Making Science More Better For You on 12/12/07

Chickens Come Home To Roost For Big-Mouth Science Guy

Watson's DNA reveals some African ancestry

BY delthia.ricks@newsday.com

News that geneticist James Watson inherited 16 percent of his DNA from an African ancestor may provide the Nobel Prize winner with a new perspective on his ancestry.

But experts Monday said the percentage of Watson's DNA possibly contributed by someone of African descent illustrates that race is a counterfeit concept, having more to do with social notions than biological ones. Many people are unaware of their DNA links to cultures worldwide.

Watson disparaged the intelligence of Africans in a series of remarks two months ago, and as a result lost book-promotion engagements and resigned under a cloud as Chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Scientists at deCode Genetics, the highly respected enterprise of gene-trackers in Reykjavik, Iceland, used Watson's genome, which he had posted online, to plumb his ancestral roots. Tucked in his DNA was a story never told -- at least not in his biographies.

Watson did not return Newsday's telephone calls Monday. DNA-trackers say African genes are not rare among Caucasians. "I am Caucasian but I have about 8 percent sub-Saharan African heritage and my family originates from Alsace-Lorraine," said Richard Gabriel, chief operating officer of DNAPrint Genomics in Sarasota, Fla. Alsace-Lorraine is the region in France that borders the Rhine River and the Vosges Mountains. Gabriel's company scans DNA to illuminate virtually anyone's genetic dowry.


“Make it plain,” as Malcolm X liked to say, make it plain…


Breaking news from our “We’re going to hell in a hand basket” department

"w00t" crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary

BOSTON (Reuters) - "w00t," an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary.

Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said "w00t" -- typically spelled with two zeros -- reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging.

It's like saying "yay," the dictionary said.

"It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all," Merriam-Webster said.

Visitors to Merriam-Webster's Web site were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases culled from the most frequently looked-up words on the site and submitted by readers.

Runner-up was "facebook" as a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the Web site Facebook.com or to search for people on the social networking site.

Merriam-Webster President John Morse said "w00t" reflected the growing use of numeric keyboards to type words.

And you wonder why nothing works and no one under 20 can construct a sentence.

Headline of the day
Girl’s Chinese Tattoo of Boyfriend’s Name Really Spells ‘Supermarket’
(Breitbart)

Marvin the Martian: What did he know and when did he know it?

Building Blocks Of Life Formed On Mars, Scientists Conclude

ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2007) — Organic compounds contain carbon and hydrogen and form the building blocks of all life on Earth. By analyzing organic material and minerals in the Martian meteorite Allan Hills 84001, scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory have shown for the first time that building blocks of life formed on Mars early in its history. Previously, scientists have thought that organic material in ALH 84001 was brought to Mars by meteorite impacts or more speculatively originated from ancient Martian microbes.

The Carnegie-led team made a comprehensive study of the ALH 84001 meteorite and compared the results with data from related rocks found on Svalbard, Norway. The Svalbard samples occur in volcanoes that erupted in a freezing Arctic climate about 1 million years ago—possibly mimicking conditions on early Mars.

“Organic material occurs within tiny spheres of carbonate minerals in both the Martian and Earth rocks,” explained Andrew Steele, lead author of the study. “We found that the organic material is closely associated with the iron oxide mineral magnetite, which is the key to understanding how these compounds formed.”

The organic material in the rocks from Svalbard formed when volcanoes erupted under freezing conditions. During cooling, magnetite acted as a catalyst to form organic compounds from fluids rich in carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). This event occurred under conditions where no forms of life are likely to exist. The similar association of carbonate, magnetite and organic material in the Martian meteorite ALH 84001 is very compelling and shows that the organic material did not originate from Martian life forms but formed directly from chemical reactions within the rock. This is the first study to show that Mars is capable of forming organic compounds at all.

The organic material in the Allan Hills meteorite may have formed during two different events. The first, similar to the Svalbard samples, was during rapid cooling of fluids on Mars. A second event produced organic material from carbonate minerals during impact ejection of ALH 84001 from Mars.

“The results of this study show that volcanic activity in a freezing climate can produce organic compounds,” remarked co-author Hans E.F. Amundsen from Earth and Planetary Exploration Services. “This implies that building blocks of life can form on cold rocky planets throughout the Universe.”

“Our finding sets the stage for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission in 2009,” remarked Steele, who is a member of the Sample Analysis on Mars (SAM) instrument team onboard MSL. “We now know that Mars can produce organic compounds. Part of the mission's goal is to identify organic compounds, their sources, and to detect molecules relevant to life. We know that they are there. We just have to find them.”

