'Extinct' frog hops back into northern Israel

In this photo made available by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011, a Hula Painted Frog, a species believed to be extinct is seen in a nature reserve in northern Israel. Omri Gal of Israel's Nature and Parks Authority said Thursday that the Hula Painted Frog was seen for the first time in 50 years this week. In the 1940s, a specimen ate a second frog, leading to speculation the species is cannabilistic.(AP Photo/Dror Galili)

A frog species believed to be extinct has hopped back into sight in northern Israel.
Omri Gal of Israel's Nature and Parks Authority said Thursday the Hula Painted Frog was seen for the first time in 50 years this week. He said it was declared extinct.
Gal said, "It's an amazing find, now we have a second chance to preserve the species."

A Hula painted frog is seen at a protective facility in the Hula Valley Nature Reserve in northern Israel November 17, 2011.  REUTERS/Nir Elias

The frog is native to the Hula Valley, a swamp drained in the 1950s to stop malaria.
Aquatic ecologist Dana Milstein says the frog was rare even before, and little is known about it. In the 1940s, a specimen ate a second frog, leading to speculation the species is cannibalistic.
She credited rehydration of the area for the frog sighting and said more are likely in the reserve.
© The Associated Press, 2011

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Weird/Hungry mosquitoes fly farther than you think

How far does a mosquito fly? Harry Boerema wants to know.

Boerema lives near a drainage project, where Dutch authorities are dredging a huge meter-deep (3-foot) basin in the northern rural landscape to head off flood waters and protect towns and villages from disaster.
The project threatens to inflict hordes of mosquitoes on people living around the water retention area, so scientists set out to calculate how to keep the boundaries of the ditch far enough from human habitation to protect residents from pest infestation.
The question they needed to find out: How far does a common European human-biting mosquito fly?
What they found surprised them: A hungry female looking for a "host" will fly at least 150 meters (yards), three times farther than previously thought, said Piet Verdonschot, who conducted the research.
The 1,700 hectare (4,200-acre) basin, begun in 2003, is designed to collect heavy rainwater that will slowly be channeled to the North Sea. But frequent wet-dry cycles will be perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
Buzzing pests are nothing new for Boerema, a retired professor of architectural history who has lived for 36 years in his quiet cottage set amid dairy farms.
"I don't mind them to a certain extent. But not in surplus," he says. "I'm a nature lover, and mosquitoes are part of nature — although not the most likable ones."
Not everyone took the prospect of living on water's edge with such equanimity, and local complaints led authorities to commission the mosquito research, said project manager John Tukker.
At the outset, Verdonschot believed mosquitoes stay within about 50 meters (yards) of their breeding ground. The biggest nuisance for humans often originates in flower pots, buckets of collected rainwater or any kind of water left stagnant in the back garden or barnyard.
"The assumption in the literature is that people who suffer bites have bred their own specimens in their own gardens," he said.
Hundreds of mosquito species exist around the world — 36 in the Netherlands alone — but Verdonschot concentrated on the two species most common in the Dutch climate: the culex pipiens, which prefers birds to people but will still keep you awake at night during the summer, and the Culiseta annulata, larger, more aggressive insects active year-round. Neither normally carries dangerous diseases.
Verdonschot, an aquatic ecologist working for the private environmental research institute Alterra, hatched 40,000 mosquitoes in large tents in a grassy field. The tents were surrounded by concentric circles of traps set at 50 meters, 100 meters and 150 meters. Around the edges of the field were ditches with tall reeds and wild grasses on the banks.
The traps drew mosquitoes into smoke from dry ice then instantly froze them. At the end of each day researchers collected the corpses and counted them one-by-one, using tweezers under a microscope.
Verdonschot expected most mosquitoes to be caught in the closest traps. Instead, about 80 percent were found in the farthest, meaning most flew at least 150 meters from the tent where they were hatched.
Verdonschot then refined his experiment, placing evergreen shrubs within the inner circle of traps. The numbers caught in the closest ring of traps shot up by one-third. The bushes offered both shelter from predators and moisture evaporating from the leaves.
That discovery led Tukker, working in the north, to create small raised islands of vegetation in the middle of the retention area, which becomes a swamp after a heavy rain. Those islands deflect mosquitoes from nearby farms.
The experiments produced a few other surprises, too.
Mosquitoes are mostly quiet during the day, preferring to concentrate on the edge of a body of water. When females hunt for blood — necessary for reproduction — they move for about an hour at dusk or at dawn, staying close to the ground.
"They move differently than we thought, they move farther than we thought," Verdonschot said.
Verdonschot believes his team's research adds to scientific knowledge about mosquitoes. Tomes have been written about mosquito bites and the effects on human health, but little research has been done on their habits, he said.
Verdonschot's simple experiments this summer have value for others building catchment areas around Europe and for housing developers.
"The whole northwestern European climate is becoming more dynamic because of climate change, because of wetter summers. And all this urban infrastructure has to be protected from water excess," he said.
Boerema also has a mosquito trap in the hedge around his cottage, helping to keep track of the mosquito population during wet and dry periods. He is anxious to see the water storage project completed, recalling that he was ordered to evacuate his home during a 1998 flood.
"I think it will ease the danger," he said, even though he's likely to have more mosquitoes.
"We've always been bitten. I don't react very much, but my wife hates them — but not to the extent that we find it unbearable to live here."

Associated Press

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Scientists Use Tears to Measure Blood Sugar

Photo: iStockPhoto

For most people living with diabete, numerous -- and painful -- finger pricks are needed to draw blood and monitor blood sugar levels throughout the day.

