amazing Images, Image Galleries, Interactive Features, Trivia and more. Sign up for our free daily email newsletter today!
Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
LiveScience.com
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Predatory dinosaurs had bird-like pulmonary system
ATHENS, Ohio – What could the fierce dinosaur T. rex and a modern songbird such as the sparrow possibly have in common? Their pulmonary systems may have been more similar than scientists previously thought, according to new research from Ohio University and Harvard University.
Though some scientists have proposed that predatory dinosaurs had lungs similar to crocodiles and other reptiles, a new study published in this week's issue of the journal Nature suggests the ancient beasts boasted a much bigger, more complex system of air sacs similar to that in today's birds. The finding is one of several studies in recent years to paint a new, more avian-like portrait of meat-eaters such as T. rex: The creatures may have had feathers, incubated their eggs, grown quickly and perhaps even breathed like birds.
"What was once formally considered unique to birds was present in some form in the ancestors of birds," said Patrick O'Connor, an assistant professor of biomedical sciences at Ohio University's College of Osteopathic Medicine and lead author on the study, which was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
O'Connor and collaborator Leon Claessens of Harvard University visited museums in New York, Berkeley, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Berlin and London to examine the bones of ancient beasts, and also studied a 67-million-year-old dinosaur, Majungatholus atopus, that O'Connor had discovered in Madagascar as a graduate student in 1996. They compared the dinosaur skeletons with those of modern birds to draw comparisons of how the soft tissues in the dinosaurs may have been structured.
Birds long have fascinated biologists because of their unusual pulmonary system. Pulmonary air sacs prompt air to pass through the lungs twice during ventilation. This system also creates holes in the skeleton of birds, which has led to a popular notion that birds have "air in their bones," O'Connor said.
The new study, which examined how the air system invades the skeleton in areas such as the neck, chest and hips, finds similarities between the vertebral column of dinosaurs and birds that point to a common soft tissue system as the culprit. Though probably not identical to living birds, "it's nothing like the crocodile system as we know it," O'Connor said.
"The pulmonary system of meat-eating dinosaurs such as T. rex in fact shares many structural similarities with that of modern birds, which, from an engineering point of view, may possess the most efficient respiratory system of any living vertebrate inhabiting the land or sky," said Claessens, who received a Ph.D. from Harvard in organismic and evolutionary biology last month and will join the faculty at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., this fall.
In birds, this special anatomical configuration increases the gas exchange potential within the lungs, boosting metabolism and creating warm-bloodedness. The researchers are quick to point out, however, that the new study doesn't clearly peg predatory dinosaurs as habitually warm-blooded animals. The creatures probably had a more complex strategy, falling somewhere between what scientists define as cold- and warm-blooded. It appears that these animals had the pulmonary machinery for enhanced gas exchange, O'Connor explained, which would have pushed them closer to being warm-blooded creatures.
Previous research that pointed to a more crocodilian-like pulmonary system was based on a study of two dinosaur skeletons encased in rock. O'Connor and Claessens have expanded on that research by studying a broader collection of dinosaur skeletal remains, and are the first to integrate both anatomical and functional studies of modern birds as models of how the ancient creatures' air sacs were structured.
The scientists are part of a reinvigorated movement of researchers who are examining dinosaur bones and comparing them with modern animals to learn more about the anatomy of these extinct beasts.
###
Additional funding for the research came from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the Jurassic Foundation and the S. & D. Welles Research Fund.
Attention Reporters, Editors: Please contact Andrea Gibson for related illustrations, photos and video at gibsona@ohio.edu.
Contacts: Patrick O'Connor in Tanzania: 011-255-746-443-958, oconnorp@exchange.oucom.ohiou.edu; Andrea Gibson, (740) 597-2166, gibsona@ohio.edu; Steve Bradt, (617) 496-8070; steve_bradt@harvard.edu
Written by Andrea Gibson.
Public release date: 13-Jul-2005
[ Print Article | E-mail Article | Close Window ]
Contact: Andrea Gibson
gibsona@ohio.edu
740-597-2166
Ohio University
Though some scientists have proposed that predatory dinosaurs had lungs similar to crocodiles and other reptiles, a new study published in this week's issue of the journal Nature suggests the ancient beasts boasted a much bigger, more complex system of air sacs similar to that in today's birds. The finding is one of several studies in recent years to paint a new, more avian-like portrait of meat-eaters such as T. rex: The creatures may have had feathers, incubated their eggs, grown quickly and perhaps even breathed like birds.
"What was once formally considered unique to birds was present in some form in the ancestors of birds," said Patrick O'Connor, an assistant professor of biomedical sciences at Ohio University's College of Osteopathic Medicine and lead author on the study, which was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
O'Connor and collaborator Leon Claessens of Harvard University visited museums in New York, Berkeley, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Berlin and London to examine the bones of ancient beasts, and also studied a 67-million-year-old dinosaur, Majungatholus atopus, that O'Connor had discovered in Madagascar as a graduate student in 1996. They compared the dinosaur skeletons with those of modern birds to draw comparisons of how the soft tissues in the dinosaurs may have been structured.
Birds long have fascinated biologists because of their unusual pulmonary system. Pulmonary air sacs prompt air to pass through the lungs twice during ventilation. This system also creates holes in the skeleton of birds, which has led to a popular notion that birds have "air in their bones," O'Connor said.
The new study, which examined how the air system invades the skeleton in areas such as the neck, chest and hips, finds similarities between the vertebral column of dinosaurs and birds that point to a common soft tissue system as the culprit. Though probably not identical to living birds, "it's nothing like the crocodile system as we know it," O'Connor said.
"The pulmonary system of meat-eating dinosaurs such as T. rex in fact shares many structural similarities with that of modern birds, which, from an engineering point of view, may possess the most efficient respiratory system of any living vertebrate inhabiting the land or sky," said Claessens, who received a Ph.D. from Harvard in organismic and evolutionary biology last month and will join the faculty at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., this fall.
In birds, this special anatomical configuration increases the gas exchange potential within the lungs, boosting metabolism and creating warm-bloodedness. The researchers are quick to point out, however, that the new study doesn't clearly peg predatory dinosaurs as habitually warm-blooded animals. The creatures probably had a more complex strategy, falling somewhere between what scientists define as cold- and warm-blooded. It appears that these animals had the pulmonary machinery for enhanced gas exchange, O'Connor explained, which would have pushed them closer to being warm-blooded creatures.
Previous research that pointed to a more crocodilian-like pulmonary system was based on a study of two dinosaur skeletons encased in rock. O'Connor and Claessens have expanded on that research by studying a broader collection of dinosaur skeletal remains, and are the first to integrate both anatomical and functional studies of modern birds as models of how the ancient creatures' air sacs were structured.
The scientists are part of a reinvigorated movement of researchers who are examining dinosaur bones and comparing them with modern animals to learn more about the anatomy of these extinct beasts.
###
Additional funding for the research came from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the Jurassic Foundation and the S. & D. Welles Research Fund.
Attention Reporters, Editors: Please contact Andrea Gibson for related illustrations, photos and video at gibsona@ohio.edu.
Contacts: Patrick O'Connor in Tanzania: 011-255-746-443-958, oconnorp@exchange.oucom.ohiou.edu; Andrea Gibson, (740) 597-2166, gibsona@ohio.edu; Steve Bradt, (617) 496-8070; steve_bradt@harvard.edu
Written by Andrea Gibson.
Public release date: 13-Jul-2005
[ Print Article | E-mail Article | Close Window ]
Contact: Andrea Gibson
gibsona@ohio.edu
740-597-2166
Ohio University
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Nobel Prize Winner Claude Simon
Nobel laureate Claude Simon, a pioneer of the experimental "new novel" style of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The Swedish Academy that awarded Simon the 1985 Nobel Prize in literature cited the novel "Les Georgiques" ("The Georgics") as perhaps his most important work. The 1981 novel depicts Simon's experience with the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
At the time, he was the first Frenchman to win the Nobel since playwright and author Jean-Paul Sartre was honored with the award but turned it down in 1964.
Born of French parents on Oct. 10, 1913, in Tananarive, on the island of Madagascar, Simon began writing in 1945 with "Le Tricheur" ("The Cheat,") an existential fable that resembled Albert Camus' "The Stranger."
The author of more than 20 works, his major literary breakthrough as an exponent of the French "nouveau roman" or new novel style came in 1960, with "La Route Des Flandres" ("The Flanders Road") set during World War II.
The "new novel" style dispensed with such literary norms as plot and character development. Simon's novels present characters in a state of emotional turmoil, often obsessed with memories.
Simon's intricate, free-flowing style makes his works difficult to read — said to partly explain why he was not well-known even in France. Some critics have compared his jumbled chronology and abrupt transitions to the techniques of William Faulkner, the American author.
"French literature has lost one of its greatest authors," Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said in a statement from his office. "Claude Simon will remain as one of the great novelists of collective and individual memory."
Simon once said of his own work: "I am incapable of making up a story. All I write is taken directly from real life, I only copy reality."
As a young man, Simon showed a passion for photography and painting. At 23, he joined the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. In World War II, he fought in the 1940 Battle of the Meuse and was taken prisoner, but later escaped and joined the Resistance.
Simon's last novel, "The Trolley" of 2001, recalled his life as a boy in Perpignan, and depicted how the foundation of a person's life is what he remembers.
"People will get to understand my work sooner or later. This is nothing new, that some authors are considered difficult," he was quoted by Swedish news agency TT as saying in 1985.
By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 42 minutes ago
The Swedish Academy that awarded Simon the 1985 Nobel Prize in literature cited the novel "Les Georgiques" ("The Georgics") as perhaps his most important work. The 1981 novel depicts Simon's experience with the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
At the time, he was the first Frenchman to win the Nobel since playwright and author Jean-Paul Sartre was honored with the award but turned it down in 1964.
