How to buy plywood in a green manner
Friends of The Foothills SierraClub preserves last south OC open
The End of Southern California Alexander Cockburn says adios to Aztlan
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indigenous
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How to buy plywood in a green manner | |
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Green Networking Orange County environmental groups' websites Friends of The Foothills SierraClub preserves last south OC open The End of Southern California Alexander Cockburn says adios to Aztlan
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There are a number of high profile cases which show that local people are fighting back. The Hoodia cactus, an
indigenous plant of the Kalahari desert in Southern Africa, was discovered to have weight loss properties which
could make it an excellent weapon against obesity. Eaten for thousands of years by the bushmen to stave off
hunger the plant is now at the centre of a bio-piracy row which could see local people given a percentage of the
profits the cactus has yielded.
Mr Hansen believes there is still a "universe of discoveries out there" but local knowledge-holders are becoming
wise to outside threats. "Local communities are becoming more secretive and the ability to get the information is
becoming more difficult," he said. He hopes that the Tekpad website will go some way to bridging the gap.
"Giving accreditation protects the moral rights of the traditional knowledge holders," he said.
Besides increasing tourism, the Oglala Sioux hope to allow family members to return to the land from which tribal members were uprooted when the bombing range was built. The land was returned to the tribe in 1977, although the Air Force still controls about 4 sq miles in the northern part of the range, which also includes part of Badlands National Park.
Federal funding to clean the site started in 1995. The Corps of Engineers said roughly $20 million has been spent and $5 million is set for this year and next year. Most of the wayward bombs are around various targets on the range.
In order to give the pilots a clear target for their bombing missions, the military carved into the earth large circular berms intersected with two lines, just like the crosshairs on a gun scope. Sometimes they got close. But sometimes they didn't.
Subcontractors, including some local Indians who are trained to search for the bombs, first remove any surface metal. Workers then use high-tech equipt to detect the presence of anything under the ground. Those spots are marked with plastic flags, but cattle often eat them along with the grass, said Corps of Engineers ordnance & explosive safety specialist Brad Lasater.
"This being a grazing area, they tend to get grazed," he said. The priority is finding and removing anything dangerous near houses, where curious children play. "That's what worries me," Lasater said.
He estimates up to 150 pieces of live ordnance have been removed from the bombing range since 1999. Much of it is the M38, a 100 lb practice bomb about 8 in diameter and 33 in long.
"It's a sheet metal stove pipe filled with sand with 3 lb of black powder that gives a flash-bang when it hits the ground. And some of those didn't go off," Lasater said.
Former coordinator of an office that communicated with tribal members about the cleanup Emma Featherman-Sam said there have been no cases of injuries from the bombs. But that's largely because many of the people whose families were displaced are still alive, she said. Children and young adults don't necessarily know where the range or the old bombs are, she said.
"That's why we're doing this," Lasater said. "So families can come up here and enjoy it and come back in one piece."
Ctr for Restorative Ecology Univ Wisconsin EarthFirst toolbox jury's complex task req. up to 167 unanimous decisions to decide all claims in favor of Judi Bari (deceased) & Darryl Cherney damages award. (rev. 5.31.02) Greenspiration Toronto locals go global Libery Tree Alliance dated, but never stale. Info excellent, links even better. Environmental Issues from Capitol Reports Environmental Health & Safety Online for public & environmental health & safety professionals |
Milloy/TASSC bunk debunk |
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Genetically engineered products cannot be recalled; pollination cannot be legislated."
[ your chance to be a wild pollen grain in a GMO world
]
We need 1000 calls or emails today!
Biowar in the Andes CIA's next secret weapon
The Steps of Agent Blue
McCaffery's Plague
The prospect of being on the receiving end of a biological attack is not alluring to countries such as
Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. The Peruvian govt has already banned the testing and or
deployment of the fungi. The Colombian govt is similarly queasy, but has been sharply
admonished by the project's supporters in the US Congress that if Colombia wants its $1.8 billion
aid package, it had better take the fungi too.
Meanwhile, back at the lab, USDA researchers have been working to create genetically modified
strains of the fungi, including the cloning of fusarium strains that attack potatoes, in order to
produce something still more vicious. However, in their search for instruments of what is officially
known as "bio-control", the govt's researchers have also, it seems, reached back into the past.
Sometime before 1969, according to documents supplied to Hammond under the FOIA, a team
from APHIS, the USDA's plant & animal inspection service, found a virus on a Datura tree
imported from Cauca, Colombia. Someone, it is not clear who, determined that the virus could be
useful as an anti-opium poppy agent, and it was dispatched to the US biological warfare center at
Ft Detrick, Maryland under the label D-437.
Following Nixon's order to close the place down, D-437 was not destroyed but put in deep frozen
storage, forgotten by all but the researchers who had worked so happily at Detrick. On April 12 this
year, Hammond caught a brief mention of D-437 on a US Army website, along with the fact that it
was being studied by a Dr Vernon Damsteegt, himself a Detrick veteran. Following enquiries by
Hammond, all mention of the virus & its custodian was hurriedly removed from the site, which
now carried a fraudulent notification that it had last been updated on April 6.
CounterPunchers will recall Agent Orange, the hellish brew deployed to defoliate the jungle. Agent Blue, targeted
on rice production, is less well known. The aim was to wipe out the NLF's food supply. Rice plantations deemed to
be servicing the enemy were duly sprayed & obliterated. Professor Matthew Meselsen recalls how,
early in 1970, he was taken by a US Army Chemical Corps colonel to survey a valley in an upland
area that had been sprayed with Agent Blue some weeks before. As they flew over the devastated
valley, the colonel proudly explained to Meselsen that this had obviously been an NLF food supply
area since there were no houses to be seen.
The researchers led by Goetz Laible engineered cells in the laboratory to overproduce casein proteins. The cells
were then fused with cow eggs. The resulting embryos were transferred into recipient cows, and 11 transgenic
calves were born. 9 were found to produce the enhanced milk.
The cows are now producing milk with 8-20% more beta-casein, and double the normal amount of kappa-casein.
Reporting their findings in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the scientists said that controlling levels of the 2
proteins could offer big savings for cheese manufacturers. "When projected on to the production scale of the dairy
industry, the increases observed in our study represent large changes that would translate into substantial
economic gains," they wrote.
Dr Robl told BBC News Online: "The antibodies that we produce consist of a large collection of different types that
will be particularly useful for killing infectious disease agents. We believe that by successfully transferring the
antibody genes into cows we have overcome one of the most difficult challenges in the project." Genzyme
Transgenics Corp (MA) animal cloning expert Yann Echelard says the cloned cows could eventually have
important medical applications. "The cows have a human immune system," he told BBC News Online.
"You can immunise them, collect their blood, get the antibodies out, purify them and give them to patients."
Antibodies are used for the treatment of many human diseases incl immune deficiencies, infectious diseases, and
autoimmune disorders. They have to be extracted from blood donations and are in short supply.
Existence of the 4 cloned cattle is revealed in the journal Nature Biotechnology. The first calf, Yoon, was born last
November. She was named after a graduate student who spent many nights looking after the animals. About 20
similar cloned cows have been born since then.
Genetically manipulated bull put to sleep
Amsterdam, Netherlands Herman the Bull, world's first farm animal carrying a human gene, was
euthanized Friday because he was suffering from a form of arthritis, his caretakers said. He was 13, not
exceptionally old for a bull. His ailment was unrelated to his genetic manipulation, said the Naturalis museum in
Leiden where Herman spent his final years.
The experiment was only a partial success. Milk from Herman's descendants contained the proteins, but at such
low levels it wasn't commercially worthwhile to extract them. A spokesman for the Naturalis museum said the
animal's joints had become almost completely blocked with growths. "He was always well-kept & happy, but
you could see toward the end that he was in pain," Hans Dautzenberg said. "He avoided moving his knees and
when he laid down, he stayed down for a long time."
A public outcry ensued, led by animal rights activists, which saved him. He eventually won a bill of clemency from
parliament, though he was ordered castrated. He lived on a farm for years until funding for his care ran out in 2002.
He was then moved to a special display pen at Naturalis to help cover costs.
Dautzenberg said Herman's skin will be saved and put into storage, in case the museum wants to have him stuffed
and put on display. The 2,500-pound bull was a cross between two Dutch breeds, the Zwartbont Holstein Frisian
and Groninger Blaarkop.
In an interview with the Associated Press in 2002, Herman's keeper Marije de Vos said he had a fondness for
music. De Vos said he listened to a rap station "around the clock." "It makes Herman calm," she said.
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Dogs' ancestors were most probably wolves 10.25.01 Steve Dale Tribune Media Services
Dogs were once considered pests in the same category as cockroaches, city rats and pigeons, according to
biologists Raymond & Lorna Coppinger in "Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior
& Evolution" (Scribner, $26). … "I can sum up the secret to training dogs in 3 words," he said: "Make it fun."
The Coppingers have been researching canine behavior, mostly together, for 43 years. In 1976, Raymond
launched the Livestock Dog Project, still considered the foundation for scientific research about livestock dogs. In
America alone, Raymond followed the lives of more than 1,400 dogs in 43 states. In all, the couple has researched
canine behavior in 19 countries.
Tame foxes
Cloned cat means pet-cloning business may be possible
2.15.02 K.Reed Bloomberg News
San Francisco Researchers said they cloned a cat, adding to the short list of animals in which
the technology has worked and suggesting it soon may be possible for pet owners to produce exact copies of a
beloved cat or dog. The calico kitten, named Cc: for the secretarial designation for carbon copy, was born in
December, according to a team of scientists from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M University.
Their research will be published in next week's edition of the journal Nature. The Texas research group is also
behind a well-publicized effort to clone Missy, an aging & beloved Husky-mix dog owned by John Sperling,
chairman of Apollo Group Inc., a higher-education company that owns the University of Phoenix. Sperling started a
pet-cloning company after getting requests from pet owners about the so-called Missyplicity dog-cloning project.
Two Mothers
False Hopes
Humane Concerns
Livestock First
A year later, cloned cat is no copycat
College Station, TX Rainbow the cat is a typical calico with splotches of brown, tan and gold on
white. Cc, her clone, has a striped gray coat over white. Rainbow is reserved. Cc is curious & playful. Rainbow
is chunky. Cc is sleek.
Though cc's arrival sparked a deluge of calls from pet owners, more research is needed to figure out how to
produce consistently healthy clones before the co. can start doing it commercially, said spokesman Ben Carlson.
"A year ago, we said we'd start commercial services in a year, and here we are a year later," Carlson said. "It's
really impossible for us to make a certain prediction as to how long it's going to take to develop the
technology to get successful results."
turning away customers
hundreds of samples
However, he said cloning could reproduce what a pet owner considers to be exceptional genes, particularly from an
animal with unknown parentage or one that has been spayed or neutered. "A small percentage of the population
know exactly what they want and they want to stick with it, another animal as similar as possible," Carlson said.
"That's the motive we've encountered among our clients."
finished with cats
8.7.03 SD Reader Since the breed is so new, Selkirk Rexes still produce straight haired kittens. …
8.14.03 Rick Weiss Wash.Post pA4
Researchers said yesterday they were hopeful that the rabbit work would lead to a new & plentiful source of
embryonic stem cells for research and, eventually, for medical use. But theologians & others decried the work
as unethical. Some wondered aloud what, exactly, such a creature would be if it were transferred to a womb to
develop to term.
Congress has been mulling legislation for years that would outlaw certain human cloning experiments, with some
opposed to any creation of cloned embryos for research and others sympathetic to research uses as long as the
embryos are not allowed to grow into cloned babies. No law has been passed, however, in part because of
researchers' warnings that the proposed restrictions are so far-reaching that they would hobble development of
new medical treatments.
Some researchers yesterday said they were frustrated by the lack of details in the paper. The team said it retrieved
foreskin tissue from two 5-year-old boys & two men, and facial tissue from a 60-year-old woman, as a source
of skin cells. They fused those cells with New Zealand rabbit eggs from which the vast majority of rabbit DNA had
been removed.
But to make cloned embryos, scientists need both normal body cells, such as skin cells, and egg cells, which have
the unique capacity to "reprogram" the genes in body cells and make them behave as though they were embryo
cells. Because human egg cells are difficult & costly to retrieve from women's ovaries, and because human
egg retrieval poses risks to the donors, scientists have been wanting to know whether animal eggs may serve as
well.
Even so, said Harvard Univ. cell biologist & cloning expert Douglas Melton, the work is a big advance because
it offers a new system for exploring the mechanisms by which egg cells get adult cells to act in embryonic ways.
That could provide deep insights into human development, wound healing and tissue regeneration. He noted that
although this is the first creation of a human "chimeric" embryo, a reference to the fabulous chimera of
Greek mythology, which had a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail, it is not the first time scientists have
blended human cells into lab animals. Some mice, for example, have been endowed with human brain cells or
portions of the human immune system for research.
The Chinese work, Melton said, is "extremely interesting, and I hope they pursue it." Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison
assoc. dean of law & bioethics prof. R. Alta Charo noted that the work passed muster with Chinese ethics
authorities, who had demanded, among other things, that the embryos not be allowed to grow more than 14 days.
"Short of putting one of these embryos into a woman's body for development to term, I don't think this work harms
anyone alive," Charo said. |
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Horse breeding for speed down to a science 6.5.04 Robyn Norwood L.A. Times
Even before Smarty Jones reaches the starting gate at today's Belmont Stakes, trying to become horse racing's
first Triple Crown winner since 1978, the race to breed another champion in his image has begun. In Reddick FL, I'll
Get Along, mare who foaled Smarty in 2001, is carrying a full sibling of the Kentucky Derby & Preakness
Stakes winner, due next March. 2 months into an 11-month gestation, the fetus is the size of a mouse, with tiny,
developing hoofs.
Mating of thoroughbreds in quest of victory at the track has long been a sophisticated combination of art and
informal science. Owners & breeders study thoroughbreds' family trees so closely, they are more likely to be
able to list a horse's great-great-great grandparents than their own. Yet the ways genes recombine generation after
generation are so unpredictable, the axiom long has been, "Breed the best to the best and hope for the
best."
"Everybody is trying to get a faster racehorse," said Stonerside Stable bloodstock expert John Adger, breeding
operation & racing stable near Paris, KY owned by Robert McNair who also owns the NFL Houston Texans.
"People have been trying to do it for centuries, but again, you didn't have the mapping of the genes like you do
now." |
British co. Thoroughbred Genetics Co. already has been advising clients on breeding & purchases for several
years by using DNA analysis in addition to traditional breeding theories, though many scientists question whether
enough is known about the horse genome yet to perform a marker-based selection. Co. managing dir. Steve
Harrison eagerly awaits results as colts produced by matings he recommended begin racing in the next 2
years.
None of the scientists seeking answers to the centuries-old puzzle of how to breed a faster horse is proposing
cloning or manipulation of the genes. They simply want to use DNA analysis as a tool to make more effective
decisions about which stallions and mares to breed to one another.
Even if someone wanted to clone a Triple Crown winner, the Jockey Club, which governs the registration of
thoroughbred foals, already had banned clones even before Italian scientists produced the world's first cloned
horse in 2003. The Jockey Club also prohibits embryo transfer or any form of genetic manipulation and, in
what seems an old-fashioned notion in light of advances in human fertility, still requires the "physical mounting of a
broodmare by a stallion."
Ways in which traits are handed down are so complex, even a full sibling of a champion racehorse is no sure thing
to succeed on the racetrack. Secretariat had a full sister, the Bride, who never won a race. "As somebody said,
Larry Bird probably has a brother who can't play basketball," said Lexington KY race course Keeneland sales dir.
Geoffrey Russell, where the most prestigious yearlings are auctioned at 2 annual sales. Bird has 4 brothers, and
none ever played an NBA game.
"The interesting question is: What is the nature of racing?" said Univ. Kentucky's Gluck Equine Research Ctr
geneticist Ernie Bailey, coordinator of intl genome effort. "People come visit our lab and we tell them about genes
that control immune response, disease resistance, all these elegant experiments. They sit patiently and listen, and
then they raise their hands and ask, 'Have you found the speed gene yet?'"
"Racing performance is much more complex. Speed probably is not a matter of one gene, but different genes
combining in different ways. That's the thing that makes racing a fascinating sport."
Animal Health Trust geneticist Matthew Binns in Newmarket, England is another of the researchers hoping to find
markers that signal the likelihood of success on the racetrack. "What do we mean by racing performance?" Binns
said. "Instinctively you know it means winning the big races, but that involves the heart, lung, bones, muscles and
temperament. Each is complicated genetically."
Heart size is seen by many as a particularly important factor. An autopsy of Secretariat, 1973 Triple Crown winner
and a great-great-grandfather of Smarty Jones, revealed a heart almost twice the size of the typical thoroughbred's.
Yet what makes a winner also is more than physiology: There is the issue of environment, and factors such as
training, illness, injury, the skill of the jockey, even a horse's competitive spirit.
"I think it's kind of an indecipherable quality they're trying to get to," said Reddick FL Cloverleaf Farms II general
manager Brent Fernung, where Smarty Jones' dam is in foal with his sibling. "They've done so much with cattle
genetics and weight gain and fat percentage. That's something that's easily measured. Racing ability is a little
different. You can't look inside that as easily."
