A lone whale with a voice unlike any other has been wandering the Pacific for the past twelve years. Marine biologist Mary Ann Daher of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and her colleagues used signals recorded by the US navy’s submarine-tracking hydrophones to trace the movements of whales in the north Pacific. The partially declassified records show that a lone whale singing at around 52 hertz has cruised the ocean every autumn and winter since 1992. Its calls do not match those of any known species, although they are clearly those of a baleen whale, a group that includes blue, fin and humpback whales
A Danish company, Aresa Biodetection, has developed genetically-modified flowers that change colour when their roots come in contact with nitrogen dioxide in the soil. Explosives used in mines produce NO² as the chemicals gradually decay. The company plans to sow fields of NO²-sniffing Arabidopsis thaliana (Thale or mouse cress) in areas riddled with long-forgotten ordinance from Angola to Cambodia.
The effort’s life- and limb-saving potential is staggering: More than 100 million land mines kill or injure 26,000 people in 45 countries each year. Today’s most popular detection method is poking around with a stick — via Core77
A new study reveals that Wolf eradication in the US has had a far more devastating impact on the genetic diversity of remaining populations than previously thought.
With the Canadian wolf population at a relatively healthy 70,000, it was assumed that the human impact of past mass eradications had been minor. But scientists found a 43% drop in genetic variability in the modern wolves. It is impossible for the wolf populations to recover this important diversity, which enables them to adapt to different environmental challenges.
Chinese scientists have successfully produced a SARS vaccine. In a clinical trial beginning in May, 36 volunteers were vaccinated. Most have now developed antibodies, and there have been no side effects reported.
Looking for a place to toss your old inkjet printers? A team of scientists working to create human tissue may have a good use for them. Inkjets that are ten years old are perfectly suited to create sheets of human skin and other tissue that one day may help burn victims and even manufacture organs
A brain
, grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a single rat embryo, has been taught to fly an F-22 jet simulator by scientists
There’s a new vaccine which has had an incredible effect in clinical trials. The vaccine, composed of human dendrites holding dead HIV viruses, has dropped test patients’ viral load by up to 90% in one year
Brazil says it intends to break patents on commercial anti-AIDS drugs as part of its battle against the disease. The head of Brazil’s AIDS programme, Pedro Chequer, told the BBC it was the only way it could afford to keep up its anti-AIDS strategy. Mr Chequer said Brazil would make copies of up to five drugs next year. Brazil currently makes eight of the 15 drugs it offers in its anti-AIDS cocktail, which is free to those with the disease — via BoingBoing
British scientists seeking to protect the environment have designed a biodegradable mobile phone cover that breaks down in soil when discarded and sprouts a flower from a seed embedded inside the case. Researchers at the University of Warwick in central England said the novel device, made from a specially designed polymer, is a boon for the environmentally sensitive
Oragenics, has received permission from the FDA to conduct the first clinical trial in which genetically modified bacteria will be put into people’s mouths. The new bacteria, which are genetically neutered so they do not make the acid that eats away at teeth, would be designed to replace the acid-producing bacteria present in most mouths
A database of badger DNA is being created to snare criminals who set dogs on the animals and dig-up setts. The RSPCA project, which will cover England and Wales, is the first of its kind for a wild species. It is hoped the database will help bring successful prosecutions against people who dig and bait the animals — via Paul Mellen
Tasmania has become a signatory to an International Seed Conservation Program. The Millennium Seed Bank project aims to collect and conserve 10% of the world’s seed-bearing plants by 2010. So far 16 countries are involved in the project, with 7,000 species of plants already stored in a seed bank in England. The manager of the Tasmanian project, Steve Harris, says seeds from 800 species of native plants will be collected from around the state
Sarah West, a Southern Cross University researcher, says technology to recycle water is available in Australia but is hardly being used. She has spent eight months studying water recycling and decentralised sewerage systems overseas. In parts of the United States, commercial laundries and car washes are using recycled water. It is also being used for flushing toilets, garden irrigation and growing vegetables
DNA profiling has enabled us to link a suspect to a sample of blood, hair or saliva found at a crime scene. But until now, there was no way of knowing when the suspect was there — giving the guilty room to wriggle free. Now a team in America has developed a test that can reveal when a sample was deposited by measuring how quickly certain genetic material breaks down. The test measures two forms of RNA and works with as little as one microlitre of blood. The technique may even be sensitive enough to tell investigators when a fingerprint was left
A plant dubbed the suicide tree kills many more people in Indian communities than was previously thought. The warning comes from forensic toxicologists in India and France who have conducted a review of deaths caused by plant-derived poisons. Cerbera odollam, which grows across India and south-east Asia, is used by more people to commit suicide than any other plant, the toxicologists say. But they also warn that doctors, pathologists and coroners are failing to detect how often it is used to murder people
A unique combination of drugs has made a 15-year-old girl the first known human to survive rabies without vaccination. A team of physicians gambled on an experimental treatment and induced a coma in Jeanna Giese to stave off the usually fatal infection, said Dr Rodney Willoughby, a pediatric disease infection specialist at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin
In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins. In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human. In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls. These are not outcasts from The Island of Dr Moreau, the 1896 novel by HG Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.
Biologists call these hybrid animals chimæras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail. They are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to developing animal foetuses. Chimæras are allowing scientists to watch, for the first time, how nascent human cells and organs mature and interact — not in the cold isolation of laboratory dishes but inside the bodies of living creatures. Some are already revealing deep secrets of human biology and pointing the way toward new medical treatments.
But with no federal guidelines in place, an awkward question hovers above the work: How human must a chimæra be before more stringent research rules should kick in?
A man-made flood is roaring through the Grand Canyon in a bold experiment to restore the sandbanks of the Colorado river and to save fish and plants that have been disappearing over the past 40 years. The water is being channelled into the river and down the canyon through four giant steel pipes, carrying badly needed natural sediment with it. The US$3.7m venture, supported by more than a dozen US government agencies and groups, ends tomorrow, but how well it works will not be known for months
An amateur palaeontologist has unearthed the biggest dinosaur to be discovered in the British Isles — and possibly Europe — from a cliff overlooking an Isle of Wight beach. Scientists who have just finished analysing the dinosaur’s two neck bones believe it grew to about 66 feet long and weighed up to 50 tons. It lived around 130 million years ago when Britain was subtropical and still connected to Europe and North America
The Charité Artificial Disc is a plastic replacement for one of two discs in the lower back. The Artificial Disc is expected to receive United States FDA approval by the end of the year. This is the first major breakthrough in back surgery since the 1940s,
says orthopedic surgeon Richard Guyer of the Texas Back Institute in Plano — via boingboing
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