Smart Energy

Plastic Planet - have you had your Bisphenol A today?

Review by Brian Charles Clark
4 out of 5 stars
Directed by Werner Boote

Originally published on Curled Up with a Good DVD

At the rate we’re going, we’re all going to need to isolate ourselves from the toxins we’ve dumped into our environment by diving into HazMat bubble suits. We’ll have to invent filters that keep the nano-sized particles of cancer-dealing crap out – but, hey, we’ve got the technology for that. And plastics.

On second thought, no: plastics are one of the biggest sources of toxins. Bisphenol A, for instance, is a plasticizer that makes plastic, well, plasticy, and has been a known estrogenic since the 1930s. Estrogenics are those wonderful chemicals that are the secret culprits behind the bitching and moaning of the Iron John crew. Chief among them, Robert Bly has long complained that men have become too feminized, and clearly plastics are to blame, not doting mothers. I mean, look at the amphibians: scientists have been observing them changing sex, male to female, mid-stream for years, so why not humans, too? Is there a problem? Read the rest of this entry »

© Copyright Richard Dorrell and licensed for reuse from http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1315247

Bolivia will this month table a draft United Nations treaty giving “Mother Earth” the same rights as humans — having just passed a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other natural things in the South American country.

The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to “dominate and exploit” — to the point that the “well being and existence of many beings” is now threatened.

Reflecting indigenous traditional beliefs, the proposed global treaty says humans have caused “severe destruction … that is offensive to the many faiths, wisdom traditions and indigenous cultures for whom Mother Earth is sacred.”

It also says that “Mother Earth has the right to exist, to persist and to continue the vital cycles, structures, functions and processes that sustain all human beings.”

In indigenous Andean culture, the earth deity known as Pachamama is the centre of all life, and humans are considered equal to all other entities.

The UN debate begins two days before the UN’s recognition April 22 of the second International Mother Earth Day — another Morales-led initiative.

Canadian activist Maude Barlow is among global environmentalists backing the drive with a book the group will launch in New York during the UN debate: Nature Has Rights.

“It’s going to have huge resonance around the world,” Ms. Barlow said of the campaign. “It’s going to start first with these southern countries trying to protect their land and their people from exploitation, but I think it will be grabbed onto by communities in our countries, for example, fighting the tar sands in Alberta.”

via UN resolution looks to give “Mother Earth” same rights as humans.

Loving Lampposts, a documentary by Todd Drezner: highly recommended.

Loving Lampposts: Living Autistic

Review by Brian Charles Clark
4.5 stars (out of 5 possible)
Directed by Todd Drezner
Originally published on Curled Up with a Good DVD

Todd Drezner’s beautiful investigation of autism is motivated by the personal. His son is autistic and loves to look at lampposts. They walk every day they can in Central Park and the young boy gazes up at the lampposts, recognizing them as individuals in ways us mere normals simply cannot.

There is a lot of bad information about autism out there and, with grace and compassion, Drezner gives even the lamest and most discredited notions their moment in the sun. The film is divided into sections and a recurring one is called “Autism is…” The reality is, no one knows for sure. But it is certainly not caused by vaccines or mercury, and it very likely isn’t genetic, either. Read the rest of this entry »

Honey bee (Apis mellifera) collecting pollen. Photo: Jon Sullivan

The disastrous decline in bees that pollinate most of the world’s food crops will continue unless humans profoundly change their ways, warns a United Nations report released today. More than a dozen factors are linked to the worldwide loss of bees, from the disappearance of flowering plants and the use of memory-damaging insecticides to the global spread of pests, air pollution and climate change.

New kinds of virulent fungal pathogens that can be deadly to bees and other pollinators are now showing up worldwide, migrating from one region to another due to shipments linked to globalization and rapidly growing international trade, the report finds. Read the rest of this entry »

Escherichia coli, one of the many species of bacteria present in the human gut

You think you’re a person, but you’re really a spaceship for bacteria:

A team of scientists from around the globe have found that gut bacteria may influence mammalian brain development and adult behavior.

“The data suggests that there is a critical period early in life when gut microorganisms affect the brain and change the behavior in later life,” says Dr. Rochellys Diaz Heijtz, first author of the study.

The research team compared behavior and gene expression in two groups of mice — those raised with normal microorganisms, and those raised in the absence of microorganisms (or germ-free mice). The scientists observed that adult germ-free mice displayed different behavior from mice with normal microbiota, suggesting that gut bacteria may have a significant effect on the development of the brain in mammals.

