CAN’T LIVE WITH ‘EM… CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT ‘EM!

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Well, I thought I’d dip into the medical file and the first thing I pulled out was all about drugs. Drugs. They range from the absolutely necessary to the absolutely deadly and I thought we’d have a look, even though the first one isn’t technically a drug; it’s a vitamin.

Vitamin D surfaces as a news topic every few months. How much vitamin D does a person need? Is it possible to have too much of it? Is exposure to the sun, which is the body’s natural way of producing vitamin D, the best option? Or should you take supplements?

Anthony Norman, a distinguished professor emeritus of biochemistry and biomedical sciences and an international expert on vitamin D, says that half the people in North America and Western Europe don’t get enough vitamin D and the number is even lower in the rest of the world.

Currently, the recommended daily intake of vitamin D is 200 international units (IU) for people up to 50 years old; 400 IU for 51 to 70 year olds; and 600 IU for people over 70. Dr. Norman says that most scientists think that the daily intake of vitamin D should be increased to 2,000 to 4,000 IU for most adults and it’s fairly easy to get 2000 IU using a combination of sunshine, food, and vitamin supplements.

There have been several studies that show that reductions in breast cancer, colon cancer and type 1 diabetes are associated with adequate intake of vitamin D, with the positive effects usually occurring within five years of an increase in vitamin D intake.

So you might want to go outside if the sun is shining and make a little vitamin D while you finish this article because we’re now moving on to a very common drug that causes some real problems.

There’s research out of New Zealand that links the use of acetaminophen (you know it as Tylenol) to the development of asthma in teenagers and the study suggests that even monthly use of the drug in adolescents may more than double the risk of asthma compared to those who used none at all. A different study on a small population in Ethiopia examined the risk of asthma and allergies associated with acetaminophen and came up with the same results.

In an earlier study from the United States, 13 and 14-year-old children with asthma took either acetaminophen (Tylenol) or ibuprofen (Motrin) after they were sick. If the illness involved the lungs, the ones who took acetaminophen showed an increased risk of a subsequent outpatient visit for asthma.

There are a number of factors that could explain how acetaminophen increases the risk of asthma and allergy. Acetaminophen may have an inflammatory effect on the whole body that increases immune response. It could also suppress the body’s immune response to viruses like the ones that cause the common cold. This prolongs the symptoms and those symptoms are a common trigger of childhood asthma.

The researchers concluded that avoidance of acetaminophen by teens could dramatically reduce the incidence of asthma in teenagers.

Drugs. You can’t live with ‘em and you can’t live without ‘em. Learn to choose your drugs wisely!

DO YOUR KIDS A FAVOR

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

As many of you know, I’m the Star Lady and I run the UOG Planetarium. I’ve been especially lucky this year because I’ve had a number of Head Start classes in the Planetarium. With the little guys, I talk about what constellations are, and then I show them the sky on the evening of their visit and tell them how they can take Mom and Dad outside and show them bright planets, bright stars and famous constellations.

The Planetarium is a new and kind of scary experience for Headstart kids and many times their parents accompany them. This year, I’ve noticed something disturbing. Instead of interacting with their children while they waited for the show to begin, many parents took out their cell phones and interacted with them instead. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed it.

University of Missouri human development specialists say powering down digital devices is a vital step to maintain healthy family relationships. In addition to strengthening family connections, turning off time-consuming devices also leads to better health, according to Saralee Jamieson, extension program director in St. Clair County. She says people who devote more time to digital technology are less likely to make healthy food choices or be physically active and are less successful academically.

Jamieson recommends these tips for parents to set a good example for children:

• Limit family members’ recreational time with TV, video or computer screens to two hours daily.
• Remove TVs from bedrooms and learn to negotiate and take turns watching different shows.
• Turn the TV off and eat or socialize as a family.
• Develop hobbies and become more involved in the community, neighborhood, local schools or places of worship.

You’ll notice that Ms Jamieson is more concerned with TV time than with cell phones. She’s not the only one with that concern either. Researchers at Ohio State University have compared how mothers and children communicate while they’re watching TV with what happens when they read books to reveal the impact on children’s development. The results show that watching TV leads to less interaction between parents and children, with a detrimental impact on literacy and language skills.

The researchers studied the interactions of 73 mother-child pairs. The average mother was married, in their early thirties and had a bachelor’s degree, while half were not employed. The children ranged in age from 16 months to 6 years.