Ultimately, a number of scientists believe, the contribution of genetic study to racing might not be discovering what
makes a horse such as Smarty Jones go fast, but what could keep him from doing it. "Whether we'll ever find a 'go-
fast' gene, I doubt it," said UC Davis animal science & veterinary medicine prof. Jim Murray. "The genome
project ultimately will help … as we understand more and more about horses, more about bone development
and why they go lame, for example."
In fact, one of the major benefits of the horse genome project so far has been the development of tests for 3
important diseases that affect certain breeds: an immunodeficiency syndrome known as SCID that affects
Arabians; a muscle disease in quarter horses known as hyperkalemic periodic paralysis, or HYPP; and a disease
affecting spotted horses called lethal white syndrome. Developing tests for genetic problems in thoroughbreds
eventually could improve performance.
"You could say, 'What things limit racehorses?' " said British researcher Binns. "Having fractures of their bones,
bleeding in the lungs. Nearly all the main problems would be caused partly by genetics and partly by
environment."
Each year, some 36,000 thoroughbred foals are registered in North America by the Jockey Club. Only one will win
the Kentucky Derby. Only 11 have ever won all 3 races of the Triple Crown, a feat Smarty Jones will attempt to
complete today in Elmont, N.Y. Those are considerable odds. Add to that the fact that a horse has about 30,000
genes, arranged on 64 chromosomes.
"It's going to be very hard to predict the outcome of a mating," said James A. Baker Institute for Animal Health dir.
Douglas Antczak at Cornell. "It's a mind-staggering amount of different combinations." The equine lotto paid off
unexpectedly for Roy & Patricia Chapman, a couple well along in years who had never had even a starter in
the Derby until they bred their champion at a place in Pennsylvania they called Someday Farm. It will be next year
before the racing world gets a look at Smarty's first full sibling, and even longer before it is clear whether the foal
can race.
All the while, scientists will be working to improve the odds in a business sometimes seen as a crapshoot. "I hope
they never get too good at it," said Cloverleaf manager Fernung. "If they do, the richest people will have the best
horses. Then you wouldn't have great stories like the Chapmans."
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Gene switch 'makes mighty Mensa mice'
¹
²
³
¶ 6.20.00 Roger Highfield News Telegraph UK
Mice that have been genetically modified to make more of a brain growth protein are significantly smarter,
scientists report today. The development of what one of the team calls "mighty Mensa mice" shows how society
may be affected by knowledge of the human genetic code, the first draft of which is about to be published, and will
stimulate ethical debate about whether to enhance people. Prof Aryeh Routtenberg, head of a team at
Northwestern Univ., Evanston IL, said that it took a change in a single genetic "letter" to cause "a very strong
determinant effect". |
2.20.00 J.Thornton & R.Highfield News Telegraph One approach would be to use gene therapy to counter the effects of these genes. Another approach would focus on making good the shortfall in the cells that form various structures in the bodies of Down's syndrome patients. Dr Reeves said that there was great interest in using "stem cells", parent cells of all types in the body, to grow nerve & other cells to repair a body. |
This, at a conceptual level,
could offer other ways to "tone down" the problems caused by the syndrome. He said: "Since this mouse can
accurately predict what will happen in Down's syndrome, we can use that in a very powerful way to make
conclusions about what is going wrong in development."
The mice with the extra chromosome, bred at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, have short
noses, skulls slightly flattened at the back and an abnormally small cerebellum - the part of the brain
controlling movement - as do people with Down's syndrome. Joan Richtsmeier, one of the research team,
marked various parts of the skulls of the engineered mice & "normal' mice with a laser microscope and
measured the distances between the points. The researchers then matched the data with the
characteristics of people with Down's syndrome. Dr Reeves said: "We found an absolute
correspondence. The changes in the mouse face are in the same bones, in the same patterns, as in
humans."
His initial research also indicates that there is an abnormally low density of cerebellar brain cells
connected with the disorder, which scientists had not previously known about. "Nobody knows exactly
why having too much of a chromosome would lead to the developmental problems you see with Down's
syndrome," he said. "We believe this model will explain that in a way we couldn't before. "Is this model
good enough to reflect what goes on in humans? Yes, it's about the strongest parallel you can get." He
added that within 3 years he aimed to discover the genes that govern development of the skull & face.
This could shed light on other craniofacial problems that hundreds of people in Britain are born with and
which, while rarely fatal, are extremely costly to treat and are psychologically traumatic.
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no title 5.14.04 Reuters
London A Nobel Prize winning scientist has called on British govt to introduce legislation to prevent
discrimination on the basis of people's genetic make-up, the Guardian newspaper reported on Saturday.
"The main worry with genetic tests is abuse of the information," Sir John Sulston, member of govt's genetics
advisory panel the Human Genetics Commission, told the Guardian in an interview. "So are we going to use them
and lose the medical benefits, or are we going to alter society by drafting good laws so people are protected?" said
Sulston.
Medical advances and sequencing of the human genome have led to concerns that genetic testing could be used
by insurance companies & employers to discriminate against people with an increased risk of developing
certain diseases. "People are quite right to be leery about having genetic tests until we have solid laws in place to
protect their rights," Sulston told the Guardian.
Sulston shared the 2002 Noble medicine prize with fellow Briton Sydney Brenner & Robert Horwitz of U.S. for
their work on how cells divide and die and how genes regulate. This shed light on diseases from AIDS to
cancer.
Scientists finish draft of human genetic code
A rough draft of the entire human genetic code has been completed, after years of work by thousands of
researchers worldwide. The achievement is a milestone in a project that will change the face of medicine &
society. The effort to read the code, or genome, will pave the way for a medical revolution but also create dilemmas over how genetic information should be used. It raises the prospect of "designer babies", for instance, or tests to assess insurance premiums or select employees. The goal of the Human Genome Project, a publicly funded international consortium, and its commercial rival, Celera Genomics in the US, is to read all three billion "letters" of the human genetic code, the book of life. Formal announcements of the first working drafts, 90 per cent of the recipe for a human being, or genome, are expected within the next week or so.
This autumn, probably October, the journals Nature and Science will publish the first analysis of what the data from the public effort means, such as the number of genes it takes to make a man. Each cell contains the code, in bundles called chromosomes. The letters of the code - As, Cs, Gs and Ts - spell out genes, the instructions to
make the proteins in an organism. However, completion of the working drafts mark only the beginning in terms of
understanding disease and the effort to develop drugs to prevent and treat illness, or to use gene transplants.
Celera said it had "completed the sequencing phase of the genome from one human being" and was about to
announce that the information had been assembled into the rough draft. A spokesman for the genome project,
which consists of 16 centres around the world, said it too had completed the draft. A spokesman for the Sanger Centre, near Cambridge, said: "The sequence is there, or thereabouts. But we still have to go through some checking. " He said that about 20% of the code has been finished. Reading the entire code will be the most momentous achievement since James Watson and Francis Crick identified the structure of DNA in 1953 at Cambridge. When the effort was first mooted in the Eighties, no one imagined it would be completed as swiftly or as cheaply. However, even when the final draft appears, expected in 2003, gaps will remain due to deficiencies in the method used to interpret & reproduce the code.
6.2.02 Gary Stix Scientic American Nevertheless, the boy propelled himself to become champion in a statewide physics contest in 2 separate years by grabbing physics & calculus books off library shelves. "I realized I had a lot of ability and didn't need formal training to compete with the best of the best," Chan remarks with characteristic bravado. At Harvard his autodidactic skills served him well. He gained top honors, eventually graduating summa cum laude in 1996.
But he still found enough time to contemplate the germ of an idea for a technology that would build on the scientific
findings of the Human Genome Project, then in its middle phases. "Is it possible for us to gain complete sequence
information from every single person on the planet?" he recalls wondering.
Piles of books & journal articles on molecular biology, medical instrumentation, optics and physics covered
much of Chan's dormitory room. Borrowing from semiconductor manufacturing and the nascent field of
nanotechnology, Chan conceived of placing miniaturized channels on a quartz chip.
To make the test widely available, Chan estimated that it should cost no more than a few hundred dollars.
The concept became such an obsession that, after completing 18 months at Harvard Med School, Chan left to
found U.S. Genomics. His brother Ian, who worked at a lucrative investment-banking job with Morgan Stanley,
decided to join him. Chan somehow convinced a prominent Boston intellectual-property law firm, Wolf, Greenfield
and Sacks, to write a patent application for him on spec, the firm would be paid once Chan obtained financing.
Then, to build credibility, he set about assembling a prominent panel of scientists, which grew to include a Nobel
Prize winner. The scientific advisory board would help him gain entrance to the offices of venture capitalists.
The idea of a 23-year-old proposing a wholly new method of sequencing intrigued scientists and engineers on the
Harvard-MIT axis. "I liked it that somebody his age was trying to tackle such a giant problem," says MIT chemical
engineering prof. Robert S. Langer, member of the co.'s scientific advisory board. "If you could do the
sequencing that rapidly, that would be a change-the-world kind of thing."
First paltry $300,000 venture-capital infusion came from Boston-area firm Still River Fund. The funding sufficed to
rent space at a technology incubator at Boston Univ. and served as an impetus to look for more money. To procure
substantial backing, U.S. Genomics would have to show progress in its plan to create a personal-genomics
sequencer. "The question people had for us was, 'Can you take that piece of DNA that looks like a big ball of
spaghetti and unfurl this thing and move it past your reader device?'" Chan says. "In six months we demonstrated
how we could do it."
With the help of 5 others who joined the newly formed co., Chan fabricated a series of upright posts, each
spaced a few tens of nanometers apart, at the mouth of a channel down which the DNA was to travel. The posts
snagged the ball of DNA, and the pressure of the molecule against the posts caused it to unravel and stream down
the channel toward the optoelectronic detector.
The expanding U.S. Genomics team spent most of 2000 developing a technique that could train a laser on a 2
nanometer spot on the elongated DNA and accurately detect whether the tags illuminate. Chan claims that the
Gene Engine, as the product is called, can spot variations on DNA segments of 200,000 base pairs in length,
enough to make the technology commercially alluring. By year's end he wants to expand the readout capacity
fivefold. Conventional sequencers evaluate about 1,000 base pairs at a time.
It also faces competitors for rapid genome sequencing. The co., housed in virtually unmarked offices in an
industrial park in Woburn, MA, has yet to publish a paper in a scientific journal that details the Gene Engine's
performance. But Chan & his brother have initiated a coming out. In January, U.S. Genomics announced it
would enter into a collaboration with a leading sequencing center, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge,
England, and join in a separate endeavor with the Washington Univ. School of Medicine to test the technology and
to start publishing. Scientists highlight the x factor in autism 9.9.03 Jeremy Lovell Reuters
Manchester A part of the brain that is key to reading expressions in people's faces and which is
affected by the X chromosome could give a new insight into autism's cause, says Britain's Institute of Child Health
prof. David Skuse . "We have not discovered the cause of autism, but in the X chromosome we may have
discovered a mechanism that could lead to a cause," he told reporters at the British Assn for Advancement of
Science's annual conference.
Women suffering from Turner Syndrome in which they have only one X chromosome had also been found to suffer
far higher rates of autism than their double X counterparts, he said. Skuse said the key lay in the amygdala, a part of the brain directly involved in processing emotional expressions seen on another's face.
This in turn could explain why autistics rarely made eye contact, Skuse added. He said women with both Xs
functioning normally had a fully operational amygdala, while those with only one X or with only one functioning as it should had poor expression recognition. In males the Y chromosome probably compensated for the key section of the missing X. Where it did not, the amygdala did not function properly. |
Patients given own stem cells escape transplant 9.1.03 Reuters
Vienna 4 of a group of 5 seriously sick Brazilian heart-failure patients no longer needed a heart
transplant after being treated with their own stem cells, the doctor in charge of the research said Monday.
Such "regenerative medicine," in which stem cells extracted from patients' own bone marrow are used to rebuild tissue, may one day become commonplace for patients with damaged or diseased hearts, some doctors believe. Hans Fernando Rocha Dohmann of the Pro-Cardiaco Hospital in Rio de Janeiro said his 4 patients had such a marked improvement in blood supply after stem cell treatment that they were removed from the list of those needing a heart transplant.
Stem cell research is highly controversial because the most promising of such cells are taken from embryos,
usually obtained from fertility clinics. Embryonic stem cells are capable of turning into nearly 200 different tissue
types. Doctors believe the field has huge potential.
The 4 critically ill patients were among a larger group of 14 who Dohmann and colleagues from the Texas Health Science Ctr in Houston had in April reported showing improved heart function. Their treatment involved taking cells from bone marrow and injecting them into the heart's left ventricle, the main pumping chamber. Heart failure is the inability of damaged heart muscle to pump enough blood around the body.
Exact mechanism of action is not understood but medics believe stem cells harvested from bone marrow or blood may be able to form new muscle and blood vessels. Alternatively, they may trigger a chemical reaction that improves the functioning of cells in the locality of the injection. So far, all the clinical work involves so-called "autologous" cell transplants, in which cells are used from the patient's own body.
Science decoding DNA's poor cousin
In the family of genetic material, RNA has long been the poor cousin of DNA. DNA makes up the genes, the master instructions of life, while RNA merely conveys those instructions to other parts of the cell. New discoveries show cells contain an army of RNA snippets that do much more than act as DNA's messenger. The discoveries are helping to refine the prevailing theories of genetics or even upend them.
The discoveries are having practical applications. Scientists have found that tiny snippets of RNA with 2 strands
instead of the usual one can be used to shut off specific genes. The technique, known as RNA interference, is
being widely used to discover the functions of genes by turning them off and seeing what happens to the plant or
animal.
"This is a gift from heaven," said Nobel laureate & MIT biology prof. Phillip A. Sharp, also Alnylam Pharmaceuticals founder, one of several companies started to exploit RNA interference. Many other companies are trying to develop drugs based on other aspects of RNA.
Scientists have recently reported that Prader-Willi & Fragile X syndromes, each leading to mental retardation, and chronic lymphocytic leukemia may be linked to RNA defects. Biologists studying other species are also looking to RNA for answers to unsolved mysteries. "Everybody wants to look in their favorite organism or favorite system and see if there's an RNA lurking there," said National Cancer Institute biochemical genetics chief Susan Gottesman who studies E. coli bacteria. "A lot of the regulatory puzzles in E. coli are explained by small RNA's we didn't think were there."
RNA & DNA are strings of chemical units called bases that embody the genetic code. The bases are
represented by the letters A, C, G and either T in DNA or U in RNA. The C base always binds to G. A binds only to T or U. So a single strand of DNA or RNA can bind to another strand that has the complementary bases.
Proteins make up most of a cell and perform most of its functions, incl turning genes on & off. New evidence suggests that some RNA is not merely the intermediary between DNA & protein, but the end product. Some huge stretches of DNA that do not contain protein-coding genes and have been considered "junk" actually hold the code for some of this RNA.
It has long been known that RNA is more than a messenger. The ribosome, which makes proteins, is made partly of RNA. Another type of RNA, called transfer RNA, aids in protein production. Some scientists say it is not surprising that RNA has multiple roles, because it is generally believed that RNA had the role of both proteins
& DNA in the early days of life on Earth.
Some genes, scientists found, produce tiny RNAs, known as micro-RNAs or miRNA, which are about 21 to 23 bases, or letters, in length. The micro-RNAs bind to matching pieces of messenger RNA, turn it into a double strand and keep it from doing its job. The process effectively stifles the production of the corresponding protein.
A popular area of biotechnology now is monoclonal antibodies, which can be made to order to fit a particular shape of a target. So several companies have sprung up trying to develop products that either bind to RNA by shape, or to use shaped RNA to bind to proteins. These shapely RNAs are called aptamers.
Because the finding was so unexpected, "there was a considerable amount of legitimate doubt," Ambros recalled. It was not until 2000 that Ruvkun discovered the second one, which also acts to control development in roundworms. Now micro-RNAs are being found in many species. Whitehead Institute & MIT associate prof. David Bartel and his sister Bonnie Bartel at Rice Univ. found 16 in arabidopsis, a plant. He also found 50 micro-RNAs in the roundworm and is about to publish his estimate for humans, which other scientists say is more than 200.
Many scientists theorize that RNA interference is a protective mechanism against viruses, which sometimes create double-strand RNA when they replicate. When double-strand RNA is detected, an enzyme called dicer, discovered at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, chops the double-strand RNA into shorter pieces of about 21 to 23 bases. The pieces are known as small interfering RNAs or siRNAs. Each short segment attracts a phalanx of enzymes.
At first, it was not clear that RNA interference would work in humans. Mammalian cells, confronted with long double-strand RNA, basically destroy themselves as a defense against pathogens. 2 years ago scientists at the
Max Planck Institute found that short double-strand RNA, again about 21 to 23 bases, would not set off the self-destructive response but would silence the corresponding gene.
City of Hope National Medical Ctr (Duarte, L.A. Cty) Dr. John Rossi & Colorado State Univ. Ramesh Akkina genetically engineered blood-producing stem cells to make a double-strand RNA that corresponded to a part of a gene in HIV. When those stem cells were transplanted into mice, they formed T cells, target of HIV, that inactivated the gene in the virus and staved off infection.
