Harper's contempt for Science and Canadian values

One of the fundamental differences between the previous Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney and the current Harper Conservatives (Reform-Alliance Party; i.e. CRAP) has been the complete abandonment of progressive environmental policies and investment in the basic sciences.

First, let us consider what Mulroney did in his two-terms that has lead some environmentalists to call him the "greenest Prime Minister" in Canadian history.

• In 1987, the Tories helped establish "The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer".  The global treaty placed a ban on the destructive CFCs that were destroying the ozone layer and jeopardizing life on this planet.  
• Acid rain pollution was dramatically curtailed through cooperative legislation with the Americans.  
• A moratorium on fishing Cod, which twenty years later has yet to recover
• At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the United Nations Environment Programme was championed by Canada, and Canadians served as their leaders.

Whereas, Mulroney could be considered the high-water mark in environmental protection, the Harper government without any doubt is about as low and dirty as a clogged drainage pipe.

Plenty of people have talked of the Conservative's fealty to market based approaches, which is vaguely strange given that the current Prime Minster has never held a real job or career outside politics; his Finance Minister Jim Flahery was a motor vehicle accident and personal injury litigation lawyer (aka Ambulance chaser); and key Minsters Peter MacKay, Tony Clement, John Baird, and Jason Kenney have spent much of their adult lives as professional politicians.  So having established that none of these men has any experience in actually running anything but their mouths off, on the tax payers dime, it is less than obvious why anyone would believe that they understand what they are doing when it comes to making decisions about science funding in the public's interest.

Stephen Harper's desire to constantly control the message and limit the information that reaches the public has become legendary.  Like the Republican Party under George W. Bush, Harper has fought to manipulate the press and machinations within the government to serve his exclusive political goals.  The influence and taint of lobbyists peddling preferred laws, as it is done in Washington DC, is now the norm in his majority government.  Legislation is proudly rammed through parliament without adequate review or discussion from opposition parties or committee members input.  Through this unsightly metamorphosis into a corporate state, impediments such as empirical data, scientific facts, and international treaties to protect the environment have been removed.

Harper has pursued a global embargo on the speech of research scientists affiliated with the Government of Canada for the past few years.  For example, prominent scientists have been barred from granting interviews, providing opinions to the public on their subject of expertise, or discussing  their publications at conferences.  Environment Canada prevented  Dr. David Tarasick from "published findings about one of the largest ozone holes ever discovered above the Arctic."  Similarly, Kristi Miller was prevented from discussing her research into  a virus that might be killing British Columbia's wild sockeye salmon, despite her research being published in the journal Science.  An article in the scientific journal Nature further illustrates the problem:

Carefully researched reports intended for the public — Climate Change and Health, from Health Canada, and Climate Change Impacts, from Natural Resources Canada — were released without publicity, late on Friday afternoons, and appeared on government websites only after long delays.

The government demands that any information provided to the public must be vetted and cleared with a local propaganda officer from the Conservative party.

Science that offends the sensibilities of religious fundamentalists, the same group that makes up Harper's western base, is also edited from public disclosure.

When Scott Dallimore, a geoscientist for Natural Resources Canada in Sidney, British Columbia, reported evidence of the colossal flood that occurred in northern Canada at the end of the last ice age (Nature 464, 740–743; 2010), he was put through the message-moulding machine. As a result, Canada's taxpayers, who funded the research, were left in the dark. While the news broke elsewhere, journalists in Canada who had previously had open access to Dallimore, a gifted communicator, were left spinning their wheels while deadlines passed. The flood happened 13,000 years ago, so how can this work be construed as politically sensitive?

Recently, the Harper government changed the laws so that not-for-profit groups that engage in political criticism are penalized to prevent them for so-called abusing their registered charitable status.

The nearly paranoid and conspiratorial nature of these acts, stems from the Conservative's desire to prevent any information that may run counter to their pro-corporate or religious minded policies from reaching the public and interfering with their program.

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It is not just the message that Conservatives loath; it is the scientists that accumulate all these facts that make Conservative-backers so angry with the fact-based world.  Over the past year, the Harper government has engaged in a systematic withdrawal of funding for Environment Canada projects and the scientists involved in those research projects.  A student researcher at the University of  Toronto discusses his perspective:

Over the past several months we have seen major cuts to Environment Canada that are leaving it without any real scientific or research power. We have seen many prominent scientific jobs cut, research funding slashed, and our ability to effectively do environmental assessment and management largely neutralized.

