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March, 2005 Archives | Homepage
Human's Activities Threaten Earth's Future
An alarming survey, The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, reveals that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth –- such as fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water regulation, and the regulation of regional climate, natural hazards and pests –- are being degraded or used unsustainably. Scientists warn that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years. A BBC article on the survey begins, "The most comprehensive survey ever into the state of the planet concludes that human activities threaten the Earth's ability to sustain future generations." The Media Cynic has more on the alarming scientific survey. The survey follows recent terrifying news about global warming and pollution. Reuters reports on recent research that found, "Even if people stopped pumping out carbon dioxide and other pollutants tomorrow, global warming would still get worse."
These same researchers also said, "The longer we wait, the more climate change we are committed to in the future." And a recent dramatic photograph of Mount Mount Kilimanjaro offered blunt proof of global warming. The photograph shows the famous snow cap on the mountain has nearly melted away.
Posted on March 31, 2005
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Scientific American Promises "Fair and Balanced" Science
It looks like the gig is up at Scientific American. The editors are finally admitting that they have been deceived by scientists' fancy fossils and radiocarbon dating for far too long.
In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles.
The editors promise readers to mend their ways--starting on April 1st: Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either -- so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day.
First reported by: BoingBoing.net and Too Much and Too Little
Posted on March 29, 2005
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8.7M Earthquake Strikes Near Sumatra
A major earthquake with a magnitude of 8.7 has struck off the coast of Sumatra -- very close to the deadly earthquake that generated the killer tsunami last December. Tsunami warnings followed the quake and evacuations have taken place in Thailand in elsewhere. So far there has been no report of a major tsunami. However, damage from the quake has killed 296 people in early estimates and destroyed numerous homes and buildings. MSNBC.com has an interesting webpage of citizen reports -- the quake was felt strongly hundreds of miles from the epicenter. Use this link to keep up-to-date on current reports about the
earthquake.
Posted on March 28, 2005
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Tyrannosaurus Rex Soft Tissues Discovered
MSNBC.com reported on Thursday that a Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil recovered from sandstone contains soft tissues, including blood vessels and possibly cells. A more recent article from Discovery reports that cells have been found and they are similar to ostrich cells: "The dinosaur and the ostrich vessels also held what could be nuclei of so-called endothelial cells, which line blood vessels."
Somehow thinking of the terrifying T-rex as similar to an Ostrich
makes them not quite as intimidating, but things would probably be
much difference if you were facing one -- even if it was running
like an ostrich.
The New York Times reports that children are already thinking of the implications of the discovery.
Ryan Butler, an 8-year-old from Corpus Christi, Tex. told the
New York Times: "I bet if you took those cells and tried to clone them, you could clone them." And Andrew Becker, 9, of the Upper East Side told the Times: "I think personally that they're going to be able to clone a woolly mammoth in the next 20 years," he continued, his feet swinging back
and forth from the chair. "I hear they're working on things --
nano-robots -- that can repair freezer burn."
Posted on March 27, 2005
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Africa Faces Ebola and Marburg Threats
A new Ebola outbreak has emerged in the Sudan. The BBC reports that four people are dead. There are 19 probable cases and over 100 people have been exposed to the deadly Ebola virus. The only good news is that the WHO says this strain of Ebola does not seem as virulent as past outbreaks. However, scientists do not believe it is a new strain of Ebola.
Meanwhile, in Angola the Marburg outbreak continues to cause problems. Already 98 people are reported dead including hospital workers and young children. A new report by the BBC indicates the virus has spread into the city of Luanda, in Northern Angola. 5 cases are reported in the capital including a teenage boy and an Italian doctor. The boy and doctor where both recently in Uige where the Marburg outbreak is believed to have began.
Posted on March 24, 2005
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Angola Outbreak Confirmed as Marburg
The mysterious illness that has now killed 96 people, including many
children, in northern Angola has been identified as Marburg, a
rare hemorrhagic fever for which there is no cure. Marburg is a
rare virus that is in the same Filoviridae family as Ebola.
Reuters reports that the Marburg outbreak could spread: "Described
as "very virulent" and "very contagious" and transmitted through
bodily fluids, the hemorrhagic fever threatens to spread from the
northern Uige province to other parts of the country."
Here is an explanation of Marburg from the CDC. ProMed also has
a new entry on the outbreak which includes the Reuters article plus comments from ProMed.
Posted on March 23, 2005
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Airport National Security is Unhygienic
While we all think of the inconvenience of removing our shoes
these days before boarding planes how many have considered the
health implications of this mass shoe removal? Dr. Cecil Fox
recently raised the question on the ProMed newsletter.
