Credit: Ken Inomata/Kanazawa University

It seems that some Japanese researchers have figured out that genotoxic stress can cause hair follicles to go white, as it were. But it’s not that the stress actually causes the lack of pigmentation, but rather that the stress causes the cells to use up their pigmentation faster than they should, and once the pigment runs out, it’s silver city, baby.

Some years ago, a dermotologist in Japan, Emi Nishimura, discovered that hair follicles are filled with melanocyte stem cells. If you look at the base of that word, melan-, you may associate it with melanin, which gives animals and plants pigment. The melanocyte stem cells hang out in your hair follicle and whenever a new hair starts to grow, some of those stem cells become the melanocytes, or the cells responsible for your hair’s color. Some of the stem cells stay behind, so to speak, waiting for the next strand to come along. Ideally, your body should store enough of these little dabs of color to last your lifetime, but new research shows that stress to the DNA in the cells cause more of the melanocytes to join whatever hair is growing, leaving fewer and fewer color cells behind for the next hair.

Nishimura suspected that genotoxic stressors, such as radiation or harsh chemicals, might play a role in the stem cells’ fate, because they’ve been implicated in other signs of aging. She and colleagues at Japan’s Kanazawa University tested the idea in mice, which also gray with age. After exposure to cell-stressing x-rays or chemotherapy drugs, young mice went gray in an unexpected way. More of their melanocyte stem cells matured into color-producing melanocytes, depleting the store of stem cells. Instead of dying or being inactivated, the DNA-damaged cells matured before their time.

“The mature cells lose their regeneration capabilities,” Nishimura explains. “The mice then can’t produce enough pigment-making cells” and consequently go gray. Moreover, the stressed mice’s gray hairs and the cell populations in their follicles were indistinguishable from those of elderly mice, suggesting that genotoxic stress might drive natural graying as well. –ScienceNOW Daily News

So basically, genotoxic stress — that is anything from ultraviolet light to the natural division of the cell itself — damages your cells’ DNA, but it also leads to the “maturing” as it were. If the cell is mature, it is no longer dividing like cells do. If a cell is not dividing, it’s not reproducing itself. Is this early maturation process a defensive move on the part of damaged cells that shut down their reproductive processes in order to not pass on the damage (DNA defect) to its “children”?

Although, truth be told, I’m sure that this research will be used to prevent grey hair, rather than to prevent cancer. Hey, I’m a cynic.

cells, stem cells, grey hair, gray hair, going grey, DNA, cancer, cell division, cell maturation, melanocyte stem cells, Kanazawa University, Emi Nishimura, mice

Scientists have figured out how to use satellite photos to find penguin colonies. Look for the poop. Much like how some future (or alien?) archeologist will search for former human population centers by looking for our massive landfills, researchers that follow the habits of flightless birds are finding new colonies by finding the waste product of said colonies.

Photo montage is from the British Antarctic Survey. The top right satellite shot is of Cape Darnley.

Up until now, most penguin colonies are found by happenstance in a way. The Antarctic winter is quite chilly, and few scientists hang out for it, so when biologists show up in the spring, it’s a matter of luck (or the past use of a spot) that they find the remains of rookeries — most adults have jetted by spring.

I mentioned that penguin researchers may find breeding grounds in the same spot of previous years, but with the changing ice conditions due to atmospheric warming, penguins are on the move. Which means that using the past to find the present isn’t working out so well. Enter satellites.

It’s like Google Earth maps for penguins. But of course, you have to know what you are looking for. Lots and lots of poop.

Penguin biologist Phil Trathan and cartographer Peter Fretwell, both of the British Antarctic Survey, wondered if it was possible to do better by tracking the penguins from space. The birds themselves don’t show up in satellite pictures; their black-and-white bodies are too similar to the white ice with black shadows. Not so with guano. “The poo just sort of stands out at you,” says Trathan. Emperors are the only penguins that breed on the sea ice, so he knows who’s doing the pooping. — Science Mag

From the initial analysis, of the 34 known breeding grounds, six have disappeared. Those six were located in warmer, more northernly areas. If the penguins are moving south to stay cold enough, the problem is that penguins also need to stay near the coast. So this pattern could spell trouble for Emperors and most penguins by extension.

