from Australian Geographic.http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/article-index.htm?tags=history+of+australia

First Fleet ship given National Heritage status

BY:AAP WITH AG STAFF | OCTOBER-26-2011

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The wreck of a First Fleet ship which once carried Governor Phillip has been given National Heritage status.

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/article-index.htm?tags=history+of+australia

Captain Phillip's flag-ship Sirius has now been given National Heritage status. (Credit: National Library of Australia)

THE WRECK OF THE HMS Sirius, the mother ship of the First Fleet, has been given NationalHeritage Listing.

Announcing the listing at Sydney's National Maritime Museum, Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke said the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 was the most significant moment in thehistory of Australia.

Speaking to primary-school students from Parramatta and Norfolk Island, he emphasised the importance of conserving historical sites and objects in order to piece together the story of Australia.

Heritage listing recognises Australia's history

The history of the Sirius, which was lost off Norfolk Island in 1790, was not just the history of the English, he said.

"If you look at the people who were on the First Fleet, you find a massive spread of different nationalities and religions, similar to what you find in Australia today," the minister said. "We can't imagine a story that has all the special parts of how our nation came to be, without including the flagship of the First Fleet."

The curator of exploration at the National Maritime Museum, Nigel Erskine, said the Sirius played a key role in the journey to Australia.

Sirius the First Fleet flagship

"If you can imagine eleven vessels on a nine-month journey from England to Australia, the Sirius was rather like Mother Duck (keeping the other vessels under its wing)," Nigel said.

The Sirius was the flag ship of the First Fleet, which sailed from Portsmouth, England to Port Jackson in 1788. Aboard was Captain Arthur Phillip who would later go on to be Governor of New South Wales, the first European colony in Australia.

Although the wreck of the Sirius is now all but disintegrated, Nigel says the listing acknowledges the significance of the site, offering scope for fund-raising and greater awareness.

A few weeks after arriving at Botany Bay the Sirius set sail to establish another settlement at Norfolk Island. She was wrecked on a small rocky outcrop on March 19, 1790.

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your mum is still in you.

Mothers And Offspring Can Share Cells Throughout Life

ScienceDaily (May 5, 2008) — Cutting the umbilical cord doesn’t necessarily sever the physical link between mother and child. Many cells pass back and forth between the mother and fetus during pregnancy and can be detected in the tissues and organs of both even decades later. This mixing of cells from two genetically distinct individuals is called microchimerism. The phenomenon is the focus of an increasing number of scientists who wonder what role these cells play in the body.A potentially significant one, it turns out. Research implicates that maternal and fetal microchimerism plays both adverse and beneficial roles in some autoimmune diseases as well as the prevention of at least one cancer. This double-edged sword in turn has opened new avenues of study of the body’s immune system and the possibility of developing new tests and therapies.

Two of the world’s leading researchers in microchimerism are J. Lee Nelson, M.D., of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Clinical Research Division; and V.K. Gadi, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Nelson also is a professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Gadi is also a research associate in the Hutchinson Center’s Clinical Research Division.

In 2007, they were the first to report these potentially beneficial effects of microchimerism:

• In January, Nelson reported the first discovery that cells passed from mother to child during pregnancy can differentiate into functioning islet beta cells that produce insulin in the child. The same study also found maternal DNA in greater amounts in the blood of children and young adults with Type 1 diabetes than their healthy siblings and a control group, implying that the cells may be attempting to repair damaged tissue. There was no evidence that the mother’s cells were attacking the child’s insulin cells and no evidence that the maternal cells were targets of an immune response from the child’s immune system. The findings could lead to new approaches to treating Type 1 diabetes. For example, if maternal microchimerism results in cells that make insulin, a mother’s stem cells might be harvested and used to treat her diabetic child. Such cells would have a genetic edge over donated islet cells from a cadaver that are usually completely genetically mismatched.
• Last October, a research paper by Gadi and Nelson described findings that suggest fetal cells that persist in a woman’s body long after pregnancy in some cases may reduce the woman’s risk of breast cancer. The scientists examined the blood of 82 women post-pregnancy, 35 of whom had had breast cancer. They looked for male DNA in the blood, presuming it was present due to a prior pregnancy with a male. Fetal microchimerism (FMc) was found significantly more often in healthy women than women with a history of breast cancer, 43 percent versus 14 percent respectively. The scientists concluded that FMc may contribute to the reduction of breast cancer based on the hypothesis that residual fetal cells may provide immune surveillance of malignant cells in the mother. They caution that further studies are needed to confirm the theory.
• Microchimerism reveals its Jekyll and Hyde personality in the case of autoimmune diseases. In the late 1990s, Nelson’s group was the first to investigate microchimerism in an autoimmune disease:
• In 1996 Nelson’s lab proposed that fetal microchimerism might in part explain the female predilection to autoimmune disease and they subsequently discovered elevated levels of fetal microchimerism in the blood of women with scleroderma compared to healthy women. Subsequent studies found fetal microchimerism in internal organs and in skin affected by scleroderma.
• In 1999 Nelson’s group found that maternal microchimerism persists into adult life in individuals who have normal immune systems. They presumed this is due to engraftment with maternal stem cells. Stem cells can become multiple different types of cells. Researchers wondered whether maternal cells can become part of the cells that make up tissues. Scientists found maternal cells in the hearts of infants who died from heart block due to neonatal lupus and identified that most of the maternal cells were cardiac myocytes (heart muscle cells). They theorized that the maternal cells are the target of an immune attack.
• On the other hand, women with rheumatoid arthritis often have their disease improve or even disappear during pregnancy. A beneficial role of fetal microchimerism was suggested by the research finding that elevated levels of fetal microchimerism significantly correlated with pregnancy-induced amelioration of rheumatoid arthritis.

The Nelson lab has expanded its study of microchimerism into the fields of reproduction, HIV/AIDS and transplantation. For example, scientists are investigating microchimerism in complications of pregnancy, especially preeclampsia, a disorder characterized by high blood pressure in women in their third trimester of pregnancy, and in recurrent pregnancy loss.

Nelson’s group also is investigating maternal microchimerism in patients with HIV and is looking at whether maternal microchimerism levels correlate with whether there is progression or non-progression to AIDS.

Transplantation of stem cells to treat some cancers results in chimerism. Graft-vs.-host disease occurs more often if the cell donor is a woman with prior pregnancies. Tests of female donor cells found they contained male microchimerism, consistent with the interpretation that fetal microchimerism contributes to graft-vs.-host disease. In kidney, pancreas and islet transplantation, Gadi, Nelson and collaborators tested serial serum samples and found that donor-specific microchimerism detection may become a useful non-invasive test for early rejection. This has led to work by several other research groups to therapeutically exploit the principles of naturally-acquired microchimerism in their selection of donors for transplantation.

The discovery that a mother’s cells can turn up in her adult progeny and that fetal cells can occur in women who were once pregnant heralds the emergence of microchimerism as an important new theme in biology.

bacteria are part of us.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-humans-carry-more-bacterial-cells-than-human-ones

You Are 10% Human. 90% Bacteria. (Video) : TreeHugger
►►	www.treehugger.com/.../you-are-10-human-90-bacteri...31 Oct 2011 We already know that eating good bacteria can help our bodiesto be ... of you as 1 or 10 percent human and ...

More videos for percentage of bacteria in the human body »

Humans Carry More Bacterial Cells than Human Ones

You are more bacteria than you are you, according to the latest body census

By Melinda Wenner

BACTERIAL BONANZA: Bacterial cells outnumber human ones in the human body, and provide a host of benefits.Image: ©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

We compulsively wash our hands, spray our countertops and grimace when someone sneezes near us—in fact, we do everything we can to avoid unnecessary encounters with the germ world. But the truth is we are practically walking petri dishes, rife with bacterial colonies from our skin to the deepest recesses of our guts.

All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug; there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho (U.I.), along with other estimates from scientific studies. (Despite their vast numbers, bacteria don't take up that much space because bacteria are far smaller than human cells.) Although that sounds pretty gross, it's actually a very good thing.

The infestation begins at birth: Babies ingest mouthfuls of bacteria during birthing and pick up plenty more from their mother's skin and milk—during breast-feeding, the mammary glands become colonized with bacteria. "Our interaction with our mother is the biggest burst of microbes that we get," says Gary Huffnagle, a microbiologist and internist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. And that's just for starters: Throughout our lives, we consume bacteria in our food and water "and who knows where else," Huffnagle says.