Given that public funding is the main source of revenue for environmental sciences at Canadian universities, which has now evaporated, researchers are packing up and leaving Canada en mass.

In 2011-12 Environment Canada had its budget cut by 20% to 854 million dollars.   Eleven percent of the department personnel was cut last year, with a total of 776 employees told that their jobs may be terminated.  Those affected include engineers, meteorologists, scientists, chemists, and biologists. Given the extent of previous cuts imposed by previous budgets, the department is said to be barely functioning.  Treasury Board Minister, Tony Clement (aka Mr. hundred thousand dollar Gazebo),  facetiously told reporters that “Environment Canada is open for business, they’re doing their job, and they want to do it more efficiently.”

Canada was a pioneer in ozone monitoring technologies, which "led to the discovery that the world's ozone layer was dangerously thinning in the 1970s, which in turn led to the successful Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances."  The internationally renowned ozone monitoring network, has about one-third of the ozone monitoring stations in the Arctic region. The data produced by this network is heavily relied on by scientists around the world.  A single person was running the entire archives, until the conservatives closed down the The Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) in Eureka, Nunavut.

Not convinced at stopping the flow of information, eliminating the funding of  researchers, and closing down research stations, the conservatives have decided to destroy Arctic ice core bores that provide evidence of the atmospheric gaseous concentrations for thousands of years.  Mark Twickler, director of the U.S. National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver, Colo said, “These ice cores are so valuable that the international community, including the U.S., will do whatever we have to to preserve these remarkable archives of past climate.”

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is undergoing a similar budget slashing process. Budget cuts have lead to the closing of the Experimental Lakes Area. The program used a region of 58 freshwater lakes near Kenora, in western Ontario, where scientists conducted experiments on the effects of pollution.

The Environmental Lakes Area program was launched in 1968 and led to important discoveries about the effects of pollutants such as phosphates in household detergents and mercury on bodies of fresh water, prompting tighter regulation in Canada and the U.S.

Researchers from across the world are claiming disbelief at the action.  Harvard University aquatic sciences professor Elsie Sunderland said:

[she] was pretty shocked... This is one of the foremost research projects and places to do research in the world. To have it shut down is just appalling. It's just embarrassing. 

Cynthia Gilmour, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland, said  she "was stunned".  Jim Elser an aquatic ecologist at Arizona State University said in an article in the journal Nature,  titled "Canada's renowned freshwater research site to close," that it was "completely shocking".  Elser said it was equivallent to the "U.S. government shutting down Los Alamos — its most important nuclear-physics site — or taking the world's best telescope and turning it off."

In a separate incident, 625 prominent scientists have written to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and warned him not to "gut fish-habitat protections they say would put species at risk and damage Canada’s international standing."  The legislation being implemented as part of the Fisheries Act in Bill C-38, the omnibus budget bill, would eliminate components of federal law that bans activity that results in "harmful" alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat.  The new law consists of a  prohibition against activity that results in "serious" harm to fish that are part of a commercial, recreational or aboriginal fishery, or any fish that supports one of those three fisheries.

David Schindler, ecology professor at the University of Alberta said the “pro-development” Conservative government was determined to abrogate long standing environmental protections.  Others are equally pessimistic of Harper's infringement on established environmental protections and resource management:

Nick Dulvy, a Simon Fraser University professor who worked formerly as a fisheries scientist in the British government, said the two moves add to his growing alarm about the Harper government's "misuse" of science.

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Hannah McKinnon of the Climate Action Network Canada (CAN Canada), an environmental NGO, made the comparison between funding essential scientific research that monitors the health of the nation versus providing 2-billion dollars to build ships for the Canadian Navy and Coast Guard and another 29 billion dollars allocated in a non-competitive and rigged bid for 65 F-35 fighter jets that don't even meet the Department of Defense's own minimal specifications.  The government can find billions of dollars to spend on pet projects, fighting Middle Eastern wars, and providing billions in subsidies to petrochemical companies -some of which are the most profitable in the world- yet it can't find the funds to monitor the environment or maintain reasonable scientific competency.

John Bennett, the executive director of Sierra Club Canada, puts it more bluntly, “It will give the polluters what they want, a toothless Environment Canada with no scientific or enforcement capability."

