Apr
24
Mom’s diet may play role in whether baby is boy or girl
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CHICAGO – Snips and snails and puppydog tails … and cereal and bananas?
That could be what little boys are made of, according to surprising new research suggesting that what a woman eats before pregnancy influences the gender of her baby.
Having a hearty appetite, eating potassium-rich foods including bananas, and not skipping breakfast all seemed to raise the odds of having a boy.
The British research is billed as the first in humans to show a link between a woman’s diet and whether she has a boy or girl.
It is not proof, but it fits with evidence from test tube fertilization that male embryos thrive best with longer exposure to nutrient-rich lab cultures, said Dr. Tarun Jain. He is a fertility specialist at University of Illinois at Chicago who wasn’t involved in the study.
It just might be that it takes more nutrients to build boys than girls, he said.
University of Exeter researcher Fiona Mathews, the study’s lead author, said the findings also fit with fertility research showing that male embryos aren’t likely to survive in lab cultures with low sugar levels. Skipping meals can result in low blood sugar levels.
Jain said he was skeptical when he first heard about the research. But he said the study was well-done and merits follow-up study to see if the theory proves true.
It’s not necessarily as far-fetched as it sounds. While men’s sperm determine a baby’s gender, it could be that certain nutrients or eating patterns make women’s bodies more hospitable to sperm carrying the male chromosome, Jain said.
“It’s an interesting question. I’m not aware of anyone else looking at it in this manner,” he said.
The study was published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British medical journal.
The research involved about 700 first-time pregnant women in the United Kingdom who didn’t know the sex of their fetuses. They were asked about their eating habits in the year before getting pregnant.
Among women with the highest calorie intake before pregnancy (but still within a normal, healthy range), 56 percent had boys, versus 45 percent of the women with the lowest calorie intake.
Women who ate at least one bowl of breakfast cereal daily were 87 percent more likely to have boys than those who ate no more than one bowlful per week. Cereal is a typical breakfast in Britain and in the study, eating very little cereal was considered a possible sign of skipping breakfast, Mathews said.
Compared with the women who had girls, those who had boys ate an additional 300 milligrams of potassium daily on average, “which links quite nicely with the old wives’ tale that if you eat bananas you’ll have a boy,” Mathews said.
Women who had boys also ate about 400 calories more daily than those who had girls, on average, she said.
Still, no one’s recommending pigging out if you really want a boy or starving yourself if you’d prefer a girl.
Neither style of eating is healthy, and besides all the health risks linked with excess weight, other research suggests obese women have a harder time getting pregnant.
The study results reflect women at opposite ends of a normal eating pattern, not those with extreme habits, Mathews said.
Professor Stuart West of the University of Edinburgh said the results echo research in some animals.
And Dr. Michael Lu, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and public health at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the results “are certainly plausible from an evolutionary biology perspective.” In other words, since boys tend to be bigger, it would make sense that it would take more calories to create them, Lu said.
Still, Lu said a woman’s diet before pregnancy may be a marker for other factors in their lives that could influence their baby’s gender, including timing of intercourse.
“The bottom line is, we still don’t know how to advise patients in how to make boys,” he said
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Mar
24
Apple’s iMac G5
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The Apple iMac G5 is the third installment in the iMac series of personal computers. Its initial difference from the previous iMac versions in the series lies in its physical structure. Whereas the previous versions may have followed a brick like design, the iMac G5 takes a new sleeker form with added curves on its edges. This makes the new version look even better.
The iMac G5 is equipped with two firewire ports and three USB ports on its back panel. Two other USB ports are located in the keyboard for additional attachments. It is powered by Apple’s PowerPC G5 processor with 512 MB of RAM and 160 GB hard drive. It is equipped with an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 graphic card and a DVD-R SuperDrive. It has an LCD widescreen that is available in 17-inch or 20-inch screen monitor.
Another notable feature of the iMac G5 is its built-in camera known as iSight. Located above the monitor, the camera can be used for videoconferencing and even to snap some pictures or record video clips. The iSight also functions as a webcam. Its wireless Bluetooth keyboard and mouse also do away with cables and wires to make its simple set up quite interesting and appealing to look at.
