By Ellen Beck <a href=www.upi.com>United Press International From the Science & Technology Desk Published 5/1/2003 7:45 AM

RESEARCHERS DECODE ANTHRAX GENE

A team led by the Institute of Genomic Research in Rockville, Md., has finished the genetic blueprint of Bacillus anthracis -- anthrax. B. anthracis, researchers say, differs very little from the common soil bacterium that is its near relative but the variations are enough to give it disease-causing properties. In comparing an isolate of the Ames strain of anthrax with two closely related bacteria, the researchers found in the 5,000 or more genes analyzed there were only about 150 significant differences. The researchers found a number of genes encoding proteins that B. anthracis might need to enter its host's cells, which could provide targets for drugs. Unlike its near relatives, B. anthracis possesses genes that give it the ability to thrive on protein-rich matter, such as the decaying animal bodies it frequently grows on, the scientists discovered.

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GEOLOGIST SAYS DIAMONDS HAVE OCEANIC ORIGIN

Materials that form diamonds mined in Guaniamo, Venezuela, originated on the ocean floor, says University of Toronto geologist, Professor Daniel Schulze. The diamond formation process begins, Schulze says when the mantle -- the interior layer between Earth's core and its crust -- forces lava up onto the ocean's floor. The lava then solidifies into a volcanic rock called basalt. When the basalt interacts with sea water, its oxygen composition changes. "The volcanic rocks are altered to form new minerals. Geological processes then thrust this altered basalt under the earth's continental plates where heat and pressure turn the basalt into eclogite -- beautiful red and green rocks that may contain diamonds, if carbon is present.

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FOR ANTS, SMELL IS BOSS

It's smell -- not brainpower -- that cause ants to carry out their organized existence -- along with a solid work ethic, say Stanford University biologists. They found when patroller ants returns to the nest, their distinctive body odor cues other workers to go out and forage for food. Associate Professor Deborah M. Gordon says since no one is in charge in the ant colony, the question is, "How does a worker know what to do?" In ant colonies, the queen only lays eggs and has nothing to do with running the place. An ant's antennae are fine-tuned to differentiate subtle smells produced by hydrocarbons -- a naturally occurring family of chemicals that includes such well-known compounds as methane and propane. Subtle changes in the concentration of hydrocarbons produce profound behavioral changes in ants, the researchers said. All ants in a colony share the colony's odor -- that's how they tell one colony from another -- but in harvester ants the team found a further subdivision. Different tasks -- such as foraging and patrolling -- smell different.

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NEW PIECE OF CELL GROWTH PUZZLE FOUND

Scientists at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research say in biology, cell size matters and they've linked cell growth to the ability to sense nutrients in the environment. This growth-triggering system, known as the mTOR pathway, is a complex of proteins that respond to nutrient cues. The researchers found a protein that helps regulate the mTOR pathway. GßL acts as a bridge stabilizing the interactions between two other proteins central to mTOR function. When GßL is absent or disabled, cells become insensitive to nutrient levels and grow abnormally, a possible cause of disease, the researchers said.

(EDITORS: For more information about ANTHRAX, contact Anne Oplinger, (301) 402-1663 or e-mail aoplinger@niaid.nih.gov. For DIAMONDS, Lanna Crucefix at (416) 978-0260, for ANTS, Dawn Levy, (650)725-1944 or dawnlevy@stanford.edu, and for CELL GROWTH, Kelli Whitlock, (617) 258-5183 or newsroom@wi.mit.edu.)

By David Boyce The Almanac Almanac Staff Writer

Much-honored science teacher Jill Baumgartel engages students with real-world experiences

If science seems a dry affair with stories of interest coming along only occasionally, it may be that you had uninspiring science teachers who, like many scientists before them, preferred the ivory tower over the open door and lecturing over collaboration.

Not so in the classroom of Woodside High School chemistry teacher Jill Baumgartel, where the energy and ferment of the open door and collaboration permeates the room.

Passing through her door have been students from many cultures and socio-economic situations. Some have built working rockets, with her advice and help. Others have designed and built experiments for the space shuttle, with her advice and help. For her efforts, she has received many honors.