Now a person's tears might be just as useful in keeping blood sugar in safe ranges, according to a recent study in animals.

The idea of using tears to gauge blood sugar isn't new, but scientists believe they've struck the right balance with an electrochemical sensor that picks up on small chemical changes in tear fluid.

Because blood sugar in tears occurs at levels between 30 and 50 times lower than in blood, previous sensors were not sensitive enough to accurately detect changes in levels. The new test needs roughly 5 microliters of fluid to work with, and the team thinks it can refine the required sample size down to 1 or 2 microliters with time.

In the experiment, scientists tested the new sensor on 12 anesthetized rabbits, taking blood and tear samples from each animal. Then, they compared blood sugar in tears relative to levels in blood. The group learned that the sensor worked for individual rabbits, meaning blood sugar ranges were accurate based on relative readings for that individual.

But there's a catch: Patients don't need to cry to give samples. The needlelike sensor can be gently placed on the surface of the eye to draw the fluid. If used in humans, patients must avoid stimulating the eye to produce tears because doing so skews the reading.

The sensor will likely need to be tested in other animals before making its way to individuals with diabetes. At this time, it's unclear what the technology would cost. Most blood sugar monitors cost between $20 and $100, depending on the type.

Diabetes is characterized by the inability to keep blood sugar levels down naturally through producing a chemical called insulin. Normally, the sugar would be absorbed by the body's cells with the help of insulin. But without it, people with diabetes cannot correctly use these sugars, which requires their bodies to need insulin treatments to prevent the high levels from causing damage to organs and the nervous system.
Approximately 25 million people in the United States have diabetes, and 346 million have it worldwide.

The paper also mentions that using tears to monitor blood sugar might be easier for many diabetes patients who also develop eye conditions that require attention or contact lenses to counter. Perhaps measuring blood sugar with eye fluids would be easier for people who already have a daily eye care regimen.

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Electronic nose aims to sniff out disease

Dr. Ranjan Nanda demonstrates the device at an experimental stage. The electronic nose aims to diagnose tuberculosis without a lab test.

A breathalyzer-like device that aims to detect tuberculosis, pneumonia and lung cancer from someone's breath could help replace time-consuming tests, researchers hope.

The electronic nose received a $950,000 grant from the federally funded Grand Challenges Canada and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Monday, to try to develop the hand-held device for use in the developing world.

"It's almost like a breathalyzer test that the police might use for alcohol," Dr. Peter Singer, CEO of Grand Challenges Canada, said in an interview from New Delhi.

"If they can bring that to the window of your car, what we're trying to do is bring the diagnosis of tuberculosis to the door of the hut in the village where it really needs to reach."

Scientists say electronic noses could also be created for early detection of lung cancer and pneumonia, also based on signature biomarkers of disease detectable in a patient's breath.

Singer called the device a "bold idea" with potentially a big payoff in preventing the 1.7 million deaths from TB each year, mainly in the developing world. Up to 400,000 of them could be saved with better diagnosis, he said.

People may not think about diagnosis as life-saving, Singer said. But if a patient in a village isn’t diagnosed, it is very likely many others will be infected and then die.

For the prototype, someone breathes into the device, which has a little tub at the end to capture the sample, which is then tested.

The battery-powered technology is based on the finding that people with TB have a different biological signature in their breath.

The two-year grant will be use to validate the finding in four centres throughout India.

Dr. Ranjan Nanda of the New Delhi-based International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, one of the lead researchers on the electronic nose project, aims to have a validated prototype by December 2013.

If it works, it could be in use shortly after that, Singer said.

The existng sputum test for TB has challenges, especially for developing countries that may not have facilities or trained lab staff, says Dr. Michael Gardam, an infectious disease specialist with Toronto's University Health Network.

"It's just such a wonderful idea and it's such a simple idea," Gardam said. "The challenge is going to be, at the end of the day, can it jump through all the necessary hoops to actually be something that people can use?"

The development of the device is a collaboration between Nanda's centre and and Next Dimension Technologies in California.

CBC News

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Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Who Tried to Sell Camera Used on Moon

Astronaut Ed Mitchell was part of the crew for the third successful lunar landing mission. (SSPL/Getty Images)
Federal prosecutors and former astronaut Edgar Mitchell have reached an agreement over a camera Mitchell brought home from his 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission.
Mitchell said the camera was a gift from NASA, and earlier this year he tried to auction it through the British firm Bonhams.
NASA says the camera is U.S. government property and sued Mitchell to get it back after learning in March it was up for sale.
In papers filed Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami stated Mitchell will give up any claim to the 16 mm motion picture camera and agree to return it to NASA. NASA will in turn give it to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington for display within 60 days.
Both sides will pay their own legal expenses. A judge was expected to sign off on the settlement in the coming days.
Mitchell's attorney Armen R. Vartian said his client decided the settlement was the best way to resolve a conflict with NASA.
"I think both sides saw the lawsuit as something that should not continue," he added.
Mitchell is one of 12 humans to have walked on the moon. He later received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The camera was one of two that went to the moon's surface on the Apollo 14 mission, which Mitchell piloted.
During the mission, Mitchell and Alan Shepard spent hours collecting nearly 100 pounds of lunar samples.
They also demonstrated that astronauts could walk long distances safely, covering about two miles on one expedition. Shepard's attempt at swatting a golf ball on the moon can be viewed on the internet.
Mitchell later said he attempted to communicate using telepathy with friends on Earth during the mission.
Since his retirement, Mitchell has devoted much of his life to exploring the mind, physics, the possibility of space aliens and ways of linking religion with scientific fact.

