This tree is called Jabuticaba, also known as the Grape Tree. As you can see, it’s trunk is almost completely covered with tiny fruits. It can be found in South America.

Scientists believe that this way of placement of fruits directly on the trunk of the tree is most useful for tree itself because other animals can reach fruits easily and eventually spread it’s seeds far away from tree and that is what will gain the chance of survival of this plant.

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Image source

Now a new study paints a more complicated picture of antibiotic resistance. Bacteria don’t just develop resistance to one drug at a time, but to many — and at accelerated rates. That’s because antibiotics boost bacterial production of free-radical oxygen molecules that damage bacterial DNA. Repairs to the DNA cause widespread mutations, giving bacteria more chances to randomly acquire drug-resistant traits.

“You have a wide range of mutations being introduced across the genome. Some afford resistance to that antibiotic. Some afford resistance to other antibiotics,” said James Collins, a Boston University biomedical engineer who described the mechanism in a paper published Feb. 11 in Molecular Cell. “It would happen anyways, but this process is accelerating it.”

Drug resistance is a serious public health concern. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 70 percent of 1.7 million infections acquired in hospitals every year are resistant to at least one drug. Those infections annually kill 99,000 Americans — more than double the number that die in car crashes.

Drugs that once destroyed almost any bacteria now kill only a few, or don’t work at all. In the case of some drugs, like Cipro, the decline is dramatic: Where in 1999 it worked against 95 percent of E. coli, it treated only 60 percent by 2006. Against lung infection-causing Acinobacter, its effectiveness fell by 70 percent in just four years.

Though drug resistance is ultimately inevitable, conventional wisdom holds that antibiotics consumed at suboptimum doses hasten the process. Bugs that would have succumbed to a larger dose live to multiply, pushing the strain as a whole closer to resistance. That happens when a prescription goes unfinished, or when antibiotics used on farms enter food and water at low levels.

The conventional wisdom isn’t wrong, but the new findings suggest that drugs push bacteria towards resistance even more rapidly, and in more ways, than was thought.

“It’s a really important paper. It underscores that we don’t fully know how antibiotic resistance is engendered,” said Harvard University molecular biologist Deborah Hung. “If you treat with low concentrations of antibiotic, the bugs respond by increasing their mutation rates.”

In earlier research, Collins’ team showed that antibiotics don’t only kill bacteria as expected – by corroding cell walls, messing with DNA and blocking proteins — but by triggering the release of free-radical oxygen molecules. Thanks to an extra electron, the free radicals bind easily and corrosively with other molecules, and prove as lethal as the drugs themselves.

For the latest study, the researchers tested whether free radicals might also affect drug resistance by using sublethal doses of five common antibiotics on Staphylococcus aureus, the annual cause of 500,000 infections in the United States, and two strains of E. coli, including one taken from a patient.

The free radicals caused DNA damage that didn’t kill all the bacteria. The bacteria’s self-repair processes then introduced mutations to genes that provided resistance to many drugs, not just those being administered.

Drugs might be found that could alter bacterial DNA repair systems, but that prospect is extremely speculative, said Collins.

Hung said more research is needed to show how different bacteria respond. Mutation rates might vary between strains. It’s also possible that free-radical damage also accelerates horizontal gene transfer, in which bacteria swap genes without reproducing. If so, resistance could develop faster and spread more rapidly.

“The clinical significance is not clear yet, but it certainly should make us pause and think about the way we use antibiotics,” said Hung.

In recent years, public health experts have recommended that doctors use antibiotics only when necessary, and that patients complete every prescription. They’ve also called for dramatic cuts in the agricultural use of antibiotics.

Of the 35 million pounds of antibiotics consumed annually in the United States, 80 percent goes to farm animals. Much of it is used to treat diseases spread by industrial husbandry practices, or simply to accelerate growth. As a result, farms have become giant petri dishes for superbugs, especially multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which kills 20,000 Americans every year – more than AIDS.

Alarming cases of farm-based MRSA and other diseases led to a proposed Congressional law restricting the use of agricultural antibiotics. That bill, supported by the American Medical Association and American Public Health Association, is opposed by farm lobbyists and remains stuck in committee.

“We need to look carefully at situations where antibiotics are used in agriculture and water supplies,” said Collins. “The benefits may not outweigh the potential harm we’re doing by creating stronger, more problematic microbes.”

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The fifth place is awarded to this design. This floating settlement contains a modern city square and it is more like floating town. This design also won the peoples’ choice award.