And she brings the world to her classrooms and occasionally takes her classrooms to the world. In an era in which knowledgeable high school science teachers are a scarce resource, Ms. Baumgartel has two of the prime ingredients for effective teaching: credibility and good stories.

She had her first chemistry set at 8 years old; by 11, she had an advanced set, she says. After college in Michigan, she did graduate work at Princeton University under Hubert Alyea, a colleague of Albert Einstein, who, Prof. Alyea said, would sometimes audit his chemistry class, according to Ms. Baumgartel.

During her 22-year career, Ms. Baumgartel has been recognized by the University of California, MIT and the National Science Foundation. She has won several teaching awards, including, in October, San Mateo County Teacher of the Year. Space science

Ms. Baumgartel has a deep and abiding interest in space and space exploration. She's been recognized by nine times by NASA and again by the Cosmonaut Federation of the former USSR. On Friday, March 28, she attended a black tie dinner in Washington, D.C., to receive the 2003 National Space Club Space Educator award.

"It's the pinnacle of my career," she says. "I'm pretty honored that an educator is being recognized."

One outlet for her interest in space is amateur rocketry. In one corner of her classroom sits a thin cylindrical finned rocket body, a device that can capture the interest of reluctant science students, she says. They've made rockets from deodorant bottles, Crayola markers and empty whipped cream cans, she says. Some rockets have reached a height of 1,500 feet and have carried moths or beetles as passengers. Of the two, beetles seemed to enjoy the ride, she says.

In the past two years, Ms. Baumgartel has advised two teams of Woodside students in designing life-science experiments that won highly competitive slots on upcoming space shuttle missions, if and when they resume.

The first experiment studies the behavior of earthworms in space; the second looks at the effect of zero gravity on antibiotics. Both experiments have relevance for human beings living in zero-gravity environments, she says.

Ms. Baumgartel has twice been a crew member on NASA's airborne observatory. A specially equipped Boeing 747 takes scientists to 45,000 feet, where the air density is 20 percent of what it is at the Earth's surface, allowing astronomers to use onboard telescopes to observe space with much less atmospheric interference. And if you put a can of soda down on the floor of the plane, it freezes, she says.

The 14-hour missions are "real science," she says. "You have a problem with the telescope, you have to get in there and fix it. Science is not just working in a lab." On the mission, her ability to identify gases in the Orion nebula allowed her to bring her chemistry expertise to bear, she says.

Science may be her passion, but it is not all-consuming. She's now on her seventh passport. Over her career, Ms. Baumgartel, 45, has been to more than 35 countries, including 14 visited on a teaching sabbatical and several to which she was accompanied by Woodside students. Worldly science

With its dry formulas, abstract theories and rapid rate of change, science can be a hard sell to students.

Popular culture can be problematic too. Entertainment-driven mass media can drown out interest in subjects that require dedication and disciplined thought processes. Add a genuinely multi-cultural student population to the mix and a science teacher can be left wondering which way to turn.

And while a well-traveled history or language teacher can relate international experiences to the classroom, what does being well-traveled bring to a teacher in a field in which English and mathematics are the primary languages?

Ms. Baumgartel says her travel anecdotes help generate interest among her students.

For example, for a lesson on Boyle's Law, which concerns the behavior of gases at different temperatures and pressures, Ms. Baumgartel says she can talk about her hikes with Himalayan sherpas. "They're amazing. They climb in flip-flops," she says. Sherpa endurance has been attributed to larger lungs that enable them to cope with thinner colder air.

Such a simple example is easily demonstrated with a trip to the thin cold air of Lake Tahoe, she says, where local students can validate Boyle's Law by sensing how different they feel after exercising at that altitude.

In a discussion of the chemistry involved when matter changes from solid to liquid to gas, Ms. Baumgartel says she can mention the three days she once spent in the Rajasthan desert in India, traveling by camel and watching the normally invisible micrometeorites vaporizing and lighting up the night sky. A context like that can make the difference between a remembered lesson and a forgotten one.

