news/notes 2009.03.01

[Born This Day] from [Britannica]
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin, born this day in 1810, was a Polish French composer and pianist of the Romantic period who ranks as one of music's greatest tone poets by reason of his imagination and fastidious craftsmanship.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]
1872: Establishment of Yellowstone as world's first national park
Yellowstone National Park, situated in the western United States and designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978, was established by the U.S. Congress as the country's—and the world's—first national park this day in 1872.

[Today's Studying Articles]
[Health] from "Reuters"

Vitamin B12 can prevent major birth defects
Mon Mar 2, 2009 12:02am EST
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Before becoming pregnant, women need to get enough vitamin B12 in addition to folic acid to cut their risk of having a baby with a serious birth defect of the brain and spinal cord, researchers said on Monday.

Irish women with the lowest vitamin B12 levels were five times more likely to have a baby with a neural tube defect than those with the highest levels, the researchers wrote in the journal Pediatrics.

Neural tube defects can lead to lifelong disability or death. The two most common ones are spina bifida, in which the spinal cord and back bones do not form properly, and anencephaly, a fatal condition in which the brain and skull bones do not develop normally.

Dr. James Mills of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, one of the researchers, said the study showed that vitamin B12 deficiency was a risk factor for neural tube defects independent of folic acid, another B vitamin.
Many women now know of the importance of folic acid and there has been a drop in neural tube defects.

Mills said he hopes that awareness of the similar role of vitamin B12 can reduce neural tube defects further.

Vitamin B12 is essential to maintain healthy nerve cells and red blood cells. It is found in meat, dairy products, eggs, fish, shellfish and fortified breakfast cereals. It also can be taken as an individual supplement or in a multivitamin.

"An absolutely critical point is that women have to consider this before they become pregnant because once they realize they are pregnant it's likely to be too late," Mills, a researcher in the NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said in a telephone interview.
The developmental events involved in these birth defects occur in the first four weeks of pregnancy, Mills said.

Mills urged women who do not eat meat or dairy products to be particularly aware of the need to get enough vitamin B12.

He had similar advice for women with an intestinal disorder such as inflammatory bowel disease that may prevent them from absorbing sufficient amounts of the vitamin.

The study involved almost 1,200 women in Ireland who gave blood samples during early pregnancy, which were analyzed to determine vitamin B12 levels.

The women in the lowest 25 percent of vitamin B12 levels were five times more likely than those in the highest 25 percent to have had a baby with a neural tube defect.

The researchers suggested that women have vitamin B12 levels above 300 nanograms per liter before getting pregnant.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Mohammad Zargham)

[Words] from "CLD"
anencephaly - [MED] a congenital malformation in which all or most of the brain and skull bones are abcent
【名】《医》無脳症◆【同】anencephalia


[Science] from "Reuters"

Fossil of 10 million-year-old bird found in Peru
Fri Feb 27, 2009 2:57pm EST

LIMA (Reuters) - Paleontologists working in Peru have found a fossil from a bird that lived 10 million years ago, scientists said on Friday after returning from the dig site on the country's desert coast.

The species of bird had a wing span of 19.7 feet and fed mostly on fish from the Pacific Ocean. It first appeared 50 million years ago and was extinct about 2.5 million years ago because of climate change, paleontologist Mario Urbina of Peru's Natural History Museum said.

Scientists discovered a rare fossil of the bird's head in Ocucaje, in the Ica region of Peru's southern coast, where an arid climate has preserved many fossils.

"The cranium of the bird, from the Pelagornithidae family, is the most complete find of its kind in the world. Its fossil remains are hard to find," Urbina said.

Old ocean seabeds in the area have been a treasure trove for fossil hunters.

"This site had marine sediments. The fossil was found with other remains from whales, sharks and turtles," Urbina said.

At the time of the bird's death, Peru's coast was hot and rainy, but millions of years later, it turned cool and dry, he said.

The fossil is 15.7 inches long and will go on display on Saturday at the museum.

The bird had some peculiar characteristics, including teeth at the tip of its beak and large wings that were less efficient than those of contemporary birds.

"The teeth helped capture its prey. This was an animal that perhaps trapped its prey and chewed while it flew. It had a hard time taking off from the ground, and needed an elevated point to take off from," Urbina said.

(Reporting by Marco Aquino, Writing by Terry Wade)