Category Archives: Science in the News

How Sea Breezes Affect You!

The term sea breeze in itself seems rather simple. In fact, the every-day person probably believes that a sea breeze is, well, just a breeze – they are commonly overlooked. Yet they would be surprised to learn how much research actually goes into studying sea breezes that occur all over the world and the huge impacts that they can have on society as a whole.

Dr.Steyn from the University of British Columbia (UBC) has dedicated many years of his life to studying sea breezes and the different interactions they can have with the atmosphere. He has found that sea breezes and the winds associated with them are actually involved in the spreading of pollution all around the world.

Image showing energy plant releasing pollution into the air. Image by flickr user thewritingzone

How might this affect the general public? Well, our governments spend millions of taxpayer dollars to implement pollution reduction programs in their countries but fail to realize that much of the pollution that they are trying to cleanup actually comes from other regions of the world through wind circulation.

Furthermore, the growing shortage of fossil fuels has become a major problem in our society. Researchers estimate that the petrochemical supply will run out in about 50 years. We are fortunate to have researchers like Dr.Steyn, who are investigating
the occurrence and frequency of sea breezes, and are collecting a vast body of knowledge that could be used to substitute many forms of unsustainable energy.

In the video below, Dr.Steyn explains how sea breezes form, how they can actually help pollution spread, and how sea breezes data can be used for energy production.

YouTube Preview Image

As you saw, sea breezes can be a major contributor to the way in which pollution is circulated around the world and can greatly influence where and how we build wind energy farms in the future.

The story doesn’t end there. Not only is collecting data and understanding sea breeze important for pollution and energy, it also influences the way we live our daily lives. It is surprising how great of an impact sea breeze can have on society and how less people know about them. From the way we travel, to the way that we spend our free time, sea breezes are everywhere.

 Sea breezes can have a significant impact on the way that planes land at airports and how surfers spend their time in the water. These two everyday examples are influenced by the direction of the sea breeze. Sea breezes are very regular in that they are onshore by day and are offshore by night. During the day, the land heats up more than the ocean because it has a lower heat capacity.

Image showing how sea breezes blow during the day and night. Image from Mr.Bent’s Educational Blog

This creates a low-pressure system near the land and causes the sea breeze to blow towards the shore. On the other hand, the complete opposite occurs during the night, when the land cools and creates a high-pressure system. This results in the sea breeze blowing towards the water. Surfers call this type of breeze an offshore wind, which is highly desired as it hollows out the wave, allowing for a more radical surf experience.

The podcast below gives a more in-depth explanation of how sea breezes affect people’s day-to-day lives.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Hopefully, you’re convinced that the sea breeze is not just any breeze; it is a very important atmospheric phenomenon that may influence your lifestyle more than you care to know. They are not to be overlooked – they help planes land, circulate pollution but still, as we found when interviewing UBC students on their opinion about sea breezes, most people only pay attention to sea breeze when it “affects what [they] wear when it’s cold out.”

A special thanks to Dr.Steyn for the Interview.

By: Gagandeep, Grattin, Ki Won, and Dragana.

What if Extinction Wasn’t Permanent?

The gastric-brooding frog was first discovered in 1972 and was native to Queensland, Australia. This frog belongs to the genus Rheobatrachus which contains only two species. Both are now extinct. These two species were so fascinating because of their unique way of reproduction. The female would swallow the eggs after fertilization, carry them in her stomach and then orally give birth to the offspring. The average number of juveniles that was observed in the stomach of a female was 21-26.

Below is a picture of a female frog giving birth orally to one of her offspring:

www.rainforestinfo.org.au

While the offspring are in the mother’s stomach, she does not eat, and as her stomach grows larger in size, the lungs deflate to make room. In order to breathe, she must rely on gas exchange that occurs across the surface of her skin.

The gastric-brooding frog went extinct in 1983 and it has been suggested that this may have occurred due to a variety of reasons: habitat loss, pollution and/or pathogens. The other species in the genus Rheobatrachu, the Platypus frog, also went extinct in the early 80s.