Just a little bit Martian now…


“I can't seem to face up to the facts
I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax”

Hypertension, cognitive impairment linked

NEW YORK, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- High blood pressure appears linked to an increased risk for mild cognitive impairment, said researchers at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York.


Study author Dr. Christiane Reitz and colleagues said mild cognitive impairment -- a condition that involves difficulties with thinking and learning -- has attracted increasing interest, particularly as a means of identifying the early stages of Alzheimer's disease as a target for treatment and prevention.

Researchers tracked 918 Medicare recipients age 65 and older -- average age 76.3 -- without mild cognitive impairment beginning in 1992 through 1994. All participants underwent an initial interview and physical examination, along with tests of cognitive function and were examined again approximately every 18 months for an average of 4.7 years.

The study, published in the Archives of Neurology, found hypertension increases the risk of incident mild cognitive impairment.

Preventing and treating hypertension may have an important impact in lowering the risk of cognitive impairment, Reitz said.



Just for the record, the RC Cola and MoonPie Diet was not created in Brooklyn

According to Newsweek, rural Americans are at increased risk of what the government calls "low food security," better understood as fear of going hungry.

"The stereotype is everyone in rural America lives on a farm, which is far from the truth," says Jim Weill, president of the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). New research from the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health shows just how unhealthy the country life can be. The study, which examined food-shopping options in Orangeburg County (1,106 square miles, population 91,500), found a dearth of supermarkets and grocery stores. Of the 77 stores that sold food in Orangeburg County in 2004, when the study was done, 57—nearly 75 percent—were convenience stores. Grocery stores, which stock far more fruits and vegetables than convenience stores, are often too far away, says University of South Carolina epidemiologist Angela Liese, lead author of the study, which appeared in last month's Journal of the American Dietetic Association. "Oftentimes a nutritionist will just say, 'Buy more fruits and vegetables,' when, in fact, the buying part is not simple."



According to new data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 35.5 million Americans (not including the nation's 750,000 or so homeless people) fell into this category last year. The highest food insecurity rates were in states with large rural populations: Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas and South Carolina. Ironically, people with low food security are often hungry—and fat. The reason: they binge on cheap, high-calorie foods that fill them up. "People don't think of people who are obese as struggling with hunger, when of course many of them are," says Weill of FRAC. "Poverty and food insecurity and obesity are often linked not because poor people are getting too much food from programs but because they're not getting enough resources to obtain a healthy diet." And according to a study published this month in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association by the University of Washington, the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables is increasing faster than the cost of other foods.

Nutritionists and anti-hunger activists know what rural Americans should eat. In an ideal world, says Weill, more people would take advantage of nutrition and financial education programs, like those offered by the USDA, that teach consumers how to make a food budget and use recipes. The 2007 Farm Bill would in–crease food stamp access and benefits and allocate an additional $2.75 billion over 10 years to buy fruits and vegetables for the USDA's nutrition assistance programs, including the national school lunch and breakfast programs. (The USDA now runs a pilot program that gives kids in 25 schools in eight states fresh fruit during the day.) Jan Probst, director of the South Carolina Rural Health Research Center, has hopes that these new measures could help prevent what may be an oncoming health catastrophe in rural America: "If you start now, these people won't be having heart attacks at 40."

There is nothing covenient about a convenience store diet.


Think of them as God’s glow sticks

Energy source of northern lights found

SAN FRANCISCO - Scientists think they have discovered the energy source of the spectacular color displays seen in the northern lights. New data from NASA's Themis mission, a quintet of satellites launched this winter, found the energy comes from a stream of charged particles from the sun flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting Earth's upper atmosphere to the sun.
The energy is then abruptly released in the form of a shimmering display of lights visible in the upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, said principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Results were presented Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting.

In March, the satellites detected a burst of northern lights, or auroras borealis, over Alaska and Canada. During the two-hour light show, the satellites measured particle flow and magnetic fields from space.

To scientists' surprise, the geomagnetic storm powering the auroras raced 400 miles in a minute across the sky. Angelopoulos estimated the storm's power was equal to the energy released by a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.

"Nature was very kind to us," Angelopoulos said.

Although researchers have suspected the existence of wound-up bundles of magnetic fields that provide energy for the auroras, the phenomenon was not confirmed until May, when the satellites became the first to map their structure some 40,000 miles above the Earth's surface.

Scientists hope the satellites will record a geomagnetic storm next year that's now in the making, and end the debate about when the storms are triggered.