Science Headlines for November 2, 2008

Transplantation: 'Molecular Miscegenation' Blurs The Boundary Between Self And Non-self

A new discovery by London biologists may yield new ways of handling transplant rejection. Scientists confirm the two-way transfer of a molecule that instructs the immune system to tell "self" from "non-self." By disrupting the transfer of this molecule, newly transplanted organs should become "invisible" to the host's immune system. Such an advance would be considered a major medical breakthrough.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2008 | 1:00 am

Biologists Discover Motor Protein That Rewinds DNA

Biologists have discovered the first of a new class of cellular motor proteins that "rewind" sections of the double-stranded DNA molecule that become unwound, like the tangled ribbons from a cassette tape, in "bubbles" that prevent critical genes from being expressed.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2008 | 1:00 am

Severe Gestational Hypertension May Protect Sons Against Testicular Cancer

Women who experience severe gestational hypertension may give birth to boys at lower risk for testicular cancer, although the exact reasons why are still unclear.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2008 | 1:00 am

Does Your Personality Influence Who You Vote For?

Does your personality influence who you vote for? The short answer is yes, according to one professor of psychology. As Americans go to the polls in record numbers to vote for the next U.S. president, some voters will crave social stability and others will crave social change. Liberals and conservatives divide according to these personality preferences.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2008 | 1:00 am

Researcher Grows Roots On Upper Part Of Plant

Researchers have succeeded in growing roots on plants at places where normally leaves would grow. This important step in plant modification can be highly beneficial for improving crop yields and efficiency in agriculture.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2008 | 1:00 am

Ultrasound Shown To Exert Remote Control Of Brain Circuits

In a twist on nontraditional uses of ultrasound, neuroscientists have developed pulsed ultrasound techniques that can remotely stimulate brain circuit activity. The findings provide insights into how low-power ultrasound can be harnessed for the noninvasive neurostimulation of brain circuits and offers the potential for new treatments of brain disorders and disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2008 | 1:00 am

Simple Blood Test Predicts Obesity

According to new research, the degree of change in blood triglyceride levels following a fatty meal may indicate susceptibility to diet-induced obesity. The findings open doors to new methods of identifying people, including children, who are at risk for becoming obese.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm

Magnetic Portals Connect Sun And Earth

During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn't believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm

Friend Or Foe? How The Body's Clot-busting System Speeds Up Atherosclerosis

Scientists have been puzzled by the fact that high levels of plasmin in blood and high levels of urokinase in artery walls are linked to high risk for rapid progression of atherosclerosis and heart attacks. Are these naturally occurring clot busters contributors to disease or evidence of the body's attempt to fight it? Molecular biology research shows interactions between urokinase and plasminogen accelerate atherosclerosis. Genetic loss of plasminogen production (the precursor to plasmin) protects mice against atherosclerosis, even when urokinase levels are elevated.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm

Bumblebee Colonies Which Are Fast Learners Are Also Better Able To Fight Off Infection

Like humans, bees' ability to learn appears reduced when they are ill. The prediction was that good learners would be worse at fighting infections -- but surprisingly, this was not the case.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm

Iraq earmarks $15 billion for reconstruction (AP)

AP - Iraq has earmarked some $15 billion nearly 25 percent of its 2009 draft budget to help rebuild the country's crumbling infrastructure, energy and oil facilities, the finance minister said Saturday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Nov 2008 | 7:04 am

Green prisons farm, recycle to save energy, money (AP)

AP - Of all the things convicted murderer Robert Knowles has been called during his 13 years behind bars, recycler hasn't been one of them.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Nov 2008 | 3:26 am

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - A wintry storm system hit the Pacific Coast on Saturday, dropping heavy precipitation on Northern California. Snow levels were expected near 6,500 feet in the Sierra Nevadas with more than a foot of new snow.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Nov 2008 | 2:31 am

Nick Cohen: Beware - creationism's march will go on

The idea of intelligent fundamentalists, like the theory of intelligent design, does not stand up to 30 seconds' scrutiny. I must, nevertheless, give credit to American evangelicals for showing belated glimmerings of sense. After decades of blindly endorsing evangelical politicians from the born-again Carter to the born-again Bush, they at last appear ready to look for more than religious dogma in a candidate.

