Transplant eyeball sent to pub

From the Courier Mail:

David Killick

January 24, 2008 07:21am

AN EYEBALL sent from Queensland for a transplant operation in Hobart went astray this week - arriving at a pub instead of the hospital.

A hotel guest in the Tasmanian city of Hobart was shocked when he received a foam box on Tuesday night containing a single human eyeball.

The box marked ``Live human organs for transplant'' was delivered by mistake by an unwitting taxi driver.

Hotel worker Gabriel Winner - who requested the name of the hotel not be used - says the agitated guest brought the esky to reception early yesterday morning.

``The guy left with me with a box with an eyeball in it,'' he said.

``He got the box and signed for it and opened it in the middle of the night.

``I thought this is just too weird. I went and put it in the fridge because I didn't know what else to do with it. It was more than a little disconcerting.''

A courier arrived shortly after and took the esky away.

Tracking records for the consignment number on the esky confirmed Australian Air Express picked the package up in Brisbane shortly before 4pm on Tuesday.

The package was dropped at 9.40pm that night. An Australian Air Express spokeswoman confirmed a ``failure in an internal handover process'' which meant the taxi driver was given the wrong package to deliver.

She said the company sincerely regretted the incident.

``As soon as we discovered the error we quickly rectified that and delivered the consignment within the appropriate timeframe,'' she said.

Mr Winner said he was disappointed that someone could have missed out on an operation because of such a basic error.

"It says on the box `human eye tissue for transplant'. What it probably means is the person who was relying on this piece of human tissue has now had to postpone their operation.

``Somebody died to donate these organs to somebody else and they've screwed it up and it's probably not even viable now.''

Queensland Health spokeswoman Penny Geraghty confirmed the incident but said tissue from the eye was recovered and successfully transferred to a patient yesterday morning.

``Nobody missed their operation. The tissue wasn't compromised,'' she said.

She said this was the first time an incident of this type had occurred.

Teen changes blood group, immune system

From the Toronto Star:

Jan 25, 2008 12:42 PM

Reuters

CANBERRA - An Australian teenage girl has become the world's first known transplant patient to change blood groups and take on the immune system of her organ donor, doctors said on Friday, calling her a "one-in-six-billion miracle."

Demi-Lee Brennan, now 15, received a donor liver when she was 9 years old and her own liver failed.

"It's like my second chance at life," Brennan told local media, recounting how her body achieved what doctors said was the holy grail of transplant surgery. "It's kind of hard to believe."

Brennan's body changed blood group from O negative to O positive when she became ill while on drugs to avoid rejection of the organ by her body's immune system.

Her new liver's blood stem cells then invaded her body's bone marrow to take over her entire immune system, meaning the teen no longer needs anti-rejection drugs.

Doctors from Sydney's Westmead Childrens' Hospital said they had no explanation for Brennan's recovery, detailed in the latest edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.

"There was no precedent for this having happened at any other time, so we were sort of flying by the seat of our pants," Michael Stormon, a pediatric hepatologist, told local radio.

Stuart Dorney, the hospital's former transplant unit head, said Brennan's treatment could lead to breakthroughs in organ transplant treatment, because normally the immune system of recipients attacked the transplanted tissue.

"We now need to go back over everything that happened to Demi-Lee and see why, and if it can be replicated," said Dorney.

"We think because we used a young person's liver and Demi-Lee had low white blood cells, that could have been a reason," he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Rejection is normally treated with a combination of drugs, although chronic rejection is irreversible.

Only seven-in-10 transplant operations in Australia are successful after a five-year period due to rejection complications.

New sea life found near Phillipines

I particularly like the quote "We don't know what it is ... it might be something new."

From the Toronto Star:

Scientists discover rare species, including tentacled orange worm and black jellyfish, in the Celebes Sea

Oct 17, 2007 04:30 AM

Oliver Teves
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MANILA, Philippines–Scientists exploring a deep ocean basin in search of species isolated for millions of years found marine life believed to be previously undiscovered, including a tentacled orange worm and an unusual black jellyfish.

Project leader Dr. Larry Madin said yesterday that U.S. and Philippine scientists collected about 100 different specimens in a search in the Celebes Sea south of the Philippines.

Madin, of the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the sea is at the heart of the "coral triangle" bordered by the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia: a region recognized by scientists as having a high degree of biological diversity.

The deepest part of the Celebes Sea is 5,000 metres. The team was able to explore to a depth of about 2,770 metres using a remotely operated camera.

"This is probably the centre where many of the species evolved and spread to other parts of the ocean, so it's going back to the source in many ways," Madin told a group of journalists, government officials, students and U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney and her staff.

The project involved the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and National Geographic magazine in co-operation with the Philippine government, which also provided the exploration ship.

The expedition was made up of more than two dozen scientists and a group from National Geographic, including Emory Kristof, the underwater photographer who was part of the team that found the wreckage of the Titanic in 1985.

The group returned to Manila yesterday after spending about two weeks in the Celebes Sea off Tawi-Tawi, the Philippines southernmost provincial archipelago nearly 1,130 kilometres south of Manila.

Madin said the specimens included several possibly newly discovered species. One was a sea cucumber that is nearly transparent which could swim by bending its elongated body. Another was a black jellyfish found near the sea floor.

The most striking creature found was a spiny orange-coloured worm that had 10 tentacles like a squid, Madin said. "We don't know what it is ... it might be something new."

He said it would take "a few more weeks" of research to determine whether the species are newly discovered.

Madin said the Celebes Sea, being surrounded by islands and shallow reefs, is partially isolated now and may have been more isolated millions of years ago, leading scientists to believe that "there may be groups of organisms that have been contained and kept within" the basin since then.

Brain-Eating Amoeba

Brain-Eating Amoeba Kills Arizona Boy

CDC: Cases Are Spiking In 2007

POSTED: 7:44 pm PDT September 26, 2007

UPDATED: 8:59 am PDT September 28, 2007

PHOENIX -- A 14-year-old Lake Havasu boy has become the sixth victim to die nationwide this year of a microscopic organism that attacks the body through the nasal cavity, quickly eating its way to the brain.Aaron Evans died Sept. 17 of Naegleria fowleri, an organism doctors said he probably picked up a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu.According to the Centers For Disease Control, Naegleria infected 23 people from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials said they've noticed a spike in cases, with six Naegleria-related cases so far -- all of them fatal.Such attacks are extremely rare, though some health officials have put their communities on high alert, telling people to stay away from warm, standing water.

"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational water-born illnesses for the CDC."This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

Organism Lives In Lake Bottoms

Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria has been found almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even some swimming pools. Still, the CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.The amoeba typically live in lake bottoms, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment. Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose -- say, by doing a cannonball off a cliff -- the amoeba can latch onto the person's olfactory nerve.The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up to the brain.People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers, Beach said. In the later stages, they'll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes.Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have been effective stopping the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said."Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," Beach said.Researchers still have much to learn about Naegleria, Beach said. For example, it seems that children are more likely to get infected, and boys are infected more often than girls. Experts don't know why."Boys tend to have more boisterous activities (in water), but we're not clear," he said.

Texas, Florida Report Cases

In addition to the Arizona case, health officials reported two cases in Texas and three more in central Florida this year. In response, central Florida authorities started an amoeba telephone hot line advising people to avoid warm, standing water, or any areas with obvious algae blooms.Texas health officials also have issued news releases about the dangers of amoeba attacks and to be cautious around water. People "seem to think that everything can be made safe, including any river, any creek, but that's just not the case," said Doug McBride, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.Lake Havasu City officials also are discussing how to deal with rare amoeba attacks in the wake of Aaron Evans' death. "Some folks think we should be putting up signs. Some people think we should close the lake," city spokesman Charlie Cassens said. City leaders haven't yet decided what to do.Beach warned that people shouldn't panic about the dangers of brain-eating amoeba. Infections are extremely rare when compared with the number of times a year people come into contact with water. And there have been occasional years during the past two decades that experts noticed a similar spike in infections.The easiest way to prevent infection, Beach said, is to simply plug your nose when swimming or diving in fresh water."You'd have to have water going way up in your nose to begin with" to be infected, he said.

Aaron's Infection Started With Headache

The Evans family lives within eyesight of Lake Havasu, a bulging strip of the Colorado River that separates Arizona from California. Temperatures hover in the triple digits all summer, and like almost everyone else, the Evans family looks to the lake to cool off.On Sept. 8, he brought Aaron, his two other children and his parents to Lake Havasu to celebrate his birthday. They ate sandwiches and spent a few hours splashing around one of the beaches."For a week, everything was fine," he said.Then Aaron got the headache that wouldn't go away. Evans took him to the hospital, and doctors thought his son was suffering from meningitis. Aaron was rushed to another hospital in Las Vegas.Evans tried to reassure his son, but he had no idea what was wrong. On Sept. 17, Aaron stopped breathing as David held him in his arms."He was brain dead," David said. Only later did doctors realize the boy had been infected with Naegleria."My kids won't ever swim on Lake Havasu again."

The CDC Fact Sheet on Naegleria

Stolen wallet found 56 years later to the day

From the Toronto Star:

May 02, 2007 02:20 PM

Associated Press

LEWISTON, Maine – On April 11, 1951, sailor Val Gregoire, 18, was hit over the head while on shore leave in Boston. When he came to, his wallet – and his pants – were gone.

Gregoire's widow and five children were familiar with the story, which became part of family legend. But now they have proof. The wallet was discovered by a demolition worker at Boston's Paramount Theatre – 56 years to the day Gregoire lost it.

"I was stunned," said Jeannette Gregoire, 75, of Lewiston, who got a call from Kathy Bagen, the worker's wife. "How could this have survived?"

Richard Bagen of East Weymouth, Mass., was tearing down a wall when the wallet spilled out, his wife said.

There was no money in the wallet, but it contained Val's navy ID, a copy of his Augusta birth certificate and more than a dozen photos. An Armed Forces Liberty Pass was dated April 11, 1951, the same month and day Richard Bagen made his discovery.

"The date was what freaked me out," Kathy Bagen told the Sun Journal of Lewiston. "Maybe it was meant to be found."

She managed to track down Jeannette Gregoire and mailed the wallet to her.

The wallet contained several pictures of Val, his mom, friends and a laminated photo of Jeannette, then his best girl.

They eventually married and were six months shy of their 50th wedding anniversary in 2003 when Val died following complications from a kidney transplant. He was a retired firefighter in Lewiston.

Experts may have found what's bugging the bees

From the LA Times:

A fungus that hit hives in Europe and Asia may be partly to blame for wiping out colonies across the U.S.

By Jia-Rui Chong and Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writers
April 26, 2007

A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday.

Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause.

But the results are "highly preliminary" and are from only a few hives from Le Grand in Merced County, UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi said. "We don't want to give anybody the impression that this thing has been solved."

Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country — as well as in some hives where bees had survived. Those researchers have also found two other fungi and half a dozen viruses in the dead bees.

N. ceranae is "one of many pathogens" in the bees, said entomologist Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University. "By itself, it is probably not the culprit … but it may be one of the key players."

Cox-Foster was one of the organizers of a meeting in Washington, D.C., on Monday and Tuesday where about 60 bee researchers gathered to discuss Colony Collapse Disorder.

"We still haven't ruled out other factors, such as pesticides or inadequate food resources following a drought," she said. "There are lots of stresses that these bees are experiencing," and it may be a combination of factors that is responsible.

Historically, bee losses are not unusual. Weather, pesticide exposures and infestations by pests, such as the Varroa mite, have wiped out significant numbers of colonies in the past, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s.

But the current loss appears unprecedented. Beekeepers in 28 states, Canada and Britain have reported large losses. About a quarter of the estimated 2.4 million commercial colonies across the United States have been lost since fall, said Jerry Hayes of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Gainesville.

"These are remarkable and dramatic losses," said Hayes, who is also president of the Apiary Inspectors of America.

Besides producing honey, commercial beehives are used to pollinate a third of the country's agricultural crops, including apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries, strawberries and pumpkins. Ninety percent of California's almond crop is dependent on bees, and a loss of commercial hives could be devastating.

"For the most part, they just disappeared," said Florida beekeeper Dave Hackenberg, who was among the first to note the losses. "The boxes were full of honey. That was the mysterious thing. Usually other bees will rob those hives out. But nothing had happened."

Researchers now think the foraging bees are too weak to return to their hives.

DeRisi and UCSF's Don Ganem, who normally look for the causes of human diseases, were brought into the bee search by virologist Evan W. Skowronski of the U.S. Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland.

Dr. Charles Wick of the center had used a new system of genetic analysis to identify pathogens in ground-up bee samples from California. He found several viruses, including members of a recently identified genus called iflaviruses.

It is not known whether these small, RNA-containing viruses, which infect the Varroa mite, are pathogenic to bees.

Skowronski forwarded the samples to DeRisi, who also found evidence of the viruses, along with genetic material from N. ceranae.

"There was a lot of stuff from Nosema, about 25% of the total," Skowronski said. "That meant there was more than there was bee RNA. That leads me to believe that the bee died from that particular pathogen."

If N. ceranae does play a role in Colony Collapse Disorder, there may be some hope for beekeepers.

A closely related parasite called Nosema apis, which also affects bees, can be controlled by the antibiotic fumagillin, and there is some evidence that it will work on N. ceranae as well.

Cellphone radiation killing honeybees?

From the Toronto Star:

Apr 16, 2007 06:15 PM

Canadian Press

A mysterious malady that is causing honeybees to disappear en masse from their hives in parts of North America and Europe may be linked to radiation from cellphones and other high-tech communications devices, a study by German researchers suggests.

While the theory has created a lot of buzz in the beekeeping world, apiarists say there could be any number of reasons why the bees are deserting their hives and presumably dying off in large numbers, including changing weather patterns and mite or other kinds of infestations.

What they do agree on is that whatever is causing the phenomenon, known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), it is playing havoc with the production of honey and other products from the hive – and threatening the growing of fruit and vegetable crops, which depend on bees for pollination.

The small study, led by Prof. Jochen Kuhn of Landau University, suggests that radiation from widely used cellphones may mess up the bees' homing abilities by interfering with the neurological mechanisms that govern learning and memory. It also appears to disrupt the insects' ability to communicate with each other.

To conduct the study, Kuhn placed cellphone handsets near hives and observed that radiation in the frequency range of 900 to 1800 megahertz caused the bees to avoid their homes.

But Brent Halsall, president of the Ontario Beekeepers' Association, said there are a lot of notions about what's causing bee colonies to dissolve like honey in a hot cup of tea.

High-frequency electromagnetic radiation from cellphones could be a factor, he acknowledged, but so could many other influences.

"Everybody's got their own little pet theory, but it's really hard to say," Halsall said from his home just south of Ottawa, where he keeps about 200 hives. "The bottom line for us as beekeepers is the industry in Ontario is already under a lot of stress because the bulk wholesale price of honey is below the cost of production."

There are about 10,000 beekeepers in Canada, operating a total of 600,000 honeybee colonies, says the Canadian Honey Council on its website. The majority are commercially operated, with Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba producing 80 per cent of Canada's 154 million kilograms of honey annually.

It's been a tough winter for Ontario's 150 to 250 commercial apiarists, who have lost about 23,000 of their 76,000 hives. Those lost hives, which at full capacity in summer house about 60,000 bees apiece, represent the loss of about $5 million worth of the industrious insects, he said.

"I think weather might be one of the big factors this year," Halsall said. "We had a very warm winter until mid-January and then, bang, it got cold."

From what he's observed so far in his hives, Halsall believes he's lost about half of his bees.

In some of his colonies, eggs had been laid and it appeared adult bees had been trying to keep the new brood alive in the face of the sudden drop in temperature. "There was honey inches away, but they probably starved to death as they tried to protect the brood."

Still, he thinks that whatever the causes of honeybee deaths in Ontario, and likely in the rest of Canada, they are different from those decimating hives in the United States.

In at least 24 states, bees have been dying in droves, with some commercial apiarists reporting huge losses, the American Beekeeping Federation reports on its website. "One lost 11,000 of his 13,000 colonies; another 700 of 900, another 2,500 of 3,500, another virtually all of his 10,000."

U.S. beekeepers estimate that more than one-quarter of their 2.4 billion colonies have been affected by CCD.

The American bee population had already been under threat in recent years from the varroa mite, a tiny parasite that devastated many keepers' hives and destroyed most wild honey bee populations.

While the varroa mite is also a problem in Canada, treatments to rid it from hives differ here compared with south of the border, and Halsall said his hives were virtually mite-free by the time winter arrived. Still, he and some other keepers have had huge losses in their hives.

"The bottom line is: We've got a problem in Ontario. There's a lot less bees than we used to have and we don't know why."

"It could be many different factors that are causing the bees to die or all of them together are enough to cause the problem and we just have the right set of wrong circumstances coming together."

Scientists Discover "Shadow Person"

From Cosmos Magazine:

by Erica Harrison

SYDNEY: Ever feel as though you're being followed? As if someone is behind you, shadowing your every move? It might be your ‘shadow person', created by unusual activity in a specific brain region, a new study shows.

The paper, published in the British journal Nature, describes the case of a 22-year-old woman with no history of psychiatric problems who was being evaluated for treatment of epilepsy. When a region of her brain called the left temporoparietal junction was electrically stimulated, the woman described encounters with a ‘shadow person' who mimicked her bodily movements.

"Electrical stimulation repeatedly produced a feeling of the presence of another person in her extra-personal space," said Olaf Blanke, co-author of the study conducted by a team of researchers from University Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland.

When the patient was lying down, stimulation of this brain region caused her to feel that someone was behind her. She described the person as young, of indeterminate sex, "a shadow who did not speak or move, and whose position beneath her back was identical to her own", according to the researchers.

When the patient sat up, leaned forward and clasped her knees, she felt that the figure was also sitting, embracing her in its arms - a feeling she described as "unpleasant".

During a language task, in which the seated patient held a card in her right hand, she described the person sitting next to her and trying to interfere with the task. "He wants to take the card … he doesn't want me to read," she said.

Because it was possible to induce the sensation repeatedly, and because the ‘shadow person' closely mimicked the patient's posture and movements, the researchers conclude that the patient was experiencing a perception of her own body.

"The strange sensation that somebody is nearby when no one is actually present has been described by psychiatric and neurological patients, as well as by healthy subjects," said Blanke. Until now, however, it was not understood how the illusion was triggered in the brain.

The temporoparietal junction is known to be involved in creating the concept of ‘self', and the distinction between ‘self' and ‘other'. According to the researchers, stimulation of this region interfered with the patient's ability to integrate information about her own body, leading to her experience of a ‘shadow person'.

Although the woman was aware of the similarity between her own movements and those of her doppelganger, she didn't recognise the experience as an illusion of her own body.

Similar shadowy encounters have been described by people with schizophrenia, as well as by healthy subjects, leading the researchers to believe that: "Our findings may be a step towards understanding the mechanisms behind psychiatric manifestations such as paranoia, persecution and alien control."

Shark disappearance threatens sea life

From the Toronto Star:

Mar 29, 2007 03:24 PM

Canadian Press

HALIFAX – The near extinction of several species of sharks is causing a dangerous ripple effect through the marine food chain, according to a new study that links their virtual disappearance to depletions of other sea life.

The report by a team of researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax has found that species that were once the primary food source for certain types of large sharks are undergoing a population boom because there aren't as many sharks to prey on them.

The scientists contend that the explosive increase in about a dozen types of smaller sharks, rays and skates has caused a cascading effect throughout the ecosystem as they begin to deplete limited nutrient sources and alter nature's complex food web.

"It's incredibly serious," said Julia Baum, who co-wrote the report to be released Friday in the journal Science. "Everyone knows that the oceans are being overfished and it's the top predators that are being disproportionately hit by overfishing.

"Because they structure everything underneath them in the food web, we may be drastically changing and restructuring how the oceanic food web functions and operates."

The report states that shark populations off the eastern United States are in an even steeper decline that originally thought. Using data from fisheries logs and research surveys from 1970 to 2005, the team discovered that the abundance of several types of so-called great sharks has dropped by more than 99 per cent.

The bull and dusty sharks are verging on extinction, while hammerheads and great white sharks are in dangerously low numbers, Baum said, due largely to overfishing.

The controversial practice of finning – slicing the shark's fin off and then tossing the carcass overboard – has led to precipitous drops in most strains of the large predators globally, the report said.

"What we're seeing is a higher risk of extinction of these species in these areas, and the term we use as ecologists is functional elimination," Baum said, adding that finning kills as many as 73 million sharks a year worldwide for an industry that supplies fins for soups and other uses.

"It means that these great predators can no longer play their roles in the ecosystem as top predators. So they're no longer controlling the species in the food web below them."

The researchers, including the late Ransom Myers who passed away Tuesday, cited a specific example of how the removal of sharks is affecting other species.

Baum, a marine biologist, said they have for the first time linked the decimation of bay scallops in waters off North Carolina to an increase in cownose rays, which eat the delicacy. Sharks feed on the rays, but because there are now so few sharks, the ray population has been allowed to grow to more than 10 times what it was a decade ago.

Cownose rays have wiped out scallop beds to the point that the fishery has been closed every year off North Carolina since 2004.

"This ecological event is having a large impact on local communities that depend so much on healthy fisheries," said Charles Peterson, a professor of marine sciences and biology at the University of North Carolina and co-author of the report.

Baum said it's not clear what the increase in the other species will mean for the food chain and the wider ecosystem, but it's likely skates, rays and smaller sharks are disrupting the wider natural order in oceans around the world.

The loss of the bay scallop has already caused disruptions to seagrass, an important habitat for other marine life, because rays plow through the growth in search of scallops. Rays may also be inhibiting the recovery of oysters, hard clams and soft-shell clams.

Ken Frank, a fisheries scientist with the federal Fisheries Department, said the findings add to what he had discovered in an earlier research paper that looked at how the disappearance of cod affected the food chain.

Frank, whose study was published in Science in 2005, found that the collapse of cod and other large species led to a cascade effect. As the number of large predators declined dramatically, the fish they preyed on – herring, capelin, shrimp and snow crab – experienced a population explosion.

"There are interdependencies among the species, and when you cause these imbalances, you're going to get some effect elsewhere," he said from his office in Halifax.

"For many decades, it was thought this type of cascade effect was possible only in simplified systems like ponds, so seeing this occur in the marine system is alarming. It means we're modifying the way energy is flowing through these systems."

This latest scientific paper follows groundbreaking research Myers and Baum did in 2003 that found shark populations in the Atlantic had plunged dramatically since the mid-1980s.

"We know better now why sharks matter," Baum said. "Keeping top predators is critical for sustaining the health of the ocean."

Mystery illness devastates honeybee colonies

From New Scientist:

• 12:31 14 February 2007
• NewScientist.com news service
• Roxanne Khamsi

A mysterious illness is devastating honeybee populations across the US from California to Florida, claiming up to 80% of colonies in some areas. The losses of honeybees could disrupt the pollination of food crops, researchers warn.

Beekeepers are finding once-healthy colonies abandoned just a few days later, says Jerry Bromenshank, at the University of Montana at Missoula and Bee Alert Technology, a company monitoring the problem: “In most cases the only one left is the queen, along with a few young bees.”

The absence of dead bees makes it difficult to know what ails them and where they have gone. Furthermore, experts cannot track the spread of the mysterious illness. “The problem is that it strikes out of the blue,” says Bromenshank.

At a loss for an explanation, researchers have referred to the honeybee decline as “colony collapse disorder”. Reports of the problem have intensified in recent weeks and spanned 22 states, but some beekeepers say that they began seeing their colonies decline almost two years ago.

Almonds and apples

Researchers say colony collapse disorder might be a re-emergence of a similarly mysterious illness that struck US honeybees in the 1960s. Experts never pinpointed the cause behind that previous bee crisis, according to Bromenshank. He notes that in light of this some people have jokingly termed the problem the “disappearing-disappearing illness”.

But beekeepers and farmers see no humour in the potential economic costs of drastic honeybee decline. Almond crops are immediately vulnerable because they rely on honeybee pollination at this time of year. And the insect decline could potentially affect other crops later in the year, such as apples and blueberries.

Bromenshank speculates that dry conditions in the autumn reduced the natural food supply of the honeybees, making them more vulnerable to some sort of virus – such as deformed wing virus – or fungal infection. He notes that the abandoned colonies are not repopulated by other honeybees or insects for at least a few weeks. This, he says, is consistent with the presence of toxic fungal residues from the dying bees that repel other insects from re-inhabiting the colony.

Other scientists have tentatively blamed the problem on pesticides or chemicals specifically designed to control mites in bee colonies.

--

This seems related to colony collapse disorder, which has struck before.

Mystery In White

From the Toronto Star:

Gown in Lake Ontario spurs theories: Jilted bride? Ad prop? Art project?
January 19, 2007
Joe Fiorito

Flotsam is floating wreckage and jetsam is that which has been thrown overboard; which of these is the wedding dress?

I have two friends, Edda Dolcetti and Peter Lenardon. They live in the west end, in a house full of her paintings, his photos, and art made by their friends. I have known them since Fort William; years and years.

They like to go prowling around the city with their cameras in the early morning, or of an evening when the light is right. They were on the boardwalk near the Humber River just before the snow fell when ... oh, let them tell the story.

Edda: "I was taking photos of the swans. They change all the time. They're wonderful to study. And the sun; when the light is right you get the reflection along the water's edge. I wanted to get a shot when I noticed this big white billowing thing in the water. At first I thought it was a garbage bag."

Pete: "I hoped it wasn't a body."

Edda: "It was a wedding dress. I could see it was puffy. The bow was at the top and the bodice was down. It was floating in the water, just far enough away that we couldn't reach it. I had my camera out. It was beautiful to shoot. I wanted to get closer. Pete got a stick of driftwood and dragged it to the shore."

Pete: "I dragged it artfully. If you gave it a swirl, it spread out." Who knew there was a technique for the dragging of wedding dresses through the lake?