Her travels have also shone light on her teaching methods, she says. During her ten-month, 14-country sabbatical in 1993-1994, she saw regional similarities and differences that caused her to reconsider her ideas.

"In Asia, science is a very serious matter," she says. Whereas in the United States, serious science education normally begins in the junior year, it's taught in all four years of secondary school in Japan, she says.

Science teachers are also revered there, she says. In Malaysia and Japan, students stand in appreciation at the end of class. But classes are often pure lecture and many kids go from regular school to "cram school" and don't get home until 10 p.m., she says.

She says she found kindred spirits and validation of her practices in Russian and Turkish classrooms, where science classes are a mix of lecture and demonstration with some humor thrown in. "It is something I like to use also. I try to include everyone. It's more of a light treatment of science," she says. Life on the road

Ms. Baumgartel grew up out of the country, spending her early years in Venezuela and some of her teen years in Singapore. When in Venezuela, her dad, who worked for General Motors, would take her for hikes high up in the Andes mountains, she says.

She also visited the Amazon rain forest and had her own collections of exotic insects, some of which she still has, though they have been turning to dust. In her Venezuelan backyard, she could find the horned rhinoceros beetle, the world's largest. It was in Venezuela that she was first struck with a love for science.

Singapore was somewhat less alluring. "They don't tolerate anything," she says. "There's a fine if you don't flush a public toilet. You spit on the sidewalk, big problem." It's a clean city, she says, but at a cost. "They take the filth from the city and they put it in the [harbor] water," she says.

But she appreciated the tiny one-room temples and the shaman-like characters who, from a trance-like state, would write answer to questions from passersby using blood drawn from their own tongues. Heroes

Albert Einstein is the first of her heroes, not just for his scientific prowess but because, against his father's wishes, he wanted to be a teacher. And, she says, because he could measure the universe "on the back of a matchbook," a reference to brevity of E = mc2, the special theory of relativity.

Another of her heroes is Madame Curie, who coined the term radioactivity and won two Nobel prizes.

But she reserves her greatest praise for her students. "They teach you things that you can't even fathom. I'm pretty certain that thee kids are going to make Earth a better place."

Copyright © 2003 Embarcadero Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction or online links to anything other than the home page without permission is strictly prohibited.

www.eurekalert.org Public release date: 19-Mar-2003 Contact: Sue Toye sue.toye@utoronto.ca 416-978-4289 University of Toronto

"One in three of the world's population suffers from anemia so this has tremendous economic consequences," says Sue Horton, a University of Toronto economics professor and lead author of the study, The Economics of Iron Deficiency. The economic loss due to iron deficiency in South Asia, alone, is staggering: close to $4.2 billion (US) is lost annually in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Adults who lack sufficient iron in their diets are more lethargic which leads to lower productivity, while the motor and cognitive development of small children is also impaired.

Horton and co-author Jay Ross, an epidemiologist from the non-profit organization Academy for Educational Development, calculated the economic impact of iron deficiencies in 10 developing countries in South Asia, Central America, Africa and the Middle East. They found that, on average, a country loses 0.6 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) due to physical productivity losses from adults lacking iron. When learning and motor impairments in anemic children are added, the figure rises dramatically to four per cent of its GDP. "A loss of four per cent of GDP even in poor countries translates into billions of dollars lost," says Horton.

Horton says iron fortification is extremely important and inexpensive. For example, it costs only 12 cents (US) per person per year to fortify wheat flour in Venezuela. The payback is tremendous for a country's economy. "With every dollar you invest, you receive $36 back in physical and cognitive productivity. Those are huge returns."

The study, funded by Micronutrient Initiative, was published online in the February issue of the journal Food Policy.

CONTACT: Professor Sue Horton, Munk Centre for International Studies, 416-287-7129, 416-946-8947, horton@chass.utoronto.ca or Sue Toye, U of T public affairs, 416-978-4289, sue.toye@utoronto.ca

www.miami.com Posted on Wed, Mar. 19, 2003
BY JOHN DORSCHNER jdorschner@herald.com

HIGH HOPES: Rosanne Satz, above, and her father, Stanley, run Bio-Nucleonics, which got FDA approval for a proposal for the painkiller strontium chloride

Think of Bio-Nucleonics as the Little Pharma that could.

