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n2doc
n2doc's Journal
n2doc's Journal
March 28, 2013
Researchers Discover Amphibian Species that Peel and Eat their Mother's Skin
Researchers have discovered a kind of amphibian that eats its mother's skin. The animal belongs to an order called caecilian, which are amphibians that look like worms.
The new species of the skin eating amphibians is named Microcaecilia dermatophaga, according to PlanetEarth.com. The peeling of skin doesn't kill the mother as it is an extra layer of skin that the mothers have grown to feed the young ones.
Researchers say that the caecilians are close to 250 million years old.
"What we've found is another species that's a skin-feeder, but most importantly, it's another species that's quite distantly related to other skin-feeders we've found, meaning that skin-feeding is probably an ancestral characteristic for caecilians," said Dr Emma Sherratt from Harvard University, according to PlanetEarth.com.
The Caecilians can easily be misunderstood for being worms or snakes as they don't have any legs and a slippery body. However, they are amphibians like toads and frogs. Since, they mostly live underground in tropical rainforests, they are difficult to study.
more
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1039/20130327/researchers-discover-amphibian-species-peel-eat-mothers-skin.htm
March 28, 2013
By JOSH MARGOLIN
Last Updated: 3:15 AM, March 27, 2013
A bumbling TSA agent “playing around” with a pepper-spray container at Kennedy Airport fired the caustic liquid at five fellow screeners yesterday, sending all six to the hospital, a source told The Post.
The agent, Chris Yves Dabel, discovered the device at the Terminal 2 security checkpoint and tried to determine if it was real, a source told The Post.
He told Port Authority cops that he “found the canister on the floor and thought it was a laser pointer.”
“They were playing around with it,” said one Kennedy Airport official.
The screener sprayed five other TSA agents around him, sending all six to Jamaica Hospital and halting security checks at Kennedy for at least 15 minutes, police said.
more
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/oops_tsa_guy_goes_spray_zy_zpNfHADRbTmEKrDnnHQ05H?utm_source=SFnewyorkpost&utm_medium=SFnewyorkpost
TSA Worker Pepper-Sprays fellow screeners
By JOSH MARGOLIN
Last Updated: 3:15 AM, March 27, 2013
A bumbling TSA agent “playing around” with a pepper-spray container at Kennedy Airport fired the caustic liquid at five fellow screeners yesterday, sending all six to the hospital, a source told The Post.
The agent, Chris Yves Dabel, discovered the device at the Terminal 2 security checkpoint and tried to determine if it was real, a source told The Post.
He told Port Authority cops that he “found the canister on the floor and thought it was a laser pointer.”
“They were playing around with it,” said one Kennedy Airport official.
The screener sprayed five other TSA agents around him, sending all six to Jamaica Hospital and halting security checks at Kennedy for at least 15 minutes, police said.
more
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/oops_tsa_guy_goes_spray_zy_zpNfHADRbTmEKrDnnHQ05H?utm_source=SFnewyorkpost&utm_medium=SFnewyorkpost
March 28, 2013
Repubs
Klan
Abuse
Banksters
Austerity
Guns
Taxes
War
Thursday TOON Roundup 3- The Rest
Repubs
Klan
Abuse
Banksters
Austerity
Guns
Taxes
War
March 28, 2013
Parks and pipes
Texas
Florida
North Dakota
California
America
Thursday TOON Roundup 2- Tour of the country
Parks and pipes
Texas
Florida
North Dakota
California
America
March 27, 2013
Jobs
Immigration
Rand
GOP
Arizona
Fetus worshippers
Guns
1%
Wednesday Toon Roundup 3- The Rest
BudgetJobs
Immigration
Rand
GOP
Arizona
Fetus worshippers
Guns
1%
March 26, 2013
Scanning electron microscope view of two mating Tetrahymena cells. Credit: The ASSET (Advancing Secondary Science Education with Tetrahymena) Program at Cornell University
It's been more than fifty years since scientists discovered that the single-celled organism Tetrahymena thermophila has seven sexes. But in all that time, they've never known how each cell's sex, or "mating type," is determined; now they do. The new findings are published 26 March in the open access journal PLOS Biology.
By identifying Tetrahymena's long-unknown mating-type genes, a team of UC Santa Barbara biologists, with research colleagues in the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and in the J. Craig Venter Institute, also uncovered the unusual process of DNA rearrangements needed for sex determination in this organism. The discovery has potential human health implications ranging from tissue transplantation to cancer, including allorecognition—the ability of an organism to distinguish its own tissues from those of another—which can be a first line of defense against infection and illness.
In the study, the scientists show that in this multi-sexed, single-celled organism, the sex of the progeny is randomly determined by a series of "cut and paste" genomic recombination events that assemble one complete gene pair and delete all others.
