The pick of the science news
Plastic explorers
A group of ocean scientists and volunteers set sail this week in search of answers about a massive collection of plastic rubbish floating in the north central Pacific. Little scientific information has been collected to date on the pollution, which lies around 1,000 miles off the coast of California and has been dubbed the “great Pacific Ocean garbage patch”. The pieces of plastic that make up the debris are too small for detailed data to be gathered from planes or satellites.
That’s why the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (Seaplex) is approaching the garbage by sea, hoping to reach some conclusions about its extent, its distribution and how it is affecting marine life. Follow the expedition blog at seaplexscience.com.
Mosquito mori
A single mosquito may have aided the malaria parasite in its jump from chimpanzees to humans, according to new findings on the origins of the condition. Researchers from the University of California, Irvine, genetically screened strains of malaria parasites in blood samples from chimpanzees in Cameroon and Ivory Coast. One chimp strain was linked to all worldwide human strains and suggests that one mosquito could have moved malaria from chimps to humans between 5,000 and two million years ago.
“When malaria transferred to humans, it became very severe very quickly,” says researcher Francisco Ayala, co-author of the study, published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. “The disease in humans has become resistant to many drugs. It’s my hope that our discovery will bring us closer to making a vaccine.”
By numbers
25,500
The estimated number of people thought to have experienced new asthma symptoms after exposure to the Twin Towers’ collapse of on September 11th, 2001, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jama)
61,000
The number of directly exposed people estimated to have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, according to the same study