Mar
18
In Laos, prized elephants are in decline
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VIENTIANE, Laos – Connie Speight has swayed on elephant-back through unforgiving jungle and has adopted nine of the high-maintenance beasts. At 83, the retired American teacher is back in this Southeast Asian country to help save what remains of the once mighty herds.
Once so famous for its herds that it was called Prathet Lane Xane, or Land of a Million Elephants, Laos is thought to have only 700 left in the wild.
“Lots of people in Asia tell you how elephants are their proud national heritage,” Speight says. “But I tell them, ‘It was your heritage, and what are you doing to bring it back?’ Often precious little.”
Elephants in Laos are better off than in most of the 12 other nations that are home to the animals. The country has extensive forest cover and a sparse population. But like elsewhere, it’s a race against time. Poachers, dam builders, loggers and farmers are taking a deadly toll on the endangered species.
“The situation will become very dramatic in about 10 years if nothing changes,” says Sebastien Duffillot, co-founder of France-based ElefantAsia. At their current rate of decline, Laos’ wild elephants could be extinct within 50 years, he warns.
Domesticated elephants number about 570, a 20 percent drop over the last decade. In all, the World Wide Fund for Nature estimates, as few as 25,000 wild and 15,000 captive Asian elephants may be left. A century ago, Thailand alone harbored some 100,000.
Speight attended a recent elephant festival organized by Duffillot’s conservation group “to pay tribute to the emblematic animal of Laos.”
One of several elephant conservation efforts under way, the three-day fair featured some 60 elephants. They demonstrated skills in logging, took part in Buddhist ceremonies and walked in stirring processions.
In their heyday, elephants served as the country’s trucks, taxis and battle tanks. Laos is communist-ruled today, but it used to be a kingdom that kept its independence by sending elephants as tribute to neighboring China and Vietnam.
Organizers said they hoped the annual festival, first held in 2007, might persuade elephant keepers to use their beasts in the fast-growing tourism business rather than logging.
For many youngsters in the dusty, Mekong River town of Paklay, the morning offering of fruit and snacks to the pachyderms was the first time they had touched an elephant’s trunk.
Speight hopes that others in Laos will get the chance as Mae Dok, one of nine jumbos she supports in Southeast Asia, travels the countryside as an “ambassador elephant” delivering books to schoolchildren.
A female with a sunny disposition whose name translates as “Mrs. Flower,” Mae Dok was rescued from a lifetime of logging labor and may be pregnant – something which sends Speight into rapture, given the dramatically declining numbers of breeding age females. ElefantAsia estimates that in 15 years there will only be 46 domesticated breeding cows under 20.
Speight, who taught natural history in Santa Barbara, Calif., has bought land for an elephant sanctuary in northern Thailand and radio collars to monitor calves released into the wild in Sri Lanka.
“If Laos could become a model for what a very poor country can do, that would wave a flag in surrounding countries, some of which are useless,” she says.
WWF and the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society are both active in Laos, which has welcomed numerous foreign aid groups since opening up its economy in the late 1980s.
WCS co-director Arlyne Johnson says WCS is working with the government on plans to avoid human-elephant conflict, which occurs when dams, mines and other industrial development cut into the elephants’ countryside and they roam into populated areas
Mar
18
Genes point to varied diabetes subtypes
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WASHINGTON – You’ve heard of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, but what about a kind called MODY? Diabetes is undergoing a genetics revolution that suggests there actually are many subtypes of the disease.
The discoveries already trigger important changes in treatment for a fraction of patients with some rare diabetes types caused by single genes gone awry – if they have a doctor aware of the findings.
“We’ve got a whole group of diabetologists who have never heard of this,” laments Dr. Andrew Hattersley, a British physician-scientist who pioneered how to treat single-gene subtypes collectively known as MODY.
Yet the vast majority of diabetes is caused by complex interactions among numerous genes and modern lifestyles – and a flurry of genetic discoveries in the past year finally points to new ways of attacking the epidemic.
So this week, U.S. health officials are bringing 20 drug companies together with international gene specialists to jump-start the hunt for new therapies.
