BIOL 1610 Spring 2018 Biology in the News

Some recent studies are calling us to be more cautious about our cell phone usage. There have been some studies on lab rats over the last two years that have started linking cell phone usage to higher cancer rates. Basically what the experiment was, Scientists exposed a bunch of lab rats to about the same amount of RF radiation (Radio Frequency, the kind of radiation cell phones use to communicate with cell towers) cell phones and wireless routers and basically all of our modern internet devices, expose us to. Long story short the Rats had a noticeably higher rate of schwannomas, and cancer in glial cells than regular non-exposed rats.  There were some other really cool findings from the study too. For example only Male lab rats contracted Schwannomas (cancer of Schwann cells in nerve tissue) and only female lab rats were found to have glioma. (cancer in glial cells, cells that help brain cells) They also found higher levels of other types of cancer such as skin cancer, prostat...

Gary Frisk 3/30/2018 Blog Post The Not So Junk DNA We have always been told that we are closely related to chimpanzees. DNA exome sequencing has shown that we vary by less than 1% in our protein encoding segments of our DNA. This article discusses the work of Katherine Pollard, a biostatistician at the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco, and her team, have found a significant difference between the introns, or “junk DNA,” of humans and most animals, and how that “junk” is possibly why we are so different from all other life on the planet. Pollard’s earlier work sequenced the differences between human and chimpanzee genomes. The 716 differences are called “human accelerated regions” (HARs). Technology to study the affects of these HARs had to catch up to this discovery. Working with Nadav Ahituv, a geneticist at U.C.S.F., they used biotechnology to splice HAR DNA into neurons they created using human and chimpanzee check cells. Doing th...

               Opioid’s are a serious problem that according to Edward Bilsky, an opioid pharmacologist and provost at Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences, can potentially be eliminated. Opioid addiction is a problem that needs to be faced as soon as possible. Utah has many different ads that are sure to be seen driving on the freeway, but we are not the only state that has an issue. Many people have died and many more will continue to die “In 2015, 2 million Americans suffered from prescription opioid addiction, and more than 33,000 died of an opioid overdose” (pg. 44) There is a solution to the problem at hand.               In Jonathon Keats’ article, building a better Painkiller, Christopher Stein stumbled upon something that would change the way that opioids are researched. He noticed that among rats an inflamed leg would be numb to the effects of touch, but anot...

A Columbia University Ph. D track student, Brian A. Smith, has invented a system which he calls the RAD, or Racing Auditory Display, which is a more sophisticated system then the currently available technology for allowing those with impaired sight access to video gaming in the racing genre. According to Smith, the systems that are currently available either "overload the player with too much information," or resort to no complexity at all in order to cater to their target audience's disability. The article states that the program Smith integrated his platform to is Unity. After doing a little research online, I learned that Unity was used in the creation of the Android version of Temple Run, Angry Birds 2, and even a game that I've wasted some hours on, Plague Inc, so the engine is built for enjoyable games with a healthy level of complexity. Using the article and the included video was difficult, as it refused to load fully, but I found a version on YouTube that all...

Problems with the Unicorns of the Sea By Adam Chappell I read an article entitled “Heart monitors on wild narwhals reveal alarming responses to stress.”  I found it through the National Science Foundation’s page that was linked to on our course website.  You can find it here if you want to learn more: https://news.ucsc.edu/2017/12/narwhals.html This particular article was published on Dec. 7, 2017, and outlines some new findings about narwhals that have never been documented before. The article describes how a team of scientists got permission in 2012 to work with native hunters to study narwhals.  These scientists would rescue narwhals caught in the hunters’ nets, and before releasing them, they would attach a heart-rate monitor to the narwhals that would stay attached for 1-3 days.  After that time, the device would float back to the surface of the water, where it would be collected, and the data could be studied. In previous years, these scientists were...

                                                            Cognitive Defect                 After reading “Cognitive Deficits Caused by a Disease-Mutation in the α3 Na+/K+-ATPase Isoform.”by news nature furthered my understanding of many nuerological diseases and the urge to find a cure and fast.  Alternating childhood of hemiplegia , ALS, epilepsy , and many other diseases all have one thing in common they are neurological they all deal with a defect/mutation in the Sodium Potassium Pump.The “Pump” maintains the NA+ and K+ electrochemical gradient. There is no cure for any of the diseases yet but they are working on it ...

We have all heard about global warming, climate change, and rising sea levels in the news and in our science classes at school. And while we know that these changes will have an affect on the world and our environment another pressing concern brought to light by paleontologist John Huntley has been about the effect of infectious diseases and parasites changing with the rising and warm tides. Huntley basis for this research directed his attention to about 11,700 years ago when higher and waters caused a large increase in the number of parasites in clams around the risen coasts. These infectious parasites were able to adapt and thrive more in a changed environment and this is the concern of many scientists as the sea levels are once again beginning to raise and warm as they did in the past. Huntley and his collages did extensive research around these clams and climate change and their study took them to some very diverse locations.They went to Northern Italy and to China's Pearl Ri...