Magnets 4 Energy

Sunday, September 30, 2007

First Synthetic Lifeform is Nigh

Exciting scientific developments descend upon us, as scientists at the J Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, have successfully managed to transfer an entire genome of one species into another — which grew and multiplied into the first species. Why is this significant? Because the next experiment involves creating and implanting a synthetic genome — the success of which could mark the creation of the first artificial lifeform and enable greater possibilities for biological engineering.

The achievement was made today by Dr. Craig Venter and his team using the following method as described in their press release:

The JCVI team devised several key steps to enable the genome transplantation. First, an antibiotic selectable marker gene was added to the M. mycoides LC chromosome to allow for selection of living cells containing the transplanted chromosome. Then the team purified the DNA or chromosome from M. mycoides LC so that it was free from proteins (called naked DNA). This M. mycoides LC chromosome was then transplanted into the M. capricolum cells. After several rounds of cell division, the recipient M. capricolum chromosome disappeared having been replaced by the donor M. mycoides LC chromosome, and the M. capricolum cells took on all the phenotypic characteristics of M. mycoides LC cells.

Colonies of the transformed Mycoplasma mycoides bacterium

The image above shows colonies of the transformed Mycoplasma mycoides bacterium. Dr. Venter says that in light of this advance — the team plans to do the same using a genome produced from scratch in a laboratory within months. As reported by the UK Telegraph:

The scientists want to create new kinds of bacterium to make new types of bugs which can be used as green fuels to replace oil and coal, digest toxic waste or absorb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

[…]

Since the 1970s, scientists have moved genes - instructions to make proteins - between different organisms.

But this marks the first time that the entire instruction set, consisting of more than a million “letters” of DNA, has been transplanted, transforming one species of bacterium into another.

They are attempting to build a microbe with the minimal set of genes needed for life, with the goal of then adding other useful genes, such as ones for making biofuels.

Seems my simulated artificial lifeforms don’t seem as significant for the time being! But of course, there are still things that we need to overcome. According to the Telegraph, only one in every 150,000 transfers worked. There are also concerns regarding safety — unexpected side effects can abruptly become evident when evolution is superseded. Venter mentions in addition that the project was on pause for some time while under review for ethical concerns, as these advances can lead to new kinds of biological warfare.

Nevertheless it’s an exciting development and I look forward to hearing the results of their consequent experiments.

Source

Power Up with Wheat Grass — The Green BLOOD!



Dr. Ann Wigmore, from the Hippocrates Institute in Boston, popularized wheat grass therapy. Many leading Naturopaths consider wheat grass to be a panacea on the earth.

Wheat grass is a humble weed that is a powerhouse of nutrients and vitamins for the human body. In the form of fresh juice, it has high concentrations of chlorophyll, active enzymes, vitamins and other nutrients. According to Dr. Preety Agarwal a famous Alternate therapist, one ounce of wheat grass juice is equivalent in food value to two and a half pounds of green leafy vegetables.

Chemical Composition of Wheat Grass:

Wheat grass is also called as “Green Blood” because its close structural similarity to Hemoglobin. Wheat grass contains many nutritious and prophylactic ingredients. It is rich in Vitamin A, Vitamin C, B, E, K, Laetrile (Vitamin B17 – which has a marked anti-cancer effect) and several useful enzymes.

Clinical uses of Wheat Grass:

Dr. Ann Wigmore found Wheat Grass useful in as many as 350 diseases.

Heart and cardio-vascular system

  • Anaemia
  • High Blood pressure
  • Atherosclerosis
  • Internal hemorrhage

Respiratory System

  • Common cold
  • Asthma
  • Bronchitis

Digestive system

  • Constipation
  • Dyspepsia
  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Peptic ulcer disease
  • Diabetes
  • Worm infestations

Teeth and gums

  • Caries
  • Septic gums
  • Bleeding gums

Joints

  • Osteoarthritis
  • Rheumatoid Arthritis

Brain and Nervous system

  • Parkinson’s disease
  • Weakness
  • Headaches

Skin diseases

  • Eczema
  • Pimples
  • Boils
  • Burns

Wheat grass therapy has also been used with great success in kidney, ear diseases and in several cancers.

How is Wheat Grass administered?

Wheat grass can be grown at home in small shallow pots. The wheat has to be sprouted first prior to sowing it. For a normal person about 100 grams of wheat grass per day are quite adequate to maintain positive health. Wheat grass can be chewed or drunk as a juice and it can also be administered as an enema. It is very important to note that the juice must be consumed as soon as it is extracted; otherwise the vital elements in the juice will lose its efficacy.

During the last ten or twenty years there has been a tremendous explosion of information in the scientific literature to support the use of natural medicine.

Wheat grass therapy teaches that is that it is nature, which cures the patient and not the physician. With the progress of civilization, we are perhaps violating the laws of nature and that is why there is an increase in disease. To be optimally effective, Wheat Grass Therapy must be combined with exercise, a stress free life and proper diet.

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Breaking the Smoking habit

The key to breaking any habit is to first determine why you do it. So you have to understand why you smoke. Once you're done that, you can then see why almost every other method of breaking the 'cigarette habit' has the possibility of failure; and then you can learn the right approach, and you'll will finally succeed in 'kicking the habit'.

Let's start by facing what seems to be the overwhelming facts. Smoking must be something you enjoy doing.. If it wasn't enjoyable, why would at least 6 out of every 10 adults smoke either occasionally or regularly? If people didn't enjoy it, why would they spend a portion of their paychecks, every week, for tobacco products? So let's agree, then, that for most people smoking is a habit they enjoy. And let's not pretend that either of us would sacrifice this apparently delightful habit for minor reasons.
While It's true most of us don't like to find bits of tobacco in our pockets or purses, and it is annoying and expensive when you occasionally burn a hole in your clothes, car upholstery, carpet, or furniture, and some of us are truly disgusted by "tobacco breath" or "nicotine stains". There are even quite a few of you are even more dismayed by the amount of money you "burn up" each year. Yet you all have other expensive or potentially annoying habits or interests, but you are not equally concerned about them. No, those of us who have at one time or another made the attempt to give up cigarettes have invariably been impelled by what I used to call "that health propaganda."
Sporadically you'd come upon reports blaming the smoking habit for everything from athlete's foot to yellow fever. But other studies, prepared by researchers and physicians whose names are followed by suitably impressive degrees and abbreviations, absolved cigarettes of all guilt. Us layman had trouble deciding who was speaking against what, and why, and to whom and for whom (and for how much).
YOU ENJOYED THE UNCERTAINTY
Although while you suspected that where there's smoke there's fire, you weren't quite ready to believe that where there's smoke there's also likely to be heart disease and lung cancer. Some of the evidence was contradictory. Some was fragmentary. Much of it left aside such other possible factors in disease as polluted air, industrial poisoning, food additives, widespread use of insecticides, increased tensions of Cold War living, and over employment of "miracle drugs." Almost all the reports youre based on studies involving animals, not humans.
One impulse was to quit. The other was to wait for something "definite."
After all, why go through so much pain and so much frustration if later it might turn out that there hadn't been any real need to do so? While, the period of uncertainty is over in the minds not only of most experts, but even for most smokers. Vast numbers of people who smoke now readily grant that there's no longer any question but that this is a dangerous habit.
This is a unique situation, isn't it? Suppose, to put it in perspective, that 70 million Americans regularly drink a beverage named "Wcaacae" (a name my attorney insists I use in order to protect the innocent). And suppose that an eminent medical group suddenly declared: "The moderate drinker of 'Wcaacae' who drinks 10-5 swallows a day-showed to be 5 times more likely to be a cancer victim than the non-drinker."
How long do you think good old "Wcaacae" would remain on the market? Even if the government didn't ban it, how long would Mom buy it at the supermarket? Indeed, how many supermarkets would even stock it?
youll-surprise!-there is no such statistic about "Wcaacae." My figures are borrowed from a report on the effects of cigarette smoking. In 1960 the American Medical Association summarized a 5-year study of the death rate among men from lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking:

1. The moderate smoker (10 to 15 cigarettes daily) showed up 5 times more often as a victim of fatal lung cancer than did the non-smoker.

