"Florida researchers develop medically safer hybrid grapefruit"

            The article I read entitled, “Florida researchers develop medically safer hybrid grapefruit” talks about creating a hybrid grapefruit that people can eat even if they are on medications that warn them not to eat grapefruit while taking the medicine.  Many people take medications that have adverse effects if mixed with grapefruit.  According to citrus researcher and breeder, Fred Gmitter, “The problem with grapefruit is a family of organic chemical furanocoumarins believed to inhibit enzymes from breaking down certain medication, leading to drugs entering the blood stream in higher concentrations that intended, causing an overdose.” (Furanocoumarins, or furocoumarins, are a “class of organic chemical compounds produced by a variety of plants.” http://www.chacha.com/question/what-is-furanocoumarin ).

                To test that this grapefruit is good for people on these medications, they did “tests of the juice in human cell cultures”.  When they got the results, they pointed out that there would be no dangerous side effects but to make absolutely sure of this they would need to conduct “human clinical trials”.  The University of Florida, is already working on “commercializing the hybrid, a cross between pomelos and red grapefruit” which could take up to five to seven years to produce in large volume.

                All of the characteristics of the hybrid grapefruit overpower the characteristics of a regular Florida grapefruit.  The hybrid was tested in focus groups and met approval because it was “seedless, and larger, juicier, sweeter and less bitter than a standard grapefruit”.

                At the end of the article, Gmitter talks about receiving many phone calls from people complaining about not having grapefruit and how they miss it. Gmitter explains once word got out about this hybrid grapefruit, people who had been told not to eat grapefruit due to their medications, were calling complaining about not having grapefruit, where can they get this new grapefruit and how they miss grapefruit. “I miss my Florida grapefruit, when can I have this grapefruit, I miss grapefruit so much.”

                I know firsthand what it means not to be able to eat grapefruit due to medication.  A year ago, I was prescribed Verapamil for my migraines.   My doctor told me that eating grapefruit would increase the strength of the medicine.  This would not be good since Verapamil is designed to lower your blood pressure.  I am happy that I have been off Verapamil for a year now and can enjoy the pleasure of eating grapefruit and don’t need to worry if it’s a hybrid.

Check this article out!

http://news.yahoo.com/florida-researchers-develop-medically-safer-hybrid-grapefruit-215238841.html

"It's in Our Genes: Why Women Outlive Men"

            

“Newborn baby boy and girl. Scientists are beginning to understand one of life's enduring mysteries -- why women live, on average, longer than men. (Credit: © Barbara Helgason / Fotolia)”

           The article I read talks about a study on how men live shorter lives then women. As you can see the answer to the study is in the title, “It’s in our Genes: Why Women outlive Men”. At the Monash University their research tells us “how mutations in the DNA of the mitochondria can account for differences in the life expectancy of males and females.” The mitochondria mutation is the reason why women can outlive men. Of course everyone in B period Biology knows why the mitochondrion is so important to the body. It’s important because it converts the food we eat into energy that our body needs.
              Looking at fruit flies, Dr. Damian Dowling and PhD student Florencia Camus and Dr. David Claney discovered, “uncovered differences in longevity and biological aging across male and female fruit flies that carried mitochondria of different origins”. They believe the “genetic variation across these mitochondria were reliable predictors of life expectancy in males, but not in females.”
            Based on the research, it states that the mitochondrial mutations will cause “faster male aging across the animal kingdom”.  The mutations in the mitochondria happen as a result of a “quirk” in how the mitochondria genes are “passed down from parents to their offspring”, Since the mitochondria genes come from the mother. If a mutation doesn’t affect the mother, it could as generations go on affect a future generation. Dr. Dowling states, “Over thousands of generations, many such mutations have accumulated that only harm males, while leaving females unscathed”.                                                                                                                                                            
             The research shows that the mitochondria are “hotspots for mutations affecting male health”.  Currently, research is being done to try to find ways for males to “arm themselves” genetically to stop the effects of these mutations.                                                                                                                       

           Wow!  Does this mean in B period Biology, which is made up of 8 females and 10 males, we females will outlive our male classmates?  It won’t be true all the time as other factors contribute to our life expectancy. How about what we put into our bodies?  Proper diet and exercise can only add to a healthier longer life. (Again, everyone should read “Fast Food Nation”.)  To me, this study assumes every person’s life has the same exposure to stress and the environment.  Science can’t predict every outcome but I’m sure glad they’re trying.