Big pharmaceutical firms spend hundreds of millions of dollars and have teams of lawyers and scientists to help get drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Miami's Bio-Nucleonics has Stanley Satz and his daughter, Rosanne.

And they have slogged their way through developing a three-inch-thick FDA proposal for strontium chloride Sr-89, a radioactive isotope with which to reduce cancer pain.

''You can't imagine the work that goes into this,'' Rosanne says with a sigh.

The process took 882 days.

She counted.

''We put our life savings into this,'' she explains.

And while ImClone and many others have seen highly touted products get slammed by the FDA, Bio-Nucleonics received approval for its strontium in January.

The Satzes and their small band of employees celebrated with dinner at a North Beach Italian eatery -- then went right back to work the next morning.

The firm now has a dozen employees working out of a warehouse just north of downtown Miami, manufacturing a product that has yet to meet the scrutiny of not only the FDA but also of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

''We have to respond to two gods,'' Stanley says with a sigh almost as big as his daughter's. ``Nuclear is one of the most regulated, if not the most regulated, areas in the country.''

NUCLEAR BACKGROUND

Stanley Satz's background is in the Cold War nuclear field -- he doesn't say any more about it than that -- and he decided in 1996 to start a business in nuclear medicine.

His daughter was just finishing business studies at Florida International University, and she jumped aboard.

He became president and chief technology officer. She was named chief executive officer and chief operating officer ''as well as the person dealing with the media.'' Staffers, she jokes, often refer to her as the ``cheap operating officer.''

While starting to develop drugs, Bio-Nucleonics did a side business exporting radioactive isotopes, mostly to Venezuela, where they were used as markers in oil exploration. This kept the company going for a while, but it ceased the export activities as the pharmaceutical side developed.

It also worked hard on obtaining grants, including one of $200,000 from Enterprise Florida. Altogether, the Satzes say, the firm has received almost $3 million in grant money that is being used to develop drugs that are still a long way from market.

The Satzes say nothing from those grants went into their strontium product, which they developed as something to give them income while their other ideas were in development.

They decided to target Metastron, a strontium isotope manufactured by Amersham, a British company.

As a basic element, strontium can't be patented, of course, but Amersham had shown the FDA that an injection of strontium was effective in treating severe cases of cancer pain.

Because Amersham had gone through the FDA's approval hurdles, the federal agency gave the firm five years of exclusivity for the product. That exclusivity had lapsed when the Satzes began looking at strontium.

But Bio-Nucleonics still had to show the FDA that it could produce the isotope in a safe, pure form. The Satzes hired a consultant to explain the FDA process to them.

''He just consulted,'' Rosanne says. ``He didn't do the application. We did.''

Now, Bio-Nucleonics has contracted with a radio pharmacy distributor -- ''We promised not to say who,'' Rosanne says -- to use its salesmen and system to distribute Sr-89.

Rosanne declined to say what the company is charging, but if it's like other generics, the price is likely 20 to 30 percent under the $3,200 or more that Amersham charges.

A SINGLE SHOT

Strontium is given to a patient in a one-time shot. Rosanne sees the potential market as 200,000 to 300,000 patients with prostate, lung or breast cancer that has spread to other areas.

The shot starts easing pain within two weeks and reaches its peak effect within six weeks. The pain relief lasts three to six months. During that six-month period, the strontium shot costs as much as other severe pain alternatives, such as morphine.

Strontium may increase pain briefly the first two days after its administration, but the Satzes say it has far fewer side effects than morphine, which can cause vomiting, nausea and an inability to function.

They add that Amersham brought in $36 million in 1997 on this pain product and that a similar radioactive isotope is earning about $1 million a month.

Compared to Nexium and Viagra, this is a small market. For a pop-and-daughter operation, it's a major chance.