This design won award for best exterior design. This structure is shaped to use maximum of wind and solar energy. It is covered by solar panels. It is completely closed.

From the photo that has been provided, you can see that this settlement is still in construction. No, it is not mistake made by designers, they created a basic design of a sea settlement that it is not actually floating but it is fixed into the ground. Designers wanted to create a design that can be expanded without limitations and this is what they created in that manner.

This settlement reminds me on some of those incredible buildings that are used to be built in Dubai. It rather looks like a giant floating luxury hotel. This design won a best picture award. As you can see, this is completely solution for luxury life on the sea. Design also includes beach-like edges and small botanic gardens.

And this one is the winning design. As you can see, this design is more like a normal little urban settlement and when you’re inside you even wouldn’t notice that you are in a floating settlement. This floating settlement is designed to be just like a normal settlement that can be found on the ground. There are a few buildings, a few of little gardens and little square in the middle. Looks like it is perfect for peaceful life with family.

The jumping spider Evarcha culicivora, which dwells near Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, hungers after mosquitoes engorged with blood. Scientists have even found this 5-millimeter-long spider prefers hunting bloodsuckers infested with the deadly malaria parasite, suggesting these predators could help control the lethal disease.

In dining on bloodsuckers, the jumping spiders — so named because they can leap some 40 times their own body length, which for a 6-foot-tall human would mean 240 feet — are in a roundabout way feeding on blood. It now turns out this vampire-by-proxy diet is sexy for the arachnids.

“In the case of E. culicivora, it seems that the way to a spider’s heart is through the other spider’s stomach,” researcher Fiona Cross, a spider biologist at the University in Christchurch, New Zealand, told LiveScience.

Cross and her colleagues fed spiders of both sexes a variety of meals — blood-fed female mosquitoes, sugar-fed female mosquitoes, male mosquitoes that naturally feed on flower nectar and not blood, and lake flies. The female mosquitoes were fed blood from the researchers — “a tub of mosquitoes was applied to the skin around our tummy,” explained researcher Simon Pollard, a spider biologist at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. (It was the first time the lab-bred mosquitoes had fed on blood, so the researchers didn’t run the risk of contracting malaria.)

Spiders that dined on blood-fed mosquitoes were sexier to members of the opposite sex — other spiders spent four times as much time closer to a vent carrying scent gently blown off them. When spiders on non-blood diets were switched to blood-fed mosquitoes, they became more attractive, and the opposite was true when spiders were changed to blood-free diets. The spiders displayed no interest in the scent of blood-fed members of the same sex.

“It’s what’s inside the prey that makes the spider more attractive,” Cross said. “It might be like if we all gave off an odor after eating chocolates. It would only be the people who ate the chocolates with particular centers who smelled particularly attractive. Weird.”

While these spiders don’t share blood-rich mosquitoes with others, Cross said, a potential mate perhaps “gets benefits that are more indirect, such as having offspring that inherit the ability to catch this unusual prey.”

It may be common for animal courtship routines to in part be rooted in the use of diet-based perfumes. There is evidence from research on salamanders and voles, for example, that suggest that the odor of feces from animals on high-quality diets is attractive to potential mates.

As may be the case in human relationships, “Resources often play an important role in whether an animal is accepted as a mate,” Cross said. They might reflect the quality of a potential mate’s territory, “or the quality of a nuptial gift, usually food, presented during courtship.”

Cross added that an important next step is to find out whether spiders on blood diets really are more successful at mating. It would also be interesting to see whether blood diets help lead to more viable eggs or sperm, whether the spiders experience health benefits, and whether there are specific compounds in the blood that are especially sexy.

“There’s an awful lot more to learn about this spider,” Cross said.

Cross, Pollard and their colleague Robert Jackson detailed their findings online Oct. 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Credit: Robert R. Jackson Via:livescience.com

While the fall foliage in North America and East Asia takes on a fiery red hue, perplexingly, autumn leaves in Europe are mostly yellow in color.

A team of researchers has a new idea as to why the autumnal colors differ between the continents, one that involved taking a step back 35 million years in time.

Pigment processes

The green color of leaves during the spring and summer is a result of the presence of the pigment chlorophyll, which allows plants to capture sunlight and produce energy by the process of photosynthesis.

When the weather begins to turn cool in the fall, chlorophyll, which is sensitive to the cold, stops being produced. As the green fades, yellow and orange pigments called carotenoids (also responsible for the orange color of carrots) take over. These pigments were always present in the background of the leaves’ color, but can finally shine through as the green diminishes.

