Dogs and Cats in Medical Research [Greg Laden's Blog]
Broadly speaking there are two kinds of federally regulated sources for dogs and cats used in medical research, training, an testing, in the US. They are labeled, unambiguously, A and B. A-class sources are breeders that produce animals for use in research. B-class sources, also called "Random source," provide animals, usually adults, that are not bred, but just acquired somehow (more or less randomly?) and kept for a while, and sold to research facilities. Random source dogs and cats are not bred by these dealers. (These are USDA regulatory categories.)
According to a report produced by the National Academy of Sciences (National Research Council. Scientific and Humane Issues in the Use of Random Source Dogs and Cats in Research, National Academies Press, 2009), there are not enough random-source dogs and cats to go around when it comes to medical research. In addition, some of the dealers of these cats and dogs were found to be wanting in the degree to which they follow the law in properly treating the animals.
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Orly Taitz gets slapped around by yet another judge. [The Questionable Authority]
Great White, Tiger, Lemon, White-Tip, Hammerhead - you name a species of shark, and Orly Taitz DDS Esq. has jumped it. She hasn't just gone off the deep end, she's gone of the Challenger Deep. One of her more recent blog posts should be more than enough proof of that for anyone:
If Obama is not legitimate, neither are his appointments, including his pick of Biden. We will need to have a new election ASAP, before these diabolical psychopaths completely destroy US economy, currency and unleash some bio engineered swine flu virus as an excuse for martial law and suspension of our constitutional freedoms
(Constitutional Lawyer/Dentist Taitz is apparently ignorant of the 20th Amendment to the US Constitution - not to mention the fact that the Vice President is also elected, not appointed.)
However, if you're looking for more evidence for that, there's a quote in the most recent ruling throwing a birther case out of the courts that might help you out:
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Jon Stewart Needs Your Help! [The Primate Diaries]
Last night Jon Stewart hosted the Israel/Palestine peace activists Anna Baltzer and Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. The angry response from the Pro-Israel crowd resulted in a backlash against the show for even having the discussion (including the shows first heckler in eleven years).
Baltzer, an American-Jewish author, has put out a public letter asking that people contact The Daily Show thanking them for hosting the discussion as a way to counter the angry response they've received so far.
Last night Dr. Barghouti and I were on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart talking about Palestine.
The show was overwhelmed with angry emails and phone calls prior to the appearance, and up until the last minute it seemed like they might cancel. During the taping the show had it's only heckler in 11 years. The entire staff were very nervous and may come to regret the monumental decision (and not make it again) as they will surely be inundated now that the show has aired.
That is why it is CRUCIAL that the show receive letters of support from anyone who appreciated the interview.
PLEASE take a moment to give a quick thank you to the Daily Show. I'm sure they will likely be affected by numbers rather than length, so it's OK to make it short, but spread the word to others! Be sure to put "Thank you" in the subject, and maybe Dr. Barghouti & my names. Fill out the form here: http://www.comedycentral.com/help/questionsCC.jhtml (make sure to choose The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as your topic).
I believe the interview wouldn't have happened 3 years ago. Times are changing. Keep on keepin' on...
Anna
You can also write a letter to: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart 604 W 52nd St New York, NY 10019.
The unedited interview of Anna Baltzer and Dr. Mustafa Barghouti can be seen at the following links (Part 1 / Part 2) and you can watch the videos below the fold.
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Chimpanzees Mourn the Death of Their Own Kind [The Primate Diaries]
At the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, chimpanzees form a gallery of grief, looking on as Dorothy--a beloved female felled in her late 40s by heart failure--is borne to her burial.
Image: National Geographic / Monica Szczupider
The Prancing Papio has brought attention to this powerful photograph presented by National Geographic showing chimpanzees focused on the body of a recently deceased member of their community. I still remember the powerful effect it had on me when I saw Jane Goodall's The People of the Forest which showed how one young male, who was fully capable of taking care of himself, was so distraught by his mother's death that he refused to leave his nest for days and eventually died. It was a clear example of the power that mourning had over our evolutionary cousins.
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Venomous shrews and lizards evolved toxic proteins in the same way [Not Exactly Rocket Science]
The Northern short-tailed shrew is a small, energetic mammal that lives in central and eastern North America. The Mexican beaded lizard is a much larger reptile found in Mexico and Guatemala. These species are separated by a lot of a land and several million years of evolution, yet they share astonishing similarities. Not only are they both venomous, but the toxic proteins in their saliva have evolved in very similar ways from a common ancestor, converging on parallel lethal structures independently of one other.
