martian 0000190.2 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Not So Rapid Eye Movement
The bizarre metamorphosis that occurs in halibut and other flatfish had even Charles Darwin floundering for an explanation. At birth, these fish have one eye on each side of the skull, but as adults, both eyes reside on the same side. Certainly, for fish that spend their lives along the sea bottom, having both eyes topside confers a survival advantage. But there seemed to be no evolutionary reason to start down the gradual path toward such lopsidedness—any intermediate steps would not seem to be especially helpful. So some biologists theorized that the fish evolved from a single, sudden mutation. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

That does not seem to be the case: Matt Friedman of the Field Museum in Chicago reports finding some missing links. He investigated two roughly 50-million-year-old primitive flatfish fossils hidden in museums in Europe for more than a century. These adult specimens possessed somewhat asymmetrical skulls that nonetheless kept eyes on opposite sides of the head. Even incomplete lopsidedness may have given the carnivorous bottom dwellers a better view of the world above than no asymmetry at all, Friedman conjectures. Eye the study in the July 10 Nature. —Charles Q. Choi

Germ-Spreading Playdates
As parents have long known, children in day care centers and schools readily spread respiratory diseases among one another. Chimpanzee communities seem to suffer in a similar way: playdates drive the dissemination of respiratory infections among the primates, according to a new study.

Scientists led by Hjalmar Kuehl and Peter Walsh of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, examined two chimpanzee groups in Taï National Park in Ivory Coast. Infants were more likely to die from a respiratory disease the more they played together—typically during the peak fruit season, when chimps congregate. Between the ages of two and three, chimps spend up to 18 percent of their day engaged in close physical contact with their peers. This period represents the peak of their social interaction and serves to connect all members of their community.

Once playful chimpanzees precipitated an outbreak, infants of all ages succumbed to disease. Affected mothers quickly entered into estrus, ultimately perpetuating the three-year cycle of infant population boom and bust. Coupled with poaching, climate change and predation, infant mortality from infectious disease is taking
a toll on the area’s chimps, says Kuehl, whose research findings appear in the June 18 PLoS ONE. These days few infants reach adulthood, he states, with “only four out of 10 surviving to the age of five.” —Barbara Juncosa

Another Gene for Alzheimer’s
A newly identified genetic mutation increases the risk for the most common form of Alzheimer’s disease—the second major gene to be linked to the neurodegenerative disorder. The mutation occurs in the so-called CALHM1 gene, which controls calcium concentrations in nerve cells. Researchers observed that mutant CALHM1 led to increased accumulation of amyloid beta plaques, the sticky protein clumps characteristic of the disease. In the U.S.

Alzheimer’s affects one in 20 adults aged 65 to 74; carrying one defective copy of CALHM1 escalates the risk to one in 14 (and to one in 10 for those carrying two defective copies). The mutation also leads to an earlier age of onset. Reporting in the June 27 Cell, lead author Philippe Marambaud of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y., states that the CALHM1 gene—along with the first Alzheimer’s gene, APOE, discovered 15 years ago—will be important in screening for the disease. —Barbara Juncosa

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The New Stone Age
Kidney stones will become more prevalent in the 21st century as the world warms up, according to Tom H. Brikowski of the University of Texas at Dallas and his colleagues. A crystallization of minerals dissolved in urine, a stone can form with the help of fluid loss. Such dehydration is more common in hotter conditions; the incidence in the southeastern U.S. is 50 percent greater than in the northwestern region of the country, for instance, and some U.S. soldiers shipped to desert conditions developed stones just 90 days after deployment. http://louis-j-sheehan.net Factoring in the expected rise in mean temperature in the U.S.—upward of two to five degrees Celsius this century—the researchers figure that the nation will see 1.6 million to 2.2 million more kidney stone cases by 2050. This 7 to 10 percent increase could exact $1.3 billion in medical costs. The findings are crystallized in the July 15 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. —Philip Yam

