Rats, Humans and Strokes

From: Andy Soos, ENN
Published January 15, 2010 11:37 AM

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A stroke (sometimes called an acute cerebrovascular attack) is the rapidly developing loss of brain function(s) due to a disturbance or loss in the blood supply to the brain. As a result, the affected area of the brain is unable to function, leading to inability to move one or more limbs on one side of the body, inability to understand or formulate speech, or inability to see one side of the visual field.

Two new studies by University of California (UC) Irvine biologists have found that a protein naturally occurring in humans restores motor function in rats after a stroke. Administered directly to the brain, the protein restores 99 percent of lost movement; if it's given through the nose, 70 percent of lost movement is regained. Untreated rats improve by only 30 percent.

"No drugs exist that will help a stroke after a few days. If you have a stroke, you don't have many treatment options," said James Fallon, psychiatry & human behavior professor and senior coauthor of the studies. "Now we have evidence there may be therapies that can repair damage to a significant degree long after the stroke. It's a completely unexpected and remarkable finding, and it's worth trying in humans."

A stroke is typically treated with a clot buster drug and is usually combined with supportive care (speech and language therapy, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. Secondary prevention with antiplatelet drugs (aspirin and often dipyridamole), blood pressure control, and statins may also be used.

The UC studies, carried out by postdoctoral researcher Magda Guerra-Crespo, chronicle the success of a small protein called transforming growth factor alpha, which plays critical tissue-forming and developmental roles in humans from just after conception through birth and into old age.

"TGF alpha has been studied for two decades in other organ systems but never before has been shown to reverse the symptoms of a stroke." Guerra-Crespo said. No lasting side effects were observed in the conducted studies.

In an earlier study scientists sought to learn whether TGF alpha administered directly to the brain could help rats with a stroke induced loss of limb function, typically on one side, as is seen in humans.

When put inside a cylinder, healthy rats will jump up with both front legs, but stroke impaired rats will use just one leg, favoring the injured side. When given a choice of directions to walk, impaired rats will move toward their good side which is an easily observed symptom.

One month after the study began rats suffered an induced stroke; some rats were then injected with TGF alpha. Within a month, they had regained their motor function. Rats that did not receive treatment improved just 30 percent.

Scientists examined the rats' brains and found that TGF alpha was stimulating neuron growth. First, it prompted adult stem cells in the brain to divide, creating more cells. Those cells then turned into brain cells and moved to the injured part of the brain, replacing neurons lost to the stroke. These new neurons, the scientists believe, helped restore motor function.

In the newest study, appearing online January 11 in the Journal of Stroke & Cerebrovascular Diseases, scientists placed TGF alpha in the rats' noses, simulating a nasal spray. They used a slightly different chemical version of the protein to render it more stable on its journey to the brain. After a month, the injured rats had regained 70 percent of their function, indicating that the intranasal method works well.

TGF Alpha promises the potential for improved post stroke treatment and recovery. Whether the TGF Alpha will work as well in humans is to be determined.

For further information please go to: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/22648

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Magnitude 7.0 Earthquake Hits Haiti

From: Haroon Siddique, Guardian UK and USGS
Published January 13, 2010 06:56 AM

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The earthquake that has hit Haiti, raising fears that thousands have been killed, is the latest in a long line of natural disasters to befall a country ill equipped to deal with such events.

Hurricanes and flooding are perennial concerns for the poorest country in the western hemisphere, which has time and again been dependent on foreign aid in emergencies.

In 1963 hurricane Flora, the sixth deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, devastated the island. The US weather bureau estimated the death toll at 5,000 and the cost of damage to property and crops at between $125m and $180m.

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The country was struck by two disasters in 2004. In May heavy rains caused flooding that killed more than 2,000 people. Four months later mudslides and flooding caused by hurricane Jeanne, the 12th deadliest Atlantic hurricane, killed more than 3,000 people, mostly in the town of Gonaives.

Tragedy struck again in 2008 when four storms — tropical storm Fay, hurricane Gustav, hurricane Hanna and hurricane Ike — dumped heavy rains on the country. Around 1,000 people died and 800,000 were left homeless. The number of people affected by the storms was put at 800,000 — almost 10% of the population — with the damage estimated at $1bn.

