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Mice Make Own Morphine

Janelle Weaver
Nature News
Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:03 UTC
Image
© N. Grobe & N. WeirMice can synthesize morphine from various intermediate chemicals.
Mammals could have opiate factories.

Mammals may possess the biochemical machinery to produce morphine - a painkiller found in the opium poppy, according to a new study.

Meinhart Zenk of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St Louis, Missouri, and colleagues detected traces of morphine in the urine of mice after injecting chemical precursors of the drug. They report their findings today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.[1]

Like other opioids, morphine is a potent, potentially addictive pain reliever. Scientists have speculated for decades that animals naturally synthesize morphine because specialized receptors in the brain respond to the drug. Trace amounts of morphine had been found in human urine and cells.[2] But studies using living animals yielded inconclusive results because of possible contamination from external sources of morphine in their food or in the environment.
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Bizarro Earth

Taiwan: Earthquake Magnitude 6.5 - Southeast of Taiwan


US Geological Survey
Sun, 25 Apr 2010 23:33 UTC
Image
© USGS
Date-Time:
Monday, April 26, 2010 at 02:59:50 UTC

Monday, April 26, 2010 at 10:59:50 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
22.247°N, 123.733°E

Depth:
10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program

Region:
SOUTHEAST OF TAIWAN

Distances:
245 km (150 miles) SSW of Ishigaki-jima, Ryukyu Islands, Japan

270 km (170 miles) ESE of T'ai-tung, Taiwan

270 km (170 miles) NE of Basco, Batan Islands, Philippines

2145 km (1340 miles) SW of TOKYO, Japan
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Bizarro Earth

US: Earthquake Magnitude 4.0 - Southern Texas


US Geological Survey
Sat, 24 Apr 2010 23:28 UTC
Image
© USGS
Date-Time:
Sunday, April 25, 2010 at 02:10:41 UTC

Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 09:10:41 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
27.762°N, 97.891°W

Depth:
5 km (3.1 miles) set by location program

Region:
SOUTHERN TEXAS

Distances:
8 km (5 miles) SW (226°) from Rancho Banquete, TX

15 km (10 miles) WNW (288°) from La Paloma-Lost Creek, TX

16 km (10 miles) W (270°) from Spring Garden-Terra Verde, TX

48 km (30 miles) W (273°) from Corpus Christi, TX

570 km (354 miles) S (191°) from Dallas, TX
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Cloud Lightning

US: Tornadoes tear through Southeast, killing 10

Holbrook Mohr
Associated Press
Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:31 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/ The Meridian Star, Paula MerrittA tornado ripped through the Meehan area in Lauderdale County, Miss., Saturday, April 24, 2010, leaving damage to the The walls of the Green Grove Missionary Baptist Church were blown out as a ripped through the Meehan area in Lauderdale County, Miss. on Saturday, April 24, 2010, leaving damage to the Green Grove Missionary Baptist Church.
Yazoo City, Mississippi - Tornadoes ripped through the Southeast on Saturday, killing 10 people in Mississippi and injuring more than a dozen others. Roofs were torn off businesses, homes were splintered, vehicles were overturned and roads were blocked by toppled trees.

Gov. Haley Barbour told The Associated Press there was "utter obliteration" in parts of Yazoo County, an area known for cotton, catfish, blues music and picturesque hills rising abruptly from the flat Mississippi Delta.

Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Greg Flynn said five people were killed in Choctaw County, including two children. Four victims were in Yazoo County and one was in Holmes County.

More than 15 other counties were also damaged. The swath of debris forced rescuers to pick up some of the injured on all-terrain vehicles the west-central part of the state.

Tornadoes were also reported in Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama, and the severe weather continued to track eastward.

In Yazoo City about 40 miles north of Jackson, Malcolm Gordon, 63, stood with members of his family peering through a broken window. Above them, the roof was gone, a tree lay across part of the house and power lines stretched across the yard in a neighborhood made up of modest houses and mobile homes on a street that winds around hills and ravines. The smell of shredded pine trees hung the warm breeze.
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Info

Giant Deep Sea Jellyfish Filmed in Gulf of Mexico

Jody Bourton
BBC Earth News
Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:35 UTC
Giant Jellyfish
© BBC Earth NewsAmazing footage of a rarely seen giant deep sea jellyfish has been recorded by scientists in Gulf of Mexico.
Remarkable footage of a rarely seen giant deep sea jellyfish has been recorded by scientists.

Using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), they captured a video of the huge Stygiomedusa gigantea.

The jellyfish has a disc-shaped bell than can be a metre wide, and has four arms that extend up to six metres in length.

The jellyfish has only been seen 114 times in the 110 years it has been known to science, say researchers.

