Allergy News to Make Eyes Runny With Joy
Anyone who suffers from allergies will tell you that although drugs and shots may help alleviate the symptoms, they are poor substitutes for being allergy-free. But now, medical scientists at UC San Diego have developed an anti-allergy vaccine that shows promise of preventing allergies from attacking and may wipe them out altogether.
The vaccine is made using a tiny piece of DNA. The DNA carries instructions for a chemical combination that mimics a potential allergen. When mice who had received the DNA vaccine were exposed to a strong antigen, they did not experience an allergic reaction. The vaccine was even able to switch off an existing allergic condition in test mice.
The vaccine can be administered merely by scratching the skin, and it could be specific to the allergy protein or allergen causing all that sneezing and itching. Pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration, it’s expected that patient studies with the new vaccine will begin in 24 months for hay fever, bee stings and asthma. The vaccine might also help combat certain parasitic disorders.
Laser Those Tags: Lasers are used for lots of things, from carrying telephone calls to performing surgery to guiding high-tech weapons. Now a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Laser Program has come up with a most mundane--but possibly most useful--application: removing graffiti from walls and buildings. Dennis Matthews has successfully completed experiments in which a laser was used to reduce spray-painted graffiti into powder without damaging an underlying unpainted surface.
Using a laser to zap graffiti has advantages over current methods of removal. Sandblasting, for example has been banned by a number of cities because of the environmental hazard. Soda blasting--which uses sodium bicarbonate mixed with water--is a preferred alternative to sandblasting. But it is not very efficient and scars the surface beneath the paint.
When a laser hits the surface of the paint, its beam converts into a sound wave. The sound wave moves through the paint, strikes the underlying surface and rebounds. When the rebounding sound wave and an incoming beam collide, the paint explodes into a powder.
Matthews envisions fitting the laser apparatus into a truck or van along with a vacuum to suck up the paint once it is pulverized. Painted metal is a problem for the laser because it can’t distinguish “good” paint from “bad” paint.
Removing graffiti, in fact, is just one application. A large wand equipped with many small diode lasers could be used for general paint removal from an apartment building or bridge.
Ring of Fire: As early as last December, researchers at the University of Arizona’s Tree Ring Laboratory knew that 1996 would be a bad year for fire in the Southwest. In fact, it is proving to be the worst fire year in the Southwest since 1974. The last few wet years followed by the current dry year have provided forest fuel that can be ignited by an ember from a campfire or a cigarette butt. The problem has been compounded by a policy of suppressing forest fires over the last century.
The researchers based their predictions on historical and statistical tree ring studies that show the relationships between fire and climate over a long period. The studies show clearly that warm and cold currents in the Pacific Ocean off western South America cause wet and dry years in the Southwest, which, in turn, relate to fire danger.
Bach by the Bit: Mozart was composing small musical pieces by the time he was 5 years old. It took David Cope, a composer and professor of music at UC Santa Cruz, one additional year to develop his own musical prodigy--a computer program that composes its own music. The first composition for what is known as EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) was a sonata in the style of, yes, Mozart.
There are perhaps 100 or so programs in the world creating music through computer algorithms. EMI (pronounced “emmy”) has a particular talent: The program composes music in the style of other composers. In his newly released book, “Experiments in Musical Intelligence,” Cope explains the program and theory on musical style.
EMI’s six-step algorithm works like this: The user selects and inputs works of music from a composer that have similar tempos, ranges and orchestration. EMI analyzes them, identifies the characteristics unique to the composer, breaks the music into its components, recombines the music into a new piece that preserves the composer’s signature and ultimately performs it.
EMI can be used as a compositional tool and to help musicologists understand style.
Freelance writer Kathleen Wiegner can be reached via e-mail at kkwrite@aol.com.