The good news is that the team found 10 new colonies. The population numbers are still hazy at this point, so who knows if the six colonies are now part of the ten new ones or if the ten were always there and never found before now. But the satellite images will be a useful tool in going forward in penguin population studies.

penguins, satellite, satellite images, breeding grounds, Emperor penguin, guano, Antarctica, global warming, climate change, biologists, rookeries, marine mammals

(photo credit: Tom Kleindinst, WHOI)

A Woods Hole grad student, now working at the University of Southern Florida’s Mann Lab for Marine Sensory Biology, has released the finding from a study he conducted on marine mammal brains, and the news is not good. It seems that human’s propensity to use the oceans as a dumping ground (as well as our ineptitude in realizing that dangerous chemicals don’t just go away when we no longer see them) has resulted in bio-accumulation of some nasty substances in marine mammals.

Yes, again with the flame retardants…

Eric Montie went to work with Environment Canada to “learn the painstaking techniques required to extract and to quantify more than 170 different pollutants and their metabolites.” He brought back the methods to Woods Hole and started analyzing the brains of 11 whales and dolphins and a grey seal. The animals came from around the Cape Cod area, and darned if you didn’t guess, some not-so-nice chemicals were present in the cerebrospinal fluid as well as the grey matter.

And yes, our dear friends DDT, an overly effective pesticide that has been banned around the world, but doesn’t seem to want to go away; PBDEs, or flame retardants which are only know being scrutinzed despite their ubiquity; and PCBs, again a banned chemical family that just doesn’t go away have all been found in the marine mammalian brain studied by Montie. In fact, the levels of PCBs in the seal were in the parts per million, which may seem small, but according to Montie, “you rarely find parts per million levels of anything in the brain.”

So what’s the big deal? Well, PCBs kind of trick a body into thinking that they are thyroid hormones and instead of healthy and needed thyroid hormones, the body gets PCBs. That can lead to all sorts of neurological issues and problems when it comes to brain development and can disrupt the sensory functions of mammals like dolphins, seals and whales that really depend on their sense of hearing to live.

Just how these chemicals might impact marine mammal health is something Montie plans to pursue. This summer, Montie, [David] Mann [the man behind the aforementioned Mann Lab], and Dr. Mandy Cook (from Portland University) will partner with scientists from NOAA to test the hearing in dolphins living near a Superfund site in Georgia and compare it to dolphins from locations where ambient concentrations of pollutants are significantly lower. Montie is also working with Frances Gulland, director of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA, to examine how California sea lions’s exposure to PCBs may increase their sensitivity to domoic acid, a naturally produced marine neurotoxin associated with “red tides.” –WHOI news release

Great…

Related: Pelicans Dropping From Sky for Reasons Unknown

marine biology, marine science, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, Eric Montie, Environment Canada, University of Southern Florida, David Mann, seals, whales, dolphins, brains, chemicals, DDT, PCB, PBDE, flame retardants, pesticides, cerebrospinal fluid, contaminants, ocean, pollution, banned substances, bio-accumulation, thyroid, hormones, senses, hearing, health, mammals, dumping

Maybe you are aware that the US Congress is finally attempting to address anthropogenic climate change, and by that I mean to say that the US government is maybe poised to possibly pass legislation in support of not only lowering carbon emissions, but also promoting renewable and clean energy sources.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee (ECC for the rest of this post) has approved H.R. 2454 — the American Clean Energy and Security Act — and has reported the bill to the House, for what will undoubtedly be a fun time to start watching C-SPAN. The vote just among the members of the Energy and Commerce Committee was 33 to 25, which yes, is a decisive victory within the microcosm of a congressional body, but still, methinks that the fight against “clean energy” legislation will be, ahem, dirty.