Born of French parents on Oct. 10, 1913, in Tananarive, on the island of Madagascar, Simon began writing in 1945 with "Le Tricheur" ("The Cheat,") an existential fable that resembled Albert Camus' "The Stranger."
The author of more than 20 works, his major literary breakthrough as an exponent of the French "nouveau roman" or new novel style came in 1960, with "La Route Des Flandres" ("The Flanders Road") set during World War II.
The "new novel" style dispensed with such literary norms as plot and character development. Simon's novels present characters in a state of emotional turmoil, often obsessed with memories.
Simon's intricate, free-flowing style makes his works difficult to read — said to partly explain why he was not well-known even in France. Some critics have compared his jumbled chronology and abrupt transitions to the techniques of William Faulkner, the American author.
"French literature has lost one of its greatest authors," Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said in a statement from his office. "Claude Simon will remain as one of the great novelists of collective and individual memory."
Simon once said of his own work: "I am incapable of making up a story. All I write is taken directly from real life, I only copy reality."
As a young man, Simon showed a passion for photography and painting. At 23, he joined the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. In World War II, he fought in the 1940 Battle of the Meuse and was taken prisoner, but later escaped and joined the Resistance.
Simon's last novel, "The Trolley" of 2001, recalled his life as a boy in Perpignan, and depicted how the foundation of a person's life is what he remembers.
"People will get to understand my work sooner or later. This is nothing new, that some authors are considered difficult," he was quoted by Swedish news agency TT as saying in 1985.
By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 42 minutes ago
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Fierce new dinos take a bow in U. campus debut
In comparison, Falcarius utahensis didn't look like much a of match for its larger Cretaceous-era dinosaur rival Majungatholus, which stretched to 25 feet long.
Claws at the ready, skeleton models of the two dinosaurs warily eyed each other Wednesday at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. This marks the world debut of Falcarius, a dinosaur from Utah, and the first appearance of Majungatholus in the Western Hemisphere.
In reality, the two dinosaurs never crossed paths. Falcarius roamed Utah in the early Cretaceous period, about 125 million years ago, while Majungatholus terrorized Madagascar in the late Cretaceous era, about 70 million years ago.
"It's
Children with the Avenues preschool Child Time get a hands-on experience with dinosaur bones. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)
fun to bring them together," said Becky Menlove, who is in charge of museum exhibits.
The two creatures do share a bond - Scott Sampson, the museum's curator of paleontology. He helped discover and study both dinosaurs.
Falcarius, which comes out of the southern Utah desert, is believed to be a missing link between earlier meat-eaters and later vegetarian dinosaurs in one family. Researchers, led by state paleontologist James Kirkland, announced the details of the new dinosaur in May.
Majungatholus, which is on extended loan before it moves to its permanent home in Stony Brook, N.Y., is a predatory dinosaur found on Madagascar.
The real fossils of both dinosaurs are still being researched.
Paleoform, a Provo company, created the skeleton cast for Majungatholus. The company ran into problems when the skull they wanted to use was 30 percent bigger than the rest of the body bones they studied, said Tyler Pinegar, who works for the Provo firm.
After making casts of various bones, the dinosaur builders filled the impression with a material called hydrospan. Paleoform workers left the material in water for two weeks, which expanded the pieces by 30 percent.
Other bones had to be carved out of a hard foam using bones from related dinosaurs as models, Pinegar said.
Gaston, Studio, of Grand Junction, Colo., designed the Falcarius skeleton cast.
On display near the 12-foot-long Falcarius is a small sculpture of the creature, which features muscles and skin. Salt Lake City sculptor/illustrator John Moore created the lifelike rendition.
After seeing the skeleton, he cast a glance back at his creation with a critical artist's eye.
"I wish at the time I'd had the skeleton," Moore said. "It would look different."
When he began the project, he only had pictures of a few bones upon which to base his sculpture. Moore said the neck should be longer and the pelvis should be a different shape.
"Nobody can exactly say it's wrong," Moore said, "because no one has ever seen it."
glavine@sltrib.com
Heading into dinosaur territory
l What: Two new cast skeletons of dinosaurs, Falcarius utahensis and Majungatholus, are on display at the Utah Museum of Natural History.
l Where: University of Utah campus, 1390 E. Presidents Circle.
l When: Monday to Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
l More information: Admission is $6.50 for adults; $3.50 for seniors and kids 3-12, and free for children under 3, museum members and those affiliated with the University of Utah.
More information is available on the Web at http://www.umnh.utah.edu or call 801-581-6927.
By Greg Lavine
The Salt Lake Tribune
Claws at the ready, skeleton models of the two dinosaurs warily eyed each other Wednesday at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. This marks the world debut of Falcarius, a dinosaur from Utah, and the first appearance of Majungatholus in the Western Hemisphere.
In reality, the two dinosaurs never crossed paths. Falcarius roamed Utah in the early Cretaceous period, about 125 million years ago, while Majungatholus terrorized Madagascar in the late Cretaceous era, about 70 million years ago.
"It's
Children with the Avenues preschool Child Time get a hands-on experience with dinosaur bones. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)
fun to bring them together," said Becky Menlove, who is in charge of museum exhibits.
The two creatures do share a bond - Scott Sampson, the museum's curator of paleontology. He helped discover and study both dinosaurs.
Falcarius, which comes out of the southern Utah desert, is believed to be a missing link between earlier meat-eaters and later vegetarian dinosaurs in one family. Researchers, led by state paleontologist James Kirkland, announced the details of the new dinosaur in May.
Majungatholus, which is on extended loan before it moves to its permanent home in Stony Brook, N.Y., is a predatory dinosaur found on Madagascar.
The real fossils of both dinosaurs are still being researched.
Paleoform, a Provo company, created the skeleton cast for Majungatholus. The company ran into problems when the skull they wanted to use was 30 percent bigger than the rest of the body bones they studied, said Tyler Pinegar, who works for the Provo firm.
After making casts of various bones, the dinosaur builders filled the impression with a material called hydrospan. Paleoform workers left the material in water for two weeks, which expanded the pieces by 30 percent.
Other bones had to be carved out of a hard foam using bones from related dinosaurs as models, Pinegar said.
Gaston, Studio, of Grand Junction, Colo., designed the Falcarius skeleton cast.
On display near the 12-foot-long Falcarius is a small sculpture of the creature, which features muscles and skin. Salt Lake City sculptor/illustrator John Moore created the lifelike rendition.
After seeing the skeleton, he cast a glance back at his creation with a critical artist's eye.
"I wish at the time I'd had the skeleton," Moore said. "It would look different."
When he began the project, he only had pictures of a few bones upon which to base his sculpture. Moore said the neck should be longer and the pelvis should be a different shape.
"Nobody can exactly say it's wrong," Moore said, "because no one has ever seen it."
glavine@sltrib.com
Heading into dinosaur territory
l What: Two new cast skeletons of dinosaurs, Falcarius utahensis and Majungatholus, are on display at the Utah Museum of Natural History.
l Where: University of Utah campus, 1390 E. Presidents Circle.
l When: Monday to Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
l More information: Admission is $6.50 for adults; $3.50 for seniors and kids 3-12, and free for children under 3, museum members and those affiliated with the University of Utah.
More information is available on the Web at http://www.umnh.utah.edu or call 801-581-6927.
By Greg Lavine
The Salt Lake Tribune
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Crazy over euphorbia
The flower-mad people of Negros Oriental and Dumaguete City have shifted their romance with flowers from bromeliad to euphorbia. And the mad fever is catching on. A house is poorer without euphorbia milii that its household equates with good fortune.
Remember the fortune plant craze? Like other fads, floral or otherwise, the obsession with euphorbia could also wane. But for the moment, it is the current passion of the province's flower-lovers. I confess I am guilty.
But imagine a rainbow in a garden or a rainbow in a petal. It would be joy in the heart! Colorful euphorbia plant flowers lay before my eyes every time I walk by in our garden. And I think of the artist responsible for mixing these colors to produce happy thoughts to the beholder.
God made them so, but humans should do the cultivation.
History
In her research in the Internet, Professor Joy G. Perez, head of the mass communication department of Negros Oriental State University (Norsu), discovered there are over 2,000 species of euphorbias in the world! They range from annual weeds to trees. They all have latex and a unique flower structure. A significant percentage is succulent.
The euphorbia was named after a Greek surgeon named Euphorbus hundreds of years ago. He was a physician of Juba II who was the Romanized king of a north African kingdom, and was supposed to have used the plant's milky latex as an ingredient for his potions.
A warning, though, says Professor Perez. Euphorbia Milii is poisonous, particularly the juice from its woody stems.
Some euphorbia species are called 'Crown of Thorns' or 'Christ plant'. A research is yet to be made to trace how the plant found its way to Jerusalem at the time of Jesus from Madagascar, an African island in the Indian ocean.
Euphorbia is a dense shrub with a centimeter-long sharp thorn. It has clusters of leaves produced near the growing tips of stems that last for several months before dropping off. Old leaves are not replaced. New ones appear only on new terminal growth.
The flowers are tiny, each surrounded by a pair of one-centimeter long, kidney-shaped bright red or white, yellow, orange, pink bracts that look like petals. Clusters of these paired flower-like bracts appear on stalks at the tip of the spiny stems.
Flowering and growing can be continuous if plants get exceptionally good light because they grow best in sunny location. The cactus family has many plant variations of euphorbia.
In the 70's several euphorbia species were introduced into cultivation by Stephen Jankalski. Later, cross-breeds were made.
In the 1990's, hybrids were produced by Somona in Germany. Somona hybrids are self-branching with deep-green, soft, large, thick leaves. They are free flowering with colors ranging from cream or beige and various shades from pink to red.
Luck plant
For those who believe in luck, good news! Known as the 'luck plant', it was named poysean by Chinese immigrants in Thailand.
'Poy' means light and 'sean' means saints after the eight saints of Chinese mythology each representing a different face: health, bravery, riches, beauty, art, intelligence, poetry, and the ability to overcome evil.
