KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaican Minister of Energy, Mining and Telecommunications, Clive Mullings, has said that the divestment of the sugar industry presents the opportunity for the country to explore synergies and investments in areas such as alternative energy. ‘This is a time of challenge, but tremendous potential. We (the Government) have to be careful that when this divestment takes place, that the collaboration is with those who have this vision, and who have something to bring to the industry,’ he stated on (Jan. 9), while addressing the opening segment of a Ministry of Agriculture’s sugar industry retreat at the Terra Nova Hotel. According to the Minister, the sugar industry holds great potential and ‘it is very important for us to look at . what has happened in the world where even oil companies are engaged in a lot of research and involvement in green energy. We have to look at the synergies with respect to ethanol,’ he told the gathering of industry stakeholders. ‘The fact of the matter is.alternative energy is the way to go. It affects the bottom-line, it makes good economic sense. There are going to be entities that want to invest in the sugar […]
Modern biology has a lot of ‘omes’. The genome-all the genes that go to make up an organism-is a familiar idea. The proteome-all the different proteins-is becoming so. But there are also the transcriptome (RNA), the glycome (sugars), the lipidome (fats) and the metabolome (all the miscellaneous odds and ends not covered by the others). And then there is the bibliome-all the mentions in research papers of known biomolecules. There are now so many of these papers, and the databases linking them are so good, that it is possible to use scientific methods to investigate the bibliome in its own right, just as any of the other, wetter ‘omes’ may be investigated. Which is exactly what a group of researchers from Peking University, led by Wei Liping, have done to get at the biochemical heart of drug addiction. Dr Wei and her colleagues wanted to answer three questions. First, what are the genes and biochemical pathways in addiction? Second, does addiction to different substances involve the same core biochemical mechanisms? Third, does anything in those mechanisms explain why addiction is so hard to shake off? Many people, of course, have asked these questions before, and partial answers have […]
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister says that such a facility would save thousands of lives and that he hopes such a system can start this year. The proposals would mean consent for organ donation after death would be automatically presumed, unless individuals had opted out of the national register or family members objected. But patients’ groups said that they were ‘totally opposed’ to Mr Brown’s plan, saying that it would take away patients’ rights over their own bodies. There are more than 8,000 patients waiting for an organ donation and more than 1,000 a year die without receiving the organ that could save their lives. The Government will launch an overhaul of the system next week, which will put pressure on doctors and nurses to identify more ‘potential organ donors’ from dying patients. Hospitals will be rated for the number of deceased patients they ‘convert’ into donors and doctors will be expected to identify potential donors earlier and alert donor co-ordinators as patients approach death. But Mr Brown, who carries a donor card, has made it clear he backs an even more radical revamp of the system, which would lead to donation […]
A research team announced yesterday that it has identified about 270 human proteins that the AIDS virus apparently needs to infect a person, instantly providing researchers with dozens of new strategies for blocking or aborting HIV infection. The vast majority — more than 200 — were not previously known to play a role in the complicated choreography by which the virus attaches to a cell, enters it, gets copied and establishes permanent residence. The discovery was made with a technique called a ‘genome-wide scan,’ which is only a few years old. Current AIDS drugs work by interrupting one of four main steps in HIV’s life cycle. The new study suggests that there are many more to target. ‘This is likely destined to be one of the best papers on HIV for this coming decade,’ said Robert C. Gallo, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, who was not involved in the study. ‘I think it is terrific.’ Anthony S. Fauci, an AIDS researcher and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the study ‘puts on the table many, many more processes that up to this point were unrecognized.’ He added quickly: ‘Now they have […]
As adult obesity balloons in the United States, being overweight has become less of a health hazard and more of a lifestyle choice, the author of a new book argues. ‘Obesity is a natural extension of an advancing economy. As you become a First World economy and you get all these labor-saving devices and low-cost, easily accessible foods, people are going to eat more and exercise less,’ health economist Eric Finkelstein told AFP. In ‘The Fattening of America’, published this month, Finkelstein says that adult obesity more than doubled in the United States between 1960 and 2004, rising from 13 percent to around 33 percent. Globally, only Saudi Arabia fares worse than the United States in terms of the percentage of adults with a severe weight problem — 35 percent of people in the oil-rich desert kingdom are classified as obese, the book says, citing data from the World Health Organization and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. With the rising tide of obesity come health problems and an increased burden on the healthcare system and industry. ‘But the nasty side-effects of obesity aren’t as nasty as they used to be,’ Finkelstein said. ‘When […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
