Pregnant 9/11 survivors transmitted trauma to their children. Epigenetics: how experiences influence genes: genes expression.

via guardian.co.uk

Immediately after the attack on the World Trade Centre that day, psychologists predicted that a wave of trauma would sweep across the country.

Although this prediction turned out to be wrong, it is estimated that some 530,000 New York City residents suffered from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the months following the attack.

those with the largest distress response were the ones born to mothers who were in their second or third trimester when exposed to the World Trade Centre attacks.

How might the traumatic experiences of a pregnant woman be transmitted to her unborn children?
Research published over the past 10 years or so suggests that this probably occurs by epigenetic mechanisms.

Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene activity that are not due to changes in DNA sequence.

Epigenetics reveals how genes interact with environmental factors, and has been implicated in many normal and abnormal brain functions.

A key study in this emerging field, published in 2004, showed that the quality of a rat mother's care significantly affects how its offspring behave in adulthood.

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> Simply said, our build, our characteristics are function not only, not simply of genes collection, but also, of a WAY genes are EXPRESSED.

The same genes collection will be expressed differently, through regulation system of genes expresssion, a very delicate, little understood and very complex mechanism.
This makes us all little different, even though we have the same - human - set of genes.

It is a known fact that a genes collection - a genome - of humans and animals, say chimpanzee, and even a fly, is astonishingly similar, 96%.

Chimpanzee
The first comprehensive comparison of the genetic blueprints of humans and chimpanzees shows our closest living relatives share perfect identity with 96 percent of our DNA sequence,

the chimp and human genomes are very similar and encode very similar proteins.

The DNA sequence that can be directly compared between the two genomes is almost 99 percent identical.

When DNA insertions and deletions are taken into account, humans and chimps still share 96 percent of their sequence.

At the protein level, 29 percent of genes code for the same amino sequences in chimps and humans.

In fact, the typical human protein has accumulated just one unique change since chimps and humans diverged from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago.
http://www.genome.gov/15515096

Fly
Although fruit flies have a genome that is 25 times smaller than the human genome, many of the flies' genes correspond to those in humans and control the same biological functions.
http://www.genome.gov/26023627

Catastrophic 4°C global warming by 2060? Would threaten water supply of half the world population. 2009. We have time to stop it.

via guardian.co.uk

Droughts and heatwaves are predicted to spread if average temperatures rise by 2C.
But the Met Office's study warns global warming could result in a rise of 4C by 2060, without strong action on emissions.

NOT A DOOMSDAY YET.
"It's important to stress it's not a doomsday scenario, we do have time to stop it happening if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon."

Soaring emissions must peak and start to fall sharply within the next decade to head off a 2C rise, he said.
To avoid the 4C scenario, that peak must come by the 2030s.

4C rise over pre-industrial levels could threaten the water supply of half the world's population, wipe out up to half of animal and plant species, and swamp low coasts.

A 4C average would mask more severe local impacts: the Arctic and western and southern Africa could experience warming up to 10C

Study forecasts 9m sea-level rise next few hundreds years if temperatures meet 2C threshold rise.

Global sea levels could rise by up to 9m in the next few hundred years, even if the world manages to stabilise average temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, according to a new study.

via guardian.co.uk

sea levels around the world during the last interglacial were between 6.6m and 9m higher than today. "During this period when temperatures were 2-3C above pre-industrial levels

New Orleans would be lost to the sea, much of southern Florida and Bangladesh and most of the Netherlands.

rise is higher than anything predicted so far because the new study takes into account the potential that the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets start to melt as the Earth warms.
This did not factor into the most recent assessment of the state of climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007

you look at things like coral reef terraces and how high they grew and
you look at old beaches that are now stranded
look at sediments that have textures that indicate they were deposited inter-tidally

"The warming we're on track to do now is more than enough to commit us to last-interglacial levels of sea-level rise."

Sea level could rise more than 1 metre by 2100, say experts, 2009. 600 milion people affected

via guardian.co.uk

Global sea levels could rise much higher this century than previously projected, 10% of Earth population, 600 milion, live in these low lying areas.

sea-level rise is continuing to rise at 3mm per year or more since 1993, a rate well above the 20th-century average.

The oceans are continuing to warm and expand, the melting of mountain glaciers has increased and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are also contributing to sea level rise."

Based on past experience, I expect that sea level rise will accelerate as the planet gets hotter."

research indicated sea levels rising between 75cm and 190cm by 2100.

Even if the world manages to cut the emission of greenhouse gases driving global warming, the "best estimate" was about 1m, he added.

====================================
ANOTHER NEW STUDY, next article
Global sea levels could rise by up to 9m in the next few hundred years, even if the world manages to stabilise average temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, according to a new study.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/16/ipcc-sea-level-rise-tempera...

Arctic sea ice is melting at fastest pace in almost 40 years. Gone in next 30 years.

Arctic sea ice has melted to a level not recorded since satellite observations started in 1972 – and almost certainly not experienced for at least 8,000 years, say polar scientists.

via guardian.co.uk

The Northwest Passage was, again, free of ice this summer.

The German researchers said the record melt was undoubtedly because of human-induced global warming.

"The sea-ice retreat can no more be explained with the natural variability from one year to the next, caused by weather influence," said Georg Heygster, head of the Institute of Environmental Physics at Bremen.

"It seems to be clear that this is a further consequence of the man-made global warming with global consequences. Climate models show that the reduction is related to the man-made global warming, which, due to the albedo effect, is particularly pronounced in the Arctic,"

> Well if somebody wants to get that oil in Arctic, just heat it up with HAARP.
www.krunchd.com/haarp