The old euphorbia milii hybrid typically has light flowers in each bunch, hence the local name 'ocho-ocho' or 'octopus'.
Thais believe that keeping poysean outside the house, in the balcony, or terrace brings these positive forces to the house and owner. Thus, poysean is an old Thai-Chinese name for 'Crown of Thorns' and a new one for the large flowered Thai hybrid.
The euphorbia milii fever hit Dumaguete City two years ago when large flowered hybrids appeared.
Until when the fever will subside, it is anyone's guess. But for now, it is fun to cultivate these plants. Its beauty brings not only happiness, but also...extra income.
Source: 'Notes', a newsletter of the College of Arts and Sciences, Negros Oriental State University, May 2005.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Crazy over euphorbia
By Rodorica Tolomia
IT IS confirmed.
Remember the fortune plant craze? Like other fads, floral or otherwise, the obsession with euphorbia could also wane. But for the moment, it is the current passion of the province's flower-lovers. I confess I am guilty.
But imagine a rainbow in a garden or a rainbow in a petal. It would be joy in the heart! Colorful euphorbia plant flowers lay before my eyes every time I walk by in our garden. And I think of the artist responsible for mixing these colors to produce happy thoughts to the beholder.
God made them so, but humans should do the cultivation.
History
In her research in the Internet, Professor Joy G. Perez, head of the mass communication department of Negros Oriental State University (Norsu), discovered there are over 2,000 species of euphorbias in the world! They range from annual weeds to trees. They all have latex and a unique flower structure. A significant percentage is succulent.
The euphorbia was named after a Greek surgeon named Euphorbus hundreds of years ago. He was a physician of Juba II who was the Romanized king of a north African kingdom, and was supposed to have used the plant's milky latex as an ingredient for his potions.
A warning, though, says Professor Perez. Euphorbia Milii is poisonous, particularly the juice from its woody stems.
Some euphorbia species are called 'Crown of Thorns' or 'Christ plant'. A research is yet to be made to trace how the plant found its way to Jerusalem at the time of Jesus from Madagascar, an African island in the Indian ocean.
Euphorbia is a dense shrub with a centimeter-long sharp thorn. It has clusters of leaves produced near the growing tips of stems that last for several months before dropping off. Old leaves are not replaced. New ones appear only on new terminal growth.
The flowers are tiny, each surrounded by a pair of one-centimeter long, kidney-shaped bright red or white, yellow, orange, pink bracts that look like petals. Clusters of these paired flower-like bracts appear on stalks at the tip of the spiny stems.
Flowering and growing can be continuous if plants get exceptionally good light because they grow best in sunny location. The cactus family has many plant variations of euphorbia.
In the 70's several euphorbia species were introduced into cultivation by Stephen Jankalski. Later, cross-breeds were made.
In the 1990's, hybrids were produced by Somona in Germany. Somona hybrids are self-branching with deep-green, soft, large, thick leaves. They are free flowering with colors ranging from cream or beige and various shades from pink to red.
Luck plant
For those who believe in luck, good news! Known as the 'luck plant', it was named poysean by Chinese immigrants in Thailand.
'Poy' means light and 'sean' means saints after the eight saints of Chinese mythology each representing a different face: health, bravery, riches, beauty, art, intelligence, poetry, and the ability to overcome evil.
The old euphorbia milii hybrid typically has light flowers in each bunch, hence the local name 'ocho-ocho' or 'octopus'.
Thais believe that keeping poysean outside the house, in the balcony, or terrace brings these positive forces to the house and owner. Thus, poysean is an old Thai-Chinese name for 'Crown of Thorns' and a new one for the large flowered Thai hybrid.
The euphorbia milii fever hit Dumaguete City two years ago when large flowered hybrids appeared.
Until when the fever will subside, it is anyone's guess. But for now, it is fun to cultivate these plants. Its beauty brings not only happiness, but also...extra income.
Source: 'Notes', a newsletter of the College of Arts and Sciences, Negros Oriental State University, May 2005.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Crazy over euphorbia
By Rodorica Tolomia
IT IS confirmed.
Friday, June 03, 2005
2005 Atlantic Tropical Season Kicks Off
The 2004 Atlantic hurricane season was very busy and ended with fifteen tropical or subtropical storms by the time the season came to a close. Nine of the storms became hurricanes with six becoming major hurricanes, category three or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.
Looking ahead, the 2005 season is forecast to be very active, as well. Dr. Bill Gray has released an updated forecast calling for 15 named storms. His forecast also predicts that 8 of the 15 named storms will become hurricanes with 4 of the 8 expected to become major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale).
Currently, the Atlantic Basin and Eastern Pacific are quiet and tropical development is not likely in the near future. The first tropical storm of the Atlantic season will receive the name Arlene, while the next storm in the Eastern Pacific will be given the name Beatriz.
In the Western Pacific there is Typhoon "Nesat". Nesat is currently over the open waters halfway between Guam and the Philippines. It is forecast to curve well to the east of the Philippines but intensify to 125 mph as it churns through the waters of the Western Pacific. The eastern facing beaches of the Philippines should prepare for very rough surf this weekend and early next week. After its recurve, Nesat will pass close to the east coast of Japan as a minimal typhoon with a big concern for waves, winds, and gusty rains to the east of Tokyo, Japan. You'll want to keep an eye on this system as it spins toward Japan in the next few days if you have friends there or plan to travel to the east coast of Japan.
6:28 a.m. ET ET Fri.,Jun.3,105
James Wilson, Meteorologist, The Weather Channel
Looking ahead, the 2005 season is forecast to be very active, as well. Dr. Bill Gray has released an updated forecast calling for 15 named storms. His forecast also predicts that 8 of the 15 named storms will become hurricanes with 4 of the 8 expected to become major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale).
Currently, the Atlantic Basin and Eastern Pacific are quiet and tropical development is not likely in the near future. The first tropical storm of the Atlantic season will receive the name Arlene, while the next storm in the Eastern Pacific will be given the name Beatriz.
In the Western Pacific there is Typhoon "Nesat". Nesat is currently over the open waters halfway between Guam and the Philippines. It is forecast to curve well to the east of the Philippines but intensify to 125 mph as it churns through the waters of the Western Pacific. The eastern facing beaches of the Philippines should prepare for very rough surf this weekend and early next week. After its recurve, Nesat will pass close to the east coast of Japan as a minimal typhoon with a big concern for waves, winds, and gusty rains to the east of Tokyo, Japan. You'll want to keep an eye on this system as it spins toward Japan in the next few days if you have friends there or plan to travel to the east coast of Japan.
6:28 a.m. ET ET Fri.,Jun.3,105
James Wilson, Meteorologist, The Weather Channel
Monday, May 30, 2005
Amazing dinosaur discovery
Sauropods were big dinosaurs with little heads, like the sort known as brontosaurus. Their heads were so small and flimsy, in fact, that their skulls are rarely found.
About a dozen sauropod skulls are known from the Jurassic era, the great middle period of dinosaur life. But for the Cretaceous, the final 80 million years of the rule of dinosaurs, no sauropod skulls have been known from North America.
Until now.
Over the past few years, experts at Dinosaur National Monument on the Utah-Colorado border and at Brigham Young University have quietly worked on an astonishing four sauropod skulls or parts of skulls, found close to each other at the monument.
"We've really got a remarkable — it's almost mind-boggling — new discovery," said Dan Chure, Dinosaur's paleontologist. "If there's one thing you would not expect to find . . . it's sauropod skulls, because they're so rare."
Also, the fossils have fine preservation, he said in a telephone interview. "It's kind of hard to overstate how amazing this is."
All four are the same type, a new species and genera, says Chure. They lived around 100 million years ago, or possibly a little earlier.
The sauropod may have been 25 feet long with an 18-inch skull.
The animals, which do not yet have a formal scientific name, were not as gigantic as some sauropods. But like all creatures of their family, at the end of their long necks were heads that seem absurdly small.
Actually, a tiny head makes sense. If this animal had a noggin the size of a T. rex's, rather than rise to the top of trees to munch on the leaves, that heavy head would be dragging along the ground.
A sauropod skull is not a single bone but a series of delicate bones. "It seems that as soon as they die, the head falls off," Chure said. The bones fall apart and the pieces may wash downstream or become scattered by scavengers. They rot away because they are too thin to be easily fossilized.
"This has been very frustrating to people who work on sauropods," Chure said. Sauropod excavators might haul out 500-pound leg bones but nothing from the ruminating end.
About a dozen sauropod skulls have been recovered from Jurassic layers, "when sauropods are kind of at their zenith in terms of diversity and abundance," said Chure.
But in the next era, the 80 million years of the Cretaceous period, sauropod skulls are exceedingly rare, he said. One was found in Madagascar, two in Africa and one in South America, an animal which has not been described yet.
"And until recently, there were none from North America," Chure said.
Parts of sauropod headgear had been recovered from this continent, however. BYU researchers found some brain cases earlier at another site in Utah but not full skulls.
Brooks Britt, assistant professor of geology at BYU, noted, "Sauropod skulls are among the rarest of dinosaur finds because they have the thinnest bones, the most delicate skulls."
Recently, he and his lab teased the second skull and the snout of a third specimen from a large block of sandstone sent there from the monument. Also recovered was the brain case of a fourth animal.
The second skull was disarticulated, meaning the pieces had fallen apart. But the bones were there, and they are especially valuable because they can be examined from all sides.
In the 1970s, visiting paleontologists discovered the site where the sauropod skulls were later uncovered, which is on the Utah side of the monument in the general vicinity of the monument visitors center. In the 1980s, said Chure, "we relocated the site and collected some bones that were sticking out of the ground and weathering."
Dinosaur National Monument
The following decade, monument staff members worked at the quarry. About the year 2000, they dug up the first stunning find, the beautifully preserved and articulated skull.
By articulated, paleontologists mean it is together, not separated in pieces. "It's slightly distorted, but it's certainly an outstanding specimen," Chure said.