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Woodpeckers could hold key to head injury prevention

Woodpeckers could hold the key to making helmets that better protect people from head injuries, a new study has found.

Researchers believe that woodpeckers may have an answer for minimizing devastating head injuries.
They say their analysis of woodpecker anatomy and behaviour revealed some features that could potentially be put to use in designing more effective helmets.
Woodpeckers are able to peck at a tree trunk at high speed, resulting in intense deceleration forces on impact, without sustaining any brain injury.
To investigate the source of the protection, the researchers - led by Yubo Fan of Beihang University in Beijing and Ming Zhang of Hong Kong Polytechnic University - recorded the birds using two synchronous high-speed video cameras.
They also took scans of the birds' heads to reveal details about the micro-structural parameters such as the bone volume, thickness and density.
Woodpeckers could hold key to head injury prevention
Woodpeckers could hold the key to making helmets that better protect people from head injuries, a new study has found.
Researchers believe that woodpeckers may have an answer for minimizing devastating head injuries.
They say their analysis of woodpecker anatomy and behaviour revealed some features that could potentially be put to use in designing more effective helmets.
Woodpeckers are able to peck at a tree trunk at high speed, resulting in intense deceleration forces on impact, without sustaining any brain injury.
To investigate the source of the protection, the researchers - led by Yubo Fan of Beihang University in Beijing and Ming Zhang of Hong Kong Polytechnic University - recorded the birds using two synchronous high-speed video cameras.
They also took scans of the birds' heads to reveal details about the micro-structural parameters such as the bone volume, thickness and density.
They then constructed 3D models that allowed for further testing and measurement of the forces involved.
The results showed that specific details of the cranial bones and beak - such as the relative "spongy"-ness of the bone at different places in the skull and the unequal lengths of the upper and lower parts of the beak - were crucial for preventing impact injury.
The researchers conclude that the shock absorption system is not based on a single factor, but is a result of the combined effect of a number of different morphological features.
Dr Fan said: "This combination may be useful in guiding design for new protective gear."
The findings were published in the latest issue of the online journal PLoS ONE.

Source: The Telegraph

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How the Zebra Gets Its Stripes

Many living things have stripes, but the developmental processes that create these and other patterns are complex and difficult to untangle.

Now a team of scientists has designed a simple genetic circuit that creates a striped pattern that they can control by tweaking a single gene.
"The essential components can be buried in a complex physiological context," said Terence Hwa, a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and one of the leaders of the study published October 14 in Science. "Natural systems make all kinds of wonderful patterns, but the problem is you never know what's really controlling it."
With genes taken from one species of bacterium and inserted into another, Hwa and colleagues from the University of Hong Kong assembled a genetic loop from two linked modules that senses how crowded a group of cells has become and responds by controlling their movements.
One of the modules secretes a chemical signal called acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL). As the bacterial colony grows, AHL floods the accumulating cells, causing them to tumble in place rather than swim. Stuck in the agar of their dish, they pile up.
Because AHL doesn't diffuse very far, a few cells escape and swim away to begin the process again.
Left to grow overnight, the cells create a target-like pattern of concentric rings of crowded and dispersed bacterial cells. By tweaking just one gene that limits how fast and far cells can swim, the researchers were able to control the number of rings the bacteria made. They can also manipulate the pattern by modifying how long AHL lasts before it degrades.
Although individual bacteria are single cells, as colonies they can act like a multicellular organism, sending and receiving signals to coordinate the growth and other functions of the colony. That means fundamental rules that govern the development of these patterns could well apply to critical steps in the development of other organisms.
To uncover these fundamental rules, Hwa and colleagues characterized the performance of their synthetic genetic circuit in two ways.
First, they precisely measured both the activity of individual genes in the circuit throughout the tumble-and-swim cycle. Then they derived a mathematical equation that describes the probability of cells flipping between swim and tumble motions.
Additional equations describe other aspects of the system, such as the dynamics of the synthesis, diffusion and deactivation of one of the cell-to-cell chemical signal AHL.
This three-pronged approach of "wet-lab" experiments, precise measurements of the results, and mathematical modeling of the system, characterize the emerging discipline of quantitative biology, Hwa said. "This is a prototype, a model of the kind of biology we want to do."
Co-authors include Jian-Dong Huang, associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Hong Kong additional researchers at Hong Kong Baptist University, the University of Marburg, and the University of Hong Kong including members of the 2008 iGEM team, which Hwa co-advised as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at UHK. Hwa is a senior scientist with UC San Diego's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics.

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Weird Science/Goats Could Increase the Risk of a Rare Lung Cancer

Exposure to goats could increase the risk of a certain type of lung cancer, according to French researchers.

The study, presented at the European Respiratory Society's Annual Congress in Amsterdam, has linked a professional exposure to goats with a distinct subset of lung cancer, known as pneumonic-type lung adenocarcinoma (P-ADC).
This form of lung cancer has a weak association with tobacco smoking when compared with other types of the disease. In attempting to identify other triggers that may cause the disease, scientists have previously noticed similarities between P-ADC and a viral infection which causes growths in the lungs of sheep. Given these similarities, the researchers have investigated whether a viral agent found in sheep and goats could be easily transferred to people who work with the animals, leading to a partiality for P-ADC.
The current epidemiologic study involved 44 patients with P-ADC and 132 controls without the disease. All participants were given a questionnaire assessing a number of risk factors including their smoking status, their personal history of cancer and their exposure to goats.
The results showed that people who had experienced a professional exposure to goats during their lifetime were five times more likely to get P-ADC compared with other types of lung cancer.
The findings also showed that P-ADC was significantly associated with females, and people who had never smoked or had any personal history of cancer.
Dr Nicolas Girard, from the Louis Pradel Hospital, Hospices Civils de Lyon, said: "Scientists have noticed similarities between P-ADC and a contagious viral infection in sheep before. This led us to explore the possibility that professional exposure to cattle could make humans more susceptible to P-ADC. These findings demonstrate that exposure to goats could be a risk factor for this type of lung cancer, however further studies are needed to assess other potential risk factors for the disease."

