Sound available
Music: Dylan; Puccini's La boheme. Birds: The Northern Raven; The Whiskered Yuhina; Birds in Antarctica
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Environments
NEWS FROM THE POLESChanges in Antarctica
Seemingly conflicting reports on the status of penguins - click on the map to read more: In a Changing Antarctica, Some Penguins Thrive as Others Suffer
Satellite images help discover massive Emperor penguin colony, see original paper below. Click Here: to Read more about the International Polar Foundations antarctic station
Melting Arctic ice will make way for more ships and more species invasions by Lisa Palmer
NATURE | SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN A new study shows immense increases in shipping are likely over the North Pole and Arctic Ocean in the coming years, alerting scientists who study invasive species.
07 March 2013 COURTESY OF LAURENCE C. SMITH An article by Scientific American. The rare ships that have ventured through the harsh, icebound Arctic Ocean require reinforced hulls and ice-breaking bows that allow them to plow through dense ice as much as two meters deep, and face hazardous conditions in remote locations for long periods of time. Arctic sea ice now is melting so rapidly each summer due to global warming, however, that ships without ice-breaking hulls will be able to cross previously inaccessible parts of the Arctic Ocean by 2050. And light-weight ships equipped to cut through one meter of ice will be able to travel over the North Pole regularly in late summer, according to a new study published March 4 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Plus. That’s good news for economic development because it offers many new and faster routes from east to west, shaving 40 percent off transportation time and fuel costs compared with shipments via the Suez Canal. But the geographic extent of trade routes across the Arctic is worrisome for scientists who study invasive species. Ships traveling regularly in the Northwest Passage, beyond the Northern Sea Route and through the central Arctic Ocean, will likely bring new invaders to the Arctic as well as to northern ports. Mosquitoes and forest beetles are expected to survive hidden in cargo, for example. Hearty marine organisms, such as mussels and barnacles, will likely tag along as larvae in ballast tanks or in niche areas on vessel hulls. When new species flourish in a new environment they can become harmful, damaging local ecosystems and threatening native plants and animals, much as the Japanese vine known as kudzu has overrun the southern U.S. Economic costs associated with new pests have been significant—for example, the influx of zebra mussels into the Great Lakes has been estimated at $1 billion annually. "The temptation for many new ships to enter [the Arctic] will be huge,” says University of California, Los Angeles, geographer Laurence Smith, lead author of the new study. Arctic shipping already has grown by leaps and bounds in just the past few years. In 2012, which set a record for lowest sea ice extent, a total of 46 ships—the most ever—traversed the Arctic Ocean. Thirty-four ships made the passage in 2011 whereas just four had done so the year before. For context, 19,000 ships pass through the Suez Canal annually. Sea ice has long been a barrier to shipping across the Arctic Ocean as well as to species. Already, shipping is by far the most common pathway for marine invasive species, responsible for 69 percent of species introductions to marine areas, followed by aquaculture at 41 percent (non-native species can have more than one pathway of introduction, meaning some double counting.) The most common transport method is ships’ ballast water. Organisms can also hitch a ride in nooks and crannies on a ship’s hull, known as hull fouling. And organisms such as forest pests and mosquitoes can survive long trips in pallets and in cargo such as tires. Related stories
Cold storageMario Tamburri, a marine scientist and director of the Maritime Environment Resource Center at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, has been researching survivorship and reproduction of organisms likely to be transported by ships by mimicking the conditions of shipping traffic. New colder, shorter routes afforded by the retreat of ice help invaders, such as mussels, barnacles and crabs, on a biological level, Tamburri says. Cold water slows metabolism of organisms, which can sustain themselves in low food conditions. “It’s like putting your groceries on ice,” he says. Shorter routes also mean more organisms either attached to the hull or in ballast water are now more likely to survive the journey. Previously, the high heat and lack of light of longer trips outside the Arctic killed them off. “When ships now transport goods through the Panama Canal, for instance, through warm water and freshwater, natural barriers to invasive species are built into the shipping routes,” Tamburri says. “In the Arctic, those barriers go away.” Ballast water and bivalvesMurmansk, Russia, a leading global port and the largest city north of the Arctic Circle, is one area that ice-free routes will likely open up further this summer. As more ships exchange ballast water for cargo, native species in places like Murmansk can quickly lose out against new species that have no checks and balances, such as marine species like bivalves that can be dispersed by larvae in ballast water as well as cold-water adapted adults, including green crabs. Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, says that once introduced, a new species can outcompete everything that has evolved over millennia. Although some nonnative species are innocuous, others thrive because there have no predators. Nothing controls them in the natural system, and they are better at filtering food out of the water than their native cousins. “Invasives use up the lion’s share of resources, and whatever biodiversity that was there falls apart,” Ziska says. When new interlopers take hold, one or two tend to become very well suited for that environment and dominate it. The natural biodiversity diminishes, Ziska says. Scientists are beginning to catalogue and classify native and nonnative species at ports near oil facilities in Alaska. No large obvious invasions by marine traffic have occurred yet in the high latitude environment but Ziska and others scientists say no one can be sure. Scientists are only now beginning to look closely. “We weren’t expecting the Arctic to change this quickly,” Ziska notes, adding that the implications for not only human traffic but also for biology are worrisome. “It’s basically opening up the entire Arctic region as a huge playground for invasive species. New things, new biological organisms are going into the area where they have never been seen before. The consequences of that are, quite frankly, are completely unknown.” Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12566
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Sea LifeFrom Slate: The Giant Squid Stalker Edith Widder uses light to communicate with mysterious animals in the deep sea.By Mark Schrope|Posted Friday, Jan. 25, 2013, at 5:43 AM ET
Deep-sea biologist Edith Widder was working on a ship positioned off Japan’s Ogasawara Islands when Wen-Sung Chung asked her to step into the lab to see something. READ MORE Video Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Learn more about squid and other cephalopodson the Art and Science page
Hammerhead shark images posted by Neil Hammerschlag of University of Miami in Ocean Views on February 27, 2013. Visit the RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program
The microbial world’s missing link or a whole new life form? Either way, these things are really cool.
“At a more conceptual level, the convergence between the discovery of increasingly reduced parasitic cellular organisms and that of giant viruses exhibiting a widening array of cellular-like functions may ultimately abolish the historical discontinuity between the viral and the cellular world.” From Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel
The quote above was taken from an article published in Adv Virus Res http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780124081161000021. The authors, a married couple working at the Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, in Marseille, France, head one point of view on the origin of these viruses. There is a summary of recent discoveries related to giant viruses at Nature News: http://www.nature.com/news/giant-viruses-open-pandora-s-box-1.13410 A hint at the wider debate these viruses have prompted can also be heard in the All Things Considered story below. In it, team Claverie and Abergel point to the extreme dis-similarity that the genome of Pandoraviruses have with any other life as suggestive that they represent an entirely separate lineage of life. The opposing view, that Pandoraviruses are just a big, strange form of the small viruses we are all familiar with is presented by an NIH researcher named Eugene Koonin. |
Listen to points of view on the state of our oceans and current exploration on the Art, Science, Society page
Technology, Archeology and Exploration
Editorial by Brower 2013.
A Roman ship (possibly 2?) carrying stolen Greek treasure sank 2,000 years ago off the coast of the island of Antikythera. In this, the first marine wreck studied by archeologists, a complex, clock-like mechanism, thought to have been constructed in 140 BC, was discovered. The wreck was found, and the first of its contents retrieved between 1900-1901 by Greek sponge divers. In the 1970's Cousteau visited the site, and in 2013, following the latest visit to the site by a team that includes Brendan Foley, new theories on the wreck are emerging.
A Roman ship (possibly 2?) carrying stolen Greek treasure sank 2,000 years ago off the coast of the island of Antikythera. In this, the first marine wreck studied by archeologists, a complex, clock-like mechanism, thought to have been constructed in 140 BC, was discovered. The wreck was found, and the first of its contents retrieved between 1900-1901 by Greek sponge divers. In the 1970's Cousteau visited the site, and in 2013, following the latest visit to the site by a team that includes Brendan Foley, new theories on the wreck are emerging.
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This story integrates discovery of Greek technology so advanced that it confounds previously held beliefs (watch the two videos provided), recovery of beautiful sculpture and other artifacts that provide insight into Greco-Roman history, the fascinating world of sea exploration, and new application of modern scanning equipment that, while improving our understanding of archeological artifacts is helping to rewrite our past. Enjoy!
Natural design in technologyThis video starts slow, but hang in and listen to Janine Benyus. You can also visit her biomimicry website
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Communication, Science, and Social Consequences
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The way we communicate ideas is as powerful as the idea itself: Case in point...watch how the people in the video on the right communicate, with each other (from the speaker intro and hand off right through), and how they communicate their ideas. Even if what they have to say is true and vital, I doubt most people would respond positively to the information because of the way it is being delivered.
