Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- New fungal defensin, plectasin, possesses as much power as penicillin
- Want to win a Nobel Prize? Live long and prosper!
- Natasha Walter: Must biology punish women who dare be free? | World…
- High up in West Virginia, a soft spot for cranberries, flytraps and…
- Medtronic Ready to Face J&J
- Quest to develop synthetic versions of rare natural substances to…
- Central Asia: World’s Largest Wild Goat Fights For Survival

New fungal defensin, plectasin, possesses as much power as penicillin
News-Medical.net - Oct 12, 2005
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“This finding (plectasin), and the existence of about 200,000 additional species of fungi, opens up a vast universe to explore for novel peptide antibiotics,” said co-author Robert Lehrer, M. , Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Plectasin, if proven safe and effective in humans, could be on the market by 2012, said Lehrer. Zasloff and Lehrer are known internationally as experts in antimicrobial peptides - the class of antibiotics that plectasin falls within - and in this study they collaborated with Novozymes, a Danish biotech company that led the research. Zasloff and Lehrer are the only two scientists from U.

Want to win a Nobel Prize? Live long and prosper!
Free with registration - Asia Africa Intelligence Wire - AccessMyLibrary.com - Oct 12, 2005
Also don’t tell too many people about your idea or it may be stolen, and write good English because your discovery needs to be a memorable story if it’s to be deemed worthy of a Nobel. So says Australian Nobel prize-winning scientist Peter Doherty in his new book "The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize. " Doherty won the.

Natasha Walter: Must biology punish women who dare be free? | World…
Guardian Unlimited - Oct 12, 2005
What, did you think that you could go play with the boys and not get hurt? Recent research has shown that women who drink are far more vulnerable to assault and rape than you would imagine. More than one in three young women say that they have been sexually assaulted after getting drunk. In a report on the research in the Guardian, Professor Robin Touquet, a consultant in accident and emergency medicine, said: “Women must not put themselves in vulnerable positions. “Or did you think you could be like the men in another way, beavering away in an office instead of concentrating on your ovaries? Recent research has shown that women in their 30s are being overconfident about their fertility, so dooming themselves to probable disappointment. The authors of that report, Melanie Davies and Susan Bewley, said that women were “defying nature and risking heartbreak”. And if you have managed to get pregnant, did you think you could be like the child’s father, and still keep a foothold in the workplace? New research purports to show that mothers who leave their babies to go out to work are doing their children a disservice. Penelope Leach said that if children are cared for by people other than their mothers, their development is “definitely less good”… the fiercer will be her struggle with nature - that is, with the intractable physical laws of her own body. And the more nature will punish her: ‘Do not dare to be free! For your body does not belong to you. ‘ ” So spoke Camille Paglia 15 years ago, so speak all the media now. More and more, when feminists talk about change, the voices of the backlash talk about the impossibility of going against nature. Biology, in the western world, acts almost like the Qur’an in the eastern world - it is the ultimate excuse for why things for women cannot and will not change. In a secular world you are told that inequality rests on nature; and in a religious world you are told that it rests on God’s word.

High up in West Virginia, a soft spot for cranberries, flytraps and…
Washington Post - Oct 12, 2005
Cranberries evoke notions of New England and fall harvests, don’t they? Bogs, meanwhile, are primordial and soupy and perilous. Picking fruit from a swamp? No thanks. A natural cranberry bog in West Virginia? Too out of place… On its ancient native turf, the cranberry almost glows. This is one of the few fruits native to North America. Native Americans used the cranberry as food and medicine. It grows from April to November, with berries ripening in late summer and fall, and an individual plant can live more than 100 years. A trip along the Cranberry Glades boardwalk takes you through one of the few remaining natural Southern populations of a plant that was once indigenous from North Carolina to Canada. (Another highland bog is within the Dolly Sods Wilderness, about 35 miles from Elkins, W.

Medtronic Ready to Face J&J
Red Herring - Oct 12, 2005
In the larger markets that both J&J and Guidant deal in, “there are very, very few competitors,” says Mr. Ellis, who was named CFO in May after holding various positions at the company since 1989. “And when you have one competitor buying another, by its very nature it’s reducing the competitiveness of that industry. ” However, he falls short of predicting whether the deal will be given the green light. Many analysts—Keay Nakae of investment bank C. Unterberg, Towbin (CEUT) among them—expect the deal to go through, albeit with some forced divestitures… “We don’t want to be the next. Medtronic’s stock price has taken some nosedives in the past few years, but has slowly climbed since November 2004 to hover around $55 in recent trading (see chart, p.

Quest to develop synthetic versions of rare natural substances to…
News-Medical.net - Oct 12, 2005
If all goes well, the team’s efforts could pay off in the form of the next generation of cancer-fighting drugs. Such research often is a long, laborious process that can take years to generate results - but is essential if breakthroughs in medicine, engineering and the sciences are to occur. In the FSU chemist’s case, the state of Florida has acknowledged that the wait may well be worth it. Dudley, an assistant professor in FSU’s department of chemistry and biochemistry, recently was awarded a $450,000, three-year grant from the James & Esther King Biomedical Research Program, which is operated by the Florida Department of Health.

Central Asia: World’s Largest Wild Goat Fights For Survival
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty - Oct 12, 2005
”Markhor hunting has been prohibited since Soviet times in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. But local populations have indiscriminately continued killing them for trophies and meat. Horns have reportedly fetched up to $1,000 per kilogram in China, where they are used in traditional medicine. The same phenomenon has touched markhor populations in neighboring countries. Overall, the number of markhor is believed to have decreased to just a few thousand. In Indian-administered Kashmir, wildlife experts have recently sighted 155 Pir Panjal markhor in 35 herds, raising hopes that the animal was not as close to extinction in the area as previously thought. But Vivek Menon, the executive director of the Wildlife Trust of India, an environmental group that took part in the survey, says poaching and overgrazing by flocks of migrant grazers continue to pose threats to the markhor population… The markhor is mainly found in the sparsely wooded mountainous regions in northern and western Pakistan. Innovative projects there have shown that trophy hunting can effectively contribute to protect the animal if they create financial incentives for the local communities. The Society for Torghar Environmental Protection is a nonprofit organization that administers such a conservation project in the Baluchistan Province. The chairman of the organization, Naseer Tareen, explains how the Torghar Hills population of Sulaiman markhor has increased from fewer than 100 animals to nearly 2,000 in the past 20 years: “These animals were really on the decline, local hunting was the main reason, and also the government felt that [it] would not be able to control the poachers. Then with tribal people, the elders, we decided that we will protect [them] ourselves and that we will approach the problem through the sustainable use of the resources, meaning there’ll be limited trophy hunt and money coming through that will create jobs and other help to the community. What they had to do was to stop hunting the animals. ”This was back in the 1985, when the first local tribesmen were hired as guards.