Watching genes in action
Scientists have found a way to study shape & movement of individual molecules of DNA. The technique
called single molecule fluorescence has enabled researchers to obtain the most precise information yet about the workings of single DNA molecules, which measure just one millionth of a centimetre across. |
While some of the details of DNA recombination were known, the new study has given scientists their most
accurate information yet about the process. Since cancer develops as a result of the accumulation of genetic
damage, understanding how cells normally repair their DNA is an important area of research into the disease.
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Look who's talking now Smart babies a la Nobel Prize sperm donors
6.19.05 David Washburn SD UT book review Sunday lit. supplement p2
The Genius Factory, curious history of the Nobel Prize sperm bank, David Plotz auth.
More than a quarter-century ago, in the basement of his sprawling Escondido estate, an eccentric multimillionaire began one of the more bizarre experiments in modern biotechnology. For decades, Robert Graham, an elitist and some would say racist San Diego County resident, had worried that the world was being overrun by idiots. He believed the only way to save civilization was to make more smart people.
Plotz describes Graham as having the "right-wing politics of a self-made millionaire, the relentless inquisitiveness of an inventor, the can-do spirit of an entrepreneur and the moxie of a salesman." He had made a fortune in the late 1950s and early 1960s after inventing shatterproof plastic eyeglass lenses. Like many of his class during that era, Graham was obsessed with America's postwar scientific supremacy.
In 1980, Graham's ideas became reality, sort of. That year, in his basement, he opened a sperm bank that in the beginning dealt exclusively in the semen of Nobel Prize winners. But there was trouble from the start. First, there was controversy over the only Nobel winner to publicly announce his involvement. Then, there were problems getting other Nobel winners to participate, and issues with the viability of sperm coming from a population of old men.
If this book were to be made into a movie, a good working title might be "David Plotz: Sperm Detective." He spent the better part of three years roaming highways of America and the portals of cyberspace, determined to find out if Graham's experiment had worked. Plotz had come across the story of Graham's sperm bank while researching the issue of fertility as he and his wife were trying to conceive. The subject continued to fascinate him even after his wife gave birth to a baby girl in late 2000.
What had become of the so-called "genius babies"? Who were their mothers? Did they know where they came from? Plotz was able to answer these questions as well as some he hadn't anticipated. It is those unanticipated answers that make it a special book. Some of the kids seem to have very average intelligence, while others are brainy but troubled. |
Sperm bank takes on a life of its own 5.2.05 Logan Jenkins SD UT p. B.2
The two most flamboyant inventor-salesmen in North County's history were both born circa 1907, lived out their days in Escondido, enjoyed worldwide celebrity as dispensers of human-race- saving fluids, died within a month of each other in 1997, and never met. There's one major difference, however, between Emanuel Bronner, the messianic creator of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, and Dr. Robert Graham, the millionaire inventor who masterminded the Repository for Germinal Choice, a seminal idea if ever there was one.
… author David Plotz … traces eugenics to Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin whose 1869 book, "Hereditary Genius," argued that Britain's brilliant men had outstanding offspring.
Graham's genius boiled down to this: He knew some ambitious women, if given a choice, would choose the genes of brilliant, healthy men. His vaulting desire to improve mankind matched the practical desire of some women to have the best babies they could.
In fact, the repository at times was so desperate for donors that it compromised its standards by not checking their qualifications. Plotz profiles two such "geniuses" who seem more like creeps taking twisted pleasure in anonymously fertilizing as many eggs as possible.
As Plotz sees it, Graham's project spawned a generation of sperm banks that offer women more information about a racially diverse roster of donors. A million American children have been born from donor sperm, 30,000 a year. The fertility business, which now includes egg donation, is booming. |
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Terminator
SeedWatch forum
Delphion patent research, where corporations log bad
deeds & seeds
Kiwi chaos math prof on bioengineering:
Chris King's Genesis of Eden
Lederberg
video clip "I was rather fearful when the first positive results came in."
U.S. eugenics
program
EugenicsWatch
¹
higher order mammal clonemeister Neil First, UWisconsin,
at work
Howard
Garber
OC eugenicist candidate for 46th Cong. Dist.
On March 23, 1971, Richard Nixon received a $3 million dollar cash gift from the dairy industry. The giving of that gift was recorded on a
Watergate tape. A few months later, Nixon set price controls for milk that guaranteed the price
farmers receive for 100 pounds of milk would never fall below $9.90. In November 1999, dairy
farmers were receiving $16.49 for 100 pounds of milk. One month later, the price of milk fell
$4.77, a traumatic financial event for dairymen & their families.
In January, 2000, the wholesale price of milk fell below the govtal support price for the first
time in history. As demand for liquid milk decreases, farmers continue to produce more milk.
Genetic engineering was a deception. The promise of more milk as a "dairy management tool"
was a mere deception meant to betray the small dairyman.
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I am a type I diabetic, and while I don't believe that eliminating dairy products from my diet will restore my islet cells' ability to produce insulin, it will help me to avoid the many complications related to diabetes. As a health aide of 17yrs working with elderly, I have seen the slow deterioration that occurs, literally, in bits & pieces until death. Being diagnosed 10yrs ago, I set about my search for a diet that would help me to not only control my blood sugars but improve my overall nutritional status, so that my body would be empowered to fight off the degenerative effects of unstable blood sugars. This has occurred one step at a time.
So far, I've eliminated: All canned, processed, packaged convenience foods, fast foods, cooked
foods (except steamed veggies & homemade whole-grain breads), meat, eggs, dairy, caffene,
all store beverages, tap water, refined grains, white flour, refined sugars, artificial sweetners,
hydrogenated oils, margarines. So, what do I eat ? |
Price fixing at Kraft 3.97 John E. Peck Z Magazine
5.17.01 Reuters Tomkins & other research scientists in Bangladesh did an analysis of the sachets which is published in The Lancet medical journal. 35 women in Bangladesh urban areas found they were easy to use and took about 4© hours to work. "We have shown that mothers in urban Bangladesh can be successfully trained in the use of the osmotic sachets for the preparation of microbiologically safe therapeutic milk," SK Roy, of the Ctr for Health & Population Research in Dhaka, said in a report in the journal. The sachets, produced by British-based UCB Films Plc, can be used to produce food for malnourished children or without the feed to purify contaminated water. |
But the growing use of carbon monoxide as a "pigment fixative" is alarming consumer advocates and others who say it deceives shoppers who depend on color to help them avoid spoiled meat. Those critics are challenging the Food and Drug Administration and the nation's powerful meat industry, saying the agency violated its own rules by allowing the practice without a formal evaluation of its impact on consumer safety.
"This meat stays red and stays red and stays red," said Kalamazoo MI Kalsec Foods lab. dir. & vp Don Berdahl, a maker of natural food extracts that has petitioned the FDA to ban the practice. If nothing else, Berdahl and others say, carbon-monoxide-treated meat should be labeled so consumers will know not to trust their eyes.
6.19.00 Alexander Cockburn The Nation p8 By the mid-nineties, S. California's coastal sage scrub had almost disappeared; so had 97 per cent of the vernal pools. Southern maritime chapparal had been reduced to 2400 acres in California. The chapparal has gone, and so too, as a site for anything but high-priced real estate, has poor, bulldozer-carved Carmel Mountain.
So far as coastal habitat in S. California is concerned, the destruction is virtually complete, but head south from Los
Angeles, turn east after Oceanside and head for Ramona or Julian. You'll discover that at the heart of San Diego
County are mountains forming a blue wall between the coast and the deep desert. Rising from these peaks, and
buffering them from the cities, are the magnificent rolling grasslands and oak-covered foothills of what San
Diegans call the back country, its pastures carrying not only cattle but live oak and golden eagles, profuse other
bird life, cougar. The country looks dry but it is an enormously important watershed, supplying the coastal cities
with as much as 15 per cent of their water.
Over the past 10 years, Save Our Forest & Ranchlands (SOFAR) run by Duncan McFetridge, a woodworker
living in Descanso, forty miles east of San Diego, has been waging a stubborn campaign against the
suburbanization of the back country. We're not talking firebrands here. We're talking League of Women Voters,
surfers, San Diego Baykeeper and assorted defenders of snakes, salamanders, lions and oaks. SOFAR put
together a coalition of enviro & community groups and sued the county for failing to protect the back country.
In 1996, Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell found San Diego County grossly negligent and in violation of
several state laws and its own environmental standards. McConnel gave tiny SOFAR authority over hundreds of
thousands of back-country acres. The real future under the county plan
would be luxury ranchettes and theme parks linked by new freeways and serviced by off-ramp commerce. In other
words, exactly the sort of unsmart growth that everyone from Vice-President Gore to the San Diego Association of
Govts has been complaining about.
Not to be defeated, SOFAR and its allies brought the new plan to the attention if the Environmental Protection
Agency. On March 31, Nancy Woo, the agency's regional chief, sent a letter to the San Diego County supervisors
& Mayor Susan Golding advising them that the plan threatened the quality & quantity of the region's
water & would gravely affect air, endangered wildlife and open space. Woo's letter threw the county officials
into desperation. It looked as though the scheming of years had gone for nought. Then, at the last minute, came an
amazing giftfrom the EPA. Five days later, on the eve of a crucial April 5 county meeting, Woo rushed another letter
to the frantic San Diego officials. She said she had misinterpreted the plan and that her first letter should be
disregarded.
In fact, Woo had not misinterpreted any significant part of the plan. But, crucially, in her second letter, she did not
advise the board to withhold approval pending further study. The supervisors were off the hook and delightedly
passed the amendment that could mean San Diego's back country will disappear into condo land, interspersed with
Indian casinos. But the game is not quite over. Because the county is still under court supervision, the plan can't go
ahead until Judge McConnell signs off on it. This is but one episode in a dire national story. I don't want to be construed as offering endorsement or encouragement, but what drives groups like Earth Liberation Front to court lifetime prison sentences by burning a ski-condo development in Vail, or Boise Cascade offices in Oregon? The people who drive them to it, who are convinced that the fix is in, that the govt is always bought, have been these past eight years men like Gore and Babbitt, so much more supple and therefore dangerous than Reagan's Interior Secretary James Watt, who was such a dunderhead he set back the course of environmental destruction by a decade. |
Lawmaker wants federal regulators to assess fines 6.16.01 Eric Rosenberg Hearst News Service The congressman acknowledged that he faces an uphill struggle to build support in the Republican-controlled House for the measure. Co-sponsors include liberal Democratic Reps. Nancy Pelosi of California, Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and Diana DeGette of Colorado. "This is a tough bill to pass," Filner said at a news conference here. "It will not happen overnight." He added that the military has been environmentally "unaccountable" for the last several decades. In a letter to House colleagues seeking their support, Filner said, "Communities bordering military bases have less environmental protection than other cities in the nation just because they are hosts to the U.S. military."
A Pentagon spokesman could not be reached for comment. The Military Toxics Project, a Lewiston, Maine-based
environmental cleanup organization, charged that the military has created an "environmental catastrophe" in many
communities by dumping pollutants that have seeped into ground water or by releasing harmful emissions into the
air. For example, it said, Cape Romanzof Long Range Radar Station in Alaska, 460 miles west of Anchorage,
contains contaminated landfills, fuel-spill areas and leaking underground storage tanks, all of which pose a threat to
nearby communities. Another polluted area is the region surrounding Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the region has substantial ground-water contaminants,
including heavy metals, solvents and fuels. People's Rally for Military Environmental Responsibility Act (MERA)! Cong. Filner, Peace Resource Ctr, Ocean Beach People's Co-op, HERE Local 30 Environmental Health Coalition 6.16.01 Port Planning Ctr Plaza, 585 Harbor Ln SD proposed federal legislation sponsored by Bob Filner would remove all exemptions of the Dept of Defense from environmental and health & safety laws. Rally part of National Day of Action for Military Accountability Connie Garcia, Environmental Health Coalition 1717 Kettner Blvd ste 100 SD CA 92101 619.235.0281
"We have had great success in this nation in the 1970s and 80s enacting
environmental laws, and yet it turns out the military, one of the biggest,
most economically powerful and most capable organizations of doing damage to
the environment, is not fully subject to these laws."
MERA sponsor Congressman Bob Filner
Report recommends federal help for border cities
Wash.D.C. The president & Congress must invest significantly more money & political
will in solving cross-border pollution & similar ills or risk threatening international trade if they leave the job
primarily to states & cities, according to a report from a presidential advisory group. The group, an arm of the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, recommends that the Bush administration use federal dollars &
manpower to help border cities such as San Diego with some of the challenges that many have tried to tackle
alone: smog, hazardous waste, sewage, scarce water, & poor water quality. Rapid growth & poverty have created enormous pollution problems along the 2,000-mile-long border, and a lack of money & cross-border coordination have made them difficult to solve. So far this month, there have been 18 sewage spills in the city of San Diego, many of them caused by breakdowns at Tijuana sewage plant & pump stations. In addition, power plants being built in Mexico do not meet the environmental-protection standards required in the U.S., though they will almost certainly affect air quality north of the border. Hazardous waste is the growing byproduct of maquiladora manufacturing. Recently, a federal environmental agency in Mexico ordered Hyundai de Mexico to post |
More than a year ago, President Clinton signed legislation calling for the U.S. & Mexico to negotiate terms for
a new border sewage treatment plant in Tijuana. The law, written by Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, authorized
$156 million for the project, but Congress has yet to pass an appropriation. Among the report's strongest
suggestions is that Congress & the president intervene to help Mexico & U.S. border cities handle the
growing volume of hazardous waste being produced by maquiladoras. The waste is being stored, transported
& discarded in a manner inconsistent with U.S. safety guidelines, Ranger said. Lack of communication
between the countries' health authorities makes it difficult to respond to hazardous-waste emergencies along the
border, he said, and makes it increasingly likely such debris will be discarded in a dangerous way.
Because all Americans benefit from the affordable products created by Mexico's maquiladoras, garage door
openers & VCRs, to name a few, all American taxpayers should contribute to solving the problems created by intl trade, said board member Irasema Coronado. Board members warned yesterday that the federal govt cannot afford to ignore border issues, even at a time when it is focusing attention & money on preventing a terrorist attack like 9.11.01. "Local communities are stretched economically, and sometimes their hands are tied because (the jurisdictions that can tackle problems) fall within federal boundaries," said panel chairwoman Judith Espinosa. "How does a local mayor negotiate a (water) treaty with Mexico?"
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A House on Fire
¹
²
³ excerpt Connecting Biological & Linguistic Diversity Crises Kieran Suckling exec. dir., Ctr for Biological Diversity courtesy of Student Ethnobotany Network |
per 1899 Old Farmer's Almanac The odor of the sweet pea is so offensive to flies that it will drive them out of a sickroom, though not in the slightest disagreeable to the patient. † |
"We are accelerating toward a calamity unparalleled in planetary history … These are crucial years for
us to act, as the Library of Life burns furiously around us, throughout the world."
Gregory Benford, UCIrvine
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Linguistic Extinction The diversity of co-existing languages & cultures prior to the ongoing colonization of the globe by a small number of dominant nations was astounding. In what is now California, indigenous peoples once spoke over100 distinct languages. This small area supported more linguistic diversity than all of Europe. Over 300 native languages were spoken in whatis now the U.S.. Meso-America had 80 distinct languages, S.America over 500. At least 250 distinct languages were spoken in aboriginal Australia. The rate of eradication of these languages, and often the people who spoke them, is equally astounding. Sixty-five percent of California's indigenous languages are extinct, with many of the remaining spoken by fewer than 10 people. Only two or three of California's indigenous languages are spoken by more than 150 people. None are spoken by children at home.
Just as "first world" societies replace diverse plant communities with monoculture crops, they are replacing a
tremendous and ancient linguistic diversity with vast mono-languages. There are approximately 6,500 languages
on Earth today. About 50% of all humans, however, speak and think in one often globally dominant languages.
That means 0.2% of all existing languages hold sway over 50% of all humans and likely upwards of
85% of the land surface of the globe. Not surprisingly, these are the languages of the cultures primarily
responsible for the global extinction crisis and the eradication/marginalizing of indigenous cultures.
