GEN-ERIC News

Strains of salmonella bacteria flown as part of a space shuttle experiment last year grew more virulent in orbit, providing researchers with new insights about how to prevent and cure infectious diseases. There was no chance the shuttle crew that flew with the super bug would get sick, though Salmonella typhimurium typically is to blame for food poisoning on Earth. The bacteria was contained in a special chamber throughout the 12-day flight of shuttle Atlantis in September 2006. Post-flight analysis suggest that changes in fluid flows around the bacteria caused by microgravity affected how the Salmonella’s genes made proteins, making it more deadly than identical strains grown simultaneously in ground-based units at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A slightly greater number of males than females are born worldwide every year. In recent decades, although there are still more baby boys born than girls, there has been an apparent decline in the ratio of male to female newborns in several industrialized countries, including Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Japan and the United States. That has led researchers to ask: Are there any factors that can influence the probability of giving birth to a baby boy or girl? A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, found that mothers who experienced an increase in weight from the beginning of the first pregnancy to the beginning of the second pregnancy may be slightly more likely to give birth to a baby boy during their second pregnancy. The study appears online September 24, 2007 in the journal Fertility & Sterility. “The results are provocative because few biological factors are known in humans to influence the chances of either conceiving or carrying to term a baby boy or girl. Our study suggests that maternal nutritional factors might play a role,” said Eduardo Villamor, assistant professor of international nutrition at HSPH and lead author of the study.

The following was revealed on the POWER OF 10 episode broadcast on Sunday, September 23:
– 36% of Americans said if they saw a group of Arab men board a plane, they would not get on the flight
– 79% of American men said if they had to kill the cow themselves, they would still eat hamburgers
– 47% of Americans have gone skinny dipping
– 15% of Americans pay someone to regularly clean their house
– 64% of Americans said even if they were in a financial bind, they would not move back in with their parents
– 62% of Americans said if their friend’s newborn baby was ugly, they would tell them their baby was beautiful anyway
– 77% of American men said they would not want to be President Bush’s son-in-law
– 17% of Americans would trade in their current car for the Batmobile
– 95% of American men said they usually hold doors open for women
– 19% of Americans talk in baby talk to their significant other
– 37% of Americans have picked up a hitchhiker
– 63% of Americans said the purpose of sex is recreation, instead of procreation
– 41% of Americans did not go on a honeymoon right after they got married
– 37% of Americans have collected unemployment insurance
– 11% of Americans think it is important for the United States to stay in Iraq and finish the job they started

The brains of people with seasonal depression may be too efficient at bundling away a key chemical, a new study suggests. The finding in people with (SAD) backs the prevailing theory about the biochemical causes of depression, and could give clues into new ways to treat the condition. The prevailing theory of depression is that affected people do not have enough of certain neurotransmitters called monoamines – serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine – in the spaces between neurons. Most modern antidepressants work by blocking the absorption of these neurotransmitters back into the cell. However, there is little agreement on why levels are inadequate in the first place. It could be that depressed people produce lower volumes of the neurotransmitters, or they could break them down too rapidly. Or it could be that the neurotransmitters are removed from the junction between neurons, called the synaptic cleft, too quickly. Matthaeus Willeit and Harald Sitte at the University of Vienna in Austria and their colleagues now have evidence for the last of these – that serotonin is being removed too efficiently.

The Harvard Coop bookstore had the police remove students who were writing down the ISBNs of textbooks, in defiance of the store’s ridiculous position that ISBNs are “property.” Of course, the store is private property (albeit property owned by a co-op that is supposed to be serving Harvard students) and they’re free to demand that students leave the premises, but busting students whose “crime” is writing down detailed information about which books Harvard students are required to read in order to get their degree is hardly appropriate for a store that nominally serves the students’ interests.

Dr John Zhu, Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering, aims to develop a carbon nanotube (CNT) membrane for gas separation that will work like a sieve to separate high volumes of methane or carbon dioxide from other gases. Dr Zhu said that the CNT technology was exciting because it would trap moving gases up to 100 times faster than other gas separation techniques and could therefore be used by large-scale plants such as power stations. “Conventional membranes such as polymeric and metal membranes, porous silica and carbon molecular sieves all show a trade-off between how well they separate gases and how much gas they can process,” he said. “The CNT membranes can both separate effectively and process large volumes of gas, making them superior to conventional membranes at the large scale required for coal-fired power plants or natural gas processing. “If the technology is successful, it may be able to significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced through power generation.