Nat-n-Bio

Image: JIM GATHANY/CDC MOSQUITO. This blood-feeding Anopheles gambiae mosquito is one of the leading malaria vectors in the world. Toby Fagan, who is currently conducting postdoctoral research on malaria at Edinburgh University, gives this response: Malaria is one of the most ubiquitous diseases known–there are more than 125 different species of malaria that infect mammals, birds and reptiles, which indicates an early origin. It has probably afflicted humans throughout our evolutionary history, although the first historical reports of symptoms that match those of malaria date back to the ancient Egyptians (around 1550 B.C.) and the ancient Greeks (around 413 B.C.). These early descriptions noted the association between fevers and wet ground. In fact, the word “malaria”[...] 

Coartem, a malaria drug whose potency is derived from a Chinese herb, may soon be approved for sale in the United States. By Jordan Lite  | December 23, 2008 DEADLY BITE The Food and Drug Administration may soon approve a drug derived from the herb artemisinin to treat malaria. Image: Public Health Image Library/James Gathany The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is poised to decide by Friday whether to green-light the use of the malaria drug Coartem as part of an expedited review reserved for life-saving treatments that the agency believes are more effective than existing therapies. An FDA advisory panel earlier this month overwhelmingly determined the drug to be safe and effective; the agency is not bound by recommendations but typically follows them. Coartem, derived from the Chinese herb[...] 

The relatively pleasant global climate of the last 10,000 years is largely thanks to higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide By David Biello  | April 4, 2012 ICE MELT: Carbon dioxide likely trapped the extra heat responsible for the end of the last Ice Age, according to a new analysis. Image: Courtesy of Michele Koppes, University of British Columbia Roughly 20,000 years ago the great ice sheets that buried much of Asia, Europe and North America stopped their creeping advance. Within a few hundred years sea levels in some places had risen by as much as 10 meters—more than if the ice sheet that still covers Greenland were to melt today. This freshwater flood filled the North Atlantic and also shut down the ocean currents that conveyed warmer water from equatorial regions northward. The[...] 

The parasite that causes malaria is becoming immune to artemisinin, the most effective drug. Pinpointing the resistance genes could offer a way to beat back the disease By Katherine Harmon  | April 5, 2012 New grounds for resistance: A camp in western Thailand, where drug-resistant malaria is becoming increasingly common Image: Timothy Anderson The malaria parasite is a wily organism, shifting its life stages as it flits from human to mosquito and back again. It still kills some 600,000 people each year and has outwitted eradication efforts, having developed resistance to previously popular drugs and, thus far, eluded vaccine-induced immunity. The arrival of a powerful drug in the late-20th century gave researchers new hope. Called artemisinin and based on a traditional Chinese herbal remedy,[...] 

Infants may understand fairness and sharing earlier than expected By Lena Groeger  | April 6, 2012 Well before “not fair!” becomes a staple phrase of your child’s spoken repertoire, he or she might already have a fundamental grasp of right and wrong. A study published last October in PLoS One found that 15-month-old infants could identify unequal distributions of food and drink and that this sense of fairness was connected to their own willingness to share. To measure these moral sentiments, researchers first had the children watch movies of an actor distributing food, either equally or unequally, between two people. Most of the toddlers spent more time looking at the unequal outcome, suggesting it surprised them by violating their basic sense of fair­ness. Next, every child picked[...] 

Scientists are struggling to raise tropical fish on farms so that fishers who now poison coral reefs to catch them will no longer be needed By Sujata Gupta  | April 6, 2012 Tropical fish tanks in restaurants, hospitals and homes evoke feelings of tranquility and beauty. They even lower stress levels prior to medical procedures and encourage Alzheimer’s patients to eat sufficiently. But what’s good for humans may be bad for the sea. Most tropical fish sold in pet stores come from reefs in Indonesia and the Philippines, where fishermen stun the colorful dwellers with squirts of sodium cyanide. The potent nerve toxin causes the fish to float up out of the reefs so they can be easily scooped up, but it can also injure or kill them as well as trigger coral bleaching. “What I[...] 

How awareness of our mortality may be a major driver of civilization By Michael Shermer  | April 6, 2012 Imagine yourself dead. What picture comes to mind? Your funeral with a casket surrounded by family and friends? Complete darkness and void? In either case, you are still conscious and observing the scene. In reality, you can no more envision what it is like to be dead than you can visualize yourself before you were born. Death is cognitively nonexistent, and yet we know it is real because every one of the 100 billion people who lived before us is gone. As Christopher Hitchens told an audience I was in shortly before his death, “I’m dying, but so are all of you.” Reality check. In his book Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization (Crown, 2012), British[...] 

Meat eaters selectively deny mental abilities in the animals they consume By Morgen E. Peck  | April 8, 2012 On the savanna a lioness will fell and shred her prey without empathy. Yet for we humans who can imagine that a cow might feel pain, pleasure and fear, enjoying animal flesh may have moral overtones. New research indicates that we have developed a mental tool to help us cope with the realities of our carnivorous nature: denial. In a study that excluded vegetarians, psychologist Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland in Australia and his colleagues first asked par­ticipants to commit to eating either meat slices or apple wedges. Before eating, everyone wrote an essay describing the full life cycle of a butchered animal and then rated the mental faculties of a cow or a sheep.[...] 

Thousands of dead or dying dolphins have washed ashore in Peru since January, a marine mystery potentially caused by a combination of stress, pollution and disease By Barbara Fraser and Environmental Health News  | April 6, 2012 LIMA, Peru — When a retired fisherman called to report that about 1,500 dolphins had washed up dead on Peru’s northern coast, veterinarian Carlos Yaipén’s first reaction was, “That’s impossible.” But when Yaipén traveled up the coast last week, he counted 615 dead dolphins along a 135-kilometer stretch of coastline. Now, the death toll could be as high as 2,800, based on volunteers’ counts. Peru’s massive dolphin die-off is among the largest ever reported worldwide. The strandings, which began in January, are a marine mystery that may never[...] 

There can sometimes be discrepancies between the ecclesiastical and astronomical versions for dating Easter By Joe Rao and SPACE.com  | April 6, 2012 FULL MOON: Skywatcher Maxim Senin caught the full moon during the moon’s conjunction with Mars, March 7, 2012, in Long Beach, CA. Says he: “Mars, it’s round and red/orange, but too blurred to see any features in my telescope.” Image: Maxim Senin Friday (April 6) brings us the first full moon of the new spring season. The official moment that the moon turns full is 19:19 UT, or 3:19 p.m. EDT. Traditionally, the April full moon is known as “the Pink Moon,” supposedly as a tribute to the grass pink or wild ground phlox, considered one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other monikers include the[...]