The results showed that mothers who read books to their kids interacted significantly more with their children than mothers watching TV. The reading mothers had a more active communication style, and used words the children didn’t hear in everyday speech, which improved their vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. In contrast, watching TV resulted in significantly fewer descriptions and positive responses than reading did.

The authors said “Reading books together increased maternal communication beyond the level required for reading, while watching TV decreased maternal communication. This is significant when we consider the amount of time young children spend watching TV. In some cases children are left alone to watch TV, missing out on any parental communication at a critical stage in their development”.

I haven’t had a functional TV in my house in over 20 years and I don’t miss it at all. As I tell the kids who come to the Planetarium “Do you want to be smart? Here’s how to do it. Turn the TV OFF, (they don’t call it the idiot box for nothing!) pick up a book and read it.”

Do your kids a favor. Turn off the cell phone and the TV and be there for your kids. They will thank you for it later!

UNDERGROUND AND FOLDED

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

As I was looking at the files this week, I realized that it’s been a very long time since we looked at what’s probably the most important one in the cabinet. It certainly isn’t bulging but it IS important because trust me, if it wasn’t for the plants, you and I would NOT be here because plants are the ultimate source of every bit of nourishment you take in.

Plants, like bacteria (the real dominant life form on old planet Earth) get no respect, but there are some really cool stories about our less mobile kin. Have you heard the story about the orchid that grows . . . underground? You haven’t? Well here goes!

Rhizanthella gardneri is cute, quirky and critically endangered. It’s also an orchid that lives its entire life underground. It even blooms underground, which makes it virtually unique. It lives in western Australia and is called the Western Underground Orchid. Since it lives totally underground, it can’t photosynthesize and gets all its nutrients from fungi that live on the roots of broom bush, a woody shrub of the outback.

There are less than 50 known individuals left in the wild but scientists have recently discovered something interesting. Even though the little plant can’t photosynthesize and has no green parts at all, it still has chloroplasts — the cells where photosynthesis occurs in plants.

The researchers discovered that compared with normal plants, 70 per cent of the genes in the orchid’s chloroplast have been lost. It has only 37 genes which makes it the smallest of all known plant chloroplast genomes.

Of course, there is always the possibility that Rhizanthella isn’t as rare as scientists think it is. Volunteers from the West Australian Native Orchid Study and Conservation Group helped locate these unique orchids. One of the scientists said “We needed all the help we could get since it often took hours of searching under shrubs on hands and knees to find just one underground orchid!”

You know, it’s possible that there could be a lot more of them. They are underground, you know!

Rhizanthella gardneri, an Australian orchid that lives all its life underground. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Western Australia)

So, we have a plant that lives entirely underground. Now would you believe a plant that uses origami to disperse its seeds? Read on!

Ice plants are succulents; fleshy plants that resemble Aloe vera. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden have discovered that Delosperma nakurense, an ice plant that’s native to Tanzania, puts its seeds in an origami box that unfolds and releases them when it rains.

The plant, which grows in the desert, thereby ensures that its seeds have a good chance of escaping the pod at just the critical time when there’s enough water to allow them to germinate.

The seed capsule lids unfold on a hinge when wet and then close again when it’s dry. This also changes the curvature of the lids so that the valves tightly seal the seed compartments when it’s dry. The lids are triangular, so that the open seed capsule looks like a five-pointed star.

The researchers think the mechanism can be used for technical applications because the energy for the directed movement is stored in the material and they hope to transfer the concept to technology that could be used in biomedicine or architecture.

The seed capsule of the ice plant D. nakurense. . When conditions are dry, five lids seal the capsule (left). When it rains, the five lids of the capsule open (right). (Credit: © Matt Harrington / MPI of Colloids and Interfaces)

Plant origami. It’s a strange and wonderful world!

UP AND DOWN

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

I was rummaging through the archeology/anthropology file and came upon an interesting article that makes the very valid point that although we are three-dimensional creatures, we do NOT think in 3D. Nothing brings this home like science fiction. I’m a Star Trek aficionado and there are multiple examples of this lack of 3D thinking in that series and in other science fiction as well.

For instance, why do all encounters between spaceships occur with both ships (or all ships) in the same orientation? There is no up and down in space. The odds of your meeting another ship with both your keels pointed the same way are not infinite of course, they are one in 360 because that pretty much defines the number of ways your keel can point. And why are planets always below the ship? Or to the left or to the right? Above makes just as much sense.

But my favorite “We do NOT think in 3D” example is the Star Trek Next Generation episode “Final Mission”. Although this was Wesley Crusher’s final mission (a matter of great glee for many ST fans) as a sub plot, the Enterprise was forced to deal with a barge emitting highly toxic radiation. The only way to get rid of it was to tow it into the system’s sun (plausible) and the only way to get it there was through a very densely packed “asteroid belt”.