While this process has long been known to scientists, the mechanism that results in red hues has proved trickier to understand, particularly because of the energy the tree must use to produce them at a time when the leaves are about to die anyway.

The red color comes from anthocyanins, which unlike carotenoids are produced only in the fall. These red pigments act as sunscreen for the trees by blocking out harmful radiation and preventing overexposure to light. They also act as an antifreeze, preventing leaf cells from freezing easily in the autumn chill.

Some scientists have even suggested that the red colors ward off pests that would munch on the leaves if they were a more appetizing-looking yellow. It’s from this premise that scientists figured out what might be going on.

Color evolution

Until 35 million years ago, the idea goes, large areas of the globe were covered with evergreen jungles or forests composed of tropical trees, say Simcha Lev-Yadun of the University of Haifa-Oranim in Israel and Jarmo Holopainen of the University of Kuopio in Finland. During this phase, a series of ice ages and dry spells transpired, and many tree species evolved to become deciduous, dropping their leaves for winter.

Many of these trees also began an evolutionary process of producing red deciduous leaves in order to ward off insects, the researchers say.

In North America, as in East Asia, north-to-south mountain chains enabled plant and animal ‘migration’ to the south or north with the advance and retreat of the ice according to the climatic fluctuations. And, of course, along with them migrated their insect ‘enemies’. Thus the war for survival continued there uninterrupted.

In Europe, on the other hand, the mountains – the Alps and their lateral branches – reach from east to west, and therefore no protected areas were created. Many tree species that did not survive the severe cold died, and with them the insects that depended on them for survival.

At the end of the repeated ice ages, most tree species that had survived in Europe had no need to cope with many of the insects that had become extinct, and therefore no longer had to expend efforts on producing red warning leaves.

To back up this theory, the researchers offer an example of the exception that proves the rule: Dwarf shrubs, which grow in Scandinavia, still color their leaves red in autumn.

Unlike trees, dwarf shrubs have managed to survive the ice ages under a layer of snow that covered them and protected them from the extreme conditions above. Under the blanket of snow, the insects that fed off the shrubs were also protected – so the battle with insects continued in these plants, making it necessary for them to color their leaves red, the thinking goes.

Read more on livescience

Their eyes appear to be virtually nonexistent. Maybe it’s because there is never enough light for the fish to see, so why bother with the eyes? After all, eyes in most organisms are designed for gathering light in the creature’s visual field and transmitting it to the brain – giving it useful information about its environment. In a world where no sunlight ever penetrates there’s probably little use for eyes. The brotulids probably have other, highly developed senses to compensate for their lack of vision, which help them to find their way around in the dark depths. Maybe YOU could be the scientist who studies this species and unravels its mysteries.

]]> http://newglobalwarmingeffects.com/2009/08/14/deepest-fish-of-ocean/feed/ 0 http://newglobalwarmingeffects.com/2009/08/01/the-tusk-art/ http://newglobalwarmingeffects.com/2009/08/01/the-tusk-art/#comments Sat, 01 Aug 2009 07:58:35 +0000 admin http://newglobalwarmingeffects.com/?p=100 Mammoths are already dead for centuries, and most of their remains are being found in the deep frozen soil of Siberian regions. Just some of them are used for scientific research, thousands more are being used by locals for carving. The whole carving art has been formed for many years of finding those mammoth remains. They don’t have ivory but plenty of this prehistoric material so it has become good substitute for the carving craft.

A team of archeologists have uncovered a flute in a German cave dating back 35,000 years, showing that early Europeans had an advanced creative culture which included artistic pursuits.

The flute, made from a griffon vulture bone, was assembled from several pieces found in the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany. It is 8.6-inches (22-centimeters) long and features complex and delicate craftsmanship, shown by its five holes and a notched end.

“It’s unambiguously the oldest instrument in the world,” says University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conar, who lead the team.

The flute is also the oldest and most complex musical instrument so far found in Europe. Another flute excavated in Austria is believed to be 19,000 years old, and a group of 22 flutes found in the French Pyrenees mountains has been dated at up to 30,000 years ago.

