Astronomy Domine

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Have you ever wonder what if every chinese eat two eggs at week?

Well, many years ago I was watching The Nature of Things TV Show, and the history of a chinese governmento plan to augment protein in the chinese daily diet.

Very simple, give them 2 eggs at week!

But wait, how many resources are needed for this colossal project?

Well, we need the 8.67 % of the world wheat production!!
Almost twice the canadian wheat production, and 3/4 of USA production!!!

Here are the numbers:

A hen can lays about a 200 - 300 eggs in a year, so we can think a hen can feed 3 chinese people for year.
Chinese population: 1,307,842,645. (source: http://www.cpirc.org.cn/en/eindex.htm and changing)
So we need in a year 8*12*1.307.842.645 = 125,552,893,920 hen eggs!!
And we need 1,307,842,645/3 = 435,947,548 hens!!
In fact, china has 800,000,000 hens!! (source: http://www.vegansociety.com/html/animals/exploitation/hens.php)
A hen can eat about 0.13 Kg of wheat in a day, i.e. 109.5 kilograms in a year.
That leads to a necesity of 47736256542.5 kilograms, or 47,736,256.5 metric tons
The world wheat production is around 550.000.000 metric tons (source: http://www.fao.org)
So we need the the 8.67% of world wheat production.

Those are astronomicals numbers!!!

Once upon a time when three little pigs didn't glow in the dark.
Now, where they can hide?

From BBC News:

Pigs and chickens that glow in the dark may signal a new era for the farm yard.

Transgenic pigs and chickens have been produced at Roslin using lentivectors to carry the green fluorescent protein gene (GFP) - a gene found naturally in jellyfish.
Both chickens and pigs carrying the gene can be detected in normal light by their slight greenish tinge, but when viewed in blue light, all areas not covered with hair or feathers are seen to glow torch-light bright.

In the case of chickens, this is the feet and head; and in pigs, it is the ears, snout, trotters and testicles.

The green fluorescent protein marker gene means we can see instantly if an animal is carrying the gene; there is no need for any biopsies or tests, and as far as we know all of the animals are normal in every other way," said Dr Whitelaw.

 

So with this new technology can detect when animals are normal, or infected with some virus (like asian flu). 

Genes that control the timing of organ formation during development also control timing of aging and death, and provide evidence of a biological timing mechanism for aging.

"Although there is a large variation in lifespan from species to species, there are genetic aspects to the processes of development and aging" "We used the simple, but genetically well-studied, C. elegans worm and found genes that are directly involved in determination of lifespan. Humans have genes that are nearly identical."

Said Frank Slack, associate professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology in an interview for eureka alerts.

A microRNA and the developmental-timing gene it controls, lin-4 and lin-14, affect patterns of cellular development at very specific stages. Slack's group found that mutations in these genes alter both the timing of the worm development stages-- and the worm lifespan.