Adventure Ausrama Blog

Ebola is still a world crisis. Though the overall rate of infected people has slowed, some pockets in Africa have increased infections. It could still spread to Europe, Asia and the US.  If it does spread this wide, control will be virtually impossible. Some form of effective treatment has to be found - fast. The blood of survivors has been seen has the most probable source of a vaccine. However, any form of treatment should be examined for its usefulness. In Australia a vaccine tested on monkeys holds out great hope. The Kunjin treatment has been created from engineering the Ebola virus protein. Monkeys were given the vaccine and they showed significant protection from the disease. Seventy five per cent of the monkeys kept their resistance. Much research was based on tests on rodents. Success on them did not mean that vaccines would work on humans, so tests on primates is beginning. Scientists must get a move on to create a successful vaccine. Ninety per cen

Who would have thought that ear wax would add to scientific knowledge. A wax ear plug from a dead 12 years old whale has shed more light on its life. Traditional research involved blubber, faeces and blood. Lipids, keratin and waxes built up by two layers a year. This was used to tell the age of the whale. When sliced ultrafine, 24 separate rings were identified. Closer analysis was done and various industrial chemicals and pesticides were found. Some of the chemicals persisted in the wax despite being banned world wide ten years before. There is no doubt that these chemicals were stored in the females fat and passed onto the young. Mercury was high at two periods in the whale"s life. Testosterone level rose when the whale reached maturity at ten years of age. The high chemical rate is believed to have an indirect effect on the high cortisol level, the stress hormone. However, a 12 year old male would have been driven to compete with other males for females and form so

New cancer "curing" medications are announced to the public all the time. Unfortunately, what you are not told is when they will be available. It isn't much use if you have to wait ten years - if you have cancer you could be dead before then. It is not so much chemicals that attack dangerous "bugs" that are coming to the fore : modified molecules are increasingly being tested. In prostate cancer testosterone attaches to androgen receptors. Activation in this manner allows cancer growth to take place. A helix-mimicking molecule attaches to the particular docking point thus preventing the ideal cancer condition occurring. In animal and human tests protein supporting cancer growth was not produced when the molecules attached. Moreover, it was not found to be toxic to the body. This research opens up a completely new area of treatment. The future looks bright in the fight against cancer - it we can afford to pay for it. http://www.adventure--australia.blo

Over recent years there has been a host of controversial claims about fish oil, calcium and glucosamine. The questions are do these supplements do any good and do they all have to be taken? Some doctors say take them and other GPs say claims about them are nonsense. Some tests have been done. It has still not been proven that taking calcium prevents deterioration of bones in old age. And there is no proof that glucosamine gets into joints thus reducing pain. Tests on fish oil offer some hope of benefit. During research into omega 3 (which is in fish oil) on young children a potential benefit came to light. It seems that premature birth is delayed when fish oil is taken. Omega 3 prolongs pregnancy. Subjects who took the supplement also had larger babies. Their birth date was later than predicted. Of course, this brings up another question: Are heavier babies healthier? As the cause of premature birth is unknown perhaps this benefit overrides the perceived consequences of la

It was thought that monkeys and chimpanzees were unable to use language as humans do because they do not have the required language centers in their brains.  Tests on baboons turned this theory on its head.  Monkeys learned the rules of words, for example consonants and vowels, so they could recognize real words in a bundle of made up nonsense. Humans must first build up words from letters before they get meaning.  We need to construct words as if they were tables and chairs, from the legs up. Baboons were tested by encouraging them to "play" with computers.  When they selected a real word they got wheat as a reward.  Each computer had a cross and a circle so the baboons could show words and non-words by pressing either symbol.  The words were only four uppercase letters long, but each baboon did up to 60,000 tests and they were 75 per cent correct.  The best baboon learned 308 words http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http: