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Antibiotics is something that we all have had experience using. This technology although a relatively recent development in history it has conferred massive benefits on the human population. After the discovery of penicillin in 1928 the average life expectancy went from 47 years at birth in 1900 to 78.8 years today, leading cause of death went from infectious diseases to non-communicable disease, and the population expanded a few times over. However, the effectiveness of this new technology is diminishing and may even come to an end.

Recently it has been found that bacteria populations have been evolving to become resistant to antibiotics. This new development has led some to suggesting that the use of antibiotics in livestock and human populations be reduced, others are suggesting to look for new alternative medicines to replace standard antibiotics. This has led to many researchers around the world to start looking for new treatments to infectious diseases. Some break throughs have been made, one in particularly being the study and application of cationic peptide antibodies.

Cationic peptides are produced naturally in all organisms and are an important component in defense against microorganisms. Additionally, microbes don’t seem develop resistance to these compounds. Although in the early stages of drug development peptide antibodies have been shown to be extremely effective in killing bacteria in vitro and quiet a bit has been discovered about their chemical structures and properties.

Cationic peptide antibodies are compounds consisting of 12-15 amino acids linked in chains with a positive charge. The chemical structure of cationic peptides varies considerably and have been grouped into four types; β-sheet structures, α-helices, extended helices and loop structures. In addition, peptides have hydrophilic and hydrophobic regions letting them interact with lipids as well as with water.

Although natural occurring in all life forms and some peptides structures being known exactly production has been costly and difficult. Peptide antibiotics are found in almost all cellular immune response mechanisms, but these quantities are insufficient even for research use let alone for industrial production. It is found in higher concentrations in amphibian skin and mucosal regions of the body but extraction from these mediums is not economically feasible and not all variations are available this way.

Another means of peptide production is chemical synthesis, which consists of three maim procedures; fragment condensation in solution, stepwise solid phase synthesis, and solid phase fragment condensation.

Kent, Stephen B H. Annual Review of Biochemistry. 1988. Title: Chemical Synthesis of Peptides and Proteins.

Fragment condensation in solution is when you take the amino acids in solution making up the peptides and link them then, link the chains just created and repeating till desired peptides is produced. Stepwise solid phase synthesis starts to a C-terminal amino acid attached to a solid base from there additional amino acids add chemically bonded in a step wise fashion then purified of resin bound intermediates by filtration and washing. Solid phase fragment condensation uses stepwise solid phase synthesis to create desired peptide fragments and then condense these fragments using resin support. All the methods of peptide chemical synthesis are sophisticated leading to a need for experts and specialized labs. The final means of peptide production is recombinant DNA procedures, in which the genetic code of bacteria is altered so that it will produce am abundance of the desired peptide, this procedure is showing to be the most efficient and so the most promising for future research and funding.

Noah Rudlowski

Recycling plastic here in B.C. is straightforward and easy. Simply sort your items into those blue bins and leave them out on weekly collection days. No headache, no hassle and no hidden conspiracy, right?

CBC’s Marketplace found out exactly otherwise. In an investigative report released this past weekend, by placing trackers in bales of plastic commissioned to be recycled, they found that only one out of three waste collection businesses with links to B.C.’s municipal recycling programs ended up recycling the plastic. What did the other two businesses do with their plastic? One dumped it in a landfill. The other brought it to a waste-to-energy facility, where it was incinerated, and what remained was then dumped in a landfill. Check out the behind-the-scenes of their investigation below:

Instead, it was established that only 9% of Canadian plastic ended up being recycled. Which begs the question, what happens to the rest? In Canada, 2.8 million tonnes were thrown away as garbage. Ending up in landfills or oceans. On a global scale, 8 million tonnes go into the oceans annually. In the ocean, plastics are then weathered under the influence of solar UV radiation into miniscule fragments called, “microplastics”.

Microplastics are either consumed by marine life or wash up along the shores of beaches. On beaches, they have become a habitat in which bacteria can proliferate. A recent study found vast arrays of bacterial communities thriving on the surfaces of microplastics on the beaches and coastal regions in Singapore. Some of the bacteria sampled were harmful, being linked to the bleaching of corals or infection of open wounds. However, some bacteria species identified were able to biodegrade plastic, offering a potential solution towards solving the plastic pollution issue.

It should be clear by now that the accumulation of plastic pollution in the oceans is bad. Further compounding this is the ineffectiveness of recycling. So, what does that leave residents of B.C. to do? Reduce and Reuse. The onus once again falls on the individual to be ever more vigilant, and more responsible for minimizing their part in the use of plastic.

Plastic pollution along the shore at the East Coast Park, Singapore. Source: http://www.greenfuture.sg/2014/08/12/insights-on-marine-trash-in-singapore/

Birds colliding into poles and buildings, beehives going through colony collapse disorder and plants with irregular metabolisms, these problems and more are thought by some to be caused by an increase in human caused EMF radiation.

EMF is short for Electromagnetic Field; electromagnetism is a type of interaction that occurs between electrically charged particles. Everything in the universe is made up of a diverse group of subatomic particles (particles smaller than the atom). One of these particles is the electron, the electron is electrically charged and exists within almost all atoms.  When voltage is applied to a conducting material such as copper the electrons within will gain energy and begin to move in a sort of stream know as electricity. Electricity is extremely efficient in the transfer of energy and information and due to these properties, it is used in almost all aspects of modern life and technology.

