Science Headlines for December 27, 2008

Real-time Gene Monitoring Developed

Imagine having GeneVision: the uncanny ability to view the activity of any chosen gene in real time through a specially modified camera. With GeneVision, military commanders could compare gene expression in victorious and defeated troops. Retailers could track genes related to craving as shoppers moved about a store. "The Bachelor" would enjoy yet one more secret advantage over his love-struck dates. A new study correlates real-time gene expression with movement and behavior for the first time.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

New Anti-cancer Components Of Extra-virgin Olive Oil Revealed

Good quality extra-virgin olive oil contains health-relevant chemicals, 'phytochemicals', that can trigger cancer cell death. New research sheds more light on the suspected association between olive oil-rich Mediterranean diets and reductions in breast cancer risk.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Ecosystem Changes In Temperate Lakes Linked To Climate Warming

Unparalleled warming over the last few decades has triggered widespread ecosystem changes in many temperate North American and Western European lakes, say researchers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Molecular Manual For Hundreds Of Inherited Diseases Developed

Researchers have created a catalogue of tissue-specific processes involved in hundreds of inherited diseases. These results could help treat diseases such as breast cancer, Parkinson disease, heart diseases and autism.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Head And Neck Injury Risks In Heavy Metal: Head Bangers Stuck Between Rock And A Hard Bass

Head banging increases the risk of head and neck injury, but the effects may be lessened with reduced head and neck motion, head banging to lower tempo songs or to every second beat, and using protective equipment such as neck braces, finds a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Breathing Problems During Sleep Associated With Calories Burned At Rest

Individuals with sleep-related breathing disorders appear to burn more calories when resting as their conditions become more severe, according to a new report.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Warmer Temperatures Could Lead To A Boom In Corn Pests

Climate change could provide the warmer weather pests prefer, leading to an increase in populations that feed on corn and other crops, according to a new study. Warmer growing season temperatures and milder winters could allow some of these insects to expand.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Dec 2008 | 7:00 pm

Killer Peptide May Offer New Therapy Against Influenza A Virus

In a new study researchers identified what appears to be the first antibody-derived peptide that inhibits the activities of harmful microbes such as influenza A virus and HIV-1.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Dec 2008 | 7:00 pm

Humans And Chimps Register Faces By Using Similar Brain Regions

Chimpanzees recognize their pals by using some of the same brain regions that switch on when humans register a familiar face. The study -- the first to examine brain activity in chimpanzees after they attempt to match fellow chimps' faces -- offers new insight into the origin of face recognition in humans, the researchers said.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Dec 2008 | 7:00 pm

New Insight Into Birth Defect Characterized By Digit Duplication And Fusion

Birth defects characterized by malformation of the limbs are relatively common. New insight into one form of the birth defect synpolydactyly, where individuals have 1 or more digit (finger or toe) duplicated and 2 or more digits fused together, has now been provided researchers in Germany who studied a mouse model of the condition.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Dec 2008 | 7:00 pm

Activists attack Japanese whalers with stink bombs (AFP)

AFP - Militant environmentalists said they had pelted stink bombs at a Japanese whaling ship in Australian waters in their latest bid to disrupt hunting of the protected creatures.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Dec 2008 | 10:47 am

Erratic weather 'harms wildlife'

Birds, mammals and insects are struggling to cope with unseasonal weather in the UK, the National Trust says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Dec 2008 | 5:49 am

Feds plan probe into fatal Calif. home blast (AP)

AP - Federal investigators will focus on a suspected leak in an underground natural gas pipeline when they begin their probe next week into a deadly Christmas Eve explosion that leveled a house in a Sacramento suburb.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Dec 2008 | 4:30 am

Storm blankets West with snow, ice glazes Midwest (AP)

AP - Yet another snowstorm closed highways in parts of the West on Friday, the latest in a tiring week of bad weather, and a dangerous sheet of ice in parts of the Midwest contributed to a looming flood problem.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Dec 2008 | 2:18 am

2009 to Arrive Not a Second Too Soon

The start of 2009 will be delayed by circumstances beyond everyone's control.
Source: Livescience.com | 27 Dec 2008 | 1:07 am

Economy: Will Green Funding Be Harder to Come By? (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - As the year wraps up on a gloomy economic forecast, people are wondering what will become of the green initiatives set forth by hundreds of organizations and governments as cash becomes harder to come by.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Dec 2008 | 1:05 am

Genes don't determine your child's ability - nurture is key

You might imagine that where you stand on the nature-nurture debate is purely academic. You would be very wrong. Simply holding the belief that genes largely or wholly determine you or your children can be toxic. For instance, if you suffer a mental illness, believing it's down to genes means you are less likely to recover, probably because you feel there's nothing you can do about it. Likewise, if you are a parent and you believe that what your nipper is like is basically due to nature, you are significantly more likely to maltreat them, up to and including abuse.

Studies have extended these findings into the realm of how your child views its own capacity. Secondary pupils who take a malleable view of their abilities get significantly higher grades than ones who believe they are fixed. When samples of teens and undergraduates are taught to think of themselves as being malleable rather than fixed, they get significantly better grades as a result of the tuition.

Cue two studies exploring how that works. The first looked at more than 300 13-year-olds, following them over a two-year period. They were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as "You have a certain amount of intelligence and you really can't do much to change it" or "You can always greatly change how intelligent you are." Sure enough, over the two years of study, children who subscribed to malleable beliefs steadily improved in their maths performance. The malleable were more successful than the fixed because they liked being made to think, they redoubled their efforts if they were not succeeding and did not feel helpless. But which came first: the try-hard motive or the malleable belief?

In a further study, 91 13-year-olds, mostly from low-income homes and doing badly at maths, were followed over a year. Half of them were given four lessons in malleability, the others were taught about other matters during those hours.

As before, the intervention group became more likely to subscribe to malleable beliefs as a result of the teaching, and the average maths score of that group rose, whereas the control group continued to do badly. The greatest improvement was found in the children who had started with a fixed view of their abilities and been taught to think of it as malleable: fixity is bad for performance. But above all, the sequence was clear: change the belief, you change the motivation, and that improves the grades.

Other evidence shows how critical it is that both parents and teachers do not regard genes as fixing children's capabilities: if either group have negative expectations of the child, academic performance suffers.

The overall message is that even if the evidence did prove that genes are critical, it would be poisonous to believe this. In fact, fascinatingly and contrary to the propaganda you may have read in newspapers or seen on television (notably from Professor Robert Winston), the science is increasingly showing genetic influence to be negligible. In the case of mental illness, for example, findings from the human genome project have forced psychiatrists to admit for the first time that there is no such thing as "a gene for" depression or schizophrenia.

But that is for another day. Today's message is you are best off believing that genes are not nearly as important as nurture and the current environment in influencing what you and your children are like. Peddle that message to your children and it could improve their exam results.

• Cue two studies: Blackwell et al, 2007, Child Development, 78, 246-63. Other evidence: Pomerantz 2006, Developmental Psychology, 42, 950-61. More Oliver James at selfishcapitalist.com

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Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 27 Dec 2008 | 12:11 am

Ben Goldacre: Vintage year for iffy studies and selective reporting

It's only when you line these jokers up side by side that you realise what a vast and unwinnable fight we face. There was the miracle pixie dust which made a man's fingertip grow back, although fingertips do just grow back by themselves. The Telegraph reported that red wine prevents breast cancer - with the flimsiest of nutritionist-style evidence - just two months after writing that alcohol causes breast cancer (the latter is more correct).

We saw the Sunday Express claiming on its front page that an impressive government adviser called Dr Roger Coghill had performed scientific research, and found that the Bridgend suicide cases all lived closer to a mobile phone mast than average. This was an issue of great public health significance, but when I contacted the researcher - he wasn't really a government adviser - he explained he wasn't a doctor, he couldn't tell me what he meant by average, and he had, in a twist of almost incomprehensible ridiculousness, "lost" the data.

He wasn't alone. Esure and Mischief PR refused to hand over their data on vermin and bins for inspection, although it had been reported credulously in every national newspaper. I got a leaked copy. It was rubbish. Citigate PR refused to hand over the data on their carbon monoxide and council flats story until I raised a fuss.

In a world where rigorous evidence from scientific research languishes unpublicised, the media continued to churn out bogus wacky science stories. Britain's happiest places were mapped by "scientists", although the differences were just chance findings; there were innumerable "surveys" from unrepresentative populations; and the rightwing press claimed that "Lord Nelson and Captain Cook's ship logs question climate-change theories", although they did nothing of the sort, as the researchers themselves helpfully explained.

We saw how the BBC misrepresented the statistics on parents' choices about continuing with pregnancies in which the foetus had Down's Syndrome, producing a publicity avalanche on the back of an incorrect story. We learned along the way about confounding variables, baseline changes, and more.

In the world of evidence-based social policy, we saw how the government quietly dropped death as an outcome indicator for their drugs policy, the fascinating inconsistencies in food additive judgment calls, and more. We also watched with delight as the rightwing thinktank Reform produced a report on the crisis in maths in which they got their maths wrong.

The pointless formulae stories continued unabated. The "fame formula" media frenzy was triggered by the Guardian itself: it wasn't just mathematically stupid, it demonstrably failed to model reality. People like to say that actually you need to be really clever to write for a tabloid, although nobody at the Sun spotted that their Cambridge mathematician's Britney boobline equation ("0*70x(20*5+32)/75") gave an answer of zero, not 123.2.

It was an interesting year for the drug companies, with most of our fun revolving around selective non-publication of unflattering data. The SSRI antidepressants fared especially badly, with repeated studies showing that evidence of non-superiority over placebo was left unpublished, as was evidence of potential harm. We saw how the drug company Lilly published strikingly similar data on duloxetine - a new-ish antidepressant drug - twice over, in two entirely separate scientific papers.

We saw how the people running the Enhance trial were really rather slow to publish their results, and altered their chosen endpoint after the experiment was finished. The same thing was happening with cancer trials, where researchers showed that only one in five cancer trials actually gets published (and only 5.9% of industry-sponsored trials, but in those 5.9%, golly did they do well: 75% gave positive results).

Regulation has unforgivably failed to deal with these simple problems, but in a spectacular episode of collective point-missing, at the same time we saw how ethics committees have now made trials so administratively cumbersome that only multinationals can perform them.

Other repeat offenders continued to churn out good comedy. The Dore "miracle cure" for dyslexia, invented by a paint entrepreneur called Wynford Dore, was puffed throughout the media, including Radio 4's investigative consumer slot You and Yours, until it turned out they'd gone into administration, leaving some distressed customers - at which point journalists suddenly decided they agreed with me about the dubious evidence.

The comedy factory of the Durham county council fish oil "trial" struggles on. In March they announced - in defiance of everything they had said on the subject for several years - that there was in fact no trial on children's performance, and they had never intended to release results. In September they released the results. They had analysed their data with such laughable incompetence that the results can only reliably be interpreted as a false positive.

The media continued to mischievously misrepresent the evidence on MMR, 10 years on; and, lest we forget, vitamin pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath dropped his 15-month libel case against me and the Guardian.

We saw quacks in universities and a TV nutritionist who wound up in court after her client wound up in intensive care.

Most importantly, I was allowed to sneak on to the news pages of a national paper carrying explanations of absolute and relative risks, numbers needed to treat, publication bias, confounding variables, the counterintuitive maths on screening programmes, genius research into the placebo effect and irrationality, corrections for multiple comparisons, selection bias, cumulative meta-analyses, clinical trial methodology and more. For that I salute and adore you all.

