ED YONG, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: This looks to me like some kind of nonlocal linkage phenomenon. I particularly noted the observation that Physarum polycephalum presented with multiple food options consumes each option in the appropriate amount to create a 'balanced diet' -- the mold equivalent of your mother saying 'Don't just eat the chicken, eat your veggies as well.'
In 2009, scientists unleashed an amoeba-like blob on to Tokyo, and watched as it consumed everything in sight. In less than a day, the blob had spread throughout the entire city, concentrating itself along major transport routes.
Fortunately for the citizens of the great Japanese metropolis, the blob did its work on a model. Flakes of oats stood in for the major urban zones and the scientists involved were no B-movie villains. Rather, they were biologists studying the sophisticated behaviour of a slime mould, an oozing blob of goo that performs feats of apparent intelligence despite being completely brainless.
The slime mould Physarum polycephalum spends most of its life as a yellow mat, sliding among the leaf litter in its search for food, such as bacteria and fungal spores. This mat is a gigantic single cell, called a plasmodium, which forages by sending out dozens of tendrils from a central mass. The branches of this living network grow and shrink, emerge and vanish, according to what they encounter.
Without a brain, Physarum makes decisions by committee. The plasmodium is a single sac but it behaves like a colony. Every part rhythmically expands and contracts, pushing around the fluid inside. If one part of […]
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GRETCHEN REYNOLDS, - The New York Times
Stephan: It gets clearer and clearer what it takes to maintain good health.
We all know that physical activity is beneficial in countless ways, but even so, Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky, a professor of pediatrics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, was startled to discover that exercise kept a strain of mice from becoming gray prematurely.
Getty Images
But shiny fur was the least of its benefits. Indeed, in heartening new research published last week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, exercise reduced or eliminated almost every detrimental effect of aging in mice that had been genetically programmed to grow old at an accelerated pace.
In the experiment, Dr. Tarnopolsky and his colleagues used lab rodents that carry a genetic mutation affecting how well their bodies repair malfunctioning mitochondria, which are tiny organelles within cells. Mitochondria combine oxygen and nutrients to create fuel for the cells - they are microscopic power generators.
Mitochrondria have their own DNA, distinct from the cell’s own genetic material, and they multiply on their own. But in the process, mitochondria can accumulate small genetic mutations, which under normal circumstances are corrected by specialized repair systems within the cell. Over time, as we age, the number of mutations begins to outstrip the system’s ability to make repairs, and mitochondria start […]
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S.L. BAKER, Features Writer - Natural News
Stephan:
In findings just published in the journal Anticancer Research, scientists at the University of California (UC) San Diego School of Medicine and Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha have reported that most people need a much higher intake of vitamin D. And that simple step added to your life could slash your risk of developing serious diseases — including cancer — by about 50 percent.
The new study involved a survey of several thousand volunteers who took supplements containing 1000 to 10,000 IU per day. The researchers ran blood tests to measure the level of 25-vitamin D, which is the form of almost all vitamin D circulating in the bloodstream.
‘We found that daily intakes of vitamin D by adults in the range of 4000 to 8000 IU are needed to maintain blood levels of vitamin D metabolites in the range needed to reduce by about half the risk of several diseases — breast cancer, colon cancer, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes,’ Dr. Cedric Garland, professor of family and preventive medicine at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, said in a statement to media.
He added that the amount of vitamin D needed for disease prevention is far higher than the […]
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, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: Another alarm. But is anyone listening?
PARIS — Mankind may have unleashed the sixth known mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a paper released on Wednesday by the science journal Nature.
Over the past 540 million years, five mega-wipeouts of species have occurred through naturally-induced events.
But the new threat is man-made, inflicted by habitation loss, over-hunting, over-fishing, the spread of germs and viruses and introduced species, and by climate change caused by fossil-fuel greenhouse gases, says the study.
Evidence from fossils suggests that in the ‘Big Five’ extinctions, at least 75 percent of all animal species were destroyed.
Palaeobiologists at the University of California at Berkeley looked at the state of biodiversity today, using the world’s mammal species as a barometer.
Until mankind’s big expansion some 500 years ago, mammal extinctions were very rare: on average, just two species died out every million years.
But in the last five centuries, at least 80 out of 5,570 mammal species have bitten the dust, providing a clear warning of the peril to biodiversity.
‘It looks like modern extinction rates resemble mass extinction rates, even after setting a high bar for defining ‘mass extinction,’ said researcher Anthony Barnosky.
This picture is supported by the outlook for mammals in the ‘critically endangered’ and ‘currently threatened’ categories […]
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Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
SIMON HENDERSON, - Foreign Policy
Stephan: I cannot get the image out of my mind, perhaps because this is what we have tied ourselves to. Imagine: A dark and rainy night, as Snoopy puts it, the dam bursts... and Jeddah and its palaces are wiped away by a tsunami of human bodily waste. It is at once comic and cataclysmic. In Islamic countries, as anyone knows who has been there, it is hard to get public toilets cleaned. It is considered unclean work. So what happens if this corrupt society inadvertently lets this happen?
Thomas Friedman is right, we are at the beginning of a vast geopolitical shift, driven by the networked young.
Simon Henderson, the Baker fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is author of 'After King Abdullah: Succession in Saudi Arabia.'
As the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia has huge earnings but, by virtue of its relatively large population, has a GDP per capita much lower than those of neighboring Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Even this wealth is badly distributed, and, in Jeddah, many still face real hardship.
King Abdullah’s generosity to the people of Saudi Arabia was probably motivated by a desire to both ease the difficulties of the kingdom’s own poor and reinforce the House of Saud’s reputation during what promises to be a difficult transition period. The princes are going to need the support over the next few months.
In televised and well-photographed action in the Council of Ministers building over the last few months, a bizarre charade is being played out. Crown Prince Sultan, King Abdullah’s designated successor, is chairing meetings of the Council of Ministers, as well as greeting visiting foreigners and Saudi dignitaries. Sultan, however, is reportedly suffering1 from Alzheimer’s disease and, anecdotally, does not even recognize government ministers who he has known for years. A WikiLeaks cable described2 Sultan as ‘for all intents and purposes incapacitated.’
Keeping Sultan in the public eye appears to be an elaborate deception carried out by his younger […]
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