According to this article, scientists in Australia are now trying to bring the gastric-brooding frog back from extinction through a cloning technique called somatic-cell nuclear transfer.

Basically, the researchers extracted cell nuclei from tissues of the gastric-brooding frog (which was collected in the 1970s and frozen) and implanted these nuclei into donor eggs. The donor eggs used in this case were from the Great Barred Frog, Mixophyes fasciolatu, which is distantly related to the gastric-brooding frog. The nuclei in the donor eggs were inactivated and replaced with the nuclei from the extinct species.  After this occurred, some of the eggs started to spontaneously divide and formed into early embryos. None of the embryos survived for more than a couple of days. Genetic tests were done to confirm that the genes in the embryos were those of the gastric-brooding frog.

Below is a simplistic diagram of how somatic-cell nuclear transfer works:

Wikipedia.org

Even though the experiment did not successful create an adult specimen of the extinct frog, the researchers are confident that it won’t be long until such a procedure will be able to be performed successfully.

The article further states that researchers from all over the world recently gathered in Washington for a conference in order to discuss the progress being made in the attempts to bring other extinct species back to life.

Possible candidates include the woolly mammoth and the dodo.

I find this so exciting!

Can you imagine having a zoo full of “extinct” animals, or even dinosaurs!?

Dragana Savic

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric-brooding_frog

Liver kept alive for 24 hours outside of body

Hundreds of thousands of lives are leaning on the edge waiting for the right organ and a new life. However, donated liver still remains a scarce resource these days and many lives are lost while waiting for the right liver. What makes the situation worse, is that over 2000 livers were wasted every year in the US and Europe because they were damaged during transport by the ice pack and solution used as the only method of preservation. However, a new device has recently been unveiled in London, England by the University of Oxford that keeps a donated liver at body temperature before they reached the patient waiting for transplant.

Because of the fact that an available liver must be matched with an appropriate receiver, it’s rare that an available liver is in close proximity to the receiver’s hospital. Therefore a long transportation time is sometimes incurred during which the liver is easily damaged because it is kept out of it optimal living conditions. The new device, however, allows the donated liver to be kept for at least 24 hours, what’s even more amazing, is that the liver keeps on functioning while in the device.

A donor liver connected with the device

The device simply acts as a body and supply the liver with oxygenated blood and nutrients, but the trick is, how much and at what pressure. “The key is that the system ‘listens’ to the organ to find out how much blood to supply, and at what pressure,” says Stuart Kay, of Team Consulting in Cambridge, UK. There are multiple sensor for the flow of fluid, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and sugar concentration in blood to create the optimum environment for the liver. Currently this device only works for donated livers, but the researchers at Cambridge are certain that it can be modified to fit other organs as well.

Check out this video on the actually hooking up of the liver and the device!

http://www.newscientist.com/video/2228569979001-device-keeps-liver-alive-outside-the-body.html

by Jonathan Lui

Panda Feces and Biofuel Production

These days that everyone is talking about climate change and increase in greenhouse gases, bio-fuels can be a good alternative to fossil fuels. Bio-fuels are liquid, gas or solid fuel that are produced from bio-masses such as corn, sugarcane, wheat, oil seed and so on. Production of these edible crops requires  high quality agricultural lands; using them for bio-fuel production can cause food scarcity, environmental concerns (replacing forest with crop lands) and economical costs. To minimize the negative effects of bio-fuel production on human beings, scientists are hoping to use  inedible super-tough plant materials known as lignocellulose  instead of using humans’ food source in production of bio-fuels. However breaking down lignocellulose in switch grass, corn stalks and wood chips requires high heat, pressure and harsh acids.