There are two things that are badly wrong with having to tow that barge through an asteroid belt. First of all, the number of ‘asteroid belts’ in the galaxy that are full of big rocks that must be avoided using all our piloting skills (think Star Wars for this one too) is vanishingly rare for a very simple reason.

Over a very short period of time (thousands of years, which IS a very short period of time on a galactic scale) gravity causes all the rocks in an asteroid belt like that to smash into each other and create an asteroid belt like the one we have in our own solar system. Asteroid miners of the future will lead very lonely lives because the rocks in our asteroid belt are so far apart you could live your entire life on Ceres or Vesta or a smaller one like 4659 Roddenberry or 2309 Mr. Spock without ever seeing another asteroid. Yes, asteroids, unlike stars, really are named for people, even fictional ones!

But those whizzing rocks that must be avoided by the best piloting skills aren’t the only problem with “Final Mission”. The very first time I saw the episode (where it’s specifically stated that this is an asteroid BELT and not an asteroid SPHERE) I found myself screaming “GO UP” or “GO DOWN” because all you have to do to escape from all those implausible rocks hurtling toward your ship is to think in three dimensions and leave them all behind!

In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, scientists studied cells in the hippocampus of rats. The hippocampus which forms the brain’s map of space was studied to see whether these cells were activated when rats climbed up or down.

The researchers found that these cells were activated only when the rats climbed up and the activation level was very low. Professor Kate Jeffery, lead author from UCL Psychology and Language Sciences, said: “The implication is that our internal sense of space is actually rather flat — we are very sensitive to where we are in horizontal space but only vaguely aware of how high we are.”

Perhaps the satirical novella “Flatland” written in 1884 by Edwin Abbot wasn’t so satirical after all. But one thing is for sure. When we actually do move out into space, we’re going to have to lose our 2D thinking pretty fast!

News from your Planetarium

By Pam Eastlick

Greetings All!

Well, it’s April when we have the best stargazing skies in the world here on Guam. In April and May, you can see eight of the ten brightest stars,

15 of the 20 brightest stars, the largest and smallest constellations AND the three most famous constellations ALL AT THE SAME TIME. And this year three of the planets will join the Magic Half Hour!

This month’s public Planetarium show ‘The Magic Half Hour’ will tell you all about it so keep reading. And I’ve also got news about a really nice conjunction coming up this weekend. April is always a spectacular month for stargazing. So get out there and look up!!

Pam

1. Full Moon conjunction

2. April public Planetariums shows

1. Moon and planet conjunction 7 April 2012 You can see Venus and Jupiter in the western sky after sunset for the rest of the month and Mars is that red ‘star’ high above the eastern horizon but a fourth visible planet will enter our early evening sky this weekend and it will do so in a rather spectacular fashion.

Full Moon is this Saturday 7 April and when it rises it will be keeping company with two bright stars. The one very close and above it is Spica, the 15th brightest star, but the one only two finger-widths to the left is NOT a star. That’s Saturn, making its debut as our fourth evening planet.

And if that’s not enough of a spectacle for you, go outside a few minutes before 7:20 p.m. and find Canopus the second brightest star above the southern horizon. At 7:20 p.m. a bright moving star will appear below it.

That’s not a star: it’s the International Space Station.

The ISS will track across the southeastern sky and at 7:24 p.m. it will be directly above the Moon, Saturn and Spica. They will be quite close to the horizon at that time, but as a general rule, the full Moon is hard to miss and you shouldn’t have any trouble finding all of them. It just could be quite a show! Enjoy!

2. April Public Planetarium shows

12, 13 and 14 April

The Magic Half Hour

6:30 p.m.

Quality Time with the Star Lady

7:00 p.m.

In Guam in April and May there’s a half hour when you can see eight of the brightest stars. I call it the Magic Half Hour and this week it occurs fairly late at night so I’ve got a deal for you! Come to April’s public shows and you’ll learn exactly how to find all this astounding wonder and when the Magic Half Hour occurs in your personal sky. We’ll show you the bright stars, the famous constellations and other stellar wonders.

At 7:00 p.m., it’s Quality Time with the Star Lady when she answers your space-related questions. But what we’re really doing is stalling for time until it gets dark enough that we can go out and look what I call The Big Planetarium. How many of the real stars, constellations and planets will we see? Mark April’s public Planetarium shows on your calendar today!