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(02/05/01 3:57am)
Until recently, the spread of the brain-destroying illness known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy from Britain to several continental European countries -- and the scare that has turned Europeans off beef en masse -- barely registered on the American radar screen. \nBut with the quarantine of some cattle in Texas last week, mad cow disease is making a splash this side of the Atlantic Ocean.\nNo case of mad cow disease has been found in the United States, and government and industry officials have pledged to keep it that way. \nA hint of trouble regarding mad cow disease on this side of the Atlantic was enough last week to send a shudder through U.S. agribusiness and some markets, according to Wall Street indexes. Shares of McDonald's fell Thursday after the Food and Drug Administration announced it had quarantined some cattle in Texas on suspicion they had been fed rations containing cattle parts in violation of rules to prevent mad cow disease. \nIn other developments, following a ban on beef imports from Brazil, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said although there was no evidence of mad cow disease in Brazil, it was concerned certain Brazilian beef products might have come into contact with beef from Europe, which has been hit with an outbreak of the brain-wasting disease. \nÆ have spread from Britain to other countries when the bones, spinal cord and other remains of diseased cattle were ground up for use in livestock feed. \nBritish officials at first denied the disease could spread to humans. They later said it could when more than 80 people died of a human version called new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after eating infected beef according to British Department of Health. CJD, not believed to be related to cows, occurs via inheritance. It is "new variant" CJD that is contracted from eating beef products laced with infectious prions. \nDr. Pierluigi Gambetti, a neuropathologist at Case Western Reserve University, has been studying human brain tissue for four years. Out of nearly 500 cases examined, Gambetti said 292 people had died of classical CJD. "None has shown signs of the variant CJD," he said.\nScientists believe one way mad cow disease can be transmitted is through a cannibal-like feeding to cattle of ground up parts of other cattle or ruminants, a practice the U.S. has banned since 1997. \nThe U.S. cattle herd is nearly 100 million animals, the single largest segment of U.S. agriculture, according to the USDA. The production of grain-fed beef in the United States is among the most intensive in the world with massive feedlots containing thousands of cattle in close quarters. \nIn Europe, intensive agriculture has come under attack as helping to spread mad cow disease. \nSo, are Americans safe from mad cow disease? \nThe government and the industry Americans are safe. But food safety advocates are not sure. \n"The government agencies say they have erected this firewall (against mad cow). We don't have a firewall. It's more like a white picket fence," said Michael Hansen, a research associate with the Consumers Union in Washington.
(01/29/01 5:02am)
Judging from President George W. Bush's recent cabinet appointments, experts anticipate a dramatic shift in the see-saw between protecting the environment and extracting energy from public land. \nThe movement in energy's favor, environmentalists say, has become apparent with the appointments of Spencer Abraham as Energy Secretary and Gale Norton as Interior Secretary.\nWith California in the midst of blackouts, utilities facing bankruptcy and oil and natural gas prices sky high, experts agree that with the present appointments there will be a renewed effort to suck more fuel out of public land.\n"The country faces some big issues on energy and the environment," said Paul Friesema, Northwestern University political science professor who studies resource issues. "There's going to be tremendous fights. The California energy crisis is going to be used politically to exploit more public land. This is unfortunate."\nNorton, Abraham and President George W. Bush favor more drilling for oil and natural gas on public land. Potential drilling spots go beyond the talked-about push to open Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- which the same trio favors but which will require Congressional approval. Other areas include forests, wilderness and other federal land near Yellowstone National Park in Montana and Wyoming, the resource-rich spine of the Rocky Mountains, stretching from Salt Lake City to the Canadian border, and off-shore waters, mainly the Gulf of Mexico.\nA report released by the U.S. Minerals Management Service estimates that there is 65 percent more undiscovered natural gas offshore than originally thought.\n"We need to drill for gas," Bush said in a New York Times interview. "We are going to review parcel by parcel Western lands to determine the cost-benefit ratio for America. We need energy."\nBush, Norton and Abraham "seem to want to ignore the environmental side of the equation and focus on the energy side," said Michael Scott, program director for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a Bozeman, Mont., environmental group. "The agenda for the future of the Western states is going to be energy development -- perhaps at the sacrifice of the very values that Americans identify with the West, which is wildlife, great open spaces, clean air, clean water."