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When we think about traveling to Mars, we forget about one of the biggestproblems we’ll have: how to take along enough food.

Food is heavy and carrying all that weight so far costs money. It could costas much as $53,000 to launch a pound of food into deep space. Eating anapple in space could cost $22,000. Astronauts on the International SpaceStation eat a diet of mostly freeze-dried foods, to which they add water.

A freeze-dried diet would be hard to stomach over the many years it wouldtake to make a round trip to Mars, so scientists are trying to figure outhow to make some favorite foods space-worthy.
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Researchers have discovered a protein called CD45 which can”turn off” disease signals to the body. It may be able to cause the body to heal itself of chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, as well as autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, MS, and lupus.

Dr. Josef Penninger, of the University of Toronto, explains that when our bodies are invaded by disease, attack signals are sent to the cells, alerting them to the problem and starting up the body’s defenses.

The problem is that these cells can overreact and keep on fighting, even after the invader has been destroyed. This results in chronic diseases and the growth of cancer cells.
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Satellite photos show that about 7 ? cubic miles of ice have eroded from the Antarctic ice sheet in the last 8 years, confirming that long-term changes are under way in the ice fields that cover the South Pole.

The ice sheet has shrunk mainly due to the speeded-up movement of an ice stream known as the Pine Island Glacier, which thinned by 30 to 36 feet during that period. “The Pine Island Glacier is the key,” said Andrew Shepherd, a University College London geologist. “It is totally exposed to the sea, and people have identified it as the weak underbelly of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet.

“The thinning is 10 times greater than the rate of snowfall in the basin,” he said. “The speed of the glacier means that much more mass is going out than is coming in.”read more

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Global warming may cause an increase in violent crime, according to Dr. Craig A. Anderson, a psychologist at Iowa State University. Even an increase of 2 degrees Fahrenheit could result in an additional 24,000 murders and assaults in the U.S. alone.

Anderson’s predictions are based on what is called the “heat effect,” which shows that higher rates of aggression occur when people are hot. Crime and murder statistics support this theory, since “there are about 2.6% moremurders and assaults in the United States during the summer than other seasons,” he says. The heat effect is “just another of the many negative results that will come if global warming predictions come true.”
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