Teen Sexting And How To Prevent It

With children getting ready to go back to school the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) says a troubling teen trend is on the rise. It is called sexting and it means the act of sending sexually explicit messages or photos electronically, primarily between cell phones and other mobile devices.

NCPC says parents need to pay attention to the "electronic fingerprints" their kids are making. NCPC has developed new reproducible brochures for both parents and teens that provide informative tips on what to do about it and how to prevent sexting.

Roughly, 20 percent of teens admit to sexting, according to a nationwide survey by the National Campaign to Support Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. NCPC's director of Children and Youth, Joselle Shea, says that "online relationships should be based on respect and not just sharing sexual images of each other."

NCPC believes it is important to teach young people to protect themselves proactively when they are online or using mobile communication devices. NCPC's new reproducible brochures on sexting can be found at the organization's website at www.ncpc.org.

The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) is a private, nonprofit organization whose primary mission is to be the nation's leader in helping people keep themselves, their families, and their communities safe from crime. NCPC manages public service advertising under the National Citizens' Crime Prevention Campaign -- symbolized by McGruff the Crime Dog® and his "Take A Bite Out Of Crime®" slogan -- and acts as secretariat for the Crime Prevention Coalition of America, more than 400 national, federal, state, and local organizations representing thousands of constituents who are committed to preventing crime. NCPC is funded through a variety of government agencies, corporate and private foundations, and donations from private individuals. For more information on crime prevention issues, visit www.ncpc.org.

New "Green" Insect Control Developed

Today, the open access journal BMC Biotechnology published a collaborative study between EVOLUGATE, LLC (www.evolugate.com) and scientists at the University of Florida that discloses the first use of a new technology to experimentally evolve industrially important filamentous fungi, which are among the most widely used microorganisms for industrial applications. In this case, the goal was to evolve improved "green" bio-pesticides.

The publication of this report coincides with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, who discovered the process of evolution by natural selection. The Evolugate technology exploits the power of Darwinian evolution to select for strains that reproduce faster than their competitors in continuous culture.

While the concept behind the technology is not new, its innovative solutions to intractable problems associated with continuous culture make it a breakthrough in experimental evolution. Previously developed methods of continuous culture are either manually intensive, carry with them a high risk of contamination or invariably select for traits that allow microbes to evade selective pressures rather than adapt to them. This new technology is fully automated and allows experimental evolution to be run indefinitely with little risk of contamination and no risk of incidental selection for undesirable traits.

EVOLUGATE will promote and market the use of its technology for the production of novel bioinsecticides under the name ENTOVIA, a newly created division exclusively dedicated to that purpose.

However, microorganisms are essential players in a variety of other industries. Evolugate technology can be used to rapidly produce the best adapted and most efficient strains for virtually any application, including for the conversion of biomass to biofuels, bioremediation, biosynthesis of fermentation products to compounds like antibiotics. EVOLUGATE aims to become a major player in these exciting fields as well.

"From environmental protection to human medicine, the power of evolution is needed to create solutions to the problems facing us," says Steven Benner, who directs the Gainesville-based research Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution. "The Evolugate methodology harnesses this power in ways previously unavailable, and their work published today proves this for a problem of considerable importance."

A Technology Based On Natural Selection

In the BMC Biotechnology article, researchers started with a naturally occurring fungus, whose ability to kill insects is currently exploited by industry as a bio-pesticide (www.evolugate.com). Unfortunately, this fungus is neither efficient at killing insects nor capable of targeting specific insects. One of the main problems is that insects have acquired special tricks to avoid being killed by pathogenic fungi. Some insects participate in what is called behavioral fever in which they take sun baths to elevate their body temperatures above that which the fungi can grow. Other insects can even elevate their own body temperature in much the same way humans do. Using the Evolugate technology, researchers selected for variants of this fungus that can grow at high temperatures in the hopes that an evolved 'thermo-tolerant' strain could circumvent insect thermoregulation.

"In the same way farmers have developed new crops for millennia by screening large numbers of seeds, we are attempting to accelerate evolution by selecting for fungi that can withstand the insect immune response" says Dr. Thomas Lyons, Principal Scientist at Entovia, LLC. "Thus far, we have selected for strains that can grow at elevated temperatures and preliminary tests performed by the USDA suggest that one of the strains we have developed may be able to kill control insects significantly faster than the original fungal strain.

An Environmentally Safe Technology

"This technology pioneers new avenues for working with natural evolutionary processes to allow for the development of bioinsecticides that target specific insect pests rather than acting as generalized insect toxins. In this manner we can minimize the impact on humans, animals, fish, birds, plants and, more importantly, beneficial insects” says Dr. Lyons.

A Technology with Breathtaking Commercial Potential

The widespread commercial use of bioinsecticides has so far been limited by their lack of efficacy. Basically, the commercially available biocontrol fungi do not kill the insects fast enough to be particularly economical and most of pesticides currently in use are not insect-specific—meaning that they have the potential to kill beneficial insects (and other animals) in addition to the target. The Evolugate technology can dramatically expand the application of bioinsecticides into new commercial arenas.

Problems with sports mouthguards

Although commonly used to protect an athlete's teeth during contact sports, mouthguards are now being questioned for their potential to injure a player's mouth. A new study published in the September/October issue of Sports Health: A Multidisciplinary Approach found that mouthguards may increase the number and intensity of mouth cuts and abrasions, exposing an athlete to an increased chance of infection due to the bacteria, yeast, and fungi that mouthguards routinely collect.

Sixty-two collegiate football players' mouths were examined pre-season and post-season. The players selected their own mouthguards, either a "boil and bite" device or a custom-made device. At pre-season testing, 75 percent of the players had oral lesions located in three different areas of the mouth (gums, cheek, and roof of mouth). By the end of the season, 96 percent of the participants had oral lesions not only in the same three areas of the mouth, but also on the tongue.

"We saw not only an overall increase in the number of lesions, but also a wider distribution," explains author Richard T. Glass, DDS, PhD and professor at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences. "While there might be other contributing factors to the oral lesions, the percentage increase and the specific locations of the oral lesions, compared with other studies done of the general population, indicated that mouthguards have a significant negative impact on the mouth."

Researchers stress that even with the increase in oral lesions, mouthguards are still an important piece of safety equipment for contact sports. "By no means should the value of a mouth guard be discounted," Glass emphasizes. "The protection they do offer teeth during contact sports is important. However, the length of time that a mouthguard is used and how often it is cleaned needs to be revised."

Glass and his co-authors suggest in the study that as soon as a mouthguard becomes distorted or develops sharp jagged edges or after 14 days of regular use, it should be discarded, whichever comes first. The study also pointed out that mouthguards have a natural ability to become a breeding ground for micro-organisms and should be sanitized on a daily basis using an antimicrobial denture-cleaning solution.

"This study stresses the importance of informing athletes of the danger of not properly taking care of a mouthguard. A mouthguard will do your mouth good only if you keep it in good shape," adds Glass.