These cultures no longer recognize a limit to their beliefs or exploitation rights, because they
no longer genuinely encounter and become situated by a diversity of other languages, ideas,
cultures and species. The external world is simply a modulation of their own desires. If we allow diversity to decline within human cultures and between cultures, we throw away the necessary mental tools to reverse the decline in biological diversity. |
UN key agreement to save crop diversity
¹
² 7.1.01 Reuters
ROME The U.N. world food body reached a landmark agreement on Sunday to try to save the
world's diversity of agricultural crops, officials said. The pact followed an anguished debate pitting many poor
countries and environmentalists against multinational corporations and wealthier nations. After a week of touch-
and-go talks, delegates said the U.S. had agreed for the first time in a public forum to mandatory
payments by plant breeders and geneticists developing new crop varieties in return for access to public seed
banks. The seed banks lend out crop seeds at no charge, enabling research into new varieties of plants to increase
resistance to disease and ameliorate some of the impact of global warming. In turn, this helps alleviate hunger in
poorer nations.
no consensus on patents |
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Saving crop diversity key to winning war on hunger 7.3.01 Reuters
MACCARESE, Italy Agricultural biodiversity must be saved in order to guarantee global food security
as the population grows and the planet warms up, a leading plant geneticist said on Tuesday. "Around 25% of
all plant species are in some way under threat," Geoffrey Hawtin, director general of the International Plant Genetic
Resources Institute (IPGRI), said. Speaking at the inauguration of IPGRI's new headquarters at Maccarese outside
Rome, he said that research was urgently needed to save crop diversity as an insurance policy against global
warming and a rapidly growing population. Some 800 million people go to bed hungry, according to the United
Nations.
search for stronger plants |
StarLink Bio-Corn found in white corn products 7.4.01 Wash.Post
WASHINGTON StarLink corn, the genetically modified yellow variety whose presence in food
products last fall resulted in widespread recalls, has been found for the first time in a white corn product. FDA
discovered genetic material from StarLink corn in Kash n' Karry White Corn Tortilla Chips last month in response to
a complaint from a consumer in Florida. An FDA official said the agency did not request a recall, but both the Kash
n' Karry and Food Lion grocery chains pulled the house brand product from their shelves on Tuesday, according to
the paper. No immediate comment was available from FDA officials or Aventis SA, the Franco-German
pharmaceutical group that makes the biotech corn. Last fall, many corn chip and tortilla makers switched to white
corn, which makes up less than 3% of U.S. corn market, to reassure consumers concerned about the possible
presence of StarLink in their taco shells and corn chips.
At the time, producers said the use of white corn eliminated the risk of inadvertently introducing StarLink into their
products. StarLink, genetically modified by Aventis CropSciences to be resistant to insects, was barred by U.S.
regulators for human use because of concerns it might trigger allergic reactions such as rashes, diarrhea or
breathing problems. EPA in 1998 approved the biotech corn variety, used by farmers to protect young plants from
destructive plants, only for feed use. But traces of StarLink corn found their way into taco shells, chips and other
food products, triggering the eventual recall of more than 300 U.S. foods. Dozens of people initially reported
experiencing allergic reactions linked to StarLink-tainted food products last year. U.S. govt last month released a
report showing that 17 people who had complained of possible allergy attacks after eating corn products had failed
to show any signs of antibodies to StarLink's key component. But environmentalists said the report was flawed and
inconclusive. FDA found the StarLink gene in the white corn chips after being notified by Keith Finger, a Florida optometrist who was one of the 17 tested earlier. Finger said his wife bought the white corn chips after hearing reports that it could not contain StarLink. He said he ate some, suffered another, milder reaction and immediately contacted the FDA. An FDA official as saying the agency was "continuing to follow up on the situation." White corn is grown & distributed separately from yellow corn, and industry observers said there are no genetically modified varieties. But they also said it has proven impossible to prevent some commingling of conventional and modified, as well as white and yellow, corn. The mixing, they said, could happen at processing plants, during transportation and through cross-pollination in fields. An EPA advisory panel of experts will meet in Washington on July 17 to review new StarLink information and recommend whether or not to grant a request by Aventis to retroactively approve StarLink for human consumption. |
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UN report: progress needs technology ¹ 7.8.01 AP
MEXICO CITY Govts will have to take advantage of genetically engineered food, cutting-edge
medicine and technology to combat poverty in a world that comes far from meeting basic development goals, a
United Nations report has concluded. The 11th annual Human Development Report, scheduled to be
released in Mexico City on Tuesday, found that the world's richest countries are holding back scientific
breakthroughs key to eradicating hunger and stamping out poverty. "The current debate in Europe & U.S. over
genetically modified crops mostly ignores the concerns of the developing world," the report says, adding that crops
altered to produce higher yields could revolutionize farming in Africa, Latin America and across the underdeveloped
world. It further argues that the developed world's push to cap technology once widely available has hurt the
world's poor, highlighting how the campaign to ban DDT has left tropical countries battling a new breed of Malaria-
carrying mosquitos.
Stolenberg's country was followed in the rankings by Australia and Canada, the latter having topped the report 6
years in a row. African nations made up 29 of the report's 36 worst performers, with war-ravaged Sierra Leone
lodged at rock bottom for the second-straight year. A baby born in Sierra Leone today will likely die before it turns
39, compared to Norway's life expectancy of 79. U.S. slipped from third to sixth in this year's report. Ranked at 134,
Haiti was the Americas' least-developed nation. At last year's unprecedented U.N. Millennium Summit, countries
pledged to reduce mortality rates for children under 5 by two-thirds, cut poverty in half, and reduce the percentage
of their citizens living without drinking water by 50% all by 2015.
Poor nations gain free access biomed research ¹
LONDON The World Health Organization (WHO) & 6 publishing companies said on Monday
they would provide the latest biomedical research via the Internet to thousands of scientists and researchers in the
developing world. Almost 1,000 leading medical and scientific journals and eventually textbooks will be available
online for free or at reduced prices to medical schools and research institutions in nearly 100 countries. "The
initiative is tremendously important and exciting," Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the WHO, told a
news conference in London. "It will enable many thousands of doctors, health workers and researchers to access
information that is very important."
The initiative follows similar moves by pharmaceutical companies to improve access and reduce prices of life-
saving drugs in poor countries. It is part of a wider United Nations-led incentive to bridge the health gap between
wealthy & poor nations. Many doctors and scientists in the developing world have little access to medical
journals, which until now were sold for the same price throughout the world. Annual subscriptions range from
hundreds of dollars to more than $1,000 a year. "Nearly 100 developing countries will gain access to vital scientific
information they could otherwise not afford," Brundtland added. Dr. Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal, described the initiative as having the potential to transform the medical environment in developing nations from a desert into a garden. The project is due to be up and running in the beginning of 2002 and expected to last for at least three years while its progress is monitored. Anglo-Dutch publishing group Reed Elsevier, the U.S. Harcourt Worldwide STM Group, American health care publisher Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Germany's Springer Verlag, John Wiley & Sons Inc (U.S.) and Britain's Oxford-based Blackwell Sciences Ltd. will work with the British Medical Journal and Geo. Soros' Open Society Institute on the project. All the publishers said the journals will be free online in the poorest countries and at reduced prices, which are still to be set, in lower-income nations. None of the publishers or the Soros Foundation, which will assist with the project, could say how much it will cost. |
As gulf grows, some nations make high-tech leap ¹ 7.9.01 Reuters
UN The gulf between the world's plugged-in and the shut-out is widening, but scores of developing
nations are using technology to keep from falling further behind in the global economy, a new report has found.
The Human Development Report 2001 commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
argues that information and communications technology can help overcome barriers of social, economic and
geographic isolation. While Silicon Valley and similar tech centers in Europe and Japan are now legendary, world-
class hubs also have emerged in Campinas and Sao Paulo, Brazil, Bangalore, India, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
Gauteng, South Africa and El Ghazala, Tunisia.
The 264-page study highlights new options for poor people using the Internet for political empowerment, such as
with the global e-mail campaign in January that helped topple Philippine President Joseph Estrada. Other
examples include distance learning projects in Thailand and Turkey and job growth created by technology exports
from Costa Rica, India and South Africa. "Often those with the least have the least to fear from the future, and
certainly their govts are less encumbered by special interests committed to yesterday's technology," the
report said of opportunities developing countries now have. But the report also concludes that most important
technology advances bypass the world's poor because of lack of market demand, inadequate public funding and
focus of innovative research efforts on high-income consumers.
technology offers hope to fast-moving countries
Potential leaders range from Portugal and Spain to Greece in southern Europe, eastern European nations such as
Poland and the Czech Republic, Asian tiger economies such as Hong Kong and Malaysia and Mexico, Costa Rica
and Chile in Latin America. Dynamic adopters include countries with little prior technology investment who are
seeking to adopt the latest advances in technology to potentially catapult themselves to the front of the pack in the
next generation of technologies.
While each school must make do with only 40 hours of access a month, the project has helped thrust Thai schools
into the global information exchange. In India, where only 15 million people, or less than 2% of the population
have access to telephones, a low-cost wireless system is under development that could cut telecommunications
costs by one-half to two-thirds, making such systems affordable to up to 200 million Indians.
marginalization faces countries that fail to keep pace
Bayer CropScience will make us the market leader
… successful completion of negotiations to acquire Aventis CropScience marks the beginning of a
new era in crop protection at Bayer. … high degree of industry consolidation over the past few years has led
to considerable shifts in the size & ranking of the main competitors. Clear market leader is Syngenta with
sales of approximately €7.4 billion. This overview showing figures for the year 2000 also includes the seeds
business. Bayer ranks seventh, with sales of almost €2.5 billion. This makes Syngenta almost 3x the size of
Bayer, and the next 2 largest competitors, Monsanto & DuPont, are 2x as big as Bayer Crop Protection.
… almost 50% of the global market is accounted for by herbicides used in the world's major crops, which
include cereals, corn, cotton and soybeans. Our weakness in herbicides, which, in spite of intensive efforts in
recent years, we have not succeeded in compensating through organic growth, has left us in a weak position in the
NAFTA countries & Latin America, for example. So far we have also not had access to the commercial
exploitation of biotechnology. And finally, the gap between Bayer & the market leader, means that we are at a
considerable disadvantage in terms of both costs & competitiveness. |
4.1.02 Maggie Fox Reuters "Modern, genetically selected White Leghorn hen lays up to 330 eggs per year, each containing about 6.5g of protein," per report published in April Nature Biotechnology journal . Researchers led by AviGenics' Alex Harvey used a virus [ Readily mutating organism hence prone to turn rogue ] to genetically engineer chickens that produced "marker" enzyme beta-lactamase in their eggs. The enzyme is not used in medicine but is easy to detect for laboratory tests. Wrinkles still need to be ironed out. Method used on 546 incubating eggs hatched 126 chicks hatched. Only 10% of these carried the new gene. They mated the birds that had highest levels of beta-lactamase gene in their own egg & sperm cells and produced birds that carried working copies of the gene. Several generations of these chickens laid eggs that carried the gene, Harvey's team reported. |
Chickens mature faster and they reproduce prolifically when artificial insemination is used, they said.
It takes about 7.5 months for a chicken to grow from egg to an adult herself laying eggs, per AviGenix corporate
development vp Anthony Cruz . "Unlike cows, goats and sheep, chickens have been raised for many generations
as specific pathogen-free animals in biosecure facilities," the researchers wrote. For example, eggs are used to
make vaccines, which must be pure. Human drugs that might be made using eggs include serum albumin used to
treat blood loss, and monoclonal antibodies used to treat a range of diseases including cancer, the researchers
said. "We are actually working with several different kinds of proteins," Cruz said. "We are working with 2 large
biopharmaceutical companies but we are sworn to secrecy."
[ How secret is the amount of public funds used to devise this
proprietary corporate patent ? ]
|
Written every few years, so-called farm bills are omnibus legislation, tying together farm subsidy, public nutrition,
research, conservation and export promotion programs. The last one, dubbed "Freedom to Farm," deregulated
farming in 1996 and capped farm subsidies at a few billion dollars a year. This time, there are calls to double or
triple outlays on conservation and to write a formula -- potentially costing billions of dollars -- to automatically send
more money to farmers when prices slump. Congress has enacted nearly $25 billion in bailouts to offset low prices
since October 1998.
House to tackle bill soon "We expect to bring that bill to the floor before the end of the year and hope to have it in place for next year's crop," Agriculture Committee chairman Larry Combest told the House shortly before its Independence Day recess. The Texas Republican intends to circulate an outline of items for inclusion in the farm bill early this week. It would be immediately followed by hearings to gather reaction from farm groups. The committee would write its bill in late July, finishing before Congress begins its month-long summer recess on Aug. 3. When Congress reconvenes in early September, Combest will gauge the pace in the Senate with the hope the House could pass the bill "in time for the bill to go to the president before Congress leaves for the year," a committee staff worker said. "That's his goal. He's been told repeatedly all his goals are ambitious." Leaders have set Oct. 5 as the target for ending this year's congressional session. There was skepticism the target could be met since many must-do bills needed action. Senators initially planned to assemble their farm bill next year, so it would first apply to 2003 crops. Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, newly installed as Agriculture Committee chairman, has declined to set a timeline for action. But he says bill-drafting might begin as early as this fall. "The farm bill should be completed this year -- because the funding may not be available next year," Vermont Democrat Sen. Pat Leahy said during the first hearing called by Harkin, an overview of farm bill issues 10 days ago. A spokesman for Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the Republican leader on the Senate committee, said Harkin and Lugar "are in general agreement. They aren't going to rush this." "We'd all like to have it done before election year, but I'm not sure there's time," said Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican.
green payments in next bill?
A major issue in the farm bill debate may be how to divide money between traditional crop subsidies and
conservation programs that have become popular since the 1985 farm law. Requests for more than $260 billion in
new spending have been handed to the House Agriculture Committee, says its Democratic leader, Charles
Stenholm of Texas. "We want the debate to get going," said Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau
Federation. The group does not "want to run a risk of losing those budgeted dollars," he said, but not if it meant a
poorly thought-out bill. Dave Orden, co-author of book analyzing the 1996 law, said there may be a financial
downside to locking up funding now. "Farm bills tend to get more generous" the longer Congress works on them,
he said. While the pace in Congress was picking up, "My betting is still on next spring or later" for sending the bill to
the president for enactment.
EPA widens rules for U.S. farms
Wash.D.C. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday issued what it described as important new
rules preventing manure from livestock operations from polluting waterways. But a top California regulator
dismissed the federal effort as a weak attempt to address the growing problem of farm animal waste.
In California, the rules will be overseen by a network of regional water quality control boards, which are
understaffed as is. In the Central Valley, where 1,700 of the state's 2,200 dairy farms are located, there are only a
few inspectors checking farms, in part because of state budget cuts. Under Monday's rules, these inspectors now
will have to prepare permits & review paperwork for an additional 1,000 dairies.
California waste regulations already prohibit discharge from large animal operations. "All this means is that instead
of staff out looking for violators they will be in the office drafting permits," he said. "It doesn't help us. … We
don't need permits to take enforcement action."
"Animal waste generated by concentrated feeding operations poses a real threat to the health of American waters,"
said EPA Administrator Christie Whitman. "We took a major step toward making America's waters cleaner and
purer by placing new controls on manure & animal waste water generated by large livestock operations."
Although tougher than current law, the new rules are significantly scaled back from a Clinton administration
proposal to tackle the same problem. The Clinton rules would have forced big corporate food producers to
share responsibility for the cleanup with the farmers who supply them.
Dairy industry officials had hoped to convince the EPA that they could regulate themselves using a self-certification
process. But the EPA decided to require the largest U.S. farms to get disposal permits. EPA officials & state
regulators acknowledge that catching violators still will be difficult because they would have to be caught in the act
of pumping manure into public waterways or ignoring overflowing "lagoons" on their farms.
Funds from the federal farm bill will be available to help producers pay for the cost of meeting the new regulations.
Congress increased funding to help farmers reduce pollution from their operations. "There is going to be a lot more
investment on dairy farms in terms of time & monitoring and paperwork," said San Bernardino County Milk
Producers Council chief of staff Nathan DeBoom.
Environmentalists bridled at the notion of taxpayers covering the costs. "Why should taxpayers have to pay for the
mess" the producers make, said Sierra Club's Factory Farm Campaign dir. Ken Midkiff. The administration
estimated that the initiative would cost $335 million a year. It did not estimate how much would be covered by
federal funds.
9.30.02 ABC News
3rd generation grain farmer Mitchell McLane in Ware built 2 prawn ponds in his soybean field this spring. As
dozens of curious onlookers gathered for his first harvest, he paced nervously. "I told the guys if there's nothing in
there, I'm going to hide in the cornfield until everyone's gone," he said.
He didn't have much to worry about. Eager neighbors pitched in to help with the harvest, which netted thousands of
giants prawns. Scientists have found that freshwater prawns, once raised only in the Deep South, can actually
flourish in parts of the Midwest where the weather stays warm enough for the prawn's 100-day growing
season.
About 400 lbs of prawns can grow in a half-acre pond. They sell for $8/lb, 10x times more than a farmer could
make planting a half-acre of corn. Now, a few dozen farmers in five states are raising shellfish, more than 1,000
miles from the nearest ocean. "All you need is water and dirt to build the pond then put the shrimp in it," said
Grover Webb of Simpson, Ill. Twice a day, Webb hops on his all-terrain vehicle and, using a leaf blower, feeds
grain pellets to his "new crop."
The experimental harvest is raising hopes that the underwater crop could keep some family farms afloat. Farmers
believe there is plenty of room for growth. America imports $2 billion worth of shrimp a year, reason enough for the
newest producers to expand their market. "Nationwide, it's an unlimited market," said Bob Boyd, another farmer.
"We can go as far as there are people that eat shrimp."
9.26.02 Toby Sterling AP Modern farming introduced after WWII began to kill off Dutch storks as farmers drained the marshy grasslands where they thrived and sprayed pesticides that poisoned the insects they ate. "Modern farming changed the Dutch landscape, and that was devastating for the birds," said Hans Peeters.
