SanLuisObispo.com: Health/Science

Scholars will reassemble ancient Egyptian boat

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 03:23 PDT

Archaeologists and scholars will excavate hundreds of fragments of an ancient Egyptian wooden boat entombed in an underground chamber next to Giza's Great pyramid. They will then try to reassemble the craft.

The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces in 1954 from another pit and painstakingly reconstructed. Experts believe the boats were meant to ferry the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in the afterlife.

Starting Saturday, tourists were allowed to view images from inside the second boat pit from a camera inserted through the a hole in the chamber's limestone ceiling.

Judge restores protection for Rockies wolves

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:44 PDT

A federal judge has restored endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, derailing plans by three states to hold public wolf hunts this fall.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula granted a preliminary injunction late Friday restoring the protections for the wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Molloy will eventually decide whether the injunction should be permanent.

The region has an estimated 2,000 gray wolves. They were removed from the endangered species list in March, following a decade-long restoration effort.

A 540-calorie Big Mac? NY chains post calorie info

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:38 PDT

Customers at big fast-food chains in New York City are finally facing the facts about their meal choices. And for some, the truth may be hard to swallow - like 1,130 calories for a Big Mac, medium fries and a medium soda.

After months of resistance, the city's chain restaurants have begun obeying a first-of-its-kind rule requiring them to post calorie counts right on the menu.

McDonald's and Burger King were among the chains that unveiled new menu boards Friday at scores of locations throughout the city, taking calorie information that had long been available on Web sites and tray liners and putting it front-and-center above the cash register.

Hundreds of baby penguins found dead in Brazil

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:14 PDT

Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro's tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.

More than 400 penguins, most of them young, have been found dead on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro state over the past two months, according to Eduardo Pimenta, superintendent for the state coastal protection and environment agency in the resort city of Cabo Frio.

While it is common here to find some penguins - both dead and alive - swept by strong ocean currents from the Strait of Magellan, Pimenta said there have been more this year than at any time in recent memory.

Health officials: Don't eat lobster tomalley

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:38 PDT

Maine officials are advising consumers to avoid eating lobster tomalley after tests revealed high levels of toxins in some lobsters.

The Maine Center for Disease Control said Friday that lobster meat is perfectly safe but that people should not eat the tomalley - a soft green substance found in the body of the lobster.

High levels of toxic algae known as red tide have been recorded along Maine's coast this summer, forcing the state to close many areas to clam and mussel harvesting. Tomalley functions as the lobster's liver by serving as a natural filter for contaminants that are in the water.

Purdue panel finds misconduct by fusion scientist

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:24 PDT

A Purdue University panel has found two instances of misconduct by a researcher who claims he produced nuclear fusion in tabletop experiments.

Rusi Taleyarkhan made headlines in 2002 when he published a paper in the journal Science claiming that he had produced nuclear fusion by making tiny bubbles collapse in a liquid. The new report found misconduct in subsequent papers.

The Purdue committee, which includes representatives from other schools, said that in a follow-up paper published in 2006 in Physical Review Letters, Taleyarkhan falsely claimed that his 2002 work had been confirmed independently. In fact, Taleyarkhan was extensively involved in the work he claimed was done independently of him, the committee found.

Tomato scare ending; fears linger for many people

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:29 PDT

The tomato scare may be over, but it has taken a toll - it's cost the industry an estimated $100 million and left millions of people with a new wariness about the safety of everyday foods.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll finds that nearly half of consumers have changed their eating and buying habits in the past six months because they're afraid they could get sick by eating contaminated food.

They also overwhelmingly support setting up a better system to trace produce in an outbreak back to the source, the poll found.

Iraqi prime minister to visit Germany, meet Merkel

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:31 PDT

A German official says Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will visit Berlin next week and meet Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm says the German leader will receive al-Maliki at the chancellery on Tuesday.

He said Friday that Merkel and al-Maliki will discuss the situation in the Middle East, bilateral ties and economic issues.

As FDA says tomatoes are safe, growers criticize agency

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:53 PDT

Was slicing tomatoes from our menus worth it?

