More information and registration at:

http://www.geneticsberlin2008.com

(click the poster image above to download the pdf version)

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13-year-old boy corrected NASA on estimates of asteroid Apophis colliding with Earth. But did he?

NASA estimated that chances of asteroid Apophis colliding with Earth were 1 in 405,000. It seems that they might have been wrong.

A 13-year-old boy, working for a regional science competition on Germany, has submitted his report entitled “Apophis - The Killer Asteroid” in which he estimates that chances of collision are much higher at just 1 in 450.

On an article by AFP it’s mentioned that

NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.

For he’s calculations, the 13-year-old has considered the chances of Apophis hitting one of the more than 40,000 artificial satellites currently orbiting Earth, which would change the asteroid’s trajectory and highly increase the chances of collision on the next orbit in 2036.

But is he correct?

Now, Don Yeomans from NASA had this to say

We have not corresponded with this young man and this story is absurd, a hoax or both. During its 2029 Earth close approach, Apophis will approach the Earth to about 38,900 km, well inside the geosynchronous distance at 42,240 km. However, the asteroid will cross the equatorial belt at a distance of 51,000 km - well outside the geosynchronous distance. Since the uncertainty on Apophis’ position during the Earth close approach is about 1500 km, Apophis cannot approach an Earth satellite. Apophis will not cross the moon’s orbital plane at the Moon’s orbital distance so it cannot approach the moon either.

It seems that the judges (maybe even the AFP) should have, at least, contacted someone in NASA to confirm the allegations. And I don’t know if it helped to come out to one of German’s leading tabloids saying something that can be translated to “I have calculated the end of the world … and NASA says, I’m right”.

If this is true or not, I think only the Space Agencies’ computers and simulation algorithms can tell.

But that it’s having a fair amount of publicity, that no one can deny.

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Back in September 2004, it was reported that interpreting sounds and meanings from Chinese symbols requires a different part of the brain than the same exercise with English.

Now, a team from the University of Hong Kong has used voxel-based morphometry to compare the 3D structure of the brain in “normal” and dyslexic chinese children and came up with an interesting result: dyslexics have less gray matter in the left middle frontal gyros, an area related to the identification of images and shapes.

According to another study by a different research group, english-speaking dyslexics have less gray matter in the left parietal region, more involved in the translation of letters to sounds.

Knowing that the impairment is related to the anatomy of the brain might mean that an english-speaking dyslexic might not be dyslexic in chinese or any other pictographic-based language.

It’s another step in understanding a problem that affects between 5 and 10% of the population.

Other sites discussing this topic:

• Dyslexia differs by language (The Core Knowledge Blog),
• Dyslexia in Chinese Readers vs English Readers (Greg Laden’s Blog)

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But this time, I’ll cross that border…

Atheists and Christians can finally agree on something, and duelinganalogs.com got it just right.

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Enjoy…

Seen it at Geeks are Sexy

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With over 30 passed since the latest breakthrough treatment against tuberculosis was reported, new insights are needed for pharmacological approaches that are effective against the bacteria and result in less side effects.

With the active site of the enzyme identified and characterized, the next step will be to design drugs that inhibit its normal functioning leading to a reduction in the bacteria’s proliferation.

A patent from these results has already been filed and a publication in a major scientific journal should be expected soon.

It might be preliminary, but to be confirmed, it can develop into a major step in the fight against tuberculosis.

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In a recent study published in PNAS, it was described that disturbances in the deep sleep stage result in insulin resistance.

Although using a reduced number of test subjects, it was demonstrated that in over 80% of the cases a disturbed sleep leads to a reduced insulin response and thus higher blood glucose levels.

Following previous results from the same researchers, in which it was shown that less sleep also reduced the insulin response, it is now clear that not only the quantity but also the quality of sleep might be a factor for the development of type II diabetes.

The importance of such studies is paramount to understand and act in order to antagonize the high prevalence of type II diabetes and other metabolism-related disorders.

Photo by capitan-patata (C.C. licensed).

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It’s again time to increase the awareness campaigns and pull some attention to a subject that tends to be somewhat forgotten in the other 364 days of the year (specially by our beloved leaders).

I don’t want to go through numbers. For those, a very nice resource is the UNAIDS site and their 2007 AIDS epidemic update report (pdf). It seems that in some regions things are getting better while in others the numbers cast a deeper shadow.

Why the frustration over the subject

Today, on one of those rare time windows that I actually managed to sit down and spend 15 minutes in front of the TV, CNN was reporting on the situation on a Sub-Saharan country. They traveled to a village where, as in most of the region, HIV orphans unfortunately tend to be in big numbers, specifically to a “family” of three children (4, 6 and 14 years old) that just had to fend for themselves. The younger one is HIV positive and was denied life-improving retroviral treatment by the local health authorities because “he was still not sick enough to qualify”. Ok, I understand that with the humongous amount of people requiring the drugs, some sorting needs to be implemented, but also knowing that the power and efficiency of current anti-retroviral drugs is at its best in the early onset of infection, my question is that if the little kid would qualify in one or two years when the probability for high efficiency of the treatment is reduced or if, by then, he would be again sorted out with a “he’s too sick to qualify”.