Richard Cizik, the Washington representative of the National Association of Evangelicals, has all but backed Obama. 'I'm a conservative, but it doesn't mean I'm going to vote that way,' he announced. 'I could disagree with Obama, and do, on same-sex marriage and abortion, but that doesn't mean I'll vote against him.'

Cizik has been criticised by the American conservative press, but his abandonment of faith in the Republican party may be a sign of a wider disillusionment. Foreigners, who bought Michael Moore's cartoon version of America as a land dominated by quasi-fascist bigots, may not understand why, but Christian conservatives have good reason to feel cheated.

The Republicans not only took their votes and left them with jobs that may vanish and homes the banks may repossess, but failed to deliver the conservative counter-revolution they promised. After eight years of Bush, abortion is still legal and the gay marriage movement is marching on. The congregations of Cizik's and other churches have every right to shrug their shoulders and vote Obama or give up on politics and stay at home. Evelyn Waugh complained in 1951 that the British Conservative party had 'never put the clock back by a single second'. We will have to wait until the votes are in, but American evangelicals could say the same about today's Republicans.

The fate of the creationists shows why. Bush whipped up the futile passions of his supporters by encouraging schools to balance the teaching of the theory of evolution with the theory of 'intelligent design', which is nothing more than creationism dressed up in the language of pseudo-science to avoid America's prohibition on religion in the classroom.

Creationists in Dover, Pennsylvania, took him at his word. With the shameful, but I suppose inevitable, support of an English academic postmodernist, one Steve Fuller of Warwick University, they argued that truth was relative. Teachers should not discriminate between evidence and superstition, but tell children that it was as reasonable to believe that a god-like intelligence designed life as to think that species evolved through undirected natural selection.

A Republican in the White House did them no good. In September 2005, Judge John E Jones ruled that they were trying to slip the Book of Genesis into science classes and came down against them. Three years on from their defeat, and with the Democrats certain to dominate Washington, the hopes of the intelligent design movement appear dead.

But ideas do not die, they spread and mutate. Creationism might be on the back foot in America, but it is blossoming elsewhere as Richard Dawkins discovered when Turkish readers told him they could no longer access his website. Dawkins's offence was to satirise Harun Yahya, the pen name of Adnan Oktar, the front man for a wealthy Islamic publishing house. Its lavishly illustrated Atlas of Creation spends 500 pages comparing fossils with present-day species to argue that evolution never took place. Dawkins looked at a picture of an ancient fossilised eel and a picture of what Yahya claimed was a modern eel and pointed out that it was in fact a sea snake.

Yahya went on to represent the immutability of God's creation by claiming that a fossilised insect had survived unchanged for millions of years. Unfortunately, the modern version of the caddis fly Yahya chose to illustrate his point was not a fly at all, but a steel fish-hook with a fake insect on top to lure fish on to the line.

Yahya is a joke, but few Turks are laughing. Index on Censorship reported last week that the Turkish courts and the Islamist government were banning Turks from accessing YouTube and the hosting sites Blogger and WordPress for various moral and political reasons as well as richarddawkins.net. When Bianet, a Turkish human rights group, published a critical piece, Yahya told its journalists: 'This is an insulting article, take it off the internet or we will have you banned like Richard Dawkins.'

'On the one hand, fundamentalists say all they want is a debate,' said Padraig Reidy of Index. 'But as soon as they get power, they close debate down.'

Westerners say that Yahya reminds them of American creationists. The link is more solid than they know. In Atlas of Creation, Yahya acknowledges his debt to Duane Gish from the Institute for Creation Research in Texas. Gish has spent years arguing that the fossil record contains no evidence of species evolving and blustering whenever a palaeontologist contradicted him. As a Muslim, Yahya did not need to accept the institute's Protestant fundamentalist 'young-Earth' doctrine - the notion that God made the world in 4004BC or thereabouts. But he happily borrowed Gish's equally idiotic delusion that today's species cannot have evolved and must therefore be identical to their ancestors of tens or hundreds of millions of years ago.

Vast sums of probably Saudi money are fuelling the move of creationism across the Atlantic. In Turkey and the Middle East, poor schools are grateful for Yahya's free books and scientists are becoming frightened of speaking out. Last year, the Council of Europe warned that Yahya was also targeting schools in France, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland. In Britain, academics talk of expelling mainly Muslim science students. They do not make a fuss about it in case post-modern relativists in the mould of Steve Fuller accuse them of religious discrimination, but say, very quietly, that if religion stops their students accepting evolution, there is no point in them staying at university.