Although it remained common in other parts of Europe, the White Stork, regarded as symbol of good luck and
mythical deliverer of human babies,was reduced to just 10 pairs of birds in the Netherlands in the mid-1970s.
In 1975, the society and a number of bird-loving volunteers launched an artificial stork breeding program. As the
human-bred birds were reintroduced into the wild, Dutch govt's decision to restrict the use of certain pesticides and
partially restore the birds' habitat spurred the comeback of the White Stork.
Storks became associated with Holland during the 1800s with the publication of the children's book "Hans Brinker,"
by American author Mary Mapes Dodge. A stork in that story roosts on the Brinker family's chimney and is said to
bring good luck. According to Peeters, the bird really does like to roost on chimneys. |
Pacific Beach 8am to noon (Promenade Mall) Mission Blvd. between Reed & Pacific Beach Blvd.
SUNDAY
Hillcrest 9am-1pm
Solana Beach CFM 2-5pm
Carmel Valley 9am-1pm. summer 10am to 2pm
4.5.02 AP
An idea is planted: firm uses tobacco to grow cancer drugs
Large Scale Biology has treated 16 patients. Signs show promise
Vacaville CA Tobacco seedlings reaching toward the bright sunlamps in an indoor greenhouse look
fairly ordinary. But the young plants growing in this rural nursery aren't destined to become cigarettes. Inside their
broad, green leaves, the plants are pumping out bits of cancer tumor as they spread upward in the 80-degree
warmth. In a laboratory nearby, the tumor fragments will be wrung from harvested plants and used to make an
experimental biotechnology vaccine.
Lymphoma spreads slowly, so it will be years before anyone can be sure that the vaccine works. But the early
signs are encouraging. At a medical conference in Philadelphia last week, Large Scale Biology reported that 10 of
the 16 patients made tumor-fighting white blood cells after getting the shots, a large percentage for a cancer
drug.
All current biotechnology drugs approved by the FDA are made by gene-splicing bits of DNA with live cells, usually
hamster cells, and turning them into mini-cell factories to produce a specific drug.
Next month, Large Scale hopes to persuade the FDA to approve a more elaborate human test of its lymphoma
vaccine on 280 patients. Even if the co. gets that go-ahead, it must raise an additional $50 million to fund the trials,
which could take 4 years to complete.
Large Scale founder is 48-year-old Robert L. Erwin, earnest, rail-thin biologist with a very personal grudge against
cancer: It killed his first wife in 1994 after agonizing surgeries, radiation treatments and chemotherapy. From the
window of his Vacaville office at Large Scale, Erwin can see the sprawling $500-million factory where S. San
Francisco-based Genentech Inc., world's second-largest biotech co., makes its breast cancer drug Herceptin. The
drug combats breast cancer cells and might have saved his wife, Marti, but she died while it was in
development.
Loss of his wife drove Erwin to find a way to slash development times for cancer medications to weeks instead of
years. Large Scale says it now can develop a vaccine for a patient in 6 weeks and hopes to eventually produce
enough custom vaccine to treat 10,000 patients each year. "One thing I've learned," said Erwin, "is that speed is
important for some patients."
Typical is a melanoma vaccine being tested by CancerVax Corp. of Carlsbad, CA that contains 30 different tumor
fragments commonly present in skin cancer. Many scientists believe that lymphoma requires a personalized
approach because it has substances on the surfaces of its deadly cells that vary from patient to patient.
Levy & his students have treated hundreds of patients in his Stanford laboratory over the last 2 decades.
Former student Larry W. Kwak of the National Cancer Institute is now a rival and is preparing to test a personalized
vaccine on hundreds of patients in a clinical trial that could lead to FDA approval.
Insurers may be willing to cover vaccines if the shots allow patients to avoid years of expensive medical care, Kwak
said. Large Scale believes that it can shave costs by producing drugs in tobacco, an innovative counterpoint to
Kwak's complicated but time-honored technique that involves fusing a patient's tumor cell with a mouse antibody.
The co. slips genes from a patient's tumor into copies of the virus, a virulent bug that is a scourge to farmers. As
the altered virus infects plants, it produces tiny tumor fragments that build up in the tobacco leaves & stems. 6
weeks later, the plants are harvested, washed and spun in a centrifuge to extract plant juices.
In the co.'s greenhouse, young plants with yellowing, mottled leaves grow in neat rows on long, wooden
tables. The plants are a cousin of the tobacco strain grown for commercial use. A team of horticulturists tends the
plants, which are grown from seeds no larger than a pinhead in temperatures that never dip below 72 degrees.
Monterrey County school administrator Catherine Gallegos became one of the first patients to receive Large
Scale's vaccine in May 2001. By then, a harsh chemotherapy regimen had forced her neck & abdominal
tumors into remission, but doctors warned that the cancer probably would recur. Gallegos' shots ended a year ago,
but her immune system continues to make anti-tumor white blood cells.
Erwin didn't have cancer vaccines in mind in 1986 when he founded the predecessor of Large Scale. But his first
wife's illness sharpened his business focus. After the standard artillery of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation
failed Marti, Erwin became convinced that a different approach was needed.
Erwin acknowledges that it can be difficult to balance his zeal with his responsibilities as Large Scale's CEO. His
co. recently was ready to provide the cancer vaccine to an additional patient, who didn't technically qualify for the
drug trial, but she did not survive a bone marrow transplant. However, Large Scale's financial condition doesn't
allow it to routinely offer treatment to others. In the next few months, if the firm does not find a partner to fund another round of cancer vaccine trials, the vaccine could be set aside. But it probably wouldn't sit on a shelf permanently. The co. hopes it can license its technology or possibly try to develop it again later. "It isn't just about making money," Erwin said. "We're giving patients something that really matters."
3.22.02 Straits Times
In the experiment, small chunks of muscle between 5 cm & 10 cm long were cut from large goldfish and
washed in alcohol. They were then placed in a vat of foetal bovine serum, extracted from the blood of cattle
foetuses, which is commonly used as a medium for growing cell cultures. After a week in the vat, the fish slices had
grown by 14%. Dr Benjaminson then removed them & fried them before presenting them to his
colleagues. 'We wanted to make sure it'd pass for something you could buy in the supermarket,' he said.
'They said it looked like fish and smelled like fish, though they didn't go as far as tasting it.' They have been banned
from tasting it until they receive approval from the US Food & Drug Admin. Prof. Colin Pillinger, who is leading the British Beagle II Mars lander project, told The Times: 'Fish mass grown in a nutrient broth sounds as unappealing as some of the other food astronauts take up with them, but these things have got to be explored.' He also questioned whether the equipt needed to produce fish in this manner would be practical on board a spacecraft. 'I think it would be more appropriate when you have got a base set up on a planet. The sort of equipt you need for biotechnology is fragile,' he said. 'Who knows what would happen to it during the launch & the flight?' |
"Environmentalists talk doom & gloom. This is our way of doing something about it. It may not be a lot, but at
least we are doing something," project head Roger Smith told Reuters. "This project is as much about people as
about plants. This is the start of something, not the end. What we have here will be a vital resource for the world."
The goal of the $127.3 million project is to collect 10% 24,000 species, of the world's seed-bearing plants by
2010.
Half of the seeds of each species will be stored in the Millennium Seed Bank's vaults, with the other half remaining
with the responsible institution in the country of origin. The seed bank, which makes its facilities available to
scientists from the co-operating partner countries, carries out extensive testing to determine the optimum conditions
for planting & germination.
This data is shared freely with the partner country, of which there are currently 16, to help it set up re-establishment
programs in places where the plants have been over-exploited for food, fuel or medicines. "We are growing the
seed collection and growing the information collection. We are deepening the knowledge about each species," said
Americas co-ordinator Michael Way. "We are building information bridges."
But while countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia & Canada have willingly signed up, others such as India &
Brazil have either been reluctant or refused point blank. "Brazil won't have anything to do with us. They have
refused to let us have any seed," Smith said. "They have a thing about not letting seeds out of their hands. "India
has also been difficult. They have black pepper. It is a very important crop to them and they are scared of losing it.
But we are not talking about black pepper. We are talking about bio-diversity."
There is also a certain amount of historical baggage to be shed on route. Britain has a colonial legacy to confront.
Kew Gardens, under whose name the Millennium Seed Bank runs, was no stranger to Victorian era bio-plundering.
"You have to confront it. You need infinite patience. Sometimes in meetings I have to try to prove I am not a bio-
pirate," Smith said.
The team, which started with just 14 people at Kew's seed conservation dept and has now grown to more than 40,
sends out teams to partner countries to train people in the delicate art of seed collecting. Some are tiny, others well
protected. It also acts as a catalyst, bringing together scientists from the different countries and even institutions
within the same country, many of whom have never communicated with each other.
"We are capacity building. We are acting before it is too late. This is not a big thing, but we have to start
somewhere," said Moctar Sacande from Burkina Faso, and head of the Seed Bank's sub-Saharan tree seed
collecting Darwin Project.
Scientists estimate that within half a century a combination of climate change & environmental pressure will
put quarter of the world's plant species on the condemned list. The consequent loss of animal life and to humans is
incalculable but certainly catastrophic. But already the Millennium Seed Bank is running out of money and will have
to hit the fund raising trail next year.
U.S. firms would reduce greenhouse gases voluntarily 2.15.02 Scott Lindlaw AP
WASHINGTON President Bush, offering his alternative to the Kyoto global warming pact, wants U.S.
businesses to voluntarily track & reduce their output of
greenhouse gases. He would offer an array of tax incentives for corporations, farms and individuals to do so. Bush
today was to announce his alternative to the Kyoto treaty, which he abandoned last year. The pact required about
40 industrialized nations to cut to fixed levels the carbon dioxide emissions that are believed to cause global
warming. One incentive to join would be a guarantee that businesses could use the credits in any future system. In addition, Bush said the govt in 2012 will re-evaluate its success in cutting greenhouse gases and consider a possibly tougher system. Bush believes that maintaining and improving about 80 other programs can also help slow greenhouse gas emissions. Through tax incentives, he would urge farmers to plant carbon dioxide-absorbing trees, consumers to buy hybrid and fuel-cell cars and solar hot water heaters and industry to capture methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from landfills.
Environmentalists claim Bush anti-pollution initiatives weaken existing measures 2.15.02 Erin Kelly Gannett News Service Bush's initiatives were attacked by environmental groups and key senators, who charged that the administration is seeking to weaken existing clean air laws and avoid mandatory regulations that would slow global warming. "The global warming and power plant air pollution policies announced today can only be viewed as a massive rollback of our clean air protections, and a political payoff for the administration's friends in the coal and power industries," said Rebecca Stanfield, an attorney with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Bush's "Clear Skies Initiative" seeks to reduce power plant plant emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and
mercury by giving utility companies credits for reducing pollution. The credits could then be sold to other companies
that find it too costly to cut emissions. The overall result, Bush said, would be a nationwide reduction of 67 percent
to 73 percent in the three pollutants over the next 16 years. "Instead of the govt telling utilities where and
how to cut pollution, we will tell them when and how much to cut," Bush said. "We will give them a firm deadline
and let them find the most innovative ways to meet it."
Avalanche in Russia & other disasters show global warming affects areas much closer to home. 9.25.02 Usha Lee McFarling L.A.Times Changes often have been difficult to perceive, because they have taken place over such a long period of time and because their effects are not always clear; some regions have become colder, even as others warm. But scientists say there is little question that a world of ice is in flux.
Glacier National Park in Montana has lost more than 100 glaciers during the last century, vanished into a
slow drip of runoff. In Venezuela, only 2 glaciers remain where there were six 30 years ago. In Tanzania's Mt.
Kilimanjaro, about 75% of the glacier has retreated, leaving some to suggest that Ernest Hemingway's famous
"Snows of Kilimanjaro" will exist only in literature in about a decade.
Human toll has been largely overlooked in the debate over global warming. Much of the attention paid to climate
change has focused on the Arctic & Antarctic, regions vulnerable to temperature change but sparsely
populated. The Russian disaster & growing changes throughout the world's mountainous regions show
warming of the world's climate affects densely populated temperate regions. The last decade brought some of the
most rapid change of the century; 7 of the last 10 years were the warmest on record.
The collapse of the Maili glacier on the northern edge of the Caucasus Mountains ripped out trees and tossed
massive trucks as if they were toys. It left a 20-mile path of rocky debris, blackened ice and devastation. A full
scientific assessment of what caused the disaster will take weeks or months, but Russian officials said this week
that the collapse of the glacier seemed at least partly linked to climate change. It is a tricky issue because the
collapse of glaciers can depend on a variety of near-term factors, incl temperature, rain, humidity, slope and even
the reflectivity of the glacial ice.
U.S. experts said the Maili glacier incident followed glacier collapse pattern in other areas affected by rising
temperatures. "Glaciers tend to [collapse] like that when they're receding, and glaciers are receding all over the
world," said Glacier National Park (Montana) ecologist Dan Fagre, expert on the ramifications of glacier loss. Huge
chunks breaking from a glacier is the sometimes spectacular result of a glacier that is gradually retreating back into
the mountains. Glaciers grow only when the amount of snow they receive is greater than what they lose by melting.
When there is less snowfall, higher temperatures or both, the "snouts" of glaciers retreat. Some of the ice breaks
off in deadly chunks; some of it drips away as meltwater.
The Dig Tsho glacial outburst in Nepal in 1985 destroyed a hydroelectric plant, wiped out 14 bridges and drowned
dozens of villagers. The danger is so obvious, Graumlich said, that some Himalayan villages have installed
primitive warning systems, basically a system of horns, in attempts to save lives during the next flood. As glacial melting proceeds, some farmers are enjoying the unexpected benefit of plenty of water. Farmers around Mt. Kilimanjaro have found the water supply so bountiful that they can grow far more than they need to survive. They are even growing foreign, water-thirsty crops such as tulips for export to Europe, Graumlich said. But scientists point out that eventually the bounty of water will shrink as the ice disappears. "More water now means more agriculture," Graumlich said. "But what will they do when there is much less water later on?" |
Yellowstone workers issued respirators for snowmobile pollution
WASHINGTON At the western gate into Yellowstone National Park, snowmobiles back up by the
dozens, sometimes hundreds, to zoom around the park. The gasoline-fired engines belch so much exhaust into the
mountain air that on still, windless days a blue haze settles over the gate. For years, park workers have complained
of sore throats, runny noses and burning eyes. To help, fresh air is pumped into their enclosed kiosks. Now the
National Park Service is providing respirators for workers. The first six sets arrived Thursday. Jon Catton, a
spokesman for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a nonprofit group that favors restricting snowmobile access, said
he is horrified by the image of park workers wearing respirators. "It's sad. Rangers forced to stay indoors, behind
glass? Or to wear respirators, because the air in our first national park is not healthy to breathe? That's just
profoundly sad," Catton said.
Yellowstone is one of the nation's signature parks, featuring abundant wildlife, geysers, lakes and streams. Its 2.2
million acres stretch from the rocky northwest corner of Wyoming into southern Montana and eastern Idaho.
Concerns about pollution prompted the National Park Service to issue a rule in 2000 banning snowmobiles from the
park, phasing them out over several years. The ban included snowmobiles in Grand Teton National Park, south of
Yellowstone, and the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Highway, an 82-mile road linking the parks. But last year,
the Bush administration put a hold on the ban to settle a lawsuit brought by snowmobile manufacturers and the
state of Wyoming, which wants to protect tourism dollars. The Bush administration agreed to conduct a second
environmental study of the impact snowmobiles have on wildlife, air quality and noise.
Options in a draft proposal range from banning snowmobiles altogether to capping the number that could enter the
park each day, instituting tighter emission controls for them. The final version of the plan is expected next week.
The Yellowstone snowmobile season runs from December to mid-March. Presidents Day weekend is one of the
busiest of the season, drawing 900 to 1,200 snowmobilers a day to the western gate, one of three gates through
which snowmobilers may ride. If the wind is up, the exhaust won't be a problem this weekend, ranger Robert
Seibert said. But if the air is cold and still, gate workers will don the respirators, he said. "This is just not a
reasonable set of working conditions that our employees should be facing without some protection," Seibert said. "I
don't think anybody's looking forward to this."
The Park Service has tried to reduce air pollution at the western gate this season by selling snowmobile passes in
West Yellowstone, Mont., the closest town to a park entrance. The idea is that if riders already have passes they
won't have to line up at the gate, idling their engines. It has helped a little. "Machines are moving through the gates
more smoothly than in the past, but even with that employees are experiencing these symptoms," said National
Park Service spokeswoman Marsha Karle in Yellowstone.
Some see nature as a war victim Since 9.11.01, Wh.
WASHINGTON With the nation's attention squarely on war & terrorism, the Bush administration
has ruled this fall in business' favor on a range of long-disputed environmental matters. It allowed oil drilling in the
red rocks of Utah and canyons of Colorado. It permitted an open-pit gold mine on a California desert site that the
Quechan tribe considers sacred. It signaled to developers across the country that they can, in many cases,
build on wetlands without creating ones to replace them. While other recent stands by the administration have
pleased environmentalists, some worry that they have lost ground against President Bush's effort to make
environmental policy more business-friendly.