This discovery, from Yael Aminetzach at Harvard University, shows that adaptations are sometimes very predictable. Despite the many changes that could have shaped the course of venom proteins in lizards and shrews, they seem to have gone down a consistent and similar route.
Northern short-tailed shrew by Giles Gonthier; Mexican beaded lizard by PiccoloNamek
The northern short-tailed shrew is one of the few venomous mammals, but its poisonous bite is painful to humans and can kill smaller animals. The key to its venom is a protein called BLTX, whose job is to cut another protein in two. This chemical reaction frees a molecule called bradykinin, which widens blood vessels and lowers blood pressure. It's a necessary job, but BLTX is so active that if floods the body with bradykinin - an overdose that leads to paralysis and death.
BLTX is a dark, hyperactive descendant of an ancestral protein called kallikrein-1, which does the same thing but in a much more restrained way. Aminetzach found that BLTX is a longer version of kallikrein and the extra amino acids it has gained have changed the structure of the protein's 'active site'.
The active site is the protein's business end - it allows BLTX to latch onto the right targets and catalyse the relevant chemical reactions. It's also the part of the protein that has changed the most from the harmless kallikrein model; amino acids around BLTX's active site have changed about twice as much as the rest of the protein. As a result, the site is larger, more flexible and better at drawing in its target, and the protein as a whole has become hyperactive.
And amazingly, the Mexican beaded lizard has gone through similar changes. Its venom relies on a protein called GTX, which is also descended from kallikrein. Like BLTX, it too is a longer version of its ancestor, and while its extra amino acids have been shoved into different places, the results are the same. The changes have altered the protein's active site so that it's larger, more flexible and better at drawing in its target.
These changes are very specific to these toxic proteins. By studying 24 relatives of kallikrein, Aminetzach found that none of the non-toxic members of the family have any of the changes that BLTX and GTX share.
This study demonstrates that evolution doesn't work with infinite possibilities. Often, there are only a few roads leading to the same destination. Through different amino acid changes, both BLTX and GTX have evolved similar structures and have turned into weapons. This predictability of venom evolution may be useful to us - for example, Aminetzach suggests that it could allow scientists to more easily identify toxins from others species, even distantly related ones.
Reference: Current Biology 10.1016/j.cub.2009.09.022
More on venom:
Orlando Thomas is NOT Dead [Greg Laden's Blog]
Last night, during Teh Game, we were told that Viking Orlando Thomas had died, succumbing to his battle with Lou Gehrig's disease. This is not true.
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Universe lets age clue slip [Greg Laden's Blog]
If you don't know someone's age, over time they may let out clues that tell you when they were born based on what they remember, or things they claim to have done. This can be very inaccurate. My wife said something the other day that would cause anyone to infer that she was at least ten years older than she is, but it turns out the TV show she was referring to came to her home as syndicated re-runs. (My own personal memory of the recently deceased Soupy Sales is a similar example.)
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Setting the Cosmic Distance Record [Starts With A Bang]
The farther backwards you can look, the farther forwards you are likely to see. -- Winston Churchill
Sometimes, we point our most powerful telescopes at the sky, peering as deeply as we possibly can, hoping to shed some light on what the Universe was like oh-so-long ago, as close to the big bang as we can. The Hubble Space Telescope can get us distant galaxies as they were just a few billion years after the big bang.
But Hubble still has never seen one of the elusive, Holy Grails of astronomy: a metal-free star.
You see, immediately after the big bang, the Universe was filled with protons and neutrons, which finally fuse together (when the Universe cools enough) to create hydrogen, helium, and lithium nuclei. A few hundred thousand years later, the Universe cools enough to turn these nuclei into stable, neutral atoms. But that's it: beyond those three elements, there's nothing heavier. The Universe can't make them, not until the first stars form.
And someday, that's what we'd love to find: a metal-free star. These first stars, without any traces of heavier elements, are responsible for exploding and enriching (or polluting, depending on your perspective) the surrounding space with elements much heavier than lithium. Well, we just determined that a Gamma-Ray Burst earlier this year shattered the distance record:
At a redshift of eight, it's the most distant object ever discovered. This was light emitted around 13 billion years ago, when the Universe was less than one billion years old. And yet, looking at the spectrum of this one, it's still full of heavy elements!