We all know that the investment in research has favorably increased and great discoveries have been made on the HIV characterization, mechanisms of infection, potential vaccine targets, and treatments that, although won’t eliminate the infection, are able to increase life expectancy and quality. And we also know that the major research advancements have been made by normal scientist teams in academia, one little step at a time. Big pharma companies tend to grab those little steps and create the enabling technology for effective drug development. That is all fine and well but of course prevents any scientist from going there and saying “Hey, I also contributed something for all of this, so go to that little 4 year old kid and give them the drugs he needs, even if it means less profit for you”. Only the pharmaceutical companies together with political leaders have the ability to do this. Pharma companies tend to go for profits and political leaders have more pressing matters to think about like oil prices and such.

So, little kid (and all the thousands of little kids like you), you won’t get the drugs that could potentially save your life.

Did I come to science for this?

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I’ll be going into it in more detail in the next days. For now, here are 2 videos (from CBS news) with the story and first insights.

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Alzheimer’s disease

Although it is known to be more commonly found on individuals over 65 years of age, there is an inherited variant that can lead to an early-onset of the disease.

Alzheimer’s is characterized by an accumulation of misfolded proteins (amyloid beta and tau). Although in small concentrations these proteins are soluble and harmless, as the concentration increases, proteins become insoluble and aggregate forming plaques outside neurons (senile plaques) that lead to brain atrophy through loss of neurons.

Although Alzheimer’s can’t be prevented, specially if originated by genetic mutations, more and more reports show that certain dietary habits might influence the progress of the disease and help reduce the risk for Alzheimer’s.

Recently, several studies were performed that show that a diary dose of coffee (or more precisely caffeine, an adenosine receptor antagonist) helps to minimize the production of malformed amyloid beta and thus reduces the risks of developing Alzheimer’s.

In January, a statistical study was published (Quintana et al., 2007) showing that consumption of coffee over decades is inversely associated with the risk of Alzheimer’s.

These results were confirmed also on the lab using transgenic mice and neuron cultures (Arendash et al., 2006). Caffeine intake reduced the levels of lower hippocampal β-amyloid levels and helped control the levels of brain adenosine levels.

So, keep the coffee flowing. Just don’t exaggerate…

Just as a side note, there were mentions recently that Alzheimer’s could be also a new type of Diabetes (video with the story).

Additional info

• Alzheimer’s Risk Lowered by Mediterranean Diet in Study
• A role for microglial senescence in Alzheimer’s?
• Could Alzheimer’s be a Form of Diabetes?
• An Early Test for Alzheimer’s Disease: Prophetic Medicine Takes Another Step

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“The conference will host leading scientists from academia and industry worldwide, to discuss the latest developments in drug design and discovery.

The conference aims to provide many interesting perspectives on how the science and technology of drug discovery is changing and will continue to change in the modern era.”

Date: Feb 6 - Feb 8, 2008

Location: Dubai, UAE

Registration closes: Dec 31st, 2007

More info: www.icddd.com

Main topics:

• Anti-Infective Drug Design & Discovery
• Anti-Cancer Drug Design & Discovery
• Cardiovascular Drug Design & Discovery
• CNS Drug Design & Discovery
• Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening
• Drug Delivery
• Drug Safety
• Endocrine & Metabolic Drug Design & Discovery
• Enabling Technology Drug Design & Discovery
• Frontiers in Medicinal Chemistry
• Inflammation and Allergy Drug Design & Discovery
• Phramacogenomics
• Protein and Peptides

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Nonetheless, I try to follow and this is a list of some of the articles that caught my attention in the last days.

• Greg Laden at Greg Laden’s Blog comments on the results of two papers from earlier this year describing how Sunlight influences the virulence levels of bacteria.
• Martin Rundkvist shares the announcement of the 2008 Gene S. Stuart Award, made to honor outstanding efforts to enhance public understanding of archaeology.
• Can Google also help inside the biology classroom? It sure can, and Sandra shows you how.
• Carl Zimmer mentions his article at the NY Times about swarm intelligence and group behavior. Oh, and congrats on that award Carl.
• Does a school have the unwritten right to protect and educate the students the best way it can, even if it brushes on parents’ wisdom? Ed Brayton writes about Condoms and Unenumerated Rights…
• Orac at Respectful Insolence targets Complementary and Alternative Medicine in this article. He raises very good points here that complement the previous discussion about Alternative Medicine and Homeopathy at the Aardvarchaeology.
• Volcanoes vs. Meteor, what killed the Dinosaurs after all? Stuart from Measured Against Reality shows the holes on the Deccan traps theory.

Enough for today?

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First, imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we’re not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we’re talking colossal load of horsehit. An epic load of horseshit. The kind of load of horseshit that has accreted over decades and has developed its own sort of ecosystem, from the flyblown chunks at the perimeter, down into the heated and decomposing center, generating explosive levels of methane as bacteria feast merrily on vintage, liquified crap. This is a Herculean load of horseshit, friends, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Augeas. John Scalzi

But he didn’t go there just for the sake of paying the $19.95 of the admission ticket. Actually, he asked for sponsorship in the form of donations, with the revenue going to the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. In this extremely original way, he managed to raise $5,118.36.

And he survived it with enough sanity to put up a detailed review of his visit, together with a photo report of it all. Both worth your time, I’m sure.

Somehow I have the tiny feeling that the $27 million would be better employed on other things than on this 60,00 square foot brain-washing facility.

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