Monthly Archives: January 2014

Public asked to look out for young hammerhead shark

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People fishing in the Bay of Islands are being asked to keep a look out for a young hammerhead shark, nicknamed Orokawa.

Orokawa is providing scientists with information on his whereabouts after becoming the first electronically tagged hammerhead to provide useful data in New Zealand waters.

The young shark, just 137cm long, was tagged last Sunday near Deep Water Cove in the Bay of Islands by fisherman Scott Tindale.

"We were anchored within casting distance of the rocks and saw a hammerhead swimming towards us on the surface," Mr Tindale said.

"I cast a bait towards him and he took it straight away. Because he was small we were able to get him in the boat, oxygenate his gills with seawater from a deck hose, and tag and release him within five minutes."

NIWA shark expert Dr Malcolm Francis has been contracted by the Ministry for Primary Industries to find out more about the biology, behaviour and stock status of hammerhead sharks in a bid to determine whether they are threatened by overfishing.

Dr Francis and Mr Tindale plan to tag a number of hammerheads - recognisable by their bizarre head shape - in the coming year to determine whether they are resident or migratory and what they do.

Little is known about the species, its habitat or abundance in New Zealand and Dr Francis says the young hammerheads are vulnerable to capture by set nets, longlines and trawls.

"They seem to be very sensitive to capture and most of them die before they can be ret

urned to the sea."

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Public asked to look out for young hammerhead shark

Neanderthal-Human Breeding Was Hard, But Yielded Benefits

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Hairiness -- allowing adaptation to warmer environments -- was among gains

Roughly 500,000 year ago, the breeding populations that would evolve into humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) separated. Neanderthals came to dominate the mountainous, forest terrain of Europe, while humans spread out across the warm grasslands of Africa and the Middle East. But the long estranged relatives would come into contact in an intimate way once more when mankind thrust its way into Europe roughly 80,000 years ago. And by intimate, yes, we mean there was sex. I. Understanding Our Shared Family Secret -- Neanderthal Sex Ever since researcher and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter, Ph.D. became the first human to have his or her genome sequenced in 2007, the race was on to sequence the Neanderthal genome and find what secrets it might hold. Led by led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and its top ancient-DNA expert, Svante Pbo, the project yielded a draft genome in May 2010, followed by a "finished" Neanderthal genome in March 2013. With the initial 2010 announcement, definitive proof of our ancestors' steamy romance with European Neanderthals was laid bare for the first time. Today researchers are still worker to chronicle that mysterious engagement and what impacts it has on modern human genetics. Harvard Medical School (HMS) geneticist Professor David Reich's lab -- working with collaborators at the Max Planck Institute -- is the latest to offer new insight into this relationship.

It suggests the introduction of some of these Neanderthal mutations was harmful to the ancestors of non-Africans and that these mutations were later removed by the action of natural selection.

Now that we can estimate the probability that a particular genetic variant arose from Neanderthals, we can begin to understand how that inherited DNA affects us. We may also learn more about what Neanderthals themselves were like. [The barren DNA stretches] suggest that when ancient humans met and mixed with Neanderthals, the two species were at the edge of biological incompatibility. It is fascinating that these types of problems could arise over that short a time scale.

The researchers next goals include making tests for the Neanderthal genes identified available to the public, enhancing the hunt for Neanderthal genomes by sequencing other Neanderthals' full gene sequences, and sequencing the DNA of Denisovans (Denisova hominins) -- another close relative of man that bread with early humans in Oceania.

The ongoing research is funded by the Max Planck Institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Sources: Nature, Science, Harvard Medical School

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Neanderthal-Human Breeding Was Hard, But Yielded Benefits

Meditation for Overcoming Fear – How To Meditate for Beginners – You Have 4 Minutes – BEXLIFE – Video

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Meditation for Overcoming Fear - How To Meditate for Beginners - You Have 4 Minutes - BEXLIFE - Video

HD Video Feedback Volunteer Katie Polese in Peru Cusco Health Care Program Abroaderview.org – Video

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HD Video Feedback Volunteer Katie Polese in Peru Cusco Health Care Program Abroaderview.org
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HD Video Feedback Volunteer Katie Polese in Peru Cusco Health Care Program Abroaderview.org - Video

Consultant: Vermont already moving toward ‘value-based’ health care payments

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MONTPELIER -- The state pledged to make 90 percent of health care payments "value-based" within five years, as part of its application for a $45 million state innovation grant.

Anya Rader Wallack, a consultant for the state who leads the team that is allocating the State Innovation Model grant award, said payments to providers must be in some way be tied to quality of care.

Jump-starting payment reform was the reason Vermont applied for the grant, and tying payments to the quality of care is reasonable, she told lawmakers on the House Health Care Committee on Thursday.

"I'm not sure what they're going to do if we don't make good on that pledge," said Anya Rader Wallack, a consultant who leads the team that is allocating the money.

