the happy fun time corgi kibble tap dance jamboree

Happy Earth Day!

Polar Bears and Sled Dogs

A strange relationship between dogs and bears.
Taken from the show "Jailed Polar Bear" on FirstScience.tv

Download in full from: FirstScience.tv

Keiko's Dream..... Keiko's Legacy

KEIKO'S DREAM... KEIKO'S LEGACY
An Educational Video
Coming in 2008

Joshua Records in association with The Free Willy Keiko Foundation to release an Educational Video about Keiko’s Life and Legacy, utilizing music written by Theresa Demarest from The Keiko’s Dream Tour.

The goal for this film is to encourage you to take a second look the whole effort to release Keiko back to the wild. We hope to evoke within you a desire:

*to ponder Keiko's own strong will to survive
*to explore his enormous embrace of his own freedom
*to observe his behavior and compare it to orcas in the wild
*to see things about Keiko in a way that maybe you didn't think about before
*to look at what The Free Willy Keiko Foundation and all those directly involved were doing
*to look at the ways in which the effort to release a captive whale into the wild succeeded perhaps from Keiko’s point of view
*to encourage the study of so many questions left unexplored...

The "KEIKO’S DREAM... KEIKO'S LEGACY" DVD utilizes footage provided by the Free Willy Keiko Foundation, Ocean Futures Society, Orcalab, and independent videographer Eric Engelken. The DVD is being produced by Joshua Records.

The title song "Keiko’s Dream" is an original instrumental piece dedicated to Keiko that evokes the whale’s song through the extra-ordinary lead guitar theme written by Theresa Demarest and eloquently performed by Good Company band member Tim Ellis. A second song titled: “Keiko” written for the DVD is performed by Theresa Demarest, Renato Caranto, and Thera Memory.

This is Keiko's Dream... This is Keiko's Legacy.

Go Orange on April 10th

Join Animal Lovers Everywhere and Go Orange for Animals on April 10 for ASPCA Day!

On Thursday, April 10, cities all over the country will be going orange to celebrate the ASPCA’s victories on behalf of animals and the joy they bring to pet parents everywhere. Lend us your voice on April 10 by dressing yourself, your kids, your pet—even your school or company!—in ASPCA orange, and show the world you support the ASPCA and the pets we protect. Visit the ASPCA Day Online Community Group to give—and get—good ideas for going orange.

Learn more about ASPCA Day here

Alligator Blood May Lead to Powerful New Antibiotics

Alligator Blood May Lead to Powerful New Antibiotics
Amitabh Avasthi for National Geographic News
April 7, 2008

Alligators often engage in violent fights over territories and mates, and scientists have puzzled over why their wounds rarely get infected.

Now researchers think the secret lies in the reptiles' blood.

Chemists in Louisiana found that blood from the American alligator can successfully destroy 23 strains of bacteria, including strains known to be resistant to antibiotics.

In addition, the blood was able to deplete and destroy a significant amount of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Study co-author Lancia Darville at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge believes that peptides—fragments of proteins—within alligator blood help the animals stave off fatal infections.

Such peptides are also found in the skin of frogs and toads, as well as in Komodo dragons and crocodiles. The scientists think that these peptides could one day lead to medicines that would provide humans with the same antibiotic protection.

"We are in the process of separating and identifying the specific peptides in alligator blood," said Darville, who presented the findings on Sunday at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans.

"Once we sequence these peptides, we can obtain their chemical structure to potentially [create new] drugs."

Alligator Cream

Study co-author Mark Merchant, a biochemist at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, was among the first to notice alligators' unusual resistance.

He was intrigued that, despite living in swampy environments where bacteria thrive, alligators that suffered frequent scratches and bruises rarely developed fatal infections.

Merchant therefore created human and alligator serum—protein-rich blood plasma that has had clotting agents removed—and exposed each of them to 23 strains of bacteria.

Human serum destroyed only eight of the bacterial strains. But the alligator serum killed all 23, including drug-resistant bacteria such as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

When the alligator serum was exposed to HIV the researchers found that a good amount of the virus was destroyed.

The study team thinks that pills and creams containing alligator peptides could be available at local pharmacies within seven to ten years.

Such products would be a boon to patients that need extra help preventing infections, such as diabetes patients with foot ulcers, burn victims, and people suffering from auto-immune diseases.

But there may be potential hurdles before alligator-based medicines can reach drugstore shelves.

For example, Darville noted, initial tests have revealed that higher concentrations of the alligator serum tend to be toxic to human cells.

Not So Primitive

Adam Britton is a biologist based in northern Australia who has found similar antimicrobial proteins called crocodillins in the blood of crocodiles.

Antimicrobial peptides in crocodiles and alligators are part of the animals' innate immune systems, Britton said, which provide automatic protection from certain diseases.

By contrast, human immunities are adaptive—people develop resistance to many diseases after exposure, such as the low doses given in vaccines.

Although innate immunity is often considered primitive, there is nothing primitive about its effectiveness, Britton said.

Innate immunities "usually serve to amplify the adaptive immune system, often by weakening the membranes of bacteria," he said.

"It appears that alligator and crocodile antimicrobial peptides are extremely effective agents" against bacteria, he added.

Britton hopes to use Australian crocodile blood to complement the latest work on alligators and answer questions about what these proteins mean for immune systems in general.

"If we can harness these secrets," Britton said, "we could be on the verge of a major advance in medical science."