An ecologist at theUniversityofHelsinkinamed Ilkka Hanski said that the contact of people with the outside environment is really essential for the development and strenghtening of the immune system. The study that he is leading is very important to a growing urban society especially to the children living in it.

Hanski, together with his colleagues, have investigated and founded the biodiversity hypothesis. To confirm if biodiversity really does create a protection towards such conditions, the team used 118 teenagers to investigate the microbial diversity. The participants in this study have lived in the same house through their entire lives and they were randomly chosen within a 100 by 150 kilometer block in easternFinland. Some participants lived in rural and isolated farms while the rest came from bigger towns. The researchers also considered factors such as having a member of the family who smokes, having pets in the household, and the kind of allergens that the participants were sensitive to make sure that a single allergen wouldn’t affect the bacteria’s health benefits.

The researchers also gathered microbial samples from the subjects’ forearms and then sequenced the DNA to determine the species of microbes that were present. They also surveyed the types and species of plants growing around the participants’ homes. Since the participants are also part or included in a separate long-term study which involves allergy, researchers used that data to determine the connection between allergies and biodiversity.

Since some individuals with allergies are living throughout the study area, authors found out that the allergies have a connection with the amount of biodiversity surrounding the participants’ homes. This means if the surrounding area has more agricultural land and forest, the lower the widespread of such allergies. As for the participants who live near or beside bodies of water or urban areas, they have higher levels of allergies.

The participants who lived in rural areas have higher biodiversity compared to those living in urban areas which also makes them have more species or types of microbes. In comparison, the researchers also reported online at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the number of species/types of uncommon native flowering plants was 25% higher in the yards of healthy participants compare to their allergic counterparts. WhetherFinland’s native plants have something special in them or this research is applicable all-over-the world is still an open question according to Hanski.

Aside from having higher levels of plants biodiversity surrounding their homes, participants from rural areas also have large numbers of microbial species in their skin. Gammaproteobacteria, a group of bacteria, was also predominant on their skin. Acinetobacter, which is a part of this group, can often be found in soil. They are also known to have a higher anti-inflammatory rate which makes the immune system of participants from rural areas ignore the allergens. A pediatrician atLinköping University in Sweden named Thomas Abrahamsson said that these bacteria play a very important role in determining whether children develop allergies or not.

According to Hanski, allergies aren’t the ones that should be concerned here. He also suggests that the presence of microbes in us definitely influences other diseases and even depression. He also said that people living in urban areas might as well use an ointment which contains gammaproteobacteria as a substitute to natural exposure is yet to be seen.

As for Abrahamsson, he thinks that Hanski’s study would be more compelling if the group also analyzed the participants’ gut microbiota. Hanski also pointed out that not all of us can become a farmer. He wanted us to know that the other purpose of the study is for us to be aware of how we are going to develop a planet which carries a lot of allergies. And since urbanization is unavoidable, we should also seriously consider about putting greener areas in the cities.

To discover the bueprint of this underlying gene, Myles together with other scentists collected hair and saliva samples which were to be used for a study. In total they collected 1209 samples from the Islanders at island of Solomon. They used smaller sample because the difference was only blond and dark hair. They used 43 blond and 42 dark haired islanders and compared their genetic make up and found that each group had a different essential gene that was coded for a protein which was involved in the hair pigmentation.Replacing or switching this protein brught about the blond and dark hair. The same process occurs to create blond mice by the reduction of the content of melanin in their fur.

This gene that is mutant is present in 26% percent of the solomon island’s population. The blond haired islanders carry two copies of this gene. Jonathan Friedlaender who is an antropologist att Temple university in Philadephia, Pennysylvania said that the mutation which does not have any advantages may have come by chance to one individual and then it may have drifted to a very high frequency in the Solomon islands. Jonathan who did not participate in the research continued to say that the island was only populated by very small groups of people who could make it across these islands bringing about dramatic effects in the fluctuations of the gene frequency.
The final outcomes of the study as Myles says, will help to deconstruct an assumption of the world about the origins of blond hair. He is hoping that the study will bring attention to the more greater issue of the other novel genes that most of the scientists are missing when they only concetrate on genomes of the Europeans. He said tat i also means that any gene can be found anywhere all over the world in underrepresented populations.