\nFrom 1989 to 1999, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the amount of power America generated rose 9.6 percent while the amount of power America used increased 24.7 percent.\nBut the prospect of more drilling appalls some environmental groups. \n"Is nothing sacred? Is nothing off-limits?" asked Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, a Washington-based international environmental group.\nEnvironmentalists worry most about protecting the Rocky Mountain spine and the Yellowstone region. Drilling in this area could spoil crucial habitats for grizzly bears, elks and wolves, Scott said.\nWhile New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's appointment as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency has not drawn nearly as much fire as Norton or Abraham's appointments, environmentalists see Whitman's environmental record as "spotty," Blackwelder said.\nWhile criticizing massive budget cuts while she was governor, environmental groups credit Whitman with pushing legislation to protect vast tracts of New Jersey land from development. She also backed a bill providing millions for forest preservation. \nThe Natural Resources Defense Council said it viewed Whitman's appointment as "a more positive sign" than Bush's other two environmental appointments.\nBut the group criticized her "lax approach" to enforcement of environmental laws.\nAccording to the present administration, the millions of barrels produced from the oil drilling would break America's dependence on Saddam Hussein. \nEnvironmentalists' remedy for the energy crunch is conservation. "Why is it we never consider lowering our consumption of energy? Why must we take and take and take and never give back?" Blackwelder asked.
(01/23/01 4:08am)
Scientists have encountered another speedbump along their way to understanding how the climate works and how it might change in the new century. \nResearchers have found a discrepancy in the way ocean water warms compared with the air just above it. In the last 20 years, water temperatures around the globe have risen faster than air temperatures. \nThe research team that discovered the discrepancy says their study underlines the need for a comprehensive and consistent system of climate observation across the globe. \nJohn Christy from the University of Alabama and colleagues examined the accuracy of methods used to determine air and water temperatures over oceans. \nChristy's team examined all available data, including 20 years of information from scientific buoys in the Pacific Ocean that record sea and air temperatures simultaneously. They found a discrepancy between the seawater and air-temperature measurements. Seawater one meter below the surface had warmed faster than air three meters above the surface, as measured since 1979. \nAccording to the team, based on their findings and the use of real air-data, the earth has warmed during the last 20 years at the rate of 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade. This is "slightly less" than the 0.18 degrees Celsius per decade if seawater proxy data is used in calculations. \nPhysics professor Ben Brabson said these findings do not undermine the fact that the earth is warming quickly. \n"Whether it is 0.13 degrees Celsius or 0.18 degrees Celsius, it is still enormously rapid when compared to the .08 degrees Celsius measurements of the last century. The change in temperature over the last 20 years has been large," he said.\nThe study, which appeared in Geophysical Research Letters, a monthly journal, goes to the heart of the debate about global warming and the human-induced climate. \nBut Christy said this was a part of the large volume of data coming from every corner of the world. \n"What is important to note is that these changes recorded on a global scale are also happening on a smaller regional scale. And regional changes will have very hazardous climactic effects on local areas," he said.\nThe journal reported that the study adds to the existing breadth of satellite data, which cover more than 95 percent of the globe, including remote ocean, desert and wilderness regions.\n"What is required is a proper, global climate observing system so that you have reliable data everywhere -- both satellites and based on the ground, and that if anyone changes their instruments, they have to run parallel experiments to ensure they haven't introduced a bias into the measurements," Christy said. \nThis is after a study released earlier in December by the scientists from Hadley Center for climactic Research, part of the UK meteorological Office, and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the magazine Science. \nThey wrote that natural processes and human activity have contributed significantly to 20th century temperature changes. \n"More than 80 percent of observed global mean temperature variations, and more than 60 percent of 10- to 50-year land temperature variations are due to changes in external (forces)." \nGlobal mean temperature near Earth's surface has been increasing at 0.2 degrees Celsius a decade during the last three decades according to latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.\nTaking into account anthropogenic and natural factors had helped explain the lull and rise in temperatures reported by the IPCC, as in some cases anthropogenic factors had not been taken into account, the study explained. \n"What is heartening are the formidable measurements that we are gathering from across the globe, not only from the ocean but above it as well," Brabson said. \n"The impressive data collection initiatives are testament to how serious the scientific community is taking climate change," he said.
