A new study from biologists at Brown University shows that fruit flies live longer if they are engineered so as not to produce eggs or sperm cells. Indeed, scientists have known for some time that delayed reproduction corresponds with longer lifespans in most animals. The new research suggests a mechanism for this effect.
The longevity effect seems to be associated with insulin, as it is with caloric restriction. What surprised scientists was the fact that the altered flies actually produced more insulin, rather than less. Excess insulin shortens lifespan in most instances, so they had to look further to explain why, in this case, it was associated with longer lives.
They discovered that the gonads of the sterile insects were producing a protein that blocked the insulins effectiveness. The protein binds to the insulin, making it inactive. Thus, one of the researches said:
“… when insulin signaling is reduced, the body goes into a state of high repair. The body becomes more stress resistant. Tissues protect themselves really well – and that increases longevity.
We have all seen the folks on TV starving themselves in hopes of living longer — now we can expect a flood of idiots racing to the doctor’s office to be sterilized. That’s great for the gene pool!
Is being a locavore a bit loca? Food faddists claim that eating mostly locally produced foods (locavore) will help reduce global warming. Transporting food uses fossil energy and produces greenhouse gases. So why not eat locally produced food and save all that energy?
Well, there’s nutrition for one thing. On of the best ways to ensure you get all the nutriments you need is to eat a varied diet. That means bananas and papaya in Kansas, and blueberries in Arizona. It also means corn-fed beef in Nevada, and Alaskan King Crab in Montana. Besides, who wants to eat only those things that can be grown around Barstow CA?
Eating only locally produced food is also a design for economic disaster. If Kansans want to eat anything but corn, their farmers will have to stop producing so much of that and turn to crops less suited to the Great Plains environment. All the people dependent on corn from Kansas for their livelihood — as transporters or consumers — will be out of luck.
Well, besides all those problems, the transportation of food doesn’t really add that much to the greenhouse gases anyhow. In a recent study scientists found that only about 10% of the greenhouse gases caused by the growing, fertilizing and transport of the average family’s food can be attributed to transport — and that isn’t entirely eliminated by local consumption, just reduced (unless you live on the farm where you eat, or walk there…) A better alternative, they suggest is to cut back on red meat and dairy foods, the production of which accounts for almost half of the greenhouse gases. Switching to a totally local diet is equivalent to driving about 1000 miles less per year, while switching to vegetables two days per week cuts the equivalent of driving 2320 miles per year. Leave your car in the garage and walk to the supermarket, and you will save even more greenhouse gas production than you will driving to that farmer’s market.
Yale University economist Robert Shiller, an influential economist who predicted the current home sale slump, is predicting things will get worse — much worse — before they get better. Shiller said:
There’s a good chance housing prices will fall further than the 30 percent drop in the historic depression of the 1930s. Home prices nationwide already have dropped 15 percent since their peak in 2006. I think there is a scenario that they could be down substantially more…
The Great Depression was sparked by the collapse of the stock market; what will call the depression sparked by the collapse of the housing market? Sometimes people have to move — in the Midwestern States where the crisis is at its worst, people are moving away because they can no longer find work where they live now. If you can not sell your house when you move, a realtor will suggest a ’short sale’ or the bank will take it and sell it for you (foreclosure), either way the home will sell for less than it is worth.
This is how the rich get richer while the poor suffer. It is a great time to be buying up houses if you have the resources available to finance them. People have to live somewhere, so those whose homes have been foreclosed-on will be renting houses — oftentimes sliding from middle to lower class in the process. The landlord need not worry, the law will ensure he can evict anyone who can not keep up payments, regardless of their reasons.
It seems that a big earthquake in California is inevitable in the next 30 years. Even the normally cautious scientists now say there is a 99% chance (that 1% wiggle room is ‘being cautious’) that California will see a major earthquake (magnitude 6.7 or higher) within the next 30 years.
Why not just give it back to Mexico and let them deal with it? Can you imagine what the costs will be? I’m sure the rates for quake insurance have already doubled at the news, and that is just in anticipation. We have enough problems with global warming and increased hurricanes and flooding.
It is not like earthquakes are anything new for California. Did you know that more than 10,000 quakes rock the state every year? Most of them are too soft to be felt, but seismic instruments measure that number. There have ‘only’ been two large quakes in California in the past 20 years: the Northridge quake in 1993 killed more than 50 people and injured over 7,000 — and that was just 6.7 magnitude; and the Loma Prieta quake in 1989, which was slightly bigger at 6.9 magnitude, and killed 63 people and caused over $6 billion in damages. The 1908 San Francisco earthquake is estimated to have been about 7.8 magnitude (remember 7 magnitude is 10 times as strong as 6 — it is a logarithmic scale). Imagine something like that in San Diego or San Francisco today?
I’m perfectly blown-away by this math puzzle and the solution. If you are familiar with this, just roll your eyes and say ‘obviously’ and leave the rest of us to our thought experiment. Feeling superior because you have read the correct answer beforehand is not grounds for laurels. Only if you can deduce the correct answer, and explain why (remember those notes with the math test answer?) do you you deserve a pat on the back and a position in government.
So here it is. Monty shows us three doors. Behind one is a certificate entitling you to an energy efficient, ergonomic and beautifully designed home. Behind the two other doors are models of that home as doll houses. You must choose one of the three doors. But wait! After you have chosen one door, smiling Monty opens one of the other doors and shows you one of the doll houses. Well duh! He knew which door has the real prize, and whether you chose it or not he knew which remaining door he could open and show a doll’s house.
