Ever-Adapting Avian Flu
A blood sample taken from one of the two Turkish siblings who died last week of avian flu contained a variation of the H5N1 virus that may make it more harmful to humans. While the mutation could be an incremental step toward the virus becoming communicable between humans, the World Health Organization said it is too early to tell if the single genetic mutation will prove to be significant.
An international team of researchers, led by a group at the University of Illinois, has received $10 million in federal funding to complete the first sequencing of the pig genome. The two-year project, which is expected to cost a total of $20 million, could lead to better pork products as well as aid in human medical research.
Forty percent, or 3.5 million, of the estimated eight-million Ashkenazi Jews alive today can trace their lineage back to just four mothers, says a new genetic study. The women each had a distinctive genetic signature traceable through mitochondrial DNA. All four are believed to have lived in Europe about a thousand years ago.
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A Norwegian cancer researcher has been exposed as a fraud after findings he published in October of last year in Britain's leading medical journal, the Lancet, were found to be based entirely on fabricated information. Jon Sudboe created an entire fictional study—from names to weights to drug use—when submitting his study on the effectiveness of an anti-inflammatory drug on oral cancer. The scandal follows in the wake of Hwang Woo-suk, the South Korean scientist whose career fell to shambles in the past few weeks.
Ding, Dong, Ditch
Greenpeace dumped the dead body of a 17-meter, 20-metric-ton fin whale outside the Japanese embassy in Berlin to protest Japan's whale hunt, claiming that the species' meat is ending up in the country's restaurants. Japan plans to take more than 900 minke whales from a sanctuary in the Southern Ocean in the first four months of 2006. The nation claims the whales are hunted only for scientific study.
Late last year, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association confiscated a bag headed to Asia from the US marked only with the word "blanco" and filled with unidentified shark fins. DNA evidence proved that the 21 fins in the bag all belonged to endangered great white sharks, and that most of them came from realtively small sharks. Since 2004, the Convention for the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) began monitoring trade in products harvested from great white sharks. Nevertheless, the fins of great whites are still a delicacy in Asia.
In a related story, researchers believe that the world's largest fish species, the whale shark, which is listed as "vulnerable" on the endangered species list, is shrinking as a result of their being caught for food in east Asia. In a study conducted off the coast of Australia, researchers have observed the average size of the fish declining from seven meters to five meters over the last decade.
Giant jellyfish have invaded the waters off Japan. Scientists have speculated that global warming may be behind the huge bloom of the slimy beasts, which can weigh as much as 200 kg. Though their stings are not deadly, they are increasingly getting caught in the nets of Japanese fishermen and causing a negative economic impact on the country's fishing industry.
An array of smart sensors are being deployed to monitor the health of coral on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The sensors, which communicate measurements of salinity, temperature and nutrient levels to researchers as far as 70 km away, will enable real-time observation of the environmental parameters contributing to destructive events such as coral bleaching.