Is there a better way to do this? The video of McDougall below is an example of very effective communication, but unfortunately most of the message is non-sensical and destructive. After you view his clip on Tarahumara running, listen to the Ira Flatow interviews with Eric Kandel on the Art, Science and Society page, top of the people to listen to section. Obviously this is just one persons opinion, but these two get science communication. Oh yeah, and you can read on if you are interested in the effects McDougall's communication skills have had on the Tarahumara. |
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A perfect storm for cultural destruction
Comment by Brower March 2013: What happens when you mix a naive capitalist who stumbles upon a reclusive
group of Indians that he admires, political unrest, and climate change? Ask Christopher McDougall, who in his own words during a charismatic TED talk said, “How do we spoil anything? We try to sell it” In the two videos here you can watch a very effective speaker manage to ignore the negative effects his personal quest for success has had on the Tarahumara, and you can read about the reality of this tribe in the article that follows.
Mexican Drug War’s Next Victims: Tarahumara Indian Runners
Jun 25, 2012 1:00 AM EDT From Newsweek Magazine by Aram Roston
Mexico’s Tarahumara are the world’s greatest ultrarunners—and the next victims of the drug war.
Camilo Villegas-Cruz is wistful when he talks about happier times, running in the shadowy depths of Sinforosa Canyon, in Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre. A member of the Tarahumara Indian tribe, renowned for their agility and running endurance, Villegas-Cruz grew up competing in traditional rarajipari races, in which contestants kick a wooden ball along a rocky trail. But by the time he was 18 years old, he was running an entirely different kind of race—hauling a 50-pound backpack of marijuana across the border into the New Mexico desert.
Today, Villegas-Cruz is 21 and languishing in a U.S. federal prison near the Mojave Desert in Adelanto, Calif. Villegas-Cruz’s unlikely journey from young athlete to drug mule shows how a little-known tribe, having been catapulted into the limelight by a runaway bestseller, is being ground down by forces out of its control, including Mexico’s all-consuming drug war, a disastrous economy, and an unrelenting drought. In their native language, Villegas-Cruz’s people call themselves the Rarámuri—the light-footed ones. Their unique physical abilities were largely unknown to the outside world until 2009, when the book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen made them famous. “When it comes to ultradistances,” author Christopher McDougall wrote, “nothing can beat a Tarahumara runner—not a racehorse, not a cheetah, not an Olympic marathoner.” Among the characters in the book was a Tarahumara champion who once ran 435 miles, and another who won a 100-mile ultramarathon in Leadville, Colo., with almost casual ease. McDougall described the reclusive Tarahumara as “the kindest, happiest people on the planet,” and “benign as Bodhisattvas.”
The central message—that nature intended human beings to run—struck a chord in the United States, where Born to Run had a staggering impact on the amateur-running world (and on the $2.3 billion per year running-shoe business). The book triggered the barefoot running rage, including popular “foot gloves” that are as close as you can get to not wearing shoes at all. But there’s a painful twist to this otherwise uplifting tale. According to defense lawyers, law-enforcement sources, and some Tarahumara Indians, drug traffickers are now exploiting the very Tarahumara trait—endurance—that has been crucial to their survival. Cartel operatives enlist impoverished Tarahumara Indians to make a grueling odyssey running drugs by foot across the border to the U.S.
Tarahumara Indians: Mexico’s Unwilling Drug Runners
The Tarahumara’s native Copper Canyons have been invaded by narcotraficantes. (Jason Florio for Newsweek) American defense lawyers on the southwest border say Tarahumara drug runners are a growing segment of their court-assigned clientele. Ken Del Valle, a defense attorney in El Paso, Texas, says he’s represented more than a dozen of the Indians since 2007, all in similar “backpacking” cases. Statistics are impossible to come by since law enforcement agencies don’t differentiate between Indians and other Mexicans, but Del Valle says it is precisely the Tarahumaras’ aptitude for endurance running that makes them so heavily recruited: the cartels “can put them in the desert and just say, ‘Go!’”
Del Valle says when the cases first starting appearing, U.S. courts were ill-equipped to handle the defendants. In one early case, he recalls, a Taruhamara was released when the court couldn’t find an interpreter. Now, lawyers and judges have a translator on call. Don Morrison, an assistant federal public defender, first represented a Tarahumara in 2010. “I had no idea that right across the border there was a tribe of people who lived like this,” he told me. Many Tarahumara men still wear handmade sandals, skirt-like loin cloths, and brightly colored tunics. “If the drug war can start involving the Tarahumara,” he says, “then no one is immune.” Until recently, the Tarahumara have been partially protected by the fearsome geography of the region they inhabit— the Sierra Madre mountains. The terrain here is psychedelic: plinths and boulders and impossible overhangs. The canyons stretch down more than a mile, though the Tarahumara navigate the cliffs as easily as staircases. But in the past decades, ranchers, miners, loggers, and narcos have moved ever closer into traditional Tarahumara enclaves. One of the last travel books to chronicle the region was the acclaimed God’s Middle Finger, published in 2008 by British writer Richard Grant. It describes a run-in with armed thugs, then closes with this thought: “I never wanted to set foot in the Sierra Madre again.” Exacerbating the situation is what -locals say is the worst drought in 70 years. Even in the best of times, many Tarahumara live on the edge, tilling just enough to survive. Now farmers can’t get most food crops to grow, and last winter an unusual cold spell killed off much of what they did plant. That’s left the Indians desperate—and easy prey for wealthy drug barons looking for mules to take their product north.