Environmentalists fear that the Clean Air Act may be hurt most by Bush's policies. The administration is expected to
give major polluters a variety of exemptions from a costly Clean Air Act requirement that plants install updated
pollution controls when they renovate. Administration officials "tell us that we will like it," said U.S. Chamber of
Commerce vp Wm Kovacs. The White House defends its record, which includes the Environmental Protection
Agency's decision in late Oct. to embrace a Clinton administration plan to reduce the permissible level of arsenic in
drinking water by 80%. And last week, the Bush administration told regulators that, for the time being, they
could not consider statistics from human tests when setting exposure levels for pesticides. "The president is moving
forward on many initiatives that demonstrate his commitment to protecting the environment," White House
spokesman Scott McClellan said. "There are some opponents of his who have tended to pollute his record of
working to safeguard our environment and protect public health."
Many of the recent decisions were consistent with previously announced administration priorities, such as oil drilling
on sensitive public lands. "The things that have been happening are very consistent with the signals we got before
9.11.01" said League of Conservation Voters president Deb Callahan. "There hasn't been a change. There has just
been a continued progression of those things the administration wanted to get done." Callahan said she believes
the administration will pay a price in the long run. "These issues were on the top of the agenda before 9.11.01; it
means the public cares about them, so they can be on top of the agenda again as we roll into the elections."
The Interior Dept's Bureau of Land Management this fall sold multiple leases for oil development at two of the 16
places that environmental groups had been highlighting as too scenic & wild to drill. Two of the leases were in
Utah's Lockhart Basin, an area of red rock formations just outside Canyonlands National Park. Some members of
Congress have introduced legislation to protect this region from development, and conservation groups have been
negotiating with the Interior Dept to declare it a wilderness area. Environmentalists are suing the administration
over these and 10 other leases in southern Utah, arguing that the agency failed to fulfill its legal responsibility to
assess the environmental effect of developing the areas before it granted the leases. "We are talking about leases
in lands that are among the wildest, most scenic or most remote in southern Utah, in an area internationally known
for wildness, remoteness and beauty," said Natural Resources Defense Council project dir. Johanna Wald, which is
a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
The administration also recently sold leases in Colorado's Vermillion Basin, a desert canyon region that
conservation groups have long been trying to save from oil development. The BLM ruled that vehicles could be
driven through national monuments on any track, wash or trail where any vehicle has been before. The Clinton
administration had restricted them to designated roads and trails. And the Forest Service last week removed
hurdles erected by the Clinton administration to road building in large backwoods areas of the national forests.
Many of these areas, which are not included on the official inventory of roadless areas, provide key habitat for
wildlife. The administration also backed away from a commitment by the first President Bush not to allow wetland
acreage to decline. An Oct. 31 letter from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to its 31 district offices says that
developers may use dry land to partially offset wetland losses if they can show that the dry land helps protect
remaining wetlands. For instance, a developer who builds a buffer of trees near a wetland can count that as making
up for filling in a wetland elsewhere. "Even though we've never achieved the goal of no net loss of wetlands, the
rate of loss has dropped dramatically," said environmental law group Earthjustice legislative council Joan Mulhern.
"This [letter] will speed up the process of loss again."
Congressional aides, state regulators and environmentalists say that the administration's bluntest blow to the
environment will be the planned changes to the "new source review" provision of the Clean Air Act. Although the
policy has yet to be announced, EPA officials have described it to interested parties. "The kinds of changes that the
administration is seeking are ones that could have a significantly detrimental impact on the environment," said
State & Territorial Air Pollution Pgm Administrators and Assn. of Local Air Pollution Control Officials exec. dir.
S. William Becker. The administration intends to be generous in granting waivers to requirements that new pollution
control devices acco. plant renovations, according to those who have been briefed by administration
officials. "It's going to mean terrible news for the breathing public," said nonprofit group Clean Air Trust exec. dir.
Frank O'Donnell. "I think 9.11.01 has strengthened the forces at the White House & Energy Dept and the
business groups that are anti-clean air." Industry leaders complain that the new source review provision is bureaucratic & costly, and discourages them from renovating plants to make them more efficient. Meanwhile, the administration has delayed introducing its proposal to reduce pollution from power plants, one of the president's few environmental campaign promises. EPA officials had told the Senate it would produce a plan in Aug. but now say that the policy has been delayed because of the White House preoccupation with the war on terrorism. |
Clear plastic baby bottles and children’s training cups are likely to be made of polycarbonate. If in doubt, contact the manufacturer to ask if the bottle or cup is polycarbonate.
Some glass baby bottles are available, though many daycare centers won’t allow them for fear of breakage. A less fragile alternative is polyethylene plastic (#1, #2, #4 recycling symbols) or polypropylene (#5). Nonpolycarbonate plastic bottles and cups are usually colored, not clear.
Don’t expose polycarbonate containers to heat or harsh detergents. Scratched or worn polycarbonate leaches more BPA, so keep plastic containers away from the microwave and dishwasher and don’t clean stained water bottles or other containers with bleach. Whether enough BPA leaches out of dental sealants to create a health hazard is unresolved. You may want to avoid dental sealants for children’s baby teeth. |
Protecting yourself from unsafe plastics
Feb/Mar 2004 Sharon Levy Natl Wildlife Fed.
In 1988, Patricia Hunt was conducting a routine experiment in her lab at Case Western Reserve University when she ran into an unforeseen complication. The geneticist noticed 40% of the eggs of mice in her control group, the group she was not experimenting on, had defects in chromosome behavior, the kind of defects that can lead to genetic errors like Down syndrome in humans, and that normally occur in just 1 to 2 percent of all mouse eggs.
Ultimately, Hunt and her colleagues traced the problem back to the plastic cages the mice inhabited. Just before the spike in egg abnormalities, they discovered, a lab technician had accidentally washed the cages with a harsh detergent that caused the plastic to begin breaking down.
Follow-up experiments confirmed that Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical building block of the plastic, had powerfully affected the mice. After replacing the cages, the scientists reproduced the jump in abnormal eggs by keeping mice in deliberately damaged new cages and by giving mice in intact cages low doses of BPA by mouth.
4 years later, it’s still easy to walk into a store and buy a plastic baby bottle or food container made with BPA, just one of a long list of industrial chemicals that can mimic the effects of sex hormones. Over the past decade, evidence has been building that a variety of pesticides, plastics and solvents containing these chemicals can alter normal development in both wild and domestic animals.
Examples of such endocrine-disrupting effects include male frogs that developed both male and female reproductive organs after exposure to the pesticide atrazine and alligators that grew up with stunted penises or had low hatching success after a DDT spill in Lake Apopka FL.
Bedrock of a multibillion-dollar industry, BPA forms the polycarbonate plastic used in some toddlers’ sippy cups, food can linings, dental sealants and sports water bottles as well as food containers and baby bottles. Recent studies show that BPA leaches from intact polycarbonate products, though not as fast as it does from worn or damaged plastic.
Concerns about BPA ignited in 1997, when reproductive biologist Fred vom Saal of the University of Missouri–Columbia (UMC) discovered that pregnant mice exposed to low doses of the chemical gave birth to male pups that developed enlarged prostates.
Since then, more than 40 studies have reported low-dose effects of BPA on creatures ranging from insect larvae to fish, frogs, snails, mice and rats. These include accelerated puberty and growth of breast tissue, decreased sperm counts and changes in gender and behavior.
“Evidence for low-dose effects of BPA on wildlife is extremely strong,” says Wade Welshons of UMC’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He adds that recent studies in pregnant women and in umbilical cord blood from newborns show that BPA is present in the human population at levels higher than those found to cause developmental changes in animals.
A few large-scale studies, largely funded by the plastics industry, have failed to reproduce the effects found by vom Saal and his colleagues. Welshons, however, cites technical problems with the research that could account for this failure, including the use of feed contaminated with estrogens that would have obscured the effects of BPA.
Findings of low-dose effects from BPA are controversial not just because they could damage the plastics industry, but because they also call into doubt long-held beliefs about measuring risk from any kind of chemical exposure. Generations of toxicologists have been taught that “the dose makes the poison”, that the impact of a chemical will be strongest at high doses and will decrease in proportion to a decrease in dose. Below some threshold level, there should be no biological effects at all.
But according to Welshons, such assumptions are wrong when it comes to chemicals that imitate hormones, because the endocrine system is designed to respond to small, subtle changes in hormone concentrations, far below doses used in traditional toxicity testing.
Industry scientists note that researchers still have not proven that BPA affects humans, and they question whether the results of mouse studies are relevant. Welshons and Hunt find that argument odd, given that BPA was developed in the 1930s as a synthetic estrogen for people. After a rival drug, diethylstilbestrol (DES), proved to be a stronger estrogen mimic, BPA was shelved until an inventive chemist realized it could be used to form a plastic polymer.
“Nobody should be surprised,” says Hunt, “that a chemical designed as a synthetic estrogen can disrupt the endocrine system.”
When DES given to pregnant women from 1938 to 1971 caused cancer and other serious health effects in their children, lab studies of the drug showed parallel effects in mice.
“The mouse has proven to be a tremendously accurate model for the human effects of DES, the best-studied endocrine disrupter,” says Welshons.
Indeed, scientists have found that human eggs are even more prone to genetic errors than are mouse eggs.
Hunt is now studying male mice that were exposed to BPA in the womb or soon after birth. Her preliminary results suggest that the chemical causes genetic mistakes in the formation of sperm, just as it does in eggs.
“If I could accomplish one thing from these studies,” concludes Hunt, “I’d like to get all those baby bottles and sippy cups made of polycarbonate off the market.”
|
GAO: Bush not protecting chemical plants 3.18.03 John Heilprin AP Wash.D.C. Bush administration & lawmakers have not followed through on their own concerns that terrorists could turn the nation's chemical plants into weapons of mass destruction, congressional auditors said Tuesday. Congress & the administration concluded after 9.11.01 that the plants were vulnerable, and the CIA warned a year ago of the potential for an al-Qaida attack on U.S. chemical facilities. 9 months ago, administration officials agreed chemical facilities should be required to assess terrorist risks. EPA planned to require tighter security & safer chemical processes, but chemical manufacturers threatened lawsuits challenging the agency's authority. EPA instead decided to rely on voluntary measures promised by the industry while seeking legislation to enforce new rules.
Officials in the new Homeland Security Dept agreed new laws were needed. The administration, however,
has submitted no proposed legislation and Congress has done virtually nothing to address the problem, the
General Accounting Office said. "Despite all efforts since 9.11.01 to protect the nation from terrorism, the extent of
security preparedness at U.S. chemical facilities is unknown," the GAO auditors said in a report requested by the
House Energy & Commerce Committee.
About a fifth of the nation's 15,000 chemical facilities are close enough to population centers that a terrorist attack
could endanger at least 10,000 lives, according to the report. "It is imperative that we act before terrorists do," said
committee's chair Rep. Billy Tauzin R-LA. Committee's sr minority Rep. John Dingell D-MI called it an outrage
federal govt doesn't know how vulnerable chemical plants are to terrorist attack.
Most progress made toward a federal plan for ensuring chemical safety came from the Senate Environment
& Public Works Committee 8 months ago. Under former chair Sen. James Jeffords I-VT, the committee
unanimously approved a bill to require that chemical plants that pose the biggest threats assess their security
vulnerabilities and develop plans to increase safeguards, incl safer chemical processes.
Homeland Security Dept exec. sec. Ken Hill said in response to the GAO report that "voluntary efforts alone will not
be sufficient to assure an appropriate level of security across the chemical industry." He said the Dept "looks
forward to working with Congress to advance this important homeland security initiative."
Antiradiation pills are urged for children
Chicago Households, schools and child-care centers near nuclear power plants should keep
potassium iodide pills on hand to protect children from thyroid cancer in the event of a release of radiation, the
American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended.
Potassium iodide, known by its chemical abbreviation, KI, can block the body's absorption of harmful radiation. FDA recommended that it be taken as soon as a radioactive cloud containing iodine is close by. The pills may still have some protective effect even 3 to 4 hours after exposure. |
Seniors benefit most. Watchdog group says grants weren't competitive, suspects favoritism 2.15.02 Larry Margasak & John Solomon AP
In a scathing report last May, the inspector general said the EPA was unable to justify its award of more than $1 billion in noncompetitive grants in the 2000 fiscal year alone. The figure included awards to nonprofits plus grants to state & local govts.
US counts nuclear test toll
Radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests probably caused 17,000 cancer deaths in U.S. in the
latter half of the 20th century, a US-based environmental watchdog reports. The Institute for Energy and
Environmental Research (IEER) drew its conclusion after studying a US govt report which has yet to be
published. Fallout from tests by the US, the Soviet Union and Britain between 1951 and 2000 were reportedly
responsible for a total of 80,000 cancer cases in the US alone. Environmentalists have welcomed the govt
report as the first extensive study of the effect of test fallout on population by a nuclear power. The report was
conducted over two years and at a cost of $1.85m by the National Cancer Institute and the Centres for Disease
Control & Prevention (CDC). Using complex computer analyses, it estimated radiation doses from sites used
until overground nuclear weapons tests were banned in 1963 by an international treaty.
'bad as Chernobyl' Another IEER official, Lisa Ledwidge, commended the US govt as the only nuclear power to have "been honest enough to say that it has harmed its own people". But she called on Washington to provide greater information. Campaigners in Idaho, where fallout was particularly high, are calling for a full govt public information pgm and for compensation awarded in the immediate Nevada area to be extended nationwide. "Now the U.S. govt's job is to take the news to small towns all over this region and help unsuspecting people whose health has been damaged by nuclear weapons," said Snake River Alliance development dir. Margaret Macdonald Stewart. "U.S. has a compensation program for Nevada Test Site neighbours who are geographical downwinders. But this is clearly not enough. There are hot spots thousands of miles from test sites and the new definition of 'downwinder' should include all of them". |
Many assumed the 1986 meltdown of one reactor, and the release of hundreds of tons of radioactive material, would turn much of the 1,100-square-mile evacuated area around Chernobyl into a nuclear dead zone. It certainly doesn't look like one today.
Dense forests have reclaimed farm fields and apartment house courtyards. Residents, visitors and some biologists report seeing wildlife, including moose and lynx, rarely sighted in the rest of Europe. Birds even nest inside the cracked concrete sarcophagus shielding the shattered remains of the reactor.
Wildlife has returned despite radiation levels in much of the evacuated zone that remain 10 to 100 times higher than background levels, according to a 2005 U.N. report, though they have fallen significantly since the accident, due to radioactive decay.
Some researchers insist that by halting the destruction of habitat, the Chernobyl disaster helped wildlife flourish. Others say animals may be filtering into the zone, but they appear to suffer malformations and other ills.
Both sides say more research is needed into the long-term health of a variety of Chernobyl's wildlife species, as governments around the world consider switching from fossil fuel plants, blamed for helping drive global climate change, to nuclear power.
Biologist Robert J. Baker of Texas Tech University was one of the first Western scientists to report that Chernobyl had become a wildlife haven. He says the mice and other rodents he has studied at Chernobyl since the early 1990s have shown remarkable tolerance for elevated radiation levels.
Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina, a biologist who studies barn swallows at Chernobyl, says that while wild animals have settled in the area, they have struggled to build new populations. Far from thriving, he says, a high proportion of the birds he and his colleagues have examined suffer from radiation-induced sickness and genetic damage. Survival rates are dramatically lower for those living in the most contaminated areas.
In explaining their starkly differing views, Baker and Mousseau criticize each other's studies as poorly designed.
But their disagreement also reflects a deeper split among biologists who study the effects of exposure to radiation. Some, like Baker, think organisms can cope with the destructive effects of radiation up to a point beyond which they begin to suffer irreparable damage.
Others believe that even low doses of radiation can trigger cancers and other illnesses. In the Journal of Mammology in 1996, Baker and his colleagues reported that the disaster had not reduced either the diversity or abundance of a dozen species of rodents including mice, shrews, rats and weasels near the Chernobyl plant.
"Our studies show that a dynamic ecosystem is present in even the most radioactive habitats," they wrote. Baker's group reported sighting red fox, gray wolf, moose, river otter, roe deer, Russian wild boar and brown hare within a 6 mile radius of the plant, the most heavily contaminated area.
Genetic tests showed Chernobyl's animals suffered some damage to their DNA, Baker and his colleagues reported. But they said overall it didn't seem to hurt wildlife populations.
"The resulting environment created by the Chernobyl disaster is better for animals," Baker told Associated Press in a phone interview.
Critics point out that Baker's work has been funded by the U.S. Energy Dept, which some view as pro-nuclear. Baker defended govt connection, saying, "We have never been asked to come up with any specific conclusions, just do honest work." He also said his work has been peer-reviewed.
Mousseau and his colleagues have painted a far more pessimistic picture. In the journal Biology Letters in March, a group led by Anders Moller, from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, said that in a study of 7,700 birds examined since 1991 they found 11 rare or unknown abnormalities in a population of Chernobyl's barn swallows.