Electrons like to have as little energy as possible, so to get rid of extra energy electrons will eject EMF radiation. EMF radiation is made up of subatomic particles called photons, photons can be thought of as packets of energy that travel through space delivering emitted energy from exited particles to particles they collide with. Photons while being a particle can also be thought of as a wave in which frequency corresponds to energy. These different frequencies make up a spectrum in which lower energy photons have lower frequencies and higher energy photons have higher frequency. Many different phenomena are actually effects of photons at different points on the energy spectrum, i.e.: Microwaves, X-rays, Light, Radio, ect.

The electromagnetic spectrum: Showing correspondence between frequency, ionization potential and different EMF radiation classifications. Picture retrieved from: https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/emf/index.cfm

There are generally two types of EMF radiation ionizing and non-ionizing. Ionizing radiation has enough energy to change the chemical properties of the object affected while non-ionizing is characterized by its lower impact on the objects affected. All electronics used by people today have EMF radiation of the non-ionizing variety because of current safety regulation.

Recent study’s by EKLIPSE have shown that the magnetic orientation of animals and plant metabolism are altered by non-ionizing EMF radiation. The alteration of magnetic orientation within bees can cause them to lose their way and some hypothesis may even be the reason for colony collapse disorder. Magnetic disorientation in birds can cause birds to migrate to the wrong geographically locations and even may affect their ability to balance during fight causing them to crash into things.

A graph of the amount of average EMF radiation measured within UK houses (estimation before 1949) normalised so that the amount of exposure in 1989 is 1. Picture retrieved from: http://www.emfs.info/sources/levels/time/

Since the discovery of electricity, the exposure to EMF radiation in house holds has gone up over ten-fold. This number is only projected to increase and so at this point research into the effects of EMF radtion on the envornment are needed. There may come a day when EMF polution regulations are passed into law.

By Noah Rudlowski

You may not have noticed it yet but there has been a steady increase in the price of salmon in consumer stores. The reason for this is due to the high demand and low availability of these fish. Pacific salmon are a very important species of fish that contribute to the economy and play a very critical part in the food chain as the primary source of food for many animals including humans and the iconic black and brown bears. Their annual migration provides an insight into the yearly population and the abundance of their species.

However, the pacific salmon population has decreased in the past few decades due to the effects of global warming causing changes within the habitats they live in. This leads to issues such as suboptimal diets that have caused a decrease in salmon health leading to death. Predators have shifted to a higher salmon diet as their other prey are becoming less abundant due to changes in climate. Rising sea levels, destroying important transition zones for juvenile salmon, has also caused the salmon population to decrease even further.

As ocean temperatures rise, warmer ocean currents pull less nutritious plankton from the central oceans and deposit them to the salmon feeding grounds, at the same time driving out the more nutritious plankton from the coastal waters. (McSheffrey 2016). This can be a disaster for the salmon as the prey they consume also feed on this plankton. As the salmon prey cannot survive on such nutrient-limited plankton they start to die off and the remaining salmon are left with no choice but to substitute their regular feeding habits to accommodate a higher less nutritious plankton filled one. In the short term, this can sustain the fish, however, in the long term this plankton diets lead to lower energy production and a less nutritious diet which in turn makes the fish weaker and more likely to die.

While the salmon prey changes, the predators that prey on salmon have been moving to a higher salmon-filled diet. Global warming has not only affected the salmon’s food source but the food source of many predators that prey on salmon. Predators must change their diets as their other prey has been steadily decreasing. They must also resort to eating a higher percentage of a different species and in this case, it is a higher salmon diet. For decades the salmon and predator population has coexisted, “but salmon populations have come under stress from many sides, reducing salmon numbers and causing an unnatural predator-prey balance” (PBS 2016).  Some of the salmon’s main predators include gulls, sharks, pollack, cod, seals, pike otters, and killer whales. The result of these predators consuming a higher number of salmon causes an overall decrease in the number of salmon. Global warming plays a critical role in the predator to prey ratio and has a very drastic role in the depreciation of salmon.

If suboptimal diets and increased predation was not enough for the salmon to deal with adding habitat loss to the list of challenges is sure to cause a drastic decrease in the salmon population. Most salmon lay their eggs in estuaries that provide an important transition zone from a freshwater habitat to live in saltwater. (National Ocean And Atmospheric 2012). These areas are critical for salmon as it allows juvenile salmon to feed and provide them with a refuge area from predators, allowing for a higher percentage of juvenile salmon to make it to adulthood. As global warming causes ocean levels to rise, the water from the ocean sometimes floods into these low-lying estuaries altering the ecosystem in a way that cannot be reversed (National Wildlife Federation 2009) With these important transition zones being permanently altered, the juvenile salmon are now unable to obtain the proper food and protection from predators, thus, decreasing the probability of the salmon making it to adulthood.

Salmon species are very sensitive to any change in their environment and this can play a drastic role in their population.  These animals are an essential part of the world and their oceanic environment. Global warming is the main reason the salmon population is declining, sustaining the salmon population is critical if one wants to ensure the survival of this species.

Image by BBC’s wildlife photographer Jon Cornforth