Who could imagine that solution to those limitations can be found in panda’s feces. There is an enzyme produced by bacteria found in panda’s gut that is strong enough to breakdown the tough plant materials. Researcher Ashli Brown and her colleagues have collected and analyzed panda’s feces and found several digestive bacteria that are similar to those found in termites that digest wood. Pandas eat 20 to 40 pounds of bamboo, leaves and stems everyday and have the ability to break down 95% of plant cellulose into nutrition. By isolating the bacteria in the giant panda’s gut, Brown is hoping to find the most powerful digestive enzyme that can be used in production of bio-fuels in order to genetically engineer this enzyme gene into yeast for massive production.

Using the enzyme contained within the giant panda’s gut in production of bio-fuels can be clearly faster, cleaner and less costly than the traditional method used today. This also can help in reduction of hunger by avoiding burning edible food source for bio-fuel production. Another point is that “The discovery also teaches a lesson about the importance of biodiversity and preserving endangered animals,” Brown said. I believe that every living thing such as plants or animals around us could be a beneficial source of products that may save our lives, so  we have to take action in saving those endangered plants and animals in order to save the beneficial resources that they provide us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flJCcyAUn24

Simin Yahyavi

Bee Stings Could Help Save People’s Lives!

Most people that have been stung by a bee would agree that it is a very painful and uncomfortable experience that they would not want to experience again. The pain takes days to go away, and the scar that a bee sting leaves may last weeks. Now though, it looks like a bee sting may not be as bad as it seems. Researchers at the Washington University School of medicine have found that a chemical found in the venom of a bee sting can destroy the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). What is extremely important is the fact that even though the chemical can kill the HIV virus, regular cells are immune to this chemical and are not affected by it in any way.

Image showing bee injecting venom. Taken from google images creative commons

Researchers believe that their findings will help them develop a vaginal gel that may help prevent the spreading of the HIV virus and be used for therapy. Although they don’t think that the gel may cure the disease completely, it may be used as a preventative measure in areas where HIV is particularly common. The active chemical that researchers believe is causing the observed effects is called melittin. This chemical works by poking holes in the nuclear envelope of the virus, causing large amounts of damage that cannot be easily repaired.

To obtain their findings, researchers loaded melittin into nanoparticles and administered them to patients. These kinds of particles have been found to very effectively treat tumors, so the scientists decided to test them to see if they would be affective in treating other types of diseases. The researchers saw that when the nanoparticles came into contact with HIV infected cells they were destroyed, while the nanoparticles simply “bounced off” the normal cells, which are much larger in size.

Nanoparticle incapsulating a chemical in the middle. This is the kind of mechanism the researchers used. Image from flicker user IBM Research

This is a major breakthrough in the world of science and medicine because HIV has been very hard to treat and prevent in the past. Also, HIV is a relatively common disease and many people suffer from it. It is approximated that about 36.1 million people around the world currently suffer from HIV. Furthermore, 21% of those that are infected in North America don’t even know that they are carriers of the deadly virus. Also, since the melittin loaded nanoparticles are so versatile, the researchers believe that this discovery could lead to the development of treatments for patients suffering from Hepatitis B and C.

Below is a short news report on this groundbreaking discovery:

YouTube Preview Image

So the next time you get stung by a bee and are panicking, calm down and just remember that the venom that the bee just injected you with is being used right now to potentially save millions of lives around the world.

Gagandeep Gill

Could Peptides Be The Cure For Depression?

For the first time ever, scientists at the UCLA have measured the release of the peptides hypocretin and melanin concentrating hormone (MCH) within humans. Hypocretin’s release is increased when the person is happy, but minimal when they are upset. MCH levels are maximized when the subject is asleep, but those levels diminished awake.

“The current findings explain the sleepiness of narcolepsy, as well as the depression that frequently accompanies this disorder” explains Jerome Siegel, professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Sleep Research at UCLA. The measurable changes of these peptides’ release will eventually allow researchers to develop medications that target the changes in brain chemistry.