Who Will Die?
Researchers have built a computer system that can predict which death-row inmates are most likely to be executed. It consists of 18 computer processors that analyzed data on about 1,000 death-row prisoners, including their sex, age, race, schooling and whether they were ultimately executed or spared. Then the researchers fed it similar information about 300 more prisoners, leaving out whether they had lived or died. The system, using logic it had developed from the first set of data, correctly predicted the outcome for 92 percent of those cases. It found that death-row inmates with the highest chance of being executed are those with the lowest levels of education; neither the severity of the crime nor race could reliably predict a prisoner’s fate. The findings, which the researchers hope will lead to a fairer appeals process, appear in the Spring 2008 International Journal of Law and Information Technology. —Larry Greenemeier

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MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING TREES
Global warming is leaving trees behind. Some two thirds of forest species in six French mountain ranges have moved at least 18.5 meters higher on the mountainsides per decade during the 20th century. Previous research has demonstrated that plants at the highest elevations on mountains and in the polar regions have shifted to adjust to global warming. The latest result marks the first confirmation that entire ecosystems in lower, more temperate regions are moving as well. The study is in the June 27 Science. —David Biello

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LOCATION INFLUENCES VOTERS
The voting location may tip the balance on some election issues. Researchers examined the 2000 Arizona general election that included a proposed tax increase to support school initiatives. After controlling for political preferences and zip codes, the researchers found that voters casting ballots at schools tended to support the measure (63.6 percent in favor) more so than those at nonschool booths (56.3 percent). A follow-up experiment revealed that voters could be subconsciously “primed” with images of lockers and classrooms to vote for a hypothetical tax for school spending. The July 1 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA contains the findings. http://louis-j-sheehan.net

MARTIAN HIT-AND-RUN
Researchers have long suspected that a massive asteroid caused Mars’s “hemispheric dichotomy”: its crust thins from 50 to 20 kilometers over a south-north span covering 42 percent of its surface. Using gravity data and other measurements, scientists have discovered the hidden outline of the impact—in particular, an elliptical mark spanning 10,600 by 8,500 kilometers. Simulations suggest that the asteroid measured 1,600 to 2,700 kilometers wide, moved at about six to 10 kilometers per second, and struck at an angle of 30 to 60 degrees with the ground. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

limb 0000124 Louis J. SheehaN

LOUIS J. SHEEHAN

The $6-million eel it ain't. But researchers who have taken the unprecedented step of connecting a brain, in this case a sea lamprey's brain, to a small mobile robot say they've got a roving fishbot that may someday lead to better prosthetic devices for humans.

In the meantime, the two-wheeled robot that scoots about the lab bench in response to light may help scientists better understand how an animal's nervous system and a machine can communicate with each other. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.us

Led by Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi, a computational neurobiologist at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, the researchers described their findings this week at the 30th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans.

"I'm very impressed with this work," says Stephen P. DeWeerth, a biomedical engineer at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. "It combines the realism of biology with the controllability of electronics."

To create the cyborg, Mussa-Ivaldi and his team removed a lamprey's brain and part of its spinal cord and placed them in a refrigerated, oxygen-rich saline solution. Then, they rigged small wires to bring electrical signals from optical sensors mounted on the robot to the disembodied brain's vestibular system, which normally enables the animal to distinguish up from down.

When the robot's sensors detected light, the lamprey's brain interpreted the signals they sent as conveying a certain orientation in the water, the scientists speculate. Electrical impulses that normally would have moved along nerves to the animal's muscles instead traveled along a second set of wires to the robot's wheels.

Depending on the electrodes' placement in the brain tissue, the signals caused the robot to wheel toward or away from the light or to travel in a circle or a spiral. In experiments with more than 40 lamprey brains, approaching the light was the most common response.

