Rickets makes comeback among computer generation - Telegraph

Rickets makes comeback among computer generation - Telegraph: "TweetMeme finds the hottest stories from twitter for you to retweet so share this story as well as it appears lack of sunlight which provides the vitamin D has a reaction on skin producing this and fear of skin cancer makes us keep our bodies covered up. But it is normal sunlight not basking in red-hot conditions or on a sun-bed that is required."

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Haiti earthquake is latest blow for country in misery - Times Online

Haiti earthquake is latest blow for country in misery - Times Online

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Live: Haiti earthquake - latest updates - Times Online

Live: Haiti earthquake - latest updates - Times Online

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Experts Predict Great Barrier Reef Could Be World's 1st Gobal Ecosystem to Collapse

Experts Predict Great Barrier Reef Could Be World's 1st Gobal Ecosystem to Collapse: "

The Great Barrier Reef will be so degraded by warming waters that it will be unrecognizable within 20 years, according Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, at a conference in London: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so. They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organization. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”

After being a highly successful life form for 250 million years, disruptions in the biological and communication systems of coral reefs have been found to be  the underlying cause of the coral bleaching and collapse of reef ecosystems around the world.

Coral reefs form the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, which is visible from outer space (image). The reef is composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 3,000 kilometers over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometers.

An explosion of knowledge is helping to explain why coral reefs around the world are collapsing and what it will take for them to survive. The problems facing coral reefs are still huge, and increasing. They are being pressured by changes in ocean temperature, pollution, overfishing, sedimentation, acidification, oxidative stress and disease, and the synergistic effect of some of these problems may destroy reefs even when one cause by itself would not. Some estimates have suggested 20 percent of the world's coral reefs are already dead and an additional 24 percent are gravely threatened.

Corals, it appears, have a genetic complexity that rivals that of humans, according to research funded in part by the National Science Foundation. Their sophisticated systems of biological communication are being stressed by global change, and are only able to survive based on proper function of an intricate symbiotic relationship with algae that live within their bodies.

'We've known for some time the general functioning of corals and the problems they are facing from climate change,' said Virginia Weis, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University. 'But until just recently, much less has been known about their fundamental biology, genome structure and internal communication. Only when we really understand how their physiology works will we know if they can adapt to climate changes, or ways that we might help.'

Corals are tiny animals, polyps that exist as genetically identical individuals, and can eat, defend themselves and kill plankton for food. In the process they also secrete calcium carbonate that becomes the basis for an external skeleton on which they sit. These calcified deposits can grow to enormous sizes over long periods of time and form coral reefs – one of the world's most productive ecosystems, which can harbor more than 4,000 species of fish and many other marine life forms.

But corals are not really self sufficient. Within their bodies they harbor highly productive algae – a form of marine plant life – that can 'fix' carbon, use the energy of the sun to conduct photosynthesis and produce sugars.

'Some of these algae that live within corals are amazingly productive, and in some cases give 95 percent of the sugars they produce to the coral to use for energy,' Weis said. 'In return the algae gain nitrogen, a limiting nutrient in the ocean, by feeding off the waste from the coral. It's a finely developed symbiotic relationship.'

What scientists are learning, however, is that this relationship is also based on a delicate communication process from the algae to the coral, telling it that the algae belong there, and that everything is fine. Otherwise the corals would treat the algae as a parasite or invader and attempt to kill it.

'Even though the coral depends on the algae for much of its food, it may be largely unaware of its presence,' Weis said. 'We now believe that this is what's happening when the water warms or something else stresses the coral – the communication from the algae to the coral breaks down, the all-is-well message doesn't get through, the algae essentially comes out of hiding and faces an immune response from the coral.'

This internal communication process, Weis said, is not unlike some of the biological processes found in humans and other animals. One of the revelations in recent research, she said, is the enormous complexity of coral biology, and even its similarity to other life forms. A gene that controls skeletal development in humans, for instance, is the identical gene in corals that helps it develop its external skeleton – conserved in the different species over hundreds of millions of years since they parted from a common ancestor on their separate evolutionary paths.

There's still much to learn about this process, researchers said, and tremendous variation in it. For one thing, there are 1,000 species of coral and perhaps thousands of species of algae all mixing and matching in this symbiotic dance. And that variation, experts say, provides at least some hope that combinations will be found which can better adapt to changing conditions of ocean temperature, acidity or other threats. The predicted acidification of the oceans in the next century is expected to decrease coral calcification rates by 50 percent and promote the dissolving of coral skeletons, the researchers noted in their report.

'With some of the new findings about coral symbiosis and calcification, and how it works, coral biologists are now starting to think more outside the box,' Weis said. 'Maybe there's something we could do to help identify and protect coral species that can survive in different conditions. Perhaps we won't have to just stand by as the coral reefs of the world die and disappear.'

