Take 2 minutes and fill out this elephants & ivory survey please

via Dan Bucknell from Elephant Family, who posted this on facebook today

"Sorry to be a work bore, but we're running a very quick questionnaire on what people know and think about ivory - a nice little lunchtime exercise that would help us if you'd be happy to fill it in. Cheers"

► Go to the questionnaire HERE ◄

Magnets destroy tumours in mice without side effects

Magnetic Nanoparticles Fry Tumors
by TIM WOGAN
From Science NOW

Any parent fretting over a child's fever knows that temperatures just a few degrees above normal can kill. But cancer researchers have now found a way to make high temperatures heal. In a new study, a team found that injecting mice with tiny magnets and cranking up the heat eliminated tumors from the animals' bodies with no apparent side effects.

The idea of killing cancer with heat isn't new. Researchers know that, like normal cells, cancer cells start to die when the mercury rises above 43˚C. The trick is figuring out how to kill the cancer without harming the body's own cells. One promising idea, known as magnetic hyperthermia, involves injecting minuscule "nanoparticles," basically microscopic lumps of iron oxide or other compounds, into tumors to make them magnetic. The patient is put into a magnetic field that reverses direction thousands of times every second. The magnetic nanoparticles are excited by the applied field and begin to get hot, heating and potentially destroying the surrounding cancer tissue. Because healthy tissue is not altered by the magnetic field, it does not heat up and is not damaged.

But the therapy has yet to make its way to the clinic, with only a single reported trial in humans (with modest success). This is largely because conventional nanoparticles interact only weakly with the applied field, so quite a large dose is needed to generate enough heat to damage the tumor. Although nanoparticles aren't particularly toxic, in large quantities they can trigger the body's immune system to attack them, causing allergic reactions.

Nanoscientist Jinwoo Cheon of Yonsei University in Seoul and colleagues set out to create a nanoparticle that would get hotter than traditional nanoparticles so that not as many would need to be injected into the body. They made two-layer nanoparticles, each containing a core of one magnetic mineral inside a shell of another. Because of an esoteric interaction between the two minerals, called exchange coupling, these "core-shell" nanoparticles interacted far more strongly with the magnetic field than do traditional nanoparticles and released up to 10 times as much heat. That means one would need to give only 10% of the original dose to patients to achieve the same degree of hyperthermia as with traditional nanoparticles.

The team tested its technique on three mice whose abdomens had been grafted with cells from human brain cancer. The researchers injected the tumors with core-shell nanoparticles and placed the mice inside a coil of wire (see illustration). They turned on an alternating current in the coil, creating an alternating magnetic field. Although the researchers weren't able to measure the precise temperatures inside the tumors, their estimates are between 43˚ and 48˚C. After 10 minutes, the team removed the mice from the coil and monitored the tumors for the next 4 weeks.

All traces of cancer disappeared from the mice with no apparent side effects, the team reported online 26 June in Nature Nanotechnology. For comparison, another group of mice were treated instead with a single dose of doxorubicin, a traditional anticancer drug. Although it initially shrunk some of the tumors, they grew back to four times their original size by the end of the trial. Heat treatment after an injection of traditional iron oxide nanoparticles had no significant effect on the tumors.

Nanoengineer Naomi Halas of Rice University in Houston, Texas, is impressed. "This group has solved the key impasse that has arrested the development of magnetic nanotherapies, that is, the weak response of the nanoparticle to the applied magnetic field," she says. "I am so happy that more of these types of nanoparticle-based hyperthermal therapies are being developed to increase the arsenal of weapons against cancer."

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Reference
Lee J-H, Jang J-t, Choi J-s, Moon SH, Noh S-h, Kim J-w, Kim J-G, Kim I-S, PArk KI, Cheon J (2011) Exchange-coupled magnetic nanoparticles for efficient heat induction. Nature Nanotechnology doi:10.1038/nnano.2011.95

Abstract
The conversion of electromagnetic energy into heat by nanoparticles has the potential to be a powerful, non-invasive technique for biotechnology applications such as drug release, disease treatment and remote control of single cell functions, but poor conversion efficiencies have hindered practical applications so far. In this Letter, we demonstrate a significant increase in the efficiency of magnetic thermal induction by nanoparticles. We take advantage of the exchange coupling between a magnetically hard core and magnetically soft shell to tune the magnetic properties of the nanoparticle and maximize the specific loss power, which is a gauge of the conversion efficiency. The optimized core–shell magnetic nanoparticles have specific loss power values that are an order of magnitude larger than conventional iron-oxide nanoparticles. We also perform an antitumour study in mice, and find that the therapeutic efficacy of these nanoparticles is superior to that of a common anticancer drug.

Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene

Thanks to Jesse D for the link!

BarcodingBushmeat.org

BarcodingBushmeat.org is a very cool forum whose purpose is to help coordinate in one place the information needed to better develop and apply DNA barcoding technology to the fight against unsustainable trade in wildlife.

To find out more visit their website and join the facebook cause here: http://www.causes.com/causes/286227-barcodingbushmeat-org

TOTAL FAIL: Italians protest re-introduced endagered bear attacks by hosting bear-meat banquet. Party raided by police, everyone loses.

FRom the guaridan via Traffic
by TOM KINGTON
Italian police break up bear-meat banquet laid on by Berlusconi allies
Meal was a protest against reintroduction of bears to Dolomites, says Northern League

Police have broken up a banquet of bear meat hosted by Silvio Berlusconi's powerful coalition partner in northern Italy after government ministers and animal rights groups described the event as scandalous.

The order to down cutlery came as about 200 people lined up to devour grilled and stewed bear at a rally in Imer in the Italian Dolomites organised by the Northern League.

Organisers said they had bought the meat legally in Slovenia to get round a ban on bear hunting in Italy, but food safety officers from Italy's paramilitary carabinieri police objected to the lack of import documentation for the 50kg of meat.

Speaking at the event, Enzo Erminio Boso, a former League senator, said he suspected the raid had been arranged by members of Berlusconi's People of Liberty party who earlier demanded that League leader Umberto Bossi halt proceedings.

Foreign minister Franco Frattini and tourism minister Michela Vittoria Brambilla had condemned the bear feast as "a scandalous initiative", while environment minister Stefania Prestigiacomo described the get-together as "barbarous".

In his blog, Frattini said the banquet was particularly offensive since Italian bears were "almost extinct and we are trying with great effort to bring them back to the mountains that have hosted them for centuries".

The brown bear population has risen to about 35 in and around the Dolomites after 10 were reintroduced there a decade ago. But instead of celebrating their return, some locals have complained that the bears are attacking chickens and sheep. Claims made for lost livestock rose to ¤100,000 (£90,000) last year, and farmers were fed up, said Maurizio Fugatti, an MP for the devolutionist and anti-immigrant Northern League.

Hence the banquet, which, said Fugatti, had been planned to "send a clear signal to citizens who have the right to reconquer their territory and freely circulate".

To protect locals from marauding bears, he added, "we prefer to eat them like this."

Fugatti said half of the bear meat had been cooked for the cancelled banquet but the remainder was frozen and ready for a new dinner date should the paperwork be put in order.

"The idea was to attract attention to a bear repopulation plan which has got out of hand, resulting in locals being followed by bears through woods normally frequented by families. Even if the banquet doesn't happen, we have made our point," he went on.

The Northern League has long specialised in controversial statements and stunts. In 2007 Senator Roberto Calderoli proposed dissuading Muslims from building a mosque in Bologna by parading a pig across the chosen site, defiling it.

Massimiliano Rocco, an officer with the WWF in Italy, praised the police raid on the banquet: "If they wanted to provoke debate about the right way to manage the bears in the area, there was no need to illegally import the meat of a protected species."

Women have better gaydar when ovulating

Is He Gay? Ovulating Women Can Tell
BY BONNIE ROCHMAN
From Time & Men's Health

Ovulation is a really useful biological function. Not only does it facilitate pregnancy — though sperm are in no short supply, the ephemeral egg appears just once a month — but new research finds that it also helps a woman select potential partners by enhancing her "gaydar."

All this complex sexual decision-making is going on behind the scenes, according to a study published online this week in the journal Psychological Science that found that straight women at their peak period of fertility are far more accurate than non-ovulaters at sussing out who's gay and who's not just by looking at a man's face.

"We consistently find that people have no idea they are able to do this," says Nicholas Rule, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and the study's lead author. "They come out of the experiment completely frustrated and say, This is so hard, no one can do this, and then we look at the data and they're doing amazingly well."

Rule and colleagues at Tufts University put 40 Tufts undergraduate women — all of whom were heterosexual and ovulating — through three experiments designed to test their hypothesis that women pay more attention to men's sexual orientation when they're extremely fertile.

First, the participants were asked to look at 80 images of men's faces; half the photos — which were similar in terms of expression and attractiveness — belonged to gay men, while the other half featured straight men. A participant's ability to determine the sexual orientation of the men in the photos was closely associated with how close she was to peak ovulation.

"The closer you get to peak ovulation, accuracy goes up, up, up, peaks at ovulation, then starts to go back down again," says Rule. "There is a linear effect."