Possible Causes of Honeybee Colony Collapse Found

US scientists associated with the US Army and the University of Montana, have ascertained a possible cause for the annual decline in honeybee colonies in the USA.

To contextualize, the phenomenon is not unique to the United States and has been found to be affecting bee populations across the globe for a number of years.   In 2004, apiarists started to discover that large portions of their colonies were either dying or not returning to their hives.  Substantial losses year-over-year both in North America and Europe, have lead to a concerted global effort to ascertain the causative agents behind this situation.  Francis Ratnieks, a biologist at University of Sussex in Brighton, has stated in Wired magazine that there is no single rational at the global level, why bee populations are in decline.  He elaborates that honeybees are "probably dying for all kinds of different reasons from loss of their foraging grounds to increased exposure to global pathogens."  Pesticide usage, monoculture agricultural practices, urban sprawl, and climate change are also a few of the other causes that investigators have looked at to understand why bees are in decline.

The NY Times is reporting that American scientists, utilizing military research tools, have identified a fungus and virus pair that is present in 100% of all colony collapse cases evaluated in their labs.  Their findings suggest that "both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised."

The article reports on the host-parasite interaction:

“It’s chicken and egg in a sense — we don’t know which came first,” Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other’s destructive power. “They’re co-factors, that’s all we can say at the moment,” he said. “They’re both present in all these collapsed colonies.”

The mechanisms that the fungus-virus pair is utilizing to undermining the bee populations is yet to be determined.

Still unsolved is what makes the bees fly off into the wild yonder at the point of death. One theory, Dr. Bromenshenk said, is that the viral-fungal combination disrupts memory or navigating skills and the bees simply get lost. Another possibility, he said, is a kind of insect insanity.

Further research into this phenomenon is necessary to understand a means of preventing future outbreaks.  However, we also know as in a case study in Britain where changes have been made to enhance the natural environment of bumblebees, such as "putting in pollen and nectar-rich flower margins to fields, growing red clover hay meadows and rotating the grazing of animals on land," that immediate improvements in the health of local bees could be achieved.

Climate Change may be Causative Agent in Bee Decline

Research conducted by scientists at the University of Toronto indicate that declines in bee population may be in part due to incongruencies that have emerged due to climate change.  Temporal mismatches arise between when the flowers are accessible and open to pollinators and when bees emerge from hibernation.  The seventeen year study indicates a "progressive decline in pollination over the years."

The research and article is summerized below from EurekAlert!

TORONTO, ON - Widespread reports of a decline in the population of bees and other flower-visiting animals have aroused fear and speculation that pollination is also likely on the decline. A recent University of Toronto study provides the first long-term evidence of a downward trend in pollination, while also pointing to climate change as a possible contributor.

"Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more important factor," says James Thomson, a scientist with U of T's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Thomson's 17-year examination of the wild lily in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado is one of the longest-term studies of pollination ever done. It reveals a progressive decline in pollination over the years, with particularly noteworthy pollination deficits early in the season. The study will be published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences on September 6.

Three times each year, Thomson compared the fruiting rate of unmanipulated flowers to that of flowers that are supplementally pollinated by hand. "Early in the year, when bumble bee queens are still hibernating, the fruiting rates are especially low," he says. "This is sobering because it suggests that pollination is vulnerable even in a relatively pristine environment that is free of pesticides and human disturbance but still subject to climate change."

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Thomson began his long-term studies in the late 1980s after purchasing a remote plot of land and building a log cabin in the middle of a meadow full of glacier lilies. His work has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

The Coming Environmental Collapse

The United Nation's Biodiversity Chief, Dr. Ahmed Djoghlaf, issued a unequivocal do-or-die statement to the governments of the world, regarding the implementation of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.  According to the UN's website, the convention's purpose is to achieve the following:

The Convention on Biological Diversity was inspired by the world community's growing commitment to sustainable development. It represents a dramatic step forward in the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources.