Check this article out!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120802122503.htm

"'Simplified Brain Lets the iCub Robot Learn Language"

This is a picture of the iCub humanoid robot. It will “be able to understand what is being said to it and even anticipate the end of a sentence."

Today I read an article called “'Simplified' Brain lets the iCub Robot learn language”. It talks about an artificial brain being developed and incorporated in an “iCub humanoid robot.” It explains what this robot can do with this artificial brain in it. Peter Ford Dominey, a “CNRS Director of Research at Inserm Unit 846" invented an artificial brain with his team. This brain comes with awesome qualities. “The artificial brain system enables the robot to learn, and subsequently understand, new sentences containing a new          grammatical structure.”

            Dominey and his team couldn’t make this brain off the top of their heads, they needed research to back them up. According to the article, the speed at which language processing is performed in the human brain is one of the most fascinating aspects of it. An example would be, a person talking to you and you listening to what they are saying and predicting, in your head, what you or they will say next based on the context of what is being discussed. The artificial brain uses an "artificial neuronal network”. This is similar to what the human brain uses. “Thanks to so-called recurrent construction (with connections that create locally recurring loops) this artificial brain system can understand new sentences having a new grammatical structure. It is capable of linking two sentences and can even predict the end of a sentence before it is provided.”

            In the middle of reading this article I thought, why is this invention/development so important? Apparently it is very important. It can provide research into certain diseases. This invention “could contribute possible linguistic malfunctions in Parkinson’s disease”. In the future it could provide robots the possibility to learn a language.

             Currently engineers aren't able to program all of the knowledge a robot would need but, it may be possible for robots to get this knowledge through “a learning process—in the same way as children.” How fun would this be being in class with a robot?

            After reading this article I felt that they should have a robot like this in every school. This article opened my eyes to the potential of how much help an iCub could be in classes where all different types of learning takes place. In a lab perhaps, the robot could be the one who holds potentially harmful materials.

Check this article out!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130219102649.htm#.USOu7D5rvfE.email\

"Mount Sinai researchers discover how the flu virus tells time"

            The article, “Mount Sinai researchers discover how the flu virus tells time” talks about how long a flu virus takes to replicate itself, contaminate other cells and spread to other human beings. Dr. Benjamin tenOever, a Fishberg Professor of Microbiology at Mount Sinai, states that the discovery of the flu virus telling time can help scientists find a new antiviral drug that can make the viral clock not function properly. When a virus is in you it can’t stay in a cell too long or too short. If it doesn’t stay long enough in the cell, the virus is not strong enough, but if it stays too long, it gives the immune system time to attack it and kill it. Dr. TenOever predicts, that the virus must have something to help it budget its time, so it can steal specific resources before the immune system takes action. Dr. tenOever’s team and him wanted to see how long the virus will take on multiplying itself and moving on. The result was, it has about 8 hours to make more of itself and spread continuously before an antiviral alarm goes off in the cell. Dr. tenOever said the “virus needs 2 days of continuous activity to infect enough cells to permit spread to another human being.”  Timing is critical. He and his team’s research discovered the process of timing of the flu infection. “The virus slowly accumulates one particular protein that it needs to exit the cell and subsequently spread to other cells, and eventually other humans, just in time before the immune system is activated.”

