Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- Fetal HeartCell Enzyme Important in Onset of Heart Failure; Findings…
- A catalyst for quality medical education
- New test identifies suitable lymphoma patients likely to respond to…
- We’re going the way of the robot.
- University receives informatics program funding
- Global Standard Set for Wild Medicinal Plant Harvesting
- Religious Environmentalism: Some Good News for a Change

Fetal HeartCell Enzyme Important in Onset of Heart Failure; Findings…
Free with registration - Europe Intelligence Wire - AccessMyLibrary.com - Feb 20, 2007
(From AScribe) PHILADELPHIA — In almost all forms of heart failure, the heart begins to express genes that are normally only expressed in the fetal heart. Researchers have known for years that this fetal-gene reactivation happens, yet not what regulates it. Now, investigators at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered that an enzyme important in fetal heart-cell development regulates the enlargement of heart cells, known as cardiac hypertrophy, which is a precursor to many forms of congestive heart failure (CHF). The study, which paves the way for new targets for treating cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure, appears in an advanced… Researchers have known for years that this fetal-gene reactivation happens, yet not what regulates it. Now, investigators at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered that an enzyme important in fetal heart-cell development regulates the enlargement of heart cells, known as cardiac hypertrophy, which is a precursor to many forms of congestive heart failure (CHF). The study, which paves the way for new targets for treating cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure, appears in an advanced.

A catalyst for quality medical education
Hindu - Feb 20, 2007
The committee headed by B. Ekbal, a neurosurgeon and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kerala, held `hearings’ in five locations across the State and was now engaged in conducting `focus group’ discussions. One of the things about the university that the committee members discussed was the university’s nature itself; should be it be just an affiliating university, an administrative roof over the heads of all medical colleges in the State or should it be something more?

The thinking in the committee now was that the proposed medical university should, along with granting affiliation, be a catalyst for quality medical education in the State. “There are four responsibilities for a medical college. One is teaching-learning, extension, research and clinical practice. Only the fourth factor seems to be in operation now. All the rest need improvement,” Dr… “When many people in the State contracted chikungunya there was nobody to come forward to state authoritatively what needed to be done and what, not. There are public health challenges particular to the State and such an institute can help coordinate anything from field action to policy initiatives to answer these challenges,” a committee member said. Social medicine

The idea of a Centre for Social Medicine also did the rounds in the committee - a centre that would focus on social medicine with particular emphasis on medical anthropology, clinical epidemiology and bio-ethics. Ekbal the very practice of medicine might get a makeover in the not too distant future thanks to the discipline called genomics. He argued that the very basic concepts of medicine drilled into the heads of doctors-in waiting could become redundant. “We should be able to absorb this knowledge explosion and pass it out to our future doctors.

New test identifies suitable lymphoma patients likely to respond to…
News-Medical.net - Feb 20, 2007
As a result, malignant B-cell lymphomas occur. Mutations or chromosomal rearrangements that deregulate BCL6 are responsible for many cases of diffuse large B cell lymphoma - an aggressive cancer that accounts for up to 30 percent of newly diagnosed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cases. In a 2004 Nature Medicine article, Dr. Melnick and colleagues described a peptide, which they dubbed BPI, that showed promise in treating B-cell lymphomas by specifically blocking the cancer-causing effects of the BCL6 protein. But until now, there has been no way to distinguish between diffuse large B cell lymphomas that are caused by BCL6 deregulation and those cases in which BCL6 is expressed but doesn’t actually drive the cancer. Melnick reasoned that those diffuse large B cell lymphomas that are caused by BCL6 deregulation should have a characteristic ’signature’ in which the genes targeted by the BCL6 protein are either expressed (turned on) or not expressed.