Edda: "I couldn't stand the thought of it in the water. There was no veil, but we could see there was a headpiece and long gloves."

These things were too far out to retrieve.

Edda: "This guy came by as I was taking pictures of the dress. He said, `Hmm, good.' I guess he thought I'd thrown it in. He just said, `Hmm, good,' and walked away. I wanted to save the dress. It was so alluring in the water."

Pete: "Plus, we just got a new washing machine."

Isn't this why anyone buys a new clothes washer? Just in case a wedding dress drifts up on shore?

Edda: "Pete put the dress in a bag he'd found, and squeezed out as much water as he could. The dress was all sandy; when we got home I put it in a basin and rinsed all the sand out. Then I put it in the washer, on the delicate cycle, with some Woolite."

The wedding dress came out beautifully, and it is now hanging in their basement.

Edda: "It's taffeta, with a drop waist. There's lace and beading; you have puffy sleeves with rosettes, and a bustle with cascading bows and a long train. There is deep scalloped lace at the hem.

"The bodice has teardrop pearls, and the lace on the bodice is floral. The taffeta is synthetic. I don't know if it's polyester, but it's not real silk. There's no designer label. But it doesn't matter that it's synthetic; it's quite well-made. There is a lining, and some netting to keep the shape. I think it's a size 6. I can tell. I work with patterns."

Her mother was a seamstress.

Pete: "There's a photo of Edda when she was 5 years old, sitting at her mother's sewing machine. She made all her own Barbie clothing."

Edda: "Ha, ha; couturier Barbie. I made it all."

More to the point, she also made her own wedding dress, using three kinds of silk, with hand-painted panels; she is a first-rate painter, and she was painting on silk at the time. She still has that dress in her closet.

But what is the true story of the wedding dress in the lake? Edda: "It could be romantic. It could not be. I don't necessarily want to find out, but I do want to know that everything is okay. You shouldn't be throwing things like this in the lake."

Was it cast into the water by a woman whose marriage went sour in a hurry? Is this the dress of a bride who was jilted at the altar? Was it used as a prop in some crass advertising shoot? The too-clever handiwork of art students echoing Ophelia?

Or might this be evidence of some hip, new, previously unreported trend: the post-wedding ditching of the finery off the deck of a party boat hired by the happy couple?

Of this latter possibility Edda said, "I can't see it. I would never waste something like this." Pete thinks it was art students. I am inclined to consider sorrow.

What will Edda do, now that the salvaged dress is perfectly clean, undamaged and resplendent, hanging safely in their basement? "I don't know. That's a good question. I'd give it to someone, I would; some young girl might want to use it. But wedding dresses are so personal ..."

Pete: "A bride puts this on, she could step into a story."

But what is the true story of the wedding dress in the water?

--

A nugget of a story here, I think . . .

Drunk man rescued from chimney

From the Toronto Star:

January 19, 2007

Tamara Cherry
Staff Reporter
A drunk Toronto man who spent five freezing hours in a stranger’s chimney Thursday morning was simply trying to enter the home after no one answered his knocks at the front door, police say.

The 35-year-old man left his friend’s Muskoka Lakes cottage in the middle of the night to “relieve himself,” Ontario Provincial Police said.

Stumbling back through the dark, he unknowingly ended up at an empty neighbouring cottage. Imagine his surprise, then, when he found the door locked and no one answering his knocks.

“Upset and determined to get in, he climbed onto the roof and slid down the chimney, the wrong chimney,” Bracebridge OPP said.

On his way down, the inebriated man became stuck at the bottom of the chimney, where he spent about five hours in freezing conditions before contractors working near the cottage heard his cries for help shortly after 9 a.m.

They initially thought someone had fallen into Lake Rousseau, OPP said. “They checked the water, but were surprised to discover the cries were coming from an intoxicated man stuck down the chimney.”

After climbing on the roof and finding the victim stuck with his arms above his head, the workers lowered a rope down the flue and managed to pull the freezing man out.

This will likely go down in the history books as “one of the strangest occurrences Bracebridge OPP officers, Township of Muskoka Lakes firefighters and paramedics have ever attended,” OPP said.

“It’s simply a miracle the victim escaped relatively unscathed without need of medical attention.”

Because the man had no criminal intent in entering the home, no charges will be laid, police said.