In 2000, Siegel was the first to show a biological cause of narcolepsy when he found that people who suffer from the illness had 95 percent less hypocretin nerve cells for in their brain than people who don’t have narcolepsy. Due to the strong affiliation between depression and narcolepsy, Siegel expanded his study by researching how hypocretin could be connected to depression.

Image Source: micah.sparacio.org

Siegel retrieved information on hypocretin and MCH levels from the patients who had intracranial depth electrodes implanted in their brains. The patient’s actions were recorded while they ate, fell asleep, woke up, were social with other patients, and watched television. Every 15 minutes, the patients’ activity was recorded along with the release levels of the peptides. Each waking hour, the patient filled out a questionnaire where they rated with mood and attitudes.

Siegel found that positive emotions, social interactions, and the act of waking up had higher hypocretin levels, while the levels of MCH were at their highest when the patient was falling asleep and were at their lowest when the patient wasn’t being social. “These results suggest a previously unappreciated emotional specificity in the activation of arousal and sleep in humans” Siegel explained. “The findings suggest that abnormalities in the pattern of activation of these systems may contribute to a number of psychiatric disorders”

Siegel mentioned that several drug companies are in the process of developing hypocretin antagonists to be used as sleeping pills, but this study means that not only will these drugs induce sleep, but they will also influence the person’s mood.

Recent studies have suggested that depression-fighting drugs, like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) may have the same effect as a placebo as they are not based on the changes in neurotransmitter levels. Because as many as 10% of the US population suffers from depression, I think this study is a breakthrough in our knowledge on depression and I hope that this will lead to the production of a drug that can balance the release of these neurotransmitters.

Kathleen Leask

An Unlikely Hero is the Key to Killing the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)

Each day, almost 7,000 people contract HIV around the world.  Many scientists have dedicated their entire lives to finding a cure for this virus and it seems that we have come one step closer to finding that cure. With a historical discovery coming out of Washington University, that number could soon be reduced to zero.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that bee venom can effectively poke holes in the envelope surrounding the HIV virus and kill it. The potent toxin contained within bee venom is called melittin.

Nanoparticles, when infused with the toxin, can filter HIV through it’s surface and destroy it, while leaving normal cells unharmed due to their much larger size. When nanoparticles come into contact with normal cells, they simply bounce off. Joshua L. Hood, MD, PhD, explained, “The melittin forms little pore-like attack complexes and ruptures the envelope, stripping it off the virus.” The virus has to have a protective coat and there is no way for the virus to adapt when its essential physical property is under attack.

Image displays nanoparticles (purple) infused with melittin (green), with molecular bumpers (small red ovals) allowing them to bounce off of normal body cells. Fuse with HIV (small spiked circles) and destroy their envelope.
Photo credit: Joshua L. Hood, MD, PhD.

The following video by the Huffington Post further explains this topic.

Video source: Huffington Post

There is promising evidence that HIV infection in children will be eliminated. A baby born with HIV in Mississippi has apparently been cured. Its mother was diagnosed with HIV during labor, and the baby received intense care just after 30 hours of birth. This child shows no sign of the virus today.

Most anti-HIV drugs inhibit the virus’s ability to replicate, while doing nothing to stop initial infection. The development of a vaginal gel is the new revelation to prevent the spread of HIV, and in addition, an intravenous treatment to help those already infected and clear HIV from the blood stream.

Humans Will Breath Under Water

Have you ever tried to hold your breath for more than a minute under water? Well, if you had succeeded you were not reading this post! Holding breath under water has always been part of man’s dream. But it seems it will not be a dream for the future generations. According to a recent research  salamanders have developed the trait of producing oxygen themselves rather than taking it from atmosphere.

Baby under Water!

 

According to this study which was  conducted in Dalihousie University faculty of Zoology eggs of salamander , Ambystoma maculatum, were placed among chlamydomonad algae. The result of this experiment is that the DNA of the algae and the DNA of the salamander eggs were somehow combined. Algae is a nitrogen-dependent organism and produces oxygen gas as a form its waste. Salamanders on the other hand require oxygen to function and survive, and combining algae and the salamanders DNA would produce an organism which produces oxygen on its own and would not require oxygen  from atmosphere.

