Teaduspõhine majandus? Uus juust!

Väljavõte bns.ee uudistevoost Südamejuust sillutab teed ekspordi arengule Eestis

Koostöös Tartu Ülikooli Arstiteaduskonna, Tervisliku Piima
Biotehnoloogiate Arenduskeskuse ja PÜ E-Piim vahel valmis uudne
probiootiline Harmony™ Südamejuust. Südamejuust sisaldab
Laktobacillus plantarum TENSIA™ bakterit, mille eripärased omadused
aitavad reguleerida süstoolset ja diastoolset vererõhku, mida
tõestavad kliinilised katsetused. Südamejuustu igapäevane tarbimine
toetab südameveresoonkonna tööd. Harmony™ Südamejuustu terviseväited
on koostatud vastavalt Euroopa Liidu seadusandlusele .
Kliiniliste uuringute raames jälgiti inimesi, kes tarbisid Harmony™
Südamejuustu kolme nädala jooksul 50 grammi päevas. "Katsealustel
täheldati kasulike laktobatsillide hulga suurenemist seedekulglas,
mis soodustab mikrofloora kaitsefunktsiooni võimalike
haigustekitajate vastu. Ühtlasi leiti, et laktobatsillide suurem
hulk, sealhulgas TENSIA™ esinemine, olid otseses seoses süstoolse ja
diastoolse vererõhu langusega," selgitas Tervisliku Piima
Biotehnoloogiate Arenduskeskuse juhataja Ene Tammsaar.
Teaduslikult põhjendatud lisandväärtusega tervislike piimatoodete
turuleviimisega avaneb Eesti piimasektoril võimalus oma
konkurentsivõime ja ekspordi tõstmiseks. PÜ E-Piim juhatuse esimehe
Jaanus Murakase sõnul peegeldub uues tootes kooslus teadmistepõhisest
majandusest ja innovaatikast. "Tunnen rõõmu, et Eesti tarbija
toidulauale saabub sedavõrd kiiduväärne toode ja olen kindel, et
Südamejuustul on tugev ekspordipotentsiaal.".
Südamejuustu väljatöötamist rahastas Eesti riik läbi Ettevõtluse
Arenduse Sihtasutuse. Madis Võõrase sõnul EAS-ist on innovaatika
tänaseni valitsuse olulisim majanduspoliitiline strateegia. "Nüüd on
see saanud käegakatsutava tulemuse Südamejuustu näol ja see annab
valitsusele kinnitust, et valitud suund on õige. Nii saame
Südamejuustust rääkida mitte ainult tervisliku toote, vaid üldise
majanduse arendamise võtmes," kinnitas Võõras.

Juustul on oma veebsait http://www.tensia.eu/

Kärbsed levitavad antiresistentset bakterit?

John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Healt teadlased leidsid asitõendeid, et kanafarmide lähedal elutsevad kärbsed võivad soodustada raviminiresistentse bakteri levikud ja suurendades sellega ohtu inimese tervisele. Antud avastus demonstreerib järjekordselt potentsiaalset ühendust tööstusliku loomse toidutootmise ja võimaliku riskiga, mis on seotud antibiootiliselt resistentsete patogeenide vahel.

Artikli inglisekeelne osa..

Previous studies have linked antibiotic use in poultry production to antibiotic resistant bacteria in farm workers, consumer poultry products and the environment surrounding confined poultry operations, as well as releases from poultry transport.

“Flies are well-known vectors of disease and have been implicated in the spread of various viral and bacterial infections affecting humans, including enteric fever, cholera, salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis and shigellosis,” said lead author Jay Graham, PhD, who conducted the study as a research fellow with Bloomberg School’s Center for a Livable Future. Our study found similarities in the antibiotic-resistant bacteria in both the flies and poultry litter we sampled. The evidence is another example of the risks associated with the inadequate treatment of animal wastes.”

“Although we did not directly quantify the contribution of flies to human exposure, our results suggest that flies in intensive production areas could efficiently spread resistant organisms over large distances,” said Ellen Silbergeld, PhD, senior author of the study and professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences.

Graham and his colleagues collected flies and samples of poultry litter from poultry houses along the Delmarva Peninsula—a coastal region shared by Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, which has one of the highest densities of broiler chickens per acre in the United States. The analysis by the research team isolated antibiotic-resistant enterococci and staphylococci bacteria from both flies and litter. The bacteria isolated from flies had very similar resistance characteristics and resistance genes to bacteria found in the poultry litter.

Flies have ready access to both stored poultry waste and to poultry houses. A study by researchers in Denmark estimated that as many as 30,000 flies could enter a poultry house over the course of six week period.

Additional authors of “Antibiotic-resistant enterococci and staphylococci isolated from flies collected near confined poultry feeding operations” are Lance Price, Sean Evans and Thaddeaus Graczyk. The study is published in the April 2009 issue of Science of the Total Environment.