Why?
When you form stars, anywhere, you make many, many little, low-mass stars, like red dwarfs. But you make a few very high-mass stars, called O-type or B-type stars. These stars are huge. Compared to a G-type star like our Sun, there's simply no contest.
Huge! Well, there's a big problem with being huge. What is it? Let's ask Bladerunner:
The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy. Look at you: you're the Prodigal Son; you're quite a prize! --Dr. Tyrell
Bladerunner got the scaling wrong: the star that burns with twice as much mass lives only one-eighth as long! So if a star like our Sun lives for 10 billion years, a star 10 times as massive lives for only 10 million years, and one 100 times as massive lives for just 10,000 years!
So that's why this gamma-ray burst we've found, despite being only an estimated 630 million years into the birth of the Universe, is still chock-full of these heavier elements.
In fact, instead of a redshift of eight, we'd have to get all the way out to a redshift of around forty before we expect to start seeing a metal-free star. And the continued observation of this Gamma-Ray Burst confirms that, despite occurring 95% of the Universe's lifetime ago, the Universe was very, very similar then to the way it is now. The same stars, the same stuff, the same explosions as the ones we see now. There's never been a more distant, more comforting observation than this, that tells us pretty much exactly what we expected.
Gamma-Ray Bursts come from stars that die in very certain ways, and this one, from 13 billion years ago, is just like the ones that happened recently -- and close -- to us. By finding very few differences, one amazing piece of the picture comes into view: the Universe looked a lot like it does now a very short time after the big bang. That we can see things when the Universe was only 5% of its current age is like me looking back on my life and remembering everything that happened when I was 18 months old. Only, I wasn't able to do all the things I can do now back then. But the Universe can, and did, and now we've seen the first pieces of evidence for that! So thank you to that massive star that died all those billions of years ago. It's shown us that the Universe grows up very, very quickly! Read the comments on this post...
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Book Tour – Bring HeLa to Your Town [Culture Dish]
Lots of excitement and news about my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (aka HeLa),
which hits stores February 2nd (after ten years in the works). It just got a starred review in Publishers Weekly and in Booklist, and was chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers title for Spring 2010. Culture Dish is very excited about all of this. But the big news for this post is that I'm organizing a three-month-long book tour that will have me speaking nationwide at
universities, scientific organizations, bookstores, book groups, high schools, and
more. If you'd like me to speak about the book, about HeLa, the history and ethics of tissue culture, race and medicine, or any number of other related topics, see the Immortal Life's interactive book tour map below. Click
on your region to see when I'm scheduled to be in your area, and email me to bring The Immortal Life to your town.
The Immortal Book Tour is a grass-roots, author-funded tour on a scale that no sane publishing house would or could organize or fund. (For those not familiar with the publishing industry, see here for the New Yorker's humorous take on why this sort of thing is necessary). Crazy as it may be, I'm convinced it will be a fun and effective way to spread the word about this book -- and honestly, after ten years of working on it solo, I'm ready to go talk about it with everyone I can. I admit, I've imagined touring in one of these with cells painted all over it, but at this point, due to budget constraints, I may be touring in one of these. This tour will depend entirely on and funding from talks at universities and other venues, so locations able
to help cover expenses get priority (and many, many thanks), but I'm also looking to hear from bookstores and other organizations in towns I'll be visiting, where I'll gladly speak if I'm able to get myself there. Interactive book tour map and link for below the jump (and if you're interested in having me speak at a date after the tour, that works too: my schedule for summer and fall is wide open at this point):
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SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report for 10/21-27/2009 [Eruptions]
The SI/USGS GVP site is back up and running - and they've posted a new weekly volcano activity report. Enjoy!
Highlights include:
- Nevado del Huila in Colombia has been showing signs that a new eruption might be starting. Seismicity has increased and minor ash fall has been reported, leading to an increase in the alert level at the volcano to "orange" (high).
- Ebeko in the Kuril Islands off Russia and Japan produced a ~8.8 km / 29,000 foot ash plume.
- Thermal images of the crater at El Reventador in Ecuador show that hot material is filling in the dome complex - this followed ash-and-steam explosions earlier in the week.
- Santa María's Santiaguito (Guatemala) dome produced ash fall, avalanches and was strongly degassing over the last week.
- White and grey plumes reached up to ~4 km / 13,500 feet at Colima in Mexico.