USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Jellyfish Lake

by Roxi Aslan

On our science diving trip to Palau we visited Jellyfish Lake, a tropical marine lake home to millions of golden and moon jellyfish. Due to the stratification of the lake into two layers, the bottom anoxic layer containing concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, phosphate, and ammonia, the lake is an unsafe environment for divers. Therefore, only snorkeling is permitted in Jellyfish Lake to ensure the protection of visitors. Because the sting of the jellyfish present in the lake is very mild to the point of being unnoticeable, divers are able to safely enjoy an almost dreamlike environment.

One of the jellyfish in Jellyfish Lake (photo by Tom Carr).

Aside from the lake?s aesthetic appeal, which has contributed to a five-fold increase in Palau?s tourism since 1986, it is an attractive site for evolutionary and ecological study (Dawson 2001). Over the span of about 20,000 years in their confined ecosystem, the dense jellyfish in the lake have developed remarkable adaptations including daily 1-km long horizontal migrations that are believed to play a part in carbon sequestration (Dybas 2009).

During the day the golden jellyfish, which have a symbiotic relationship with microscopic algae, avoid their white-sea anemone predator by swimming east until hitting a shadow that precedes the predator rich edge of the lake (Coral). As these creatures avoid shadows, they then reverse in the afternoon and head west, completing the same cycle the next day.

In the fall of 1998, the previously stable population of golden jellyfish collapsed and then finally vanished. After field measurements and observations along with laboratory-based experiments, scientists determined that the high sea surface temperature brought on by the 1997-98 El Nino had caused the disappearance. Studies of this particular marine lake ecosystem therefore have been especially important in demonstrating the relationship between climate change and the dynamics of such an ecosystem.

The author at Jellyfish Lake (photo by Tom Carr).

The temperature of the lake has cooled since, and the jellyfish polyps that were able to endure such high temperatures made it possible for the medusae population to recover. Though the population has recovered, the jellyfish and the ecosystem as a whole remain under constant threat. The government of Palau has therefore been taking initiatives to protect this fragile ecosystem. Upon exiting our boats prior to our hike up to the lake, we were instructed not to apply sunscreen as well as to wash our shoes in a bucket of water and make sure our snorkel gear was clean. These instructions are an important step in protecting the lake as non-native species have already been introduced into the lake most likely by being carried in by a visitor.

To further protect the lake, the government of Palau has also introduced a controversial fee increase on the permits required to visit Jellyfish Lake. When our group visited with the Department of Conservation and Law and Enforcement for a lecture on conservation and enforcement activities in the State of Koror, we were told that the Jellyfish Lake permit fee would be increased from $35 to $100 and this increase would become effective on June 1st ? luckily, we had bought our permits already. Soon enough, the story could be found in local newspapers and on the web where debates ensued. The fee increase has just gone into effect, and time will tell whether this increase will be effective in meeting Koror State?s objectives of controlling the number of visitors and generating enough revenue to preserve its marine resources.

About the author:

Roxi Aslan is a junior biology major with a minor in environmental studies in the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. Roxi plans on pursuing a career in biomedical research and hopes to hone her science diving skills in Guam and Palau.

Works Cited

Colin, Patrick L. Marine Environments of Palau. San Diego: Indo-Pacific, 2009. Print.

Coral Reef Research Foundation. Jellyfish Lake Information Sheet. Coral Reef Research Foundation. Print.

Dawson, Mike N., Laura E. Martin, and Lolita K. Penland. Jellyfish Swarms, Tourists, and the Christ-child. Hydrobiologia 451 (2001): 131-44.

Dybas, Cheryl. ?Jellyfish: Far From Passive Drifters-in-the-currents.? National Science Foundation, 8 May 2009. Web. 16 May 2012.

Editor?s note: Scientific Research Diving at USC Dornsife is offered as part of an experiential summer program offered to undergraduate students of the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. This course takes place on location at the USC Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina Island and throughout Micronesia. Students investigate important environmental issues such as ecologically sustainable development, fisheries management, protected-area planning and assessment, and human health issues. During the course of the program, the student team will dive and collect data to support conservation and management strategies to protect the fragile coral reefs of Guam and Palau in Micronesia.