The January 12, 2010, Haiti earthquake occurred in the boundary region separating the Caribbean plate and the North America plate. This plate boundary is dominated by left-lateral strike slip motion and compression, and accommodates about 20 mm/y slip, with the Caribbean plate moving eastward with respect to the North America plate.

Haiti occupies the western part of the island of Hispaniola, one of the Greater Antilles islands, situated between Puerto Rico and Cuba. At the longitude of the January 12 earthquake, motion between the Caribbean and North American plates is partitioned between two major east-west trending, strike-slip fault systems -- the Septentrional fault system in northern Haiti and the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault system in southern Haiti.

The location and focal mechanism of the earthquake are consistent with the event having occurred as left-lateral strike slip faulting on the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault system. This fault system accommodates about 7 mm/y, nearly half the overall motion between the Caribbean plate and North America plate.

The Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault system has not produced a major earthquake in recent decades. The EPGFZ is the likely source of historical large earthquakes in 1860, 1770, 1761, 1751, 1684, 1673, and 1618, though none of these has been confirmed in the field as associated with this fault.

For more information: Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/13/haiti-earthquake-history-disasters

USGS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rja6.php#maps

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Top 10 Tech Tools for Sustainable Eating

Image via Wikipedia

posted by Megan, selected from Planet Green Jan 10, 2010 2:07 pm

filed under: Conscious Consumer, Diet & Nutrition, Food & Recipes, General Health, Green 101, On The Go, 100 mile challenge, notakeout, online sustainable eating tools

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By Jaymi Heimbuch, Planet Green

Going green in the kitchen can be one of the biggest ways to reduce your impact on the planet. Luckily, in our tech-savvy world, we have access to some great online and electronic tools that help us eat more eco-friendly without adding any hassle to our daily lives. Here are ten resources that will help you make your kitchen an earth-friendly and incredibly appetizing place to hang out.

Favorite Online Resources

1. NoTakeOut
NoTakeOut is a great website for super easy meal planning, shopping, and cooking. It makes cooking at home so easy that take-out seems like an unhealthy hassle. You can subscribe to have a recipe sent to you daily. The ingredient lists are short, the instructions clear, and there are lots of options for going organic and vegetarian.

2. Organic A-Z Videos
Delving into one ingredient per alphabet letter, you’ll learn all about a staple organic ingredient - and what to do with it - in each video. Check out one short clip online per day and learn about how easy it is to incorporate organic food into your diet.

3. 50 Ways to Eat Green
This article is chock full of tips for eating more healthfully and sustainably. And when the list starts out with “Eat More Chocolate,” we’re all eyes and ears! It’s an online article you’ll want to bookmark and reference as you go green in the kitchen.

4. 100 Mile Challenge
Okay, so this one isn’t so easy. In fact, it’s tough, but it’s one of the most impactful things you can do to make your diet more planet-friendly. And there is indeed online help. Planet Green has a 100 Mile Challenge site that can lend support if you decide to become a locavore and stick within a 100 mile radius for all your food purchases.

5. Green Fork Blog
We love this blog for all the helpful advice it lends on how to green your eating. Green Fork highlights leaders in the green food industry and offer eco-conscious tips. It’s hosted by the Eat Well Guide, a handy online database of small-scale farms, restaurants, and other green food outlets throughout the U.S., which is another must-know online resource for sustainable eating.

6. The Daily Plate
Counting calories isn’t just for trimming your waistline. It’s also an important part of lightening your environmental footprint. Eating less means literally consuming fewer resources. Use The Daily Plate to find out what calorie intake you should have to maintain a healthy weight, then track your caloric intake each day to make sure you’re being as healthy as possible for both you and the planet.

Favorite Phone Apps

These five iPhone apps are great options for easy ways to green up your food consumption. If you don’t have an iPhone, there is likely a version of these apps for other smart phone devices like Blackberries and Android phones.

7. Harvest
Harvest provides tips and techniques for choosing the best produce in a store or market, from how to test a watermelon for ripeness, to how to store garlic for optimum freshness. Makes buying fresh foods easier so you can skip packaged meals. This app runs $2.99.