Mexico’s Tarahumara are the world’s greatest ultrarunners—and the next victims of the drug war.
Camilo Villegas-Cruz is wistful when he talks about happier times, running in the shadowy depths of Sinforosa Canyon, in Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre. A member of the Tarahumara Indian tribe, renowned for their agility and running endurance, Villegas-Cruz grew up competing in traditional rarajipari races, in which contestants kick a wooden ball along a rocky trail. But by the time he was 18 years old, he was running an entirely different kind of race—hauling a 50-pound backpack of marijuana across the border into the New Mexico desert.
Today, Villegas-Cruz is 21 and languishing in a U.S. federal prison near the Mojave Desert in Adelanto, Calif. Villegas-Cruz’s unlikely journey from young athlete to drug mule shows how a little-known tribe, having been catapulted into the limelight by a runaway bestseller, is being ground down by forces out of its control, including Mexico’s all-consuming drug war, a disastrous economy, and an unrelenting drought. In their native language, Villegas-Cruz’s people call themselves the Rarámuri—the light-footed ones. Their unique physical abilities were largely unknown to the outside world until 2009, when the book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen made them famous. “When it comes to ultradistances,” author Christopher McDougall wrote, “nothing can beat a Tarahumara runner—not a racehorse, not a cheetah, not an Olympic marathoner.” Among the characters in the book was a Tarahumara champion who once ran 435 miles, and another who won a 100-mile ultramarathon in Leadville, Colo., with almost casual ease. McDougall described the reclusive Tarahumara as “the kindest, happiest people on the planet,” and “benign as Bodhisattvas.”
The central message—that nature intended human beings to run—struck a chord in the United States, where Born to Run had a staggering impact on the amateur-running world (and on the $2.3 billion per year running-shoe business). The book triggered the barefoot running rage, including popular “foot gloves” that are as close as you can get to not wearing shoes at all. But there’s a painful twist to this otherwise uplifting tale. According to defense lawyers, law-enforcement sources, and some Tarahumara Indians, drug traffickers are now exploiting the very Tarahumara trait—endurance—that has been crucial to their survival. Cartel operatives enlist impoverished Tarahumara Indians to make a grueling odyssey running drugs by foot across the border to the U.S.
Tarahumara Indians: Mexico’s Unwilling Drug Runners
The Tarahumara’s native Copper Canyons have been invaded by narcotraficantes. (Jason Florio for Newsweek) American defense lawyers on the southwest border say Tarahumara drug runners are a growing segment of their court-assigned clientele. Ken Del Valle, a defense attorney in El Paso, Texas, says he’s represented more than a dozen of the Indians since 2007, all in similar “backpacking” cases. Statistics are impossible to come by since law enforcement agencies don’t differentiate between Indians and other Mexicans, but Del Valle says it is precisely the Tarahumaras’ aptitude for endurance running that makes them so heavily recruited: the cartels “can put them in the desert and just say, ‘Go!’”
Del Valle says when the cases first starting appearing, U.S. courts were ill-equipped to handle the defendants. In one early case, he recalls, a Taruhamara was released when the court couldn’t find an interpreter. Now, lawyers and judges have a translator on call. Don Morrison, an assistant federal public defender, first represented a Tarahumara in 2010. “I had no idea that right across the border there was a tribe of people who lived like this,” he told me. Many Tarahumara men still wear handmade sandals, skirt-like loin cloths, and brightly colored tunics. “If the drug war can start involving the Tarahumara,” he says, “then no one is immune.” Until recently, the Tarahumara have been partially protected by the fearsome geography of the region they inhabit— the Sierra Madre mountains. The terrain here is psychedelic: plinths and boulders and impossible overhangs. The canyons stretch down more than a mile, though the Tarahumara navigate the cliffs as easily as staircases. But in the past decades, ranchers, miners, loggers, and narcos have moved ever closer into traditional Tarahumara enclaves. One of the last travel books to chronicle the region was the acclaimed God’s Middle Finger, published in 2008 by British writer Richard Grant. It describes a run-in with armed thugs, then closes with this thought: “I never wanted to set foot in the Sierra Madre again.” Exacerbating the situation is what -locals say is the worst drought in 70 years. Even in the best of times, many Tarahumara live on the edge, tilling just enough to survive. Now farmers can’t get most food crops to grow, and last winter an unusual cold spell killed off much of what they did plant. That’s left the Indians desperate—and easy prey for wealthy drug barons looking for mules to take their product north.
