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In the news
How do the lion prides of the Kruger National Park interact with each other? A mysterious disease is offering clues. A team of researchers at Stellenbosch University and SANParks is using the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) to understand how widespread the disease is among lion populations in the Kruger, and how it affects various lion prides. FIV resembles HIV so closely that both diseases have similar symptoms: wasting, immune depletion, oral lesions caused by opportunistic infections, renal disease and chronic inflammation. "The work now being done will extend our knowledge about how widespread the disease is among southern Africa's lion population, and in the process how different prides interact," said Dr Danny Govender of scientific services at SANParks, who approached Stellenbosch University (SU) to conduct the research over a year ago. She is fascinated how FIV, so like the HIV virus, has a different transmission rate. FIV is transmitted by fighting or other aggressive encounters between members of the same cat species through saliva and blood. It is not harmful to humans. Researcher Tanya Kerr said the social behaviour of lions suggested that if one member of the pride was infected with the virus, "most, if not all, adult members will be infected regardless of pride size". Kerr is a conservation ecology masters student at SU who is studying the spread and rate by which various subtypes of this virus occur among prides in the Kruger. Sonja Matthee of the SANParks conservation ecology department says that the virus could be used as an indicator of how the lions in the Kruger were moving. "Researchers are using the virus because it is mutating much faster than a lion would produce offspring ... to track the movement of the host and see which prides are interacting. They can probably also use this research as a model for controlling and managing diseases within our large nature reserves." Source: Saturday Star
An invention using recycled plastic bottles to help young asthmatics breathe easier, has landed a Cape Town professor and paediatric pulmonologist an international award. Heather Zar's home-made asthma spacers (a specially designed plastic tube for use with a puffer inhaler) for patients at the Red Cross Children's Hospital earned her the World Lung Health award in recognition of her research work and innovations in improving child health. Zar is head of the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at Red Cross and the University of Cape Town. After she took over the position as a medical officer at the children's hospital, Zar said she witnessed the inadequate treatment that asthmatic children were given at the time, which was mostly drugs that had many side effects. This was because asthma spacers were expensive. But using recycled plastic bottles, Zar made home-made spacers for the children to use. Awarded the honour at the American Thoracic Society meeting in San Diego in May this year, Zar became the first African and the first paediatrician to receive it. Commenting on her latest award, Zar said: "My hope is that it helps shine a spotlight on this relatively under-resourced area of research. Children are so seldom prioritised on the health agenda. There's a lack of knowledge about the burden of childhood illnesses - even though children make up 37 percent of our population." Source: Cape Argus. Picture: Henk Kruger
A rare species of pufferfish was caught by deep-sea fishermen off East London in April this year. The strange-looking fish was caught at a depth of 90m and weighed 2.05kg. The threetooth puffer (Triodon macropterus) is the only living species in the genus Triodon and family Triodontidae. Other members of the family are known from fossils stretching back to the Eocene. In nearly 30 years, this is only the third record of this deep-sea fish in southern African waters. Two of these specimens are housed in the National Fish Collection at SAIAB. The first, which is recorded in Smiths' Sea Fishes, is of a specimen found off Inhambane, in southern Mozambique before 1986. The second specimen, the first to be found in South African waters, was trawled at 414m in the deep ocean off Durban in 2009. According to Wikipedia, the three-toothed puffer fish is native to the Indo-Pacific. It has three fused teeth that make up a beak-like structure, reaches a maximum length of 54cm and has a belly flap as large as or larger than its body. It is able to inflate this when threatened. Source: Dispatch online. Picture: Wikipedia
Scientists weren't always this excited about Enceladus, which is just one of Saturn's more than 50 known moons. It's small, with a diameter about one-seventh that of Earth's moon, which means it cools quickly and so was thought to be inactive, but it is fast emerging as a top contender for the possibility of signs of life. Buried under kilometres of ice, astronomers have detected a liquid water sea. The sea is about the size of Lake Superior and it touches Enceladus' silicate core ... which means it could have minerals dissolved in it that are necessary for life. "It makes the interior of Enceladus a very attractive potential place to look for life," said Jonathan Lunine, a Cornell University astronomer who worked on the study determining Enceladus has an ocean. You can see what Popular Science refers to as 'sexy' photos of Enceladus here. Source: Daily Maverick |