Then, researchers substituted 100 female faces — half straight, half lesbian — and performed the experiment again. This time, they found no association between fertility and so-called gaydar, an informal term referring to the ability to intuit a person's sexual orientation.

"It's not just that women are more attentive to nonverbal cues around ovulation," says Rule. "It's really something specific about paying attention to men's sexual orientation."

Finally, researchers went a step further, asking half the female subjects to read a sexy story in order to "induce reproductive thinking" before repeating the previous two experiments with both groups. The women who'd read the tale — a hokey-sounding beach romance about meeting a handsome guy on an island — were even more successful at predicting sexual orientation than the control group, an outcome that Rule says proves that women's brains are evolutionarily primed for mating during ovulation.

This is hardly the first time that ovulation has been shown to alter women's behavior. Previous research has found that women are quicker to identify a man's face than a woman's face near ovulation; subsequent analysis divined that the opposite held true for lesbians: they were faster to pick out a woman's face. Last year, another study in Psychological Science found that ovulating women are half as likely to call their dads. Why? Because incestuous relationships are more likely to produce problematic offspring, women are unconsciously shunning pop at their most fertile time of the month.

Taken as a whole, the entire body of research suggests that when women have the greatest chance of getting pregnant, they are unconsciously making judgments and perceptions that maximize that possibility.

"Around ovulation, the mind is reallocating its resources in ways that are relevant evolutionarily," says Rule. "It shows us that the link between body and mind is greater than we often think."

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Reference
Rule NO, Rosen KS, Slepian ML, Ambady N (2011) Mating Interest Improves Women’s Accuracy in Judging Male Sexual Orientation. Psychological Science doi: 10.1177/0956797611412394

Abstract
People can accurately infer others’ traits and group memberships across several domains. We examined heterosexual women’s accuracy in judging male sexual orientation across the fertility cycle (Study 1) and found that women’s accuracy was significantly greater the nearer they were to peak ovulation. In contrast, women’s accuracy was not related to their fertility when they judged the sexual orientations of other women (Study 2). Increased sexual interest brought about by the increased likelihood of conception near ovulation may therefore influence women’s sensitivity to male sexual orientation. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated women’s interest in mating using an unobtrusive priming task (Study 3). Women primed with romantic thoughts showed significantly greater accuracy in their categorizations of male sexual orientation (but not female sexual orientation) compared with women who were not primed. The accuracy of judgments of male sexual orientation therefore appears to be influenced by both natural variations in female perceivers’ fertility and experimentally manipulated cognitive frames.

Very Important Scientist of the Month: Grit Schubert (New paper: Male-Mediated Gene Flow in Patrilocal Primates)

Male-Mediated Gene Flow in Patrilocal Primates

Schubert G, Stoneking C, Arandjelovic M, Boesch C, Eckhardt N, Hohmann G, Langergraber K, Lukas D, Vigilant L (2011) Male-mediated gene flow in patrilocal primates. PlosOne 6(7): e21514. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0021514

Abstract
Background
Many group–living species display strong sex biases in dispersal tendencies. However, gene flow mediated by apparently philopatric sex may still occur and potentially alters population structure. In our closest living evolutionary relatives, dispersal of adult males seems to be precluded by high levels of territoriality between males of different groups in chimpanzees, and has only been observed once in bonobos. Still, male–mediated gene flow might occur through rare events such as extra–group matings leading to extra–group paternity (EGP) and female secondary dispersal with offspring, but the extent of this gene flow has not yet been assessed.

Methodology/Principal Findings
Using autosomal microsatellite genotyping of samples from multiple groups of wild western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), we found low genetic differentiation among groups for both males and females. Characterization of Y–chromosome microsatellites revealed levels of genetic differentiation between groups in bonobos almost as high as those reported previously in eastern chimpanzees, but lower levels of differentiation in western chimpanzees. By using simulations to evaluate the patterns of Y–chromosomal variation expected under realistic assumptions of group size, mutation rate and reproductive skew, we demonstrate that the observed presence of multiple and highly divergent Y–haplotypes within western chimpanzee and bonobo groups is best explained by successful male–mediated gene flow.

Conclusions/Significance
The similarity of inferred rates of male–mediated gene flow and published rates of EGP in western chimpanzees suggests this is the most likely mechanism of male–mediated gene flow in this subspecies. In bonobos more data are needed to refine the estimated rate of gene flow. Our findings suggest that dispersal patterns in these closely related species, and particularly for the chimpanzee subspecies, are more variable than previously appreciated. This is consistent with growing recognition of extensive behavioral variation in chimpanzees and bonobos.