(01/12/01 5:34am)
In a speech that conveyed a clear challenge to President-elect George W. Bush and his incoming administration, outgoing U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck unveiled an initiative Jan. 8 that calls for the protection of the nation's remaining old growth forests. \nSpeaking at a conference at Duke University, Dombeck said the time has come for the Forest Service to take the "long view" and enact policies that prohibit the harvesting of old growth trees, according to the Associated Press. \nOld growth forests are stands of trees that are about 200 years old or older. \nDeclaring that "reverence for ancient trees is ingrained in our culture," Dombeck outlined a series of new Forest Service directives designed to protect the nation's remaining old growth forests. \nAccording to the directives, each of the 155 national forests managed by the U.S. Forest Service will be required to inventory, map, protect, sustain and enhance old growth ecosystems. \nSean Cosgrove, forest issues specialist for the Washington D.C. Sierra Club, explained that the directives require the Forest Service to determine the extent and pattern of old growth forests in the past, and to develop plans to facilitate the development of old growth in the future. \nDombeck pledged that the Forest Service will work with local communities to prioritize and implement old growth restoration projects, which he said would create jobs. He said selective slashing and burning could still be utilized in areas where "uncharacteristic" wildfire risks threaten old growth resources and values. \nBut specialists are skeptical about the staying power of the directive. \n"This is a more complex policy than any of the earlier Clinton initiatives," said Matthew Auer of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. "The Senate sub-committee will look at it as making a policy change in the Forest Service manual and in this case they have the jurisdiction to review it." \nConservation groups hailed Dombeck's announcement, the latest in a flurry of 11th hour environmental initiatives put forth by the outgoing Clinton administration. \n"This is a significant step towards restoring old growth in the Eastern U.S., which has been nearly eliminated," said Kristen Sykes of the American Lands Alliance. "With only 1 percent of the eastern old growth left, few people know or appreciate how magnificent the forests east of the Mississippi really can be." \nPublic opinion polls released by the Sierra Club have shown a majority of Americans want greater protections for national forests, and especially for the nation's remaining ancient forests. Those opinions are reflected by the drop in market demand for old growth wood.\nThough conserving old growth forests has gathered national momentum through public opinion, conservationists predict Bush might draw on local support in timber areas to overturn the initiative. \nVicky Meretsky, a conservation biologist at IU, said she thinks "this initiative will have numerous enemies and they will come up with every possible legal method of overturning it." \n"It doesn't yet carry the force of law," she said.\nBut the case is one of preserving old growth forests for ecological and aesthetic reasons. \n"Old growth trees are a very small percentage of American forest cover, so they cannot be considered as potential carbon sinks to reduce temperatures," Auer said.\nThe Forest Service's initiative to curtail the harvesting of old growth trees comes just days after President Bill Clinton signed an executive order prohibiting commercial logging and road building on nearly 60 million acres of untouched Forest Service land. \nThe initiative will still have to withstand an ideologically split Congress and a possible veto from President Bush.
