Are You Carrying the Redhead Gene?

Are You Carrying the Redhead Gene? - Some parents worry that their children will be born with a rare disease or a hidden genetic disorder. Other parents, however, wonder if their children will possess something more obvious: red hair.

A British ancestry company, BritainsDNA, is now offering parents the chance to see if their children might inherit the so-called "ginger gene," the Telegraph reports. The test will scan each parent's DNA for signs of the so-called MC1R gene that causes redheadedness.

"Through a simple saliva test to determine deep ancestry, we can … identify whether an individual is a carrier of any of the three common redhead variants in the gene MC1R," said Dr. Jim Wilson, chief scientist at BritainsDNA, as quoted in the Huffington Post.

The gene for red hair is recessive, so a person needs two copies of that gene for it to show up or be expressed. That means even if both parents carry the gene, just one in four of their children are likely to turn out to be a redhead. As a result, families that have no redheads for decades can suddenly discover a carrottop in their midst.

"Families can carry a variant for generations, and when one carrier has children with another carrier, a redheaded baby can appear seemingly out of nowhere." Wilson said, as quoted in the Daily Mail.

Though there's no scientific evidence that redheads deserve their reputation for having fiery temperaments, some recent reports suggest having red hair is associated with a number of health issues. A study from the journal Nature found that the pigment pheomelanin, which is responsible for red hair, may also make redheads even more susceptible to melanoma than fair-skinned blondes, according to the Los Angeles Times.

And a widely reported study from the Journal of the American Dentistry Association found that redheads are more sensitive to pain and require extra anesthesia during surgery, according to ABC News.

But there may be some advantages to having red hair, too, EverydayHealth.com reports. The pale skin that redheads usually have is more efficient at soaking up sunlight — and sunlight is required for the body to manufacture vitamin D, an essential nutrient.

Worldwide, red hair is quite rare, and just over 0.5 percent, or one in 200 people, are redheads — this amounts to almost 40 million people, the Daily Mail reports.

In Ireland, an estimated 10 percent of the population has red hair, though about 40 percent of the Irish carry the recessive gene. In Scotland and England, 13 percent and 6 percent, respectively, are redheaded, according to the Daily Mail.

The DNA test will be offered by BritainsDNA at a genealogy and ancestry exhibition named Who Do You Think You Are, associated with the popular NBC television show and scheduled to be held in London next month. ( LiveScience.com )

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Superstorm moves film from theoretical to concrete

Superstorm moves film from theoretical to concrete — In the documentary "Shored Up," scientists warn that with a rising sea level, a major storm could put New Jersey's barrier islands underwater and create devastating storm surges. In other words, what happened last month when Superstorm Sandy slammed into New Jersey and New York.

For Ben Kalina, the Philadelphia filmmaker who was nearly finished putting together the documentary when the storm hit, it meant that the ideas in the film that may have sounded far-fetched — or at least, discussions of something that may happen sometime in the future — were suddenly immediate.

Associated Press/Geoff Mulvihill - Filmmaker Ben Kalina poses for a portrait in Philadelphia on Monday, Nov. 12, 2012. Kalina is finishing a film about the vulnerability of barrier islands. (AP Photo/Geoff Mulvihill)

"Until Sandy, we were making a film about something much more meditative, really," Kalina said. "And now the stakes are suddenly much more real."

It also meant Kalina and his crew had more shooting to do, revisiting places they'd shot — some of which were wiped away by Sandy.

That again pushed back the completion date for a film he'd been working on for three years. He's now planning to finish the film in January. It's an independent effort that he is hoping will be shown on television. He is also planning to hold screenings, particularly in the places featured in the movie, such as New Jersey's Long Beach Island.

Kalina, 36, is not a scientist, but he's fascinated by telling the stories from science by looking at the cultural and political implications, too. He worked on "A Sea Change," about the state of the world's oceans, and "After the Cap," a look back at the Gulf oil spill of 2010, among other films.

He became interested in the state of barrier islands after reading an article about how surfers opposed beach replenishment projects on the New Jersey shore.

The story became broader than that, evolving into a look at the way shore areas are developed and protected through means like jetties and beach replenishment projects. As more structures are built on barrier islands, he said, more has to be done to protect them. "Once you decide to settle in a place that's so fraught, all the decisions you make have consequences and more consequences," he said.