8. Locavore
Also priced at $2.99, Locavore helps you eat local food when it’s in season. Find out what foods are in season while you’re at the market, so you know that you’re buying as responsibly as possible. We’d love it to also feature a farmers’ market finder, since these markets usually carry in-season produce.

9. Foodle
This app is a shopping list that remembers what you like best and helps you locate items nearby. It provides vegetarian and vegan friendly food suggestions to add to your list. It’s on the expensive side at $4.99, but if it saves you trips to the store, and guides you towards a vegetarian or vegan option whenever possible, then it’ll make up for the price in your reduced carbon footprint.

10. Seafood Guide
Finding sustainable seafood is a really big deal for ensuring our oceans stay healthy. But it can also mean standing in a store freezer section or butcher counter hemming and hawwing about which is the best choice for both you and the planet. Instead, quickly pick sustainably caught fish in restaurants and markets with this app from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It tells you which fish are safe, which are good alternatives, and which to avoid buying or eating. Grab this app for a mere $0.99.

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McDonald's To Fund Cow Methane Study--Can We Trust the Results or Ourselves?

by:

Nancy Roberts

The UK Guardian reports that McDonald's is funding a three-year study of cows on 350 British farms to look for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. The methane emitted from cows and other livestock is a significant factor in global warming, according to multiple studies, and the British government has asked industry to see what can be done to mitigate the problem. The study will be conducted by an independent consulting entity, the E-CO2 project. Over three years researchers will regularly measure greenhouse gas emissions on the farms and specialists will advise on ways to reduce the methane levels.

How far would McDonald's to toward envisioning the kind of radical change in its offerings that might make a real difference? It is tempting to roll one's eyes and view McDonald's as the corporate devil, and I have certainly done my share of dismissive shrugs. However, any progress in understanding cause and effect of greenhouse gas emissions is useful. McDonald's is doing (part of) its job in funding the project, but it is really up to all of us "non experts" to ask the tougher questions:

Can You Bite the Hand That Funds You?
Can those performing a study funded by a multinational corporation be trusted to come up with results that might displease the people with the purse strings? Is it asking too much of business not to expect a "return" for their investment in green or environmental research and good citizenship? While I do not impugn the morals of the researchers, it is only human not to bite the hand that feeds you.

Who Is Blowing Smoke?
By examining the symptoms (methane emissions) are we avoiding the tougher questions around what is causing the emissions? Cows (and indeed, humans) emit methane in the process of digestion; but variations of diet and the sheer number of animals, driven by demand for dairy and beef, has made livestock, by some estimates, the cause of 18% of global warming. Rather than accepting the methane and trying to mitigate it, are there ways to cut down on the number of cows?

What's Normal?
When did eating meat two or three times a day become normal? In many cultures today, meat is an occasional luxury. In the U.S., per capita meat consumption has risen from 125 pounds in 1950 to 201 pounds per person per year in 2007, in a period where we have seen increases in obesity, heart disease and other illnesses of poor nutrition. And the western diet is being adopted by more people globally, increasing the demand for meat. What chance do we have to instill a cultural change, a shift away from a norm of eating four pounds of meat a week per person?

The food journalist Michael Pollan is an inspiration when it comes to fortifying oneself against the advertising industry and the corporate titans of processed food. His book In Defense of Food contains the simplest rules of all, and sometimes the hardest to follow, as he promotes mindful eating of food prepared from fresh products, mostly vegetables and fruits. His mantra--Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.--is a challenge to all that McDonald's currently stands for. It is simple, to the point, and a challenge to all of us to eat consciously to improve our health and to mitigate global warming and global inequity. And if enough of us change how we eat, McDonald's will follow our lead.

Read more: food, meat, environment, global warming

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How Cold Is It?

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It is very cold in most of the US this winter. It brings to mind is it so cold that you can freeze to death as well as what happened to global warming? Cooling as well as warming trends have happened before and will happen again. Back in the 1970's for example winters turned significantly colder for awhile.

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Meteorologists are quick to point out that reliable U.S. weather data goes back only to the late 1800s, so it's normal for records of various types to be broken every year, somewhere, when dealing with such a relatively brief data set. Any given day or year may set set a record. For global warming it is the long term trend that is important.