About a year and a half ago, crews dug out a giant slab of sandstone from the quarry, because they could see traces of fossilized bones in the rock. The slab was around 6 or 7 feet long, 4 feet wide and 3 feet thick. It weighed thousands of pounds.
"It was a whoppin' big block," Chure said.
It was lifted from the quarry by helicopter and taken to the visitors center. Early last year, a truck carried the slab to BYU, where Britt's team worked on it, painstakingly removing rock.
They extracted sauropod body bones and essentially a whole second skull, which was in pieces.
"Those guys did an amazing job," Chure said. "Some of the bones are paper thin, and they got all of the bones out of the rock."
They found the snout of a third sauropod of the same species, and at the quarry, scientists recovered the brain case of a fourth.
More specimens may await discovery in the new quarry. "The producing layer goes for probably at least as long an area as the quarry we have inside the building, and we've only excavated a small part of it," Chure said.
The articulated skull is so well preserved that eventually it may be used to make a mold, which could be cast. The cast could be placed on display.
How did four skulls end up together? Chure can't tell for certain.
The remains were in an ancient river or stream environment. Perhaps a herd of the animals drowned crossing a river. Or maybe they died in a drought, waiting beside a river that had gone dry, and a later flash flood washed the carcasses together.
He doesn't know what else might be discovered at the new site.
"We could have used up all our luck right away," he said. But he doesn't really think that and quickly adds that there's a lot more digging and chipping to do.
"Further work there is likely to turn up additional specimens," he said.
Chure hopes that he and Britt can get funding to support a concerted, longer effort. The new quarry, he said, might turn out to be as important as the famous one at the visitors center.
About a dozen sauropod skulls are known from the Jurassic era, the great middle period of dinosaur life. But for the Cretaceous, the final 80 million years of the rule of dinosaurs, no sauropod skulls have been known from North America.
Until now.
Over the past few years, experts at Dinosaur National Monument on the Utah-Colorado border and at Brigham Young University have quietly worked on an astonishing four sauropod skulls or parts of skulls, found close to each other at the monument.
"We've really got a remarkable — it's almost mind-boggling — new discovery," said Dan Chure, Dinosaur's paleontologist. "If there's one thing you would not expect to find . . . it's sauropod skulls, because they're so rare."
Also, the fossils have fine preservation, he said in a telephone interview. "It's kind of hard to overstate how amazing this is."
All four are the same type, a new species and genera, says Chure. They lived around 100 million years ago, or possibly a little earlier.
The sauropod may have been 25 feet long with an 18-inch skull.
The animals, which do not yet have a formal scientific name, were not as gigantic as some sauropods. But like all creatures of their family, at the end of their long necks were heads that seem absurdly small.
Actually, a tiny head makes sense. If this animal had a noggin the size of a T. rex's, rather than rise to the top of trees to munch on the leaves, that heavy head would be dragging along the ground.
A sauropod skull is not a single bone but a series of delicate bones. "It seems that as soon as they die, the head falls off," Chure said. The bones fall apart and the pieces may wash downstream or become scattered by scavengers. They rot away because they are too thin to be easily fossilized.
"This has been very frustrating to people who work on sauropods," Chure said. Sauropod excavators might haul out 500-pound leg bones but nothing from the ruminating end.
About a dozen sauropod skulls have been recovered from Jurassic layers, "when sauropods are kind of at their zenith in terms of diversity and abundance," said Chure.
But in the next era, the 80 million years of the Cretaceous period, sauropod skulls are exceedingly rare, he said. One was found in Madagascar, two in Africa and one in South America, an animal which has not been described yet.
"And until recently, there were none from North America," Chure said.
Parts of sauropod headgear had been recovered from this continent, however. BYU researchers found some brain cases earlier at another site in Utah but not full skulls.
Brooks Britt, assistant professor of geology at BYU, noted, "Sauropod skulls are among the rarest of dinosaur finds because they have the thinnest bones, the most delicate skulls."
Recently, he and his lab teased the second skull and the snout of a third specimen from a large block of sandstone sent there from the monument. Also recovered was the brain case of a fourth animal.
The second skull was disarticulated, meaning the pieces had fallen apart. But the bones were there, and they are especially valuable because they can be examined from all sides.
In the 1970s, visiting paleontologists discovered the site where the sauropod skulls were later uncovered, which is on the Utah side of the monument in the general vicinity of the monument visitors center. In the 1980s, said Chure, "we relocated the site and collected some bones that were sticking out of the ground and weathering."
Dinosaur National Monument
The following decade, monument staff members worked at the quarry. About the year 2000, they dug up the first stunning find, the beautifully preserved and articulated skull.
By articulated, paleontologists mean it is together, not separated in pieces. "It's slightly distorted, but it's certainly an outstanding specimen," Chure said.
About a year and a half ago, crews dug out a giant slab of sandstone from the quarry, because they could see traces of fossilized bones in the rock. The slab was around 6 or 7 feet long, 4 feet wide and 3 feet thick. It weighed thousands of pounds.
"It was a whoppin' big block," Chure said.
It was lifted from the quarry by helicopter and taken to the visitors center. Early last year, a truck carried the slab to BYU, where Britt's team worked on it, painstakingly removing rock.
They extracted sauropod body bones and essentially a whole second skull, which was in pieces.
"Those guys did an amazing job," Chure said. "Some of the bones are paper thin, and they got all of the bones out of the rock."
They found the snout of a third sauropod of the same species, and at the quarry, scientists recovered the brain case of a fourth.
More specimens may await discovery in the new quarry. "The producing layer goes for probably at least as long an area as the quarry we have inside the building, and we've only excavated a small part of it," Chure said.
The articulated skull is so well preserved that eventually it may be used to make a mold, which could be cast. The cast could be placed on display.
How did four skulls end up together? Chure can't tell for certain.
The remains were in an ancient river or stream environment. Perhaps a herd of the animals drowned crossing a river. Or maybe they died in a drought, waiting beside a river that had gone dry, and a later flash flood washed the carcasses together.
He doesn't know what else might be discovered at the new site.
"We could have used up all our luck right away," he said. But he doesn't really think that and quickly adds that there's a lot more digging and chipping to do.
"Further work there is likely to turn up additional specimens," he said.
Chure hopes that he and Britt can get funding to support a concerted, longer effort. The new quarry, he said, might turn out to be as important as the famous one at the visitors center.
Ancient DNA Confirms Single Origin of Malagasy Primates
Living lemurs comprise more than 50 species, all of which are unique to the island of Madagascar, which is the world’s fourth largest island and east of Africa. Evolutionary analysis of the DNA obtained from the extinct giants reveals that they, like the living lemurs, are descended from a single primate ancestor that colonized Madagascar more than 60 million years ago, Yoder said.
The biologists extracted DNA from nine subfossil individuals in two of the more bizarre extinct species, Palaeopropithecus and Megaladapis. The first has been likened to tree sloths and the second compared to koala bears. Both ranged in body weights from 100 to 150 pounds, as compared to the largest living lemur, Indri indri, which weighs in at fewer than 15 to 17 pounds.
“The most important conclusion to be drawn from our study is that the phylogenetic placement of subfossil lemurs adds additional support to the hypothesis that non–human primates colonized Madagascar only once,” Yoder said. “However, the limited taxonomic success of our study leaves open the possibility that data from additional taxa will overturn this increasingly robust hypothesis.”
Yoder said the researchers’ results support the close relationship of sloth lemurs (Palaeopropithecus) to living indriids, but Megaladapis does not show a sister–group relationship with the living genus Lepilemur. “The classification of the latter in the family Megaladapidae is misleading,” she said.
Yoder said that damaging effects of moisture, ultraviolet irradiation, and tropical heat on DNA survival likely contributed to the inability to obtain DNA from some species. The only samples to yield DNA from tropical localities were the two individuals that were used as positive controls, Yoder said.
“The results of our study contribute to the mountain evidence that suggests that prospects for ancient DNA studies from the tropics are less promising than those from higher latitudes, but when the results are potentially of such compelling interest, it’s always worth a try,” she said.
May 27, 2005 - Yale biologists have managed to extract and analyze DNA from giant, extinct lemurs, according to a Yale study published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Radiocarbon dating of the bones and teeth from which the DNA was obtained reveal that each of the individuals analyzed died well over 1,000 years ago, according to the senior author, Anne Yoder, associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
The biologists extracted DNA from nine subfossil individuals in two of the more bizarre extinct species, Palaeopropithecus and Megaladapis. The first has been likened to tree sloths and the second compared to koala bears. Both ranged in body weights from 100 to 150 pounds, as compared to the largest living lemur, Indri indri, which weighs in at fewer than 15 to 17 pounds.
“The most important conclusion to be drawn from our study is that the phylogenetic placement of subfossil lemurs adds additional support to the hypothesis that non–human primates colonized Madagascar only once,” Yoder said. “However, the limited taxonomic success of our study leaves open the possibility that data from additional taxa will overturn this increasingly robust hypothesis.”
Yoder said the researchers’ results support the close relationship of sloth lemurs (Palaeopropithecus) to living indriids, but Megaladapis does not show a sister–group relationship with the living genus Lepilemur. “The classification of the latter in the family Megaladapidae is misleading,” she said.
Yoder said that damaging effects of moisture, ultraviolet irradiation, and tropical heat on DNA survival likely contributed to the inability to obtain DNA from some species. The only samples to yield DNA from tropical localities were the two individuals that were used as positive controls, Yoder said.
“The results of our study contribute to the mountain evidence that suggests that prospects for ancient DNA studies from the tropics are less promising than those from higher latitudes, but when the results are potentially of such compelling interest, it’s always worth a try,” she said.