Starting in the mouth, nose or other orifices, these microbes travel through the esophagus, stomach and / or intestines—locations where most of them set up camp. Although there are estimated to be more than 500 species living at any one time in an adult intestine, the majority belong to two phyla, the Firmicutes (which includeStreptococcus, Clostridium and Staphylococcus), and the Bacteroidetes (which include Flavobacterium).

For a long time, scientists assumed that these bacteria, despite their numbers, neither did us much harm nor much good. But in the past decade or so, researchers have changed their tune.

For one thing, bacteria produce chemicals that help us harness energy and nutrients from our food, Huffnagle explains. Germ-free rodents have to consume nearly a third more calories than normal rodents to maintain their body weight, and when the sameanimals were later given a dose of bacteria, their body fat levels spiked, even if they didn't eat any more than they had before.

Intestinal bacteria also appear to keep our immune systems healthy. Several studies suggest that microbes regulate the population and density of intestinal immune cells by aiding in the development of gut-associated lymphoid tissues that mediate a variety of immune functions.

The bacteria also appear to influence the function of immune cells like dendritic cells,T cells and B cells, although scientists don't know the precise mechanisms yet. And one chemical released by the bacterium Bacteroides fragilis is capable of directing how the developing immune system matures.

Further, probiotics—dietary supplements containing potentially beneficial microbes—have been shown to boost immunity. Not only do gut bacteria "help protect against other disease-causing bacteria that might come from your food and water," Huffnagle says, "they truly represent another arm of the immune system."

some Sydney tunnels.

- Pedestrian and Road Tunnels

Subterranean Sydney http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/aboutsydney/historyandarchives/OldSydneyBurialGround.asp   Simeon Lord family history. http://belindacohen.tripod.com/lordfamily/  Sydney's creepy underground tunnels - YouTube ► 3:09► 3:09 www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgQhNb8248w22 Mar 2010 - 3 min - Uploaded by aphoticd News coverage of the creepy and mysterious underground tunnels in Sydney, Australia. The Tunnel 2011 by The Tunnel Project (ENG CC) - YouTube ► 91:15► 91:15 www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjf20rwZfPU23 Jun 2011 - 91 min - Uploaded by zaghy2zy "This free release of The Tunnel was made possible by all the ...disused underground train tunnels ... More videos for sydney's underground tunnels » Sydney underground railways -  There are a number of smaller grave cuts, indicating the graves of infants. This photograph shows the excavation of a grave of an adult and infant buried together. Bone fragments have confirmed this was the grave of a woman; she probably died during childbirth.

