CQUniversity researcher Dr Scott Wilson has examined more than 6000 toads in CQ, most from Gladstone, and said close to 10% of those had abnormalities.
In a normal toad population, Dr Wilson said only 1% or 2% of the amphibians had defects.
The research fellow, based in Gladstone, said the results of the year-long study were concerning because up to half are believed to have been caused by chemicals in the environment.
Dr Wilson said the porus skin that frogs and toads had allowed them to work like a canary in a coal mine.
Because the amphibians adapt to their environment, Dr Wilson said the results from Gladstone showed there was something in the Central Queensland environment that was causing bizarre abnormalities in toads.
A common stomach complaint known as ‘phowa’ affects up to 80% of the exiled Tibetan population.
The term phowa describes painful stomach disorders like ulcers, gastritis and reflux and several years ago one of the monks visiting Australia was diagnosed with the bacteria helicobacter pylori (H.pylori) as the cause of his problems.
H.pylori is a common bacterium that lives in the stomach, but it eluded medical science for many years. In 2005 two Australian scientists, Dr Robin Warren and Dr Barry Marshall, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for discovering it and the link with stomach ulcers.
Last November Maureen and a medical team ran a pilot program to test about 60 monks back in the Dharamsala monastery and as expected, the tests showed that an incredibly high proportion of the population had the bacteria. It can be treated with a simple course of antibiotics.
“It was incredibly successful,” Maureen said. “78% of people tested positive and were promptly treated. Within seven days people who had been suffering for 20 years were basically cured. We had a 100% success rate (for those treated). It was an excellent result.”
Maureen is now hoping to go back in April to run a much bigger program that would involve testing all 500 monks at the monastery and about 2200 people at a nearby school.
The Middle East is facing its worst water crisis in decades. For three summers, the annual rains have failed to come. Farmland has dried up across the region in Iraq, Syria, southeast Turkey and Lebanon.More than 160 villages are abandoned now in Syria alone. According to a United Nations report on the drought, 800,000 people have lost their livelihood. Hundreds of thousands left once-fertile land that turned to dust and pitched tents near the big cities, looking for any kind of work.
Syria and Iraq blame Turkey's huge network of dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for reducing water supplies by 50 percent.
Turkey is the site of the headwaters of a river system that Syria and Iraq depend on. An informal agreement determines the flow downstream.
"When we had bad relations with Turkey, they reduced the flow of water despite the agreement, and now, thank God, we have excellent relations with Turkey, and hopefully, we will not see any cutoff of water," Sukkar says.
Turkey says there is enough water for everyone, but Syria and Iraq waste their share. Amery, the water expert, says the Turks are partly right.
"The issue is water but it goes far beyond water," he says.
Amery says the key to head off a water crisis is more efficient management of a scarce resource. But he adds politics, not climate, is the problem.
"A lot of Arabs believe that Turkey is trying to assert itself as a regional superpower," he says, "and water is being used as a tool to advance that interest."
Turkey is a water superpower because the headwaters of the great rivers — the Tigris and Euphrates — are in the Turkish mountains. Over the years, the Turks have built dozens of dams limiting the flow to the Arab world downstream.
Between 2007 and 2008, the drought forced residents to abandon about 160 villages in Syria and scores of villages in Iraq.
This week, Turkey and Syria agreed to joint management of some water resources, after being at odds for years.
This weekend the skies over Evans Head will again roar with the sound of many old aircraft as part of the annual Great Eastern Fly-In. www.greateasternflyin.com.
We would like to thank Con MP Brent Rathgeber for that lovely explanation of Steve's dismissal of parliament - first ignoring its will and then proroguing it - and move on to how the media props up that c...
CANADIANS AGAINST PROROGUING PARLIAMENT On Facebook . Meanwhile, Alberta Con MP Brent Rathgeber, who sits on both the Justice and Human Rights Committee and the Public Safety and National Security Commit...
What do you get when you cross aboriginal wisdom with Google Maps? Newly discovered meteor impact craters, of course! Duane Hamacher studies aboriginal astronomy as MacQuarie University in Sydney; already ...