(12/01/00 5:27am)
Gestating in individuals for five to 10 years before killing them, AIDS is crippling much of Africa. In Zimbabwe, more than a quarter of adults carry the virus. Currently, 2.8 to 3 million people in South Africa are living with HIV or AIDS, as estimated by the 8th National HIV Survey of Women Attending Antenatal Clinics of the Public Health Service in South Africa (1997).\nIn the western world, meanwhile, the HIV death rate has dropped steeply, thanks to powerful drugs that keep the disease from progressing. These doses must be taken for years, sometimes for life, and they can cost more than $10,000 per patient per year. Yet in many of the hardest-hit African countries, the total per capita health-care budget is less than $10. \nMany people -- in Africa as well as the West -- dismiss this inequality, saying it holds true for many other diseases running rampant in third world countries. Mark Heywood of the AIDS Law Project, which is based in Africa, disagrees. \n"Drugs for the world's major diseases like tuberculosis and malaria have been subsidized by the international community for years," he said. \nWhy is AIDS worse in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world? "Partly because of denial; partly because the virus almost certainly originated here, giving it more time to spread; but largely because Africa was weakened economically and infrastructurally by 500 years of slavery and colonialism," said V.J. Ravishankar, an economist with the World Bank. \n"Having a sexually transmitted disease increases the probability of spreading and contracting HIV, but few Africans get effective treatment because the clinic is too expensive or too far away," said Dr. Labode, a provincial medical officer in Africa.\nUttara Bharath, Program Officer of Johns Hopkins' Zambia Integrated Health Program, said there are some bright spots in this gloomy scenario. \n"The way the Africans have come together and made sense out of their meager resources has offered tremendous hope. Several communities have involved themselves and are desperate to fight this disease."\nIn the industrialized world, powerful drugs called anti-retrovirals have sent AIDS death rates plummeting. People with HIV are running marathons and climbing gorges. In Africa, the reality is a bit different. \n"Many Africans subsist by cultivating small plots of land. When someone in the family is infected with AIDS, other family members have to spend time taking care of them, which means one less farmer on the lands. Following death, the family loses a crucial farm worker," said Dr. Violari, the head pediatrician at Africa's largest hospital, Bharagwanath Hospital in Soweto.\nEven with discounted prices, AIDS treatment would be a tall order. \n"To treat Africa's patients with the accepted AIDS treatment would cost more than $160 billion a year. This exceeds more than half the GDP of many African countries," Ravishankar said.\nDr. Labode agreed that though many doctors have come up with local innovations -- which lead to temporary relief -- without advanced drugs, the virus cannot be defeated. \n"If you get an infection that is strong and virulent, that is the end of the story. The drugs are just too expensive. Though AIDS pneumonia (common killer of AIDS patients) is preventable, it is impossible within our budget."\nAIDS activists don't believe that AZT or 3TC, components of the drug regimen to combat AIDS, have to be as expensive as they presently are, and point to Thailand. \nCatherine Hanssens, AIDS Project Director Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said, "When pharmaceutical giant Pfizer had a fluconazole (generic name for AIDS drug) monopoly in Thailand, the price of a daily dose was $14. \nBut when local companies started putting out their generic versions, the price fell to about 70 cents. Thai companies also make generic AZT; the price of that AIDS drug has fallen by almost three-quarters."\nWhile patent laws are a crucial issue to be resolved in this fight against AIDS so is the resurrection of basic infrastructure to support it. \n"In Africa, only one-third of the population has clean water," Bharath said.\nElhadj Sy of the United Nations AIDS Program believes lobbying for cheap anti-retrovirals is "praiseworthy," but adds, "People in the West don't realize what going hungry is. Attacking the deep-rooted poverty that is disabling most of this country may the critical first step to fighting AIDS"
(11/30/00 6:10am)
Bahla Nabwegki is an immigrant who earns a dollar a day. He bought a one-pedaled bicycle with his seven-dollar weekly pay. Another two dollars went to reinforce its frame. After he removed the chain, Nabwegki was ready to use his bicycle, not so much for cycling, but as a trolley for carrying as much as 250 kilograms of coal across distances of 30 to 40 miles. \nThat's tough work, especially since Nabwegki is HIV positive and the medicine that combats AIDS would cost Nabwegki $1,500 a month, so he doesn't consider the idea of leaving his job. \nHe can be seen either as an HIV patient or a symptom of a larger epidemic of poverty, poor employment and terrible human conditions. In most developed countries, one man carrying 250 kilograms of coal more than 40 miles would have created a furor.\nEstimates by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS, a United Nations program, project there will be about 5.3 million new cases of HIV infection this year -- including 600,000 children under 15 -- and 3 million people will die from AIDS. Among the worst hit: Africa.