Maybe in a generation's time, Americans will patronise Europeans as quasi-fascist bigots. If we are to avoid their condescension, we must accept that creationism will not go down with the American conservative movement. It is evolving and its opponents must evolve, too, if they want to defeat it.

Go forth and multiply, says Oxford's new Professor for the Public Understanding of Science

How Richard Dawkins's successor plans to make maths sexy
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 2 Nov 2008 | 12:04 am

The Observer profile: Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician who's in his prime

Marcus du Sautoy is an odd sight even by the standards set by other Oxford dons. With his checked trousers, purple T-shirts and pink sweaters, he has the appearance of a man who has dressed himself in the first clothes that came to hand when he opened his wardrobe that morning. Elegant is not the word for him. He stands out, especially among his fellow mathematicians for whom a cardigan and slippers, or possibly a safari jacket and sandals, are considered the acme of good taste.

There is, in short, a little of the studied, flamboyant eccentric to Oxford's new Simonyi professor of the public understanding of science, a post recently relinquished by its first incumbent, Richard Dawkins, after he had reached the end of his term in office. We should not underestimate the merits of du Sautoy for all his populist credentials and dubious taste in clothes, however. He is energetic, committed, eclectic in his interests and the possessor of a first-rate mind. Thus his appointment has been widely welcomed by UK academics. 'I am absolutely thrilled by this news. He has done more than anyone else in a generation to popularise mathematics,' said Surrey University professor Jim al-Khalili.

'It is an excellent decision,' added Kathy Sykes, professor of sciences and society at Bristol University. 'He has the creativity and the humanity to do really well. I am sure he is going to be a success.'

His winning of the Berwick Prize, one of mathematics' most prestigious awards, in 2001 underlines the depth of du Sautoy's intellect. Then there are his media interests. He has presented TV programmes such as Mind Games and is also a writer with a proven record of turning arcane maths into entertaining prose for books such as Finding Moonshine (about mathematical symmetry) and The Music of the Primes. The latter subject turns out to be a particular interest. Indeed, primes - numbers that are divisible only by themselves and by one - permeate his life. 'Every number is built by multiplying prime numbers - 105, for example, is three times five times seven,' he says. 'They are like the atoms of arithmetic - the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers.'

It remains to be seen how well these passions and talents will help him in his new post, however. His professorship represents a very different challenge, a point stressed by Sykes. 'Science now fills every crevice of modern society and we can no longer leave scientists alone in their ivory towers to get on with their jobs. They have to explain what they are doing and a post like this one gives a scientist space and time to explain the roles that their fellow scientists play in society.'

And while Dawkins is a superb writer and was assiduous in attacking and ridiculing the new age, anti-science absurdities of today, Sykes believes du Sautoy will make his mark in the job in a very different way. 'Richard [Dawkins] was uncompromising in his attitude and made a point of standing at one polar extreme in the battle against those who oppose science. I think Marcus will be more interested in the grey area between these two poles. He is certainly very open-minded and likes to compromise.'

Simon Singh, a mathematics writer and a friend, also sounded a note of caution. 'Marcus is immensely energetic and will bring real commitment to the job. However, I think it would be a mistake if he confined himself to his subject. He needs to confront issues such as creationism, GM foods, stem cell science and global warming, for example. These are all key scientific concerns of the day and he must face them. He will have to take a broad approach to his job.'

An avowed atheist, du Sautoy will certainly take a firm line on the teaching of creationism in schools. Nevertheless, he is a numbers man at heart and very sensitive to those who attack mathematics. Last week, he maintained a conciliatory stance in most interviews concerning his appointment, but was careful to single out one target: Simon Jenkins. The columnist wrote in the Guardian a few months ago that he considered mathematics to be a waste of time, that it was less useful than Latin and Greek and that it deserved no support from the public. For his part, du Sautoy was unamused. 'I presume he [Jenkins] did badly at the subject at school and has held a grudge against it ever since,' he said in an interview with The Observer last week. 'It simply isn't true, of course. Mathematics underpins all of science and the technology that runs our lives.'

Nor is it true that the public is scared of the subject, he claims. A keen footballer (for his local club, Recreativo Hackney), du Sautoy says that his team-mates - none of them scientists - were engrossed by coverage of the opening of the giant atom-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, at Cern in Geneva a few weeks ago. 'We talked about it a great deal. It involved some maths but no one was worried about that. The point was there was real interest in the subject.'