However, maybe this country has had enough of the Bush Era thinking that if we bury our heads in the sand, it won’t get as hot. The ECC was urged by many an environmental group to send the bill to the House, but you might be surprised at how many energy and manufacturing companies have given their support to the proposed legislation. Energy companies like Shell and BP, Duke Energy and Entergy; manufacturing concerns like Alcoa and GE, DuPont and Dow Chemical . Even the Big 3 automakers are signed on to support reducing the US carbon emissions by 83% by 2050 (working off 2005 levels).

Now, whether you blame human activity for global climate change issues or not, this move toward clean, renewable energy is smart and forward-thinking. Oil, gas and coal will run out one day. Why not do some planning now to make the transition easier for everyone when that time comes? Not only that, but fossil fuels almost invariably result in some form of waste that pollutes our land, air and water. I’ve never heard of a wind turbine leaching heavy metals into the groundwater supply.

Then again, I don’t want to give too much credit to Congress just yet…but hey, it’s a start.

Committee on Energy and Commerce, Energy and Commerce Committee, House, US, United States government, climate change legislation, Congress, global warming, renewable energy, fossil fuels, clean energy, green jobs, carbon emissions

Now we have to wonder what is replaing the BPA...

Last week, Chicago one-upped the FDA by banning Bisphenol-A in products like sippy-cups, baby bottles, and all those things that parents think are safe for their babies, because you know, if they were not safe, the Government would do something about them, right?

Wrong.

The debate over BPA is long and storied, and one of those he-said-she-said affairs. The FDA has held true to one line: That there is little evidence that BPA is harmful to humans. And that the amounts of BPA exposure are so insignificant that no one needs to worry their pretty little heads about it.

But that doesn’t exactly fill the rest of us with confidence…In fact, it seems that even the Chicago ban faced pressure from the American Chemistry Lobby, I mean, American Chemistry Council. And you know money talks in governmental circles. Looking at Chicago as a microcosm for the whole debate over BPA is telling as to what kind of fight we have on our hands when it comes to protecting our kids (and ourselves).

From the Sun-Times:

Last year, [Manny] Flores [(1st)] and Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) got nowhere with a more sweeping version that would have banned nearly all products made with BPA used by children under the age of 7.

The softer version approved Wednesday narrows the ban to “any empty bottle or cup specifically designed to be filled with food or liquid to be used primarily by a child under the age of 3.”

Former Ald. Terry Gabinski (32nd), one of Burke’s closest friends, is a registered lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council. The group has publicly lobbied against the ban and behind-the-scenes for a softer version of it. — Chicago Sun-Times

Will the Chicago BPA ban end up repealed like the Chicago Fois Gras ban? Well, fois won’t kill you, and maybe neither will BPA. But — and maybe I am crazy in thinking this — if there is a chance of this chemical leaching from our sippy-cups into the high-fructose corn syrup-laden juices we feed our kids, then shouldn’t we err on the side of caution? There is no real need to produce plastics that contain BPA, so why are we clinging to them like our guns and religion?

Good job, Chicago. Even if your ban is largely symbolic, it is step in the safer direction.

Bisphenol A, BPA, Bisphenol-A, plastics, baby products, baby bottles, children, childrens health, chemicals, FDA, Chicago, ban, dangerous chemicals, government

A little history…Methyl Isocyanate is an ester of isocyanic acid, a volatile and poisonous substance made up of one Hydrogen, one Nitrogen, one Carbon and one oxygen atom. You’d think that those four elements would produce nothing but good, but then you’d be wrong. Methyl Isocyanate is used in making pesticides such as Bayer’s trademarked Sevin (carbaryl), among other pesticides used in industrialized agriculture.

Methyl isocyanate is not the only chemical that Bayer can use to produce carbaryl, but it is the cheapest. So you see, it’s not that Bayer has to use MIC, it’s that it is more profitable to use MIC. And we all know that profits come before human health and safety.

A plant making Sevin in India accidentally released MIC into the surrounding area of the then-Union Carbide Ltd plant outside of Bhopal back in 1984. The death toll from that accident is estimated to be around 16,000. One of the consequences of one of the worst industrial accidents ever was that Union Carbide and other chemical companies phased out MIC as a major ingredient in those yummy pesticide.