Newspapers & magazines

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Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 27 Dec 2008 | 12:08 am

Cross-country running with your dog

Three years ago, Didi Mann was recently retired and contemplating a life "sitting at home reading books and eating chocolate", when she read an article about Cani-X (pronounced "Cani-cross"), the sport of cross-country running while harnessed to your dog.

Despite never having participated in any sport, Mann was sufficiently intrigued to turn up at the next event, close to her West Sussex home, with her elderly border cross lakeland terrier Tess, and give it a go. She is now a British champion in the over-60s category and has become an enthusiastic member of a rapidly growing band of besotted devotees of an unlikely sport.

The British championships, established five years ago, run throughout the winter months at venues across the country, and attract up to 180 competitors for each meet. In October, the first British team competed at the European Cani-X championships in the Czech Republic; from one runner last year, the UK fielded a team of 27 competitors.

Tomorrow sees the latest event in the season, a three-mile run through Cannock Chase in Staffordshire.

Though long-established in the US and mainland Europe, Cani-X was almost unknown in this country when in 2003 Richard and Eileen Cook pinned posters on trees in the Forest of Dean asking if dog walkers were interested in getting together for a human-canine race. They now organise the national championships and last year Richard was admitted to the European federation board.

Though it is acceptable to run with your pet on a lead, serious runners invest in specialist shoulder harnesses (for their dogs) and waist belts (for themselves), attached by a bungee rope.

The etiquette is strict: no dragging of dogs, giving way to overtaking from the rear, and no shouting at dogs or members of the public. "Try to get your dog to do its business before the race," says one of the race guidelines. Runners are obliged to pick up poop, potentially losing valuable seconds.

The Cooks stumbled across Cani-X while looking for a way to train with their Siberian huskies Pasha and Alexi. They had tried the Alpine pursuit of skijoring, or skiing while pulled by dogs, but opportunities to train off-season were limited near their Cheltenham home. While looking on the internet for skijor harnesses an American correspondent mentioned an off-season activity popular there - running with dogs in harness.

For serious competitors, there is a marked potential benefit if your dog can be trained to pull. But since almost any breed of dog can outrun a human, says Eileen Cook, the type of dog is largely immaterial. "I always call it cross country running with your pet dog, because it's for every dog," she says.

"I'm sure I've seen every single breed running at our events. One woman ran with her pug."

Mann has since retired Tess and now runs with Lottie, a frisky two-year-old jack russell. She came second in her category, taking her championship tally to 57. "My grandfather used to show terriers very seriously at Crufts, though I don't know that he would have approved of his granddaughter running around with them for fun," she says. "But why not? People sort of think, 'Oh, 60s, how ghastly, what am I going to do now?' And it isn't. It's just the start of the rest of your life."

With a race season that continues until May, the Cooks are beginning to feel the strain of loading their trailer and campervan every two weeks to prune pathways and mark courses, starting, timing and commentating on races, as well as awarding the prizes.

"We would like to license the sport, so other people can run their own events." She can foresee it becoming as big as agility that is featured at 600 events a year: "That started in someone's back yard and look at it now."

Having secured an exhibition slot for the sport at Crufts last year and a repeat invitation at this year's show, her sights are now considerably higher; she is awaiting a response from the British Olympic Association to her request for an exhibition race inside the 2012 Olympic stadium.

However, the home team may have some training to do first: despite their enthusiasm, the first British assault on the European championship failed to bring home any prizes.

The sport is already more popular in the UK than the rest of Europe, Eileen thinks. Why? "Oh that's easy. We do love our dogs in this country, and we are always searching for things we can do with them."

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Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 27 Dec 2008 | 12:06 am

Pint of beer a day raises cancer risk by fifth, says expert

Two units of alcohol a day increases the risk of bowel cancer by 18% and the risk of liver cancer by 20%

Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 27 Dec 2008 | 12:05 am

1,000 years on, perils of fake Viking swords are revealed

It must have been an appalling moment when a Viking realised he had paid two cows for a fake designer sword; a clash of blade on blade in battle would have led to his sword, still sharp enough to slice through bone, shattering like glass.