May 27, 2005 - Yale biologists have managed to extract and analyze DNA from giant, extinct lemurs, according to a Yale study published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Radiocarbon dating of the bones and teeth from which the DNA was obtained reveal that each of the individuals analyzed died well over 1,000 years ago, according to the senior author, Anne Yoder, associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Plant extracts emerging as weapon against metabolic syndrome
Botanicals are thought to offer strong potential against metabolic syndrome as most derive their effectiveness from a mixture of active molecules acting at the same time. Scientists believe that they could find a plant containing multiple agents that reach the numerous different targets of metabolic syndrome.
According to the most recent definition, drawn up by experts from around the world, people with the metabolic syndrome have central obesity, plus two of four additional factors: raised triglycerides, reduced HDL cholesterol, raised blood pressure, or raised fasting plasma glucose level.
At Vitafoods in Geneva this month, Italian plant extract firm Indena introduced Madeglucyl, produced from the seeds of Eugenia jambolana (also known as Syzygium cumini), an edible plant used as a remedy in Madagascar folk medicine.
It has licensed the extract from a Madagascar institution that has completed a package of toxicological and clinical work on the product, which also has a history of consumption in Europe. Human clinical trials on Madeglucyl done in Madagascar, the US and Germany, have shown that it has a significant effect on blood glucose levels 15 days after starting the treatment.
Extracted from seeds of the plant, each batch of the supplement is said to have at least 20 per cent reduction on glucose levels in rats.
Its EFLA943 olive leaf has shown a strong effect on lowering blood pressure levels in a published animal study and a new clinical trial, not yet published, has confirmed the effects on humans. There is however also some animal data showing its effects on blood sugar levels and it could also help with cholesterol levels by increasing antioxidant levels in the blood.
Media attention is set to increase as the scale of the problem becomes clear. People with metabolic syndrome are twice as likely to die from, and three times as likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared to people without the syndrome. People with metabolic syndrome also have a fivefold greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, if it is not already present.
This puts metabolic syndrome and diabetes way ahead of HIV/AIDS in morbidity and mortality terms yet the problem is not as well recognised, according to the International Diabetes Federation.
20/05/2005 - Plants hold the power to keep the increasing prevalence of metabolic syndrome, a collection of chronic disease symptoms, in check, according to scientists, prompting the leading plant extract firms to start developing a whole new category of natural products, writes Dominique Patton.
According to the most recent definition, drawn up by experts from around the world, people with the metabolic syndrome have central obesity, plus two of four additional factors: raised triglycerides, reduced HDL cholesterol, raised blood pressure, or raised fasting plasma glucose level.
At Vitafoods in Geneva this month, Italian plant extract firm Indena introduced Madeglucyl, produced from the seeds of Eugenia jambolana (also known as Syzygium cumini), an edible plant used as a remedy in Madagascar folk medicine.
It has licensed the extract from a Madagascar institution that has completed a package of toxicological and clinical work on the product, which also has a history of consumption in Europe. Human clinical trials on Madeglucyl done in Madagascar, the US and Germany, have shown that it has a significant effect on blood glucose levels 15 days after starting the treatment.
Extracted from seeds of the plant, each batch of the supplement is said to have at least 20 per cent reduction on glucose levels in rats.
Its EFLA943 olive leaf has shown a strong effect on lowering blood pressure levels in a published animal study and a new clinical trial, not yet published, has confirmed the effects on humans. There is however also some animal data showing its effects on blood sugar levels and it could also help with cholesterol levels by increasing antioxidant levels in the blood.
Media attention is set to increase as the scale of the problem becomes clear. People with metabolic syndrome are twice as likely to die from, and three times as likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared to people without the syndrome. People with metabolic syndrome also have a fivefold greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, if it is not already present.
This puts metabolic syndrome and diabetes way ahead of HIV/AIDS in morbidity and mortality terms yet the problem is not as well recognised, according to the International Diabetes Federation.
20/05/2005 - Plants hold the power to keep the increasing prevalence of metabolic syndrome, a collection of chronic disease symptoms, in check, according to scientists, prompting the leading plant extract firms to start developing a whole new category of natural products, writes Dominique Patton.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Crossing Africa With EGNOS
Flying over Africa using navigation information via satellite is what the European Space Agency (ESA) is undertaking next week between Senegal and Kenya. The aim is to demonstrate methods for safer aviation in the region.
ESA has already demonstrated that in Africa safe landings can be achieved thanks to the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS). Several test campaigns have been conducted, most notably in February 2003 in Senegal.
The advantage of these procedures is to provide on each runway a vertical guidance approach without any specific infrastructure on the ground. It is thus an improvement in safety that is being offered by satellite technology. It will also allow the development of safer aviation at secondary airports that would be too costly to equip with classic landing support tools. GPS alone cannot provide this vertical guidance or ensure its integrity.
EGNOS is a programme from the European Space Agency, the European Commission and Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation. Developed by an industrial consortium lead by Alcatel Space, EGNOS comprises a network of around forty elements spread all over Europe for collecting, correcting and improving the American GPS data. The modified signals are then retransmitted via geostationary satellites to users’ receivers. EGNOS offers a positioning accuracy of less than two metres against 15 to 20 metres for GPS signals. It also guarantees the quality of the signals that GPS, a military system, does not wish to provide.
An ATR 42 plane from ASECNA (Agence pour la sécurité de la navigation aérienne en Afrique et à Madagascar) designed for just these types of test flights has been equipped to navigate by receiving the signals from EGNOS. The plane will use EGNOS to steer a course along aviation routes over the major part of the African continent. Moreover the pilot will land using the EGNOS test bed signals called the Interregional Satellite Based Augmentation System (ISA) - available over the Africa-Indian ocean region - which is the EGNOS extension for Africa. Departing from Dakar on May 16, the first stop will be N’djamena, Chad, before reaching Nairobi. Further flight trials will take place from Nairobi airport in the Kenyan capital.
Since 2002 an ongoing programme has ensured the installation of reference stations in several African countries. Currently, ISA comprises 10 stations: in Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Namibia, and South Africa. This network provides corrections and improvements to the GPS signals all over Africa. These corrections are similar to those available in Europe. All these stations are linked to the EGNOS test bed located in Hönefoss, Norway.
The demonstrations across Africa are made in the framework of the Programme for Development and Demonstration of Applications for Galileo and EGNOS (ProDDAGE) in cooperation with the Galileo Joint undertaking (GJU), set up by ESA and the European Commission.
EGNOS is compatible with equivalent systems implemented throughout the world, in North America, in Japan and in India, which are called Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS).
The objective of these new test flights is to demonstrate the feasibility of the system for the entire African continent while Africa and Indian Ocean States have adopted a strategy for the use of satellite navigation in their region in the frame of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). This pioneering crossing of Africa is in line with a vast operation intended to bring to Africa better safety in aviation.
EGNOS is currently going through its readiness review and will be declared progressively operational by early 2006 with a certification process for air navigation and safety-of-life services by 2007.
Source: European Space Agency
Date: 2005-05-13
ESA has already demonstrated that in Africa safe landings can be achieved thanks to the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS). Several test campaigns have been conducted, most notably in February 2003 in Senegal.
The advantage of these procedures is to provide on each runway a vertical guidance approach without any specific infrastructure on the ground. It is thus an improvement in safety that is being offered by satellite technology. It will also allow the development of safer aviation at secondary airports that would be too costly to equip with classic landing support tools. GPS alone cannot provide this vertical guidance or ensure its integrity.
EGNOS is a programme from the European Space Agency, the European Commission and Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation. Developed by an industrial consortium lead by Alcatel Space, EGNOS comprises a network of around forty elements spread all over Europe for collecting, correcting and improving the American GPS data. The modified signals are then retransmitted via geostationary satellites to users’ receivers. EGNOS offers a positioning accuracy of less than two metres against 15 to 20 metres for GPS signals. It also guarantees the quality of the signals that GPS, a military system, does not wish to provide.
An ATR 42 plane from ASECNA (Agence pour la sécurité de la navigation aérienne en Afrique et à Madagascar) designed for just these types of test flights has been equipped to navigate by receiving the signals from EGNOS. The plane will use EGNOS to steer a course along aviation routes over the major part of the African continent. Moreover the pilot will land using the EGNOS test bed signals called the Interregional Satellite Based Augmentation System (ISA) - available over the Africa-Indian ocean region - which is the EGNOS extension for Africa. Departing from Dakar on May 16, the first stop will be N’djamena, Chad, before reaching Nairobi. Further flight trials will take place from Nairobi airport in the Kenyan capital.
Since 2002 an ongoing programme has ensured the installation of reference stations in several African countries. Currently, ISA comprises 10 stations: in Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Namibia, and South Africa. This network provides corrections and improvements to the GPS signals all over Africa. These corrections are similar to those available in Europe. All these stations are linked to the EGNOS test bed located in Hönefoss, Norway.
The demonstrations across Africa are made in the framework of the Programme for Development and Demonstration of Applications for Galileo and EGNOS (ProDDAGE) in cooperation with the Galileo Joint undertaking (GJU), set up by ESA and the European Commission.
EGNOS is compatible with equivalent systems implemented throughout the world, in North America, in Japan and in India, which are called Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS).
The objective of these new test flights is to demonstrate the feasibility of the system for the entire African continent while Africa and Indian Ocean States have adopted a strategy for the use of satellite navigation in their region in the frame of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). This pioneering crossing of Africa is in line with a vast operation intended to bring to Africa better safety in aviation.
EGNOS is currently going through its readiness review and will be declared progressively operational by early 2006 with a certification process for air navigation and safety-of-life services by 2007.
Source: European Space Agency
Date: 2005-05-13
Leprosy genome tells story of human migrations, French researchers report in Science
A French genetics study comparing strains of leprosy-causing bacteria has revealed some surprises about how the pathogen evolved and how it was spread across the continents by human migrations. The research, led by scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, appears in the 13 May issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.
The findings indicate that the world's existing leprosy infections are all caused by a single bacterial clone that has spread yet barely mutated for centuries. They also show that the disease may have begun in East Africa, as opposed to India as previously thought, and then spread to the other continents in part through European colonialism and later the slave trade.