The Hohle Fels cave is also where archeologists have uncovered the oldest statue on record, a small ivory carving of a woman believed to have been used in fertility rituals. Other ancient fertility objects have been found in this cave. Via

Different types of sea turtles especially the Olive Ridely turtles throng the coastline of Nosara, Costa Rica in big numbers to breed, laying eggs in the beaches. About 162 hectares of the coastline of Nosara is being protected as Ostional Wildlife Refuge to save the beauty of the shore and obviously the endangered species of Olive Ridleys. This is the reason; one would find paintings of turtles in the beaches. Also to preserve the beauty of coastline high-end hotels, tall apartments and casinos which are usually the favourite destinations near the beaches are prohibited here.

Many Eggs are Laid, But Few Turtles Survive

During a specific time, every year, hoards of Turtles reach the beach and lay eggs. A female lays about 100 ping-pong sized eggs after creating large hole but out of these a small number of eggs hatch out properly ensuring the maturity of new born. And only due to this, the female turtles lay such big number of eggs. And the trouble follows since the hungry sharks waiting in shallow seas feed on killing these kids when they move out and try reaching the Oceans.

Planned Harvesting

Wildlife organisations do harvest the eggs which were laid earlier, as due to the smaller size of beaches or coastline there’s not enough space for the large number of eggs, the turtles lay. They come in big groups during different weeks; hence destroy the already laid eggs for the same reason. Even it was a good business for black marketers since in old stories and all these were shown as a booster of sexual desire in humans. Due to structured harvesting, further endangering of this species of animals is prevented and alongside their poaching is prevented in large scale. The turtle population remains unaffected and the economy of the place is boosted. But still the place sees a lot of disparities between several groups.

Sanctuary for Turtles and Humans

The beaches of Nosara, Costa Rica act as a sanctuary and a safe habitat for the Turtles and the nature loving tourists who usually love peaceful places (far away from the busy and populated towns) would like to vacation here. But you have to adjust without most of luxuries of life like Cable TV, Hot Water Showers, etc as you won’t find these in Nosara coastline, even in the Hotels. Peace of mind is what you definitely get with the beautiful place being free of pollution, traffic; which is very much sought after for a happy vacation. In the turtle breeding season local food items, made from the turtle eggs like completely raw ones and omelettes are things to enjoy eating.

Nanotechnology, or more affectionately nicknamed as nanotech, is a field of research that deals with controlling matter on an atomic or molecular level. This has multiple applications that range anywhere from electronics, to energy production, to engineering, to physics, and even to medicine. In the field of medicine alone, nanotech is giving rise to tools and possible applications that are now being streamlined to focus on finding and eradicating cancer cells. This is a particularly timely issue because cancer is now the foremost killing disease of the modern times. As humankind evolves into the new millennia, it seems that cancer cells are evolving as well. As such, there are still no known medicines or medical procedures that can prevent or cure the occurrence of any type of cancer.

The Role Of Nanotechnology In Medicine

Cancer, or any disease for that matter, begins and ends with the tiniest life force within the human body. These are the living cells that carry out the multiple complex functions necessary for life. Unfortunately, with today’s tools for diagnosis and surgical procedures, there is always the possibility that: damaged, infected and disease-carrying cells are overlooked (and thereby not eradicated by the treatment); and that the surgical procedure might actually do more damage as opposed to letting the disease run its course. It is not uncommon for cancer cells to metastasize to other organs in the body after removing the cancer afflicted part – even with aggressive chemotherapy. It is also not uncommon to hear patients dying from the surgical procedures or surgery patients suffering from the complications of the post operative treatments.

With nanotech, medicine has a fighting chance against cancer cells by producing diagnostic tools that can pinpoint the occurrence of cancerous growths as they happen; and by removing these in the cellular level that the afflicted body does not even have to be surgically opened. Nanotech has paved the way for various possibilities in diagnosis, cure and prevention of all possible diseases. Most of these are still a few technology tweaks along the way. However, the point is: the potential is now here and what may have been sheer impossibilities a good 50 years back are now becoming real by the minute. Right now, all eyes are focused on cancer research.

Cancer research with nanotech is particularly useful when it comes to the development and construction of smaller but more efficient cancer detection gadgets that can be easily replicated with the right technology. This means that formerly expensive diagnostic tools for cancer detection can now be made at more economical rates. Complex molecular machines can also be started on and developed further to help with correct and early disease diagnosis. One possibility that a lot of nanotech researchers are trying to develop are the molecular computers that not only works as a diagnostic tool but can be used as a search-and-destroy “operative” that can eradicate cancer cells on a cellular level. This is a proposed alternative to the various cocktails of medications and the series of medical procedures that one cancer patient has to endure just to slow down the process of cancer growth.