            Have you gotten your flu vaccine?  After reading this article I felt extremely relieved because I have already got my flu vaccine. Every year it’s important everyone gets their vaccine but not everyone does. It has been in the news that there have been long lines for flu vaccines. This affects our community as a whole. The value in Dr. tenOever’s research is it could provide “a novel design platform for the flu vaccine.”

            Can it be true, can this new antiviral drug, they soon discover have different ingredients?” My Aunt Cristina can’t get the flu shot because of her allergies to eggs. Perhaps the timing of the virus can attribute to how the vaccine is made by eliminating “eggs” in the vaccine.

            My family and I have always gotten our flu shots every year for as long as I can remember. If you haven’t gotten your flu shot yet I would suggest you do. After reading this article it might encourage you too.

Check the article out!

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2013/01/18/mount_sinai_researchers_discover_how_the_flu_virus_tells_time.html

"Plastic waste": "Littering Arctic seafloor"

                

This is a picture of a deep-sea organism tangled up in a plastic bag

When reading this article I felt extremely curious on what the seafloor actually looks like with all this litter on it. This article talks about how much litter there is on the seabed today compared to how much there was a decade ago. This article also talks about how much danger the litter on the seabed can cause the deep-sea organisms. Melanie Bergmann, “a biologist and deep-sea expert at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association” said that it was a “gut feeling” (Macroevolution, 2012) to start studying about the plastic waste at the bottom of the Arctic seafloor. When she was looking through these seafloor pictures taken near HAUSGARTEN, a AWI deep-sea observatory that is 2500 meters below the surface of the water, she had the impression that pictures from 2011 had more litter found on the seafloor than pictures taken in earlier years. When Bergmann had this theory she had to look at all of the photos taken from 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008, and 2011. HAUSGARTEN takes a picture every 30 seconds; imagine how many pictures it takes in a year! The increase in litter is due to the ship traffic in the Arctic Sea. Since the Arctic Sea ice is always shrinking and getting thinner it is able now to get private yachts through. Bergmann says that they are “seeing 3 times the number of private yachts and up to 36 times more fishing vessels in the waters surrounding Spitsbergen compared to pre-2007 times”.

                This article did speak to my interests. Every trip to the beach this summer I am going to be extremely cautious in picking up my trash and recycling the things that can be recycled. I didn’t realize how deep our plastic can travel in the ocean. Next time I am on my boat and I see plastic floating by I am going to be sure to snag it and dispose of it properly. Before reading this article I didn’t know that plastic bags or other kinds of litter could be a danger to deep-sea organisms. Melanie Bergmann said “Almost 70 percent of plastic litter that we recorded had come into some kind of contact with deep-sea organisms.” Also their ability to breathe could be “impaired”. I learned litter on the ground is as bad as litter on the seabed because when you litter on earth it hurts our ecosystem. When litter is on the seabed it hurts the deep-sea organisms.

                Plastics bags always have chemical additives in them, therefore their toxic effects vary. Bergmann says that other studies discover that plastic bags that sink to the bottom of the ocean can “altar the gas exchange processes in this area. This sediment below then becomes a low oxygen zone, in which only few organisms survive.”

                Since Bergmann and her colleagues want to extend their research projects on “litter in the sea”.  They are concerned with microplastic particles which are “microscopically small plastic particles created when plastic waste breaks down into ever smaller fragments during the course of chemical and physical aging processes. In an aquatic environment, due to their size, microplastics pose a risk of being eaten by small shrimps, fish larvae and other organisms at the bottom of the food chain.” Bergmann is concerned that when microplastics make their way into marine animals they will eventually enter the “human food chain”. If you are reading Fast Food Nation like I am, this is like the cattle that are fed everything but grass. We can relate this to the fish we could be consuming.  Next time you are on the beach be sure to pick up any trash you might see and dispose of it properly. Remember even a small plastic Market Basket bag affects us all!

http://www.macroevolution.net/plastic-waste.html