Roughly one-third of 248 Chernobyl nestlings studied were found to have ill-formed beaks, albino feathers, bent tail feathers and other malformations. Mousseau was a co-author of the report. In other studies, Mousseau, whose work is funded by the National Science Foundation and National Geographic Society, and his colleagues have found increased genetic damage, reduced reproductive rates and what he calls "dramatically" higher mortality rates for birds living near Chernobyl.
The work suggests, he said, that Chernobyl is a "sink" where animals migrate but rapidly die off. Mousseau suspects that relatively low-level radiation reduces the level of antioxidants in the blood, which can lead to cell damage.
"From every rock we turn over, we find consequences," he told Associated Press in a phone interview. "These reports of wildlife flourishing in the area are completely anecdotal and have no scientific basis."
While the experts debate, Maria Urupa, harvests tomatoes from her garden, buys fish from the nearby Pripyat River and brews moonshine vodka. Eating locally produced food is risky, health experts agree, because plants and animals can concentrate radioactive materials as they cycle through the food chain. Doe she fear the effects of her exposure to radiation?
"Radiation? No!" she said. "What humans do? Yes."
|
Struggle to survive for an 'urban whale' 10.16.01 Carol Kaesuk Yoon NYTimes
Haro Strait, WA Out of the dark waters off the west side of San Juan Island, 3 great
black fins rise in unison as a trio of killer whales surface for air then slowly descend to pursue a run of
salmon. Powerful & wild, these huge black-&-white icons of the Pacific Northwest may seem
immune to the activities of mere humans, like the scores of tourists in the 19 boats circling them this
afternoon. But researchers report that this population of orcas off the Washington coast is in decline,
down more than 20% in 6 years, to 78 from 99. 7 have died in the last year alone. And scientists say
people, possibly even the adoring whale watchers, may be to blame.
While disagreement remains, some scientists & advocates say the hordes of whale-watching boats on these
waters from May through Oct. could be disrupting the whales' feeding & mating behavior and polluting their air
& water. San Juan Island Ctr for Whale Research exec. dir. Ken Balcomb has overseen a 26- year census of
this group of whales, known as the southern resident population, using the idiosyncratic scars and shapes of dorsal
fins to identify individuals. He called the 7 deaths this summer "a huge problem. This summer was bound to
happen." … These are urban whales in the most urban setting of any killer whale population. It's
remarkable that they're still here." The 78 southern residents, along with the neighboring northern resident
population of some 200 orcas off British Columbia, are the most thoroughly studied killer whales on earth, with
every individual photographed & numbered and often affectionately named. There is the wavy-finned Ruffles,
the tattered Raggedy, and Oreo, mother of Doublestuf. Scientists even know many of the family relationships of
whales within the population's 3 groups, known as the J, K & L pods.
Scientists also know that the southern residents hunt fish and can often be found chasing runs of salmon. Because
a single whale can eat 100 to 300 lbs of fish a day, researchers worry the whales & salmon may both suffer,
presenting the rare prospect of one endangered species eating another. With shortage of salmon, researchers also
worry that the orcas could turn more heavily to bottom fish. Many of these species are also in decline and are more
likely to be contaminated, most notably with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCB's, the same industrial chemical that
pollutes the Hudson River in upstate NY. "I said these guys are really hot," said Sidney, B.C Inst. of Ocean
Sciences wildlife toxicologist Dr. Peter S. Ross, recalling his first look at the data that eventually showed the
southern residents were among the most contaminated marine mammals in the world. "They were very disturbing
results." Originally used as a lubricant and in electrical transformers, PCB's are very slow to break down and can
accumulate in an animal's fat stores. Animals at the top of the food chain, like killer whales, are at greatest risk.
Laboratory studies have not been carried out on orcas, for obvious logistical reasons, but in other mammals, incl
humans, there is evidence that PCB's can disrupt the immune & nervous systems and hamper normal
development.
But with tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of orcas the world round, how important is preserving the southern
resident population? Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Center marine mammal scientist Dr. Lance Barrett-
Lennard says he & his colleagues have found in recent studies that the population is genetically isolated.
Individual whales are breeding only with others from the southern resident population, making it a distinct entity, a
prerequisite for listing as an endangered species. DNA studies also show that females mate only with males
outside their pods, revealing another potential problem. Because the population is so small and there are only 3
pods within it, females are severely limited in the numbers of possible mates. "For most females there are between
one & 3 potential males to mate with," said Dr. Barrett-Lennard. "That means that a lot of the calves in this
generation are going to be siblings and they're going to be mating with siblings the next generation. We're into a
situation where there's the sort of spiraling effect. It's going to be a rapid loss of genetic diversity."
Then there are the whale-watching boats. Any time in summer or fall, the easiest way to find killer whales is to
search for the flotilla of slow- moving boats that constantly surrounds them. Researchers estimate that whale
watching is now worth in the tens of millions of dollars a year in the Haro Strait; a study found that between 1990
& 1997, the number of whale-watching boats seen off San Juan Island increased fivefold. Researchers say it
is unclear whether the boats have harmful effects on the whales, though some are concerned, not only about
pollution from the boats, but also about the possibility that engine noise may interfere with the complex whale-song
communication among these highly social animals. Federal scientists say there are likely to be many similar
questions about the whales as the National Marine Fisheries Service considers its decision.
For example, 26 years is a long time for scientists to monitor a population, but killer whales can live more than
twice as long as that, making the census just a snapshot. As a result, it is hard to know whether the current decline
will continue or is just part of a long-term cycle of ups & downs. "This could be interpreted that this is a natural
fluctuation that the population normally deals with," said Dr. Paul Wade, a marine biologist with the fisheries
service, who is part of the biological review team. "Unfortunately, there are so many other factors that are at play
for this population, there's no way we can conclude that yet." But many researchers say the population is so small
that it may be eliminated by chance events like new diseases or accidents like oil spills. More recently, in the 1960's & 70's, killer whales, including individuals from the southern resident population, were captured for aquariums. These trained whales may have helped create the now popular image of the orca as a clever, soulful, playful creature, a kind of giant dolphin, in formal attire. (In fact, orcas are in the Delphinid or dolphin family, hence the similarities.) Today, orcas have achieved star wildlife status. The "Free Willy" movies helped establish them as symbols of nature unleashed, as huge draws for tourists and others wanting a connection, even as spiritual links, to the wild outdoors. "It's like having a relationship with a person," said Tom McMillen, who pilots the Stellar Sea, echoing a common refrain. After 8 years of running whale-watching tours, Mr. McMillen says he knows some of the whales and recognizes those that like visiting his boat more than others and that seem to know him. He added, "Or maybe they like my dog Elmer." But even some tourists aboard his boat said they would willingly put some distance between themselves and the orcas if that would help protect them. Visiting from Boise, Idaho, to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary, Todd & Amy Rustad snapped pictures and exclaimed as members of the L pod swam past or frolicked in the waves. "This is great," Mr. Rustad said. "But I don't think anyone would mind not going on these trips if they thought it was hurting the whales." 
Plans are being drawn up to send mice into orbit on board their own love-mobile where they can have low-gravity
sex. Researchers at the privately funded Mars Society are designing a capsule which will simulate conditions on
Mars. It could be put into orbit for 2 months which is enough time for its occupants to reproduce and their offspring
grow to adulthood. The capsule would then be brought back to Earth to see if low gravity had affected the
development of the young mice. Scientists behind the so-called Translife Mission say it would help plan for the long-term missions necessary to explore Mars.
With the right backing the flight could take place in 2003 aboard a tiny capsule which simulates Martian gravity by
spinning like a centrifuge. The Mars Society
hopes to launch the experiment for as little as £1.4 million
6.25.01 Hannah MacLachlan News Telegraph UK
6.25.01 Andy McSmith News Telegraph UK In a letter to Michael Cummins, Serjeant at Arms, Mr Casale said: "I seldom use these facilities but would not wish to do so at all if an assurance cannot be given that the place has been cleared of mice & other vermin. The presence of mice at large in the Commons cafeteria suggests an even greater problem behind the scenes. "Such an infestation would result in the immediate closure of any eating place outside the Commons and falls well below minimum health & safety standards."
2.28.02 Asia Diary column BBC
Badgers thrive as protection pays off
Badger numbers have increased by 77% since tighter laws were introduced to protect them 10 years ago, a
new survey showed yesterday. The animals, which have been blamed by farmers for causing an upsurge of
tuberculosis among cattle, now outnumber foxes by nearly two to one, the People's Trust for Endangered Species
reported. The impact of new safeguards under the Wildlife & Countryside Act in 1981, which made it illegal to
dig out setts, was largely responsible for halting the decline and reducing "persecution" of badgers, it said. Attacks
on setts had fallen by half and badgers were now moving into new areas of the country.
But Bristol Univ. prof. Stephen Harris, who headed the £80,000 survey carried out by a team of 1,000 volunteers,
rejected demands for urgent culls in problem areas. "I don't think they need to be controlled. We are
slowly starting to see the diversity of the species in this
country that we should have. We are not going to be knee-deep in badgers and don't need to start shooting them.
"Badgers can give TB to cattle, but no one knows how. Persecuting badgers and killing them in huge numbers in
the past has not been an effective way of eliminating the disease in cattle." He called on the Ministry of Agriculture
to do more to help farmers with TB problems in their herds.
Study: sea protection costs less than fish subsidies
Johannesburg Protecting the world's oceans will cost govts far less than the amount they spend on
subsidies for fishing fleets and will lead to bigger catches in the long run, according to a new study. The study, by
conservation group WWF Intl & Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, estimates that a network of
marine protected areas (MPAs) covering 30 percent of Earth's oceans would cost $12-14 billion annually.
It says this falls far short of the $15-30 billion already spent each year on subsidies to commercial fisheries, which
environmentalists say encourages overfishing.
Roberts said priority areas included tropical coral reef systems, which are threatened by overfishing and climate
change. According to WWF, only 0.5 percent of the sea is under protection, compared to 12 percent of the planet's
land area. But the study says increasing marine protection to 30 percent of the global total would cost less than the
subsidies that are splashed out on fishing fleets.
The report estimates that setting up and running an expanded network of MPAs would generate between 830,000
and 1.1 million full-time jobs directly. Further jobs would be created through increased fish catches and other spin-
offs such as ecotourism. It estimates MPAs would help preserve marine services valued at an estimated $7.0
trillion a year. This includes cash generated by tourism, fishing, waste recycling and the price of coastal
properties. |
Newport's war on sea lions
The nighttime barking was bad enough. Then they sank a sailboat. But the law is on their side.
9.15.05 Roy Rivenburg L.A. Times
Think of them as amphibious sumo wrestlers. A pack of rowdy sea lions has invaded Newport Harbor, sinking a boat, thrashing docks and, with their cacophony of barking, turning residents into sleepless zombies. In a scene that has played out up and down the West Coast, the whiskered creatures are charming tourists but exasperating local officials, who are studying a far-flung set of strategies to thwart the federally protected mammals.
Seattle tried a similar plan 9 years ago after sea lions raided Puget Sound to devour endangered steelhead trout at a fish ladder. The fiberglass whale, dubbed "Fake Willy," was submerged nearby as an "aquatic scarecrow."
It didn't work. Neither did rubber bullets, firecrackers or underwater speakers blasting high-pitched sounds.
Sea lions have always been known for their ingenious and sometimes ornery antics. But this summer, Newport Beach officials noticed a dramatic influx. Nobody knows why the creatures are muscling into the area, but the U.S. sea lion population has boomed over 3 decades, since Congress made it a crime to kill them.
Schriber and her husband recently paddled their dinghy toward a group of sea lions lounging on a catamaran and shooed them away by splashing water in the mammals' faces.
Elsewhere along the Pacific coast, sea lions have attacked swimmers, chomped bodyboards and even yanked people off boats. In Alaska, according to one news account, "19-year-old Ray Dushkin Jr. was working on his grandfather's fishing boat in King Cove when a sea lion leaped from the water and grabbed the seat of the young man's coveralls in its teeth. In a flash, he was pulled overboard." Dushkin escaped with a small scrape on his buttocks.
Lawmakers never envisioned that the law would work so well, said House Resources Committee spokesman Matt Streit. In response, a bill has been drafted to allow cities to use nonlethal methods to repel sea lion incursions.
Such efforts would be too little, too late for Gerald Dunlap of Garden Grove, whose 1910 sailboat, Razzle Dazzle, sank under the weight of 18 sea lions this month in Newport Harbor, near the Balboa Pavilion. Dunlap said he was surprised the Harbor Patrol didn't phone him to warn that sea lions had targeted his boat. 2 days before the vessel went down, deputies boarded the craft to chase one of the beasts from the boat's cabin, he was told later.
Late Wednesday, the Harbor Commission urged Newport Beach's City Council to ban anglers from hosing off bait and fish waste from their decks while inside the harbor, which can attract hungry sea lions. Lance Brooks, a harbor tour captain, said he had seen fishermen train sea lions to jump over small docks by feeding them barracuda meat. Some residents fret that Newport Harbor is heading toward the same fate as Monterey.
One option: total surrender. In 1990, when Pier 39 in San Francisco was mobbed by hundreds of pungent pinnipeds, authorities were initially distraught. But once they realized it was boosting tourism, pier officials erected a bronze sea lion sculpture and built additional docks for the carnivorous critters to bask on.
In essence, their study said that a human history of overfishing had decimated the ocean's largest creatures, from
whales to sea turtles to giant codfish. "We've been overfishing the oceans for thousands of years," said Jackson.
"We have a maritime tradition of taking until there's nothing left to take. And the proof is in the historical, ecological
and paleontological record. Virtually everything was more abundant and diverse before mankind appeared."
On its face, this might not seem a startling conclusion. After all, human activity tends to be implicated in most
environmental depredations. It's not for nothing that we have the phrase: "man-made disaster." Nonetheless, the
conclusions of Jackson's team were controversial and provocative. "I attended a conference back in New England,"
Jackson recalled, sitting in his cramped, book-lined office at Scripps. "The subject was the near-extinction of
Atlantic cod. A lot of people had seen the paper and agreed with it. They understood its point, but others didn't.
They were mostly scientists who had been saying for decades that we could continually increase our ocean
harvests and the fisheries would be fine. Some of them were having a hard time admitting that they had made a
huge mistake."
Jackson, who came to Scripps with his wife, marine biologist Nancy Knowlton, in 1998, smiles without
joy at the recollection. It's a major theme of the paper and of Jackson's chosen career that environmental scientists
have, overall, been guilty of historical short-sightedness, that their notions of nature and what is "natural" are flawed
and incomplete. "Scientists tend to think that natural is the way they saw something in grad school," said Jackson.
A sense of history threads throughout Jackson's life. His father, Melvin Jackson, was a master mariner
(certified to command a merchant vessel) and maritime historian at the Univ. of Miami. "My father always told me
that you can't understand what's going on until you know what's happened before. He called ignoring history the
arrogance of the present. If you want to do something good, he said, find out what happened first."
Out of academe, Jackson had no intention of becoming a button-down scientist locked in a lab, tyrannized by
bureaucrats and grant proposals. He moved to Jamaica, where he would become an authority on coral reef
ecologies. "It was pure research," he said. "If it was useful in other ways, that was great." In 1980, Hurricane Allen
struck. Allen was a Category 5 hurricane, a once-in-a-century storm whose winds reached 190 mph. It
devastated portions of Jamaica, including the coral reefs in Discovery Bay where Jackson worked. "Wiped them
out," Jackson said. In the aftermath, he and colleagues developed scenarios and predictions about how and when
the reefs would recover, based on known science. "But we got them all wrong," Jackson says now, chuckling.
"Things didn't happen the way we thought they would." 6 years later, Jackson was among several Smithsonian
Institution scientists sent to Panama to study the effects and consequences of a 10-million-gallon oil spill in Las
Minas Bay. "There was another study and again we got our predictions wrong. Things were dying that shouldn't
have."
These events underscored for Jackson the fact that scientists often know less than they think they do. "The
problem is that many scientists push only for research in which they already know the answers. They play it too
cautious and safe, and that's sad." Jackson wanted to shake things up. The paper in Science is a step toward
doing that. It was inspired, in part, by a singular, startling observation: "I realized," said Jackson, "that every marine
ecosystem I had ever studied during my entire 30-year career looked unrecognizably different from the way it used
to be. I wanted to know why." In their paper, Jackson and his colleagues examine the fates, broadly speaking, of 4
specific marine ecosystems: kelp forests, coral reefs, tropical seagrass beds and estuaries. The players and plots
are different for each of these habitats, but the endings are alarmingly similar. "We started out to study everything
that people had ever done to oceans historically and were astounded to discover that in each case we examined,
overfishing was the primary driver of ecosystem collapse," said Jackson.
Take kelp forests, which can be found off the San Diego shore. In the northern Pacific Ocean, such forests arose
during the last 20 million years and evolved into vast habitats that housed an astonishing interaction of predator
and prey, from sea otters and the now-extinct Stellar's sea cow to sea urchins and, of course, the kelp itself.