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Disgraced Korean scientist unveils cloned coyotes

South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk (R) and Gyeonggi province governor Kim Moon-su (2nd R) hold a cloned coyote during a donation ceremony at a wildlife protection centre in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, October 17, 2011 CREDIT:REUTERS/Jo Yong-Hak
Disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-Suk unveiled eight cloned coyotes Monday in a project sponsored by a provincial government.
Hwang delivered the clones to a wild animal shelter at Pyeongtaek, 50 kilometres (35 miles) south of Seoul, in a ceremony chaired by Gyeonggi province governor Kim Moon-Soo, Kim's office said.
Hwang was a national hero until some of his research into creating human stem cells from a cloned embryo was found to be faked.
But his work in creating Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, in 2005 has been verified by experts and authorities.
Under a joint project with the province to clone wild animals, Hwang took cells from the skin of a coyote, Kim's office said in a statement.
He transplanted their nuclei into a dog's eggs from which the canine nucleus had been removed, it said, adding the first clone was born on June 17.

 Disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk, right, and Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Moon-su hold a coyote, which is claimed to be cloned, during a donation ceremony at a farm in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 17, 2011. A South Korean team led by Hwang is claiming to have cloned coyotes for the first time. (AP Photo/Yonhap, Shin Young-keun)
In a Twitter message, the governor praised Hwang for what he called the world's first use of such a technique. "The cloning of an African wild dog is under way, and we will attempt to clone a mammoth in the future," Kim said.
South Korean experts have previously cloned animals including a cow, a cat, dogs, a pig and a wolf. The cloned wolf died in 2009.
Hwang shot to fame in 2004 when he published a paper in the US journal Science claiming to have created the world's first stem-cell line from a cloned human embryo.
But his reputation was tarnished in November 2005 by allegations that he had violated medical ethics by accepting human eggs from his own researchers.
In January 2006 an investigative team ruled that his findings were faked and said he had produced no stem cells of any kind.
In 2009 Hwang received a two-year suspended sentence for embezzling research funds and ethical lapses in obtaining human eggs. Last December an appeals court reduced the penalty to an 18-month suspended sentence.

(STORY -ABC NEWS)

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Weird Science/Black Death genome reconstructed

 

Five skeletal remains from the East Smithfield site (Photo: Museum of London)

It's hard to comprehend the impact of the Black Death. The "Great Pestilence" is believed to have originated somewhere in Northern Asia in the 1330s before hitting Europe in 1347. It killed an estimated 75 million people worldwide - that's around 25 per cent of all humans in existence at the time. Now in an effort to better understand modern infectious diseases, scientist have sequenced the entire genome of the Black Death.

The research is based on analysis of skeletal remains from the East Smithfield "plague pits" in London using a previously developed methodology for extracting degraded DNA fragments of the bacteria that caused the plague - Yersinia pestis.

    Close-up of teeth from a plague victim (Photo: Museum of London)

The international team, led by researchers from McMaster University and the University of Tubingen, say this is the first time a reconstructed genome of any ancient pathogen has been drafted.
So why is this relevant in the 21st Century?
Descendants of the specific variant of the Yersinia pestis found in the 14th Century remain exist today, killing an estimated 2,000 people a year. By drafting the reconstruction of the genome scientist are able to see changes in the pathogen's evolution - which in this case have been minor - and gain a better understanding of such deadly infections.
(Hendrik Poinar, associate professor and director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre Photo: Museum of London)
"The genomic data show that this bacterial strain, or variant, is the ancestor of all modern plagues we have today worldwide," says Hendrik Poinar, associate professor and director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre. "Every outbreak across the globe today stems from a descendant of the medieval plague. With a better understanding of the evolution of this deadly pathogen, we are entering a new era of research into infectious disease."
There are still questions that remain unanswered about why the Black Death was so devastating however.
"We found that in 660 years of evolution as a human pathogen, there have been relatively few changes in the genome of the ancient organism, but those changes, however small, may or may not account for the noted increased virulence of the bug that ravaged Europe," says Poinar. "The next step is to determine why this was so deadly."
In other words, the research may have knocked out one of the main contenders in establishing why the Black Death had such a deadly impact. The Paper states that because the Black Death may not have been due to bacterial phenotype, "factors other than microbial genetics, such as environment, vector dynamics and host susceptibility, should be at the forefront of epidemiological discussions regarding emerging Y. pestis infections."
It has also been shown that the variation of Yersinia pestis that caused the medieval plague originated sometime around the 12th Century, which means that it was not the cause of the Justinian plague that struck the Byzantine Empire around 540 CE was not caused by the same pathogen as once thought.
"Using the same methodology, it should now be possible to study the genomes of all sorts of historic pathogens," says Johannes Krause of the University of Tubingen Krause. "This will provide us with direct insights into the evolution of human pathogens and historical pandemics."
The research is published online in the scientific journal Nature

Source: McMaster University

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Weird Science/World's Deepest Known Animal: Worm That Lives Under Almost a Mile of Rock