One of the oldest known human diseases, leprosy is still a significant problem in parts of the developing world, especially India. According to the World Health Organization, roughly 500,000 new cases were detected in 2003. (who.int/lep/stat2002/global02.htm)
"Leprosy is still very real and devastating to patients who aren't treated appropriately. The better we can understand this pathogen's genome and the subtle differences among its various strains worldwide, the better position we'll be in to ultimately eliminate the disease," said Caroline Ash, Senior Editor at Science.
The ability to trace an infection back to a certain region may help public health workers monitor the movement of the disease over time and determine the geographic source of new infections, said study author Stewart Cole of the Pasteur Institute.
Historically, it's been thought that leprosy originated in the Indian subcontinent and was then introduced to Europe by Greek soldiers returning from the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great, according to Cole. More research will be necessary to confirm this, but the new findings indicate that the disease actually originated in East Africa or perhaps the Near East, then migrated eastward and westward.
Europeans and North Africans then spread Leprosy to West Africa, and the slave trade brought the disease from West Africa to the Caribbean and South America, the study suggests. Europeans also introduced leprosy to North America.
"Colonialism was extremely bad for parts of the world in terms of human health," said Cole.
The disease, caused by Mycobacterium leprae, primarily affects the skin and nervous system, particularly the limbs and digits. It's not especially contagious, as people once widely believed, but it can cause permanent disability and disfigurement and is still a source of social stigma. The disease is treatable with a combination of antibiotics.
The bacterium has long puzzled researchers because its genome is filled with an unusually high proportion of damaged, nonfunctional genes. This is probably why it grows exceedingly slowly, making it difficult for researchers to study because they can't grow it in culture. In fact, M. leprae only lives in humans and in armadillos (which might have acquired the bacterium by eating infected human cadavers), and it can also grow in the footpads of mice.
Cole and his international research team compared the genomes of seven strains of M. leprae taken from patients around the world and then grown in armadillos until the samples were large enough to analyze. They focused on genetic sequences known to be dynamic -- to move around, copy themselves or disappear -- and thus most likely to reflect evolutionary change, but found strikingly little variation.
Next, the researchers looked for mutations known as "single nucleotide polymorphisms" or "SNPs," which are substitutions of single nucleotides or "letters" at a specific spot in the genome. They found only three spots where useful SNPs occurred.
"Finding so few SNPs is pretty unusual. It's the least number of SNPs I'm aware of in any bacterium," Cole said.
At each of the three SNP locations, one of four different nucleotides can be substituted, making for a possible 64 different combinations in the genetic sequence. In a study of 175 different bacteria samples from 21 countries, the researchers found only four of these possible combinations.
Overall, the genetic similarity between the different samples suggests that the bacterium's genome is exceedingly stable.
"It seems that there was only a single source of the bacterium that was at the origin of this global pandemic," Cole said.
Each of the four SNP combinations was most common in a certain geographic region, allowing the researchers to trace how the pathogen had spread from its original source.
Additional contacts: French: Michaela Jarvis, AAAS, 1-925-945-8229 PST, michaelajarvis@sbcglobal.net
Corinne Jamma, Pasteur Institute, 33-1-40-61-33-41, cjamma@pasteur.fr
English: Kathy Wren, AAAS, 1-617-628-0373 EST, kwren@aaas.org
Cole's coauthors are Marc Monot, Nadine Honoré, Thierry Garnier, Romulo Araoz, Jean-Yves Coppée and Céline Lacroix of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France; Samba Sow at Centre National d'Appui à la lutte Contre la Maladie in Bamako, Mali; John S. Spencer and Patrick J. Brennan at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO, USA; Richard W. Truman and Diana L. Williams at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA, USA; Robert Gelber at Leonard Wood Memorial Center for Leprosy Research in Cebu, Philippines; Marcos Virmond at Instituto "Lauro de Souza Lima" in São Paulo, Brazil; Béatrice Flageul at Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris, France; Sang-Nae Cho at Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, Republic of Korea; Baohong Ji at Faculté de Médecine Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris, France; Alberto Paniz-Mondolfi and Jacinto Convit at Instituto de Biomedicina in Caracas, Venezuela; Saroj Young and Paul E. Fine at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, UK; and Voahangy Rasolofo at Institute Pasteur de Madagascar in Antananarivo, Madagascar.
The study was funded by the Pasteur Institute, the Association Française Raoul Follereau, Lepra, the Consortium National de Recherche en Génomique, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science. AAAS was founded in 1848, and serves some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more.
Contact: Jessica Lawrence-Hurt
jlawrenc@aaas.org
1-202-326-7088
American Association for the Advancement of Science
http://www.aaas.org
14 May 2005
The findings indicate that the world's existing leprosy infections are all caused by a single bacterial clone that has spread yet barely mutated for centuries. They also show that the disease may have begun in East Africa, as opposed to India as previously thought, and then spread to the other continents in part through European colonialism and later the slave trade.
One of the oldest known human diseases, leprosy is still a significant problem in parts of the developing world, especially India. According to the World Health Organization, roughly 500,000 new cases were detected in 2003. (who.int/lep/stat2002/global02.htm)
"Leprosy is still very real and devastating to patients who aren't treated appropriately. The better we can understand this pathogen's genome and the subtle differences among its various strains worldwide, the better position we'll be in to ultimately eliminate the disease," said Caroline Ash, Senior Editor at Science.
The ability to trace an infection back to a certain region may help public health workers monitor the movement of the disease over time and determine the geographic source of new infections, said study author Stewart Cole of the Pasteur Institute.
Historically, it's been thought that leprosy originated in the Indian subcontinent and was then introduced to Europe by Greek soldiers returning from the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great, according to Cole. More research will be necessary to confirm this, but the new findings indicate that the disease actually originated in East Africa or perhaps the Near East, then migrated eastward and westward.
Europeans and North Africans then spread Leprosy to West Africa, and the slave trade brought the disease from West Africa to the Caribbean and South America, the study suggests. Europeans also introduced leprosy to North America.
"Colonialism was extremely bad for parts of the world in terms of human health," said Cole.
The disease, caused by Mycobacterium leprae, primarily affects the skin and nervous system, particularly the limbs and digits. It's not especially contagious, as people once widely believed, but it can cause permanent disability and disfigurement and is still a source of social stigma. The disease is treatable with a combination of antibiotics.
The bacterium has long puzzled researchers because its genome is filled with an unusually high proportion of damaged, nonfunctional genes. This is probably why it grows exceedingly slowly, making it difficult for researchers to study because they can't grow it in culture. In fact, M. leprae only lives in humans and in armadillos (which might have acquired the bacterium by eating infected human cadavers), and it can also grow in the footpads of mice.
Cole and his international research team compared the genomes of seven strains of M. leprae taken from patients around the world and then grown in armadillos until the samples were large enough to analyze. They focused on genetic sequences known to be dynamic -- to move around, copy themselves or disappear -- and thus most likely to reflect evolutionary change, but found strikingly little variation.
Next, the researchers looked for mutations known as "single nucleotide polymorphisms" or "SNPs," which are substitutions of single nucleotides or "letters" at a specific spot in the genome. They found only three spots where useful SNPs occurred.
"Finding so few SNPs is pretty unusual. It's the least number of SNPs I'm aware of in any bacterium," Cole said.
At each of the three SNP locations, one of four different nucleotides can be substituted, making for a possible 64 different combinations in the genetic sequence. In a study of 175 different bacteria samples from 21 countries, the researchers found only four of these possible combinations.
Overall, the genetic similarity between the different samples suggests that the bacterium's genome is exceedingly stable.
"It seems that there was only a single source of the bacterium that was at the origin of this global pandemic," Cole said.
Each of the four SNP combinations was most common in a certain geographic region, allowing the researchers to trace how the pathogen had spread from its original source.
Additional contacts: French: Michaela Jarvis, AAAS, 1-925-945-8229 PST, michaelajarvis@sbcglobal.net
Corinne Jamma, Pasteur Institute, 33-1-40-61-33-41, cjamma@pasteur.fr
English: Kathy Wren, AAAS, 1-617-628-0373 EST, kwren@aaas.org
Cole's coauthors are Marc Monot, Nadine Honoré, Thierry Garnier, Romulo Araoz, Jean-Yves Coppée and Céline Lacroix of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France; Samba Sow at Centre National d'Appui à la lutte Contre la Maladie in Bamako, Mali; John S. Spencer and Patrick J. Brennan at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO, USA; Richard W. Truman and Diana L. Williams at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA, USA; Robert Gelber at Leonard Wood Memorial Center for Leprosy Research in Cebu, Philippines; Marcos Virmond at Instituto "Lauro de Souza Lima" in São Paulo, Brazil; Béatrice Flageul at Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris, France; Sang-Nae Cho at Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, Republic of Korea; Baohong Ji at Faculté de Médecine Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris, France; Alberto Paniz-Mondolfi and Jacinto Convit at Instituto de Biomedicina in Caracas, Venezuela; Saroj Young and Paul E. Fine at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, UK; and Voahangy Rasolofo at Institute Pasteur de Madagascar in Antananarivo, Madagascar.
The study was funded by the Pasteur Institute, the Association Française Raoul Follereau, Lepra, the Consortium National de Recherche en Génomique, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science. AAAS was founded in 1848, and serves some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more.
Contact: Jessica Lawrence-Hurt
jlawrenc@aaas.org
1-202-326-7088
American Association for the Advancement of Science
http://www.aaas.org
14 May 2005
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Fetuses found to inherit mother's trauma
Science: NATURAL SELECTIONS KEEPING STRESS IN THE FAMILY
Stress can motivate us, but it can also get us down. And though it might just make us feel blue, it can also kill us. It depresses levels of sex hormones and people stressed by deadlines are more likely to suffer heart attacks.
