DON'T EAT THE BLUE SHELLFISH

The hungry blogger aims her fork towards a plate of seafood on the lab bench in front of her when a mussel suddenly cries out, “Wait -- don't eat me!”

Well, not quite. But researchers at U.C. San Diego have developed a fluorescent warning system that lights up in the presence of toxins that could lead to food poisoning for a consumer.

The toxins are produced by single-celled plankton called dinoflagellates, which oysters and mussels consume while filtering seawater. Dinoflagellates are usually harmless, but can sometimes make toxic chemicals that leach into the tissue of shellfish. And occasionally, dinoflagellates create large algal blooms, known commonly as "red tide," which poison many shellfish at once.

Chemistry professor Michael Burkhart and his team made the warning system by attaching a chemical label to the enzyme in the dinoflagellate responsible for switching toxin production "on."  When the enzyme turns on, the label fluoresces. The warning glow of small blue dots can be seen under a fluorescent microscope.

The method worked both in a dish culture of dinoflagellates plus some bacteria thought to aid toxin-making in the wild, as well as in live mussels. When the researchers added antibiotics to the mix, the glow disappeared.

In time, the San Diego team hopes to be able to use the glow system as way to keep tabs on shellfish in the wild and to examine mussels and oysters sold for eating. But because fluorescent microscopes are quite large and expensive to use, the technology isn't yet widespread.

I wonder if the San Diego crew has talked to their colleagues over at U.C. Berkeley about the fluorescent microscope cell phone attachment they've developed. Maybe one day there will even be an app so that shell-fishermen will be able to test their crops for toxins from the ship deck with their smartphones.

From : http://news.discovery.com/tech/dont-eat-the-blue-shellfish.html

GM MOSQUITOES RELEASED IN MALAYSIA TO REDUCE DENGUE SPREAD

In late December, the Institute for Medical Research in Malaysia released about 6,000 genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes into the country's Eastern forests. They were designed by the U.K. company Oxitec as an experimental method to help prevent the spread of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne virus that impacts 50 to 100 million people every year and for which there is no cure. Last year, nearly 46,000 Malaysians caught the fever, which generally does not result in death, but causes headaches, fatigue, joint and muscle aches, nausea and vomiting.

All the mosquitoes were sterile male Aedes aegypti. Because female Aedes aegypti only breed once in a lifetime, introducing sterile males into a population is thought to be one way of greatly reducing the number of offspring and hence the number of dengue-carriers in the next generation. Actually, the males were not exactly sterile, but they carried a “lethal” gene that kills offspring early on; any survivors are not fit for reproduction. And since this was an experiment, the Institute simultaneously released 6,000 unmodifiedAedes aegypti into the wild, with plans to track how many of each group survive.

 Malaria-Proof Mosquito Created

Problem? Malaysians claim they were unaware that this trial was going on until late January, after it had ended. In the meantime, two Malaysian groups opposed to the use of GM mosquitoes appealed to the National Biosafety Board to cancel the study. They didn't know it was already happening.

What's wrong with using this biotechnology to try and reduce the risk of a raging illness among mosquito-infested areas? Some groups, including Greenpeace, worry that reducing the population of just one species will only make it easier for other species to proliferate in the wild -- and Aedes aegypti is not the only dengue carrier. Others worry that, since tiny percentages of the GM mosquitoes will actually be female and/or will survive, they will live on reproducing in the wild, posing unknown ecological threats. The researchers claim to have killed all the remaining mosquitoes with insecticide at the end of the trial in order to prevent this. But it seems unlikely -- dare I say impossible? -- that they could catch every stray mosquito weeks after releasing them, though a few lingering bugs compared to a few thousand might be inconsequential.

Even further skeptics are wary of Oxitec itself, claiming the company is losing millions each year but has a loan to pay back by 2013, and it's rushing into the mosquito trials as a result of panic. But as the company's chief scientific officer, Luke Alphey, tells ScienceInsider

From: http://news.discovery.com

Daylight Saving Time Around the World 2011

Daylight saving time is also called summer time or daylight savings time. When DST is not observed, it is called standard time, normal time or winter time.

This list displays a brief (but not complete) overview over which countries and territories that plan to observe DST during 2011.Note that the list might not be final - countries, territories and states sometimes make adjustments that are announced just days or weeks ahead of the change.

To know the world clock, click the following link : Worldclock