Apart from numbers, football turns out to be his life's passion. He is an Arsenal season ticket holder, while his household's cat is called Freddie Ljungberg, after the Gunners' former midfielder. When playing for Recreativo, he is noted for tackling that is decidedly robust, his physicality recently requiring the intervention of team-mates on a club trip to Spain. For a man who recently turned 43, such athletic commitment is commendable, if nothing else. Not that du Sautoy worries about his age. Forty-three is a prime number, he points out. You cannot do better than that.

Hence du Sautoy's insistence in playing with 17 on his shirt at Recreativo. Play with the power of the prime and you cannot lose, he says, which is why David Beckham was right to wear 23 when he moved to Real Madrid. 'All the key players at Real Madrid were then playing in prime-number shirts: [Roberto] Carlos at 3, [Zinédine] Zidane at 5, Raúl at 7, and Ronaldo at 11. Having signed a new building block, Beckham had to be given a prime-number shirt, too.'

This is a man who knows how to bring mathematics to everyday life, if nothing else. Yet mathematics was never his top subject at school - a comprehensive in Henley - where he performed poorly at sums. It was only when a mathematics teacher took him aside and explained the joys of numbers that he suddenly got the bug. 'At the time, I wanted to be a spy,' he recalls. 'My mother worked for the Foreign Office and I was convinced - wrongly as it turns out - that she was a secret agent. So I began learning different languages so I could be a spy as well. But I found it frustrating: all those irregular verbs and nouns. There was no pattern. Then I discovered mathematics: the perfect language. With it, everything is logical and consistent.'

It was, in short, love at first sight. While still a schoolboy, du Sautoy visited Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford. 'I watched undergraduates lounging around reading the hieroglyphs that covered the pages of maths books as if they were digesting sentences in English. I thought, I am going to do that one day.'

In fact, du Sautoy has gone much further than that. After getting a scholarship to study at Wadham College, Oxford, he gained a first in mathematics and won a fellowship at All Souls. Today, he is a professor of mathematics at Oxford, a position he will hold while fulfilling the obligations of his new post. He not only reads those mathematical hieroglyphs with ease, he writes them. They are the words and sentences of his day-to-day life.

It is not an easy trade, however. Indeed, mathematics can be cruel and unforgiving. He is fond of quoting Julia Robinson, a Berkeley professor who dedicated her life to finding equations to predict prime numbers and who outlined a typical mathematician's week: 'Monday - tried to prove theorem; Tuesday - tried to prove theorem; Wednesday - tried to prove theorem; Thursday - tried to prove theorem; Friday - theorem false.'

Nevertheless, there is a thrill to the subject that ensnares its practitioners and du Sautoy - who is married with one son, aged 12, and twin adopted daughters, aged five - has been keen to share that passion through a striking range of outlets. Most recently, he worked with Simon McBurney, founder of theatre company Complicite, in the devising of A Disappearing Number. The play tells the story of the collaboration between mathematicians Srinivasa Ramanujan, a poor Brahmin from southern India, and Cambridge don GH Hardy. Prime numbers, needless to say, feature in just about every scene.

As to his heroes, du Sautoy says he is an admirer of Evariste Galois, the young French mathematician whose work as a teenager led to the creation of Galois theory, a field of abstract algebra, and whose commitment to the Republican cause led to his death, aged 20, after a duel in 1832. 'He was a fantastically romantic figure, though I can see his passions took him just a little too far.'

Nor does he accept the view, shared by many, that mathematicians are over the hill as theoreticians by the age of 30. 'It is a myth,' he claims. 'We can still do great work in our middle years.' It is the prime of life, in fact.

The du Sautoy Lowdown

Born: 26 August 1965 in London. Grew up in Henley-on-Thames.

Best of times: Won a scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford University, in 1983. 'I remember phoning my dad up at work to tell him the news. He's quite an unemotional guy, but he ran back home and collapsed in tears.'

Worst of times Not too much has gone wrong - at least on the professional front. The worst one might suggest is the doubts he had, following his first degree, when he worked on a kibbutz in Israel, and thought about becoming an actor.

What he says: 'I fell in love with mathematics about the same time as I started learning the trumpet. Since then, I've always been convinced that mathematics and music share much in common. Today, as I sit at my desk, there is often music playing as I try to battle away with the latest mathematical conundrum that I'm wrestling with.'