The solutions can be expensive, and Kalina says, not sustainable.

"Beach replenishment is not going to save the day," he said. "You get this sense of security from beach replenishment that's a false sense of security in the long run."

The film uses animation, interviews with scientists, footage of storms past and some dramatic policy debates to tell the story.

Kalina started out focusing on New Jersey's Long Beach Island, but also traveled to North Carolina. There, officials decided this year to use historical trends to build their expectations for oceanside building codes and land-use decisions rather than the more rapid sea-level rise that many scientists now expect.

The filmmaker, who grew up going to family homes on Martha's Vineyard, said the ideal time to address these how best to develop vulnerable coastlines would be before a major storm, not after one.

The irony is that nothing can draw attention to the issue like a storm.

"It's a window of time when people have actually just witnessed the destructive force of nature," he said. "There are very few windows like that."

And it could also be a window for his movie.

Before the storm, when he talked about it in his neighborhood in South Philadelphia, Kalina said, he found himself explaining what a barrier island is.

Now, practically everyone knows. ( Associated Press )

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Marijuana linked to testicular cancer

Marijuana linked to testicular cancer in US study - Young men who had smoked marijuana recreationally were twice as likely to be diagnosed with testicular cancer than men who have never used marijuana, according to a US study.

Researchers whose findings appeared in the journal Cancer said the link appeared to be specific to a type of tumour known as nonseminoma.

"This is the third study consistently demonstrating a greater than doubling of risk of this particularly undesirable subtype of testicular cancer among young men with marijuana use," said Victoria Cortessis of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, who led the study.

Among the men with cancer, 81 per cent had used marijuana at some point

"I myself feel like we need to take this seriously now," she added, noting that the rates of testicular cancer have been rising inexplicably over the past century.

The research is not ironclad proof that the marijuana is to blame, and even if it is, the danger is not overwhelming. According to the American Cancer Society, a man's lifetime risk of getting testicular cancer is about one in 270 – and because effective treatment is available, the risk of dying from the disease is just one in 5,000.

So far, little is known about what causes it. Cortessis said undescended testicles, in which the testes remain in the abdomen beyond the age of a year, are a risk factor. Both pesticide and hormone exposure have also been associated with the tumours.

Cortessis and her colleagues used data from 163 young men who had been diagnosed with testicular cancer and nearly 300 men in a comparison group without the disease. Both groups had been interviewed about their health and drug use between 1987 and 1994.

Among the men with cancer, 81 per cent had used marijuana at some point, whereas that was the case for 70 per cent of the comparison group.

By contrast, cocaine use was linked to a smaller risk of the tumours.

The new study is "interesting," said Carl van Walraven of the University of Ottawa in Canada, who has studied testicular cancer, but said it has a number of limitations.

For instance, it did not find an increased risk among men with higher marijuana use, and it was relatively small.

But Cortessis highlighted the consistent results from all the studies so far.

"It is hard to imagine a scenario whereby it is due to chance and I can't think of a systematic bias that would cause this. I will feel very confident that this is cause and effect once we have worked out the biology," she said. ( Reuters )

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Science's "most beautiful theories"

Science's "most beautiful theories" - From Darwinian evolution to the idea that personality is largely shaped by chance, the favorite theories of the world's most eminent thinkers are as eclectic as science itself.

Every January, John Brockman, the impresario and literary agent who presides over the online salon Edge.org, asks his circle of scientists, digerati and humanities scholars to tackle one question.

In previous years, they have included "how is the Internet changing the way you think?" and "what is the most important invention in the last 2,000 years?"

This year, he posed the open-ended question "what is your favorite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?"

The responses, released at midnight on Sunday, provide a crash course in science both well known and far out-of-the-box, as admired by the likes of Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, physicist Freeman Dyson and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

Several of the nearly 200 scholars nominated what are arguably the two most powerful scientific theories ever developed. "Darwin's natural selection wins hands down," argues Dawkins, emeritus professor at Oxford University.

Pigeon bones are displayed in Charles Darwin's former home Down House, Kent, southern England February 12, 2009. REUTERS/Tal Cohen

"Never in the field of human comprehension were so many facts explained by assuming so few," he says of the theory that encompasses everything about life, based on the idea of natural selection operating on random genetic mutations.