2. The heavy smoker (15 to 25 cigarettes daily) showed up 15 times more often in lung cancer deaths than the non-smoker.

3. Excessively heavy smokers (25 to 50 cigarettes daily) showed up 25 times as often in lung cancer deaths as non-smokers.
The smoker winces when he reads this kind of look into his future-but yet it doesn't stop him from smoking. It didn't stop you, did it? And do you want to know why? well, for one thing, a part of you doesn't believe it. Part of your mind thinks that smoking will affect the 'other guy' but not you. You tell yourself that it makes you happier and healthier and nicer-looking and maybe even richer,stronger and maybe even more glamorous. This part of your mind flatly refuses to pay attention to anything that conflicts with its beliefs.
Obviously I can't cover all the various ways you can stop smoking in one page, so to learn more about how to finally quit smoking once and for all be sure to visit all the pages on this site.

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"Good" Cholesterol Earns Its Name

HDL cholesterol is often nicknamed "good" cholesterol, and a new study shows just how good HDL cholesterol can be for people with heart disease.

Here's the take-home message: The higher HDL cholesterol levels were, the better, even when LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels were very low.

Before you read about the study's details, here are optimal cholesterol numbers to keep in mind.

  • HDL cholesterol removes LDL "bad" cholesterol from your blood. Ideally, HDL level should be 60 mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter) or higher.

  • LDL cholesterol can build up in artery walls, making heart attack and stroke more likely. Ideally, LDL should be less than 100 mg/dL and less than 70 mg/dL for people at high risk of heart disease.


  • Don't know your cholesterol numbers ? You can find out by taking a simple blood test.

    HDL and LDL Cholesterol Study

    The new HDL report, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, is based on data from an international study of 9,770 heart disease patients.

    The patients -- who were in their late 50s to early 60s, on average -- got their HDL and LDL cholesterol levels checked.

    All of the patients were assigned to take the statin drug Lipitor primarily to lower their LDL cholesterol levels.

    The researchers, who included Philip Barter, MD, PhD, of the Heart Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, typically followed the patients for five years.

    During that time, the patients with the highest HDL cholesterol levels were the least likely to have a heart attack, stroke, or cardiac arrest.

    The higher the patients' HDL cholesterol level was, the lower their odds of having a heart event during the study. That includes patients who got their LDL "bad" cholesterol below 70 mg/dL.

    Barter's team considered many factors that affect heart health, including the patients' age, sex, smoking, BMI (body mass index, which relates height to weight), and diabetes.

    But the researchers don't rule out the possibility that some other traits may have affected the results.

    The study was funded by Pfizer, which makes Lipitor. In the journal, Barter and colleagues report financial ties to various drug companies, including Pfizer.

    Looking to raise your HDL cholesterol level? Exercise, stress management, a healthy diet, and moderate alcohol consumption may help.

    Talk to your doctor for guidance, and remember, doctors usually don't
    recommend that anyone start drinking alcohol for health reasons.

    Source

    The Science of Why Your Pee is a Yellow Color

    Your kidneys & liver are where the magic happens. Pee is made up of water and dissolved waste material from what you have been drinking and eating. It also includes material the body wants to eliminate, like dead blood cells and other things.

    Urochrome is a yellow pigment that comes from the processing of dead blood cells in the liver. The liver protects your body from harmful substances by screening out the stuff in your blood that flows directly from your stomach and intestines.

    Urobilin are the breakdown products of the bile pigment bilirubin, which itself is the breakdown product of the heme part of the hemeglobin from old blood cells. Most bilirubin is partly broken down in the liver before making its way through your intestines and out in your poop. Some remains in your bloodstream and is extracted by the kidneys.

    The kidneys act as a filter for your blood, allowing water, sugars, vitamins, amino acids and other vital substances back into the bloodstream… all while eliminating excess water, salts and minerals, as well as urea from protein digestion, uric acid, creatinine from muscle breakdown, hormone waste and toxins. The remaining bilirubin is extracted by the kidneys, where converted it gives urine that familiar yellow color.

    So…
    Urochrome and the degradation products of bilirubin and urobilin, make our pee yellow.

    Some early Alchemists believed that the yellow-gold color of pee might be from actual gold and employed all sorts of experiments with it trying to derive gold from pee. As you might have guessed, there wasn’t “Gold in them thar hills!” But, one German merchant and amateur-alchemist, Henning Brand did find phosphorus while performing an experiment with pee hoping for gold… Phosphorus is commonly used in safety matches and pyrotechnics.

    Source

    Ethanol, schmethanol

    Everyone seems to think that ethanol is a good way to make cars greener. Everyone is wrong

    SOMETIMES you do things simply because you know how to. People have known how to make ethanol since the dawn of civilisation, if not before. Take some sugary liquid. Add yeast. Wait. They have also known for a thousand years how to get that ethanol out of the formerly sugary liquid and into a more or less pure form. You heat it up, catch the vapour that emanates, and cool that vapour down until it liquefies.

    The result burns. And when Henry Ford was experimenting with car engines a century ago, he tried ethanol out as a fuel. But he rejected it—and for good reason. The amount of heat you get from burning a litre of ethanol is a third less than that from a litre of petrol. What is more, it absorbs water from the atmosphere. Unless it is mixed with some other fuel, such as petrol, the result is corrosion that can wreck an engine's seals in a couple of years. So why is ethanol suddenly back in fashion? That is the question many biotechnologists in America have recently asked themselves.


    The obvious answer is that, being derived from plants, ethanol is “green”. The carbon dioxide produced by burning it was recently in the atmosphere. Putting that CO2 back into the air can therefore have no adverse effect on the climate. But although that is true, the real reason ethanol has become the preferred green substitute for petrol is that people know how to make it—that, and the subsidies now available to America's maize farmers to produce the necessary feedstock. Yet such things do not stop ethanol from being a lousy fuel. To solve that, the biotechnologists argue, you need to make a better fuel that is equally green. Which is what they are trying to do.

    Designer petrol

    The first step on the road has been butanol. This is also a type of alcohol that can be made by fermenting sugar (though the fermentation is done by a species of bacterium rather than by yeast), and it has some advantages over ethanol. It has more carbon atoms in its molecules (four, instead of two), which means more energy per litre—though it is still only 85% as rich as petrol. It also has a lower tendency to absorb water from the atmosphere.

    A joint venture between DuPont, a large American chemical company, and BP, a British energy firm, has worked out how to industrialise the process of making biobutanol, as the chemical is commonly known when it is the product of fermentation. Although BP plans to start selling the stuff in the next few weeks (mixed with petrol, to start with), the truth is that butanol is not all that much better than ethanol. The interesting activity is elsewhere.

    One route might be to go for yet-larger (and thus energy-richer) alcohol molecules. Any simple alcohol is composed of a number of carbon and hydrogen atoms (like a hydrocarbon such as petrol) together with a single oxygen atom. In practice, this game of topping up the carbon content to make a better fuel stops with octanol (eight carbon atoms) as anything bigger tends to freeze at temperatures that might be encountered in winter. But living things are familiar with alcohols. Their enzymes are geared up to cope with them. This makes the biotechnologists' task that much easier.

    The idea of engineering enzymes to make octanol was what first brought Codexis, a small biotechnology firm based in Redwood City, California, into the field. Codexis's technology works with pharmaceutical precision—indeed, one of its main commercial products is the enzyme system for making the chemical precursor to Lipitor, a cholesterol-lowering drug that is marketed by Pfizer. Codexis controls most of the important patents for what is known as molecular evolution. This designs enzymes in the way that normal evolution designs organisms. It creates lots of variations on a theme, throws away the ones it does not want, and shuffles the rest in a process akin to sex. It then repeats the process on the survivors until something useful emerges—though, unlike natural evolution, there is a bit of intelligent design in the process, too. The result, according to Codexis's boss, Alan Shaw, is enzymes that can perform chemical transformations unknown in nature.