Rasmus Nielson who is a population geneticist from the University of California, Berkely. Believes that millions of dollars are being lost by studying gene traits in Europeans which have already been studied,this study should encourage the study of diverse populations. There are still a lot of knowledge which is to be gained from these studies.

The reoccuringi of evolution of fresh water characteristics in marine sticklebacks has for a long time amazed biologist dealing with evolution. In these fish, the changes have copied themselves very many times, from the time the first fish migrated from the sea into the fresh water bodies in different parts of the nothern region . These include regions like Alaska, California, Europe and Japan.It has been discovered that all the fish that have been found in all these different regiions have gone through the same evolution in all parts, including the kidneys, the shape of the body, the sizes of the eyes, and a number of bony plates on their bodies. An evolutionary biologist from Stanford University on Palo Alto california, David Kingsley has used this evolution to look at and try and explain how these changes occure as a result of the genome.

David and the Broad Institute in Cambridge Massachusetts Kerstin Lindblad-Toh and their collegues began by externining the DNA of a stickleback fish from an Alaska lake to a very high degree of accuracey. With this as the reference sequence guide,the biologists have been able to sequence ten other addittional pairs or stickleback genomes from around the world with a lot of ease. Every pair consisted of a marine stickleback and its fresh water counterpart.

Usually,a gane should be simillar among fish of the same location. Hawerever,if theerre was a recurrence of evolution at a particular area of the genome, then that region should be simillar in all the freshwater fish,no matter the distance from each other. Lingsley’s group examined all the genomes from regions where evolution has taken place repeatedly and found 147 of them, hence conferming that evolution had taken place repeatedly in these fish.

From there, the reaserchers then estgablished the number of regiions that contained the gene. Atfer that they compared the sequences of the different fish. If the gene was the same in all the fish found in fresh water but not the same with the marine fish, the biologist made an assumption that the gene was the one responsible for the adaptation in fresh water. This occured in 17 percent of the regions the group visited. However, 41 percent of the region had no gene, giving a clear indication that the changes that were responsible for the adaptation were regulating the activity of the genes elsewhere in the genome. The other 43 percent consisted of a gene a a regulatory DNA, but since the regulatory DNA was similar among the fresh water fish, the biologist made an assumption that the regulatory changes were at the heart of these adaptations as well.

Many researchers have documented the reoccuring of evolution in other organisms, but the stickleback are different and one of a kind in that this freshwatwer transition has taken place time and again. Erica Bree Rosenblum of the University of California says that the sticklebacks have been a phenomenal system for the understanding of rapid evolution. Berkeley who wasnt involved in the reseach notes that the repeated evolution can occure as a result of reusing the same genetic mechanism repeatedly. As for now, Kingsley has a wide accounting of the reused genetic changes involved in the change from marine to fresh water.He and other reaserchers are trying to find out what traits these changes control.

These stories throw an insight on the how the modern drug discovery mechanism works. Sometimes as an innocent serendipity, that pops up as a side effect during trials, surprising yet extremely valuable when it comes to curing ailments and others times by knowingly testing a drug in order to check whether it can have an impact on any other illness or not. The latter ones involve less expenses and troubles as they are already clinically approved of safety to the humans.

However, if we consider these examples in totality then we will find that the discovery of a drug is more towards the random that it is towards a premeditated outcome. Below is a list of such drugs that raised eyebrows in surprise:

Viagra: This one is probably the most popular drug on the planet owing to the effect it has on the human body. However, what is an affect now was once a side effect and Pfizer (the company that invented it) was almost ditching it in the form of chest pain curing drug when it grew curious on one particular side effect of it. It caused prolonged erections in males. The rest of it is history itself.

Lithium: This is not a drug but a metal used in drugs for curing manic disorders in bipolar patients. It is also a major constituent of the truth serum. Mr John Cade in 1949 was trying to isolate and find the compound that caused mental illness and happened to use Lithium as a control agent for the test. Well he did not find the compound but he sure did find the cure for the mental illness, a mere serendipity.

Minocycline: This drug was originally used for treating acne in humans but now there has been news of this drug being a possible cure for schizophrenia. The news triggered off after the psychotic symptoms of a Japanese man disappeared after being treated with the antibiotic for pneumonia. Clinical trials to verify this have been planned in UK.

These serendipities might be beneficial but we cannot rely upon them to find cure for the hundreds of diseases all around us. Today, the process of drug discovery initiates with the library of thousands of known drugs that are squirted onto the sample cells, for example cancer cells, one by one by a mechanism that keeps on repeating it until one compound kills those cells. That particular compound is isolated for further testing.

With the rapid advancement in the computer technology, drug screening might be done virtually in future. A 3-D computer model can be made of a particular disease-causing enzyme and researchers can search for the molecules that can penetrate and disable it.

Eugenie Scott was also preset in the panel and was a critic. He is the director of National Center for Science Education in Oakland. This place had managed in preaching its evolution teachings. She talked of science as being religious neutral and revealed how every person uses the same method when dealing with science. On the other hand Childress noted that is was important to include what the evangelicals had to say rather than ignoring them. He pointed that science policy discussions could benefit if people allowed the evangelicals to bring in their ideas to be tested as well. He gave an example of some frozen embryos a science project that was fought against by some given evangelicals and thus interrupting an advancement in that field

Scientists and evangelists have in the past found a common ground in different matters that concern us. One of this is the climate change where they have come up with ways to preserve our environments. Another panel speaker by the name James McCarthy who is a professor at Harvard accompanied by Richard Cizik a former pastor traveled all the way to Alaska where they experienced the effects of climate change. Though this was a stand that was largely rejected by many pastors before,when they got to see how people were suffering most of them saw it fit to join hands and promote the climate change course. Though Ciziks ended up losing his job as a pastor but thanks to him the climate change activism many people were touched.

Cizik was heard as saying that pastors who denied climate change have committed a great wrong against the creation. He went ahead to point out that preachers were being misled by religious right groups whose main aim was to to see a disagreement with the learned people. He talked of the political people who strive to keep things that way. Neuroscience was expected to be a great topic of discussions as view by William Newsome a neuroscientist at Stanford university. He talked of conceptions of self, free will and mind. He also seemed to imply that once advancement has been done well man will learn more about himself. This would include things like actions, gene make up and chemical process in the body.

Newsome went ahead to reject the christian stand point on moral soul. He suggested that natural systems found in humans be researched in details, in order to come up with good solid answers about the whole make up of man. When viewed this way he believed it would encourage good discussion with the preachers. Eventually the meeting did come to an end despite both sides trying to come to a common ground yet it didn’t happen. It was evident that however much both sides tried to come together that would never occur. The political game seemed happy with the state of the matter since it always used both religion and science for its own gain.

There are several ways of determination of age and dates for historical samples with some old ways like carbon dating becoming redundant and inaccurate. This only leaves the research archeologist with the option of making guesswork and approximation. A new version of test has however been invented to solve this dating puzzle for silk artifacts in fashion and science. This new chemical technique is made a success courtesy of Mehdi Moini who is a chemist by profession at Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute. Since his arrival at the museum in the year 2010, this scientist has gained access to the silk treasures in the Maryland based institution.

Moini had previously been concentrating on studies that involved protein decay analysis. Materials that are the building blocks for protein can be monitored and their decay rates are established. This can be narrowed down to hourly rate. Silk is a protein derivative which translates to this study being a lime light to the silk date puzzle. The findings could still not be compounded because of a technical problem that called for programming of the timer. Equipment in form of a watch was to be used to harmonize the rates of decay with those timer units in the watch. Dating silk was then ultimately made possible by giving exact timings of the age when Moini discovered that amino acids which make up the protein could be flip monitored. It was a good link for both fashion and science applications.

The use of mass spectrometry and electrophoresis concepts was employed to harmonize these two remote research ideas. The resultant image could then be observed under a microscope to find a lasting solution to the problem of dating silk. This discovery prompted positive reaction form the top administration of the Smithsonian museum led by the curators to analyze all the silk tapestries. Several ancient silk samples were verified in dating from China, France, and the United States among other places since it was proved to be accurate.

Todd Blackledge, a biologist from Ohio based university of Akron acknowledged Moini’s works as one of the most significant describing it as “implications beyond identifying forgeries,”. The biologist is working on studies of the evolution and mechanics of silk with a long focus of the changes that are to be expected form this biological material. The changes that the silk will register as time goes by are the centre stage of his interest and Moini has helped his quest a great deal. This silk dating technique is just the appropriate one in this context.