\nSub-Saharan Africa has taken a disproportionate toll and continues to be the worst hit region, with 72 percent of the infections and 80 percent of the deaths in the past year. The minister of public health in South Africa has estimated that 1,500 persons are being infected daily. In Botswana, the situation is worse, where 36 out of every 100 adults are infected with the virus. \nE. Preston-Whyte's novel, "Survival Sex or the Culture of Sex Work in South Africa," published in the AIDS Bulletin in 1996 concluded that women are made to work as commercial sex workers to supplement income. This has led to very high rates of infection: In one area of Johannesburg, an estimated 80 percent of sex workers who took part in a survey were found to have HIV. \nDr. Catherine Campbell, a professor at the London School of Economics wrote, "sex with its associations of comfort and intimacy (even in the impersonal contact with commercial sex workers) serves as a comfort to workers in the face of fears and stresses, when they are miles away from their homes." \nThis has a dramatic effect on the lives of children, Labode said. \n"As the number of orphans grows, increasing numbers of children are at risk indirectly through lost educational opportunities and more directly by forcing them to survive in high-risk situations on the street. The children are left uneducated. And, poor educational opportunities for people living on the streets limits their access to information and services."\nExperts believe that while poverty increases a person's vulnerability to AIDS, AIDS intensifies poverty once infected, causing a spiral effect. \nMark Heywood, the head of the AIDS Law Project said, "Breadwinners and future breadwinners die resulting in a loss of income to a family. Gender roles are reinforced, with the woman continuing to stay at home, taking care of the ill. Poverty grows exponentially in this manner -- the mortality of a coming generation is affected drastically in this way, with the standard of living plummeting sharply." \nIn a population as painfully poor as most of sub-Saharan Africa the presence of a disease seems just another problem they must combat, said Uttara Bharath, program officer of Johns Hopkins' Zambia Integrated Health Program.\n"One of the reasons for the failure of the governments' national AIDS prevention plan to date has been that amongst people most at risk the perceived dangers related to HIV infection are considered less pressing than the day-to-day threats that face poor people," she said. "Therefore, being HIV positive becomes just another burden in an endless struggle for survival"
(11/29/00 3:56am)
The failure to reach an agreement on measures to tackle global warming has disappointed governments and environmentalists worldwide. \nLast week, last-minute attempts by the United Kingdom to broker a compromise between the European Union and the United States were unsuccessful at the United Nations climate conference in the Netherlands. \nThe executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, Klaus Topfer, said in a press release he was "shocked and disappointed" at the outcome of the summit. \nThe talks were aimed at putting into effect an international climate treaty reached in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. It called for a 5 percent average cut in developed countries' gas emissions, which scientists hold to be responsible for what they regard as a rapid rise in global temperatures. \n "Ratification of the Kyoto Protocol will now be delayed," said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Program. \nThe E.U.-U.S. dispute was concerned a U.S. plan to allow developed nations to count carbon dioxide absorbed by forests -- so-called carbon sinks -- against emissions reduction targets. \n"Forests absorb carbon, that is true. But in America there is a history behind it. In the 1920s, when people gave up farming, all the forests that had been cut grew back," said Emilio Moran, director of the Anthropological Center for Training in Global and Environmental Change at IU.\n"But they were secondary forests: those in Indiana, Ohio and upper New York. So, trying to say that America has a large forest cover that is sequestering more carbon dioxide than other countries is not a viable argument. The other countries are at the stage we were years ago. It is inadvertent and a short-term solution, trees reach a saturation point very easily, when they will not absorb anymore dioxide. So, by that argument, one should cut down those trees once they stop absorbing dioxide and plant new ones." \nThe European Union fears countries might claim all their greenhouse gases are being absorbed by carbonsinks so they do not need to make any actual reductions in the pollution they emit from chimneys, vehicle exhausts and other sources.\n"Australia, Canada and Japan have joined the bandwagon and are claiming that they cannot reach targets without counting credits for carbon sinks," Moran said. \nMost environmental groups see this as just another way to get around the economics of achieving Kyoto targets without much action. \n"If governments continue to act irresponsibly, as they have done this week, then people from rich countries should prepare to build ever higher and wider dikes, from which they can watch the rest of the world suffer and drown from climate change. Either that or demand that politicians give them access to the solutions to climate change in the form of clean energy and energy efficiency," Greenpeace, an organization committed to reducing temperatures and warming, said in a press release. \nMeanwhile, Becker said America is weakening the process to reduce emissions. "The United States' push to weaken the Kyoto agreement is turning it into the Emperor's New Treaty," he said. "Some claim to see a rich tapestry of action where none exists. But, if you examine the United States' proposal, you will find it has lost its environmental integrity."\n"Instead of producing cleaner cars, the U.S.'s proposal would allow polluters to plant forests of saplings abroad," Becker said. "The U.S. is pushing a bogus 'emissions trading' scheme that substitutes delay for action"
(11/15/00 5:14am)