We’re going the way of the robot.
Free with registration - Newsday - AccessMyLibrary.com - Feb 20, 2007
–> COPYRIGHT 2007 Newsday Byline: Bryn Nelson Feb. 20–SAN FRANCISCO Robots already are driving cars, vacuuming rooms, tracking wildlife, climbing up walls and spying on nannies. In the not-so-distant future, a new generation of machines may be driving for us, watching our kids and dispensing medicine, according to a panel of experts assembled at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The remarkable potential has engineers and computer scientists thinking big even as other researchers ponder our increasingly complicated relationships with the machines we’ve endowed with ever-greater artificial intelligence. “Not only must they be intelligent, but they must be able to go anywhere,” said Robert Full, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. And with nature as a source of inspiration, many are doing just that. Full’s studies of how a cockroach runs, for example, led to the collaborative development of a robot known as RHex and its smaller sibling, EduBot — each equipped with… The remarkable potential has engineers and computer scientists thinking big even as other researchers ponder our increasingly complicated relationships with the machines we’ve endowed with ever-greater artificial intelligence. “Not only must they be intelligent, but they must be able to go anywhere,” said Robert Full, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. And with nature as a source of inspiration, many are doing just that. Full’s studies of how a cockroach runs, for example, led to the collaborative development of a robot known as RHex and its smaller sibling, EduBot — each equipped with.

University receives informatics program funding
Cavalierdaily.com - Feb 20, 2007
as medical informatics training site; Engineering, Medical Schools to collaborate
Thomas Madrecki, Cavalier Daily Associate Editor

The University will become one of the National Library for Medicine’s sites for medical informatics training in June after having successfully filed a proposal for funding from the organization last March. The practice of medical informatics deals with applying “computer and communications technology to the field of health,” according to a NLM press release. The University was one of the 18 schools recently approved for funding by the NLM, according to James Harrison, Jr… ”
“Most programs of this kind have their own perspective on informatics,” Harrison said. “Our perspective was to create a combination of engineering, specifically systems engineering, and medical informatics. Medicine is one of the last fields that these [engineering] techniques have been applied to. The kinds of techniques that helped make the airline or nuclear power industry as safe as they are now are only beginning to penetrate into medicine. ”
Stephanie Guerlain, associate professor of the systems and information engineering department and the leader of the engineering portion of the program, said “the main focus will be on how to improve healthcare delivery through better information systems.

Global Standard Set for Wild Medicinal Plant Harvesting
Environment News Service - Feb 20, 2007
The standard is needed to ensure plants used in medicine and cosmetics are not over-exploited. About 15,000 species, or 21 percent of all medicinal and aromatic plant species are at risk, according to the report by the Medicinal Plant Specialist Group of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission that sets forth the new standard. More than 400,000 metric tons of medicinal and aromatic plants are traded every year, and about 80 percent of these species are harvested from the wild… The United States imports hundreds of thousands of tons of many different herbs each year to support its $3 billion market. Following extensive consultation with plant experts and the herbal products industry, the International Standard for Sustainable Wild Collection of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, ISSC-MAP, was drawn up by the Medicinal Plant Specialist Group. The German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation was involved in the consultation along with WWF-Germany, and the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, plus industry associations, companies, certifiers and community-based nongovernmental organizations. “Traders and companies, collectors and consumers must share the responsibility for maintaining populations of medicinal plants which are valuable natural resources,” said Susanne Honnef of TRAFFIC. “The ISSC-MAP principles and criteria show how this can be achieved in practice,” she said. The standard is based on six principles - maintaining medicinal and aromatic plant resources in the wild, preventing negative environmental impacts, legal compliance, respecting customary rights, applying responsible management practices, and applying responsible business practices. Traditional Medicinals, a California herbal medicine company, is testing the application of the new standard to the collection of bearberry, a shrub whose leaves are used to treat the kidney, bladder and urinary tract.

Religious Environmentalism: Some Good News for a Change
Cayman Net News - Feb 20, 2007
-based Alliance for Religions and Conservation, the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science, the World Wildlife Fund and CARE. The sheiks ruled that exploding ecosystems violated Koranic injunctions against wasting God’s creation-and the dynamiting days were over. Half a world away, following the tenets of Chinese religion rather than Islam, researchers at the world-renowned Beijing School of Traditional Chinese Medicine are trying to protect endangered species by changing traditional prescriptions which call for ingredients like tiger penis, bear gal and rhinoceros horn. The high price of these ingredients leads poachers to violate international bans on their trade, but the researchers have argued that the use of endangered species violates Buddhist and Taoist principle of balance in nature, and thus are bad for both the environment and the soul. In 2004 the sixth annual meeting of Sisters of Earth, a loose network of American nuns, mingled presentations on sustainability, eco-spirituality, earth literacy and bioregionalism with religious celebration. The participants-from Texas and Massachusetts, New Jersey and Colorado-run organic farms, educate their local communities about the virtues of local food movement, and protest destructive World Bank practices. They seek, as one of them puts it, to