To date however, not a single signatory has met its target to protect nature.  Planetary biodiversity is not an esoteric subject or a triviality to be dispensed with lightly.  Rather, it is a vital ecological principle that defines biosphere stability and hence the survival of the human species.  The web of life is an extraordinary complex and dynamic set of systems, which cycles nutrients and minerals, stabilizes global climate levels, and controls an enormous number of biological systems necessary for sustaining life from the Antarctic to the rainforests to the grain fields of the Great Plains in North America.  As this blog has been discussing for the past year (here, here, here, & here), the destruction of the biological commons; liquidation of forests; consuming all the ocean's fish; and toxification of the air, land, and sea with human waste and pollution will result in a world which is more fragile and susceptible to ecological collapse; i.e. human extinction.

The Guardian UK newspaper outlines the argument.  In the article, Djoghlaf warns countries, "It would be very short-sighted to cut biodiversity spending. You may well save a few pounds now but you will lose billions later. Biodiversity is your natural asset. The more you lose it, the more you lose your cultural assets too."   His warnings, made to the entire world community, implies that unless substantial policy changes are made and improvements at conserving biodiversity and managing ecosystem stability are achieved, many nations and their citizens will cease to exist in the future.

UCLA scientist Jared Diamond likewise has outlined in his book Collapse how human civilizations over the millenia have failed due to human caused environmental degradation.  Overpopulation, resource scarcity, misuse and abuse of natural resources, water management failures...etc. are all areas that have resulted in the decline and eventual demise of many societies throughout history.  Today, all nations are confronted with some, if not all, of these issues.  Loss of biodiversity and ecosystem instability is therefore a direct result of societies and humankind not addressing the individual and unique issues that ultimately are within their own control and perpetuating what historian Arnold Toynbee described as the collective suicide on the part of societies, when they fail to adapt to challenges of their time.

Pancreatic cancers use fructose, common in the Western diet, to fuel their growth

Pancreatic cancers use fructose, common in the Western diet, to fuel their growth

According to UCLA researchers everything gives you cancer can now be officially extended to fructose. The research examined the metabolic differences of pancreatic cancer cells when given glucose or fructose as monomeric carbohydrate sources. Conventional biochemistry would imply that there should not be a significant difference between the isomers. However, upon analysis it was found "that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation. They have major significance for cancer patients, given dietary refined fructose consumption."

Pancreatic cancers use the sugar fructose, very common in the Western diet, to activate a key cellular pathway that drives cell division, helping the cancer to grow more quickly, a study by researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has found.

Although it's widely known that cancers use glucose, a simple sugar, to fuel their growth, this is the first time a link has been shown between fructose and cancer proliferation, said Dr. Anthony Heaney, an associate professor of medicine and neurosurgery, a Jonsson Cancer Center researcher and senior author of the study.

"The bottom line is the modern diet contains a lot of refined sugar including fructose and it's a hidden danger implicated in a lot of modern diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and fatty liver," said Heaney, who also serves as director of the Pituitary Tumor and Neuroendocrine Program at UCLA. "In this study, we show that cancers can use fructose just as readily as glucose to fuel their growth."

The study appeared in the Aug. 1 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Cancer Research.

The source of fructose in the Western diet is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a corn-based sweetener that has been on the market since about 1970. HFCS accounts for more than 40 percent of the caloric sweeteners added to foods and beverages, and it is the sole sweetener used in American soft drinks.

Between 1970 and 1990, the consumption of HFCS in the U.S. has increased over 1,000 percent, according to an article in the April 2004 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Food companies use HFCS - a mixture of fructose and glucose - because it's inexpensive, easy to transport and keeps foods moist. And because it is so sweet, it's cost effective for companies to use small quantities of HCFS in place of more expensive sweeteners or flavorings.

In his study, Heaney and his team took pancreatic tumors from patients and cultured and grew the malignant cells in Petri dishes. They then added glucose to one set of cells and fructose to another. Using mass spectrometry, they were able to follow the carbon-labeled sugars in the cells to determine what exactly they were being used for and how.

Heaney found that the pancreatic cancer cells could easily distinguish between glucose and fructose even though they are very similar structurally, and contrary to conventional wisdom, the cancer cells metabolized the sugars in very different ways. In the case of fructose, the pancreatic cancer cells used the sugar in the transketolase-driven non-oxidative pentose phosphate pathway to generate nucleic acids, the building blocks of RNA and DNA, which the cancer cells need to divide and proliferate.

"Traditionally, glucose and fructose have been considered as interchangeable monosaccharide substrates that are similarly metabolized, and little attention has been given to sugars other than glucose," the study states. "However, fructose intake has increased dramatically in recent decades and cellular uptake of glucose and fructose uses distinct transporters … These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation. They have major significance for cancer patients, given dietary refined fructose consumption."