"We found a pair of genes that have a specific sequence which is different for each mating type," said Eduardo Orias, a research professor emeritus and part of the UCSB team. "They are very similar genes—clearly related to one another, going back probably to a common ancestor—but they have become different. And each is different in a specific way that determines the mating type of the cell."
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-03-tetrahymena-roulette-sexes.html
Researchers discover how model organism Tetrahymena plays roulette with seven sexes
Scanning electron microscope view of two mating Tetrahymena cells. Credit: The ASSET (Advancing Secondary Science Education with Tetrahymena) Program at Cornell University
It's been more than fifty years since scientists discovered that the single-celled organism Tetrahymena thermophila has seven sexes. But in all that time, they've never known how each cell's sex, or "mating type," is determined; now they do. The new findings are published 26 March in the open access journal PLOS Biology.
By identifying Tetrahymena's long-unknown mating-type genes, a team of UC Santa Barbara biologists, with research colleagues in the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and in the J. Craig Venter Institute, also uncovered the unusual process of DNA rearrangements needed for sex determination in this organism. The discovery has potential human health implications ranging from tissue transplantation to cancer, including allorecognition—the ability of an organism to distinguish its own tissues from those of another—which can be a first line of defense against infection and illness.
In the study, the scientists show that in this multi-sexed, single-celled organism, the sex of the progeny is randomly determined by a series of "cut and paste" genomic recombination events that assemble one complete gene pair and delete all others.
"We found a pair of genes that have a specific sequence which is different for each mating type," said Eduardo Orias, a research professor emeritus and part of the UCSB team. "They are very similar genes—clearly related to one another, going back probably to a common ancestor—but they have become different. And each is different in a specific way that determines the mating type of the cell."
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-03-tetrahymena-roulette-sexes.html
March 26, 2013
Mar. 25, 2013 — Humans don't "own" their own genes, the cellular chemicals that define who they are and what diseases they might be at risk for. Through more than 40,000 patents on DNA molecules, companies have essentially claimed the entire human genome for profit, report two researchers who analyzed the patents on human DNA.
Their study, published March 25 in the journal Genome Medicine, raises an alarm about the loss of individual "genomic liberty."
In their new analysis, the research team examined two types of patented DNA sequences: long and short fragments. They discovered that 41 percent of the human genome is covered by longer DNA patents that often cover whole genes. They also found that, because many genes share similar sequences within their genetic structure, if all of the "short sequence" patents were allowed in aggregate, they could account for 100 percent of the genome.
Furthermore, the study's lead author, Dr. Christopher E. Mason of Weill Cornell Medical College, and the study's co-author, Dr. Jeffrey Rosenfeld, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey and a member of the High Performance and Research Computing Group, found that short sequences from patents also cover virtually the entire genome -- even outside of genes.
"If these patents are enforced, our genomic liberty is lost," says Dr. Mason, an assistant professor of physiology and biophysics and computational genomics in computational biomedicine at the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell. "Just as we enter the era of personalized medicine, we are ironically living in the most restrictive age of genomics. You have to ask, how is it possible that my doctor cannot look at my DNA without being concerned about patent infringement?"
more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130326101614.htm
You Don't 'Own' Your Own Genes:companies have essentially claimed the entire human genome for profit
Mar. 25, 2013 — Humans don't "own" their own genes, the cellular chemicals that define who they are and what diseases they might be at risk for. Through more than 40,000 patents on DNA molecules, companies have essentially claimed the entire human genome for profit, report two researchers who analyzed the patents on human DNA.
Their study, published March 25 in the journal Genome Medicine, raises an alarm about the loss of individual "genomic liberty."
In their new analysis, the research team examined two types of patented DNA sequences: long and short fragments. They discovered that 41 percent of the human genome is covered by longer DNA patents that often cover whole genes. They also found that, because many genes share similar sequences within their genetic structure, if all of the "short sequence" patents were allowed in aggregate, they could account for 100 percent of the genome.
Furthermore, the study's lead author, Dr. Christopher E. Mason of Weill Cornell Medical College, and the study's co-author, Dr. Jeffrey Rosenfeld, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey and a member of the High Performance and Research Computing Group, found that short sequences from patents also cover virtually the entire genome -- even outside of genes.
"If these patents are enforced, our genomic liberty is lost," says Dr. Mason, an assistant professor of physiology and biophysics and computational genomics in computational biomedicine at the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell. "Just as we enter the era of personalized medicine, we are ironically living in the most restrictive age of genomics. You have to ask, how is it possible that my doctor cannot look at my DNA without being concerned about patent infringement?"
more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130326101614.htm
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