A genetic test appears to help predict how well people with a form of brain cancer will respond to standard chemotherapy drugs.\nDoctors from Johns Hopkins University found victims of aggressive brain tumors called gliomas react better to therapy if they have a particular form of a gene that helps the body repair DNA damages. The testing for that gene type could help doctors tailor cancer treatment.\nDoctors said the same gene might play a role in patients' response to treatment for other forms of malignancy, including lymphoma and cancer of the lung, colon, head and neck, according to last week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study was financed by the National Cancer Institute. Hopkins has licensed the test to Virco Lab Inc. of Baltimore, which plans to make it available next year.\nIn a related editorial on the study, John N. Weinstein, of the National Cancer Institute said cancer treatments have been selected on the basis of tumor type, pathological features, clinical stage, the patient's age and performance status and other non-molecular considerations. The differences in patients, he said, is often a matter of luck.\nPharmacogenomic studies, a relatively new approach to therapy, will inevitably produce benefits such as these for clinical research and standard practice.\nManel Esteller, a doctor from the Center of Oncology at Johns Hopkins and the head of the study, said "Some gliomas have the capacity to resist drugs like carmustine in chemotherapy. The presence of MGMT (methylguanine methyltransferase in these gliomas), a DNA repair enzyme comes in the way of treating cancer. Therefore, when we detect the presence of MGMT, our study aims at altering it so that it doesn't hinder chemotherapy."\nThe test reveals whether the gene MGMT has been chemically changed through a process called methylation. People whose MGMT genes are altered that way respond much better to chemotherapy drugs.\nIn the study, doctors checked 47 glioma patients. Nineteen had the altered form of the gene, and 12 of the 19 had significant responses to chemotherapy. Among the 28 who had the ordinary form of the gene, only one responded to treatment.\nThose with the altered gene lived an average of 13 months longer than the other patients.\n"In particular, about 30 percent of gliomas lack MGMT. Although the literature on this subject is complex, a lack of MGMT appears to correlate with sensitivity to carmustine."\nEsteller said the new drug will not come without cost. \n"From the perspective of the pharmaceutical industry, they have the potential disadvantage of dividing the market for a successful drug, but their larger potential advantages include the discovery of better drugs, elimination of poor candidate drugs early in the development process and dramatic decreases in the size and expense of clinical trials," Esteller said.
(11/02/00 4:32am)
New evidence shows that man-made pollution has "contributed substantially" to global warming and that the earth is likely to get a lot hotter than previously predicted, concludes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.\nA United Nations organization, IPCC's findings are expected to widely influence climate debate over the next decade. The report's summary, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, was being distributed to governments around the world, according to Neil Leary, head of the Technical Support Institute of the IPCC. The Institute helps the scientists at the IPCC direct its reports. \nThe report predicts the extent of change of global temperatures over the next century and will be reviewed in a plenary session in Shanghai in January 2001. There were two previous reports.\n"This report says what the previous one did, but says it loudly," said Ben Brabson, a physics professor. "In 1990, scientists didn't know about sulfur and its (cooling effect) on the climate. Hence, they predicted an overall rise in temperatures without setting the sulfur dioxide limits."\nIn 1995, sulfur dioxide was widely believed to reduce global temperatures considerably, and scientists' estimates of temperatures were more conservative.\n"Now we've come a full circle," Brabson said. "Since the sulfur dioxide in the air has been brought down substantially to combat acid rain, its cooling effect has been mitigated. So we are estimating the same temperatures as in 1990."\nIn the IPCC's new assessment, "there is stronger evidence," than ever before on the human influence on climate, and that it is likely that man-made greenhouse gases already "have contributed substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years."\nAnd the scientists said if greenhouse emissions are not curtailed, the earth's average surface temperatures could be expected to increase from 2.7 to nearly 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century -- substantially more than estimated in its report five years ago.\nIt attributes the increase -- from a range 1.8 to 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the 1995 assessment -- mainly to a reduced influence now expected to be played by sulfate releases from industry and power plants.\nKevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said global warming has to do with greenhouse gas emissions. \n"What this report is unambiguously saying is that global warming is a real problem and it is with us and we are gong to have to take this into account in our future planning," he said. \nThe report has been the outcome of observations during several intensely warm years. \n"After replicating computer records of decades of climate observations and recording the temperature changes the earth has undergone due to human activity, the report attributes two-thirds of the warming to greenhouse gas emissions," he said.