Researchers dubbed it "Halicephalobus mephisto," from the Greek for “he who loves not the light.”G.Borgone/Ghent University, Belgium

When it comes to indestructible species, the cockroach is a kitten compared with the nematode. Nematode worms thrive in desert, mountain, and ocean environments. Nematodes aboard the space shuttle Columbia even survived after the spacecraft disintegrated during reentry in 2003. Now Belgian biologist Gaetan Borgonie has discovered a new species of nematode in a rock fracture nearly
a mile underground, where no other animal has ever been found.
Earth’s first few miles of bedrock teem with life, but scientists had long assumed that only simple, single-celled organisms could survive there. Borgonie teamed with Tullis Onstott of Princeton University to prove that assumption wrong. For a year they made intermittent descents to sample the Beatrix gold mine in South Africa, funded by their own savings. Finally, in late 2008, Borgonie looked into a microscope and saw a worm with a broken tail squirming across the slide. “I became an ICU nurse, looking every few hours to make sure she was still alive,” he says. “She laid 12 eggs before dying.”
Now they plan to expand their expedition to find other animals lurking in the depths.
(DISCOVERY NEWS)

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Sperm Donors May Father 'Dozens' of Children

In a scenario straight from science-fiction, experts are increasingly concerned about lax rules for sperm donors in the US and Canada where some men have anonymously fathered dozens of children.

Unlike in some countries such as France and Britain, there are no laws in either Canada or the United States officially limiting the number of children who can be born from a single donor, the Canadian health ministry said.
An international norm places the ceiling at 20 pregnancies from the same donor. In Denmark, the limit on a single donor is 25 births. And most sperm banks set their own regulations.
But the rules are not always respected. Some families try to create a "designer baby" by carefully choosing the donor from a catalog, drawn by his particular genes or characteristics, such as eye color or IQ level.
The practice has meant some of these star donors have now left a huge and at times overwhelming legacy, and the issue has stirred recent debate in Canada and the United States, spawning a number of films and documentaries.
"Starbuck," a popular Canadian comedy released this year, told the story of a perpetual bachelor who accidentally fathers 533 children by selling his semen for quick and easy cash.
In a stranger-than-fiction twist, Toronto documentary maker Barry Stevens has used his experiences -- born in Britain through a donor who then went on to sire some 500 to 1,000 children during his three decades working with sperm banks -- to fuel his own work.
His siblings are now spread across Canada, the United States, Europe and beyond.
And last month the US Style Network channel launched a reality series called "Sperm Donor" in which one donor, Ben Seisler, 33, tells of his surprise on going onto the registry and of learning that "to date I know of around 70 kids."
Specialists warn over-reliance of one donor increases the risk of the transmission of genetic diseases and malformations, and some say there are dangers of inadvertent incest between half-siblings.
"We can't exclude the possibility that children of one donor can meet and have sex, and children, and indeed the possibility that the donor himself could have sex with his daughter," said Stevens, who has made films about his search for his real father and his half-siblings
Juliet Guichon, a professor of bioethics at the University of Calgary, said involuntary incest with donor children happens more frequently than it might at first seem.
"People who seek sperm donation are from the same socio-economical status. They know each other, they are advised to see the same doctor, they live in the same neighborhood. It's not randomly distributed," she said.
"Sperm giving is a market-driven phenomenon. What is governing this is market consideration, not consideration for the best interest of children. And that is why we have this outcome."
Guichon also noted that Canada lacks accurate data on the number of donor children in the country and suggested donor anonymity should be abolished to promote greater transparency and control.
Since 2004, donors have no longer been paid in Canada, leading to the depletion of stocks and forcing clinics to rely heavily on imports, especially from the United States.
The popularity of certain specific donors has also had a major impact. The US-based Donor Sibling Registry, which helps children get in touch with their half-brothers and sisters, highlighted the growing number of such families.
"We have a group of 150 children of one donor, and this number keeps growing," said Wendy Kramer, executive director and co-founder of the registry which she established in 2000 to connect so-called donor families.
"It's overwhelming for those kids, and we don't know how they will react."
Her group allows donor children to initiate contact anonymously at first. The donor is identified only by a number, but children can see how many half-siblings they likely might have.
Jonah Jacobson and his twin sister, Hilit, have in recent years formed a close bond with their half-siblings, Jayme and Jesse Clapoff, also twins whose biological father is the same donor, identified only by a number.
The four met through the sibling registry and now get together often and are in regular contact. And they have discovered that there are a total of 15 siblings from the same donor most of whom they have now met.
"We have the same sense of humor, we are all athletic. We all clicked together from the first time," Jonah told CNN last year.
And even though initially it can be a little awkward, "you definitely feel a bond right away," he added.