As in anti-smoking campaigns, a federal effort should be launched to reduce refined fructose intake, Heaney said.

"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications," Heaney said. "Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of HFCS in our diets."  Heaney said that while this study was done in pancreatic cancer, these finding may not be unique to that cancer type.

Going forward, Heaney and his team are exploring whether it's possible to block the uptake of fructose in the cancer cells with a small molecule, taking away one of the fuels they need to grow. The work is being done in cell lines and in mice, Heaney said.

Ontological Deviations on MS (Mad Scientist) Syndrome

You may Not Patent my Genes!

In a decisive blow to the fraud-mongers in the biotech industry and US Patent office, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet in New York State invalidated part of seven patents granted to Myriad on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are two alleles or variants of a tumour suppressor gene that is found in all humans and responsible, under normal situations, in removing malignancies that may arise. The BRCA1/2 mutational variants substantially increase the risk of a carrier developing breast, ovarian, prostate, pancreatic, colon, and other cancers. Based on current data, females carrying either of these two mutations, will encounter lifetime risks above normal for developing ovarian cancer at 10-20% for BRCA-2 mutations and 40-60% for BRCA-1 mutations.

USA Today outlines the discovery process of BRCA1/2:

The genes for both BRCA1 and BRCA2 were first patented by geneticist and Myriad founder Mark Skolnick, who in the 1990s began looking at detailed family histories to zero in on the genetic basis for breast cancer. Family histories helped him figure out which genes probably carried the mutations. Using gene sequencing, he found exactly where on the genes the mutations occur.

For the past twenty years, due to legal gimmickry, the biotech industry has been able to wage a concerted racket against patients and scientific advancement.

A case was filed against Myriad Genetics by the ACLU and the New York-based Public Patent Foundation on behalf of doctors, patients and several medical groups, including the Association for Molecular Pathology and the American College of Medical Genetics. To the surprise of both legal analysts and the biotech industry, Judge Sweet effectively told Myriad as described by Stanford Law Professor Hank Greely, “You didn't invent this, you didn't make it, and you shouldn't get a patent on it!"

The Judge overturned all the patent claims held by the defendant, based on the fact that they cover products of nature and abstract ideas. In his decision, Judge Sweet wrote:

The resolution of these motions is based upon long recognized principles of molecular biology and genetics: DNA represents the physical embodiment of biological information, distinct in its essential characteristics from any other chemical found in nature. It is concluded that DNA’s existence in an “isolated” form alters neither this fundamental quality of DNA as it exists in the body nor the information it encodes. Therefore, the patents at issue directed to “isolated DNA” containing sequences found in nature are unsustainable as a matter of law and are deemed unpatentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

Beyond the legal arguments, there exists the practical dimension that these patents impinge on necessary scientific research, inhibit patients from effectively ascertaining their genetic profiles and evaluating treatment options, and gouge consumers with excessive charges. In the latter case, Myriad Genetics charged patients $3,000 to assess whether they were carriers of the BRCA1 or 2 alleles. Patients like Lisbeth Ceriani, who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer in both of her breasts, had to wait a year and a half to find out if she needed to have her ovaries also removed, because Myriad Genetics refused to deal with her insurance company (Massachusetts MediAid), due to the low reimbursement rate provided.

The Economist magazine discussess a report published by Duke University researchers, which concludes that gene patenting and its monopoly granting status prevents access to these critical tests for many poor Americans, prevents diagnostic accountability from the monopoly providers, and hampers business innovation in the field of medical diagnostics.

Again and again, the typical business model in America is to put the profits of individual corporations over the collective needs and in this case the lives of ordinary people. My genes, your genes, or that of any organism on this planet are not for sale, nor is it the ownership of crooked scientists who have sold their souls to profit on the exploitation of the genetic commons.

Psychopaths' brains wired to seek rewards

According to an article published in Nature Neuroscience (14 March, 2010) and described in Eurekalert!:

The brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain's reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals.

"This study underscores the importance of neurological research as it relates to behavior," Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said. "The findings may help us find new ways to intervene before a personality trait becomes antisocial behavior."