Sea cows, similar to the still-existing but threatened manatee, once ranged around the northern Pacific Rim, from
the Japanese to the California coast. The appearance of aboriginal hunters 10,000 or so years ago spelled the
beginning of the end. By 1741, when Russian explorer Vitus Bering described the animal, sea cows were found
only around certain unpopulated Aleutian Islands and probably numbered fewer than 5,000 individuals.
Bering was the first European to report seeing a Stellar's sea cow. Like typical explorers of his day, he
and his crew immediately butchered dozens of the animals for meat and hides. Subsequent expeditions
did likewise. The last Stellar's sea cow was killed by fur traders in 1768, just 27 years after Bering
discovered them. Sea cows ate seaweed, and thus helped keep kelp forests in check. So too did sea urchins,
which in turn were eaten by sea otters. Aboriginal Aleuts began to seriously deplete the otter population 2,500
years ago. European fur traders nearly finished them off in the 1800s. Kelp forests benefited not at all. With fewer
sea otters, the urchin population exploded and many forests collapsed or disappeared. Some forests have partially
recovered, thanks in part to a rebounding otter population protected by environmental regulations, but their fate
remains precarious. Sea otters aren't legally hunted by humans, but they have new enemies: killer whales, who
have turned to eating otters as their traditional food source, seals and sea lions, have become increasingly scarce.
Similar impacts and stories have occurred in the kelp forests elsewhere, from the Gulf of Maine to S.California. In
the latter case, the natural ecosystem of millenniums past was even more varied, with spiny lobsters and large
sheephead fish also preying upon kelp-eating urchins. Local forests fared OK until intense human exploitation of
sheephead, lobsters and abalone in the 1950s and 1960s allowed sea urchin populations to run amok.
Humans roiled the waters again in the 1970s and 1980s when sea urchins became commercially important and
were widely harvested. One result is that kelp forests have expanded their range but remain hollow imitations of the
past, housing fewer species in fewer numbers. Jackson says you cannot escape these overfishing stories. Coral
reefs in the Caribbean and Great Barrier Reef in Australia have suffered mightily from disastrous rises and declines
of key species, all directly or indirectly linked to human overfishing.
Once, for example, vast beds of seagrass covered most of the shallow bays of south Florida and the
Caribbean. These were home to uncountable numbers of green sea turtles, who cropped and maintained
the grass like shelled lawn mowers. The turtles were so abundant that Columbus worried that his ships would run
aground upon their backs. Between 1688 and 1730, European settlers reportedly harvested more than 13,000
turtles annually from the waters of just one island, Grand Cayman. These days, green sea turtles, the largest of the
sea turtles, are endangered. "I don't think I have ever in my life seen a green turtle in turtlegrass," said Jackson,
frowning at the irony. In fact, it's hard to find healthy turtlegrass. In the 1980s, many beds off the Florida coast and
in the Gulf of Mexico succumbed to disease. Without sea turtles to maintain them, the turtlegrass beds had grown
unchecked and eventually rotted, creating perfect conditions for slime molds that, in turn, generated diseases that
killed entire grass beds. "The whole ecosystem has changed in just so many depressing ways," said Jackson.
Of course, tales of environmental collapse are not new. Every school child, for example, has heard the stories of
passenger pigeons once darkening the skies with their multitudinous numbers. (The last passenger pigeon died in
1914.) They know the fate of dodo birds and Tasmanian tiger-wolves. They know what is happening to the panda,
rhino and tiger. Still, said Roger Bradbury, a researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra and co-
author of the Science paper, "comparing the magnitude of the mass ecological extinctions in the ocean to those on
land may not be enough. On the land, as we killed off the giant mammals and destroyed the ancient forests, we
replaced them with a new suite of farmed species. In the coastal seas, we took out the animals and replaced them
with nothing." "But despair is not a satisfactory answer," said Jackson.
The fact that large marine animals once thrived in unimaginable numbers (the biomass of green sea turtles in the
Caribbean at the time of Columbus easily exceeded the biomass of all large animals in East Africa) suggests that
scientists may be thinking too small. With only a few exceptions (e.g. Stellar's sea cow and the Caribbean monk
seal), most large marine species still survive in numbers sufficient to make it conceivable they might be restored to
something resembling their past glories. But Jackson said researchers and conservationists must broaden and
deepen their understanding of how human disturbances of the ocean ripple through whole ecosystems. And the
work should begin close to home. "We live in a rich country, so we can afford to do something first," said Jackson.
"We need to show the real potential of reviving these historic habitats. For example, oysters once filtered and
cleaned the waters of the Chesapeake Bay every few days. A cannon, Jackson said, could be seen lying under 30
feet of water. Now there aren't enough oysters left to completely filter the bay once a year and the water is virtually
opaque.
Jackson is among a growing chorus of scientists who say mankind cannot rely upon the oceans for long-
term sustenance, at least not using present fishing methods.
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"If you go into a kelp forest, the place is swarming with fish," said Scripps Institution of Oceanography marine ecology prof. Paul Dayton. "Take out that kelp and the fish won't go extinct, but they'll be much rarer because they don't have the habitat. … We should protect it just on the grounds that it's for our grandchildren."
Since the 1960s, scientists, including academics and those from govt agencies and non-profit groups, have tried to restore the kelp. Even after El Nino storms ripped the plants out, divers kept coming back with thousands of seedlings. When that didn't work, they scattered spores. They even tried warding off marauding urchins and fish by draping giant nets over baby kelp beds to protect them from being eaten.
None of their efforts amounted to much: Only two acres of kelp were restored in Southern California from 2001 to 2004, say environmental groups that spent $2.5 million in state and federal grants.
"Little programs to help plant a little kelp here and there is like putting a finger in a hole in a dike to hold back water," said ecologist Ed Parnell. "How much effect can a few divers replanting a few kelp plants here and there [have] in the face of El Nino?"
Kelp, algae that can grow in depths of 30 to 80 ft, supports nearly 800 species ranging from sea squirts to sea scallops. Even gulls and sand crabs reap benefits when tangled clusters of kelp wash ashore. Harvested worldwide, kelp can be found in paper, beer and cosmetics. The kelp byproduct algin, for example, prevents ice crystals from forming inside ice cream and keeps the foamy top on beer from dissolving.
But in the last 50 years, frequent episodes of warm-water El Nino have devastated kelp, which thrives at lower temperatures. California and Alaska are the only two places in the Northern Hemisphere where giant kelp grows.
Scientists say humans also are to blame for kelp's demise because they pollute the ocean and overfish the urchins' natural predators, lobsters, sheep-head fish and sea otters.
More than 85 percent of seedlings planted are gobbled up by urchins or fish before they can mature. Despite kelp restoration's mixed results, federal scientists put stock in the project's educational success. Thousands of schoolchildren learn about kelp as they help grow seedlings in the classroom that are later put underwater.
"Yes, it's labor-intensive, but you've also got kids learning about kelp and how important kelp is," said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration marine ecologist Natalie Cosentino-Manning.
Despite the challenges, Ford, the Malibu kelp farmer and director of kelp-restoration efforts for the environmental group Santa Monica Baykeeper, remains undeterred, and hopeful that he can restore 10 acres a year. When 8 adult plants took hold 3 years ago off Point Dume, Ford saw his chance to tilt the scales in nature's favor.
Armed with a rake and mesh satchels, he and volunteers purged the area of purple, red and white urchins, bagging 25,000 last year alone.
The urchins can crawl several yards a day using hundreds of tiny sucker-like tube feet; they denuded other areas to the point that Ford swears he has seen them resort to cannibalism. When they find a kelp bed, they feast on it like rabbits in a vegetable garden, he said. At his Malibu site, Ford recalled, there were so many urchins that "you couldn't even see the bottom. … They were everywhere."
As added insurance, Ford dropped 5-foot-tall mesh bags loaded with kelp leaves that would release millions of spores into the water. The eight kelp plants have multiplied into an acre. It might not last, but Ford wants to bring back natural balance between urchins, fish and kelp, hopefully setting the stage for kelp to bounce back quicker after a devastating storm.
"A few of my detractors would say, `Forget it, man, you'll burn out on this,'" Ford said. "But if the kelp goes away, a great deal of what is our marine heritage will be gone."
5.22.01 Andrew Craig BBC
2.17.01 John Duce BBC
Recent examples of havoc caused by invasive species include arrival on Guam of the brown tree snake from SE
Asia. Its introduction led to 10 of the island's 13 bird species becoming extinct. In Africa, introduction of S.American
water hyacinth to Lake Victoria led to large areas of water being covered & starved of oxygen, severely
damaging marine life.
Stanford Univ. prof. Harold Mooney presented the GISP plan to the American Assn for the Advancement
of Science annual meeting . He told BBC that alien species have devastating effect all around the world.
"They're causing diseases, devastating our crops, destroying our forests, impeding water
navigation, they're even modifying the course of evolution, driving species to extinction," he said. Despite
scale of the problem, Prof. Mooney said his group still had a hard fight ahead to try to persuade govts to introduce
legislation and spend the money needed to tackle the issues.
Scientists say the human propensity to travel, carrying plants, animals and bacteria, is essentially taking our
ecosystems back some 200 million years, when the Earth consisted of a supercontinent called Pangea. During that
time, plant seeds & animals could move freely across the land, since they were not yet separated by
thousands of kilometres of ocean. Currently there is no global network set up to deal with or to prevent future
ecosystem invasions. |
Ant supercolony dominates Europe 4.16.02 BBC
An Argentine ant species introduced into Europe about 80 years ago has developed the largest supercolony ever
recorded. It stretches 6000km from northern Italy through the south of France to the Atlantic coast of Spain with
billions of related ants occupying millions of nests. While ants from rival nests normally fight each other to the
death, ants from the supercolony have the ability to recognise each other and co-operate even if they come from
nests at opposite ends of the colony's range. The Argentine species (Linepithema humile) probably came into
Europe on imported plants, pushing back the 20 or so indigenous species of European ant.
Scientists are not entirely sure why the supercolony has emerged. They think initial success of the alien invaders
would have led to high nest densities, which in turn would have favoured co-operative behaviour over aggression.
And evolution would then have reinforced this superiority because nests devoid of internal strife would have had
time & resources to fight off their enemies. Success would have bred success.
But Prof. Keller & colleagues say the supercolony may be doomed. Sooner or later, rivalries will emerge as
genetically distinct groups of ants turn against each other. The supercolony itself also has a rival, a second, smaller
supergroup of Argentine ants holds sway in the Catalan region of Spain. These creatures are more than happy to
make war.
Alien ants devour locals, then go vegetarian
Carnivorous Argentine ants that have invaded coastal California devour other insects. When that food's gone, the ants become vegetarians. The amazingly adaptive behavior, detailed in what is the first study of this ant's diet, has allowed the invaders to spread successfully and rapidly.
The new finding, based on an 8 year study of a population of ants in the foothills southeast of San Diego, reveals how the alien ants thrive so well in a foreign land. Their success is linked to their dietary versatility, according to results detailed in this week's online issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Holway and his colleagues discovered that when Argentine ants first move into an area they become fierce predators of native insects. But as the ants eliminate their competitors, and thus, their main source of food, they switch from a carnivorous, protein-rich diet to a largely carbohydrate, sugar-water diet of honeydew nectar.
This ability to switch from an all-insect protein diet to a carbohydrate-rich one also allows the ants to expand their populations because plant material is much easier to find in irrigated residential communities, the researchers say.
Ants riddled with cheating and corruption
Although ants are noted for their communal cooperation, the ranks of ant royalty are actually riddled with cheating and corruption, a new study finds. Ant queens were thought to be the products of nurturing, as certain larvae were fed foods that prompted their development into queens, with any larvae having an opportunity to ascend to the royal ranks.
"These ants have a 'royal' gene or genes, giving them an unfair advantage and enabling them to cheat many of their altruistic sisters out of their chance to become a queen themselves," said study team member Bill Hughes of the University of Leeds in the U.K.
"If there were too many of one genetic line developing into queens in a single colony, the other ants would notice and might take action against them," Hughes said. "So we think the males with these royal genes have evolved to somehow spread their offspring around more colonies and so escape detection. The rarity of the royal lines is actually an evolutionary strategy by the cheats to escape suppression by the altruistic masses that they exploit.”
So although ants were once thought to be an exception to the foul play that plagues other cooperative societies, including our own, these cheating ants show that isn't the case, Hughes said. Hughes's research is detailed in the March 10 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Plundering paradise book review
The Hand of Man on the Galapagos Islands auth. Michael D'Orso (2003 Harper
Collins)
The Galapagos stand not only as a microcosm of life on Earth but also demonstrate how tourism can at once
enrich & undermine a community, and how govt corruption & inefficiency can color daily life on these
remote Pacific islands.
Fitter says, "People ask me all the time, 'How can you be a guide and believe in Creationism as well?' I tell them,
yes, I, we, believe that there is a Creator. He is the answer to the question of why, not how. The how, the
mechanics of life, is left to the scientists, as it should be. At the end of the day, Adam was the first scientist, the first
park warden."
But D'Orso is also an unpretentious reader's representative as he travels from island to island, spotting human
quirks alongside natural wonders. Another writer could have written a book of greater biological detail or deeper
analysis of Ecuador's tragicomic politics, but he does have an ear for resonant details.
Parks congress sets 10-year plan to protect planet
Durban The World Parks Congress adopted the "Durban Accord" and an action plan on protected
areas Wednesday, blueprints that environmentalists hope will set the conservation agenda for the next decade.
It also noted hundreds of recommendations to make the planet a greener & cleaner place. "The Durban
Accord sets a new vision, one that is clear, and one that is feasible for the world to implement," said 10-day
congress sec.general David Sheppard.
Many of these areas are so-called "paper parks" where poaching & logging are rampant but conservationists say it is still a major step in the right direction. Looking ahead, the conference urged govts to greatly increase the amount of protected marine & coastal areas. Only a tiny fraction of the world's oceans are protected at present. |
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Cold-climate creatures may be survivors of global warming
7.14.03 Mark Shwartz Stanford News
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Science forces reexamination of basic assumptions about nature. Consider the following: Animals that thrive in high temperatures are more likely to survive global warming than those that are less tolerant to heat. While this
conclusion may seem obvious, a new study in the journal Science finds that the opposite may be true. In an
experiment published in 7.4.03 Science, Stanford Univ. postdoctoral fellow Jonathon H. Stillman examined effect of climate change on porcelain crabs (genus Petrolisthes), inch long invertebrates that inhabit coastal areas
throughout the Pacific Ocean.
"This is definitely counterintuitive. You would expect heat-tolerant organisms to be the most resilient to global
warming, but it turns out they may have a harder time surviving as their habitat temperatures increase," he added, noting that a half-degree increase in the Earth's temperature could be enough to wipe out countless porcelain crabs.
For the experiment, Stillman collected live specimens of all 4 species and transported them to Hopkins Marine
Station, where they were kept in temperature-controlled aquariums for several weeks. Crabs from Oregon were
held at a constant temperature of either 47 F (8 C) or 65 F (18 C), and crabs from Mexico were kept at
temperatures of 59 F (15 C) or 77 F (25 C). "The idea was to allow the animals to acclimate to cold or warm
temperatures that reflect what they'd likely encounter in the wild," Stillman explained.
"The results were surprising," Stillman said. It turned out that cold-water crabs were able to change their
upper thermal tolerance limit much more readily than those from hotter climates. In fact, the top survivor
in the experiment was Oregon's P. eriomerus, which lives in the coolest habitat of all 4 species studied.
Stillman discovered that P. eriomerus crabs that were acclimated to 47 F (8 C) temperatures succumbed
when the thermometer reached 83 F (28.5 C). However, those acclimated to 65 F (18 C) tank water
survived temperatures of nearly 87 F (30.5 C).
At the other extreme, Mexico's P. gracilis, whose habitat sometimes reaches 105.8 F (41 C), had the poorest
showing. The study found that P. gracilis crabs housed in 77 F (25 C) tank water had an upper thermal tolerance limit of about 106.2 F (41.2 C), only a fraction of a degree higher than those kept at 59 F (15 C). "Thus, during the hottest summer low tides, P. gracilis experiences habitat temperatures right at the edge of its thermal range," Stillman observed. "Because this species has a limited capacity to adjust that range, it will be impacted by global warming-related increases in habitat temperature."
Stillman concluded … "To survive those really high temperatures in the summer, these animals have
given up their ability to adjust their thermal limits." … He noted that global warming already appears
to have reduced the population of P. cinctipes, whose habitat ranges from California to British Columbia.
However, Stillman pointed out that skeptics, including several leading economists, question whether such
biological change is the direct result of climate change.
Like larger siblings, asteroid 2002 EM7 follows an elliptical orbit with an extremely low risk of Earth collision in the coming decades or centuries. Nonetheless, astronomers maintain that constant surveillance is necessary to identify more killer rocks in our neighborhood to ensure none take our planet by surprise, in particular those traveling near the blinding light of the sun. "If one comes from the direction of the sun, we're not going to see it," Williams said. "Often these objects are outside of the Earth's orbit for a significant amount of time. The key is to detect them when they are outside the Earth's orbit and predict whether they might hit us in the future from the sun side." Even lesser rocks such as 2002 EM7 could do serious damage by plunging into the ocean, causing tsunamis, he said. |
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