(Discovery News)

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Why men with deep voices get the girls

Scientists discover that women remember deep-voiced men better — and are more inclined to pick basses as mates

Men, if you want a woman to remember your name, say it with a boomingly deep voice. That's the stereotype-perpetuating finding of a new study from the University of Aberdeen in the U.K., which reveals that women not only recall men with deeper voices more vividly than their squeaky-voiced brethern, but that women are also more likely to choose a Barry White sound-alike as a mate. Here, a brief guide:
How was this research conducted?
In a series of experiments — the results were just published in the journal Memory & Cognition — researchers showed women a succession of images of ordinary objects. Each image was introduced by the voice of a man or a woman at varying pitches. The women were then shown two similar — but not identical — versions of the objects they had been shown before, and were asked to identify which of the two images they had seen earlier.
What did the psychologists discover?
In each experiment, the women had better recall of the objects that were introduced by the deep male voice — they had more trouble remembering objects that had been described by women's voices and higher-pitched male voices. The women were also asked which of the voices they preferred, and, to a significant degree, opted for the rumbling Darth Vader-esque guy.
How would this affect a woman's choice of mate?
The psychologists conducting the study suggest that the timbre of a man's voice communicates a "genetic quality as well as behavioral traits" that women find alluring in a long-term mate, says Claire Bates at Britain's Daily Mail. "We think this is evidence that evolution has shaped women's ability to remember information associated with desirable men," says researcher Dr. Kevin Allan, as quoted by ScienceDaily. One caveat: A similar study conducted earlier this year at Canada's McMaster University found that, while women are more magnetized by deeper male voices, they're also more likely to suspect the owners of those voices of infidelity.
Sources: Daily Mail, Globe and Mail, ScienceDaily

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Weird Science/Monkeys Use Minds to Control Computer

A screenshot of a virtual monkey selecting among identical objects, controlled by the monkey's brain.

Discovery News | Being able to control objects by simply thinking about them has long been the realm of science fiction, but a few smart monkeys are inching it toward reality. For the first time, neurobiologists have successfully demonstrated two-way interaction between a primate brain and a machine interface.

“We liberated the brain from the physical constraints of the body and allowed it to gain an extra virtual arm that can be used to explore a virtual world,” said Miguel Nicolelis, a medical doctor, Duke University neurobiology professor, and director of the Duke Center for Neuroengineering.
Their work, which was published in the current issue of Nature, could lead to a brain-controlled robotic exoskeleton that could give a paralyzed person mobility.
For this study, devices containing hundreds of hair-like filaments were implanted in different regions of the monkeys’ brains. These implants both record brain activity and deliver neural stimulation simultaneously and in real time, an accomplishment that until now had not been done.
The experiments involved two trained monkeys that already knew how to move a cursor across a computer screen with a joystick. The researchers showed the monkeys several objects that looked identical on the screen, but were encoded with a special pattern that the monkeys couldn't see and could only sense through the brain implants.
The goal for the monkeys was to touch the one object that they sensed was different by moving a virtual arm across a computer screen using only their minds. When they virtually touched the correct object, they were rewarded with juice. After several initial attempts, the monkeys started consistently picking the correct object, behavior that was proven not to be random.
While the experiment was going on, the neuroengineers used the implants to record the monkeys' sensing and decision-making in real time. The ability to record and sense brain activity in real time is a necessary step in the development of brain-controlled prosthetics. In order to work effectively, these devices must mimic the natural feedback and response between the brain and the limbs that occurs in people who aren't paralyzed.
“This is a major step forward into the translation of this whole field into clinical applications,” Nicolelis said.
After completing the Nature paper, Nicolelis says his team finalized a wireless interface that picks up signals from a tiny brain implant without the need to attach cables. The implants are comparable to pacemakers in the sense that they are worth the simple neurosurgical procedure to put them in, especially for completely paralyzed patients who can’t move at all, Nicolelis added.
Next, the neuroengineers plan to work on a prototype for a brain-controlled robotic exoskeleton with the international nonprofit the Walk Again Project, as well as specialists from neuroscience institutions in Brazil, Germany, and Switzerland. They want to debut a functional exoskeleton at the 2014 World Cup in Nicolelis’s native Brazil, giving an as-yet unknown paralysis patient the chance to walk onto the field.
“That would be a demonstration that this technology is becoming ready and can be very helpful to restore ability to patients,” Nicolelis said.
Philip Troyk is an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology who researches neuroprosthesis and leads a Chicago-based company called Sigenics that makes the integrated circuits for implantable brain devices.
While we do know that the monkeys make choices based on sensing patterns, we still don’t know what their actual perception was, he said. In addition, neuroengineers will need to develop a permanent hardware system that could be implanted.
These challenges don’t diminish the importance of the study, though, Troyk said. “It allows us all to realize that if we can overcome some of the major technical problems of a chronic implant, then we may in fact be able to permanently have this communication with the brain.”
Todd Coleman is an associate bioengineering professor at the University of California, San Diego, who works on brain-machine interfaces. Coleman wonders what kind of implications the study will have in the distant future for people with neurological disorders such as autism.
“These findings need not be limited to thinking about someone who has some type of motor deficit,” he said.
At the University of Chicago, Nicholas Hatsopoulos is an associate professor of organismal biology and anatomy with a focus on researching neural prosthetic systems. Robotic exoskeletons bring Iron Man’s powerful suit to mind.
“In the movie he gets into this suit, and he’s using arms and hands to control this thing,” he says. “But imagine controlling it with your brain.”
Hatsopoulos sees research into brain-machine interfaces heating up at the moment. “This paper is an important contribution to that whole endeavor,” he said of the Duke study. “What we still need to do is to really develop a system that we feel confident provides genuine sensory perception.”

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Weird Science/Spies Can Hide Secret Messages in Bacteria, Scientists Say

Scientific espionage: microbial messaging.