    Dr Shaw, however, is no longer so interested in octanol as a biofuel. Like two other, nearby firms, he is now focusing Codexis's attention on molecules even more chemically similar to petrol. The twist that Codexis brings is that unlike petrol, of which each batch from the refinery is chemically different from the others (because the crude oil from which it is derived is an arbitrary mixture of hydrocarbon molecules), biopetrol could be turned out exactly the same, again and again, and thus designed to have the optimal mixture of properties required of a motor fuel.

    Exactly which molecules Codexis is most interested in these days, Dr Shaw is not yet willing to say. But Amyris Biotechnologies, which is also based in California, in Emeryville, and which also started by dabbling in drugs (in its case an antimalarial medicine called artemisinin), is slightly more forthcoming. Under the guidance of its founder Jay Keasling, it has been working on a type of isoprenoid (a class of chemicals that include rubber).

    Unlike Codexis, which deals in purified enzymes, Amyris employs a technique called synthetic biology, which turns living organisms into chemical reactors by assembling novel biochemical pathways within them. Dr Keasling and his colleagues scour the world for suitable enzymes, tweak them to make them work better, then sew the genes for the tweaked enzymes into a bacterium that thus turns out the desired product. That was how they produced artemisinin, which is also an isoprenoid.

    Isoprenoids have the advantage that, like alcohols, they are part of the natural biochemistry of many organisms. Enzymes to handle them are thus easy to come by. They have the additional advantage that some are pure hydrocarbons, like petrol. With a little judicious searching, Amyris thinks it has come up with isoprenoids that have the right characteristics to substitute for petrol.

    The third Californian firm in the business, LS9 of San Carlos, is cutting to the chase. If petrol is what is wanted, petrol is what will be delivered. And diesel, too, although in this case the product is actually biodiesel, which is in some ways superior to the petroleum-based stuff.

    LS9 also uses synthetic biology, but it has concentrated on controlling the pathways that make fatty acids. Like alcohols, fatty acids are molecules that have lots of hydrogen and carbon atoms, and a small amount of oxygen (in their case two oxygen atoms, rather than one). Plant oils consist of fatty acids combined with glycerol—and these fatty acids (for example, those from palm oil) are the main raw material for the biodiesel already sold today.

    LS9 has used its technology to turn microbes into factories for fatty acids containing between eight and 20 carbon atoms—the optimal number for biodiesel. But it also plans to make what it calls “biocrude”. In this case the fatty acids would have 18-30 carbon atoms, and the final stage of the synthetic pathway would clip off the oxygen atoms to create pure hydrocarbons. This biocrude could be fed directly into existing oil refineries, without any need to modify them.

    These firms, however, have one other competitor. His name is Craig Venter. Dr Venter, a veteran of biotechnological scraps ranging from gene patenting to the private human-genome project, has been interested in bioenergy for a long time. To start with, it was hydrogen that caught his eye, then methane—both of which are natural bacterial products. But now that eye is shifting towards liquid fuels. His company, modestly named Synthetic Genomics (and based, unlike the others, on the east side of America, in Rockville, Maryland), is reluctant to discuss details, but Dr Venter, too, is taken with the pharmaceutical analogy. Indeed, he goes as far as to posit the idea of clinical trials for biofuels—presumably pitting one against another, perhaps with petroleum-based products acting as the control, and without the drivers knowing which was which.

    Whether biofuels will ever be competitive with fossil fuels remains to be seen. That will depend on a mixture of economics and politics. But the political rush to back ethanol, just because it is green and people have heard of it, is a mistake. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and see which one wins Dr Venter's Grand Prix.

    Source

    Belly Fat on Women-Some Tips on Reducing it

    You probably don't like the fat under your upper arm or on your thighs, however the fat on the belly is the hardest to deal with and has serious health risks also. If your waist bulges out as far or farther than your hips, this is not good. Lets take some steps to rapidly do away with the Belly Fat.

    The first thing that you should do is to make a commitment to yourself to stay with this program until the Belly Fat is reduced to the level that you want. It definately requires commitment and attention to the program 24/7. You have to be aware of the amount of food that you are eating and the kind of food.

    Get yourself a notebook and write down the number of pounds that you want to lose, date it and write down what you presently weigh and your waist measurement. Once a week weigh yourself and take your waist measurement just above the navel, be sure to write these down in your notebook. Do not do this more than once a week. Set yourself a reasonable goal, say one inch off the waist per month.

    Lets get started. First thing in the morning on arising take the juice of half a lemon in eight ounces of warm water and drink it down. What this does is to get your metabolism in high gear. If you like you can substitute apple cider vinegar (two teaspoons) for the lemon. This will also help to keep the liver cleansed and working in top order.

    Diet Stay away from simple carbohydrates, go for the complex ones. Better yet get yourself a book or article about the glycemic index and eat the foods recommended. You can eat a lot of food, you just have to be more selective. Stay away from sugar and products made with it. Stay away from alcoholic beverages and caffienated drinks ( this is tough but you have inches to lose, remember?) Caffiene causes the body to store fat. Alcohol is carbs and it also blocks the bodies ability to utilize vitamins and minerals (not good). Drink lots of water, you should drink one ounce of water a day for every two pounds of body weight. Water flushes out the toxins that build up in the body and hydrates it. Eat more fresh fruit and vegetables to get the vitamins, minerals and enzymes that they provide and they just taste good.

    Excercise Yeah, the E word. Excercise in addition to the above suggestions, will cause you to be stronger and will take inches off of the waist line if you do the right ones. Probably the best excercise for thinning the waist is sit-ups. Do the sit-ups just before bedtime. Do at least ten a day or whatever you can do to start with and build yourself up to 25-30 sit-ups a day. Do these without fail, everyday!! If you miss a day it's almost like starting over, do it right and don't miss. Another good excercise is to just take a walk everday. Getting as much excercise in each day as you can will help you burn extra fat away. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Look for ways to get more excercise in your day to day routine. If you haven't excercised in awhile, you should check with your doctor to be sure it is safe for you to do these excercises.

    Some Ideas That Help Find someone to excercise with, it's more fun and makes excercising go by faster. Don't weigh yourself everyday, you won't see the ups and downs and get discouraged. Get your family to support you in this endeavor. Explain to them that it's more about being healthy than it is about appearances.

    Don't fall for the pill pusher claims that you can lose 30 lbs in 10 days junk that they promote. Do it right and go slow and deliberate.

    You can do this, it's a little hard at first but you will get used to the lifestyle changes and it will benefit you in many ways. Stick to it and enlist the help and support of friends and family. In no time the inches will go away and you will be very proud of yourself.

    Source

    Why Men Hate Weddings

    A warning to all men thinking of getting married

    Having just suffered a big, fancy, expensive wedding, I thought I had better sound the warning for all the prospective grooms out there. Because nothing emasculates a man like going through a wedding ceremony.

    One of the first things that I noticed is that the guy doesn’t get a song. What do they play to celebrate the occasion? “Here comes the bride!” What about the groom? It’s so unfair. A friend suggested “Another One Bites the Dust,” as the groom’s song. Or 'Under Pressure'. Freddie Mercury understood.

    And then there’s the Best Man. Is it the groom? No, it’s his friend. Someone please tell me why a guy can’t even be the best man on his own wedding day!

    Other forms of bias are when people refer to the wedding as ‘Her Big Day’, and the fact that the guy is the bridegroom, but the woman is simply the bride.

    Now, women love weddings, because they get to go shopping for lots of stuff. I decided to be non-traditional and follow along to help her pick out her wedding dress. Big mistake!

    We spent four days looking at dress shops and each one was full of nice, white dresses. Each time she tried one on and asked me what I thought, I replied, ‘It’s nice.’ This approach got me into a lot of trouble because, apparently, I wasn’t trying hard enough. I was stumped; the dresses all looked the same to me and they all looked nice. After all, if they weren’t nice, the shop wouldn’t sell them.