TUNNELLING THROUGH THE PAST People hurrying through the gloomy Devonshire Street tunnel from Central Station are probably unaware that they are on the site of an old cemetery. In fact, many of Australia's pioneers were buried here between 1818 and 18.67. They include the convict turned-merchant Simeon Lord, the first postmaster Isaac Nichols, and the first chief justice Sir Francis Forbes. After the Government decided to extend the railway to its present site, a tunnel was driven through the site of the cemetery. A tramway was built to a new alternative cemetery at Botany and most of the bodies were exhumed and removed to there. The grave stones themselves were relocated at various other suburban cemeteries such as Petersham, Rookwood, Balmain, South Head, Gore Hill, and Waverley. When Central Station was completed in 1906, a pedestrian tunnel from Devonshire Street to Railway Square was opened beneath the railway. In the early 1970% the Sydney City Council and the New South Wales Government combined to build an eighty-metre $2.5 million extension to the Devonshire Tunnel under Railway Square. During the construction, workers dug past the main city gas line. They dug through old roads about a metre deep; they found several layers of tram tracks. Deepest of all was an ancient sand. . stone sewer -a forgotten piece of Sydney's convict past. The large tunnel drain 1.5 metres deep and a metre across was formed from huge, hand-hewn sandstone blocks. It ran east-west, about four metres below the present surface. The Sydney City Council came across more reminders of the city's past on its own back door step beside the Town Hall in 1974. During the construction of Sydney Square, a bulldozer broke through a vaulted chamber about two metres below ground level. Sections of the roof collapsed to reveal the remains of a wooden-coffin inside. The discovery came as no surprise because it was well known that the Town Hall site had been Sydney's first burial ground. From 1793 to 1820, many convicts, soldiers and several of the wealthier citizens were buried there. The site was neglected until the 1860s when it was decided to build the Town Hall and the Cathedral there. The Sydney City Circle underground railway system opened in 1926, brought with it networks of tunnels serving Museum, St. James, Town Hall, and Wynyard Stations. The retailer Mark Foys linked with the underground system with a tunnel leading from the Museum Station to the store. Another store with its own tunnel is David Jones. But this is a private one at the intersection of Market and Castlereagh Streets and is used as a service tunnel between the company's two retailing sites. More recently, underground shopping centres have become fashionable around the city -which is hardly surprising considering the price of land at the surface. One of the largest is under the Hyde Park Square Office and Shopping complex between Park and Bathurst Streets. A new sixty-five-metre tunnel under Elizabeth Street was opened in 1978 to take pedestrians from the complex to Museum Station. The new tunnel was given a modern-art atmosphere with wide bands of colour. The smooth lining of the tunnel was made of a specially toughened material and was said to be vandal proof. One of the longest tunnels in Sydney's underground network takes people from the Domain Parking Station under the Domain by a moving footway. It was opened in 1959. A most extensive tunnel area already in existence is around Wynyard Station where a large proportion of Sydney's work force struggles up from the ground on to city streets each morning. The Sydney City Council would like to see this subterranean network extended. In 1971 the Council put forward a plan for a network of overpasses, arcades, and underpasses around Wynyard Station. The plans included using the existing subway under George Street, linked with an improved arcade and subway system. They proposed a new tunnel under Hunter Street to Australia Square. To the west the Council saw another opportunity for an underpass under Clarence Street from Wynyard Station. They proposed using the old existing tramway tunnel for a moving footway from Wynyard to Lang Park from where pedestrians could walk along to the Rocks area. They also saw an ' opportunity of using the disused tramway tunnel to the south to arrive at the southern side of Wynyard Station. When the Eastern Suburbs Railway opened in 1979, its station at Martin Place created its own area of pedestrian underground tunnels. The Council has plans to extend the tunnels under Martin Place to Castlereagh Street. A tunnel under Martin Place from Angel Place to the GPO which carried postal vehicles is now also used as a pedestrian passageway.

Evil Asbestos.

What Australian born in the last century has not had long contact with buildings made from asbestos sheeting?

 In the Sutherland Shire where I grew up there were hardly any houses not incorporating asbestos sheets to some extent.

Although I have been a resident of Canada for the last fifty one years and  have never knowingly lived  close to asbestos in this country, my early life amidst asbestos in schoolrooms, houses and public buildings could  have been a contributing cause to my wheezing lungs. Certainly it was not smoking because I have never smoked in my life.

Now eighty years I wonder how many thousands or hundreds of thousands of Australians with clogged up lungs attribute their condition solely to nicotine addiction.Ric Williams.

............................................................................

Asbestos related diseases

Asbestos is a fibrous mineral that was widely used in Australia in the 20th Century for many industrial and domestic applications. Inhalation of asbestos fibres has been shown to lead to a number of serious health risks, including asbestosis and the cancer mesothelioma. As these can take a number of decades to develop, it is likely that the effects on the Australian community of exposure to asbestos will continue to increase into the 21st Century.

What is asbestos?

Asbestos is a group of naturally-occurring silicate minerals that are made up of fine, fibrous crystals. Three of these are crocidolite (blue asbestos), amosite (brown or grey asbestos) and chrysotile (white asbestos).

Asbestos fibres have many useful qualities: they are strong and flexible, resistant to fire and chemical attack, and have good insulating properties. They can even be spun and woven into cloth.

Asbestos is also relatively cheap to mine and process. Historically, asbestos was seen as a desirable raw material in a range of products such as insulation, construction materials, concrete, an additive in paints and sealants, vehicle brake pads and clutches, and even outdoor furniture.

Unfortunately, asbestos is also a highly toxic, insidious and environmentally persistent material that has killed thousands of Australians, and will kill thousands more this century. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Why is asbestos a health risk?

Asbestos becomes a hazard when microscopic fibre fragments become airborne and are inhaled. Due to their size and shape they can remain airborne for some time, and enter even the smallest air passages in the lungs where they embed in lung tissue. The fibres are highly resistant to removal by the lungs’ natural cleaning processes. [5]

Asbestos related diseases

Embedded asbestos fibres irritate the lung tissue around them, causing a number of diseases:

Pleural disease

Inflammation and irritation of the outer lining of the lung, the pleura. The pleura stiffens and thickens widely (diffuse thickening) or in patches (plaques), and can fill with fluid. This thickening can restrict breathing.

