Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Human Rights Law Blogs -> Never In Our Names

Human Rights Law

: Never In Our Names

Science Tidbits

By possum

Gather around for another day of new and exciting, tantalizing news in the realm of science.  New discoveries.  New takes on old knowledge.  The base of information and knowledge grows at a rate much too fast to keep up with all that is available.

Over the fold are some selections from a few of the many fine science news sites around the world.  Today's tidbits include the the impact of fat on cancer spread, exotic ecosystems in the Great Lakes, the world's smallest periscope, an association between alcohol and cancer risk in women, why hair turns gray, and functional neurons from stem cells.  Follow over the fold and down the yellow brick road for one more session of science education and entertainment.
For years scientists have known of a relationship between cancer rates and obesity.  Now researchers at Purdue University have described the mechanism which links the two.Results showed the increase in lipids had no impact on the original tumors implanted in the mice. However, the rate of metastasis rose a dramatic 300 percent in the mice fed a high-fat diet.In the presence of lipid (fat) cancer cells separate and form small balls compatible with travel through the blood stream allowing for metastasis.  Without lipid the cells stick together and form very tight junctions.

The more we explore our planet the more we find.  The Great Lakes have sinkholes made by water dissolving parts of an ancient underlying seabed.  These sinkholes harbor unusual ecosystems where the usual fish of the lake are rarely seen.Instead, brilliant purple mats of cyanobacteria-cousins of microbes found at the bottoms of permanently ice-covered lakes in Antarctica-and pallid, floating pony-tails of other microbial life thrive in the dense, salty water that's hostile to most familiar, larger forms of life because it lacks oxygen.The environment in the sinkholes is an extreme one with decaying matter collected along with fresh water and minerals from 400 million years ago.

Scientists have developed the world's smallest periscope and are using the tool to look at cells on all sides rather than the conventional one side view of a microscope.They are microscopic in dimension - about the width of a human hair - and can be made in a range of sizes to view different-sized objects. When a cell is placed in such a well and viewed with a regular optical microscope, the researcher can see several sides simultaneously.Be sure to check the link and look at the images presented in the report.  This another example of beautiful science.

In a study of more than a million women an association (not a causal effect) between low to moderate alcohol consumption and cancer risk was determined.Low to moderate alcohol consumption among women is associated with a statistically significant increase in cancer risk and may account for nearly 13 percent of the cancers of the breast, liver, rectum, and upper aero-digestive tract combined.This is one more study that needs a lot more investigation to determine the real relationship between alcohol and the incidence of cancer.

As a member of the aging population in our nation today, I care little about the color of my hair but there are those who resent being gray.  Now science has discovered the reason for that color change with age.Going gray is caused by a massive build up of hydrogen peroxide due to wear and tear of our hair follicles. The peroxide winds up blocking the normal synthesis of melanin, our hair's natural pigment.Lack of melanin leads to the gray color.  Not only blondes have the peroxide secret these days. (:.

Very exciting to those of us interested in neurology is the news of functional neurons from stem cells.  This may be the first report of this advance.Lowry and his team used skin fibroblasts and reprogrammed them back into an embryonic state, with the ability to differentiate into any cell type in the human body. They then took those cells and differentiated them into motor neurons.This is exciting news for patients with neurologic conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinal cord injury.

For more science news see these and other websites:

General Science Collectors:
Eureka Science News
New Scientist
LiveScience
PhysOrg.com
Space Daily

Blogs:
ScienceBlogs
Tetrapod Zoologyvertebrate paleontology
Laelaps more vertebrate paleontology
Cantauri Dreams space exploration
Deep Sea News marine biology
A Few Things Ill Considered Techie and Science News:
Wired News
Techonology Review
Space Review
List of Geoscience Blogs

Science RSS Feed: Medworm

NASA picture of the day.  For more see the NASA website.  These pictures are evidence of your tax dollars hard at work.

Eskimo Nebula, NASA, Public Domain

Peace.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on February 27, 2009 (boomark / email).