    Anyway, after four days of dress shops, my fiancée decided that none of the dresses were nice enough and she would have to get one specially designed.

    Then I went into a tuxedo shop and picked one out within five minutes.

    Then there’s the money issue. Foolishly, I bought an expensive ring (which she didn’t like) and booked an expensive honeymoon in Spain. I figured I easily had enough left over to cover the rest of the costs. Wrong again! Have you ever had a hole in your pocket? Well I had one in my bank account. To top it all off, she decided that the furniture in the new house was ‘not nice’ and that we should throw it away and get new ones. Kaching!

    Of course, my ideal wedding would be the drive-through in Vegas. What guy wouldn’t want to be married by ‘The King’? I was smart enough not to even suggest it.

    With all this wedding turmoil going on, the best advice of all came from my dear old mom. She said the man’s wedding duties are simple: Just turn up sober and shaved, with a ring.

    Source

    Bringing Patients Back From The Dead

    In health, doctors in Philadelphia are testing a revolutionary new treatment that is restoring life and bringing people back from the dead. Medical Reporter Stephanie Stahl has details.

    During cardiac arrest, the heart stops beating. It's a trauma alert and people are often declared dead within minutes.

    But now doctors at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital are bringing people back from the dead.

    Dr. Lance Becker and his team are challenging fate with breakthrough new treatments that could save hundreds of thousands of lives.

    61-year-old Bill Bondar is living proof that people can be brought back from the dead.

    "I didn't know I died, I didn't feel anything, I still don't believe it," Bill said.

    "I looked at his face, and I was looking at a dead man," Bill's wife Monica said.

    It happened just after the couple left a jam session. Bill collapsed outside their home, lifeless.

    "That was the most frightening thing I ever saw in my life and I knew my husband was gone. He was gone," said Monica.

    Paramedics were able to restart his heart, but that's just part of the battle. Cells continue to die, and there can be damage to vital organs like the brain, that could be fatal.

    Bill ended up at Penn, where he got the new experimental treatment of chilled saline that's injected.

    Cooling pads are then wrapped around a patient. The body temperature is normally 98 degrees, but cooling brings it down to 92 degrees. Doctors keep it there for about 24 hours. This process is called intentional hypothermia.

    "It decreases cellular injury when the cells are deprived of oxygen, so with less injury we are able to do a better job of getting people back," said Dr. Becker.

    A similar cooling therapy was used on Buffalo Bills football player Kevin Everett, after a devastating spinal cord injury. He's now able to move after getting a quick infusion of cold saline.

    But Dr. Becker said the cooling therapy needs to be faster, so they're developing a slushy type saline that contains ice particles. It would be injected into the blood stream to quickly reduce body temperature.

    "We really believe that that is going to save lives in a way that we haven't even seen," said Dr. Becker.

    "I feel lucky," said Bill.

    After being dead for a few minutes back in May, Bill along with Monica are now back to enjoying their boating life, with a whole new perspective.

    "Our grasp on life is so tenuous. It's so fragile that it doesn't really matter what you worry about tomorrow because you might not have it. You have to live as if you're going to die tomorrow," said Monica.

    Bill now has an internal defibrillator and is taking medications.

    The experimental cooling treatment at HUP can only be used on certain patients. But doctors expect it will eventually become a critical standard of care for saving lives.

    Source

    Saturday, September 29, 2007

    Microsoft extends XP availability by five months

    Microsoft has extended the availability of its Windows XP operating system to computer makers by five months.

    System builders will now be able to continue making computers bundled with XP until 30 June 2008. The software was scheduled to be axed on 31 January 2008.

    "There was a set of customers who needed a bit more time. Feedback from our OEM partners and from customers is that 30 June 2008 will address those needs," Windows corporate vice president Mike Nash said on a company website.

    Although Nash claimed that Microsoft is "pleased" with the response to Windows Vista, it is common knowledge that consumers and especially businesses have demonstrated limited interest in the software.

    Many have shunned Vista because it contains far greater technological differences compared to Windows XP than with previous Windows upgrades.

    Many peripheral devices, for instance, require new drivers to function under Vista. Older devices often lack such drivers, forcing consumers to delay purchasing a new system in anticipation of a driver update, or upgrading printers and scanners.

    Several applications will not execute in Windows Vista, prompting enterprises to delay rolling out the software because it buys them more time to test and update internally developed applications.

    Although Nash maintained an upbeat tone, there is mounting evidence that Vista is failing to enthuse a large group of customers.

    Lenovo unveiled a programme last week that allows disappointed customers to downgrade Windows Vista to Windows XP.

    Dell reintroduced Windows XP systems earlier this year, citing customer demand for 6 years old software.


    Source

    Friday, September 28, 2007

    Ghost hunting at Charleston's Old Jail

    There's an entire sub-industry of reality television based on haunted places. Usually the shows feature paranormal experts, but it's more fun when there's some antsy, easily-spooked rookie who jumps at every errant sound, sight, or smell. "Oh my god! What is that! Please tell me someone farted!"

    When we got word that the guys from Southern Paranormal Investigation and Research would be visiting Charleston's Old Jail, I was happy to offer up my challenged, but easily panicked senses.

    Built at the turn of the 19th century, the jail was the final home for some of Charleston's most infamous murderers and crooks until shuttered in the 1930s. The building never had running water and, as our tour guide Suzanne puts it, "It's the coldest building in the winter and the hottest building in the summer." It's hard to say what exactly happened in the building during its long run. Records and pictures are random. Cells have been removed, replaced by supporting beams to try and preserve the creepy gem of the local ghost tour scene.

    As for who exactly is haunting the place, that's up for debate as well. Standing outside with a handful of tour guides, they share a variety of stories used during walking tours. Usually, they involve the same people — a small boy wrongfully accused or maybe a sinister Hannibal-like figure that tormented guards. While the stories may be different, these folks (who'd likely know better than most) believe the building is haunted.

    The Southern Paranormal investigators have chased after Bigfoot and witnessed exorcisms. They've investigated claimed hauntings in hotels and abandoned mental hospitals, but this is the group's first jail.

    "I've been to a lot of places," says lead investigator Shawn Sellers. "But this is one where you know something's here, you just got to find it."

    The jail is spooky at high noon, much less at the witching hour. But, since that's when spooks like to spook, we gather outside the building minutes before midnight to see what we can (or can't) see. Some foreigners are filing through the building, the last of the traditional tours that move about 160 people through the building on a given night. We are getting a much more intimate tour — able to scour most every nook and jail cell.

    Sellers shows me a K2 Meter, a new device used to track the spirits, but the team warns me later that, while technology traditionally follows science, the science seems to follow technology in the paranormal world. I'm not sure what that means, either, but I'm pretty sure they were telling me to be skeptical.

    If there is a surprise about these guys, it's their seemingly endless ability to doubt everything they see. Unlike the crowd you'll find in Roswell or at an Elvis convention, these guys head for the most reasonable answer first. There have even been some investigations where they've walked out emptyhanded.

    When presented with photos of "orbs" — pictures of mysterious dots the Scooby Gang would likely consider evidence of ghostly apparitions — the guys from SPI groan.

    "It's too easy for someone to say it's nothing," says James Kirkley.

    One odd photo could be dust stirred in front of the camera or a bug flying into the picture, ruining the focus. Orbs are only interesting when you can track them over several photographs.

    And Kirkley and the others are just as careful during the investigations. As they record and listen for audible sounds of spirits, they try to account for every noise, whether it's someone moving around, breathing heavily, or walkers-by outside. That way, they don't trick themselves when listening to the tapes later.

    "We look at something as, 'We're going to find a way to prove what this is,'" says Kirkley. "When we can't, we know we've got something."

    Heading In, Locking Up

    Once in, Suzanne locks the gates and bolts the door behind us to keep vagrants or others from walking in. It's important that we're the only uninvited guests. Fake cobwebs and a cauldron rest in one of the first rooms we visit, relics of last year's Halloween party, but we find a very real bat flying just over our heads.