Dr Veron’s comments came as the Zoological Society of London, the Royal Society and the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) held a crucial meeting on the future of coral reefs in London yesterday. In a joint statement they warned that by mid-century extinctions of coral reefs around the world would be inevitable.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=38862&src=twitter-news

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6652866.ece

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Antimatter Lightning Discovered (On Earth!)

Antimatter Lightning Discovered (On Earth!): "

Antimatter Lightning!  We're going to do our best, but nothing we could possibly write will be as awesome as the fact that's real and on Earth.  In fact, nothing you ever read for the rest of your life will be as awesome as that, and it's only the way human memory degrades with time that'll let you ever get excited about anything ever again.  

Like all the most awesome discoveries, it was unexpected.  The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope was launched to examine the universe for the stupendously powerful processes that produce gamma ray bursts, from black hole jets to the effects of dark matter itself, only to find blasts coming from behind it. From Earth.

That large storms can produce gamma rays isn't news, but the surprise - and that's 'Surprise' with a capital 'Antimatter Annihilating Tiny Bits Of The Atmosphere In The Most Energetic Reaction Known To Science' - was that some of the Terrestrial Gamma Flashes (TGFs) were of the exact energy level which could only be produced by positron annihilation: anti-electrons appearing, meeting and electron, and exploding.  (And you'll never see a TGiFs without thinking of awesome science ever again).

How can this happen?  No-one knows.  Michael Briggs, research scientist at the University of Alabama, first announced the results at the 2009 Fermi Symposium and is currently preparing a paper on the subject.  After that it'll be an awesome race to see who can explain the events - if a slightly less explosive battle than you'd expect with antimatter and lightning bolts involved.

Luke McKinney.

Antimatter detected in lightning 

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THIS IS AMAZING AND ALSO EXTREMELY WORRYING THAT LIGHTING CAN DO THIS AT ALL ANYONE UNDERSTAND THIS PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT ON THIS BLOG AND EXPLAIN SO WE CAN SHARE AND SPREAD THE WORD. IAN

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Parents Refusing the Flu Vaccine

Parents Refusing the Flu Vaccine: "Parents today are of two minds about the new flu vaccine. Some can't wait to get it for their kids, while others remain fearful, writes pediatrician Dr. Perri Klass."

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New Thoughts on Memory

New Thoughts on Memory: "

Traditionally, scientists have believed long-term and short-term memories were formed by different processes within the brain.

This theory is now being challenged by researchers from University College London.

Historically, the position of a different process for memories was based on observation of patients with amnesia, a condition that severely disrupts the ability to form long-lasting memories.

Typically, amnesia is caused by injury to the hippocampi, a pair of brain structures located in the depth of the temporal lobes.

Amnesia, a common side effect of concussions, severely affects long-term memory — although individuals may be proficient in rehearsing a phone number over short periods of time, as long as their attention is not distracted. This led to a hypothesis that the hippocampus supports long-term but not short-term memory.

However, the UCL study, published in PNAS, shows that this distinction now needs to be reconsidered.

The team studied patients with a specific form of epilepsy called ‘temporal lobe epilepsy with bilateral hippocampal sclerosis’, which leads to marked dysfunction of the hippocampi.

They asked the patients to try to memorize photographic images depicting normal scenes, for example chairs and a table in a living-room. Their memory of the image was tested and brain activity recorded using MEG (magnetoencephalography) after a short interval of just five seconds, or a long interval of 60 minutes.

The researchers discovered that short-term memory about more detailed aspects of the scene, for example whether the table was located left or right of the chairs, required the coordinated activity of a network of visual and temporal brain areas, whereas standard short-term memory drew on a very different network. Critically, the coordinated activity of visual and temporal brain areas was disrupted in the patients with hippocampal sclerosis.

Professor Emrah Duzel, UCL Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, said: “As we anticipated, the patients could not distinguish the studied images from new images after 60 minutes - but performed normally at five seconds. However, a striking deficit emerged even at five seconds when we asked them to recall the detailed arrangement of objects within the scenes.

“These findings identify two distinct short-term memory networks in the brain: one that functions independently of the hippocampus and remains intact in patients with long-term memory deficits and one that is dependent on the hippocampus and is impaired alongside long-term memory.”

Nathan Cashdollar, UCL Institute of Neurology and first author of the paper, added: “Recent behavioral observations had already begun challenging the classical distinction between long-term and short-term memory which has persisted for nearly half a century. However, this is the first functional and anatomical evidence showing which mechanisms are shared between short-term and long-term memory and which are independent.”

“They also highlight that patients with impaired long-term memory have a short-term memory burden to carry in their daily life as well.”

Source: University College London

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