Mussa-Ivaldi says the disembodied brain's continuous response to the ever-changing signals from the robot's optical sensors is the first example of two-way interaction between neural tissue and a robot. Studying the behavior of this simple fish-robot hybrid may help researchers develop more complicated systems that combine biological and electronic elements, he notes.

"Scientists don't have a clear understanding of how to develop a two-way communication between a brain and an artificial limb," Mussa-Ivaldi told Science News. "We need to understand how the nervous system and a machine may talk to one another."http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.us

The researchers chose a lamprey's brain to control their robot for several reasons, says Mussa-Ivaldi. For one thing, the neurons are large and easily identified. Also, the tissue can be kept alive outside the animal's body in a cold saline solution for weeks. Moreover, he notes, the lamprey's central nervous system can compensate for a lesion in the vestibular system. When some of these cells are damaged, connections between the neurons somehow rearrange so that the lamprey still swims normally.

In their next set of experiments, the researchers plan to examine the brain's flexibility after such rewiring. They'll simulate a lesion in the lamprey's nervous system by electronically blocking the input to the brain tissue from one of the robot's sensors. After the brain has adjusted, the scientists will restore the signal and observe the robot's behavior. Such a before-and-after comparison would be impossible with a surgically induced lesion but easy to obtain via reversible electronic simulation, Mussa-Ivaldi says.

Any organism that receives an implant or a prosthesis connected directly to its nervous system will have to adapt to the device's presence and learn to communicate with it, says DeWeerth. Characterizing the interactions between simple biological and electronic materials is a fundamental step in building true hybrid systems, he notes.http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.us

ethopia

Our species, Homo sapiens, has a new pair of ultimate old-timers. The remains of two ancient individuals, found in Ethiopia in 1967, date to about 195,000 years ago, a research team reports in the Feb. 17 Nature.

The former most-senior H. sapiens fossils were a trio of roughly 160,000-year-old skulls unearthed in 1997 at Ethiopia's Herto site (SN: 6/14/03, p. 371: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030614/fob1.asp).

Ian McDougall of the Australian National University in Canberra and his coworkers trekked to the Kibish formation along Ethiopia's Omo River, where the 1967 excavators had found a partial H. sapiens skull, associated lower-body parts and another H. sapiens braincase. Scientists had dubbed the two individuals, respectively, Omo 1 and Omo 2.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com

Features of the Omo 1 fossils closely resemble those of the bones of people today, whereas the Omo 2 fossil recalls ancestors with traits such as a relatively thick braincase. Originally, anthropologists estimated the Omo fossils to be approximately 130,000 years old.

McDougall's team used isotopic analysis to determine the ages of volcanic-ash layers above and below river sediments that contained the fossils. The results show that Omo 1 and Omo 2 were extracted from sediment that's extremely close in age to a 196,000-year-old ash layer.http://louis-j-sheehan.info

The new analysis of the Omo fossils indicates that, between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago, H. sapiens in eastern Africa possessed varying combinations of "modern" and "primitive" skeletal traits, comments Christopher Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London.Louis J. Sheehan

inveterate

Much like people, chimpanzees are inveterate conformists whose copycat tendencies enable them to develop cultural traditions, a new study suggests. http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com

Andrew Whiten of the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland, and his colleagues trained a high-ranking female in each of two chimpanzee groups to use a stick to release a food pellet from a ramp in a rectangular box.

One animal learned how to push the stick through an opening and against a block inside the box, knocking the food off the ramp so that it could roll out through a chute. The other chimp learned to manipulate the stick to lift a hook that moved the block and allowed the food to roll into the chute.

Each dominant female was then returned to her home group. Over the next 21/2 months, 30 of the remaining 32 chimps in the two groups mastered and primarily employed the stick-wielding technique that they observed in the trained animal in their group, Whiten's group reports in an upcoming issue of Nature. The few chimps in each group that had independently discovered a method different from the one that their group adopted eventually conformed. http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com

A third set of chimps lacking a member with stick training didn't develop any tool-use styles during the study.