Instructors for the course include Jim Haw, Director of the Environmental Studies Program in USC Dornsife, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies David Ginsburg,, SCUBA instructor and volunteer in the USC Scientific Diving Program Tom Carr and USC Dive Safety Officer Gerry Smith of the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies

Previously in this series:

Catching Up with Scientific Diving at USC Dornsife: Surfgrass Monitoring at Catalina
Catching up with Scientific Diving at USC Dornsife: The Robot Submarine
Catching up with Scientific Diving at USC Dornsife: Diving into the Aquarium of the Pacific
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Moving Forward to Guam and Palau 2012
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Finding My Career Through This Course
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: The Devaluation of Ecosystem Services
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Why USC Dornsife was the Right Decision For Me
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Why Experiential Learning is Vital to Academic Life
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: My Walden South of Los Angeles
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Crown-of-Thorns Outbreaks and Anthropogenic Pollution
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: The International Policy Rationale for the Military Buildup on Guam and Some Environmental Drivers
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Marine Ecology from Antarctica to Micronesia
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Palau Water Supply
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: The Contributions of J. S. Haldane to Dive Safety
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Human Impacts on Mangrove Forests
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Global Sea Cucumber Fisheries
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Palauan Mermaids
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: The California Spiny Lobster
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: The Invasion of the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: The Coconut Crab in Guam
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: The Ordot Dump and Layon Landfill
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Marine Ecosystem Based Management
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: The Navy Dive Tables
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Entangled in the Excitement of Every New Day
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Economic Effects of the Revised Military Buildup in Guam
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: The Guam and Calayan Rails
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Chamorro Women and the Spanish
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Diving into Apra Harbor?s Western Shoals and CB Junkyard
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Remaking What We?ve Lost ? A Look At Artificial Reefs
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Ecosystem Monitoring in the Ngederrak Marine Conservation Area
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Micronesia Regional Shark Sanctuary
USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Palau, Above the Waterline

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Huge Crowds Welcome Shuttle Enterprise to NYC Museum

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Dr. Elaine Schattner: Novel Drug Shows Promise in Her2+ Form of Breast Cancer

This weekend, researchers at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology presented new findings on a novel agent that targets some forms of breast cancer. The new drug, called T-DM1, is designed to deliver a toxic chemotherapy directly to tumor cells.

In a Phase III trial called EMILIA, the drug delayed tumor growth by several months, relative to other treatment in women with Her2+, metastatic breast cancer. What's more, the new medication appears to be relatively safe and well-tolerated, as compared to the other, FDA-approved drugs used in the randomized study of nearly 1,000 women.

The new drug is a hybrid and interesting compound, designed by linking a traditional kind of chemotherapy, DM1 to the Herceptin antibody (trastuzumab). Herceptin is old news in breast cancer: this antibody binds a signaling molecule, Her2, that's expressed at high levels in approximately 1 in 5 breast tumors. The FDA approved Herceptin for use in patients with metastatic, Her2+ breast cancer in 1998 and, for some women with localized, lymph node positive disease, in 2006.

The chemo part of the new agent, DM1, is related to maytansine, an old compound derived from an Ethiopian plant, Maytenus serrata. DM1 is a microtubule inhibitor; this chemotherapy binds to tubulin, a protein that's critical for dividing cells. The antibody works, in principle and apparent effect, by delivering the toxic chemo directly to the malignant cells and destroying those.

Genentech, the drug's manufacturer, sponsored the EMILIA trial. The latest data involve 978 women with confirmed Her2+, metastatic breast cancer. All had disease that had progressed through prior therapy including Herceptin. The randomized trial assigned participants to receive either the experimental agent, T-DM1, every 3 weeks by intravenous infusion or "XL" - a combination of FDA-approved pills, Xeloda (capecitabine) and Tykerb (lapatinib). Median follow-up was just over one year -- not bad for a study of metastatic breast cancer, but not great, either.