    Our initial walk through the building warrants little attention from the investigators, until I follow Suzanne and another local tour guide up to the third floor of the guards quarters. A bit ahead of the investigators, we're met by a strange smell on the floor. "That's Cletus," Suzanne says. Considering it's often her job to freak people out, I pay little attention. But, once Sellers makes it to the floor, he asks Suzanne if other mediums or investigators have ever sensed a man on that floor. She smiles. Ruh-roh, as Scooby would say.

    The investigation team relies on a host of equipment, but a key tool is Sellers' ability to track these otherworldly beings. He describes it as if he's watching an old movie reel with some of the frames missing.

    "We take what we sense as part of the evidence," he tells me.

    We hang out for a while, but Cletus doesn't give us anything else. As we're leaving the room, one of the investigators asks me if I'm religious. "Um, sort of," I tell him. He asks if I go to church. "No. That's the sort of part." Well, do you pray? I say yes, though even that is really left for weddings, funerals, and school board meetings (thanks, Cousin Arthur). He tells me to go to that white place you find in prayer. Great. Maybe we could have had this talk before meeting Cletus.

    We head back over to the cells and the group finds a presence in one of the smaller rooms built later in the jail's history.

    Standing in silence, I inexplicably feel the hairs on my arms rise without cause, a second before one of the investigators standing across the room looks up and says, "Did you feel that?"

    We sit quietly as Sellers and the others try to goad the ghost for information. "Who are you? If there's someone there, make a noise in the room. If there's someone there, touch someone in the room."

    Internally, I yell from my white place, "Touch anyone else but me!"

    It turns out that there is, in fact, a story about that room. Suzanne tells us of a young black woman jailed and abused until she was left for dead. With each detail she gives, a rush of cool air envelopes the room. Sellers confirms that he is sensing a young woman and that there seems to be a presence in the hallway that continues to haunt the girl's spirit.

    As we sit there quietly, Sellers challenges the hallway troller to come in and try to scare us. Um, no thank you.

    In the end, much like the orbs, the team even discounts this experience, suggesting that what Sellers was feeling may have just been the residual emotions of the thousands of people who have heard the story of the girl and left their fear in the room for dark spirits to exploit. Apparently, even in the afterlife, there are ghosts looking to scare us with a good yarn.

    I check with Sellers later in the week and he says the team has collected more than 1,000 photos, four hours of audio, and temperature and EMF readings but they haven't reviewed it yet, hence the final verdict is out. As for my analysis, my shorts go unsoiled and I have a restful night's sleep, but I pause at every cold chill, mumbling under my breath, "Touch someone else!"

    Source

    Ghost lights that dance on Banni grasslands when it’s very dark

    The deserts of the Rann of Kutch, which melt into the arid Banni grasslands hold many unexplained mysteries apart from the varied species of birds. Spread across 3,846 sq km, this grassland is witness to a strange light phenomenon on any dark night.

    Locals who have been seeing it since time immemorial, call it Chhir Batti in their Kutchhi-Sindhi language, with Chhir meaning ghost and Batti meaning light.

    Jugal Kishor Tiwari, an ornithologist of Moti-Virani village, who was earlier employed as a BHNS scientist and ecologist for Seawater Foundation of USA, has seen these strange lights several times. “I first came to know about these during the study of birds in Banni in 1990. We were there to trap some birds for a BNHS project and were distracted by these lights,” said Tiwari.

    “The light, which is as bright as a mercury lamp changes its colour to blue and sometimes red. It is like a moving ball of fire, which sometime stops or moves as fast as an arrow. On November 5, 2005 my team found these lights at seven places. We have shown this phenomenon to several experts including well-known American ornithologist Bill Clark. He was amazed and had no explanation,” Tiwari said. He, however, said that he had not been able to capture this phenomenon on video or a film roll.

    “No, they are not ghosts as is believed by people in this area. It can be anything. Strangely enough, though this has been a part of life of Banni grasslands for centuries together, no one has been able to come up with a suitable explanation. As long as there is no sound explanation, people would assume these to be ghost lights,” he said.

    He said that these lights can only be seen after 8 pm on dark nights and are always 2-feet above the ground to about 8- to 10-feet in the air.

    Tiwari said the lights had not harmed any one so far except that if one followed them one could be misled from the road into the thorny jungles.

    “It’s like the lights playing hide and seek. Even if you decide not to follow them, they can creep up on you. It’s something like the light following you. This is not only mine but has been every body else’s experience here,” he said.

    Source



    Czech crash victim wakes up speaking English

    A CZECH speedway driver knocked unconscious in a crash stunned ambulance drivers when he woke up speaking perfect English.

    18-year-old Matej Kus was out cold for 45 minutes after the crash, but when he woke up he conversed fluidly in English with paramedics, even speaking in an English accent.

    The teenager had just begun to study the language and his skills were described by friends and team-mates as “basic at best”.

    Peter Waite, the promoter for Kus's team, the Berwick Bandits, told the Daily Mail: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

    "It was in a really clear English accent, no dialect or anything. Whatever happened in the crash must have rearranged things in his head.

    "Before his crash Matej's use of the English language was broken, to put it mildly.

    "He was only just making a start on improving it and struggled to be understood, but was keen to learn.

    "Yet here we were at the ambulance door listening to Matej talking to the medical staff in perfect English.

    "Matej didn't have a clue who or where he was when he came round. He didn't even know he was Czech.

    "It was unbelievable to hear him talk in unbroken English."

    Unfortunately, the speedway driver's new found skills didn’t last and he remembers nothing of the accident or the following two days. He is now keen pursue studies in English.

    He told the Daily Mail, through an interpreter: "It's unbelievable that I was speaking English like that, especially without an accent.

    "Hopefully I can pick English up over the winter for the start of next season so I'll be able to speak it without someone having to hit me over the head first.

    "There must be plenty of the English language in my subconscious so hopefully I'll be able to pick it up quickly next time."

    Source : news.com.au



    Tuesday, September 25, 2007

    Pomegranate Could Fight Cancer


    Juice from the pomegranate shows promise for fighting prostate cancer. Credit: USDA Agricultural Research Service

    Researchers in California are reporting new evidence explaining pomegranate juice’s mysterious beneficial effects in fighting prostate cancer. In a study scheduled for the Sept. 19 issue of ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication, Navindra Seeram and colleagues have found that the tart, trendy beverage also uses a search-and-destroy strategy to target prostate cancer cells.

    In previous research, Seeram’s group found that pomegranate juice consumption had a beneficial effect for prostate cancer patients with rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels. Such increases in PSA signal that the cancer is progressing, “doubling time” a key indicator of prognosis. Men whose PSA levels double in a short period are more likely to die from their cancer. Pomegranate juice increased doubling times by almost fourfold.

    In the new study, they researchers discovered evidence in laboratory experiments that pomegranate works in a “seek and destroy” fashion. On consumption, ellagitannins (ET), antioxidants abundant in pomegranate juice, break down to metabolites known as urolithins. The researchers showed that the urolithins concentrate at high levels in prostate tissue after being given orally and by injection to mice with prostate cancer. They also showed that urolithins inhibited the growth of human prostate cancer cells in cell culture.

    “The chemopreventive potential of pomegranate ellagitannins and localization of their bioactive metabolites in mouse prostate tissue suggest that pomegranate may play a role in prostate cancer treatment and chemoprevention,” the researchers state, recommending further clinical studies with pomegranate and prostate cancer patients.

    Source: ACS

    Solving a Dragonfly Flight Mystery

    Dragonflies adjust their wing motion while hovering to conserve energy, according to a Cornell University study of the insect's flight mechanics. The revelation contradicts previous speculation that the change in wing motion served to enhance vertical lift.

    The Cornell physicists came to their conclusions after analyzing high speed images of dragonflies in action. The insects have two pairs of wings, which sometimes move up and down in harmony. At other times the front set of wings flap out of sync with the back set.

