Snippets From Science

• A major goal in stem cell research has been to inject these unspecialized cells into the human body so they may become specialized into cells that replace ones lost through disease or injury. Geron, a California biotech firm, is the first company to receive FDA approval to inject stem cells into human patients with spinal cord injury. Studies of rats with damaged spinal cords were successful and crippled rats responded by regaining the ability to walk and even run. Many neuroscientists feel that “stem cell therapy” offers great hope in treating not only spinal cord injury, but such diseases as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s where populations of nerve cells are lost.

• Speaking of Alzheimer’s Disease, a study sponsored by The Alzheimer Society of Canada reported that almost 15 percent of people with dementia are under the age of 65.

• In an article reported in Science, two Idaho researchers examined the chances that the 1,300 species on the endangered list will survive without human monitoring and intervention. They found that 80 percent of the endangered species will require continual help. They conclude by stating:  “The situation is likely to get worse. Because habitat destruction and other threats are increasing, more species will probably need to be listed…”

• So many of us are focused on habitat destruction and other societal and biological problems, very few people see the elephant hiding in a corner of the room:  namely, population increase.

• Intel is still shrinking computer chips. One of its latest contains 820 million transistors. The transistors are so small that more than 2 million can fit in the period at the end of this sentence. And a device inside each transistor can switch on and off up to 300 billion times a second (from Science, Feb. 20, 2009). Wonder if the cell phone keyboard in our future will measure about an inch across, and if evolution will select for smaller and smaller thumbs?

• Are our earthworm friends turning on us? In a piece in Scientific American, there was a headline, “invasive earthworms denude Great Lakes forests.” Although the last Ice Age wiped out native earthworms over 10,000 years ago, fishing worms tossed aside have established themselves to the point where some of our hardwood forests are beginning to struggle. Since the trees depend on a mat-like understory of decaying vegetation dominated by fungi, large populations of earthworms eat the detritus, and the soil fungi are replaced by bacteria that change the soil’s pH. Sadly, night crawlers, the bait of choice for many fishermen (and women and children), are major culprits, and their spread may have to be limited to sustain forest health.

• A researcher at the U. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center published a study that suggests that individual brain neurons can retain a “memory” for up to a minute. Unless this memory trace is processed into longer-term memory, it disappears. He compares this to the way RAM memory works in a computer.

Before he retired, Paul Burton was a professor of physiology and cell biology at Kansas University and a member of an Alzheimer’s Study Group and the Center for Biomedical Research. He received his doctorate in zoology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and carried out advanced studies in cellular biology at the UW Medical School. He published over 75 research papers and presented dozens of papers at national meetings, mostly on the ultrastructure of the nervous system.