August 24, 2006, 4:50 AM CT

Manatee Traveler

A West Indian manatee has been sighted in various waters of the northeastern United States in the last 5-6 weeks. It took in the sights along the Hudson River traveling up into Harlem, visited Cape Cod, Mass., and was most recently sighted in Warwick, Rhode Island, in Greenwich Bay.

The question everyone is asking is: Is it Chessie on summer vacation? U.S. Geological Survey manatee scientists have today been able to rule out Chessie as the current traveler through the use of the manatee photo-identification database. Yet the roving manatee´s identity is still unknown.

Photographs and video were sent to USGS manatee scientists in Florida, who used the manatee photo-identification catalog to compare scar patterns on the animal with others in the database and ruled out Chessie as the current traveler. Photographs of the mystery manatee do not match any of the existing Florida manatees previously documented for the manatee identification database.

In 1994, researchers photographed Chessie during his rescue from Chesapeake Bay, Md. - and his unique markings and scars - before his release in Florida. Chessie has a distinctive long gray scar on his back, with several small white spots apparent within the scar.

"Since then, Chessie also has acquired tail mutilations, but these are not severe," said Cathy Beck, a biologist with the USGS Sirenia Project. "Reports of manatee sightings far from the usual summer range are of great interest and we appreciate receiving photographs to help us document the individual whenever possible." Beck said.........

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August 23, 2006, 8:08 PM CT

Brave new world in life sciences

The biosciences are converging with information technology, nanotechnology, and materials science in unforeseen ways, yielding remarkable advances that have the potential to cure--or kill. To reduce the likelihood that these discoveries will be exploited for destructive ends, the authors of the 2006 report, "Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of Life Sciences," propose a "web of protection" that bolsters the development of robust defenses without restricting the free flow of scientific information.

Writing in the September/October Bulletin, the authors argue that fixing a fractured public health system to be responsive to "both natural and deliberate biological threats" is perhaps "the most obvious and important" of the recommendations coming from the report produced by a committee of the National Research Council/Institute of Medicine (IOM).

Eileen R. Choffnes, director of the IOM's Forum on Microbial Threats; Stanley M. Lemon, forum chair and director of the Institute of Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas, Galveston; and David A. Relman, associate professor of microbiology and immunology and of medicine at Stanford University, were the study director and co-chairs, respectively, of the committee.

Also in this issue of the Bulletin: Two different assessments of U.S. vulnerability to nuclear terrorism. Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, warns that Americans are "more vulnerable to a nuclear 9/11 today than we were five years ago." William M. Arkin, online columnist for the Washington Post and author of upcoming The Alternative: Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the American Future, argues that the nuclear terrorism threat has diminished, and that exaggerated fears of a nuclear 9/11 have prompted the United States to divert crucial resources toward failed policies.........

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August 23, 2006, 7:06 PM CT

Genome Set To Transform The Cow

The ability of researchers to improve health and disease management of cattle and enhance the nutritional value of beef and dairy products has received a major boost with the release this week of the most complete sequence of the cow genome ever assembled.

Developed by an international consortium of research organisations, including CSIRO and AgResearch New Zealand, the new bovine sequence contains 2.9 billion DNA base pairs and incorporates one-third more data than earlier versions.

Differences in just one of these base pairs (known as single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs) can affect the functioning of a gene and mean the difference between a highly productive and a poorly performing animal. Over two million of these SNPs, which are genetic signposts or markers, were identified as part of the project.

Australia's representative on the US $53 million Bovine Genome Sequencing Project, CSIRO's Dr Ross Tellam, says the new map marks the end of the sequencing phase of the project, with the focus now on analysing the available data.

"This is very valuable information," Dr Tellam says. "We could potentially achieve as much improvement in cattle breeding and production in 50 years as we have over the last 8000 years of traditional farming."........

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August 23, 2006, 6:52 PM CT

Virus Threat To Red Squirrels

New research has revealed for the first time the catastrophic effect of a deadly virus on Britain's native red squirrels.

The research shows that squirrel poxvirus is threatening to wipe out red squirrels in some of the areas in which they remain in northern England within 10 years. In areas where the virus has been detected, the rate of decline in reds is 17-25 times higher than in places where there has been no outbreak.

Until now the reds' main survival challenge was thought to becompetition with grey squirrels over resources. However, this research highlights the urgency for new conservation strategies for the red squirrel, a species that has been in Britain for the last 10,000 years and is protected under the UK's Wildlife and Countryside Act.

Scientists say that in the absence of a vaccine for the disease the only effective way of stopping the spread is to target grey squirrel control at the narrow entry points and corridors to England's 16 designated red squirrel refuges by killing the small numbers of greys that may come in.

Squirrel poxvirus is passed to reds by grey squirrels, and probably arrived to Britain with some of the greys that were introduced from North America over 100 years ago. The virus does not appear to harm grey squirrels, but is fatal to reds when they become infected.........

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August 23, 2006, 5:04 AM CT

Sturgeon's general warning

They take a long time before they mate and, once old enough, don't mate every year. Even so, sturgeons are heavily sought after for their eggs, which are made into caviar.

For these and other reasons, a number of sturgeons - a variety of ancient, bottom-feeding fish - are in trouble.

Trent Sutton, a fisheries biologist at Purdue University, has helped to ensure that a local variety of sturgeon, the shovelnose, does not become endangered or threatened like a number of of its relatives.

"The problem with sturgeons in general is that they are a long-lived fish that take a long time to reach sexual maturity," Sutton said.

He has completed a series of studies on the shovelnose sturgeon in Indiana waterways, especially the Wabash River. His findings have become the basis for size and catch limits on the fish that will be put into place next summer, said Bill James, chief of fisheries for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR). There are currently no fishing regulations for the shovelnose.

Sutton's research identifies a number of of the fish's habits that were previously unknown. Importantly, he observed that the Wabash River population appears to be stable. Nevertheless, his sampling uncovered very few young fish in the river.........

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August 21, 2006, 9:14 PM CT

Biologist Trying To Crack Microscopic Code

The Bowling Green State University biologist wants to crack the communication code of proteins, particularly the ones whose "talking" aids and abets disease.

"Proteins interact; they 'talk' to each other," the associate professor says. "It's how they know what to do, and it's how most of the things that need to happen for living organisms get done."

Over the past three years he has received $300,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation for his research.

What talking proteins have to do with infectious disease is a story that unfolds in the submicroscopic world of molecular biology. It starts with bacteria, which are cloaked by an outer membrane--a defensive barrier against the harsh elements of their environment, whether toxins in nature or the protective antibodies of an infected host. Specific proteins interact to support this shield, and knowing how they communicate would provide a key to disabling it, Larsen says.

Once communication questions are answered, a goal is to develop drugs to break the barrier, rendering the bacteria more susceptible to the human body's natural defenses--antibodies--as well as certain antibiotics, he points out.

While keeping potential dangers out, the outer membrane must also be porous enough to allow nutrients in, he continues. As an analogy, he cites a house with a yard and a chain-link fence that "keeps the dogs out of the roses but lets the butterflies through".........

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August 20, 2006, 9:22 PM CT

A New Tool Against Brain Disease

University of Utah scientists isolated an unusual nerve toxin in an ocean-dwelling snail, and say its ability to glom onto the brain's nicotine receptors may be useful for designing new drugs to treat a variety of psychiatric and brain diseases.

"We discovered a new toxin from a venomous cone snail that may enable researchers to more effectively develop medications for a wide range of nervous system disorders including Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, depression, nicotine addiction and perhaps even schizophrenia," says J. Michael McIntosh.

Discovery of the new cone snail toxin will be published Friday, Aug. 25 in The Journal of Biological Chemistry by a team led by McIntosh, a University of Utah research professor of biology, professor and research director of psychiatry, member of the Center for Peptide Neuropharmacology and member of The Brain Institute.

McIntosh is the same University of Utah researcher who as an incoming freshman student in 1979 discovered another "conotoxin" that was developed into Prialt, a drug injected into fluid surrounding the spinal cord to treat severe pain due to cancer, AIDS, injury, failed back surgery and certain nervous system disorders. Prialt was approved in late 2004 in the United States and was introduced in Europe last month.........

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August 20, 2006, 6:32 AM CT

The Abbot's Compassion

So Ferocious you are,

King of the forest;

As a killer, you are merciless;

It has become legendary;

Your fierceness and cruelty,

Everyone is well aware;

How ruthless a tiger is;

But with a heart of love and care;

I tend for you, gently and bit by bit;........

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August 19, 2006, 9:06 PM CT

Loss Of Just One Species Makes Big Difference

Scientists at Dartmouth, Cornell University, and the University of Wyoming have learned that the removal of just one important species in a freshwater ecosystem can seriously disrupt how that environment functions. This finding contradicts earlier notions that other species can jump in and compensate for the loss.

Brad Taylor, currently a research associate in the department of biological sciences at Dartmouth, and colleagues studied a fish called the flannelmouth characin (Prochilodus mariae) native to South American rivers. This particular fish eats detritus, the fine organic matter on the river bottom, and because of this, it plays a critical role in regulating the breakdown and transport of carbon in the rivers.

"This fish species is a popular food source; it is harvested regularly, and in some cases, it's overfished," says Taylor, the lead author on the study that was reported in the August 11 issue of the journal Science. "We learned that removing this particular fish greatly altered the metabolic activity of the river ecosystem. Other fish species did not compensate for the lack of Prochilodus, an effect consistent with observations from other rivers where they have been excluded much longer by dams".

The scientists used a heavy, plastic divider to split a 210-meter stretch (a little more than a tenth of a mile) of Rio Las Marías in Venezuela into two separate river sections. On one side, they removed only Prochilodus, and on the other, all the fish remained. The team then took a series of measurements upstream and downstream to quantify the transport of particulate organic carbon (POC).........

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August 19, 2006, 2:47 PM CT

Ocean Noise Has Increased Considerably

With populations increasing around the globe in recent decades, no one would be surprised by an increase in the amount of noise produced in terrestrial environments. Now, a unique study involving scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has shown that the underwater world also is becoming a noisier place, with unknown effects on marine life.

New research reported in the recent issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) has shown a tenfold increase in underwater ocean noise off Southern California's coast as compared with the 1960s. Mark McDonald of WhaleAcoustics in Bellvue, Colo., and John Hildebrand and Sean Wiggins of Scripps Oceanography accessed acoustic data recorded in 1964-1966 through declassified U.S. Navy documents and compared them against acoustic recordings made in 2003-2004 in the same area off San Nicolas Island, one of the Channel Islands more than 160 miles west of San Diego.

The results showed that noise levels in 2003-2004 were 10 to 12 decibels higher than in 1964-1966, an average noise increase rate of three decibels per decade. The culprit behind the increase, as per Hildebrand, appears to be a byproduct of the vast increase in the global shipping trade, the number of ships plying the world's oceans and the higher speeds and propulsion power for individual ships. The noise detected off Southern California originates from ships traveling across the entire North Pacific Ocean. As per Lloyd's Register figures quoted in the JASA paper, the world's commercial fleet more than doubled in the past 38 years, from 41,865 in 1965 to 89,899 in 2003.........

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