“We’re trying to inspire some really creative thinking,” says Dr. Francis Collins, gene chief at the National Institutes of Health, who organized the first-of-a-kind meeting.
Why does diabetes strike one person who’s overweight but not another who’s equally heavy? Why does one diabetic need dialysis while another has healthy kidneys despite decades of bad blood sugar? The newest gene work suggests there likely are even more subtypes that explain those differences, and that in turn may require personalized treatment just as MODY does.
Some 21 million Americans have diabetes, meaning their bodies cannot properly turn blood sugar into energy. Either they don’t produce enough insulin or don’t use it correctly.
With the Type 1 form, the body’s immune system attacks insulin-producing pancreatic cells, so that patients require insulin injections to survive. It usually, but not always, strikes in childhood.
With the most common Type 2 form, the body gradually loses its ability to use insulin, so the confused pancreas churns out extra until eventually its cells wear out. Most at risk are the overweight.
Genetics research is showing diabetes is far more complicated than those simple demarcations:
_First there’s MODY, shorthand for six different subtypes thought to account for 2 percent of all diabetes. Each is caused by a single, different gene. Suspicions arise when patients are extra hard to treat, especially skinny people diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes or young adults with diabetic relatives who abruptly seem to develop Type 1.
Consider Dan Humphries of Shawbury, England, who at age 16 was diagnosed with Type 1. His mother, a nurse with diet-controlled diabetes, questioned the diagnosis. But doctors insisted he was too skinny for other diabetes. They prescribed insulin that had Humphries passing out from low blood sugar even with small doses.
His mother sought out Britain’s Peninsula Medical Center in Exeter, where Hattersley performed a gene test that showed Humphries’ pancreas actually can make its own insulin. But a gene called HNF1-alpha was essentially putting that production to sleep.
Over a decade of research, Hattersley had found that old diabetes drugs called sulfonylureas neutralize that gene so insulim production resumes. Sure enough, Humphries, now 19, is fine with a quarter-tablet morning and night.
_That brings us to the 16 genes discovered so far to play a role in Type 2 diabetes, and at least 14 in Type 1.
Surprisingly, the Type 2 genes don’t affect how the body uses insulin, thought to be the trigger. Instead, they alter how the pancreas makes insulin in the first place, explains Dr. David Altshuler of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
So how healthy your pancreas starts out could determine how vulnerable you are to other diabetes triggers, like getting fat.
Collins points to one potential drug target: A gene with the sole job of getting zinc to insulin-creating cells. Zinc’s a key part of the recipe; too little or too much, and insulin isn’t secreted.
But randomly choosing a gene to target is “a shot in the dark,” cautions Eric Schadt of Merck & Co., who will urge another approach at this week’s meeting, hosted by the National Disease Research Interchange.
Monday in the journal Nature, Schadt reports finding how multiple genes work together in computer-like networks that suggest which will be master control switches – and thus good drug targets. Already, Merck has begun checking whether one network of obesity genes really might predict which overweight people get diabetes.
Mar
18
Group: Humpback whale calves make sounds
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HONOLULU – Researchers say they have shown for the first time that humpback whale calves make sounds. The nonprofit Cetos Research Organization, which studied humpbacks off Maui and Kauai, say the grunts and squeals emitted by the young whales are messages for their mothers.
Ann Zoidis, director of the research project, said the sounds may be expressions of curiosity or warnings of potential danger.
The sounds are not as complex as the continuous, repetitive and highly structured phrases and themes of older males, the researchers found.
The calves instead produced a limited number of sounds that were short and simple in structure, according to the study. The noises included repetitive grunts that increased in strength and were sometimes accompanied by bubble streams and seemed to function as an alarm call to the mother, the researchers found.
They say the sounds were produced more frequently during calmer periods when the mother was resting or during slow travel.
“This tells us that calves do in fact communicate, and it tells us they are communicating to their mothers,” Zoidis said.
An article about the group’s research, which was conducted during the winter months between 2004 and 2008, appears in the March issue of the Journal of the Acoustic Society of America.
Prior to Cetos’ research, scientists had recorded sounds from whale pods that included calves. But Zoidis said they had difficulty pinpointing the particular animals responsible for the noises.