"Psychopaths are often thought of as cold-blooded criminals who take what they want without thinking about consequences," Joshua Buckholtz, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology and lead author of the new study, said. "We found that a hyper-reactive dopamine reward system may be the foundation for some of the most problematic behaviors associated with psychopathy, such as violent crime, recidivism and substance abuse."

Previous research on psychopathy has focused on what these individuals lack, fear, empathy and interpersonal skills. The new research, however, examines what they have in abundance impulsivity, heightened attraction to rewards and risk taking. Importantly, it is these latter traits that are most closely linked with the violent and criminal aspects of psychopathy.

There is a reason why we forget

"Memories were meant to fade, Lenny. They're designed that way for a reason." Mace, Strange Days (1995).

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A recent publication in the Journal Cell (free article available online) elaborates how researchers at Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory discovered a protein that regulates forgetting of short-term memories.  In general, short-term memory refers to the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an animal's neural network (i.e. mind) in an active, readily available state for a short period of time.  The researchers "discovered that three kinds of forgetting – all involving the erasure of short-term memory – are regulated within neurons by the activity of a protein called Rac."  The research was conducted on Drosophila melangaster (fruit fly) both of the wild type (normal) and genetically engineered variety (via standard transposon mutagenesis) to evaluate short-term memory retention with respect to modulation of the Rac protein.

Naturally occurring Rac activation within neurons located in a fruit fly organ called the mushroom body was linked experimentally with three distinct memory-erasure tasks by CSHL Professor Yi Zhong, Ph.D., and colleagues at Tsinghua University in Beijing. One kind of erasure is associated with gradual short-term memory loss (previously considered "passive"); another entails an acute, rapid removal of short-term memory (e.g., "reversal learning"); a third involves a kind of erasure associated with new information that interferes with an existing short-term memory ("interference").

In all three kinds of erasure, the team has found, the process of forgetting is mediated by a mechanism dependent upon the activity level of Rac, a protein that belongs to the Rho family of GTPases. These are a type of protein known to act, among other things, as regulators of the cytoskeleton, the superstructure of cells. Importantly, Zhong and colleagues propose that Rac's role in erasing memory is directly related to its function as a cytoskeleton remodeling agent.

In genetically modified flies, the team elevated Rac activity in mushroom body neurons, which are the seat of olfactory-based memories in the fly. Elevated Rac activity had the effect of accelerating the decay of short-term memories. The process worked in the other direction, too. By inhibiting the activity of Rac they observed that short-term memories decayed more slowly than normal, lasting more than a full day rather than vanishing within three hours, as they do, on average, when Rac is not blocked.

The scientists reported that the Rac-dependent forgetting mechanism in flies did not affect mechanisms involved in the formation of new memories, specifically a pathway associated with the gene Rutabaga that is mediated by the enzyme adenylyl cyclase.

"The molecular basis of short-term memory really has been overlooked by the neuroscience community," says Zhong, a CSHL professor. "It has been widely assumed that such memory is degraded through passive cellular processes. Our experiments challenge the notion by providing evidence of a dedicated mechanism for removing several kinds of short-term memories."

The active forgetting mechanism that Zhong and colleagues have uncovered has potentially adaptive benefits for an organism, they speculate. "The Rac-mediated mechanism makes possible a forgetting strategy that can respond to environmental information," Zhong explains. "For instance, it could be advantageous to forget a memory in disuse that is no longer of biological significance, or a memory inconsistent with current circumstances."

"Forgetting Is Regulated through Rac Activity in Drosophila" appears online ahead of print in Cell February 19. The authors are: Yichun Shuai, Binyan Lu, Ying Hu, Lianzhang Wang, Kan Sun and Yi Zhong. The paper is available online at: DOI 10.1016/j.cell.2009.12.044

Darwin Bio-pic Causes Religious Uproar in America

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." H.L. Mencken.

This is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, a man whose name has become synonymous with science, controversy and religious extremism. Darwin is perhaps one of the greatest scientific minds to have come out of the 19th century, producing the first cogent explanation of species diversity through natural selection. His topics included geology, botany, invertebrate zoology, human evolution, and sexual selection. In recognition of Darwin’s pre-eminence, he was one of only five 19th-century UK non-royal personages to be honoured by a state funeral, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton.