    The physicists found that dragonflies maximized their lift, when accelerating or taking off from a perch, by flapping both sets of wings together. When they hover, however, the rear wings flap at the same rate as the front, but with a different phase (imagine two people clapping at the same speed, but with one person's clap delayed relative to the other).

    The physicists' analysis of the out-of-sync motion showed that while it didn't help with lift, it minimized the amount of power they had to expend to stay airborne, allowing them to conserve energy while hovering in place.

    Citation: Z. Jane Wang and David Russell, Physical Review Letters, forthcoming article

    Source: American Physical Society

    Scientists discover how cancer may take hold

    A team, led by researchers at the Carnegie Institution, has found a key biochemical cycle that suppresses the immune response, thereby allowing cancer cells to multiply unabated. The research shows how the biomolecules responsible for healthy T-cells, the body’s first defenders against hostile invaders, are quashed, permitting the invading cancer to spread. The same cycle could also be involved in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. The work is published in the September 25, 2007, issue of PLoS Biology.

    The scientists used special molecular “nanosensors” for the work. “We used a technique called fluorescence resonance energy transfer, or FRET, to monitor the levels of, tryptophan, one of the essential amino acids human cells need for viability,” explained lead author Thijs Kaper. “Humans get tryptophan from foods such as grains, legumes, fruits, and meat. Tryptophan is essential for normal growth and development in children and nitrogen balance in adults. T-cells also depend on it for their immune response after invading cells have been recognized. If they don’t get enough tryptophan, the T-cells die and the invaders remain undetected.”

    The scientists looked at the chemical transformations that tryptophan undergoes as it is processed in live human cancer cells. When tryptophan is broken down in the cancer cells, an enzyme (dubbed IDO) forms molecules called kynurenines. This reduces the concentration of tryptophan in the local tissues and starves T-cells for tryptophan. A key finding of the research was that a transporter protein (LAT1), present in certain types of cancer cells, exchanges tryptophan from the outside of the cell with kynurenine inside the cell, resulting in an excess of kynurenine in the body fluids, which is toxic to T-cells.

    “It’s double trouble for T-cells,” remarked Wolf Frommer. “Not only do they starve from lack of tryptophan in their surroundings, but it is replaced by the toxic kynurenines, which wipes T-cells out.”

    The scientists think that this cycle may be also be involved in cells involved in certain autoimmune diseases. In these cases the cells may not be able to take up or convert enough tryptophan. Without enough of the amino acid or the IDO enzyme to convert tryptophan, the cells cannot produce enough kynurenine. Lacking kynurenine, the body’s own T-cells cannot be kept in check, so they rebel and attack the body.

    The FRET system detects metabolites such as sugars and amino acids using a biosensor tag. A protein is genetically fused to tags at opposite ends of a molecule. The tags are made from different colors of the jellyfish green fluorescent protein (GFP). When a metabolite binds to the biosensor, it changes the shape of the sensor’s backbone, altering the position of the fluorescent tags. When a specific wavelength of light activates one tag, it fluoresces. When the metabolite causes the tags to move close together, the other tag will also fluoresce—resonating like a tuning fork. This system allows the scientists to visually track the location and concentration of certain biochemicals.

    “Our FRET technology with the novel tryptophan nanosensor has an added bonus,” said Thijs. “It can be used to identify new drugs that could reduce the ability of cancer cells to uptake tryptophan or their ability to degrade it. We believe that this technology could be a huge boost to cancer treatment.”

    Source: Carnegie Institution

    Irish UFOs blast into the light after 37 years in twilight zone




    If the Americans can have The X Files, then so can we. A dossier on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), kept by the Irish Defence Forces for 37 years, has finally emerged.

    But anyone hoping to confirm the existence of little green men will be disappointed. The best the file comes up with are flying saucers, objects shaped like fried eggs and flashing coloured lights - some of the sightings logged in documents dating back to 1947.

    The file - released to the Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act - includes press cuttings about reported sightings of UFOs, along with classified memos and other correspondence.

    In recent months, the British and French authorities opened their files on UFO sightings to the public. A spokesman for the Department of Defence said that, since 1984 the UFO file was no longer maintained by the Defence Forces.

    The file up to then includes a report of a UFO sighting in Boherlahan, near Cashel, Co Tipperary, in 1984. It was "the same shape as a fried egg" and had "some kind of an aerial on top and it was brown in colour", local teenager Conor Dwyer told The Irish Times at the time. A 10-year-old boy reported it made a buzzing noise like a chainsaw and said the bright lights dazzled him.

    The file also contains a classified memo on an alleged sighting of a flying projectile over a bog in Donegal in May the same year. An off-duty garda and a farmer were cutting turf near Falcarragh when they heard "a gushing sound". The garda looked up and saw a grey object travelling at speed over his head. It was shaped like a household iron with fins at the back.

    The memo noted the garda was "extremely reluctant" to be interviewed but agreed after receiving assurances his identity would not be revealed. However, the garda's cover was blown a month later in Phoenix. The magazine speculated it had been a sea-launched guided missile.

    An early entry in the file concerns a statement by a Cahirciveen shopkeeper and farmer in June 1947. He told gardaĂ­ he saw a circular object moving "faster than a motor car" through the sky. "It was flat and was like a big wheel or large plate . . . the rim was white and it was hollow in the centre".

    Source - Ireland.com



    Scientists create transparent frog

    This transparent frog was created by a research team led by professor Masayuki Sumida at Hiroshima University’s Institute for Amphibian Biology. They weren't just trying to make a froggy freak - the idea behind it is that the transparency will allow the status of internal organs and blood vessels to be observed by lab scientists while the frog is alive and without having to dissect it.

    It was developed through selective breeding - two specimens of Japanese brown frog (Rana japonica) that had a genetic mutation giving them pale skin were bred, then their offspring were selectively bred to focus on the transprarency. The frog is something of a rarity - most of the world’s known transparent creatures live underwater, and few are four-legged animals.

    Professor Sumida says, "Transparent frogs will prove useful as laboratory animals because they make it easier and cheaper to observe the development and progress of cancer, the growth and aging of internal organs, and the effects of chemicals on organs."

    Source - Fortean Times

    Have you got green fatigue?

    You recycle and buy local – but the earth's still warming and the ice cap's still melting. If you're starting to feel apathy creeping in, you're not the only one. Hugh Wilson reports

    Recent environmental messages have made such an impact on a friend of mine that, a couple of weeks ago, he broke a four-year prohibition and walked back into Burger King. "Intensive beef production, clone town Britain, just so much blah," he said, by way of explanation. "Nobody else really seems to be doing much about it, so why should I bother?"

    My friend is the embodiment of one of the great fears of the environmental lobby. Fifteen years ago, the term "compassion fatigue" indicated a general disillusionment with fund-raising concerts and famine appeals. The cause was too hopeless, governments too apathetic, and individuals too impotent. Slowly, and for similar reasons, the term "green fatigue" has started to creep into the dinner-party conversations of the composting classes.

    And, if anything, with more reason. Environmental campaigners worry that individuals see their actions as largely irrelevant when set against the enormity of global climate change. While famine appeals parade a simple, striking message – send a tenner, save a child – no such easy cause and effect exists for global warming. By contrast, the solutions to climate change seem hugely complex and controversial.

    "The problems we face are of a magnitude no one has seen in at least two generations," says Alex Steffen, the executive editor of WorldChanging, a website and book that promote innovative solutions for sustainable living. "The scale of the actions people are being told to take by green consumerism groups and businesses, on the other hand, are so small as to seem meaningless. I think that more and more people see this widening gulf and lose hope."

    And if we're not all losing hope just yet, many of us are becoming increasingly cynical. To campaigners, that's not surprising. As Steffen suggests, businesses have turned environmentalism into a marketing strategy. A new term, "green-washing", describes companies that paint a superficial green gloss on conventional business practices. When firms such as BP and Wal-Mart parade their environmentally friendly credentials, scepticism is not only inevitable, says Steffen, it's "a necessary antidote".