What others say: 'Marcus is a great science communicator and possesses the ability to make maths engaging to people of all ages, as we have seen on television and at our Festival of Science. Mathematics can sometimes appear one of the less accessible science subjects despite its central role, so I'm particularly pleased to see a mathematician take up the post.'
Sir Roland Jackson, chief executive of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

Ban on primate experiments would be devastating, scientists warn

Scientists, politicians and animal rights campaigners will confront each other this week in a battle that will ultimately determine the future use of primates in medical research in Britain and the rest of the European Union.

The public meeting - to be held in Brussels on Thursday - will mark the opening round of a campaign that could result in the EU banning experiments on macaques, marmosets and other monkeys in all member states.

'It is quite clear a serious battle over primate research is about to begin,' said Oxford neuroscientist Tipu Aziz, who will speak at the meeting. 'We should be under no illusions about the impact of primate experiment ban, however. It would force us to abandon research that could lead to new treatments for Alzheimer's, motor neurone disease, strokes and many other illnesses.'

Great apes - gorillas, chimpanzees and orang-utans - are no longer used in scientific experiments in Europe but other primates are involved in research into new drugs, surgical procedures and vaccines. Around 10,000 experiments, mainly on marmosets and macaques, are carried out every year, with Britain leading the field with an annual total of just under 4,000.

In the case of Aziz, his experiments on primates taught him how to drive electrodes into the brains of patients suffering from Parkinson's disease, a process that produces instant relief from their symptoms.

'Campaigners say other methods could be used to develop techniques like this,' he said. 'The claim is false. There is no alternative. More to the point, I have plans to treat motor neurone disease, Alzheimer's and stroke patients in a similar way, using electrodes, but if I cannot experiment on primates to find the right brain centres, I will not be able to do this.'

Other groups disagree, however, including MEPs. Last year, they issued a declaration which demanded the establishment of a timetable for replacing primates in experiments. Many primate species face extinction, they argued, thanks to increased habitat destruction and eating of their flesh, known as bushmeat. 'It may be difficult to protect primates from [these] threats if it is perceived these species are used freely by Western academic institutions,' the MEPs warned.

Their declaration was rejected by the European Commission, however. Primate research is unavoidable in developing treatments for auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, infections such as HIV and Sars and neurological illnesses such as Alzheimer's, the Commission stated in an official response.

Now it is set to publish its draft proposals for updating legislation that controls animal experiments in Europe and these are expected to be announced at this week's meeting, before being debated by the European Parliament. The key and most contentious issue will concern primate experiments.

'It will take months or even years for the new proposals to be hammered out,' said Mark Matfield of the European Coalition for Biomedical Research. 'Basically it will be passed back and forward between the European Commission and the European Parliament as they wrangle over the key clauses. Whatever the outcome, however, it will be binding on the UK.'

While scientists insist that primate research is irreplaceable, groups such as the Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research argue that alternatives are feasible. 'It was claimed there were no alternatives to animal tests on cosmetics,' said trust official Nicky Gordon. 'But when these tests were banned, the industry quickly found alternatives. Banning primate experiments would concentrate scientists' minds in exactly the same way.'

Last month, the trust - together with the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments (Frame) and the St Andrew Animal Fund - issued a report on replacing primates in medical research. 'Primates are often subjected to invasive and painful procedures and are restricted to a lifetime of laboratory incarceration: thus it is increasingly unethical to pursue such inadequate "models" of human illness,' the report states.

It also argues that malaria vaccines have been developed and tested in primates but have all failed to generate immunity in humans. Similarly, the report attacks the use of experiments aimed at studying human cognition. Sections of brain are removed from primates and electrodes are implanted into their skulls in order to study psychological processes such as memory or perception. But advances in medical imaging mean that these processes can now be studied directly in humans without using monkeys. 'There is simply no need to use primates for this kind of work,' added Gordon.

Ending the use of primates in experiments will not happen overnight, warned Vicky Robinson, head of the government-backed National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research. 'We need a strategy to develop alternatives. The crucial point is that we must move away from the rhetoric and start doing research that will lead to alternatives.'

These points were disputed by scientists, however. 'Primates are the only creatures that suffer from human diseases like Hepatatis C,' said Simon Festing of the Research Defence Society. 'More than 100 million people are now infected with that virus and the effects can be devastating. The key point is that primates provide our only model for developing vaccines. Ban primate research and our hopes of dealing with the scourge of Hepatitis C will vanish.'

Researchers also warn that if experiments on primates are banned in Europe, such research will merely be taken up in India, China and other countries where less rigorous standards of animal care are imposed. 'Monkeys are kept in the best possible conditions in Europe,' said Festing. 'That is not always the case in other nations.'

These scientists fear that Europe - and Britain in particular - could lose its pre-eminent position as a world leader in medical research. Key work in neurological and infectious diseases would be thrown away to save a relatively small number of animals. 'We have cut back primate use to the very minimum,' said Festing. 'In the US, more than 60,000 experiments on primates are carried out every year, more than 10 times our level. The medical leads that we would give up by abandoning experiments on monkeys would be taken up across the Atlantic. We would gain nothing and lose a great deal.'

This point was backed by Professor Roger Morris of King's College London. 'We should not forget that the few experiments we carry out on primates have the potential to alleviate a vast amount of human suffering. In the case of Parkinson's, a few thousand animals will help develop models that could prevent hundreds of thousands of people suffering lingering deaths, their brains etched from within, and whose families face terrible emotional suffering.'

Officials say the decision to end or continue with primate research will take at least a year to reach as the debate echoes round the EU headquarters. Nevertheless, this week's meeting in Brussels is seen as crucial in deciding how the battle will develop.

'In the long run, I am confident we will persuade the European Parliament to see sense and to continue with primate research,' said Aziz. 'However, I do despair of the constant battles that we have to fight just to continue to do good science and to save lives. These waves of anti-science we keep experiencing are disquieting.'

Are there alternatives to vivisection?

Primates represent only a small fraction of the animals used in scientific experiments. In 2007, just over 3.2 million experiments on animals were carried out in Britain. Of these, mice, rats and other rodents formed the vast majority: 83 per cent. By contrast, primates were used in only a fraction of one per cent of experiments: just under 4,000 in total.

'There are certain medical issues that can only be resolved by using primates,' says Simon Festing of the Research Defence Society. 'In particular, they are extremely useful for studying motor function. Macaques and marmosets use their hands like humans and therefore display the tremors and symptoms of illnesses like Parkinson's disease just as we do. You simply cannot reproduce a disease like that in a pig or a rodent.'

Primates such as the great apes - gorillas, chimpanzees and orang-utans - are the closest biological relatives to humans but have complex social lives that makes their use in scientific experiments unacceptable in Europe today. By contrast, macaques and marmosets are considered by scientists to have less demanding social structures but are still similar enough to humans to be used in occasional experiments.

Anti-vivisectionist protesters argue that such experiments involve unjustified cruelty on intelligent creatures. They say other approaches are now more likely to lead to the development of new drugs and treatments: cultures of human cells grown in laboratories, for example. 'These technologies could now take over the use of primates in research,' says Dr Nicky Gordon, of the Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research.

But Festing disagrees: 'All approaches have their uses but none are perfect. We need to use every means at our disposal if we want to succeed in our battle against disease.'

Terrorists try to infiltrate UK's top labs

Dozens of suspected terrorists have attempted to infiltrate Britain's top laboratories in order to develop weapons of mass destruction, such as biological and nuclear devices, during the past year.

The security services, MI5 and MI6, have intercepted up to 100 potential terrorists posing as postgraduate students who they believe tried accessing laboratories to gain the materials and expertise needed to create chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, the government has confirmed.

It follows warnings from MI5 to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that al-Qaeda's terror network is actively seeking to recruit scientists and university students with access to laboratories containing deadly viruses and weapons technology.

Extensive background checks from the security services, using a new vetting scheme, have led to the rejection of overseas students who were believed to be intent on developing weapons of mass destruction. A Foreign Office spokesman said the students had been denied clearance to study in the UK under powers 'to stop the spread of knowledge and skills that could be used in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery'.

He added: 'There is empirical evidence of a problem with postgraduate students becoming weapons proliferators.' The overseas students, a number of whom are thought to be from 'countries of concern' such as Iran and Pakistan, were intercepted under the Academic Technology Approval Scheme, introduced by universities and the security services last November.

The findings raise questions over how many terrorist suspects may have already infiltrated the UK's laboratory network. Rihab Taha, dubbed 'Dr Germ', who worked on Saddam Hussein's biological weapons programme, studied for her PhD in plant toxins at East Anglia University's School of Biological Sciences in Norwich.