Given the enormity and significance of this man, a film named curiously enough "Creation," staring husband and wife team Paul Bettany (as Darwin) and Oscar Award winning actress Jennifer Connelly and produced by Academy Award winner Jeremy Thomas, was the opening film at this year's Toronto Film Festival (TIFF). The film had its British premiere on Sunday. The distribution rights to the film has been sold in almost every territory and country; except America.

An article in the London Telegraph outlines the outrageous details:

US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.

The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying."

The religious right, never shy to expose their anti-intellectual credentials have sought, through censoring the distribution of this movie, to slay their most loathed opponents; secularism and science. After eight years of having their man George W. Bush plunge America into a sea of economic and societal ruin, based on their no small support, they still continue with their drive to enslave us all with their dogma. When will these charlatans be expunged from modern society and be forced to toll on the periphery of civilization, where they belong?

Hey, global warming skeptics, take your heads out of the sand | csmonitor.com

Hey, global warming skeptics, take your heads out of the sand csmonitor.com

One of the more enduring alternative hypothesise that global warming skeptics have forwarded in attempting to rationalize why ambient global temperatures are on the increase, has been in correlating the natural periodicity of the planet to biosphere transformations. The basis of this argument is that Earth’s orbit varies in distance from the Sun over a 21,000 year cycle, leading to defined and determinable changes.

The above Christian Science Monitor article outlines research, conducted by Northern Arizona University (NAU) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., over a period of five-years, that has reconstructed 2,000 years of Arctic summer temperatures. The research team combined previous data from ice cores and tree rings with lake sediment data to build a record of events substantially beyond the existing 400 year record.

The study shows the Arctic is warming two to three times faster than anywhere else at a time when it should be cooling down. Natural changes in Earth’s orbit vary our distance from the Sun over a 21,000 year cycle. The closer we are, the warmer the Arctic and vice versa. Right now, we’re in the cool down part of that cycle. The study confirms a cooling trend over the past 2,000 years until it reversed about a century ago. The Arctic summer now is about 2.5 degrees warmer than it should be.

In an announcement of this result, team member Nicholas McKay explained that, “The 20th century is the first century for which how much energy we’re getting from the Sun is no longer the most important thing governing the temperature of the Arctic.” His co-author, Caspar Ammann at NCAR, said, “This study provides a clear example of how increased greenhouse gases are now changing our climate.”

As alternative explanations to global warming continue to fall to the wayside, the evidence continues to point to the fact that anthropogenic sources of CO2 emissions arising from the massive industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries has precipitated this climate shift. Instead of engaging this subject with our best minds and efforts, we have allowed oil and gas companies, people with no understanding of science (much less evolution and ecology), anti-intellectuals who believe in a 6,000 year old earth, and bought off Western politicians to dictate the future of all life on this planet. Military organizations across the world have already started war-gaming the outcomes and have begun making internal preparations. Yet those in power would rather dither and obfuscate the reality to the public, while the dumbest of our population scold us that the American president just may be a resident alien who is a closet-communist seeking to euthanize the elderly and incarcerate card carrying rednecks in FEMA holding cells.

In some ways the issue is moot, for humanity has already waited too long to prevent the problem. We are now past the point of no-return, as the tell tale products of global climate change emerge: acidification of oceans, irregular precipitation patterns, drought, forest fires that are larger and more destructive (i.e. Australia, Greece, and Western North America), declining agricultural production, rising ocean levels, and mounting civil unrest brought on by environmental scarcity. Even if we were to completely stop all industrialization tomorrow, the existing gases in the atmosphere will reside there for decades and continue to likewise heat the planet.

9200 uncatalogued pathogens found at US lab - Short Sharp Science - New Scientist

9200 uncatalogued pathogens found at US lab - Short Sharp Science - New Scientist

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My old research advisor was a pack rat and as a result, I always had to pull out the biohazard friendly circular filer bin to make room for my enzymes, chemical preps, and assorted stuff by cleaning out the fridge. In the process I'd find sticks of C-14 still clicking away, expired petri dishes, and miscellaneous chemical reagents from 1977.

The article illustrates why you need super-clean "Seinfeld-eque" nerds running labs. When you open your freezer and there's a couple hamburger patties that got loose that's one thing, but when 9,200 vials of the most deadly human pathogens on the planet just happen to be floating around at the bottom of your crisper its time for the Military Police to start doing audits.

And to think all they had to do was check their liquid nitrogen filled crisper's to catch the Anthrax-mailer!