Asbestosis

This is scarring of the lungs: the airways become so inflamed and scarred that oxygen is no longer able to pass from the lungs into the blood. The lungs become stiff and inelastic, making breathing progressively difficult. Symptoms include tightness in the chest, dry cough, and in the later stages, a bluish tinge to the skin caused by lack of oxygen. Asbestosis is usually seen in former asbestos miners, asbestos manufacturing workers and insulation workers, and usually takes a decade or more to develop.

Lung cancer

Exposure to asbestos fibres greatly increases a person’s risk of developing lung cancer, particularly if they are also a smoker.

Mesothelioma

Mesothelioma is a cancer of the pleura. It typically grows quickly and spreads widely before symptoms appear, making its early diagnosis and effective treatment very difficult. The average survival time after diagnosis is only 6-18 months. A very small exposure to asbestos can be enough to trigger the cancer, however only a small percentage of people exposed to asbestos develop mesothelioma. There may be a lag of 20 to 40 years after asbestos exposure before mesothelioma results.[5] [19] [20]

Other risk factors

Two further factors that increase the health risks from asbestos are:

• The typical lag of 20 to 40 years between exposure and the onset of symptoms of disease. This can make detection, prevention and risk management for asbestos related health risk very difficult. It is estimated that the peak of the epidemic of asbestos-related disease in Australia will not occur until the 2020s.  [4] [5]
• The extremely widespread use of asbestos in construction in Australia last century means that exposure to it is also widespread. The weathering and ageing of asbestos-containing materials and renovation of buildings containing asbestos products may continue to release asbestos fragments for many years.  [4]

Removal and disposal of asbestos contaminated materials is regulated by Occupational Health and Safety authorities in each State and Territory. [5]

Who is at risk of asbestos-induced cancers?

Those who are particularly at risk of asbestos-induced cancers, as noted by the Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia Inc,are people exposed to the loose fibres of asbestos in mining, manufacturing, building and construction or at work, school or in the home; as well as those exposed through asbestos removal, and the consequences of uncontrolled, unsafe removal.

Mortality from asbestos related diseases

Australia and the UK have the highest rates of asbestos-related death in the world. [7] This is understood to be because of the amount of asbestos used in these countries, and the relatively high proportion used of the most dangerous types, blue and brown. It is estimated there have already been at least 4,700 deaths from mesothelioma in Australia since records began in the early 1980s [8], and more than 25,000 Australians will die from it over the next 40 years. [8]

Currently, each year 500 men and 100 women develop mesothelioma in Australia, and this is expected to rise to 900 new cases a year by 2020. [8]

Asbestos in Australia

Between 1945 and 1980, asbestos was used extensively in construction and industry in Australia. Most public buildings and about one third of private dwellings built in this era contained asbestos in the forms of concrete, asbestos cement sheeting (AC sheeting or fibro), vinyl floor coverings, lagging of pipes and boilers, and insulation (laid or sprayed). Removing this asbestos, and dealing with asbestos that remains in situ, have required careful management.  [4] [5]

Asbestos was phased out in Australia after 1980. It was finally banned from building products in 1989, though it remained in gaskets and brake linings until recently. Asbestos was prohibited completely after 31 December 2003, and can not be imported, used or recycled.  [3] [4]

The mining of asbestos ended in Australia in 1983. Before that, blue asbestos was mined primarily at Wittenoom in WA, with earlier and smaller mines in SA, Tasmania and NSW. White asbestos was mined in NSW and Tasmania. Asbestos was also imported from South Africa and Canada.  [1]

Wittenoom

Blue asbestos (which is considered to be the most dangerous form of asbestos) was mined near Wittenoom in Western Australia between 1943 and 1966 — at a large scale after 1943. Precautions taken against asbestos contamination were non-existent, so many workers were exposed to intense levels of airborne asbestos fibre. [9] Asbestos containing dust from the mine was also allowed to contaminate the nearby township and surrounding country. [10]

An NHMRC-funded follow-up study of former miners and residents from Wittenoom has shown that they are prone to dying from mesothelioma, other cancers, asbestosis and tuberculosis, among a range of causes, at rates significantly in excess of comparable populations.  [11]