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Editorial by Brower Feb 2013
What is about to happen when society, technology, and genetics come together under the influence of men like George Church?
I started out my morning determined to get my head around DNA-based nanotechnology. I read papers by George Church and others until I felt like I had the technology roughed out in my head; just enough that I could more or less picture what was going on in the lab, and then I found my attention turned to the question above.
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I don’t think anyone knows the answer, and there has been a lot of coverage on the topic of late, but the perspective on this I am most interested in is that of Harvard Professor Ting Wu. Problem is, as much as I’d love to provide a video link in which Ting explains her thoughts on the effects this new field will have on individuals and society, I can’t find one. No TED Talks, no YouTube, no Harvard videos available to the public, just a quiet little blog that takes some ambition to find. (She’d be on the Art, Science, and Society page under people to listen to if I could find such a video.) I can find George talking about himself, his science, what he thinks the importance of his work is and what it will do for society without any trouble, and that’s fine. What seemed not so fine was having to suffer through dear old George paddling around with a snorkel [A really unsettling attempt to humanize him?] just to get a few seconds with Ting – in which she eluded to her possible misgivings with her husbands work, no elaboration, and no detail provided about her contributions to the field through pged: http://www.pged.org/mission/
The point of the video, I realize, was to laud George Church and his accomplishments, and the point of this commentary is not to bash George Church; his technical discoveries are unquestionably brilliant, mind blowingly creative, fascinating, etc., and will be life changing for generations to come. My point is, I question the scientific community’s ability to appreciate when the baton needs to be handed off; when and how to translate and deliver technical scientific discovery to the world. The scientist who makes the discovery is not always, perhaps is usually not, the person best positioned to or most capable of understanding how society will use and react to its fall out. I know this may sound like sacrilege, but if we're honest it's an old story predating Darwin and Einstein; it’s not like we aren’t familiar with it. Ego, power, and a sense of ownership by the scientist, and perhaps a social need to honor the scientist are at the crux of science-to-society translational fumbles. Science, for all of its lofty integrity is also a human sport, and it is limited and influenced by human psychology. The scientific community has a responsibility, often neglected, to recognize that the next step and the people involved in the next step, the translation and use of science, are as or more important than the scientist. Following a discovery these people need to be front and center, and we need to hear from them. They are often hidden in the shadows, sometimes by neglect and sometimes by intent, but they are who we should be seeking out. I want George to explain the nuts and bolts of how DNA will hold the data currently locked up in silicon, but I want Ting to tell me about what she thinks this means for society. I’m not saying I want to see her paddling around with a snorkel, but I do want her voice to dominate that video.
Mike Archer and the Lazarus Project Click on the image to see more by artist Peter Schouten
From the University of New South Wales Australia: News | Science Scientists produce cloned embryos of extinct frog 15 March 2013 The genome of an extinct Australian frog has been revived and reactivated by a team of scientists using sophisticated cloning technology to implant a “dead” cell nucleus into a fresh egg from another frog species.The bizarre gastric-brooding frog, Rheobatrachus silus – which uniquely swallowed its eggs, brooded its young in its stomach and gave birth through its mouth – became extinct in 1983. But the Lazarus Project team has been able to recover cell nuclei from tissues collected in the 1970s and kept for 40 years in a conventional deep freezer. The “de-extinction” project aims to bring the frog back to life. In repeated experiments over five years, the researchers used a laboratory technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. They took fresh donor eggs from the distantly related Great Barred Frog, Mixophyes fasciolatus, inactivated the egg nuclei and replaced them with dead nuclei from the extinct frog. Some of the eggs spontaneously began to divide and grow to early embryo stage – a tiny ball of many living cells. Although none of the embryos survived beyond a few days, genetic tests confirmed that the dividing cells contain the genetic material from the extinct frog. The results are yet to be published. “We are watching Lazarus arise from the dead, step by exciting step,” says the leader of the Lazarus Project team, Professor Mike Archer, of the University of New South Wales, in Sydney. “We’ve reactivated dead cells into living ones and revived the extinct frog’s genome in the process. Now we have fresh cryo-preserved cells of the extinct frog to use in future cloning experiments. “We’re increasingly confident that the hurdles ahead are technological and not biological and that we will