\nMichael Schlesinger, a climatologist and professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, wrote a paper on the issue of global warming and is widely considered an expert in his field. He said human factors, volcanic activity and the sun contribute to the overall warming effect. \n"Information about some natural climatic variables is presently incomplete, those findings may alter the assessment," he said.\nSchlesinger's work had revealed that the cooling effect, contributed by sulfate aerosols, (the sulfate nucleii that attracted water droplets and then scattered radiation) was balancing the warming in the atmosphere, but with the reduction of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere to reduce acid rain. \n"There is an imminent threat of warming and efforts toward reducing warming must continue," he said.\nThree years ago, industrialized nations tentatively agreed to curtail the release of greenhouse gases -- mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels -- to below 1990 levels as a first step to address global warming. But none of the major industrial countries has yet ratified the agreement.\nThe IPCC panel's summary of a voluminous technical report covering 14 chapters attempts to provide the most current state of scientific understanding of the climate system and potential for future warming.\n"Emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols due to human activities continue to alter the atmosphere in ways that affect the climate system," the report said. "Various findings of the last five years have reinforced the IPPC's 1995 determination that climate change warrants top-level attention by government policy makers."\nThe Associated Press contributed to this report.
(10/23/00 5:28am)
Results of a large-scale experiment in the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica, hint that scientists could engineer the world's oceans, according to Nature. But some experts say the effects of "geofertilizing" can be harmful.\nThe procedure can be accomplished by stimulating the growth of algae, which consume carbon dioxide. This means oceans can then be immense sponges for carbon dioxide -- the culprit for rising global temperatures.\nPhilip Boyd and his colleagues from the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), were part of the Southern Ocean Iron Release Experiment (SOIREE), an international collaboration, which was conducted last year. Researchers released more than eight and a half thousand kilograms of an iron compound into the Southern Ocean within an area of eight kilometers across and monitored its effect on the growth of marine plants or phytoplanktons.\n"Iron, normally, is a limiting nutrient," said associate biology professor Flynn Picardal. "Just like the human body needs iron for hemoglobin, planktons use them to make certain enzymes and co-factors. But because of its low concentrations, it tends to limit the growth of planktons. Therefore, when iron is broadcast over an ocean it stimulates an increase in plankton growth."\nMassachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Sallie D. Chisolm said while phytoplanktons on the surface of the ocean absorb carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, deeper biomass function differently. They draw on the carbon dioxide dissolved in the ocean. The phytoplanktons then convert the carbon dioxide into carbohydrates during photosynthesis, she said. \nBen Brabson, environmental physicist and physics professor, addressed concerns on how the ocean's behavior as a large reservoir of carbon, affects the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He said the carbon dioxide levels in the ocean and atmosphere are related.\n"In pre-industrial times, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the ocean were roughly the same," Brabson said. "Since then, the ocean has continued to absorb dioxide from the atmosphere and now contains 40 times more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere."\n"The researchers are attempting to spur plankton growth, so that more carbon dioxide from the ocean can be used in photosynthesis. The dioxide level having now decreased, the scientists predict the ocean will now absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thereby reduce warming."\nSo while the scientists relied on the deeper bio-mass to decrease ocean levels of carbon dioxide and thereby alter the atmospheric levels, the effects of the planktons on the surface water were seen immediately. According to Boyd in Nature, "Increased iron supply led to elevated phytoplankton biomass (levels) and rates of photosynthesis in surface water, causing a large draw down of carbon dioxide." \nThis is not the first time that this procedure has been tested. According to the results reported in Nature in 1996, a team of scientists conducted an experiment similar to SOIREE in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. And, indeed the phytoplankton 'bloomed' in response to hundreds of kilograms of an iron compound. \nBut this kind of geofertilizing can be potentially very dangerous, Chisolm said.\n"While iron increases the plankton bio-mass, considering it as a possibility to reduce greenhouse gases is short-sighted. There can be other ramifications. Other greenhouse gases can be stimulated and the toxicity levels can increase dramatically, adversely affecting the ocean habitat.\n"I think this is very exciting science, and we should continue experimenting like this, but the simultaneous effects on the waters should also be kept in mind," she said.\nEchoing similar sentiments, Brabson added, "I think it's a great effort in the right direction, but it may be something that will hold good only in warmer tropical waters, not in the Northern oceans. It seems slightly hair-brained and a rather long shot."\nThis may be considered by some as sidestepping the real solutions to global warming. "I don't think this is an effective way to combat warming. Developing more efficient fuels, and more renewable sources of energy are more viable options," Chisholm said.