She said the common theory among scientists was that humpback calves did not produce sound.
She said Cetos researchers traced the sound back to its source, demonstrating that both male and female humpback calves make noises.
The group is continuing to study the sounds, including when they are emitted. The researchers are trying to determine whether they are a potential indicator of stress.
Source: Yahoo News
Mar
16
Activists vow to stop kangaroo cull
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CANBERRA, Australia – Protesters gathered at an abandoned military site in the Australian capital Saturday to prevent the planned slaughter of 400 kangaroos blamed for ruining the habitat of rare lizards and insects.
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About 70 protesters congregated at the gate of the disused naval communications station in suburban Canberra, vowing to stop government contractors from entering and killing the eastern gray kangaroos.
The planned cull has triggered international protests by animal rights activists and split Australians over the merits of killing their beloved national symbol to protect rare lizards and insects that share their grassy habitat.
Citing possible danger to the public, the Defense Department does not plan to shoot the animals. The contractors will instead fire darts to tranquilize them before administering lethal injections.
“We are all determined to see that the kangaroos are not killed,” said protest leader Pat O’Brien, president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia, whose patrons are the family of the late “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin.
“There is a lot of anger in a lot of people about this. We will stand in between the kangaroo and the darts if necessary,” he said.
Australia’s Defense Department declined to say when the cull would start, but O’Brien said he has heard rumors it would begin in the coming days.
The plan is a scaled-down version of a proposal last year to eradicate about half of the more than 6,000 kangaroos at two military sites in Canberra.
Scientists point out that eastern gray kangaroos are abundant and they are destroying the native grassland of threatened species such as the grassland earless dragon, striped legless lizard, golden sun moth and perunga grasshopper.
European settlers built Australia’s cattle and sheep industries on grass seeds imported from Britain, and native grassland, which is imperative for some species, is now rare. In some parts of Australia, it can only be found in old cemeteries where livestock never grazed
Source : Yahoo News
Mar
16
Blair: poor nations must cut emissions
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CHIBA, Japan – China, India and other developing nations must join industrialized countries in reducing greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to avert a global warming disaster, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a climate change conference Saturday.
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An agreement to succeed the Kyoto global warming pact that expires at the end of 2012 will have to find a way to include developing nations, while allowing them to grow their economies, Blair told the meeting of 20 nations.
“The dilemma is this: how to cut a deal that has both the developed and developing in it, recognizing that the obligations on the one can’t be the same as the obligations of the other,” Blair said at the opening session of the conference outside Tokyo.
He noted China and India are on the verge of a transition from rural to industrialized economies – setting the stage for a huge rise in emissions. China now generates a large share of the world’s greenhouse gases, with some experts saying it has already overtaken the U.S. as the world’s No. 1 emitter.
Carbon dioxide and other pollutants are blamed for the rise in global temperatures.
Developing countries say rich countries have the primary responsibility for reducing emissions, while poorer nations need to grow their economies. The United States and other wealthy countries are eager to include growing economies such as China and India on the next global warming pact.
Blair said it would be unfair to deny developing nations the chance to expand. He said the United States, Japan and Europe – where per capita emissions are far higher – should bear the largest burden.
But all nations should share in the solution, he said.
Blair was addressing the conference in his role as a consultant to The Climate Group, a nonprofit organization funded by corporations and governments from around the world. His aim is to rally support for a global pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050.
A U.N. conference in Bali in December struck a deal to conclude an anti-global warming pact by 2009, to take effect in 2013, but nations did not agree on a 2050 emissions target.
Source: Yahoo News
Mar
16
Rocket lifts off with GPS satellite
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A Delta 2 rocket carrying a GPS satellite for the Air Force is on its way into orbit.
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The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral early Saturday without a hitch. It momentarily lit up the star-studded sky, despite earlier concerns that thick clouds and rain might postpone the launch.
The third-generation GPS satellite is about 6 feet by 34 feet, a little smaller than an average sailboat. At nearly 4,500 pounds, it weighs about the same as a minivan.