Salamander. Amphibian

Researchers have also found traces of this algae in mature salamander’s reproductive system which suggests that these algae are inherited to other generations.

What good is it to humans?

New technologies such as DNA Recombinant has enabled us to combine DNA strands of different species. In this technology, the wanted DNA is reproduced many times by molecular cloning in laboratory. These DNAs are then directed to the main DNA sequence by means of another organism and sequencing. Viruses are usually used in this step to deliver the multiplied DNA to the main DNA.

Formation of recombinant DNA requires a cloning vector, a DNA molecule that will replicate within a living cell. Vectors are generally derived from plasmids or viruses, and have the necessary sequence of DNA for replication. The inserted DNA may or may not express its codes depending on its place on the main DNA sequence. Thus, markers are used to place the DNA among functional genes.

Human DNA is packed with hundreds of viruses DNA s which have entered our DNA sequence along the course of evolution. This finding suggests that viral vectors can be used to alter human DNA sequence by means of insertion.  Recently, this technology has been used in the treatment course of of insulin-dependent diabetes. So, it’s not far beyond imagination if scientists mix algae DNA with that of human.

Soon the future of human beings will be altered with this technology and super humans will be produced! but until that day do not hold your breath for too long under water unless you are this guy:

References:

Canadian Journal of Zoology, 2008, 86(11): 1289-1298, 10.1139/Z08-115

 

Gluten-free diet: Necessary for all?

Gluten-free

(Picture resource: Power of food)

A gluten-free diet is a diet that excludes the protein gluten. Gluten is found in grains such as wheat, barley and rye. The protein gluten causes celiac disease which is an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine because of gene mutation. The vast majority of people who have celiac disease do not know it. Eating a gluten-free diet is a treatment for people with celiac disease by controlling their symptoms and preventing complications. People with celiac disease must eat a strictly gluten-free diet and must keep on the diet for their remaining lives.

Medical experts largely agree that there is a condition related to gluten other than celiac, called non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Non-celiac gluten sensitivity is a medical term used for someone who does not have celiac, but whose health improves on a gluten-free diet and worsens again if gluten is eaten. It could even be more than one illness.

Kristen Golden Testa, who is health program director in California for the Children’s Partnership, is one of the gluten-sensitive. Although she does not have celiac, she started a gluten-free diet. She says she has lost weight and her allergies have gone away. She did not consult a doctor before starting a gluten-free diet, and she also does not know whether avoiding gluten has helped at all. Also, she gave up sugar at the same time and made an effort to eat more vegetables and nuts. People like Ms. Golden Testa say that gluten-free diets have improved their health. They believe that avoiding gluten gives them more energy and alleviates chronic ills.

Dr. Stefano Guandalini, medical director of the University of Chicago’s Celiac Disease Center, said that “it is not a healthier diet for those who don’t need it. These people are following a fad, essentially”.

Experts also worried that people could end up eating less healthfully. A gluten-free muffin generally contains less fiber than a wheat-based one. Many grains are enriched with vitamins. Avoiding grains with a gluten-free diet may mean eating fewer of nutrition enriched products.

If you think you are having problems with gluten, you should be tested for celiac disease. You can’t cut out gluten before being tested. Celiac experts urge people to not to do self-diagnose. Celiac disease can be silent, causing damage you can’t see or feel, so you need regular monitoring and tests, especially since it’s so easy to be accidentally exposed to gluten. It is also highly recommended to visit a doctor or a licensed nutritionist before starting on a gluten-free diet.

Here’s a video more about gluten-free diet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLJSmJ0bMlk

Reference

http://glutenfreeexpo.ca/

http://www.celiac.ca/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten-free_diet/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease/

http://www.glutenfreefind.com/

http://glutenfreediet.ca/

KiWon Min