    At least the green lobby can count on celebrities to spread the message. Unfortunately, the message too often seems to be, "do as I say, not as I do". Celebrity is an intrinsically unsustainable condition. The reaction to the Live Earth concerts – which prompted as much debate on the carbon footprint of the A-listers who'd been chauffeured in for the occasion as the campaign they were there to endorse – showed the insidious spread of green fatigue.

    It could have been worse. In the States, Sheryl Crow's "Stop Global Warming College Tour" was panned for stipulating parking for three tractor-trailers, four buses and six cars. John Travolta recently urged the British public to "do their bit" to combat global warming after flying in on his private Boeing 707, and got trounced in the press for his efforts. None of this is likely to keep the public on side in the long run – and countering climate change is likely to be a very long run indeed.

    Even the pronouncements of more committed celebrities can seem, well, a little misjudged. A new book, edited by the socialite and former model Sheherazade Goldsmith, the wife of the Ecologist editor Zac, advises concerned greens to keep geese and make their own goat's cheese. As my sceptical friend said: "The goose can stay on the balcony, but I doubt you'd call it free-range."

    Of course, many celebrities and businesses now offset their carbon emissions by paying for trees to be planted in sustainable forests or investments made in green energy projects. But "magic bullet" solutions to climate change are quickly losing their sheen. Recent investigations – including a widely trailed Dispatches programme on Channel 4 – question the effectiveness of carbon offsetting and suggest that it might even be counterproductive.

    Some environmentalists worry that carbon offsetting promotes the idea that if you throw a few quid at the problem you can carry on as normal. According to Michael R Solomon, the author of Consumer Behaviour: Buying, Having and Being: "Consumers are always going to gravitate toward a more parsimonious solution that requires less behavioural change. We know that new products or ideas are more likely to be adopted if they don't require us to alter our routines very much."

    Unfortunately, most environmentalists agree that altering our routines quite fundamentally is the only real way to save the planet. Meanwhile, another "magic bullet" solution – and one that would also allow many of us to carry on pretty much as normal – is coming in for unexpected criticism: a recent study has suggested that any widespread uptake of biofuels in Europe could decimate Asian rainforests.

    What all this adds up to, experts fear, is a recipe for disillusionment and – eventually – disengagement. Psychologically, we're primed to walk away from problems that are too complex to understand and too difficult to solve, and we'll break into a run if we think cynical marketers and self-publicising celebrities are jumping on a green bandwagon. And green campaigners who think a deluge of apocalyptic information will cut through our cynicism are probably mistaken.

    "In an information-filled world, people screen heavily what new information they let in, and I suspect that the run-of-the-mill global-warming story is just not crossing the threshold," says the climate scientist Dr Susanne Moser, the co-author of Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change. By run-of-the-mill, she means those all-too-familiar stories about melting ice shelves or endangered species. "Thinking about a global, complex, challenging, and potentially very dangerous and disastrous thing and not knowing what to do about it makes us go numb or into denial."

    The antidote to numbness and denial is a sense of progress, of things getting better. But in the fight against climate change, progress is hard to come by. Moser uses the analogy of a diet. How long would you stay on a diet that demanded stringent effort over a prolonged period and promised only that that your weight gain might slow down a bit? Let's face it, it wouldn't make the cover of Grazia.

    She also admits that "we have terribly failed our audience" by focusing on apocalyptic scenarios and complex science. Instead, one key factor in keeping people enthused in the fight against climate change will be local, collective action, she says.

    "Why do people go to Alcoholics Anonymous, or to Weight Watchers? Because in a group of like-minded people they have the support, accountability, peer pressure and the shared experience of others to help make the change. They also have opportunities to come together, check on progress, and get support around setbacks. That's what we need for climate change – to recover from our fuel addiction."

    Progress on a small and local scale – such as saving a beloved local shop, voting in a councillor who will push green issues, or increasing local recycling rates – and even a desire to keep up with the Joneses ("if everybody's ditching the gas-guzzler, I'll do it, too") are far more effective motivators than media-inspired guilt and vague fears of an uncertain future, she adds.

    Alex Steffen also believes in the need for a local, community focus. But he says that we need to be honest about the scale of the changes that have to be made, and to counter green fatigue by imbuing the fight against climate change with an almost heroic spirit.

    "I don't think we need to sugar-coat the challenges we face," he says. "We just need to ask people to rise to their real potential, and see that this is our moment for greatness. If we create a sustainable future for everyone, it will be an accomplishment as great as winning the Second World War.

    "Many environmentalists assume people won't do anything more than small steps, and hope those small steps will build the political will for more substantive changes. But history has shown a thousand times that "regular" people are capable of extraordinary courage, dedication and ingenuity when asked to answer the call. It's time we put out that call, rather than another marketing pitch."

    The small actions that can make a big difference

    * You've heard it before, but changing to energy-efficient light bulbs really can make a difference. Lighting uses 20 per cent of the world's electricity, the equivalent of burning 600,000 tons of coal a day. Phasing out old bulbs would avoid the release of 700 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year.

    * Shop local. If your food shopping amounts to £100 a week, that's £5,200 a year that could be going into the pocket of a local butcher, grocer and baker, rather than the supermarket till. Imagine if 100 people in your area had the same idea.

    * Is recycling really worth it? Yes. Recycling one glass jar saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours. Glass can be reused an infinite number of times. Think of all the jars recycled in your street in a year.

    * Recycling a ton of paper saves 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water.

    * Turning your thermostat down by two degrees can save 2,000 pounds of carbon every year. Just imagine if everyone in your family and everyone in your office did it.

    Hell on earth - The 10 most polluted places on the planet

    SUMGAYIT, AZERBAIJAN

    Affected people: 275,000
    Pollutants: Organic chemicals, oil, heavy metals including mercury.
    Source: Petrochemical and industrial sites

    Once a Soviet centre of industry and the location of more than 40 rubber, chlorine and pesticides factories, Sumgayit is now home to piles of untreated sewage and mercury-contaminated sludge. Cancer rates are up to 50 per cent higher than the rest of Azerbaijan and a birth defects are common.

    SUKINDA, INDIA

    Affected people: 2,600,000
    Pollutants: Hexavalent chromium and other metals
    Source: Chromite mines and processing

    Home to 97 per cent of India's chromite deposits, Sukinda's mines spew out millions of tons of waste rock into the rivers that residents drink from. A quarter of nearby residents have pollution-related illnesses

    TIANJIN, CHINA

    Affected people: 140,000
    Pollutants: Lead and other heavy metals
    Source: Mining and processing

    Tianjin, one of China's largest lead-production bases, has no pollution controls. Forced to breathe air with 10 times the legal levels of lead, residents suffer lower IQs, impaired growth and brain damage.

    CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE

    Affected people: Initially 5.5m, now disputed
    Pollutants: Radioactive dust
    Source: Meltdown of reactor core in 1986

    From 1992 to 2002, 4,000 youngsters born in and around the 19-mile exclusion zone that still exists around the destroyed reactor developed thyroid cancer. Five million people still live in contaminated areas.

    DZERZINSK, RUSSIA

    Affected people: 300,000
    Pollutants: Chemicals and toxic by-products, including Sarin and VX gas. Also lead, phenols.
    Source: Cold War-era chemical weapons manufacturing. The principal site of chemical weapons production during the Cold War, Dzerzinsk is now a centre of chemical manufacturing. Over a period of 70 years until 1998, 300,000 tons of chemical waste were dumped, leaching almost 200 chemicals into groundwater. The drinking water is heavily contaminated and the life expectancy for men is just 42.

    NORILSK, RUSSIA

    Affected people: 134,000
    Pollutants: Air pollution - particulates, sulphur dioxide, heavy metals (nickel, copper, cobalt, lead, selenium), phenols, hydrogen sulphide.
    Source: The mining and processing of nickel and other related metals.

    The snow is black in Norilsk, and 16 per cent of child deaths at the former Siberian slave labour camp are caused by respiratory illnesses related to the city's mining operations. Residents at the world's largest heavy metals smelting complex suffer a horrifying range of illnesses including respiratory illnesses and lung cancer. Birth defects are common.