Among women who received T-DM1, the time until their disease progressed was a median of 9.6 months; for those who got the non-experimental pills, it was 6.4 months. This difference of just over three months, was statistically significant. Although that doesn't sound like a lot of time -- and I have to admit, it's not -- it is meaningful in the context of comparing drug regimens for people with advanced malignancies. Both regimens delayed progression of the disease for over half a year. The T-DM1 agent did so alone.

Many cancer medications, like drugs for HIV, are most effective in combination; T-DM1 is, clearly, a powerful single agent. We don't yet know what will be the overall survival for those treated with this new compound, and how it might be buttressed by the addition of newer, future therapies.

The main side effects attributed to T-DM1 were low platelets and abnormal liver function. These problems were reversible, according to the investigators. The XL pill regimen caused more toxicity, overall -- including diarrhea, hand-foot syndrome and nausea. Evidently, hair loss isn't an issue for women who get T-DM1. While this detail may seem trivial to some observers, as it might have to me when I was practicing years ago, for women living with metastatic breast cancer it's the kind of quality-of-life issues that can render a drug preferable and tolerable, besides that it may be life-extending.

Speaking of survival -- there is encouraging, but less definitive news: Among the women on study for two years, 65 percent were alive after receiving T-DM1; only 47 percent were alive on the XL pill regimen. The statistical details for this comparison are not available; evidently it was of weak significance. Nonetheless, an overall survival rate of 65 percent at two years is impressive (although, of course, not good enough) for women with progressive disease after other treatments.

One concern I have is that the study, though randomized, is not "blinded," and can't be: It's impossible for the women and their doctors to not know whether they're getting an intravenous drug or a combination of pills. Still, the initial, observed difference in overall survival is striking, especially as the drug appears to have fewer side effects.

I wonder how this new agent, if approved, will fit in with other options available and in the pipeline for patients with Her2+ disease. The key question, as considered in a 2010 Journal of Clinical Oncology paper, is how T-DM1 -- if effective and less toxic -- will fit in to the growing options for women with Her2+ breast cancers. The drug is sure to be expensive (price not yet known); it's a proprietary monoclonal antibody-conjugate that's necessarily given by infusion, which is necessarily inconvenient for patients, besides more costly to administer. Testing this drug against all the other current and up-and-coming alternatives, in varying combinations and doses, will be tricky. The trials alone will cost more money than some -- even big pharmaceutical companies -- might want to spend, besides the costs of potential toxicity and women's lives, which won't necessarily be improved.

In sum, the EMILIA study results are promising. T-DM1 appears to be relatively effective and safe for women with metastatic, Her2+ breast cancer, in itself and as compared to the standard XL regimen. Hopefully we'll soon see similar kinds of good news and treatment options for women with other forms of this disease, including triple negative breast cancer.

For more by Dr. Elaine Schattner, click here.

For more on new research, click here.

?

Follow Dr. Elaine Schattner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ElaineSchattner

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Ore. woman wins $900K in lawsuit over herpes claim

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) ? An Oregon jury has awarded $900,000 to a 49-year-old woman who claimed that a 69-year-old Portland man intentionally gave her a sexually transmitted disease after they met on an online dating website.

The Oregonian reports (http://is.gd/cdR7MI ) that it was the first time that a case of a person suing another for intentionally transmitting genital herpes went to trial in Oregon, according to lawyers. They say similar cases have been settled out of court.

The man testified he didn't know he was contagious. His lawyer argued that she was lying about her sexual history and may have had sex with other men who gave her the disease.

The woman from Beaverton, Ore., sued after she suffered repeated painful outbreaks of the disease. The jury award was for pain and suffering.