The adult germ-free mice were observed to be more active and engaged in more ‘risky’ behavior than mice raised with normal microorganisms. When germ-free mice were exposed to normal microorganisms very early in life, as adults they developed the behavioral characteristics of those exposed to microorganisms from birth. In contrast, colonizing adult germ-free mice with bacteria did not influence their behavior.

Subsequent gene profiling in the brain identified genes and signaling pathways involved in learning, memory and motor control that were affected by the absence of gut bacteria, highlighting the profound changes in the mice that developed in the absence of microorganisms. This suggests that, over the course of evolution, colonization of the gut by microorganisms (in total 1.5 kilograms) in early infancy became integrated into early brain development.

via Bacteria in the gut may influence brain development.

Here’s a pictorial how-to for making seed starter boxes out of origami’d newspaper. You can plunk ‘em right in the ground when it’s time. Makes sense to me, especially if you have a lot of fish wrapper but no fish (maybe because you’re a vegetarian).

Catastrophic drought is on the near-term horizon for the capital city of Bolivia, according to new research into the historical ecology of the Andes. If temperatures rise more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) above those of modern times, parts of Peru and Bolivia will become a desert-like setting.

Climatologist Mark Bush of the Florida Institute of Technology led a research team investigating a 370,000-year record of climate and vegetation change in Andean ecosystems.

The scientists used fossilized pollen trapped in the sediments of Lake Titicaca, which sits on the border of Peru and Bolivia.

They found that during two of the last three interglacial periods, which occurred between 130,000-115,0000 years ago and 330,000-320,000 years ago, Lake Titicaca shrank by as much as 85 percent.

Adjacent shrubby grasslands were replaced by desert.

In each case, a steady warming occurred that caused trees to migrate upslope, just as they are doing today.

However, as the climate kept warming, the system suddenly flipped from woodland to desert.

“The evidence is clear that there was a sudden change to a much drier state,” said Bush.

via Catastrophic drought looms for capital city of Bolivia.

Naidu Rayapati examines some suspeciously colored grape leaves.

WINO Magazine just published my article on why leaves turn colors and, more interestingly, why some grape plants’ leaves turn colors. You might think, How lovely, as you’re driving through wine country but, to growers, it’s bad news.

WSU plant pathologist Naidu Rayapati and his colleagues are carefully unraveling the intricate biochemistry and molecular biology of grapevine leafroll disease.

Grapevine leafroll is a complex viral disease that can cause a marked decline in grapevine vigor, grape quality, and fruit productivity, according to Rayapati. The disease can reduce yields as much as 50 percent or even more, depending on the severity of infection. A few years ago, it was estimated that nearly 10 percent of Washington’s vineyards have grapevine leafroll disease. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the disease is more wide spread than previously thought, raising alarm among industry stakeholders. Grapevine leafroll disease accounts for about 60 percent of the production losses of grapes worldwide, Rayapati said.

via Wino Magazine – Experience Washington Wine.

Interested in what makes wine tick? Subscribe to Voice of the Vine, perhaps the world’s only publication focused on exploring the science of wine in terms us lay folk can understand.

These girls ain’t messing around:

In a finding that upends decades of scientific theory on reptile reproduction, researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered that female boa constrictors can squeeze out babies without mating.

More strikingly, the finding shows that the babies produced from this asexual reproduction have attributes previously believed to be impossible.

via Boa constrictors can have babies without mating, new evidence shows.

Spatial relationships communicate information.

I’ve written several genome sequencing stories lately (about apple, peach, and cacao) and have been definitely getting the impression from the science types that there’s lots more to the story than just a genome. A genomic sequence is really just a big pile of information; it takes a ton more work to begin to understand bits of it as useful knowledge.

So this business of spatial relationships among genes adds interest to the gravy and bangs the gong otherwise known as my brain:

If there is one thing that recent advances in genomics have revealed, it is that our genes are interrelated, “chattering” to each other across separate chromosomes and vast stretches of DNA. According to researchers at The Wistar Institute, many of these complex associations may be explained in part by the three-dimensional structure of the entire genome.

And all of that puts me in mind of André Breton’s Communicating Vessels in which, and in a sense, the sensorium of spatial relations is the only channel of information:

a great traveler of untraveling: to experience any place, he simply surrounds himself with its smells or sounds, never leaving the ship it if docks there, or never leaving his armchair. The experience is all the more intense for the imagining, and the contextual props are more elaborate than reality could ever be.