succeed. Importantly, we’ve demonstrated already the great promise this technology has as a conservation tool when hundreds of the world’s amphibian species are in catastrophic decline.” The technical work was led by Dr Andrew French and Dr Jitong Guo, formerly of Monash University, in a University of Newcastle laboratory led by frog expert, Professor Michael Mahony, along with Mr Simon Clulow and Dr John Clulow. The frozen specimens were preserved and provided by Professor Mike Tyler, of the University of Adelaide, who extensively studied both species of gastric-brooding frog – R. silus and R. vitellinus – before they vanished in the wild in 1979 and 1985 respectively. UNSW’s Professor Archer spoke publicly for the first time today about the Lazarus Project and also about his ongoing interest in cloning the extinct Australian thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, at the TEDx DeExtinction event in Washington DC, hosted by Revive and Restore and the National Geographic Society. Researchers from around the world are gathered there to discuss progress and plans to ‘de-extinct’ other extinct animals and plants. Possible candidate species include the woolly mammoth, dodo, Cuban red macaw and New Zealand’s giant moa. Lazarus project media contacts: Mike Archer in Washington + 1 (202) 276 2637. (15 hours behind Sydney)m.archer@unsw.edu.au; Andrew French: afrench4@optusnet.com.au, 0437 156 266; Michael Mahony:Michael.mahony@newcastle.edu.au, 02 4921 6014; Simon Clulow, simon.clulow@newcastle.edu.au, 0459 551 370; UNSW Science media contact: Deborah Smith, 9385 7307, 0478 492 060, Deborah.Smith@unsw.edu.au Media for TEDx talks in Washington: Kathleen Russell kcr@kathleenrussell.com or media@TEDxDeExtinction.org Funding: The Lazarus Project has been funded through the generosity of donors - particularly Professor John Shine, Mr Dick Smith, Mr Gary Johnston - and by the researchers themselves. |
The Resurrection of Lazarus; Painting by Giovanni di Paolo; Image from The Walters Art Museum Gallery
More on "de-exctinction" below and on the pathology of the past pageEditorial by Brower April 2013
Is science about to get into the business of resurrection? This is the kind of headline I’ve been seeing in response to work by Archer and Church. And it’s no wonder with experiments afoot presenting charged titles like ‘the Lazarus Project’. I’m not sure what would drive a scientist to claim a title like this for his work other than to be provocative, but there are clearly some real differences between how it went down in the Christian bible story and what’s happening in the laboratory. John, Chapter 11 verse 25: Jesus said I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. In the King James version it continues, And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go. In the Mike Archer version it goes something more like, and then we harvested eggs from Mixophyes frogs year after year, exchanging nuclei, growing up clusters of cells, and watching them die, until one day, we had a big enough cluster to call a press conference. Why get everyone stirred up with a project name that mixes in religious beliefs? The events aren’t the same in so many ways. Isn’t science cool enough as it is? Honestly, I see tying science to religious doctrine as a shallow move; it clearly gets you media attention, but I think the kind of heat and emotion it injects outweighs any benefits it might afford the science. The science isn’t actually published yet, but you can read a description of the work from Archers university press on the left. |
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Below is a paper commissioned as part of a series titled "Special Topics in Social, Economic and Behavioural (SEB) Research"
Globalization and infectious diseases: A review of the linkages One major focus of this literature has been the links between globalization and infectious disease. There are particular concerns that globalization is impacting on the epidemiology of infectious disease, and on the capacity to effectively prevent, control and treat these diseases. It may, for example, influence the risk factors for specific diseases, and at the same time enhance the opportunities for improving surveillance, monitoring and reporting capacity through global information and communications technologies. This paper reviews the current evidence for links between globalization and infectious disease. In particular, it identifies changes in disease distribution, transmission rate, and in some cases, management of disease. The aims of the paper are to: •improve understanding of how globalization influences infectious diseases, particularly in the developing world; • explore how the processes of globalization impact on the epidemiology of, risk factors for, and capacity to control, infectious diseases; • examine how efforts to control infectious diseases need to take account of globalization processes. The paper extensively reviews the relevant published English language literature and, where possible, literature in other languages. It also reviews a substantial amount of “grey” literature. The focus is on the priority diseases of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR). READ MORE |
This photo kindly provided by Gennifer Reed; GenSafaris
This photo kindly provided by Gennifer Reed; GenSafaris
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Editorial by Brower Nov 2012
What do Poverty, Infectious Disease, and the 2012 US Election have to do with each other?