In addition, a number of well-educated Iraqi scientists - funded by Baghdad - infiltrated several British microbiology laboratories in the run-up to the Gulf war of 1990-91. Britain has about 800 laboratories in hospitals, universities and private firms where staff have access to lethal viruses such as Ebola, polio and avian flu or could acquire the technology and expertise to develop deadly weapons. Whitehall sources remain concerned about the number of countries intent on acquiring the materials and knowledge to develop a nuclear or biological warfare capability.

John Wood of the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control said: 'Any scientist would say it's important that we know who is working in our laboratories, and also why they are working there.'

The trial of two NHS doctors, Mohammad Asha, 27, a Jordanian national, and Bilal Abdulla, 29, from Iraq, who allegedly plotted widespread carnage through car bomb attacks in London's West End and Glasgow airport last year, has intensified scrutiny on the radicalisation of students. Named in the plot is 27-year-old Indian PhD student, Kafeel Ahmed, who drove a Jeep laden with gas canisters into Glasgow Airport's main terminal building but died several weeks later from severe burns. Ahmed studied for his PhD in the technology department of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.

A spokesman for Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, said the security scheme had so far proved effective. He added: 'It is important to protect the UK from people who may wish to use technology and materials here inappropriately.'

Michael Stephens, head of security at the Medical Research Council, which runs some of Britain's most sensitive laboratories, said they took the issue of biosecurity 'extremely seriously'.

Concern that al-Qaeda is intent on developing a more sophisticated weapons capability moved the former director-general of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, to warn publicly that terror attacks in Britain could involve weapons of mass destruction. She said: 'We know that attempts to gather materials are there, we know that attempts to gather technologies are there.'

Extremist groups are known to have targeted students, offering to fund courses in return for using their newly acquired expertise. It is unclear if any of those denied 'clearance' to study in the UK during the past year were funded by grants from host governments such as Tehran.

A Foreign Office spokesman said 'efforts' on scrutiny of foreign postgraduate students would continue with only a few of the 20,000 applications rejected for security reasons. In the US, draft legislation advocates banning all non-Americans from laboratories which possess potentially dangerous bacteria and viruses, a measure the UK government believes is too draconian.

Professor George Griffin, chairman of the advisory committee on dangerous pathogens, has warned of the lack of a national standard required for people to work in high-security laboratories.

The move comes as the government considers plans to build a new pathogen research facility in central London, between King's Cross station and the British Library. Experts have warned that a terror attack would prove catastrophic to the surrounding area.

Postnatal depression 'in the genes'

The most severe form of postnatal depression, which affects one in 500 new mothers and has been linked to suicide and infanticide, could be genetic, according to new research.

It is also claimed, in a separate piece of research, that thousands more women could suffer postnatal depression than currently thought, with up to 17,250 late-onset cases a year in the UK going undetected.

It was believed that the mood disorders affecting up to 75 per cent of new mothers were caused by the women's circumstances, personality and hormonal changes.

But according to a study by Cardiff University, Birmingham University and Trinity College, Dublin, funded by medical charity the Wellcome Trust, the most severe form of postnatal depression - postpartum psychosis - has a genetic cause. The study is now working to isolate the gene, which will enable doctors to identify and treat high-risk women before they fall ill.

New mothers can suffer from a spectrum of mood disorders. But while most women suffer 'baby blues' - a short period of tearfulness and tiredness after childbirth - postnatal depression is a more severe, long-lasting condition which affects 10 to 15 per cent of women and can prevent mothers bonding with their babies and cause suicidal thoughts. If left untreated, it can affect the short or long-term development of the baby.

The impact on mothers can also be devastating. Women are 23 per cent more likely to be admitted to a psychiatric unit in the 18 months after giving birth than at any other time in their lives. Suicide is a leading cause of maternal death in the UK, with most attempts being made by those suffering an abrupt onset of postnatal depression.

Sufferers include Gwyneth Paltrow, Katie Price - aka Jordan - and Elle Macpherson, who has spoken of the extreme depression she experienced after the birth of her second child, Aurelius Cy, in 2003. Fern Britton has admitted feeling suicidal after the birth of her daughter Gracie. Brooke Shields had visions of her newborn baby Rowan being thrown against a wall.

The most serious form of maternal depression affects around one in 500 new mothers. Although rare, the condition has been associated with suicide and infanticide.