___

Information from: The Oregonian, http://www.oregonlive.com

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Scientists use bilayer graphene to develop extra-sensitive photodetector

By now it goes without saying that graphene is something of a darling in the research community, with scientists using the material to develop transistors, batteries and circuits, among other devices. In 2011, MIT researchers discovered graphene's effectiveness as a photodetector, and a team at the University of Maryland has taken that line of thought a few steps further. By using bilayer graphene (two atoms thick instead of one atom thick), the scientists developed a temperature-sensitive device more than 1,000 times faster than existing technologies. Not to mention, it's capable of recognizing a very broad range of light energies, which means it could be useful in everything from biochemical weapons detection to airport body scanners. Still, the UMD researchers have their work cut out for them: the graphene photodetector has a high electrical resistance, and it will require tweaks to absorb enough light to be useful. Still, this is graphene we're talking about -- and we don't expect its popularity to wane any time soon.

Scientists use bilayer graphene to develop extra-sensitive photodetector originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jun 2012 05:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How to Find Cheap Health Insurance Plans | Free Press Release

Posted on 04 June 2012. Tags: California, Family Business Health Insurance, Health Coverage, health insurance, Los Angeles

If your employer does not offer health insurance plans and you do not qualify for state-sponsored policies, you may find yourself puzzled as to how you can find affordable health coverage policies for yourself or your family. While finding insurance on the open market inexpensively can be a chore, it is doable. You just need to know how to sort through your choices and choose the plan that best meets your needs.

One of the least expensive options for those who qualify is to get covered under a parent?s policy. Under the Affordable Care Act, you may be able to stay covered under a parent?s health coverage plan until you are 26 years old. Even if you are married and financially independent, you are still qualified under the new health care reform rules.

If you are over 26, you can locate cheap health coverage by comparing several different health insurance plans. To maximize your chances of success, know what you want out of a health coverage plan first. List your maximum budget for out-of-pocket expenses and monthly premium. Consider what you absolutely must have covered as well. If you regularly use prescription drugs, a policy with prescription medication coverage will most likely be the most cost-effective for your situation. On the other hand, if you regularly take advantage of chiropractic care or acupuncture, you may need to seek out a health insurance policy that offers coverage for alternative care, even if the monthly premiums are a bit higher than other plans.

Being aware of the different types of policies can also help you narrow down your alternatives. One of the most common cheap insurance plans is the HMO. HMOs require their members to choose primary care physicians, who will then be responsible for coordinating members? health care needs. Care sought from within the network of participating providers will be covered while care sought outside the network is not covered.

Another cheap health insurance option is to select a high-deductible health plan and use it in combination with a health savings account. Health insurance plans with high deductibles tend to have lower monthly premiums. By paying for everyday medical expenses out of pocket, you can save your insurance coverage for major illnesses or accidents. Health savings accounts, which allow you to save pre-tax dollars for qualified medical expenses, can help you meet the costs of your deductible and save on taxes. Any unused funds in your HSA can be rolled over every year.

At the end, you may be able to take advantage of group health coverage plans even if your employer does not offer health coverage. If you belong to an organization such as the AARP or a group for self-employed individuals, you may be eligible for a group rate.

LAHealthCoverage.com can help you find cheap health insurance plans that provide coverage for your individual needs.

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MSI unwraps Slider S20 hybrid tablet with Windows 8 (hands-on)

MSI is well-known for showing tablets at Computex -- it even showed what amounts to the same tablets at two different shows. It's certainly shaking things up this year, however, with the Slider S20. We've seen hybrid tablet PCs before, but the Windows 8-toting S20 has a fairly slick tilting mechanism that locks the 11.6-inch touchscreen at an angle, turning the slate into a pseudo-laptop right on the spot. MSI is only willing at this early stage to mention a few key details, but it's promising at least one Slider S20 variant with a properly speedy low-voltage Ivy Bridge chip as well as 4GB of RAM, Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI and USB 3.0. Our friends at Engadget Spanish got an early look and found the tablet a bit chunky with a so-so display, but also thought that it looked like a "robust" design. Check our overseas companions' first impressions for more, and know that the Slider S20 is expected to reach Europe in September at €899 ($1,121) in its full Ivy Bridge glory along with a lower-powered model at €799 ($996).

MSI unwraps Slider S20 hybrid tablet with Windows 8 (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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