Everyone except Bayer, that is. And then, last year, an explosion at a Bayer CropScience plant in Institute, West Virginia narrowly avoided another disaster. The fire at the plant was a mere 80 feet from the above-ground MIC storage tank. At the time, Bayer assured the public that the MIC was in an underground storage tank far away from the fire.

But it seems that Bayer was lying. And because they lied, that meddling Committee on Energy and Commerce is looking into why Bayer still feels the need to keep so much MIC around. The Institute, WV plant is the only plant in the US that still has a substantial (more than 10,000 pounds) inventory of MIC.

Bayer is being asked (nicely) to give the CEC an explanation why it has so much MIC lying around, if Bayer has even begun to think about not using MIC, and what it would cost to switch to alternative chemicals. I hope that the cost estimate is not being included, so we taxpayers can cough up the dough to help a very rich company pay for being safe.

Bayer, pesticide, Bhopal, gas, MIC, methyl isocyanate, toxic substance, chemicals, agriculture, India, industrial accident, Congress

Entergy Corporation, based in Louisiana, is blessed with natural gas and a sizable “fleet” of nuclear power generation stations. And we all know that nuclear power is clean* and natural gas, according to energy experts like Sarah Palin, is clean and green. And that means that Entergy produces electricity from some of the cleaner sources around in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.

*But not in terms of radioactive waste that lasts and lasts.

So, let’s say that Congress passes cap’n trade legislation that would auction off credits for companies to be allowed to produce carbon emissions. A company like Entergy would have to buy fewer of those credits or permits in order to cover its rather low levels of emissions. That means less costs are passed down to you, the consumer. That makes Entergy’s Leonard happy.

However, Entergy has not done much to expand its renewable power portfolio. And one form of the cap and trade law could include a government mandate as to how much renewable energy a company has to produce. That would make Leonard sad. He doesn’t think the Fed should mandate this renewable component, as he feels that the free market will prevail in encouraging companies to invest in the most economical renewables (if there are any in Leonard’s eyes) in order to decrease costs for pollution permits.

And then, there is the whole idea of the Fed giving away the credits to companies based on its individual emissions based on say a year chosen at random, like 2005. And if your company can reduce its emissions and not have to use all of those permits, your company can sell them to companies that still pollute. Well, Entergy had already reduced what emissions they could have by 2005, because they were responsible and did it way back in 2000. So, now all that hard work they already did, when it was voluntary, will work against them, as Entergy will get a smaller amount of credits to sell off to the the coal plant down the street, who never did anything in the first place or even now to reduce its emissions levels.

So, this insight into how one energy company views the current debate over cap and trade legislation is interesting to me, but also rather irritating. Think about it. Entergy is but one of many, many large and rich corporations that produce energy and do in it a way that pollutes the Earth. Each company is going to do its best to pressure someone in Congress to adjust, rewrite or add an amendment to the cap and trade law, if it even passes, that will be advantageous to that company, perhaps to the detriment to another company, who will then fight the new law. I just don’t see cap and trade passing any time soon, but then again, I’m not sure if it will make a difference in the long run.

And then again again, it’s not fair to blame the energy companies. They are only giving us what we want — cheap energy and a lot of it.

Reading the article in the Times-Picayune, I noted that Entergy is spending more than 4 million dollars on lobbying Congress to pass a cap and trade law that will benefit them. It makes you wonder how much the Coal Industry as a whole is spending to fight cap and trade altogether? What if all that money were spent on research and development of new technologies, more efficient energy infrastructure, and a better way to deal with spent nuclear fuel?

energy, Entergy, electricity, renewable energy, nuclear power, natural gas, Louisiana, cap and trade, Congress, carbon emissions, pollution

Scientists in Spain may have made a bee-line in the fight to save the honeybees. One possible reason for the devastating Colony Collapse Disorder is a really, really small parasite called Nosema ceranae. It is not totally agreed on in the scientific community what indeed has or is causing CCD in the honeybee populations in Europe and the US, but more data and more testing is showing evidence of an Asian parasite-strain, the Nosema ceranae, jumped from the Apis cerana, or the Asian Honeybee, to Apis mellifera, otherwise known as the Western Honeybee.