The phrase of the day is "Feraliminal Lycanthropizer"

Great article on the Fortean Times website about sonic weapons -- loads of interesting material pertaining to military applications, ghost hunting and behavior modification, but I was struck by this passage in particular:

"The link between periods of insanity and exposure to specific infrasound frequencies forms the basis for the ‘Feraliminal Lycanthropizer’, a device claimed to stimulate atavistic animality, sexual excitement, and a loss of inhibitions in its target. As described in an essay published in Dainty Viscera magazine, the Feraliminal Lycanthropizer creates two infrasound frequencies – 3Hz and 9Hz – which, combined, generate a lower, third frequency of 0.56Hz. The machine also uses a combination of four subliminal, looped, audio tape recordings – playing both forwards and backwards – outside the normal audible pitch."

Freaky.

More Dead Birds -- Now In Australia

First Texas, now Australia. This is getting weird . . .

Mystery as thousands of birds fall from sky

• Amanda O'Brien
• January 10, 2007

THOUSANDS of birds have fallen from the skies over Esperance and no one knows why.

Is it an illness, toxins or a natural phenomenon? A string of autopsies in Perth have shed no light on the mystery.

All the residents of flood-devastated Esperance know is that their "dawn chorus" of singing birds is missing.

The main casualties are wattle birds, yellow-throated miners, new holland honeyeaters and singing honeyeaters, although some dead crows, hawks and pigeons have also been found.

Wildlife officers are baffled by the "catastrophic" event, which the Department of Environment and Conservation said began well before last week's freak storm.

On Monday, Esperance, 725km southeast of Perth, was declared a natural disaster zone.

District nature conservation co-ordinator Mike Fitzgerald said the first reports of birds dropping dead in people's yards came in three weeks ago. More than 500 deaths had since been notified. But the calls stopped suddenly last week, reportedly because no birds were left.

"It's very substantial. We estimate several thousand birds are dead, although we don't have a clear number because of the large areas of bushland," Mr Fitzgerald said.

Birds Australia, the nation's main bird conservation group, said it had not heard of a similar occurrence. "Not on that scale, and all at the same time, and also the fact that it's several different species," chief executive Graeme Hamilton said. "You'd have to call that a most unusual event and one that we'd all have to be concerned about."

He expected birds would return to the area once the problem - natural or man-made phenomenon - was fixed but said it was vital the cause was identified.

The Department of Agriculture and Food, which conducted the autopsies, has almost ruled out an infectious process.

Acting chief veterinary officer Fiona Sunderman said toxins were the most likely cause but the deaths could be due to anything from toxic algae to chemicals and pesticides.

Dr Sunderman said there were no leads yet on which of potentially hundreds of toxins might be responsible. Some birds were seen convulsing as they died.

Michelle Crisp was one of the first to contact the DEC after finding dozens of dead birds on her property one morning.

She told The Australian she normally had hundreds of birds in her yard, but that she and a neighbour counted 80 dead birds in one day. "It went to the point where we had nothing, not a bird," she said. "It was like a moonscape, just horrible.

"But the frightening thing for us, we didn't find any more birds after that. We literally didn't have any birds left to die."

Dozens of birds dead in Texas city

January 08, 2007

Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas – Police shut down 10 blocks of businesses in the heart of downtown today after dozens of birds were found dead in the streets, but officials said preliminary tests showed no air quality problems and the area reopened around 1 p.m.

As many as 60 dead pigeons, sparrows and blackbirds were found overnight along Congress Avenue, a main route through downtown. No human injuries or illnesses were reported.

"We do not feel there is a threat to the public health," said Adolfo Valadez, the medical director for Austin and Travis County Health and Human Services.

He said preliminary air-quality tests showed no dangerous chemicals, though the dead birds would be sent for further testing to rule out viruses or poison.

Experts at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society said the most likely cause was a deliberate poisoning of the troublesome blackbirds, also called grackles, which is more common than people think. It's also legal, with local permits, said Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation at the Audubon in Washington.

Austin officials were smart to take it so seriously, though, Butcher said, because birds' "requirements for life are pretty similar to our requirements for life" so they can serve as an early warning for risks to human health.

On Congress Avenue, just beyond the state Capitol steps, emergency workers donned yellow hazardous-material suits this morning, and dozens of fire trucks and ambulances were parked nearby.

Workers collected dead birds off the roadway and tested for possible environmental contaminants and for any gas or chlorine leaks, said police spokeswoman Toni Chovanetz. At least one bird carcass was being tested locally for other possible causes, and others were shipped to Texas A&M University.

Valadez said the tests, expected to take several days, would look for signs of poisoning or viral infections, though he said officials do not think bird flu is involved.