Dr. Cecil Fox said, "Having spent some time with mycotic
infections, I am startled to see that
the Transportation Security Administration, who supposedly monitors
airports, 'strongly' suggests that passengers remove their shoes while
passing through the lines in American airports. The penalty for not doing
so is an intimidating delay in which a total body scan for such contraband
as glasses frames and wrist watches is conducted, whereupon you still are
required to remove your shoes and to stand around on unkempt airport
carpets while your shoes are X-rayed! If you do as 'suggested,' you must
march 10 to 15 feet either barefoot or in stocking feet to a point where
one's shoes may be reclaimed. This is evidently because a demented
passenger attempted to ignite his shoes with either matches or a cigarette lighter, already prohibited.
Unless I am terribly mistaken, one's flora are being mixed with that of
several hundreds of thousand of passengers who have passed through the same lines. The floors are rarely cleaned (evidently) and never disinfected. Has simple hygiene been forfeited in the US in the name of 'security?' When the
TSA finally answered a query, they told me that OSHA had approved the cross contamination of hundreds of thousands of feet. The CDC, NIH, WHO, or state or local health departments were not consulted. National Security indeed."
If you think Dr. Fox is correct and this sounds like an obvious health
risk -- it is. At a minimum those floors should be disinfected
a few times a day.
ProMED followed up by saying, "the people at highest risk must
obviously be airport security staff. Studies documenting increased risk of
dermatophytes and/or tinea pedis, and increased risk of respiratory tract
symptoms like asthma or allergic alveolitis, is clearly highly needed."
Posted on March 22, 2005
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Could Dragons Have Been Real?
The Animal Channel (part of the Discovery Network) produced an interesting show, called Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real. Dragons provides a
faux documentary that shows scientists discovering a
frozen dragon carcass in a cave high in the mountains.
Inside the cave scientists also find the bodies
of several 15th-century humans. As the Dragons show
reminds us several times during the show -- Dragons have
been recorded in nearly every single human culture. Even
cultures that did not have contact with one another like
the Aztecs and Inuit Eskimos.
The show takes the viewpoint that the dragons must have
been intelligent animals that were hunted and pushed to extinction
by man's continuous expansion. To explain dragons
from a science standpoint the producers came up with some
interesting theories to explain the dragon's ability to
fly and breathe fire. They said the dragons' bones were
strong but light -- similar to large birds today. The dragons
also created hydrogen from a bacteria in the gut that was
stored in two organs called air bladders that gave the
creatures buoyancy during flight. To create fire the
dragons ground up platinum with a second set of teeth
that they could use to ignite the hydrogen and oxygen. Today's bombardier beetle goes through a similar process when it blasts chemicals at a predator at temperatures of over 212 degrees Fahrenheit as a survival technique.
Obviously, we have no real fossil records of dragons. However,
the city of Troy was considered a legend until its discover.
And the recent discovery of a race of very short people (hobbits) makes you wonder if some of the stories we assume are myths and legends are actually facts. Even if you don't
think it is possible the show is still worth watching simply for the
cutting-edge special effects -- plus Patrick Stewart narrates.
An especially amazing segment is when the dragons display a dangerous courtship ritual the developers based on the actual courting ritual of Sea Eagles. The dragons soar high in the sky together where they
lock talons. Then the dragons dive straight downward together at alarming speed before pulling up at the very last moment.
Posted on March 21, 2005
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77 Killed from Angola Disease Outbreak
Reuters reports that a disease has killed 77 of the 83 people suspected of being infected in Angola. The disease causes fever, vomiting and diarrhea and has primarily killed children. WHO officials called the disease acute hemorrhagic fever and an ebola outbreak has been ruled out.
Jose Caetano, a WHO spokesman in Angola, told Reuters, "The situation is
now under control. Our problem is trying to get the sick to go to health
centers. We are trying to encourage people who feel any of the symptoms to
get medical attention as quickly as possible."
Posted on March 18, 2005
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Mystery Disease Kills 56 in Angola in Two Weeks
The ProMed email service, a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, had an email post that 56 people have died in Angola in the last two weeks from an unknown illness. A post on ProMed said that the illness, called gastric hemorrhage by local doctors, "begins with fever symptoms for 2 days and then the patient begins to cough up blood, falls into a coma, and dies within 4 days." 2 of victims were nurses in the regional Huige province hospital. If your thinking this might be ebola or another hemorrhagic fever the ProMED moderator had this to say:
As a geographical reminder, while the viral hemorrhagic fevers such as
Ebola, Lassa & Marburg have not been reported from Angola, Lassa fever is
endemic in West Africa to the north of Angola, Ebola has recurrently
appeared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the
Congo to the north of Angola, and Marburg was reported in backpackers
travelling through Zimbabwe to the southeast of Angola.