'Postpartum psychosis is classed as among the most severe episodes of illness seen in clinical practice,' said Dr Ian Jones, head of psychological medicine at Cardiff, who led the study into the DNA of families in which at least one woman had suffered postpartum psychosis. 'The consequences for the mother, infant and family are so serious that such episodes require close attention, often including hospitalisation.'

In a paper published in the November issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, out this week, Jones will present his evidence, which has been peer reviewed, that women with a particular recessive gene are susceptible to postpartum psychosis.

'We have identified chromosomal regions that are likely to harbour genes that predispose individuals to bipolar affective puerperal psychosis,' he said. 'We have also been examining individual genes that code pregnancy and mood-related hormones or receptors, such as oestrogen, serotonin and oxytocin, and genes that have been suggested to be involved in other psychiatric conditions.' Jones's team will now carry out the first systematic genome scan to localise the genes that influence a woman's susceptibility to bipolar affective puerperal psychosis. 'It is hoped that identifying these factors will lead to improvements in the management of women who will become ill at this time and will increase understanding of affective disorders in general,' he said.

In a separate study to be published in Bipolar Disorders journal, Jessica Heron, a research fellow in Birmingham University's mental health research team, claims that a quarter of women who experience mild euphoria after childbirth go on to develop postnatal depression within two months.

Heron followed 500 women from their 12-week antenatal scan to eight weeks after they gave birth.

Her findings are backed by the responses of more than 1,000 mothers asked about postnatal depression by the website Mumsnet on behalf of The Observer. Of those who responded, 48 per cent said that they were not diagnosed for up to a year. A further 13 per cent suffered for between a year and 18 months before their condition was identified.

Almost 40 per cent of women said that they received no treatment, while of those who did receive help, 42 per cent said it was unsatisfactory.

'Road map' test can predict when the menopause will start

A test to predict when a woman will go through the menopause has been developed by scientists who believe it will provide a 'road map' of fertility for older would-be mothers.

The breakthrough will also help women prepare mentally for losing their fertility and allow those in their late 30s and 40s who are considering trying for a baby pinpoint just how long they have left to conceive.

One of the country's leading experts in fertility and women's health last night welcomed the test as a genuine and important breakthrough. 'The menopause is not an illness. But it is a big life event which has big implications for women's lifestyle and quality of life,' said Bill Ledger, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Sheffield.

'This test seems to be reasonably predictive of menopause. Lots of people want to know when it's going to happen so that they can plan their life and work and their children, if possible, and this test would give them an idea of that.

'It would give them an idea of where their body is in relation to the menopause, how soon it's coming.

'We live in an era when people want to know more about their bodies and what can go wrong with them, and this test reflects that. This test could let women plan how they are going to cope with menopause and help them understand what's happening in their own body.'

The test measures three hormones in a woman's blood to calculate how many eggs are left in her ovaries. International researchers led by MaryFran Sowers, a professor of public health at the University of Michigan, found that changes in the levels of anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), the follicle-stimulating FSH and inhibin B concentrations, in more than 600 women studied, foretold when they would enter menopause. The team found AMH fell to a very low or non-measurable level five years before a woman has her final period. By then she is likely to have so few eggs that her fertility is increasingly questionable, says the study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism

The findings are significant, because while these hormones have been measured before doctors have not been able to connect diminishing levels of them to fertility or to the menopause because of a lack of data.

Between 400,000-500,000 women a year in Britain experience the onset of menopause, many with symptoms including hot flushes, mood swings, disturbed sleep and a loss of libido.

'The information [in the test] provides a road map as to how fast women are progressing through the different elements of their reproductive life,' said Sowers. 'People really want information about "how long do I have?" and "when will I have my final menstrual period?"

'Now we are beginning to say, "If you have a specific FSH level, combined with your age, this is the likelihood that you are in this reproductive stage". We finally have numbers from enough women evaluated over a long time period to describe the reproductive ageing process.'

About 200,000 women in Britain at any one time are suffering from menstrual dysfunction in their 40s. Some 2,000 get such severe problems that they have a hysterectomy or similar procedure. If the test proves successful, it could mean at least some of them can avoid surgery.

Do We Still Need Embryonic Stem Cells? (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Since their discovery, stem cells have been hailed as the ultimate answer for crippling and incurable diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other conditions that leave vital organs like heart or nerves damaged beyond repair.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Nov 2008 | 6:47 pm

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