When cold air hits your body, blood will move away from your skin, fingers and toes and towards the inner core. This process is called vasoconstriction, and it helps limit the amount of heat you lose to the environment. The opposite effect is called vascodilation where blood goes to the skin and heat is lost to the cold air (though you feel warm). This is what happens when one drinks too much alcohol.

Shivering also occurs when you get cold. Major shivering also occurs when your body core temperature drops very low. This is called hypothermia. This normally will not happen excedt under severe and prolonged exposure.

If you're wet and cold, your body loses heat up to 25 times faster. So being in wet clothing may cause more damage than just being in cold weather. Even sweat may do this.

The wind will also cool a person. In summer it a a cool refreshing breeze. In winter it is called wind chill.

Normal core body temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (F). Mild hypothermia sets in at about 95 degrees F. Below 70 degrees F, you are said to have profound hypothermia and death can occur. A person in hypothermia may be unconscious and may appear dopey or intoxicated.

The record for the lowest body temperature at which an adult has been known to survive is 56.7 degrees F, which occurred after the person was submersed in cold, icy water, according to Castellani of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine.

Frostbite, an injury caused by freezing, is more common in everyday scenarios. This is because fingers and toes are more easily isolated from the body higher temperatures.Since frostbite is brought on by freezing, you can't get frostbite if the air temperature is above 32 degrees F. "It takes a wind chill temperature of around minus 15 degrees [F] where you start to see an increase in the incident of frostbite," Castellani said.

For further information go to: http://www.livescience.com/health/100107-freeze-to-death.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+livescience%2Fhealthscitech+%28LiveScience.com+Health+SciTech%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Protect America's Wild Horses

Image via Wikipedia

Protect America's Wild Horses
Target: U.S. Senate
Sponsored by: Care2.com

Federal land throughout the American West is home to thousands of healthy wild horses. Yet as herds continue to grow, Bureau of Land Management officials continue to trap hundreds of wild horses – condemning many of them to live the rest of their lives in holding pens.

Recently, the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed the Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act -- a bill working to protect wild horses. The ROAM Act would step up fertility control measures, encourage more adoptions and provide as much as 19 million additional acres for the wild animals to roam.

81-Year-Old Fasts at the W.Va. Capitol to Abolish Mountaintop Removal

photograph (c) antrim caskey 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: 304 854 7372
Email: news@climategroundzero.org

CHARLESTON, W.Va.–Roland Micklem, 81, will begin a fast at the West Virginia State Capitol on Monday, Nov. 30. It will continue for an indeterminate period of time, and Micklem has neither set demands nor preconditions for its termination.

Micklem spent half a century as a naturalist, teacher and environmental writer. The loss of biodiversity caused by mountaintop removal is a focus of his activism.

“The loss of so many once common and beloved species has been traumatic and depressing, depressing to an extent that has resulted in a loss of enthusiasm for a field of study that had stoked my fires in bygone years,” Micklem writes in an open letter, explaining his motives for the fast, published on Climate Ground Zero’s web site.

Micklem organized and led over 30 people on the 25-mile Senior Citizen’s March to End Mountaintop Removal, which began at the state capitol on Oct. 8 and ended at the gates of Mammoth Coal in eastern Kanawha County on Oct. 12. This march followed Micklem’s participation in two acts of nonviolent civil resistance–the June 23 rally at Marsh Fork Elementary School and a blockade of the entrance to Massey Energy’s regional headquarters in Boone County on Sept. 9. At the Marsh Fork Rally, he was arrested alongside distinguished NASA climate scientist James Hansen, actress Darryl Hannah, Goldman Prize Winner Judy Bonds and dozens of concerned citizens.

His fast begins one week before a coalition of West Virginians and allies converge at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to demand enforcement of the Clean Water Act and an end to blasting on Coal River Mountain.

“This is a prolonged act of mourning, not only for the mountains, but for all of God’s Creation–plants, animals, nature–that has been callously exploited and abused to satisfy the selfish wants of a single species,” stated Micklem, a devout Christian.

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