Posted on March 16, 2005
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Supervolcano Risk is Real
The BBC reports that scientists are recommending an emergency management taskforce be established in case there is a massive volcanic eruption somewhere on Earth known as a super-eruption. The warning coincides with a new BBC TV drama, called Supervolcano, that depicts a fictional super-eruption at Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, US. Geologists say this is more than just a risk. It is really going to happen someday. "We don't want to be sensationalist about this, but it's going to happen. We just can't say exactly when," Open University Geology Professor Stephen Self told the BBC. Scientists so far can not predict exactly when or where such a massive explosion might occur, but one possible spot is Yellowstone. This geological hot spot, which is also known as a caldera, is the largest volcanic system in North America. The producers of the film had this to say about Yellowstone, "It was an obvious choice for the programme makers as the site of their super-eruption because of its location on a highly populated continent and because it has already had three of these events, which have occurred roughly 600,000 years apart from each other." Let's hope we don't see a fourth eruption anytime soon. Wikipedia has more on the Yellowstone Caldera.
Posted on March 14, 2005
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Scientists Find Mass Extinction Cycles
SFGate.com reports that two scientists from UC Berkeley have
found an interesting, but alarming, discovery after studying
Earth's fossil records of 500 million years. The scientists
found that the Earth goes through a massive extinction every
62 million years. The scientists found no deviation from this
pattern. Unfortunately, it has now been 65 million years since
Earth's last great extinction. The scientists have only theories
as to what causes these extinctions. Some of these theories include:
periodic surges of volcanism, deadly comets from the Oort Cloud and
an increase in galactic gravity that causes a deadly comet shower.
About the discovery James Kirchner, a professor of earth and natural
scienes at UC Berkely, told SFGate, "Their discovery is exciting,
it's unexpected and it's unexplained. Everyone and his brother will be proposing an explanation -- and eventually, at least one or two will turn out to be right while all the others will be wrong."
Posted on March 10, 2005
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Catchy Tunes Get Stuck in Auditory Cortex
The auditory cortex appears to be responsible for helping you
remember the missing parts of songs and for making
songs get stuck in your head. The BBC reports that researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging measured brain activity while playing songs to human subjects. When brief gaps
were left in songs that the subject was familiar with the
auditory cortex helped the subject "remember" the gaps.
If an unfamiliar song was played with gaps the auditory
cortex did not help. Scientists believe this could mean that
the auditory cortex plays a role in audio storage as well
as the original processing of incoming sounds.
Posted on March 9, 2005
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The Pain Weapon
The U.S. military is working on a weapon that can cause extreme pain in rioters or terrorists from a distance of up to 2 kilometers. Some scientists have expressed outrage at the military's plan. Andrew Rice, a consultant in pain medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, told New Scientist: "Even if the use of temporary severe pain can
be justified as a restraining measure, which I do not believe it can, the long-term physical and psychological effects are unknown." The exact specs of the weapon are unknown but New Scientist reports that the weapon could be a type of laser (or Pulsed Energy Projectiles) that would hit targets with an electromagnetic pulse. The idea would be for this pulse to trigger a massive temporary pain response in the human targets
without causing them physical damage.
Posted on March 7, 2005
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James Baker: Take Global Warming Seriously
Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker has argued for a serious look into alternative energies. Reuters (via MSNBC.com) reports that while speaking to the Houston Forum Club, Baker said, "It may surprise you a little bit, but maybe it’s because I’m a hunter and a fisherman, but I think we need to a pay a little more attention to what we need to do to protect our environment. When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum, both of which are perhaps represented in this room, saying there
is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought
to listen." Reuters reports that Baker said it is time to start an "orderly" move towards alternative energy sources. Baker served in the
cabinet of George Bush Senior and represented George W. Bush in
the controversial 2000 elections. The Bush Administration has
refused to acknowledege that global warming is a threat -- often ignoring evidence and warnings from organizations like NASA, the Woods Hole Research Center and even the Pentagon. The Bush Administration has also pursued plans, like the Clear Skies Initiative, that environmental groups say greatly weaken the existing Clean Air Act. The Sierra Club calls the Clear Skies plan a Bush smokescreen to weaken the Clean Air Act and allow more pollution.
Posted on March 4, 2005
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HIV to Infect 90 Million Africans
The UN is warning that if HIV/AIDS continues to grow in Africa
at its current rate it could impact 10% of the population within
20 years -- or 90 million people. Those 90 million would be in
addition to the 25 million Africans who already have the
deadly disease. Simon Wright, of ActionAid, told the BBC that,
"All countries must be more ambitious in fighting AIDS, otherwise
generations of Africans will be lost."
Posted on March 3, 2005
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More Post Tsunami Discoveries
The recent post-Tsunami discovery of animal carvings and ruins
in India has led to more discoveries underwater off the
coast of India. In the ocean divers found large stone structures
which the scientists believe are man-made and which could
be a significant archeaological discovery. The BBC reports that
some archaeologists think it find might be the ancient, mythical
city of Mahabalipuram, which is said to have been flooded in legends.
Posted on March 1, 2005
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