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…
And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
Thoughts on Gov. Mitt Romney’s assertion that he shouldn’t worry about the 47% of the US population he describes as lacking personal responsibility:
This sort of attitude, in all of it’s naïvete, may be useful when all that is at stake is one-uping a business rival, but it falls far short of the mark when what’s on the line is leading the most powerful nation in the world. The fact is, it’s going to get harder and harder for the U.S., and the world, to afford poor people, and Mr. Romney, that doesn’t mean they aren’t your problem; that means they are one of your biggest problems. Not being prepared to take that fact to heart, or finding the concept just too abstract suggests that staying in business and leaving running the United States to people with the mental scope to handle it would be the best course. Why do poor people matter? There is no end to this discussion, and it is tempting just to turn to Dickens now, but I'd like to try looking at it from a veterinary pathologists’ perspective and consider the way in which poverty effects emerging infectious diseases.
60% of human infectious diseases are caused by zoonotic pathogens. Now, if we consider the statements, “Infectious diseases have for centuries ranked with wars and famine as major challenges to human progress and survival” and “they remain among the leading causes of death and disability worldwide” from The challenge of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (Morens, David M. et al. Nature, Vol 430, 2004), look at the pie chart of disease the authors provide in this article showing 14.9 million deaths annually attributed to infectious disease, and then consider the statement Molyneux makes in his article, Zoonoses and marginalised infectious diseases of poverty: Where do we stand?, “Infectious diseases disproportionately affect poor and marginalised populations which are subjected to a cycle of ill-health and poverty” (Molyneux et al. Parasites & Vectors 2011, 4:106 http://www.parasitesandvectors.com/content/4/1/106), we may be able to agree that infectious disease and poverty go hand in hand. We may even be able to see how zoonoses can impact humans doubly; both directly through human infection, and indirectly through destruction of our food supply (the animals that are also lost through infection), and in turn how disruption of food security threatens poor people particularly, maintaining the cycle of poverty.
But some may also believe that these diseases are problems for other places, having little relevance to US poverty; African poverty is different from American poverty? Well, maybe once, and maybe still, but I think less and less so. Here’s a headline that suggests the same: “UCSF researchers found that poor HIV-infected individuals living in San Francisco are significantly more likely to visit emergency rooms and to have hospital stays if they lack access to food of sufficient quality and quantity for a healthy life.” (http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/08/12596/food-insecurity-increases-hospital-use-hiv-positive-urban-poor-san-francisco), and another from Dr. Michael S. Saag, director of the UAB Center for AIDS Research, “Many more people who are poor contract HIV due to lack of access to healthcare and the close ties between poverty and drug addiction. With more infected people living in poor communities, the risk of passing it to fellow community members is higher. Those living in poverty are also more likely to be focused on day-to-day survival, which drives risky behavior.”
So, is it now just the subset of HIV infected people in the 47% that we are talking about, and if so, is this really too small a population/too small an issue for a guy running for president of the United States to be worrying about? Consider this, some of the most frightening emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases of the past decade have occurred in the US. Here are just a few examples of the new and re-emerging we’ve seen in the states recently: Hantavirus, spread by rodents (2012 outbreak in Yosemite); monkey pox, spread through animals bought and sold via the US pet trade (2003 outbreak in Wisconsin); fungal meningitis, spread through contaminated pharmacuticals (2012 outbreak across the US); E. coli O157:H7 repeatedly spread through contaminated food, petting zoos, and county fairs; the list goes on. People exposed to infected rodents, pets, and food animals are at risk, but in conditions with reduced sanitation, lower education, pre-existing disease, and limited access to health care – our nations poor – the risk of contracting disease is far greater. Further, while the numbers of deaths in these outbreaks don’t hold a candle to those linked to cardiovascular disease (4.1% of the US population has had a heart attack), diabetes (affects approximately 9% of the US population), or obesity (27.6% of the US population is considered obese), consider what an otherwise manageable infection does in a diabetic, in a person who’s immune suppressed, in a person with chronic illness, and then add up the numbers. US health care has become a major political issue because it is a major economic issue, and you cannot tease the effects of poverty away from it.
If we consider health costs in the US, sitting at approximately 15% of GDP in 2008, as compared to, for instance, Norway or the UK at just under 9% in the same year (2008 OECD data), and consider that spending is anticipated to grow 6.7% annually through 2017, and then factor in the 15.3% of the population who were without health insurance prior to Obama care, and then try to imagine the addition of increasing outbreaks of emerging infections disease, it is really hard to believe that a person running for president of the United States is willing to disregard the poor half of the American population and think that won’t be a bird that comes home to roost. It’s not about politics it’s about being willing to accept that poverty is a problem that must be tackled in the US, for everyone’s sake. Ignoring it will not make it go away.
