Red Wine helps in preventing cancer

But for maximum benefits, sip don't gulp, research shows.
New research is uncovering the disease-prevention secrets of a polyphenol called resveratrol, one of compounds in red wine that seems to improve health. Although the benefits have been touted for years, researchers weren't sure how polyphenols, and resveratrol in particular, worked in the body.

Scientists are beginning to understand how resveratrol does its work. Possible mechanisms include:
• High doses of the compound may prevent cancer by increasing the process of apoptosis (programmed cell death).
• Low doses improve cardiac health by increasing cellular protection and reducing damage.
• Resveratrol may help remove very reactive oxidants in the body and improve blood supply to cells.
Scientists are also studying how the body absorbs resveratrol into the blood stream, since the compound is largely inactivated in the gut and liver.

Stress – its effects on your body and health

Everyone has stress. We have short-term stress, like getting lost while driving or missing the bus. Even everyday events, such as planning a meal or making time for errands, can be stressful. This kind of stress can make us feel worried or anxious.
Other times, we face long-term stress, such as racial discrimination, a life-threatening illness, or divorce. These stressful events also affect your health on many levels. Long-term stress is real and can increase your risk for some health problems, like depression.
Both short and long-term stress can have effects on your body. Research is starting to show the serious effects of stress on our bodies. Stress triggers changes in our bodies and makes us more likely to get sick. It can also make problems we already have worse. It can play a part in these problems:
• trouble sleeping
• headaches
• constipation
• diarrhea
• irritability
• lack of energy
• lack of concentration
• eating too much or not at all
• anger
• sadness
• higher risk of asthma and arthritis flare-ups
• tension
• stomach cramping
• stomach bloating
• skin problems, like hives
• depression
• anxiety
• weight gain or loss
• heart problems
• high blood pressure
• irritable bowel syndrome
• diabetes
• neck and/or back pain
• less sexual desire
• harder to get pregnant

Changes in climate can increase the effects on aeroallergens:

Every year around this time it starts: itchy, watery eyes, sneezing, wheezing. With the return of spring comes allergy season. As trees and plants sprout new growth, the pollen count climbs and millions begin to suffer.

Aeroallergens such as dust, ragweed, pollen, and mold impact half of all Americans, and treatment for allergies in the U.S. costs $21 billion annually. Aeroallergens include pollens, which can be produced by weeds, grasses, and trees, as well as molds and other indoor allergens.

Expected Changes in Pollen Seasons, Growth, and Allergenicity:
Increases in temperature, carbon dioxide (CO2), and precipitation tend to favor the proliferation of weedy plant species that are known producers of allergenic pollen. Higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere act as a fertilizer for plant growth. Warmer temperatures and increased precipitation cause some plants to grow faster, bloom earlier, and produce more pollen. Temperature changes are expected to alter allergy seasons to begin earlier and last longer and the distribution of allergenic plant varieties to change over time.

Recent scientific studies also suggest that climate-related temperature changes are expected to increase the potency of airborne allergens. Such changes increase the concentration of pollen in the air, the length of the allergy season and the strength of airborne allergens, and associated increases in allergy symptoms.

Climate change will allow certain allergen-producing plant species to move into new areas, and wind blown dust, carrying pollens and molds from outside of the United States, could expose people to allergens they had not previously contacted. Exposure to more potent concentrations of pollen and mold may make current non-sufferers more likely to develop allergic symptoms.

Future Research:
Currently, limited data are available on aeroallergen trends. Further investigation is needed to understand the response of aeroallergens to climate change, to characterize the role of aeroallergens in allergic disease development, and to estimate the costs to avoid or minimize the health impacts of these allergic diseases. Long-term data on aeroallergens are needed to document changes in aeroallergen production, and to characterize the distribution, content, and potency of airborne allergens.

Germs convert metals and other nasty compounds into less toxic

Konstantinidis and his colleagues studied on a bacterial genus called as Shewanella, which is seen in a broad range of ecosystems ranging from the Arctic to the Amazon.

Shewanella has a capacity to change metals and other nasty compounds into less toxic stuff - which makes the bacteria well-suited for environmental cleanup duty. Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 is mainly good at sucking metal oxides from groundwater and transforming them into unsolvable forms that can be removed very easily.

With Shewanella experiments are going on to find whether it can be used as a potential power converter for microbial fuel cells.

Jellyfish plays an important role in ocean energy budgets.

If you were to snorkel just before dawn at the popular tropical Pacific destination Jellyfish Lake, you'd have lots of company: millions of golden jellyfish, known to scientists as Mastigias papua, mill around the western half of the lake, waiting for sunrise.

With the sun's first rays, Jellyfish Lake, located 550 miles east of the Philippines in the island nation of Palau, comes alive. As the sky brightens in the east, the golden jellies turn and swim toward a solar beacon.

The jellies need sunlight to sustain algae-like zooxanthellae within their tissues; the zooxanthellae in turn sustain the jellies.For several hours the jellyfish swim, the contractions of their bells never stopping, until they approach the eastern end of the lake.

Following the rising sun, the jellyfish are stopped, not by the edge of the lake, but by shadows cast by overhanging trees--which they meticulously avoid.Millions of jellyfish that started out in the west are now densely packed around the illuminated eastern rim of the lake. For a few hours around noon, they're stationary, basking in the mid-day sun directly overhead.

Later in the afternoon, the solar cycle--and jellyfish cycle--reverse, and the jellies swim westward.Eventually the jellyfish complete one round-trip migration from west to east and back, each day between sunrise and sunset.

What the jellies are doing, say marine scientists Michael Dawson of the University of California at Merced and John Dabiri of the California Institute of Technology, is "biomixing"--as they swim, they're churning and churning the waters and nutrients of the lake.

Jellyfish like Mastigias papua and the moon jelly Aurelia aurita use their body motion, Dawson and Dabiri have found, to generate water flow that transports small copepods within feeding range. "The 'underwater turbulence' the jellies create is being debated as a major player in ocean energy budgets," says Dabiri.

At night, the jellies descend into a bottom-layer of hydrogen sulfide. Although snorkeling in the surface waters of the lake is allowed, scuba diving is prohibited to avoid disturbing the jellyfish, and to reduce the risk of hydrogen sulfide poisoning.

Aqua Mission

Aqua is a major international Earth Science satellite mission centered at NASA. Launched on May 4, 2002, the satellite has six different Earth-observing instruments on board and is named for the large amount of information being obtained about water in the Earth system from its stream of approximately 89 Gigabytes of data a day. The water variables being measured include almost all elements of the water cycle and involve water in its liquid, solid, and vapor forms. Additional variables being measured include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures.

The White-kneed or Papuan Forest cricket

The White-kneed or Papuan Forest cricket is often seen on tracks in the night-time forest as it spends its time on the ground.

The shiny brown segmented body is about 5 cm (2 inches) in length and the legs with their white joints are even larger. The antennae can be over 10 cm (4 inches) long. White-kneed crickets tend to sit where they are until a bushwalker is nearly about to tread on them - then they make a very high jump into the air, often bumping into or landing on the bushwalker that startled them. Feeling the grab of little feet from all directions usually startles the bushwalker as well, but the crickets are harmless and jump off quickly. They live in the ground and emerge at night to feed on leaf litter and detritus.