    VAPI, INDIA

    Affected People: 71,000
    Pollutants: Chemicals, heavy metals
    Source: Industry estates

    At the end of India's 400 km-long "Golden Corridor" of industrial estates, Vapi has more than 50 factories producing petrochemicals, fertilisers, dyes and paint, discharging dangerous levels of pollutants into the groundwater. Doctors report a high incidence of respiratory diseases and spontaneous abortions.

    KABWE, ZAMBIA

    Affected people: 255,000
    Pollutants: Lead, cadmium
    Source: Lead mining and processing

    Children in Kabwe still bathe in the heavily polluted river that runs from the town's lead mine, which ran without safeguards from 1902 to 1994. Many have blood lead levels considered fatal.

    LINFEN, CHINA

    Affected People: 3,000,000
    Pollutants: Fly-ash, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, arsenic, lead.
    Source: Automobile and industrial emissions

    Linfen's residents are forced to breathe the toxic output from hundreds of unregulated mines, factories and refineries. Clinics report an explosion in bronchitis, pneumonia and lung cancer.

    LA OROYA, PERU

    Affected people: 35,000
    Pollutants: Lead, copper, zinc, sulphur dioxide.
    Source: Heavy-metal mining and processing

    The US owners of a metallic smelter in this mining town have failed to clean up the plant, which exposes residents to toxic emissions and waste. Ninety-nine per cent of children living in or around La Oyroya have blood lead levels that exceed safe limits and acid rain caused by sulphur dioxide in the air has decimated vegetation in the area.

    EU watchdog calls for urgent action on Wi-Fi radiation

    Europe's top environmental watchdog is calling for immediate action to reduce exposure to radiation from Wi-Fi, mobile phones and their masts. It suggests that delay could lead to a health crisis similar to those caused by asbestos, smoking and lead in petrol.

    The warning, from the EU's European Environment Agency (EEA) follows an international scientific review which concluded that safety limits set for the radiation are "thousands of times too lenient", and an official British report last week which concluded that it could not rule out the development of cancers from using mobile phones.

    Professor Jacqueline McGlade, the EEA's executive director, said yesterday: "Recent research and reviews on the long-term effects of radiations from mobile telecommunications suggest that it would be prudent for health authorities to recommend actions to reduce exposures, especially to vulnerable groups, such as children."

    The EEA's initiative will increase pressure on governments and public health bodies to take precautionary action over the electromagnetic radiation from rapidly expanding new technologies. The German government is already advising its citizens to use wired internet connections instead of Wi-Fi and landlines instead of mobile phones.

    The scientific review, produced by the international BioInitiative Working Group of leading scientists and public health and policy experts, says the "explosion of new sources has created unprecedented levels of artificial electromagnetic fields that now cover all but remote areas of the habitable space on Earth", causing "long-term and cumulative exposure" to "massively increased" radiation that "has no precedent in human history".

    It says "corrections are needed in the way we accept, test and deploy" the technologies "in order to avert public health problems of a global nature".

    Germany warns citizens to avoid using Wi-Fi

    Environment Ministry's verdict on the health risks from wireless technology puts the British government to shame. People should avoid using Wi-Fi wherever possible because of the risks it may pose to health, the German government has said.

    Its surprise ruling – the most damning made by any government on the fast-growing technology – will shake the industry and British ministers, and vindicates the questions that The Independent on Sunday has been raising over the past four months.

    And Germany's official radiation protection body also advises its citizens to use landlines instead of mobile phones, and warns of "electrosmog" from a wide range of other everyday products, from baby monitors to electric blankets.

    The German government's ruling – which contrasts sharply with the unquestioning promotion of the technology by British officials – was made in response to a series of questions by Green members of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament.

    The Environment Ministry recommended that people should keep their exposure to radiation from Wi-Fi "as low as possible" by choosing "conventional wired connections". It added that it is "actively informing people about possibilities for reducing personal exposure".

    Its actions will provide vital support for Sir William Stewart, Britain's official health protection watchdog, who has produced two reports calling for caution in using mobile phones and who has also called for a review of the use of Wi-Fi in schools. His warnings have so far been ignored by ministers and even played down by the Health Protection Agency, which he chairs.

    By contrast the agency's German equivalent – the Federal Office for Radiation Protection – is leading the calls for caution.

    Florian Emrich, for the office, says Wi-Fi should be avoided "because people receive exposures from many sources and because it is a new technology and all the research into its health effects has not yet been carried out".

    Toxic chemicals blamed for the disappearance of Arctic boys

    Twice as many girls as boys are being born in remote communities north of the Arctic Circle. Across much of the northern hemisphere, particularly in the US and Japan, the gender ratio has skewed towards girls for the first time.

    Now scientists working with Inuit villages in Arctic Russia and Greenland have found the first direct evidence that this trend is linked to widespread chemical pollutants. Despite the Arctic's pristine environment, the area functions as a pollution sink for much of the industrialised world. Winds and rivers deliver a toxic tide from the northern hemisphere into the polar food chain.

    Scientists have traced flame-retardant chemicals used in everything from industrial products to furniture, phones and laptops to the food chain, finding high levels of these pollutants in seabirds, seals and polar bears. The Inuit have traditionally relied on a hunter- gatherer's diet almost exclusively made up of marine animals, making them especially vulnerable to toxic pollutants.

    Historically in large populations, it is considered normal for the number of baby boys slightly to outnumber girls in a trend believed to compensate naturally for greater male mortality rates.

    But a peer-reviewed US study found an unexpected drop in the proportion of boys born in much of the northern hemisphere. The missing boys would number more than 250,000 in the US and Japan, using the gender ratio at the levels recorded up until 1970.

    The researchers suspect-ed that this linked widespread exposure among pregnant women to hormone-mimicking pollutants. But Danish scientists examined 480 families in the Russian Arctic and found high levels of the hormone-mimicking pollutants in the blood of pregnant women, and twice as many girls being born as boys.

    They are now studying similar communities in Greenland and Canada and although full results will be published next year, their initial findings exactly match those in Russia.

    Lars Otto Riersen, a marine biologist, pollution expert and an executive with the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap), says: "When you see such things happening in the Arctic, it may happen here first, in the same way as climate change did."

    Although the nature of the Inuit diet is believed to have triggered the disturbing ratios in the Arctic, a similar pattern may be emerging further south. Until now, the only evidence of the impact of these toxins was circumstantial. The most skewed ratio had been in Canada, where a First Nation community in Sarnia lives amid Ontario's petrochemical industry, and the number of boys born has plunged since the 1990s. The fallout from the toxic cloud in Seveso in Italy in 1976 allowed scientists to monitor dramatic impacts on both the gender ratios and numbers of babies born.

    Every year in the industrialised world, household fires cause billions of pounds worth of damage, and chemical flame retardants designed to curb this are big business. They contain a host of chemicals some of which mimic human hormones. These chemicals became notorious in the 1960s and a worldwide ban on one category, PCBs, was introduced after tests showed they had entered the food chain with potentially lethal consequences for humans and animals. But the chemicals industry continues to produce variations of the retardants, which scientists claim are not subject to the long-range testing required.

    Dr Jens Hansen, leader of Amap research, said they were finding incredibly high levels of banned PCBs among a cocktail of other hormone-mimicking chemicals in pre-natal mothers. Pregnant mothers, he said were ingesting these hormone-mimicking chemicals in their diet and passing them through the placenta where they influenced the gender of the foetus or killed male foetuses.

    Aleqa Hammond, Greenland's Foreign Minister, says: "We heard from scientists four years ago that our heavy metal consumption is dangerous." She adds wryly: "If you ate me, you would die."

    Aqqaluk Lynge, head of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, said they were trying to raise the alarm internationally but nobody was listening. "People don't want to talk about such a critical question. We are talking about our people's survival which is very alarming."

    Greenland, the world's largest island and still a dependency of Denmark, now has the highest proportion of women in the world.