Einstein's theory of relativity, which explains gravity as the curvature of space, also gets a few nods.

As theoretical physicist Steve Giddings of the University of California, Santa Barbara, writes, "This central idea has shaped our ideas of modern cosmology (and) given us the image of the expanding universe."

General relativity explains black holes, the bending of light and "even offers a possible explanation of the origin of our Universe - as quantum tunneling from 'nothing,'" he writes.

Many of the nominated ideas, however, won't be found in science courses taught in high school or even college.

Terrence Sejnowski, a computational neuroscientist at the Salk Institute, extols the discovery that the conscious, deliberative mind is not the author of important decisions such as what work people do and who they marry. Instead, he writes, "an ancient brain system called the basal ganglia, brain circuits that consciousness cannot access," pull the strings.

Running on the neurochemical dopamine, they predict how rewarding a choice will be - if I pick this apartment, how happy will I be? - "evaluate the current state of the entire cortex and inform the brain about the best course of action," explains Sejnowski. Only later do people construct an explanation of their choices, he said in an interview, convincing themselves incorrectly that volition and logic were responsible.

To neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University, the most beautiful idea is emergence, in which complex phenomena almost magically come into being from extremely simple components.

For instance, a human being arises from a few thousand genes. The intelligence of an ant colony - labor specialization, intricate underground nests - emerges from the seemingly senseless behavior of thousands of individual ants.

"Critically, there's no blueprint or central source of command," says Sapolsky. Each individual ant has a simple algorithm for interacting with the environment, "and out of this emerges a highly efficient colony."

Among other tricks, the colony has solved the notorious Traveling Salesman problem, or the challenge of stopping at a long list of destinations by the shortest route possible.

THE OTHER PAVLOVIAN EFFECT

Stephen Kosslyn, director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, is most impressed by Pavlovian conditioning, in which a neutral stimulus such as a sound comes to be associated with a reward, such as food, producing a response, such as salivation.

That much is familiar. Less well known is that Pavlovian conditioning might account for placebo effects. After people have used analgesics such as ibuprofen or aspirin many times, the drugs begin to have effects before their active ingredients kick in.

From previous experience, the mere act of taking the pill has become like Pavlov's bell was for his dogs, causing them to salivate: the "conditioned stimulus" of merely seeing the pill "triggers the pain-relieving processes invoked by the medicine itself," explains Kosslyn.

Science theories that explain puzzling human behavior or the inner workings of the universe were also particular favorites of the Edge contributors:

* Psychologist Alison Gopnik of the University of California, Berkeley, is partial to one that accounts for why teenagers are so restless, reckless and emotional. Two brain systems, an emotional motivational system and a cognitive control system, have fallen out of sync, she explains.

The control system that inhibits impulses and allows you to delay gratification kicks in later than it did in past generations, but the motivational system is kicking in earlier and earlier.

The result: "A striking number of young adults who are enormously smart and knowledgeable but directionless, who are enthusiastic and exuberant but unable to commit to a particular work or a particular love until well into their twenties or thirties."

BEAUTIFUL IDEAS

* Neurobiologist Sam Barondes of the University of California, San Francisco, nominates the idea that personality is largely shaped by chance. One serendipitous force is which parental genes happen to be in the egg and sperm that produced the child.

"But there is also chance in how neurodevelopmental processes unfold - a little virus here, an intrauterine event there, and you have chance all over the place," he said in an interview. Another toss of the dice: how a parent will respond to a child's genetic disposition to be outgoing, neurotic, open to new experience and the like, either reinforcing the innate tendencies or countering them.

The role of chance in creating differences between people has moral consequences, says Barondes, "promoting understanding and compassion for the wide range of people with whom we share our lives."

* Timothy Wilson nominates the idea that "people become what they do." While people's behavior arises from their character - someone returns a lost wallet because she is honest - "the reverse also holds," says the University of Virginia psychologist. If we return a lost wallet, our assessment of how honest we are rises through what he calls "self-inference." One implication of this phenomenon: "We should all heed Kurt Vonnegut's advice," Wilson says: "'We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.'"

