Category: Berkeley

Popular weed killer feminizing America's frogs

October 31, 2002

Bad news, guys. Native male leopard frogs throughout the nation's Corn Belt are being feminized by an herbicide, atrazine, used extensively to kill weeds on the country's leading export crops, corn and soybeans, according to a study at the University of California at Berkeley. The Berkeley biologists also report male frogs raised in laboratory tanks contaminated with atrazine develop egg cells in their testes and essentially turn into hermaphrodites.

Asian dust storm causes plankton to bloom in the North Pacific

October 27, 2002

In the spring of 2001, two robotic Carbon Explorer floats recorded the rapid growth of phytoplankton in the upper layers of the North Pacific Ocean after a passing storm had deposited iron-rich dust from the Gobi Desert. The carbon measurements, reported in the October 25 issue of Science, are the first direct observation of wind-blown terrestrial dust fertilizing the growth of aquatic plant life.

Valium-like drug helps treat lupus

October 27, 2002

A cousin to the anti-anxiety drug Valium has been shown in mice to reduce some of the symptoms associated with lupus. Lupus is an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissues. "The best available therapies for lupus haven't changed for many, many years," says U-M's Gary D. Glick, Ph.D., one of the lead authors on the study. "It's a disease where the mechanisms that normally prevent the immune system from attacking components of one's own body are defective. Because we do not yet understand what triggers lupus, it has been very difficult to develop lupus-specific therapies."

Thank you Mr. Farnsworth!

October 27, 2002

From Barney W. Greinke in Berkeley:

"When people point out the great technological accomplishments of the 20th century, they usually think it's the big things that are the most important ones. The atom bomb, jet airplanes, the Salk vaccine, electronic computing, DNA, men on the moon.

"How incredibly wrong they are.