Espionage just got a little more sophisticated and scientific. Invisible ink? Decoder rings? Lemon juice? Puh-lease -- that's mere child's play compared to what double agents scientists at Tufts University just created.
Now secret messages can be hidden in genetically engineered bacteria, thanks to a new method called steganography by printed arrays of microbes, or SPAM. Developed by chemistry professor David Walt and his cloak-and-dagger team of researchers, this new method uses an assortment of E. coli strains modified with fluorescent proteins that glow in seven colors.
Multiply that number by the two colors each message character is encoded with, and spies like us have more than 49 possible code combinations. That's enough for the alphabet, plus digits 0 to 9, with room left over for a few extra symbols.
The secret microbial messages are first grown in petri dishes. The cultures are then transferred to a thin film and ready to be sent to the desired undercover recipient. To unlock the message, the recipient must transfer the bacteria to a genetically modified growth medium, which acts as the secret key.
For example, the bacteria could be engineered to react only with a certain antibiotic, therefore allowing the message to be revealed only when in contact with that specific chemical. If any other chemical key is used, the message would be scrambled.
Self-destructing messages could also be created by using bacteria that loses its fluorescence over time.

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Facial Expressions Develop Before Birth, Researchers Show

 Babies in the womb develop a range of facial movements in such a way that it is possible to identify facial expressions such as laughter and crying. For the first time, a group of researchers was able to show that recognisable facial expressions develop before birth and that, as the pregnancy progresses from 24 to 36 weeks gestation, fetal facial movements become more complex.
The group of researchers include Dr Nadja Reissland, a psychologist and Professor James Mason Director of Research in Medicine and Health of Durham University, Professor Brian Francis, Professor of social statistics at Lancaster University and Dr Karen Lincoln, consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, where the fetal scans are collected.
The group examined video-taped fetal facial movements obtained by 4D ultrasound machines in the later stages of pregnancy.
They recorded the same fetuses after they had been found to be healthy at their 20 week scan, several times between 24 and 36 weeks of gestation. They found that the movements of the fetal face become more complex over time.
Fetuses at the first stage of observation (24 weeks) were able to move one muscle in their face at a time. They would for example stretch their lips or open their mouth. By 35 weeks gestational age, fetuses combined a number of facial muscle movements, combining for example lip stretch, lowering of the eyebrows and deepening the nasolabial furrow, thereby turning isolated movements into recognisable and increasingly complex expressions.
Professor Brian Francis from the Department of Maths and Statistics at Lancaster University said: "This is a new and fascinating insight into the remarkable process of fetal development. This research has for the first time demonstrated that in healthy fetuses there is a developmental progression from simple to complex facial movements, preparing the fetus for life post birth."
Although the fetus cannot make any sounds, the development of facial expressions means that at birth, the baby has already developed the facial movements to accompany crying and laughing.
Dr Nadja Reissland from Durham University said: "We have found so much more than we expected. We knew that the baby blinks before birth and that some research has identified scowling before birth. However in this study for the first time we have developed a method of coding and analysis which allows us to objectively trace the increasing complexity of movements over time which results in recognisable facial expressions."
The researchers argue that these patterns of the motor movements are developed before the baby feels the emotion, just as the baby practises breathing movements in the uterus even before it has drawn a breath.
The discovery could help potentially identify health problems in utero, since there is a link between fetal behavioural patterns and the development of the fetal brain. Looking at differences between normal and abnormal fetal facial developments may indicate problems with brain development.
The researchers now plan to look at whether fetal facial movement might help differentiate between fetuses of mothers who smoke during pregnancy and non-smokers. They will also examine the development of facial expressions relating to anger, smiling and sadness.

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UF researchers discover 20-foot-long crocodile species

University of Florida researcher Alex Hastings displays a pelvic bone of Acherontisuchus guajiraensis, a 60-million-year-old ancestor of crocodiles discovered in northeastern Colombia. (Photo submitted by the University of Florida)

The fossils were found in a coal mine in northeastern Colombia

Sixty-million years ago, in the heat and humidity of Paleocene-era Colombia, a snake so large that researchers named it Titanoboa was the reptile king of its domain.
But it wasn't the only giant reptile hunting for fish in the rivers of northern Colombia.

A new species of enormous crocodile, measured at 20 feet long, has been discovered by University of Florida researchers in the same coal mine that Titanoboa was found.

The creature may have been large enough to give Titanoboa competition for the fish they were both ideally adapted to hunt.

The excavations at the site were led by Jonathan Bloch, associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History; and Carlos Jaramillo, a paleobotanist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Alex Hastings, a UF Ph.D. student in the department of geological sciences, collected the type-specimen for the species. This fossil set will be used as a comparison tool for future finds.

The crocodile, Acherontisuchus guajiraensis, is the latest prehistoric reptile to be found in the Cerrejon coal mine.

It is named after the river Acheron, which in Greek myth is a branch of the river Styx in the underworld.

Bloch described the coal mine as a hot and humid place, where seams of coal spontaneously combust and give off a sulfuric smoke, giving the entire area a very hellish atmosphere.

The Acherontisuchus species was a cousin to modern-day crocodiles, not their direct ancestors, and it dates back 60 million years.

This places the species at the time immediately following the mass extinction event that claimed the dinosaurs, as well as a wide variety of other life on Earth.
cherontisuchus belonged to a group that somehow managed to survive the cataclysm.

"One of the questions about this group was how they were able to survive … what advantages did they have?" Hastings said.

"What this new crocodile really contributes to that is that it is the first evidence of a large-bodied member of this group in a freshwater habitat," he said.

Before now, it was thought that only baby crocodiles would spend any appreciable amount of time in freshwater, and that adults would spend most of their time in a saltwater environment.

Their ability to adapt to multiple environments would have helped this family of crocodiles survive the mass extinction and the lean times that followed it.

Hastings said that their survival depended on taking advantage of multiple resources, rather than just what the ocean provided.

Living in freshwater may also have shielded the species from whatever began to kill off the large marine reptiles of the ocean around the same time as the dinosaurs.