In Japan, karoshi (death by overwork) is said to claim 10,000 lives each year. Meanwhile in Britain last November, the Trades Union Congress, the national trades union organization, released data showing that stress costs the economy £7 billion a year.
With all the understandably negative reports about the effects of stress, it's easy to overlook the fact that the stress response is beneficial. And, like everything else to do with our bodies, the way they work and the way we behave, the stress response evolved through natural selection.
The stress hormone cortisol causes a rise in blood pressure and blood glucose levels. This is useful when an organism faces possible danger or loss of resources. It prepares us for "fight or flight," or -- in the modern world -- it helps us, say, to get a column written in time or to get through a public speaking engagement.
Cortisol is secreted when there are special opportunities as well as potential dangers. But when there are extreme dangers, cortisol levels can actually fall, because so much of it is used up. One of the consequences is a depressed immune system.
Cortisol levels can also fall if stress is chronic, drawn out, relentless. This was the kind of stress experienced by Yuji Uendan, a 23-year-old temporary staff agency employee who worked 9 3/4 hour shifts at a Nikon Corp. plant in Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture, for 15 days in a row before committing suicide in March 1999. A Tokyo District Court ruling in March 2005 ordered Nikon and Atesuto (formerly Nekusuta), the Nagoya-based agency, to pay Uendan's mother 24.8 million yen compensation for her son's karoshi, in what is believed to be the country's first such ruling related to a temp service worker.
However, despite the recent increased awareness of the danger of stress, it is not just a symptom of the modern age.
If anything, stress was harsher in prehistory and had just as serious consequences as it does now. This was clearly seen in a study on wild primates in Madagascar, published earlier this year. High-stress animals were six times more likely to die than low-stress animals during a two-year study. The animals weren't captured (imagine how that would add to their stress), but their stress levels were measured by analysis of fecal glucocorticoid levels. Glucocorticoids are hormones similar to cortisol that help the body to cope with stress.
Biologist Ethan Pride, of Princeton University, N.J., who conducted the research, said that the technique will be useful for wildlife managers to identify at-risk animals and focus conservation efforts on them.
Few biologists would be keen to collect human feces and measure them for stress hormones, and thankfully there are easier ways. One method measures stress by analyzing cortisol in saliva. The results of such research are making scientists to re-evaluate the causes of stress.
It used to be thought that reduced cortisol levels could be explained by mostly environmental factors, such as the stress of living with a parent who is depressed or anxious. That was how researchers explained the low cortisol levels in the adult children of Holocaust survivors: The children had heard stories of how their parents suffered, and became traumatized themselves.
But after 9/11, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City saw a different pattern. The scientists studied 38 women who were pregnant and witnessed the attacks on the World Trade Center. Those women in the sample who developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in response to 9/11 had lower cortisol levels than the women who did not develop PTSD.
Such a result was what the scientists expected.
However, about one year after birth, the babies of mothers who had developed PTSD symptoms had significantly lower cortisol levels compared to those in babies of mothers who developed only minimal symptoms. .
"The findings suggest that mechanisms for transgenerational transmission of biologic effects of trauma may have to do with very early parent-child attachments," said Mount Sinai's Rachel Yehuda, "and possibly even in utero effects related to cortisol programming."
In other words, the reduced cortisol in babies seems to be a "transmitted" biological trait -- traumatized mothers may have passed on potential mental illness to their unborn children.
The Mount Sinai researchers, working with others at the University of Edinburgh, have found that this decrease is apparently passed on to children in the womb. The work is published in May's issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
The findings strengthen the evidence for in utero or early-life risk factors for the later development of adult mental or physical disorders. These can cause a "ripple effect" of stress in the next generation.
But it is worth emphasizing that, to fully understand a physiological response, it is necessary to consider the evolutionary history of the response -- its function in evolutionary terms.
A book of Natural Selections columns translated into Japanese, "Nou to sekkusu no seibutsugaku (Evolution, Sex and the Brain)," is published by Shinchosha.
Rowan Hooper is a biologist at Trinity College, Dublin. He welcomes readers' questions and comments at rowan.hooper@tcd.ie
Stress can motivate us, but it can also get us down. And though it might just make us feel blue, it can also kill us. It depresses levels of sex hormones and people stressed by deadlines are more likely to suffer heart attacks.
In Japan, karoshi (death by overwork) is said to claim 10,000 lives each year. Meanwhile in Britain last November, the Trades Union Congress, the national trades union organization, released data showing that stress costs the economy £7 billion a year.
With all the understandably negative reports about the effects of stress, it's easy to overlook the fact that the stress response is beneficial. And, like everything else to do with our bodies, the way they work and the way we behave, the stress response evolved through natural selection.
The stress hormone cortisol causes a rise in blood pressure and blood glucose levels. This is useful when an organism faces possible danger or loss of resources. It prepares us for "fight or flight," or -- in the modern world -- it helps us, say, to get a column written in time or to get through a public speaking engagement.
Cortisol is secreted when there are special opportunities as well as potential dangers. But when there are extreme dangers, cortisol levels can actually fall, because so much of it is used up. One of the consequences is a depressed immune system.
Cortisol levels can also fall if stress is chronic, drawn out, relentless. This was the kind of stress experienced by Yuji Uendan, a 23-year-old temporary staff agency employee who worked 9 3/4 hour shifts at a Nikon Corp. plant in Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture, for 15 days in a row before committing suicide in March 1999. A Tokyo District Court ruling in March 2005 ordered Nikon and Atesuto (formerly Nekusuta), the Nagoya-based agency, to pay Uendan's mother 24.8 million yen compensation for her son's karoshi, in what is believed to be the country's first such ruling related to a temp service worker.
However, despite the recent increased awareness of the danger of stress, it is not just a symptom of the modern age.
If anything, stress was harsher in prehistory and had just as serious consequences as it does now. This was clearly seen in a study on wild primates in Madagascar, published earlier this year. High-stress animals were six times more likely to die than low-stress animals during a two-year study. The animals weren't captured (imagine how that would add to their stress), but their stress levels were measured by analysis of fecal glucocorticoid levels. Glucocorticoids are hormones similar to cortisol that help the body to cope with stress.
Biologist Ethan Pride, of Princeton University, N.J., who conducted the research, said that the technique will be useful for wildlife managers to identify at-risk animals and focus conservation efforts on them.
Few biologists would be keen to collect human feces and measure them for stress hormones, and thankfully there are easier ways. One method measures stress by analyzing cortisol in saliva. The results of such research are making scientists to re-evaluate the causes of stress.
It used to be thought that reduced cortisol levels could be explained by mostly environmental factors, such as the stress of living with a parent who is depressed or anxious. That was how researchers explained the low cortisol levels in the adult children of Holocaust survivors: The children had heard stories of how their parents suffered, and became traumatized themselves.
But after 9/11, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City saw a different pattern. The scientists studied 38 women who were pregnant and witnessed the attacks on the World Trade Center. Those women in the sample who developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in response to 9/11 had lower cortisol levels than the women who did not develop PTSD.
Such a result was what the scientists expected.
However, about one year after birth, the babies of mothers who had developed PTSD symptoms had significantly lower cortisol levels compared to those in babies of mothers who developed only minimal symptoms. .
"The findings suggest that mechanisms for transgenerational transmission of biologic effects of trauma may have to do with very early parent-child attachments," said Mount Sinai's Rachel Yehuda, "and possibly even in utero effects related to cortisol programming."
In other words, the reduced cortisol in babies seems to be a "transmitted" biological trait -- traumatized mothers may have passed on potential mental illness to their unborn children.
The Mount Sinai researchers, working with others at the University of Edinburgh, have found that this decrease is apparently passed on to children in the womb. The work is published in May's issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
The findings strengthen the evidence for in utero or early-life risk factors for the later development of adult mental or physical disorders. These can cause a "ripple effect" of stress in the next generation.
But it is worth emphasizing that, to fully understand a physiological response, it is necessary to consider the evolutionary history of the response -- its function in evolutionary terms.
A book of Natural Selections columns translated into Japanese, "Nou to sekkusu no seibutsugaku (Evolution, Sex and the Brain)," is published by Shinchosha.
Rowan Hooper is a biologist at Trinity College, Dublin. He welcomes readers' questions and comments at rowan.hooper@tcd.ie
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Madagascar populated from Africa, Borneo - study
The Malagasy people of Madagascar carry the genes from ancestors in both nearby East Africa and also distant Borneo suggesting a big migration from Asia back to Africa 2,000 year ago, British researchers reported on Tuesday.
The genetic study supports the puzzling finding that the Malagasy language more closely resembles Indonesian dialects than east African tongues but does little to answer the question of how the settlers arrived.
Madagascar, the largest island in the Indian Ocean, lies 250 miles off the coast of Africa and is 4,000 miles from Indonesia.
Its long isolation has led to the evolution of unique animals, including lemurs, rare birds and plants.
A team of genetics experts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Leicester looked at both the Y chromosomes of Madagascar residents, inherited virtually unchanged from father to son, and the mitochondrial DNA, passed directly from mothers to their children.
Tiny mutations in these two forms of DNA provide a kind of genetic clock that can help scientists trace human migration and inheritance.
The results showed clear similarities to sequences found on the island of Borneo, now shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
"The origins of the language spoken in Madagascar, Malagasy, suggested Indonesian connections, because its closest relative is the Maanyan language, spoken in southern Borneo," said Matthew Hurles, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute at Cambridge, who helped lead the study.
"Malagasy peoples are a roughly 50:50 mix of two ancestral groups: Indonesians and East Africans. It is important to realize that these lineages have intermingled over intervening centuries since settlement, so modern Malagasy have ancestry in both Indonesia and Africa."
The findings suggest a substantial migration from southeast Asia between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago, the researchers report in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Tue May 3, 2005 04:45 PM ET - WASHINGTON (Reuters)
The genetic study supports the puzzling finding that the Malagasy language more closely resembles Indonesian dialects than east African tongues but does little to answer the question of how the settlers arrived.