The research was funded by a grant from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

According to Robert Lawrence, MD, director of the Center for a Livable Future, confined animal feeding operations—where thousands of animals are crowded together and are fed antibiotics for growth promotion—create the perfect environment for selection of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. “Antimicrobials are among the most important developments of the twentieth century in managing infectious diseases in people. We can’t afford to squander them by using them as growth promoters in industrial food animal production. The increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a major threat to the health of the public, and policymakers should quickly phase out and ban the use of antimicrobials for non-therapeutic use in food animal production,” said Lawrence.


Allikas: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090316120846.htm

Klooniti kitsetall

Kloonitud kitsetall küll suri, kuid lootus väljasurnud liike taastada sai uut hoogu

Zaragoza Ülikooli teadlastel Hispaanias õnnestus esimest korda kloonida väljasuremis ohus loomaliiki. Seekordses töös kasutati Ibeeria poolsaarel elutsevat kaljukitse, kes on Hispaania kaljukitse alamliik.
Kuigi kaljukitse tall suri mõni minutit peale sünnitust kopsu väärarengu tõttu, on jätkuvalt lootus, et antud läbimurdev protsess juhib teadlasi täieliku väljasurnud loomaliikide "tagasitulekuni".
Esimesed katsetused nimetatud kitsede tehti 2003. aastal, kuid katseloomade tiinus katses teisel kuul.

Allikas: www.independent.co.uk/news/science/cloned-goat-dies-after-attempt-to-bring-species-back-from-extinction-1522974.html

Teaduse rahastus majanduslanguse ajal

Arvan, et kõik on teadlikud tänasest majandusolukorrast ning vajadusest väljaminekuid kitsendada. Samas hulk riike, kes on pikaajaliselt paika pannud kindlad prioriteedid, jätkavad teaduse finantseerimist samas mahus.

Toon siinjuures välja mõningad näited riikide soovist tagada teaduse areng ka tulevikus:

Prantsuse valitsus eraldas teaduse- ja arengutegevuse infrale veel 46 miljonit eurot
The French government is to invest an extra 46 million euros in large scientific facilities during 2009, research minister Valérie Pécresse has announced. The 17 per cent increase will bring the total budget for projects such as the Soleil synchrotron outside Paris and the work of French scientists on international projects such as the Large Hadron Collider and ITER to 319m euros over the period.
The cash comes as part of president Nicolas Sarkozy’s 26 billion euro economic rescue package, which was announced in December. Pécresse was given the go-ahead for the decision by Patrick Devedjian, the minister charged with putting the rescue plan into operation.
An extra 14.2m euros will be invested in interdisciplinary facilities such as Soleil and the neutron spectrometer facility Orphée in Saclay, while 10.3m euros will be directed towards condensed matter physics. 7.8m euros will go towards supporting computing facilities. The remainder of the investment will be divided between ITER, biology infrastructures, oceanographic facilities and IT services for research.
Allikas: Research Day Europe 4 Febr 2009; French governmental announcement.

Soome valitsus stimuleerib teadust abipaketiga
The Finnish scientific community has pointed out that one of the means available would be to boost research funding, which would help provide a way out of recession. When Finland was last struck by a recession, in the 1990s, weighty decisions were made about stepping up R&D funding. As a result, Finland was brought out of the trough of the previous recession, and in the present situation, forceful investments into knowledge and know-how would be likely to produce equally good results.
The last two governments set a goal of raising national investment in research funding to four per cent of GDP by 2011. The latest forecasts for GDP and R&D funding suggest that this goal will not be reached. Public R&D funding as a percentage of GDP came to 0.94 per cent in 2008, which puts it below the one per cent target set by the EU. About 25 per cent of government research funding goes to the universities, whose percentage has fallen compared with 2000.
allikas: Academy of Finland Newsletter, January 2009

Prantsusmaa uusim ülikool saab 375 miljoni euro suuruse süsti
Strasbourg University - which was founded at the beginning of this year following a merger of three local institutions - is to benefit from 375 million euros in government funding for the redevelopment of its facilities. The money announced by Pecresse will come from the Operation Campus fund, a 5 billion euro programme to fund the regeneration of 10 campuses across the country.
The government announced 575m euros for higher education facilities in Lyon at the end of January as part of the programme and is expected to make announcements on how the remaining money will be carved up in the near future.
Allikas: Research Day Europe 11 Febr 2009

Mainzi Ülikool sai 100 miljoni eurose eraannetuse
The University of Mainz has received 100 million euros from a private donor to create a life sciences research centre in one of the biggest philanthropic donations ever made to university research in Germany. The money was provided by the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation, a foundation that supports basic research in medicine. The federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz announced during the donor ceremony on 6 February that it would top up these funds with an additional 30m euros.
The centre will be constructed and created over the next ten years. The first researchers are expected to start working at its labs by the end of 2010, and the centre is expected to create around 100 jobs for highly qualified personnel.
Allikas. Research Day Europe 10 Febr 2009; University of Mainz statement.


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