Now you can choose. Stay with your original choice, or switch to the other unopened door? Don’t read further before making your choice! Common sense would dictate that there is a 50/50 chance that the door you chose has the prize, so it doesn’t matter if you change your mind or not … and mental momentum is likely to make you stick with your original choice, since there is no overwhelming reason to change. Or is there?
Your original choice had a one in three chance of being correct. Monty has kindly shown you one of the wrong choices, and left two others. One is your original 33% chance of being correct — the other? There is a 66% chance that the other has the prize. If you chose correctly to begin with, Monty could choose either door, it makes no difference and doesn’t change the odds. But if you chose wrong (as would happen two out of three times) then Monty must choose the door with no prize, so two out of three times he is showing you where the prize is by not choosing the door it hides behind.
Dracunculus medinensis, is a parasitic nematode that causes the dreadful Dracunculiasis disease, (commonly called Guinea Worm Disease). It is commonly found in the lakes, rivers and streams that provide much of Africa with drinking water. Infection is caused by drinking water with Dracunculus larvae in it. About a year after initial infection, a meter long worm burrows out of the infected person, leaving a painful skin wound. Not a pleasant image, is it?
Luckily, this terrible disease is easily prevented, since any filtering of the water, even with fine cloth, is sufficient to strain out the larvae. So eradication is mostly a matter of education, and for the past 22 years various organizations have worked together to encourage that process. More than 650,000 cases of Dracunculiasis were reported in Nigeria in 1989. In 2007 there were only 73 cases reported there. Eleven African countries have completely eliminated infection from this horrible parasite, only four countries still have active cases — and all of those report much reduced frequencies compared to a few years ago. The goal is to completely eradicate the disease next year. But don’t worry about old Dracunculus medinensis, it will still be there, lurking in the water should people let their guard down. There are plenty of other animal hosts that will keep these monsters alive when humans have learned to avoid them.
Yes, scientists say, the Genistein in soy foods can help prevents breast cancer — but only if it is consumed during puberty. According to Dr Leena Hilakivi-Clarke, professor of oncology at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown:
Timing seems to be vitally important in use of this bioactive food, and if we can figure out why that is so, then we may be able to help prevent breast cancer in the widest sense possible.
Obviously, the Genistein must confer some cancer-protection on cells during breast development. There is some evidence that use of genistein in puberty cut the number of so-called “terminal end buds” in the breast, and/or modified the expression of genes in those terminal end buds, but scientists are unable to explain at this point why that would lessen the incidence of later cancers.
Another theory is that Genistein activates cells known to suppress tumors, specifically BRCA1, p53, and PTEN. Those genes may continue to be more active later in life, though the exact mechanism is not yet known.
There is a bit of a furor over this ad, run in Mexico, that shows the pre-1848 borders of Mexico, when Calfornia, Texas and everything in-between was all part of Mexico:
Why are Americans in an uproar over historical fact? Is it that they do not want to be reminded of how they stole half of Mexico in an unjust and unprovoked war? Or is it that the reminder of where those lands came from conflicts with their strenuous efforts to keep Mexicans out of them? It is kind of unsettling to the Texan belittling the ‘damn foreigners’ to find that the family in question may have been in Texas before Sam Houston. And it is upsetting to Californian sensibilities to remember their oh-so-ecological cliff-top house is perched on land stolen from the ancestors of their gardener.
But really, others say, why not go a few years further back in history and show the entire continent belonging to Native Americans, before the English and Spanish and French stole the land from them? That could get complicated since the locals did not consider themselves one nation, but thousands of independent entities — who regular conquered territory from one another.
Here at the coffeeshop we say it is all nonsense. Nobody deserves compensation for the wrongs done to their ancestors, or we would all be in for a slice of the pie. But that doesn’t mean we should forget the lessons of history — be it the Mexican War or the Holocaust — we need occasional reminders of the sins of our ancestors to shed light on today’s decisions. Had Junior Bush thought of justice before invading Iraq we would be living in a safer and more hopeful world today. The living have enough of their own actions to be held accountable for, we need not look to the dead to find evil deeds.
It all began with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator that will give scientists information on the origin of the universe, among other things. That is scheduled to begin operation later this summer, but years ago the developers realized that the new accelerator, once complete, will generate data at prodigious speed and in amazing quantities. Experiments on the LHC are expected to produce 15 million gigabytes of data per year. The scientists realized early on that if they wanted to share that data with institutions around the globe they were not going to be able to use the Internet without causing such a bottle-neck that the whole thing would come to a grinding halt. And they have to spread the data around for analysis, because all the computers at CERN do not have enough power to analyze that much data.
So they built a new high-speed replacement for the Internet, and called it The Grid. Sounds like something out of science fiction, doesn’t it? But this is real and it exists today. Developed at CERN, the same organization responsible for developing the Internet, it consists entirely of state of the art components, high speed and high capacity routers and fiber optic cable. With this new network it is possible to send data 10,000 times faster than any current broadband internet speeds.
You won’t be seeing any improvement in Internet speed when The Grid is activated this summer though — it is a private network between major research institutions around the world, and will not be handling Internet traffic. But it may serve as a model for commercial development of the next generation Internet, where holograms will be transferred as quickly and easily as small JPEGs today.
A surprising study shows that non-lethal electric shocks may increase the production of useful chemical compounds in plants. According to the report:
Exposing plants to electricity can boost production of useful plant chemicals and may provide a cheaper, safer, and more efficient method for producing medicines, pesticides, and other commercially important plant-based materials…
Hmmm. I wonder if a battery in the grow room would improve THC levels in those Cannabis plants Uncle Henry grows? Just kidding of course … Brunch Coffeeshop, it’s management and employees do not encourage or support or endorse illegal activities of any sort — including spitting on the sidewalk.