POST-PRESS: Philippine Carabao Descended from China

Leslie Ann del Barrio and colleagues at the Philippine Carabao Center confirmed the water buffalo, popularly known in the country as carabao, descended from swamp buffalos native in China. Through a molecular analysis of gene-carrier mitrochondrial DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), Del Barrio sample carabaos from Cagayan (Luzon), Batangas (Luzon), Bohol (Visayas), and Bukidnon (Mindanao), and their genetic sequences are much the same as the maternal swamp buffalos of China. (Read more.)

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The "Lungs" of Our Homes

As trees slowly disappear with growing urbanization, the Rooseveltian lungs are replaced with more dangerous electrical lungs at home, many of which can damage the genetic materials of the human lungs. FRANKLIN Roosevelt said: “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” In Cebu today, however, people may have given up “fresh strength” for the material conveniences of an urbanized province. Even the more far-flung towns in the province of Cebu have already shown signs of urbanization. And it will not be long when even forests will cease to be. Nonetheless, the “lungs” have been replaced with electric air fresheners, with all the varied approaches to freshen the air—at least in the cities and the suburbs. But four Japanese researchers—three from the Iwate University (Ueda, Morioka, Iwate) Department of Veterinary Medicine and one from the National Institute of Health Services (K...

Dealing with TURP

As we age, a lot of things we easily can do when we were younger get harder to do as our bodily systems start to show problems in functioning. That's the case with TURP; and if you add the inevitable side effects of drugs used in treating it, you can only imaging how difficult old age can be. A CERTAIN practice has been common in synthetic drug treatments (so common it may be considered a cliché). You start taking a prescription for one health problem and you end up having a new one. Of course that is not true for all synthetic medications. But given lack of long-term studies in most pharmaceutical drugs today, who knows what’s going to happen in the next 20 to 30 years after taking a particular regimen. In history, many drugs have been pulled out from shelves because they later turned out to be potential killers, if not already one. The classic case is that of finasteride, a treatment used against certain complications that transurethral ...

Sex Industry Weathers Financial Crises

Varmus Christopher Forbes.com 12/29/08 14:00:05 GMT The sex industry traces back to 500 B.C., when traders from the Greek port of Miletus sold olisbos, an early version of the dildo. Today, the business of sex (including pornography) now runs into the tens of billions of dollars. (No official estimates are available; Wall Street analysts don't tend to track this stuff.) And while print and video sales are ebbing, as more free adult content has become available online, sales of un-reproducible sexual aids are still healthy. "Of course, there's concern about the economy, but right now our sales are growing," says Michael Trygstad, founder of Wet, a lubricant manufacturer in Van Nuys, Calif. "We've grown 30% this year alone. We've had to completely automate our factories to meet the tremendous demand. People are deciding to stay at home and engage in inexpensive entertainment.'' Slick marketing--and the ability to shop anonymously online--helps, too...

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