Anya Rader Wallack. (VTDigger photo) (Josh Larkin)

Rep. George Till, D-Jericho, said he was dumbfounded that the administration would make such a pledge.

"In actuality, only a very small portion of the payments received by the practice are based on the quality measures," Till wrote in an email.

Wallack tried to reassure him, explaining that federal regulators' definition of "value-based" payments includes Vermont's payments to primary care providers through the Blueprint for Health.

The majority of Vermont's health care providers have signed up with an Accountable Care Organization, and with Medicaid and commercial insurers beginning to offer shared savings programs to the organizations this year, the state is increasing the opportunity for value-based payments, Wallack said.

Shared savings payment programs are considered value-based because the amount of savings payers give back to the Accountable Care Organization is partially based on how well they do in meeting the payers' quality measures.

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Consultant: Vermont already moving toward 'value-based' health care payments

New genetic forms of neurodegeneration discovered

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In a study published in the January 31, 2014 issue of Science, an international team led by scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report doubling the number of known causes for the neurodegenerative disorder known as hereditary spastic paraplegia. HSP is characterized by progressive stiffness and contraction of the lower limbs and is associated with epilepsy, cognitive impairment, blindness and other neurological features.

Over several years, working with scientific colleagues in parts of the world with relatively high rates of consanguinity or common ancestry, UC San Diego researchers recruited a cohort of more than 50 families displaying autosomal recessive HSP -- the largest such cohort assembled to date. The scientists analyzed roughly 100 patients from this cohort using a technique called whole exome sequencing, which focuses on mapping key portions of the genome. They identified a genetic mutation in almost 75 percent of the cases, half of which were in genes never before linked with human disease.

"After uncovering so many novel genetic bases of HSP, we were in the unique position to investigate how these causes link together. We were able to generate an 'HSP-ome,' a map that included all of the new and previously described causes," said senior author Joseph G. Gleeson, MD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, professor in the UC San Diego departments of Neurosciences and Pediatrics and at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego, a research affiliate of UC San Diego.

The HSP-ome helped researchers locate and validate even more genetic mutations in their patients, and indicated key biological pathways underlying HSP. The researchers were also interested in understanding how HSP relates to other groups of disorders. They found that the HSP-ome links HSP to other more common neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

"Knowing the biological processes underlying neurodegenerative disorders is seminal to driving future scientific studies that aim to uncover the exact mechanisms implicated in common neurodegenerative diseases, and to indicate the path toward development of effective treatments," said Gleeson.

"I believe this study is important for the neurodegenerative research community," said co-lead author Gaia Novarino, PhD, a post-doctoral scholar in Gleeson's lab. "But more broadly, it offers an illustrative example of how, by utilizing genomics in specific patient populations, and then building an 'interactome,' we greatly expand knowledge around unknown causes of disease."

"This is very exciting since identifying the biological processes in neurological disorders is the first step toward the development of new treatments," agreed co-lead author Ali G. Fenstermaker. "We identified several promising targets for development of new treatments."

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The above story is based on materials provided by University of California, San Diego Health Sciences. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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New genetic forms of neurodegeneration discovered

Concern Voiced About Media Repression in Middle East

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Advocates of press freedom are concerned about recent moves by some governments to arrest journalists and restrict Internet access to their citizens. Freedom House is a Washington-based group that supports democracy and free speech activists. The group says these restrictions on freedom of expression undermine both human rights and the foundation of democratic societies.

Charles Dunne is director of Middle East and North Africa programs at Freedom House. He says reports that journalists in Egypt are being harassed and arrested and that a proposed law in Turkey will increase restrictions on Internet access are an alarming turn toward repression in the Middle East and other countries where democracy is not firmly established.

Our annual Freedom of the World Report that was released in January did find a trend of authoritarian pushback, certainly in many Arab spring countries, but elsewhere in repressive countries, focusing not only on journalists but on bloggers, even Tweeters in many cases. So this is something that is very concerning to us," said Dunne.

The proposed law to restrict Internet access in Turkey has sparked public protests. The government says the new restrictions are to protect peoples privacy, but Turkish free speech advocate Selin Kaledelen says the purpose is to protect government officials from media scrutiny.

So for me, it's dictatorship of the authorities in terms of law. It's a censorship law, and we don't recognize it," said Kaledelen.

In Egypt, the arrest of journalists with Al Jazeera on charges of aiding a terrorist group has been condemned by UN Human Rights spokesman Rupert Colville.

It is extraordinary to find this being put into the kind of terrorist dialogue that journalists are supporting terrorists. This is really an alarming development and we hope it changes very quickly," said Colville.

U.S. State Department Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki says the U.S. government is also troubled by reports of journalists being arrested in Egypt.

Any journalist, regardless of affiliation, must not be targets of violence, intimidation or politicized legal action. They must be protected and permitted to freely do their jobs in Egypt," said Psaki.

She said the United States government advocates freedom of the media and freedom of the press as something that should be respected and valued.

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Concern Voiced About Media Repression in Middle East