* Psychologist David Myers of Hope College finds "group polarization" a beautiful idea, since it explains how interacting with others tends to amplify people's initial views. In particular, discussing issues with like-minded peers -increasingly the norm in the United States, where red states attract conservatives and blue states attract liberals - push people toward extremes. "The surprising thing is that the group as a whole becomes more extreme than its pre-discussion average," he said in an interview.

* Martin Rees, professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, nominates the "astonishing concept" that what we consider the universe "could be hugely more extensive" than what astronomers observe.

If true, the known cosmos may instead "be a tiny part of the aftermath of 'our' big bang, which is itself just one bang among a perhaps-infinite ensemble," Rees writes. Even more intriguing is that different physics might prevail in these different universes, so that "some of what we call 'laws of nature' may ... be local bylaws." ( Reuters )

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New Mineral Discovered on Antarctic Meteorite

New Mineral Discovered on Antarctic Meteorite - A meteorite discovered in Antarctica in 1969 has just divulged a modern secret: a new mineral, now called Wassonite.

The new mineral found in the 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite was tiny — less than one-hundredth as wide as a human hair. Still, that was enough to excite the researchers who announced the discovery Tuesday (April 5).

"Wassonite is a mineral formed from only two elements, sulfur and titanium, yet it possesses a unique crystal structure that has not been previously observed in nature," NASA space scientist Keiko Nakamura-Messenger said in a statement.

This scanning transmission electron microscope image shows the Wassonite grain in dark contrast.

The mineral's name, approved by the International Mineralogical Association, honors John T. Wasson, a UCLA professor known for his achievements across a broad swath of meteorite and impact research.

Grains of Wassonite were analyzed from the meteorite that has been officially designated Yamato 691 enstatite chondrite. Chondrites are primitive meteorites that scientists think were remnants shed from the original building blocks of planets. Most meteorites found on Earth fit into this group.

Yamato 691 likely originated from an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. It was discovered along with eight other meteorites by members of the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition on the blue ice field of the Yamato Mountains. They constituted the first significant recovery of Antarctic meteorites. Follow-up searches by scientists from Japan and the United States have recovered more than 40,000 specimens, including rare Martian and lunar meteorites.

The research team used NASA's transmission electron microscope to isolate the Wassonite grains and figure out their chemical makeup and atomic structure.

When meteors hit the ground they are called meteorites. Most are fragments of asteroids (space rocks that travel through the solar system), and others are mere cosmic dust shed by comets. Rare meteorites are impact debris from the surfaces of the moon and Mars.

"Meteorites, and the minerals within them, are windows to the formation of our solar system," said co-discoverer Lindsay Keller, space scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Through these kinds of studies we can learn about the conditions that existed and the processes that were occurring then." ( foxnews.com )

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Seventy metal books found in cave in Jordan could change our view of Biblical history

Could this be the biggest find since the Dead Sea Scrolls? Seventy metal books found in cave in Jordan could change our view of Biblical history - For scholars of faith and history, it is a treasure trove too precious for price.

This ancient collection of 70 tiny books, their lead pages bound with wire, could unlock some of the secrets of the earliest days of Christianity.

Academics are divided as to their authenticity but say that if verified, they could prove as pivotal as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.

Lines of inquiry: The metal tablets could change our understanding of the Bible

On pages not much bigger than a credit card, are images, symbols and words that appear to refer to the Messiah and, possibly even, to the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Adding to the intrigue, many of the books are sealed, prompting academics to speculate they are actually the lost collection of codices mentioned in the Bible’s Book Of Revelation.

The books were discovered five years ago in a cave in a remote part of Jordan to which Christian refugees are known to have fled after the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. Important documents from the same period have previously been found there.

Initial metallurgical tests indicate that some of the books could date from the first century AD.

Revelation: Experts speculate that the tablets could be the lost collection of codices referred to in the Bible's Book Of Revelation

Hidden meaning: Scrolls, tablets and other artifacts, including an incense bowl, were also found at the same site as the tablets

This estimate is based on the form of corrosion which has taken place, which experts believe would be impossible to achieve artificially.

If the dating is verified, the books would be among the earliest Christian documents, predating the writings of St Paul.

The prospect that they could contain contemporary accounts of the final years of Jesus’s life has excited scholars – although their enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that experts have previously been fooled by sophisticated fakes.

