Bush names three marine national monuments
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush designated "three beautiful and biologically diverse areas" in the Pacific as marine national monuments Tuesday.
Bush signed proclamations creating the Marianas Trench, the Pacific Remote Islands and the Rose Atoll marine national monuments.
"Taken together, these three new national monuments cover nearly 200,000 square miles, and they will now receive our nation's highest level of environmental recognition and conservation," Bush said in remarks at the White House before signing the proclamations.
Bush set aside the areas as national monuments under authority granted him by the Antiquities Act that President Theodore Roosevelt signed in 1906. The designations bar resource destruction or extraction, waste dumping and commercial fishing.
The marine national monuments "will allow for research, free passage, and recreation -- including the possibility of recreational fishing one day," Bush said.
"For seabirds and marine life, they will be sanctuaries to grow and thrive," he said. "For scientists, they will be places to extend the frontiers of discovery. And for the American people, they will be places that honor our duty to be good stewards of the Almighty's creation."
New poisonous spider species found
PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- A new, colorful poisonous spider species has been discovered in south Moravia, Czech Republic researchers said.
The spider, whose bite triggers a fever accompanied by headache, has been dubbed Eresus Moravicus, the Moravian ladybird spider, and listed in the World Spider Catalog, Czech news agency CTK reported Tuesday.
"It can be found in the reserves where remains of the Pannonian steppes are preserved," said Milan Rezac, associated with Research Institute of Crop Production in Prague.
He said he found the Moravian ladybird spider near Mikulov in south Moravia. The arachnid lives in underground dens, which Rezac said explained why it is difficult to find in the wild.
Male Moravian ladybird spiders have a distinctive black-and-red coloring and resemble a ladybird, while females are bigger, and have black-and-orange coloring, he said.
The species was discovered by accident, CTK reported. Rezac said he was searching for the Eresus Sandaliatus species when he found a ladybird spider that differed from existing described species.
Mayo Clinic violated U.S. regs on research
ROCHESTER, Minn., Jan. 6 (UPI) -- The Mayo Clinic failed to follow federal regulations for about 140 human research projects spanning two decades, letters to the Minnesota facility indicated.
Among the violations of federal rules governing human health was the failure to perform mandatory annual reviews for four straight years, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported Tuesday.
The violations were outlined in two letters to the Rochester, Minn., facility, which has until this week to provide final responses.
A Mayo spokesman said the clinic has been working with Office of Human Research Protection and resolved most of the issues, the Pittsburgh newspaper said. He would not identify any of the research studies cited by the agency, under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Spokesman Robert Nellis said in an e-mail to the newspaper no human subjects "were placed in jeopardy" because of the lapses.
The first letter sent in July cited Mayo for failure to perform mandatory annual reviews on 140 of 1,060 federally funded active research projects. The second letter in December said key records involved in one study were not included in a file submitted to the agency and cited two other research projects for deficient records.
"Mayo Clinic is committed to protecting human subjects in research and has been cooperating with the OHRP throughout its inquiry," Nellis wrote. He said remaining issues about documentation and conversion to an electronic recordkeeping system "are currently being resolved."
Early trauma, chronic fatigue link found
ATLANTA, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Trauma during childhood could predispose the sufferer to chronic fatigue syndrome as an adult, researchers at Emory University in Atlanta found.
In a report in Tuesday's Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers said they found 62 percent of adults with chronic fatigue syndrome suffered a childhood trauma such as neglect or abuse, compared with 24 percent of adults who hadn't experienced such trauma, USA Today reported.
Chronic fatigue syndrome is unexplained exhaustion, aches and pains that last more than six months, said Janet Squires, director of the Child Advocacy Center at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, who wasn't part of the study.
"It's eye-opening to see that things that go wrong in childhood might impact people for the rest of their lives," Squires told USA Today.
Study author Christine Heim said relatively few trauma survivors develop chronic fatigue, which affects about 2.5 percent of the adult population. Research also indicates the syndrome could be caused by an infection or immune system problem, she says.
While the study linked trauma and chronic fatigue, Heim said it wasn't designed to prove that trauma actually causes the condition. To better prove the link, researchers must do a "forward-looking" study in which they follow trauma survivors for many years, she said.
Heim said her study also found a possible biological explanation. Adults with chronic fatigue had lower levels of a stress hormone called cortisol, as do many people with post-traumatic stress disorder.
