Antarctic SOS: A Global Green/Green Cross delegation including researchers, business leaders and representatives of 13 nations scaled an iceberg to deliver a message about climate change. Image produced in the Gerlache Strait, in the Antarctic peninsula by John Quigley of Spectral Q, and shot by photographer and Global Green board member Sebastian Copeland.

To send a 'global warning' to the world about the threats posed by climate change and to encourage smart solutions (i.e., renewable energy, conservation, fuel efficiency), the group also sent a photo of themselves assembled on a stark white iceberg to form a large "human SOS." The message calls attention to the imminent danger caused by warming trends to Antarctica and the melting sea ice, not just to penguins in Antarctica but to all of humanity due to the resulting rising sea levels.

Environmental groups Global Green USA and Green Cross Argentina (affiliates of Gorbachev's Green Cross International) co-organized the photographic mission with Sebastian Copeland, Spectral Q's John Quigley and the crew of the Ice Lady Patagonia and Asociacion Buque Austral Patagonico.

Last year, actors Salma Hayek and Jake Gylenhaal helped with a similar global warning message by traveling to the Arctic Circle.

"Having seen the Arctic Circle firsthand," said Hayek, "It's deeply disturbing to me that even though there is growing physical and scientific evidence from the research community illustrating the effects of global warming, world leaders simply are not doing enough to fight the problem."

Heart disease patients who eat one grapefruit daily can significantly reduce the levels of cholesterol in their blood in comparison to patients who do not eat the fruit, a new study has found. Chronic high blood cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease.

Dr. Shela Gorinstein at a citrus fruit stand in the Mahane Yehuda outdoor market in Jerusalem. (Photo by Sasson Tiram)

The study was conducted by a group of scientists under the leadership of Dr. Shela Gorinstein of the Hebrew University School of Pharmacy, Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, in cooperation with Prof. Abraham Caspi, head of the Institute of Cardiology at Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot. In addition, scientists from Poland and Singapore participated in laboratory work connected with the project.

The study, which strengthens a growing body of evidence supporting the heart benefits of eating citrus fruit, was published this month on the website of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The study will appear in the journal’s March 22 print issue.

February has been designated in the U.S. as American Heart Month. In the U.S., heart disease is the number one killer of women.

The grapefruit study included 57 patients at Kaplan Hospital, both men and women, with hyperlipidemia (high blood cholesterol) who recently had coronary bypass surgery and did not take statin drugs during the study period. Statins are commonly prescribed to lower cholesterol.

This illustration compares the size of a gargantuan star and its surrounding dusty disk (top) to that of our solar system.

The discovery was made through NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observations of two hypergiant stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud--the Milky Way's nearest neighboring galaxy--by a team led by Joel Kastner, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. His team's findings will appear in the Feb. 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

So far, searches for planets outside the solar system have been restricted to sun-like stars. All of these stars are older, dimmer and cooler objects than hypergiants, which are extraordinarily large and luminous but shorter-lived by billions of years.

Kastner and his team used infrared spectra obtained by Spitzer to study a population of dying stars. They added a new direction to their project when Spitzer's infrared spectrograph revealed unexpected information. Spitzer's sensitive spectrometer, which breaks down infrared radiation into component wavelengths as a prism splits visible light into a rainbow, indicated that a third of the stars in the population thought to be in decline--including two massive and exceedingly luminous hypergiants--were actually younger stars in varying stages of development.

The curious spectra of these two hypergiants (R126 and R66)--with one star being 70 times bigger than the sun--led Kastner to reexamine the stars' classifications as dying. The shape of the spectra, or the amount of light from different wavelengths, is characteristic of flattened disks of dust orbiting the stars.

The two stars' similar spectra differ in detail, with one encircled by dust in crystalline form, the other by more shapeless, amorphous dust grains. This expands the range of known conditions under which complex dust grains and molecules can form and persist around stars, Kastner says.