GEN-ERIC News

James Lovelock, the British planetary scientist and originator of the Gaia hypothesis, has endorsed a cure for the “pathology” of global warming, but has admitted that it could make matters worse. The idea is to tether millions of vertical pipes across the oceans to pump nutrient-rich deep water to the surface. These waters would fertilise the growth of algae, which in turn fix carbon dioxide. The pipes, reaching to depths of 200 metres, would have flap valves at the bottom operated by the energy of waves, which would push deep water up the pipe. The concept, put forward with Chris Rapley of the Science Museum in London, is based on a proposal by Philip Kithil of the Santa Fe-based corporation Atmocean. Kithil suggested at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union last year that 100 million 10-metre diameter pumps across the oceans could capture one-quarter of human-made CO2 emissions.

For more than a decade, Steve Stice has dedicated his research using embryonic stem cells to improving the lives of people with degenerative diseases and debilitating injuries. His most recent discovery, which produces billions of neural cells from a few stem cells, could now aid in national security. “It’s like a canary-in-a-coal-mine scenario,” said Stice, a University of Georgia animal science professor and Georgia Research Alliance eminent scholar in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. In collaboration with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Stice hopes to use his recently developed neural cell kits to detect chemical threats. “They have a device that looks like a small tool box that contains neural cells and can detect changes in their electrical activity,” Stice said. “When these cells’ activity is altered, you know there’s something present that shouldn’t be and they don’t like it.”

One of the largest individual studies of the effects of alcohol on the risk of breast cancer shows that it makes no difference whether a woman drinks wine, beer or spirits (liquor). It is the alcohol itself (ethyl alcohol) and the quantity consumed that increases breast cancer risk. In fact, the increased breast cancer risk from drinking three or more alcoholic drinks a day is similar to the increased breast cancer risk from smoking a packet of cigarettes or more a day, according to Kaiser Permanente researchers Yan Li, MD, PhD and Arthur Klatsky, MD.