More than 1,200 people in 42 states now have been sickened by a rare strain of salmonella bacteria carried on tomatoes ... or maybe hot peppers. Or maybe both.

Federal investigators on Thursday said they still aren't sure but declared all tomatoes now on the market safe to eat.

Mississippi remains most obese state, CDC reports

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:43 PDT

The South tips the scales again as the nation's fattest region, according to a new government survey.

More than 30 percent of adults in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee are considered obese. In part, experts blame Southern eating habits, poverty and demographic groups that have higher obesity rates.

Colorado was the least obese, with about 19 percent fitting that category in a random telephone survey done last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Record number of babies born last year

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:38 PDT

More babies were born in the United States last year than ever before, according to preliminary data, but it's not another baby boom just yet.

About 4,315,000 children were born in 2007, about 15,000 more births than the peak time of the baby boom in 1957, said Stephanie Ventura, a demographer at the National Center for Health Statistics, which compiled the data from provisional birth certificate registrations at state health departments.

"According to our provisional data, we had the highest number of births ever reported in 2007," she said.

Family sues co. for muscular dystrophy drug

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:18 PDT

A Minnesota family is trying to force a New Jersey drug company to give their son an experimental drug for a fatal form of muscular dystrophy, saying he'll die without it.

The boy's mother, Cheri Gunvalson, who helped persuade Congress to significantly boost spending to find a cure for the disease, filed a lawsuit along with her husband and son in federal court in New Jersey this week.

Jacob Gunvalson, 16, suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic, degenerative disease that mostly affects young boys. Typically, those who suffer from it die in their 20s because of weakness in their heart and lung muscles. There is no known cure, but the Gunvalson family believes the experimental drug holds hope.

Gore: Carbon-free electricity in 10 years doable

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:48 PDT

Former Vice President Al Gore called Thursday for a "man on the moon" effort to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources within 10 years, a goal that he said would solve global warming as well as economic and natural security crises caused by dependence on fossil fuels.

"The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels," Gore told a packed auditorium in Washington's historic Constitution Hall. "When you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices."

Gore compared the challenge to establishing Social Security and the Interstate highway system, as well as landing a man on the moon - all successes that took more than a single presidency to accomplish and required members of both political parties to overcome their partisanship.

Should we move species to save them?

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:38 PDT

With climate change increasingly threatening the survival of plants and animals, scientists say it may become necessary to move some species to save them. Dubbed assisted colonization or assisted migration, the idea is to decide how severe the threat is to various species, and if they need help to deal with it.

"When I first brought up this idea some 10 years ago in conservation meetings, most people were horrified," said Camille Parmesan, a biology professor at the University of Texas.

"But now, as the reality of global warming sinks in, and species are already becoming endangered and even going extinct because of climate change, I'm seeing a new willingness in the conservation community to at least talk about the possibility of helping out species by moving them around," she said. Parmesan discusses the idea in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Smithsonian dishes the dirt on, well, dirt

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:38 PDT

Dishing the dirt has a long history in Washington, but the Smithsonian Institution is taking it to new depths. The National Museum of Natural History opens a new exhibit on Saturday - "Dig It" - exploring the mysterious and complex world of soil.

"We want people to walk away understanding that soils are living, living breathing bodies," said exhibit curator Patrick Megonigal, a soil ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland.

"One of the most important messages for me is that people get beyond thinking of soil as something in their garden, but think of it as the foundation of all the Earth's ecosystems," as important as air and water, he said.

Researchers report toadfish sing to attract mates

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:38 PDT

It's not exactly Tony serenading Maria in "West Side Story," but for all their homeliness toadfish also sing to attract mates. OK, singing may be a stretch; it's more of a hum. But it turns out to be useful, for science as well as the fish.

Exploring how their nervous system produces sounds is allowing scientists to trace the earliest developments of vocalization in other animals, including people.

Many animals communicate vocally - birds chirp, frogs thrum, whales whistle - and comparing the nerve networks in a variety of vertebrates suggests that making sounds originated in ancient fishes, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.