And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
Thoughts on Gov. Mitt Romney’s assertion that he shouldn’t worry about the 47% of the US population he describes as lacking personal responsibility:
This sort of attitude, in all of it’s naïvete, may be useful when all that is at stake is one-uping a business rival, but it falls far short of the mark when what’s on the line is leading the most powerful nation in the world. The fact is, it’s going to get harder and harder for the U.S., and the world, to afford poor people, and Mr. Romney, that doesn’t mean they aren’t your problem; that means they are one of your biggest problems. Not being prepared to take that fact to heart, or finding the concept just too abstract suggests that staying in business and leaving running the United States to people with the mental scope to handle it would be the best course. Why do poor people matter? There is no end to this discussion, and it is tempting just to turn to Dickens now, but I'd like to try looking at it from a veterinary pathologists’ perspective and consider the way in which poverty effects emerging infectious diseases.
60% of human infectious diseases are caused by zoonotic pathogens. Now, if we consider the statements, “Infectious diseases have for centuries ranked with wars and famine as major challenges to human progress and survival” and “they remain among the leading causes of death and disability worldwide” from The challenge of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (Morens, David M. et al. Nature, Vol 430, 2004), look at the pie chart of disease the authors provide in this article showing 14.9 million deaths annually attributed to infectious disease, and then consider the statement Molyneux makes in his article, Zoonoses and marginalised infectious diseases of poverty: Where do we stand?, “Infectious diseases disproportionately affect poor and marginalised populations which are subjected to a cycle of ill-health and poverty” (Molyneux et al. Parasites & Vectors 2011, 4:106 http://www.parasitesandvectors.com/content/4/1/106), we may be able to agree that infectious disease and poverty go hand in hand. We may even be able to see how zoonoses can impact humans doubly; both directly through human infection, and indirectly through destruction of our food supply (the animals that are also lost through infection), and in turn how disruption of food security threatens poor people particularly, maintaining the cycle of poverty.
But some may also believe that these diseases are problems for other places, having little relevance to US poverty; African poverty is different from American poverty? Well, maybe once, and maybe still, but I think less and less so. Here’s a headline that suggests the same: “UCSF researchers found that poor HIV-infected individuals living in San Francisco are significantly more likely to visit emergency rooms and to have hospital stays if they lack access to food of sufficient quality and quantity for a healthy life.” (http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/08/12596/food-insecurity-increases-hospital-use-hiv-positive-urban-poor-san-francisco), and another from Dr. Michael S. Saag, director of the UAB Center for AIDS Research, “Many more people who are poor contract HIV due to lack of access to healthcare and the close ties between poverty and drug addiction. With more infected people living in poor communities, the risk of passing it to fellow community members is higher. Those living in poverty are also more likely to be focused on day-to-day survival, which drives risky behavior.”
So, is it now just the subset of HIV infected people in the 47% that we are talking about, and if so, is this really too small a population/too small an issue for a guy running for president of the United States to be worrying about? Consider this, some of the most frightening emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases of the past decade have occurred in the US. Here are just a few examples of the new and re-emerging we’ve seen in the states recently: Hantavirus, spread by rodents (2012 outbreak in Yosemite); monkey pox, spread through animals bought and sold via the US pet trade (2003 outbreak in Wisconsin); fungal meningitis, spread through contaminated pharmacuticals (2012 outbreak across the US); E. coli O157:H7 repeatedly spread through contaminated food, petting zoos, and county fairs; the list goes on. People exposed to infected rodents, pets, and food animals are at risk, but in conditions with reduced sanitation, lower education, pre-existing disease, and limited access to health care – our nations poor – the risk of contracting disease is far greater. Further, while the numbers of deaths in these outbreaks don’t hold a candle to those linked to cardiovascular disease (4.1% of the US population has had a heart attack), diabetes (affects approximately 9% of the US population), or obesity (27.6% of the US population is considered obese), consider what an otherwise manageable infection does in a diabetic, in a person who’s immune suppressed, in a person with chronic illness, and then add up the numbers. US health care has become a major political issue because it is a major economic issue, and you cannot tease the effects of poverty away from it.
If we consider health costs in the US, sitting at approximately 15% of GDP in 2008, as compared to, for instance, Norway or the UK at just under 9% in the same year (2008 OECD data), and consider that spending is anticipated to grow 6.7% annually through 2017, and then factor in the 15.3% of the population who were without health insurance prior to Obama care, and then try to imagine the addition of increasing outbreaks of emerging infections disease, it is really hard to believe that a person running for president of the United States is willing to disregard the poor half of the American population and think that won’t be a bird that comes home to roost. It’s not about politics it’s about being willing to accept that poverty is a problem that must be tackled in the US, for everyone’s sake. Ignoring it will not make it go away.
Indulgence Watch
Romney
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