''We could be profitable with this product,'' Rosanne says, ``but this is just the beginning.''

She declines to talk about what else is in Bio-Nucleonic's pipeline, but trade publications report that the firm received $1.5 million in August 2001 from the U.S. Department of Commerce to develop an alloy for use in a stent to prop open arteries after angioplasties.

THE BIG LEAGUES

Bio-Nucleonics is looking to create an alloy that could kill scar tissue by having a short-lived, low-level beta radiation.

With this, the Satzes are entering a Big Pharma arena. Miami Lakes-based Cordis has spent more than $600 million to develop the drug-eluting Cypher stent, which is expected to get FDA approval within the next few weeks.

Rosanne knows they're going to need more funds.

''Absolutely,'' she says. ``You're always looking for money.''

For now, her father remains unwilling to sell a huge stake in the company to get investors.

''We're not,'' he says, ``selling the sizzle.''

www.dallasnews.com 03/17/2003 Washington Post

Beginning in the eighth century and continuing for 150 years, the great Mayan civilization of the Petén rain forest in present-day Guatemala fell apart. Cities were abandoned, people fled and wars raged across the encroaching wilderness.

This prolonged event – known traditionally as the Maya "collapse" – is one of the enduring mysteries of pre-Columbian America and a subject of continued debate. How did it happen?

In research reported last week, a German-led team of earth scientists offered new evidence that a 200-year dry spell, punctuated by three periods of serious drought, may have played an important role.

"There's competition for food, there are wars, there's deforestation, and the climate is drier," says paleo-oceanographer Gerald Haug of Potsdam's Geoscience Center. "These were problems you could cope with to a certain degree – but then you had the extremes. It's a subtle catalyst."

By measuring the undisturbed sediments of Venezuela's Cariaco Basin on the Caribbean coast, Dr. Haug's team was able to identify a significant decline in regional rainfall beginning aroundA.D. 750, with drought spikes starting at 810, 860 and 910.

The sequence corresponds fairly closely to protracted Maya upheavals that began in the western Petén in the late seventh century, and in the central Petén lowlands in the ninth century. By 930, some archaeologists calculate that the Maya heartland had lost 95 percent of its population.

For more than a century, this diaspora bewildered archaeologists even as it cemented the popular vision of a "lost civilization" of spectacular pyramids and monuments overtaken by jungle in a trackless tropical wilderness.

Much more is known today, and archaeologists are much less likely to accept overarching theories for the "collapse," a term that is losing cachet as evidence accumulates that the Maya did not "disappear," but simply moved: north to Yucatan in Mexico, eastward to Belize and to highland settlements on the edges of the rain forest.

"It's not a question of whether there was a drought or an invasion. There wasn't some big, single anything that happened at some big, single time," says Vanderbilt University archaeologist Arthur Demarest, who is editing a book on the period. "This kind of theory doesn't have a place anymore, given the detail of cultural history we have."

More sympathetic was the University of Pennsylvania's Robert Sharer, author of a classic text on the Maya, who notes that "climate changes, including drought, have always been part of the mix," and "the argument has been strengthened" over the last 10 years. "But what everybody wants is a pat answer," Dr. Sharer says, "and we're still not at that point, and probably never will be."

The new research, reported in last week's issue of the journal Science , was sponsored by the Ocean Drilling Program, a multinational initiative led by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Haug's team studied the topmost layers of a 560-foot Cariaco Basin core sample.

The basin in Venezuela is about 1,800 miles east of the Petén, but both places lie on the "Intertropical Convergence Zone," also known as the doldrums, a band that encircles the Earth where the northern and southern trade winds meet to create a region of almost perpetual thunderstorms. When it rains in the basin, it is raining in the Petén.

"The Cariaco Basin is the best climatological archive in the tropics, and since the Maya region is clearly affected by the same climate, it was perfect for us," Dr. Haug says.

"No one archaeological model is likely to capture completely a phenomenon as complex as the Maya decline," the authors wrote in Science. "Nevertheless, the Cariaco Basin sediment record provides support for the hypothesis that regional drought played an important role."