David Elkington, a British scholar of ancient religious history and archeology, and one of the few to have examined the books, says they could be ‘the major discovery of Christian history’.

‘It is a breathtaking thought that we have held these objects that might have been held by the early saints of the Church,’ he said.

But the mysteries between their ancient pages are not the books’ only riddle. Today, their whereabouts are also something of a mystery. After their discovery by a Jordanian Bedouin, the hoard was subsequently acquired by an Israeli Bedouin, who is said to have illegally smuggled them across the border into Israel, where they remain.

However, the Jordanian Government is now working at the highest levels to repatriate and safeguard the collection. Philip Davies, emeritus professor of biblical studies at Sheffield University, said there was powerful evidence that the books have a Christian origin in plates cast into a picture map of the holy city of Jerusalem.

A 16th century painting depicting Jesus's death. The metal books contain pages with images, symbols and words that appear to refer to the Messiah and, possibly even, to the Crucifixion

X marks the spot: The cave in Jordan where the artifacts were discovered

Dr Margaret Barker, a former president of the Society for Old Testament Study, confirmed that a sealed book is mentioned in the Bible

‘As soon as I saw that, I was dumbstruck,’ he said. ‘That struck me as so obviously a Christian image. There is a cross in the foreground, and behind it is what has to be the tomb [of Jesus], a small building with an opening, and behind that the walls of the city.

‘There are walls depicted on other pages of these books too and they almost certainly refer to Jerusalem. It is a Christian crucifixion taking place outside the city walls.’

The British team leading the work on the discovery fears that the present Israeli ‘keeper’ may be looking to sell some of the books on to the black market, or worse – destroy them.

But the man who holds the books denies the charge and claims they have been in his family for 100 years.

Dr Margaret Barker, a former president of the Society for Old Testament Study, said: ‘The Book of Revelation tells of a sealed book that was opened only by the Messiah.

‘Other texts from the period tell of sealed books of wisdom and of a secret tradition passed on by Jesus to his closest disciples. That is the context for this discovery.’

Groundbreaking find: A section of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were unearthed in 1947

Professor Davies said: ‘The possibility of a Hebrew-Christian origin is certainly suggested by the imagery and, if so, these codices are likely to bring dramatic new light to our understanding of a very significant but so far little understood period of history.’

Mr Elkington, who is leading British efforts to have the books returned to Jordan, said: ‘It is vital that the collection can be recovered intact and secured in the best possible circumstances, both for the benefit of its owners and for a potentially fascinated international audience.’

*British scientists have uncovered up to eight million mummified dogs, thought to have been sacrificed to Anubis, the god of the dead, 2500 years ago after excavating tunnels in the ancient Eygptian city of Saqqara. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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'Earliest known life on Earth' may just be cracks in rock, study finds

'Earliest known life on Earth' may just be cracks in rock, study finds - Twenty years ago scientists hailed the important discovery of the oldest fossils on the planet, 3.5-billion-year-old microbes found embedded in rock in Australia.

But a new analysis of the microscopic structures has returned a surprising result - that they are not biological material at all.

In a new study published in Nature Geoscience, the US scientists suggest they may in fact simply be a series of rock fractures filled with crystals.

A new study claims the so-called fossils found in rock in the Pilbara region of Western Australia do not even contain carbon

The finding suggests that astrobiologists examining distant planets such as Mars must be careful labelling alien objects 'life', when researchers cannot be certain even with the evidence in front of them on Earth.

The Apex Chert formation in Western Australia's Pilbara region had been interpreted as cyanobacteria, once known as blue-green algae.

But the claim that the structures were carbon-based lifeforms has always been controversial, and so geologists from the University of Kansas decided to take another look.

Like previous teams, they cut slices of rock just 300 microns thick - roughly three times the diameter of a human hair - to study under the microscope, but this time added 30 micron sections to allow more light into the sample.

This revealed fractures within the rock that were filled with two unknown materials. Further analysis using a laser identified the mystery minerals were in fact haematite and quartz, neither of which are biological materials.

'It's one of those funny moments in science when you go out to do one thing and it completely flips 180 on you,' co-author Craig Marshall said. 'We discovered things were a little more complex than we thought they would be.'

The scientist who originally interpreted the structures as fossils, J. William Schopf, has prepared a response to the study but it has not yet been published. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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