BBC Medical Science – The incidence of eczema is increasing dramatically in England, data suggests.

There was a 42% rise in diagnosis of the condition between 2001 and 2005, by which time it was estimated to affect 5.7m adults and children.

One potential explanation for the rise is increased frequency of bathing and use of soap and detergents. Margaret Cox, chief executive of the National Eczema Society, said, “Water use dries up the skin and soaps and detergents degrease the skin. We are using quite a lot of these products from an early age.”

Study leader Professor Aziz Sheikh, chair of the allergy and respiratory research group at the University of Edinburgh, said he expected to see a rise but it was fairly marked given the short time period. “What’s quite striking is the very high proportion of people who are getting eczema, it’s an incredibly common disorder. Why eczema is important is increasingly we think eczema is a herald condition for individuals to go on to develop other allergic conditions, such as asthma and allergic rhinitis.”

The theory is that allergens may be able to cross the skin in people with eczema to cause disease whereas in people without the condition the skin is able to act as a barrier. He added that it is likely that a proportion of individuals have a genetic predisposition to develop eczema but that environmental factors also play a large part, and it is these which are likely to be causing the increase. “The environmental factors are frequency of bathing and use of soaps and detergents.”(03/24/09)

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You may have heard of distributed computing — that’s when a computing task is distributed over several processors. Many of today’s modern personal computers have 2 processors some have four or even eight. At the university level some computing tasks are distributed over hundreds or even thousands of computers, making the assembly of many machines work as if they were one single machine. Now science is discovering that bee swarms and ant colonies may be working the same way. …

BBC Biological Science — Bees and ants are true team players unlike other creatures who seek safety in numbers for selfish reasons, according to researchers.

Scientists from Edinburgh and Oxford Universities used mathematical models to study “swarm behaviour”. They found that bison or fish want to get to the centre of large groups to keep themselves safe from predators. Ants and bees worked together as a single unit, and were prepared to die for the greater good of the colony.

The study’s findings appear to echo the insect worlds portrayed in the animated films Antz and Bee Movie, in which the characters live in rigidly conformist societies. In some co-operative groups of animals - known as superorganisms - members are closely related, and work together to ensure their shared genetic material is passed on, the researchers concluded.

In other groups they perform a policing role, for instance in honey bee hives where worker bees destroy any eggs not laid by the queen to ensure the queen’s offspring survive.

Dr Andy Gardner, from the University of Edinburgh, said: “We often see animals appearing to move in unison, such as bison or fish. However, what looks like a team effort is in fact each animal jostling to get to the middle of the group to evade predators. By contrast, an ant nest or a beehive can behave as a united organism in its own right. In a beehive, the workers are happy to help the community, even to die, because the queen carries and passes on their genes. However, superorganisms are quite rare, and only exist when the internal conflict within a social group is suppressed - so we cannot use this term, for example, to describe human societies.” (03/24/09)

… At least not presently. Today humans utilize mostly adversary and neutral strategies for organization. In the Future, we could choose to voluntarily suppress conflict, and organize ourselves synergically.
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BBC Technology/Politics — There should be a significant increase in the number of wind farms built onshore in the UK, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has said. It called for an end to the “needless delays” that beset wind farm projects, after a study said more turbines could be built without harming wildlife. It would be “disastrous” if the vast potential of wind power in the UK was wasted, the charity added.

Ministers said the planning process was being “streamlined” to encourage a mixture of on and offshore wind farms.

In 2007, just 2% of the UK’s energy came from wind power, compared with 29% in Denmark, 20% in Spain and 15% in Germany.

A report for the RSPB, written by the Institute for European Environmental Policy, said that with an effective planning system, the UK could greatly increase onshore wind development without damaging nature conservation. Ruth Davis, head of climate change policy at the RSPB, said it was in favour of such an expansion because of the “truly terrifying” impact that global warming was increasingly having on birds. “Left unchecked, climate change threatens many species with extinction. Yet that sense of urgency is not translating into actions on the ground to harness the abundant wind energy around us.”

The RSPB called on the government to set firm regional and local targets for developing wind energy, and give more guidance to councils on how to deal with planning applications. Currently, many become bogged down in local politics at the expense of national efforts to tackle climate change, it said.

In order to protect wildlife, the RSPB argued, there must be a program of mapping to identify which areas should be earmarked for wind turbines and which should be avoided in order to protect habitats. Areas with large numbers of nesting seabirds or those which are home to rare birds of prey should be spared, it said.

Much more effort must also be made to win the support of local communities, the charity said, for example, by offering cheaper energy to people in the immediate vicinity of a wind farm. (03/24/09)
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