Photosynthesis Song

DNA Song

This was quite funny. Had a good time in class today.

Swine flu update more updates – First Case in Singapore 27 May 09

Singapore confirms first case of H1N1.

Will just update and revise this post since the situation is rapidly developing. Many decisions to be made concerning trips and traveling overseas for students. It is important to make sound decisions based on solid facts and analysis.

Otterman just posted on the need to be accurate when posting updates and also how to assimilate all the information online. Communicating the Swine influenza A (H1N1) crisis.

Currently we are yellow – Slight human to human transmission and small risk of being imported here.

Latest update in Swine Flu. Over 70 confirmed cases in US, Canada and Mexico. WHO alert level raised up to 4 – which means verified human-to-human transmission able to cause community-level outbreaks. Significant increase in risk of a pandemic.

This is certainly worrying and I have students who are now studying in the states. Hope they will be fine.

Thought this was a good biology lesson to discuss why certain diseases in animal hosts seem to have an easier time when crossing the species barrier to infect humans. We have bird flu, SARS, pigs.. the usual suspects.

Jared Diamond’s article on domestication of plants and animals in Nature Reviews (2002) [Diamond, J. 2002. Evolution, consequences and future of plant and animal domestication. Nature 418 pp700 - 707] offered a keen insight on this phenomena.

“The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute, highly infectious, epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or, if the victim recovers, immunize him/ her for life. Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of agriculture, because they can sustain themselves only in large populations that did not exist before agriculture… The mystery of the origins of many of these diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades, demonstrating that they have evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into close contact 10, 000 years ago…. For instance, measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks..

Update on swine flu – a lecture prepared Dr Rashid from Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Lecture citation: “Just-in-Time Lecture: Swine influenza A (H1N1) Outbreak in US & Mexico: Potential for a Pandemic ,” by Rashid A. Chotani. Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS). Ver 3 – 28 Apr 2009. Updated daily.

Resources:
WHO webpage: Swine Influenze update
Singapore Ministry of Health: MOH
CDC twitter feed: CDCemergnecy

Academic stuff:
New Scientist: Scientists have warned about swine flu for last decade

Swine flu: What you need to know

Swine flu update

Latest update in Swine Flu. Over 70 confirmed cases in US, Canada and Mexico. WHO alert level raised up to 4 – which means verified human-to-human transmission able to cause community-level outbreaks. Significant increase in risk of a pandemic.

This is certainly worrying and I have students who are now studying in the states. Hope they will be fine.

Thought this was a good biology lesson to discuss why certain diseases in animal hosts seem to have an easier time when crossing the species barrier to infect humans. We have bird flu, SARS, pigs.. the usual suspects.

Jared Diamond’s article on domestication of plants and animals in Nature Reviews (2002) [Diamond, J. 2002. Evolution, consequences and future of plant and animal domestication. Nature 418 pp700 - 707] offered a keen insight on this phenomena.

“The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute, highly infectious, epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or, if the victim recovers, immunize him/ her for life. Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of agriculture, because they can sustain themselves only in large populations that did not exist before agriculture… The mystery of the origins of many of these diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades, demonstrating that they have evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into close contact 10, 000 years ago…. For instance, measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks..

How the concept of food miles hurt the planet

It used to be simple. The further the food is away from you, the more ecologically unsound it is as it would have emitted lots more carbon dioxide via transportation (trucks, planes, trucks etc).

Of course nothing is ever simple in ecology, where you get a myriad of inputs influencing the outcomes. So transportation is only one factor contributing to total emissions in food production.

This article from Guardian sums it up nicely.

How the myth of food miles hurts the planet

Ecopath Modeling – Precursor to an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management

This is an excellent example of integrating technology and knowledge for the betterment of using resources and hopefully achieving sustainability.

From NOAA.

Animal Planet

The Animals Save the Planet

Lots to learn from them.

Greater Mousedeer back in Ubin

Greater Mousedeer Sighted in Ubin
. Also the report in Straits Times by Ang Yiying.

Could be from the 7 that was reintroduced in 1997 and never spotted since.

Such is the wonders of Web 2.0. A quick search in google revealed others were ahead before me.

The Biodiversity Crew@NUS – By Siva, who else.

Fig Wasp Symbiosis

An excellent resource on Fig Wasp Symbiosis

The Figweb

Embryonic Stem Cell Therapy Causes Cancer in Teenage Boy

From Discover Blogs, 80 beats

A

new study shows that teenage boy developed cancerous tumors because of the stem cell therapy he received years ago for a rare genetic condition. The boy, now 17, suffered from ataxia telangiectasia, or AT, a neurodegenerative disease that interferes with the part of the brain that controls movement and speech. AT patients do not usually live past their teens or 20s, and the Israeli boy, whose identity was not publicly revealed, was taken to Russia for experimental treatment. The first neural stem cells, taken from fetuses, were first injected into his brain and spinal cord when he was nine, and he received further injections at ages 10 and 12.
His condition deteriorated and he was using a wheelchair by age 13, when he also began to complain of headaches. Tests showed two growths, one pushing on his brain stem and the other on his spinal cord. The tumors were removed in 2006 and his health has since remained stable. But scientists at Tel Aviv University who wanted to determine the origin of the cancer have been in the lab ever since, and their findings have just been published in PLoS Medicine. The team found that the tumor could not have arisen from the boy, because he [has two disease-causing versions of the gene] that causes AT, while the DNA from the tumor cells carried only the normal version [The Scientist].The tumor studied was the one removed from the spinal cord; they could not test the growth that appeared in the brain, but believe it was also caused by the injected tissue. Donor-derived cells might have been able to spark tumours in this patient because people with ataxia telangiectasia often have a weakened immune system, say the researchers. It is not clear whether the stem cell therapy helped his genetic condition [BBC].
The case raises a number of ethical questions. For all the promise, researchers have long warned that they must learn to control newly injected stem cells so they don’t grow where they shouldn’t, and small studies in people are only just beginning [AP]. And, because the patient’s immune system was impaired, it’s not yet clear whether the increased risk of cancer is specific to patients with suppressed immune systems, something particular to the procedure done in Moscow, or a danger with neural stem cell transplantation in general, said Uri Tabori, a pediatric hematologist and oncologist…. “It’s a cautionary tale for studies currently being done in the US and elsewhere,” said [Arnold] Kriegstein [The Scientist], a U.S. stem cell researcher.