Wild chimps exhibit local traditions in tool use and social behavior (SN: 6/19/99, p. 388). The new report provides the first experimental evidence that chimps transmit traditions by copying the behavior of their peers, Whiten says.

milk

Given intravenously, a molecule found in breast milk can improve mental function in people with dementia and in victims of stroke and traumatic brain injury.

Researchers at the University of Palermo in Italy tested the molecule, called glycerophosphocholine (GPC), for its effect on neurological functioning in 2,044 stroke victims. GPC improved the patients' performance by 27 percent compared with patients not given the treatment, the scientists reported in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. http://www.bebo.com/LouisS205

In 12 separate trials by different research groups, GPC also significantly improved memory, attention, and orientation in people with various forms of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease. http://www.bebo.com/LouisS205 And mice given GPC recovered from induced brain injuries more quickly than untreated mice, says Parris M. Kidd, a biologist at Crayhon Research, a Reno, Nev., company that sells brain nutritional supplements.

GPC works by increasing the number of receptors on brain cells for nerve growth factor, a signaling protein that spurs production and survival of nerves. GPC can readily cross the blood-brain barrier, a layer of cells that surrounds blood vessels in the brain and controls which proteins and other large molecules can pass from the blood to nerve cells. These cells can also convert GPC into choline, which they then use to make acetylcholine, a chemical messenger that carries signals between nerves.

weeks

We’ve all heard the plastic bag horror stories—the billions of bags discarded every year that wind up polluting oceans, killing wildlife and getting dumped in landfills where they take up to 1,000 years to decompose. Researchers have been wracking their brains for years to figure out a solution. http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com But leave it to a Canadian high school student to leave them all in the dust. Daniel Burd, an 11th grader at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, has discovered a way to make plastic bags degrade in as little as three months—a finding that won him first prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair, a $20,000 scholarship, and a chance to revolutionize a major environmental issue. http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com

Burd’s strategy was simple: Since plastic does eventually degrade, it must be eaten by microorganisms. If those microorganisms, as well as the optimal conditions for their growth, could be identified, we could put them to work eating the plastic much faster than under normal conditions.

With this goal in mind, he ground plastic bags into a powder and concocted a solution of household chemicals, yeast and tap water to encourage microbe growth. Then he added the plastic powder and let the microbes work their magic for three months. Finally, he tested the resulting bacterial culture on plastic bags, exposing one plastic sample to dead bacteria as a control.

Sure enough, the plastic exposed to the live bacteria was 17 percent lighter than the control after six weeks. Once Burd examined the most effective strains of bacteria, he was able to isolate two types—Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas—as the plastic munchers. At 37 degrees and optimal bacterial concentration, the microbes had consumed 43 percent of a plastic sample within six weeks.

Next up, maybe it’s time to put him to work on this whole carbon emissions thing.

q

MAY 19TH—Sunshine and showers, the former predominating. Gen. Lee sends a dispatch saying the enemy’s attack yesterday was repulsed easily—our loss very light. http://louis-j-sheehan.com

It is said, however, that the enemy have Guinea’s Station, 12 miles this side of Fredericksburg.

Gen. Beauregard intends shelling Butler in his fortifications to-morrow.

From the West, in Georgia, and beyond the Mississippi, all seem bright enough.

Congress has passed a resolution to adjourn on the 31st inst., in obedience to the wish of the President. http://louis-j-sheehan.com He has a majority in both Houses, it seems; and even the bills they pass are generally dictated by the Executive, and written in the departments. Judge Campbell is much used for this purpose.

Gen. Bragg sent in a manuscript, derived from a deserter, stating that of Gen. Butler’s two corps, one, the 10th, is from the Southern coast, no negroes in it, leaving only negroes in the Southern garrisons. We learned Butler was in command, and dismissed all apprehensions—and one day we had but 5000 opposed to his 40,000!