(10/17/00 4:55am)
Who can forget Dolly? Well, now get ready to welcome Noah, who will be the first cloned ox to enter the world.\nThe bovine surrogate mother, Bessie, is carrying the Indian bison or gaur, a fetus, at a farm near Sioux City, Iowa. If she delivers as expected next month, she will be the harbinger of a stunning new way to save endangered species.\n"This is a way to preserve unique populations of our large habitat," said Philip Damiani, a researcher for Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts and senior author and project coordinator of a study published in "Cloning."\n"We realize evolution is a natural process, but we are trying to make amends for the mistakes we have made in altering the habitat. Man's interference has been one of the reasons for the extinction of many species. We are trying to correct some mistakes," he said, while explaining the motivation behind the study.\nIn this process, the DNA from a gaur cell was fused with the DNA from one of Bessie's eggs, using a technique called, "cross species nuclear transfer," to form a gaur egg which would be accepted by Bessie's immune system. \n"The fetus genetically will be 99 percent gaur and 1 percent cow," Damiani said.\nBy this technique, developers hope to do away with captive breeding, where an animal is removed from its habitat and then used. With this new method, the researchers can now go to the animal's habitat, remove some cells and return -- leaving the animal in its own, natural environment. \nThe ACT expects the Spanish government to approve this technique for cloning the bucardo, a recently extinct Spanish goat. The last bucardo died earlier this year and was immediately frozen by researchers in Spain.\n"Cloning is not going to save all endangered species, but reintroducing some unique species and preserving the larger habitat is the aim here," Damiani said. "In a global scale, we are trying to save as many species as possible."\nStill, conservationists worry this kind of science will draw funds away from habitat protection programs already in place. \nBut biology professor Patricia Foster, whose interests are in DNA replication and recombination, said, "I don't see it being used as a way to get around funding for preservation because the technology is too delicate and too expensive to save an entire species." \nIn other words, it could be used for the preservation and introduction of certain unique birds in a larger bird family, while it is unlikely that it could ever bring a whole species of birds, on the brink of extinction, back to life.\n"This is a whole new approach that has never been tried before. It is human values being forced on animals, but if people care enough and they have the money, I say go for it," Foster said.\nIt seems Damiani does care enough. While working in Africa he became interested in endangered species. \n"In the case of the gaur, its most common predators are tigers -- few of which remain -- now the gaur, too, is near extinction, for we hunt it for its horns and capture it for sport," he said.\nAccording to the World Conservation Monitoring Center, the gaur is a "vulnerable" group. The gaur has known to inhabit evergreen and deciduous forested hills and associated grassy clearings up to 1,800 meters, eastwards from India, Nepal and Bhutan to Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, southern China and the Malay Peninsula. \nOutside captivity, the conditions under which they breed, the center reports the gaur is found in isolated, remote areas. Thornback, in 1983, reported the gaur population to be 10,000, and now it has dwindled to a few hundred.\n"We have to do something," Damiani said. \nAccording to the study, although the technique could be used with cells from animals once frozen immediately after death, it can't resurrect specimens frozen for centuries whose DNA has become fragmented.\n"If there are three breeds of some species, and A dies, only B and C will continue mating; this will ruin the diversity. What this technique will do is try and preserve species A; thereby, genetics will not be lost. Our aim is to bring back genetics that dies," Damiani said.