Professor Mark Benfield from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, US, came across the creature as part of the Serpent project, a collaboration between marine scientists and energy companies, including BP, Shell, Chevron and Petrobras, working in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Bizarro Earth

Magnitude 6.0 - Kepulauan Obi, Indonesia


US Geological Survey
Sat, 24 Apr 2010 13:59 UTC
Indon earthquake240410
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 07:41:02 UTC

Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 04:41:02 PM at epicenter

Location:
1.842°S, 128.188°E

Depth:
35 km (21.7 miles) set by location program

Distances:
205 km (125 miles) N of Ambon, Moluccas, Indonesia

305 km (190 miles) SSE of Ternate, Moluccas, Indonesia

1215 km (750 miles) NNW of DARWIN, Northern Territory, Australia

2415 km (1500 miles) E of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia
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Bizarro Earth

Could Icelandic volcano cause famine?


Euronews
Sat, 24 Apr 2010 06:49 UTC
So far it has caused massive travel disruption, but could the Icelandic volcano bring famine and widespread social disorder?

A French historian says it has happened before.

Emmanuel Garnier argues that a volcanic eruption in Iceland in 1783 brought freak weather conditions in Europe that indirectly led to the French Revolution.

Comment: It is hard to be 100% sure about the direct casual effect between the vulcano eruption and the French Revolution, but such a link is surely interesting to consider in the light of current events.

Are we to expect local climate disruption followed by crop failure and food riots and finally some sort of revolution? If so, this time it is likely to be lead by the psychopaths in power, not the common people.

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Better Earth

Whale poop is vital to ocean's carbon cycle

Wendy Zukerman
New Scientist
Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:27 UTC
Image
© J BrokowskiThe high iron content of whale faeces feeds Antarctic krill in the Southern Ocean and elsewhere
Saving endangered baleen whales could boost the carbon storage capacity of the Southern Ocean, suggests a new study of whale faeces. Whale faeces once provided huge quantities of iron to a now anaemic Southern Ocean, boosting the growth of carbon-sequestering phytoplankton.

So says Stephen Nicol of the Australian Antarctic Division, based in Kingston, Tasmania, who has found "huge amounts of iron in whale poo". He believes that before commercial whaling, baleen whale faeces may have accounted for some 12 per cent of the iron on the surface of the Southern Ocean.

Previous studies have shown that iron is crucial to ocean health because plankton need it to grow. "If you add soluble iron to the ocean, you get instant phytoplankton growth," says Nicol. The amount of iron in whale faeces means that protecting Antarctic whales could swell populations of phytoplankton, which absorb carbon dioxide.

Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) feed on the phytoplankton, concentrating the iron in their tissue. And in turn, baleen whales eat the krill.
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Bizarro Earth

Canada: Windsor at toxic ground zero, study finds

Dave Battagello
The Gazette
Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:33 UTC
Pollution
© Rob Gurdebeke, The Windsor StarSmoke is shown rising from Detroit's Zug Island industrial complex in this 2008 photo. Heavy industry in the Great Lakes region dumped four million kilograms of deadly chemicals into the air in 2007, according to a report by a Canada-U.S. coalition of environmental groups.
Canadian industries are pumping out more cancer-causing carcinogens than their U.S. counterparts in the Great Lakes region and Windsorites are among the hardest hit, says a binational coalition of environmental groups.

Four million kilograms of deadly chemicals -- including mercury, lead, formaldehyde and benzene -- were released by large industries into the air in 2007 from both sides of the border, according to the coalition's report Partners in Pollution 2.

The greatest level of toxins within the Great Lakes basin was found in the stretch between Sarnia and Windsor that included the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and Detroit River areas, the report said.

"The potential to be in contact with toxic substances are higher there than elsewhere," said John Jackson, program director for Great Lakes United, a coalition of citizens groups that monitors toxic substances and participated in the study. "Of course, health is at risk with that."

But determining exact health risks is difficult because of a lack of studies and funding to support that work, he said.

"Cancer is a horrible thing, but it's only one of the impacts," Jackson said. "You have higher numbers of birth deformities, disruption of development of the brain and the ability to reproduce because these substances give a wide range of negative impacts."
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Extinguisher

Iceland volcano calms down: volume of ash and plume size decreases


Press TV
Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:43 UTC
Image
Ash rising from an erupting volcano near Eyjafjallajokull on April 20, 2010
Tremors coming form Iceland's volcanic eruption stay strong, while the smoke and fumes have much less ash and the plume has stayed at low levels.

Huge ash clouds caused by the volcanic eruption under the southwestern Eyjafjallajokull glacier disrupted flights and paralyzed airports across northern Europe.

Scientists, however, announced strong tremors and lower plume on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

"Only the northernmost fissure is erupting now and the plume is occasionally reaching a height of 3 km (1.9 miles), but it is mostly below that," meteorological office geophysicist Steinunn Jakobsdottir told a news conference. "

"It (the plume) is kind of stable at a height of 2 to 3 km," she added.

Seismologist Bryndis Brandsdottir believes the tremors could be a sign for a lava build up or molten rock within the crater.
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