"You really didn't want to have that happen," said Dr Alan Williams, an archaeometallurgist and consultant to the Wallace Collection, the London museum which has one of the best assemblies of ancient weapons in the world. He and Tony Fry, a senior researcher at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, south-west London, have solved a riddle that the Viking swordsmiths may have sensed but didn't quite understand.

Some Viking swords were among the best ever made, still fearsome weapons after a millennium. The legendary swords found at Viking sites across northern Europe bear the maker's name, Ulfberht, in raised letters at the hilt end. Puzzlingly, so do the worst ones, found in fragments on battle sites or in graves.

The Vikings would have found it impossible to tell the difference when they bought a newly forged sword: both would have looked identical, and had razor sharp blades. The difference would have only emerged in use, often fatally.

Williams began to test the Ulfberht blades when a private collector brought one into the Wallace, and found they varied wildly. The tests at the NPL have proved that the inferior swords were forged in northern Europe from locally worked iron. But the genuine ones were made from ingots of crucible steel, which the Vikings brought back from furnaces thousands of miles away in modern Afghanistan and Iran. The tests at Teddington proved the genuine Ulfberht swords had a phenomenally high carbon content, three times that of the fakes, and half again that of modern carbon steel.

The contemporary fake Ulfberhts used the best northern metal working techniques, which hardened the metal by quenching - plunging the red-hot blade into cold water. It enabled them to give the blade a keen edge, but made it fatally brittle.

In the 11th century the Russians blocked the trade route, and the supply of crucible steel ended. Evidence is emerging that the swords from burials are the fakes, or the work of less prestigious makers. The genuine Ulfberhts have mostly been found in rivers. "I don't think these were ritual offerings," Williams said. "They are mostly from rivers near settlement sites, and I think what you have almost certainly is some poor chap staggering home drunk, falling into the river and losing his sword. An expensive mistake."

Their work has also proved that many of the Ulfberht swords in some of the most famous weapons collections in the world are fakes. The Wallace's is the real McCoy, but the one brought in by the private collector which started the hunt turned out to be fake.

Archaeology

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Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 27 Dec 2008 | 12:05 am

Risky surgery: separating conjoined twins

Separating conjoined twins can be a complex and high-risk surgical procedure. For parents, separation can require harrowing ethical judgments - on rare occasions, for example, the procedure will mean sacrificing one twin's life to save another.

Twins can be joined in a variety of ways and the specifics of each operation to separate them depend heavily upon which vital organs, if any, the twins share.

Faith and Hope Williams were joined from the breastbone to the top of the navel and had a shared liver but separate hearts. In about 30% of cases, conjoined twins are joined at the chest, the most common form encountered.

If they can be successfully parted with a chance of survival, the greatest risks come from undergoing anaesthesia and surgical complications, according to George State University, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Complications can include clots in new blood vessels created as part of the separation procedure, bleeding in the brain, heart complications and infections.

At Great Ormond Street, the centre with the most experience in Europe in separating conjoined twins, the survival rate for operations where the separation is planned and both children are otherwise well is more than 80%.

But not all operations go to plan, and the hospital does separate newborns - such as the operation to separate Faith and Hope - if there are medical reasons why the procedure cannot wait. Only around 20-25% of newborn conjoined twins separated at the London hospital survive.

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Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 27 Dec 2008 | 12:04 am

Coral springs back from tsunami

Scientists report recovery in some reefs damaged by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Dec 2008 | 9:25 pm

Chile says Chaiten volcano still poses danger

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile's government said on Friday the area surrounding the Chaiten Volcano, which erupted in May for the first time in thousands of years, was still not safe and that a decision regarding the future of the town of Chaiten would be made in coming days.