The soil worms, which were named as nematode caenorhabdits elegans, will take two paths of evolution. Their evolution is highly dependent on the environment they lived in. It can either mature within three days, reproduce and reaches its life cycle’s within two weeks or it will take into a duaer larvae. This is the stage in which soil worms survive even in a stressful environment, where there is a little amount of food available. Food availability, environment temperature and crowded conditions are factors that will trigger the worm to enter the duaer stage.

These worms produce chemicals called “pheromones”. If there is a high amount of pheromones, the worms will be alerted that the environment is too crowded. A crowded environment means less food; that is why these worms are triggered to enter the stage of duaer larvae, in which they will have bigger chances of surviving.

One unique case happened when a single worm, though placed in a crowded environment, chose a different path of evolution. However, biologists have already found an answer to this particular incident. Even though placed in a crowded environment, these worms are under lab conditions where there is plenty of food. Worms tend to ignore the crowded aspect and continue their natural evolution. Later studies show biologists have tracked the gene which plays an important role in the evolution of soil worms.

With many organisms being small in number,chances of a female mating with a close kin are quite high.This may result in genetically deformed offspring that have ver low chances of survival.Thus, when a female animal mates with different males, the best sperm is given an opportunity to fertilise her eggs.And this can help overcome inbreeding among such small populations.

A UK based ecologist, Matthew Gage and colleagues have found that polyandry(multiple mating) was of great benefit to inbred females.To be exact, Gage’s reasearch established that females who mated with only one male had offsprings with 50% fewer survival chances set against their counterparts with a chance of with multiple males.

The researchers also embarked on further reasearch with beetles.They began by acquiring some inbred samples by mating close kins.They also got outbred beetles and began observing the mating behaviour of the two for comparison.They found that the outbred female beetles were not promiscuous.They however found that the inbred ones were more sexually active,mating with many different males and producing offspring that survived for longer time.

This research has stirred reactions from various quarters around the world.Theoretically,it is believed that the same results will be replicated in other animals.

Thus,as scientists Rhonda Snook of UK and Goran Arnqvist of Sweden have said, promiscuity in animals can be a beneficial thing, after all!

Do you worry constantly? Is your body low on energy? You may very well be able to place the blame for your state of mind on the gut bugs that live inside of you. Scientists who do study both behavior and gene activity have come across these gut bugs whom appear to help shape brain development. If these medical findings do come across to humans as they need to, this may very well be a beneficial way to handle depression, anxiety, and various other existing mental problems.

If people heard of this some twenty years ago, they might have not believed it. Nonetheless, there is some real truth to it, states Sven Pettersson. Petterssoon is an immunologist for Karolinkska Institute in Stockholm. Within a decade or so, scientists have come to truly appreciate the gut bugs. This collection of bacteria is known as the human microbiome, and it greatly influences all things from how obese we may be to if we will have allergies.

Sven Petterssoon began to believe there was a microbe that was capable of mind control five years back. This suspicion came about after he and a genomicist named Shugui Wang from the Genome Institute of Singapore learned from gene expression studies that these gut microbes helped to regulate a major brain chemical called serotonin.

Petterssoon went on to initiate a collaboration with Rochellys Diaz Heijtz. Heijtz was a neurobiologist at Karolinksa Institute. The pair did experiments using germ-free mice and mice that had intact gut bacterial. Heijtz was able to examine the behavioral differences between both types of mice closely.

The findings released as per these studies did indicate that the germ-free mice were not as anxious as was the mice with the intact gut bacteria. This clearly shows that these gut bugs do strongly influence brain development and behavior.

An issue of “Journal of Sleep Research” which is soon coming at the market, made a study with volunteers for just one night. They had to spend an evening at a clinic and be observed meanwhile. On the other day just as expected people who had had problems with their sleep were the first who appeared at their appointments.
Studies in the past succeeded in proving that excessive punctuation is considered in some aspects as arising from perfectionism. Nowadays scientists work at exactly the same direction. They cannot explain the exact cause responsible for the connection between these two features but they are certain that either the traits of perfection cause insomnia or just the opposite.

For future, researchers have decided to try the influence of psychotherapy over the bodies and minds of their patients. It may change anybody’s behaviour so if insomnia comes from an obsession with the help of psychotherapy it may be modified to some point. Trying this they believe the agents causing insomnia would be restrained even with the risk that their patients may be not that punctual for their meetings.