The GPS satellite has a life expectancy of about 8 1/2 years, though the equipment it is replacing is more than 15 years old.
The GPS technology is designed to make navigational applications more accurate for the military and civilians.
Source: Yahoo News
Mar
16
Source Yahoo News
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ZURICH, Switzerland – Glaciers are shrinking at record rates and many could disappear within decades, the U.N. Environment Program said Sunday.ADVERTISEMENT
Scientists measuring the health of almost 30 glaciers around the world found that ice loss reached record levels in 2006, the U.N. agency said.
UNEP warned that further ice loss could have dramatic consequences particularly in India, whose rivers are fed by Himalayan glaciers.
The west coast of North America, which gets much of its water from glaciers in mountain ranges such as the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, also would be affected, it said.
“There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine,” UNEP’s executive director Achim Steiner said in a statement. “The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise and it is absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes notice.”
He urged governments to agree stricter targets for emissions reductions at an international meeting next year in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.
On average, the glaciers shrank by 4.9 feet in 2006, the most recent year for which data are available.
The most severe loss was recorded at Norway’s Breidalblikkbrea glacier, which shrank 10.2 feet in 2006, while Chile’s Echaurren Norte glacier was the only one to grow slightly thicker.
“The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight,” said Wilfried Haeberli, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service.
The Zurich-based body conducted the study on which the findings are based.
Haeberli said glaciers lost an average of about a foot of ice a year between 1980 and 1999. But since the turn of the millennium the average loss has
Mar
16
Astronauts attach handyman robot’s arms
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HOUSTON – Two spacewalking astronauts attached 11-foot arms to the international space station’s huge new robot on Sunday, preparing the giant machine for its handyman job on the orbital outpost.
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The Canadian-built robot, named Dextre, will stand 12 feet and have a mass of 3,400 pounds when it’s fully assembled. It is designed to assist spacewalking astronauts and possibly someday take over some of the tougher chores, like lugging around big replacement parts.
The already challenging outing turned grueling as Linnehan and fellow spacewalker Michael Foreman struggled to release one of the robot’s arms from the transport bed where it had been latched down for launch.
Two of the bolts wouldn’t budge, even when the astronauts banged on them and yanked as hard as they could. They had to use a pry bar to get it out.
The other arm came out much more smoothly and quickly, paving the way for Linnehan to pull up Dextre’s body 60 degrees, like Frankenstein rising from his bed. That was the ideal position for plugging in Dextre’s gangly arms to its shoulders.
“The whole team did a spectacular job today,” Mission Control radioed the crew after the spacewalk. “You guys ought to be proud of yourselves.”
Zebulon Scoville, the lead spacewalk officer for Endeavour’s mission, said the ground team was ecstatic when Linnehan and Foreman got the last bolt out.
“The crew really performed beyond what could ever be expected of them,” Scoville said.
The seven-hour overnight spacewalk – which lasted into the wee hours of Sunday – came close to being drastically altered or even delayed. For nearly two days, a cable design flaw prevented NASA from getting power to Dextre, lying in pieces on its transport bed.
But Dextre got the power it needed to wake up and keep its joints and electronics from freezing when the astronauts gripped it with the space station’s mechanical arm on Friday night.
After the spacewalk, the crew hooked Dextre back up to the mechanical arm to keep the robot warm. That also allowed NASA to perform tests to ensure all of Dextre’s electronics are working properly. Later Sunday, the crew plans to test all of Dextre’s joints and brakes.
Dextre – short for dexterous and pronounced like Dexter – has seven joints per arm and can pivot at the waist. Its hands, or grippers, have built-in socket wrenches, cameras and lights. Only one arm is designed to move at a time to keep the robot stable and avoid a two-arm collision. The robot has no face or legs.
Space station astronauts will be able to control Dextre, as will flight controllers on the ground. The robot will be attached at times to the end of the space station arm. It is also able to ride by itself along the space station arm’s railway.
The crew will finish building Dextre during a third spacewalk, set for Monday night. A total of five spacewalks are planned for Endeavour’s nearly two-week visit to the space station, the most ever performed during a joint shuttle-station flight
Source : Yahoo News