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The Rubber Research Institute of Maylasia in Kuala Lumpur has successfully produced genetically modified rubber plants that produce human proteins.

Human serum albumin, which is a nutrient given to patients on intensive care, is now being produced in steady quantities from rubber plants into which the appropriate human genes have been implanted. According to Hoong-Yeet Yeang of the Institute, “we’re getting continuous production simply by tapping it for milk.”

The yield is high enough to make the human proteins very cheaply, and the rubber left over can still be used for tires.

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British cattle feed in all probability contaminated with Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis prions was exported to third world countries for years after its exportation was banned to the European Union by the British government.

The first two cases of humans with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), the disease caused by BSE prions in human beings, have been confirmed in Thailand. Before 1996, Thailand was a major importer of British livestock feed.

Other suspected cases in South Korea and Spain, both of which were importers of British cattle feed, are waiting for confirmation.
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The stratosphere above the northern hemisphere has been much warmer than normal for over a week. This is a relatively unusual situation at this time of year, and could be due in part to recent solar activity, and on a longer-term basis, to the buildup of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

As long as the condition persists, there is the possibility that significant weather systems will develop over the northern hemisphere, however they cannot be predicted with accuracy. Models show that powerful late-winter and early spring storms can emerge when this type of stratospheric condition exists.
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The white ice on top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, that Hemingway wrote about so lovingly in his book “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” is melting away. A survey has found that 82 percent of the ice field that has existed on Kilimanjaro since 1912 has melted, says Lonnie G. Thompson of Ohio StateUniversity.

“The ice will be gone by 2015 or so,” he says. He mapped the ice cap last year and compared his results with a survey conducted in 1912. Some of the rivers and streams in Tanzania that are fed by the mountain’s snow melt havealready dried up. “A hospital in Tanzania that depended on a river now has to get its water elsewhere,” says Thompson.
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