Another rival reptile family, the mosasaurs, began to vanish at this point, so whatever environmental pressure took these creatures may have passed over Acherontisuchus.

Bloch said that the species also is important because each new find tells researchers more about the time period they are from.

He said that the tropics are a very mysterious place when it comes to the fossil record because of the predominantly forested land, which makes it difficult to excavate.

Bloch said this is particularly ironic because a lot of the animal diversity today can be found in the tropics, but we know the least about the creatures that lived there during the Paleocene.

Acherontisuchus' size of 20 feet was based on the larger of two individuals found at the site.

Hastings said that there were certainly larger specimens, as well as smaller. Twenty feet places it at the known upper size of modern specimens, such as the reportedly 21-foot saltwater crocodile captured in the Philippines in early September.

To put this size in perspective, and comparing it to modern specimens, Acherontisuchus probably weighed upward of a ton and grew to be more than half the length of an RTS city bus. It had a wide shelf on the back of its head, giving it a very broad, flat appearance.

Like modern gavial crocodiles, its snout was very long and narrow, filled with pointed teeth, making it ideally suited to hunting fish.

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Weird Science/Tree Frogs Chill out to Collect Precious Water

Research published in the October issue of The American Naturalist shows that Australian green tree frogs survive the dry season with the help of the same phenomenon that fogs up eyeglasses in the winter.

According to researchers from Charles Darwin University in Australia, tree frogs often plop themselves down outside on cool nights during the dry season in tropical Australia. When they return to their dens, condensation forms on their cold skin -- just like it does on a pair of glasses when we come in from the cold. The researchers found that frogs absorb this moisture through their skin, which helps to keep them hydrated during periods of little or no rain.

Before this study, the frogs' dry-season excursions were a bit mysterious.

"Every once in a while, we would find frogs sitting on a stick under the open sky, on nights when it was so cold they could barely move," said Dr. Chris Tracy, who led the research. "It was a real puzzle."

Tracy and his colleagues thought this behavior might enable the frogs collect condensation, but the hypothesis had never been tested.

The researchers designed a series of experiments using real frog dens in eucalyptus trees and artificial ones made from PVC pipe. They wanted to see if the frogs could collect enough moisture through condensation to compensate for what they lost being in the cold. They found that a cold night out cost a frog as much as .07 grams of water. However, a frog could gain nearly .4 grams, or nearly 1 percent of its total body weight, in water upon returning to the warm den.

The researchers also tested how well a frog's skin could absorb water, and found that as much as 60 percent of each water drop could be absorbed.

The results show that frogs can use condensation to hydrate themselves. And in a place as arid as the Australian savannahs during the dry season, where there is essentially no rain from June through August, every little bit counts.

"When there's no water available, even a small amount can mean the difference between surviving the dry season or not," Tracy said.

Tree frogs often plop themselves down outside on cool nights during the dry season in tropical Australia. When they return to their dens, condensation forms on their cold skin -- just like it does on a pair of glasses when we come in from the cold.

(story credit: Science Daily)

(photo Credit: © Patryk Kosmider / Fotolia)

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Weird Science/Climate Change Could Shrink Animals

Climate change could result in a planet full of cold-blooded runts.

IMAGE: A whale shark feasts on plankton. (Wikimedia Commons)

In a warming world, copepods, tiny crustaceans that make up the bulk of the ocean's animal plankton, could end up stunted. Copepods cope with warmer temperatures by maturing faster, but they don't grow as fast as they mature, so they end up runts.
The same phenomenon, called the “temperature-size rule,” affects most cold-blooded animals, so as the planet heats up, many animals' sizes may go down.
Researchers at the University of London examined the case of the incredible shrinking organisms in the journal The American Naturalist.
“We’ve shown that growth and development increase at different rates as temperatures warm. The consequences are that at warmer temperatures a species grows faster but matures even faster still, resulting in them achieving a smaller adult size,” said lead author Andrew Hirst in a press release.
Since copepods are food for marine animals, from fish to whales, what happens developmentally to the shrimp-y crustaceans could affect the entire ocean's food web.
“Decoupling of these rates could have important consequences for individual species and ecosystems,” Hirst added.

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Weird News/Sperm Bank Rejects Redheads

photo: iStockPhoto

Can sperm banks discriminate against potential donors based on their hair color?

In countries where donations are in high demand -- Spain, Italy and Greece, there's less interest in sperm that might differ from the current demographics of the area. That is, people in these areas usually have brown eyes and brown hair, not lighter eye colors and red hair.
Donated sperm is used to impregnate women through artificial insemination. Single women wanting a child, couples with fertility issues and lesbian partners may use sperm bank services and other third party reproduction methods. Some men may give to sperm banks for their own personal use in the future, too.
After screening and being accepted as a donor, most men agree to a several-month commitment for donating. This also reduces the number of donors a given company will take on.
Banks reserve the right to accept men based on their height and weight as well. But rejecting potential donors based on physical appearance isn't foolproof. For example, one man passed on a rare genetic disease to multiple children through his donation. Though most banks check for a list of common genetic conditions, they seem to value a person's appearance just as much in some cases.
The director of Cryos International sperm bank said the company has refused donors based on hair color and skin traits because women want donations that more closely resemble their partners and others in their community.
Because Cryos has reached its storage capacity (70 liters of sperm, if you're wondering), company representatives say they have the right to be more selective with the physical attributes of donors.
But before writing off redheads, rest assured that their sperm is still a best-seller in Ireland and for women and couples with a preference for the trait.

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