If this is your first exposure to the Friday News Feedbag...we're glad to have you in the club. Welcome to Feedbag Nation, which stems from our weekly science news podcast that you can subscribe to here on...
In early December 2009, Super Typhoon Nida was dying in the North Pacific (that's her in her prime below). She was a real beaut - 175 mph winds, lots of energy. Some of that energy ended up in what could ...
Elvis Presley, who would have celebrated his 75th birthday today, famously sang about a hound dog. But his true animal passion was for horses, suggests Priscilla Presley and multiple other sources. You'll ...
"We now have a real whale war on our hands," said Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd after a collision between his vessel, the Ady Gil, and the Japanese whaling ship Shonan Maru No.2 tore the bow off the former a...
It turns out ants have group strategies for avoiding famine and poisoning that humans could borrow from.
NASA engineers are working on an ultra-compact nuclear power plant that should generate enough electricity to run an average American house.
Alexander The Great Wear patterns on one of the most celebrated mosaics of antiquity have allowed researchers to reconstruct exactly how ancient Romans viewed the artwork. Found during the 1831 excavations...
It may not seem like it now, but satellite maps show a sharp decline in late winter and early spring snow cover.
Although a new study on autism cannot pin down the causes of the disability, researchers have just recognized a new trend among parents of autistic children.
*Friday Night at 6PM Eastern Time, WWL Radio relaunches for 2010!* The Holiday Break/Vacation is over! I am pleased and excited to rejoin Gottlieb on air in this New Year. It is always an honor to run wit...
If you love science fiction, there's a good chance you love escape pods. Just try and tell a space opera without one. But what about the real-life space escape and rescue vehicles? Let's abandon ship toget...
Searching for alien worlds using the cutting-edge Kepler space telescope would be the pinnacle of anyone's career, but what does it take to be an exoplanet hunter? We ask Kepler co-investigator Ted Dunham ...
Records show that reefs are key sources for the appearance of new species.
This diamond in the sky could help scientists to deflect future asteroids on a collision course with Earth.
Killer Whales in the in the North Atlantic Ocean come in two different flavors, and could be in the process of splitting into two species, according to new research by a team of European scientistsSanyo rolls electric bicycles into U.S. market. Orcas ...
A new dairy in Texas promises to green the farming process and put more money in farmers' pockets at a time when they are feeling the greatest pinch. The demonstration dairy facility under construction at ...
Hovering silently a few feet off the ground it looks like a flying saucer out of a Steven Spielberg film. The AR.Drone can be used for "augmented reality gaming" -- allowing "real world objects and conditi...
If you're thinking about taking up running to burn off those holiday pounds, you might want to set aside the running shoes. A study published in American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation rep...
So called "non-avian theropod" dinosaurs from the Cretaceous had feathers, nests, laid eggs and roosted like birds. If they were so much like birds, why don't we just say they were birds? A paper in the Fe...
It's just like the movie "Avatar" -- well, sort of. Starfish, sea urchins, and their brethren are rising up to fight humanity's greatest wrong to the Earth: global warming. Together they are sucking around...
In New Bedford, Mass., a shuttered plant that once rolled out Polaroid film is up and running again. Except this time, the plant isn't producing film -- it's making extremely thin flexible solar panels. Ba...
Out of nowhere, a very quiet Silicon Valley startup called Neato Robotics announced the official release of the XV-11, a robotic vacuum cleaner, which promises to challenge Roomba.
Who would've thought deforestation had an upside? Satellite flyovers of newly cleared land in the Amazon have uncovered a vanished civilization that could rival the Incans or Aztecs in sophistication. Rese...
Over the winter holidays I bought a bug vacuum, one that promised to suck up insects without harming them, so they could be easily deposited outside. It didn't work and was returned, but I wish I'd have se...
Find out how the rhythms of Wall Street could help to predict patterns of enemy combatant attacks, potentially saving the lives of both soldiers and civilians.
A Japanese craft sniffs the moon's thin atmosphere and provides details that could help future explorers.
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