However, the CCD and nosema ceranae relationship is not altogether understood, as the bees are usually not analyzed until after the colony has collapsed. It may very well be that pesticides or mites or something else is causing the deaths, and maybe the nosema ceranae are only moving in once the bees are weakened.

But Spanish scientists have found a way to treat this microscopic pest, and they did is successfully in two colonies that losing their numbers.

They found no evidence of any other cause of the disease (such as the Varroa destructor, IAPV or pesticides) other than infection with Nosema ceranae. The researchers then treated the infected surviving under-populated colonies with the antibiotic drug, flumagillin and demonstrated complete recovery of all infected colonies. –Compute Scotland

Is it wrong of me to still want to blame pesticides?

honeybees, colony collapse disorder, CCD, Spain, nosema ceranae, Western honeybees, Asiatic honeybee, parasite, pesticides, Apis cerana, Apis mellifera

As a life-long night owl that continues to try and switch her clock around to join the rest of the world on that early morning commute to school, work, or whatever it is we humans do early in the morning, I have to say it’s difficult for me. I find that when I do change my sleep schedule, and start rising at say 8 or 9 in the morning, but the time it rolls around to 11pm, I am falling asleep in my chair. Nothing stops it — caffeine, sugar, slaps to the face.

Not that that is all that strange, right? If I fall asleep at 11 or 12 at night, I will have ample time for 7 to 8 hours of sleep. However, a research team at the University of Liège in Belgium has found that those early risers are less alert later in the day that those that rise late and stay up throughout the night.

Um, duh. I could have told you that without the grant money.

No, but seriously, the experiment is not as simple as I just made it. Actually, what the researchers did was test both early risers and night owls at similar times throughout the day according to how long they have been awake. So testing was a few hours after waking, a few hours after that, and you get the point. And according to the data, the night owls stay more alert later into their day as compared to the early-to-bed-early-to-rise crowd.

Could this be the evidence I need to insist that I really do need to sleep in until 11am?

Unfortunately, it’s a man’s world, and men must be early risers. Because despite the late-risers superior alertness, this whole society seems to value getting an early start to the work day. I know that it all stems from our agrarian roots, but come on, we are not all farmers. What if we as a society just push the start of the work day back a few hours? Could we then evolve over time into a race of super-alert accountants, doctors and nuclear technicians?

Maybe I’ll just move to Spain.

sleep, night owls, early birds, sleep study, University of Liege

Thank you, CBS, for covering this charade foisted on the American Public for far-too-long. I can bitch and bitch about coal, but when it comes right down to it, nothing is going to change anytime soon.

What I don’t get is this fanatical need for the US Energy Kings to push the “grow the economy” paradigm. Maybe our economy is built on the same inflated values of Wall Street. It’s like we just found this cheap energy trough, and like pigs, we are stuffing ourselves with no thought to the consequences (like why is the farmer fattening us up in the first place?).

I am seeing the same scary consumptive trend in anything eco- or green or earth-friendly. Earth friendly would mean cutting back on all that sh*t you buy every day. If we all go out and replace our entire wardrobes with organic cotton and bamboo, we are still creating a waste stream that undermines our efforts to live lightly. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it. That’s as eco- as you can get, but then that doesn’t “grow our economy,” does it?

Back to 60 Minutes…it’s about time that a major news organization calls our the Emperor’s nudity. Will it make a difference? Ah, heck no. Seriously, I hate to be pessimistic here, but we are doomed. Like I mentioned yesterday, we are not all going to die, but it’s going to be bad.

Here’s my great idea, and you heard it here first. Use carbon dioxide in fission-style reactions and capture the energy released while producing oxygen and carbon monoxide, which can then be converted into liquid fuels. Oh, crap, someone beat me to it.