Madagascar, the largest island in the Indian Ocean, lies 250 miles off the coast of Africa and is 4,000 miles from Indonesia.
Its long isolation has led to the evolution of unique animals, including lemurs, rare birds and plants.
A team of genetics experts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Leicester looked at both the Y chromosomes of Madagascar residents, inherited virtually unchanged from father to son, and the mitochondrial DNA, passed directly from mothers to their children.
Tiny mutations in these two forms of DNA provide a kind of genetic clock that can help scientists trace human migration and inheritance.
The results showed clear similarities to sequences found on the island of Borneo, now shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
"The origins of the language spoken in Madagascar, Malagasy, suggested Indonesian connections, because its closest relative is the Maanyan language, spoken in southern Borneo," said Matthew Hurles, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute at Cambridge, who helped lead the study.
"Malagasy peoples are a roughly 50:50 mix of two ancestral groups: Indonesians and East Africans. It is important to realize that these lineages have intermingled over intervening centuries since settlement, so modern Malagasy have ancestry in both Indonesia and Africa."
The findings suggest a substantial migration from southeast Asia between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago, the researchers report in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Tue May 3, 2005 04:45 PM ET - WASHINGTON (Reuters)
Monday, May 02, 2005
Madagascar Technology: Proven method for boosting rice yields
SYSTEM OF Rice Intensification (SRI) technology is an innovative and cost-saving approach to boost rice yields. Also called `Madagascar Technology,' this seed-and water-saving method of rice farming was introduced in Southern India by the scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) under the leadership of Dr. V. Balasubramanian.
It is popularised by conducting extensive trials in the research stations and at the farmers' holdings by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) and the Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU).
The extension support for promoting this technology came from the farmers' programme of All India Radio and the Department of Agriculture. Several progressive farmers in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have reaped rich dividends by adopting the SRI technology.
Using young seedlings
"This is a technology that focuses on using young seedlings of 15 days and planting one robust seedling per hill in square planting with a wider spacing of 20 cm by 20 cm in a perfectly puddled and levelled field.
It uses only 5 to 7.5 kg of seeds per hectare as against 50 kg of seeds per hectare used conventionally," say IRRI scientists.
It also involves judicious use of water. A thin film of water is retained on the fields, and the next irrigation follows when hairline cracks appear on the soil.
A sound nutrient management with liberal application of organic manure, bio-fertilizers and mineral fertilizers will prove to be highly rewarding. Weed management is a crucial aspect of SRI, and by employing cono-rotary weeder, the fields can be kept free of weed menace.
The technology requires some skills and farmers can easily acquire them with some practice. Special type of nurseries has to be prepared for healthy, robust seedlings. When farmers plant only one seedling per hill in the field, they should ensure that the seedlings are planted vertically in the soft, puddle soil.
Each seedling will develop in to a thick clump accounting for a profusion (ranging between 60 to 70) of productive tillers.
The wider spacing facilitates better aeration to encourage extensive root formation and easy weeding using mechanical gadgets.
The plants have more room and sunlight to grow vigorously. The SRI technology can be used for all improved varieties of rice varieties of short- and medium-duration.Several farmers in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh who have successfully adopted this technology have recorded high yields of over 10 tonnes of paddy per hectare. A group of farmers from Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu visited a progressive farmer of Kalahasthi to learn the nuances of this technology.
Extensively propagated
SRI technology is extensively propagated by the Krishi Vigyan Kendra of ANGRAU at Kalahasthi, and farmers are using specially fabricated rotary-markers for planting the seedlings in line adopting a wider spacing says Mr. S.S. Nagarajan, Senior Vice President (Agricultural Research and Development), Tractors and Farm Equipment Limited (TAFE), Chennai."Farmers should exercise some caution while adopting this technology on a large scale. Planting one15-day-old seedling needs some expertise and weed management using the mechanical weeder should be adopted with great care," says Dr. Ramachandran, a progressive farmer of Red Hills. The cost of cultivation using SRI will be about Rs. 17,500 per hectare. Some innovative farmers have recorded a net profit of Rs.62, 500 per hectare from a rice variety of 130 days duration, according to Mr. Nagarajan.The technology requires some skills and farmers can easily acquire them with practice.SUCCESSFULLY ADOPTED: Improved rice variety showing profusion of tillers. Inset: An improvised rotary marker for sowing the seedlings at wider spacing.
It is popularised by conducting extensive trials in the research stations and at the farmers' holdings by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) and the Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU).
The extension support for promoting this technology came from the farmers' programme of All India Radio and the Department of Agriculture. Several progressive farmers in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have reaped rich dividends by adopting the SRI technology.
Using young seedlings
"This is a technology that focuses on using young seedlings of 15 days and planting one robust seedling per hill in square planting with a wider spacing of 20 cm by 20 cm in a perfectly puddled and levelled field.
It uses only 5 to 7.5 kg of seeds per hectare as against 50 kg of seeds per hectare used conventionally," say IRRI scientists.
It also involves judicious use of water. A thin film of water is retained on the fields, and the next irrigation follows when hairline cracks appear on the soil.
A sound nutrient management with liberal application of organic manure, bio-fertilizers and mineral fertilizers will prove to be highly rewarding. Weed management is a crucial aspect of SRI, and by employing cono-rotary weeder, the fields can be kept free of weed menace.
The technology requires some skills and farmers can easily acquire them with some practice. Special type of nurseries has to be prepared for healthy, robust seedlings. When farmers plant only one seedling per hill in the field, they should ensure that the seedlings are planted vertically in the soft, puddle soil.
Each seedling will develop in to a thick clump accounting for a profusion (ranging between 60 to 70) of productive tillers.
The wider spacing facilitates better aeration to encourage extensive root formation and easy weeding using mechanical gadgets.
The plants have more room and sunlight to grow vigorously. The SRI technology can be used for all improved varieties of rice varieties of short- and medium-duration.Several farmers in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh who have successfully adopted this technology have recorded high yields of over 10 tonnes of paddy per hectare. A group of farmers from Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu visited a progressive farmer of Kalahasthi to learn the nuances of this technology.
Extensively propagated
SRI technology is extensively propagated by the Krishi Vigyan Kendra of ANGRAU at Kalahasthi, and farmers are using specially fabricated rotary-markers for planting the seedlings in line adopting a wider spacing says Mr. S.S. Nagarajan, Senior Vice President (Agricultural Research and Development), Tractors and Farm Equipment Limited (TAFE), Chennai."Farmers should exercise some caution while adopting this technology on a large scale. Planting one15-day-old seedling needs some expertise and weed management using the mechanical weeder should be adopted with great care," says Dr. Ramachandran, a progressive farmer of Red Hills. The cost of cultivation using SRI will be about Rs. 17,500 per hectare. Some innovative farmers have recorded a net profit of Rs.62, 500 per hectare from a rice variety of 130 days duration, according to Mr. Nagarajan.The technology requires some skills and farmers can easily acquire them with practice.SUCCESSFULLY ADOPTED: Improved rice variety showing profusion of tillers. Inset: An improvised rotary marker for sowing the seedlings at wider spacing.
Indena present, Madeglucyl, the glucose level supplement
Madeglucyl is produced from the seeds of Eugenia jambolana (also known as Syzygium cumini), an edible plant used as a remedy in Madagascar folk medicine, according to the company.
Indena said that the efficacy of Madeglucyl has been made clear during clinical tests carried out in Madagascar, the US and Germany, where the supplement apparently demonstrated “a good tolerability and a significant effect 15 days after starting the treatment”.
Meanwhile, toxicological and pharmacological data appeared to confirm that Madeglucyl is devoid of any side effects and can provide a support in maintaining normal sugar levels in several experimental conditions.
Paolo Morazzoni, Indena’s scientific director, said that Madeglucyl "can provide a safe and effective aid in correcting impaired carbohydrate metabolism".
However, he warned that the supplement can not work in isolation.
“The maintenance of healthy blood sugar levels through physical exercise and an appropriate dietary regimen is a pivotal step in preventing impaired glucose tolerance with all the possible later complications,” he said.
The seminar on Madeglucyl will be held at Vitafoods on 12 May at 11:40am.
Vitafoods is Europe’s largest nutraceutical trade show, which runs from 10-12 May 2005 in Geneva.
Indena, a privately owned Italian company, reported €140 million in consolidated turnover in 2004, mostly generated abroad.
The phyto-chemical research is carried out in Indena's Settala Research Center, near Milan.
28/04/2005 - Italian company Indena plans to present its dietary supplement Madeglucyl, designed to maintain normal glucose levels, at Vitafoods next month.
Indena said that the efficacy of Madeglucyl has been made clear during clinical tests carried out in Madagascar, the US and Germany, where the supplement apparently demonstrated “a good tolerability and a significant effect 15 days after starting the treatment”.
Meanwhile, toxicological and pharmacological data appeared to confirm that Madeglucyl is devoid of any side effects and can provide a support in maintaining normal sugar levels in several experimental conditions.
Paolo Morazzoni, Indena’s scientific director, said that Madeglucyl "can provide a safe and effective aid in correcting impaired carbohydrate metabolism".
However, he warned that the supplement can not work in isolation.
“The maintenance of healthy blood sugar levels through physical exercise and an appropriate dietary regimen is a pivotal step in preventing impaired glucose tolerance with all the possible later complications,” he said.
The seminar on Madeglucyl will be held at Vitafoods on 12 May at 11:40am.
Vitafoods is Europe’s largest nutraceutical trade show, which runs from 10-12 May 2005 in Geneva.
Indena, a privately owned Italian company, reported €140 million in consolidated turnover in 2004, mostly generated abroad.
The phyto-chemical research is carried out in Indena's Settala Research Center, near Milan.
28/04/2005 - Italian company Indena plans to present its dietary supplement Madeglucyl, designed to maintain normal glucose levels, at Vitafoods next month.
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