Americans May Be Missing Direct Route To Head And Neck Cancer Care, Survey Shows

Tens of thousands of Americans are diagnosed annually with head and neck cancers, but many adults are unaware of doctors who specialize in treating these conditions, according to a recent survey.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am

Even Modest Exercise Can Reduce Negative Effects Of Belly Fat

A new study suggests that moderate amounts of exercise alone can reduce the inflammation in visceral fat -- belly fat, if you will -- that has been linked with metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that predict heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am

Blood Testing, Mosquito Style: Electronic Device Lets Diabetics Test Glucose Painlessly

Biomedical engineers have patented a prototype of a device to test blood glucose levels quickly and painlessly. The Electronic Mosquito is designed after the biting mechanism of a mosquito.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am

Is Biofuel Policy Harming European Biodiversity?

The EU promotes the production of biofuels and has set a target of 5.75% share of biofuels in the transport section for all EU Member States by 2010, and a target of 10% to be reached by 2020. Researchers have developed a new method of assessing biodiversity impacts resulting from changing land use due to the production of biofuel crops in Europe, distinguishing between arable (first generation) and woody (second-generation) crop types. The results indicate that more species might suffer from habitat losses rather than benefit from a doubled biofuel target, while abolishing the biofuel target would mainly have positive effects.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am

Bovine Genome Could Lead To Better Meat For Consumers, Experts Say

A newly annotated sequence of the cattle genome could lead to better disease resistance and higher quality meat for consumers, researchers in Texas say.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am

Bridging The Gap In Nanoantennas

Scientists have developed an innovative method for controlling light on the nanoscale by adopting tuning concepts from radio-frequency technology. The method opens the door for targeted design of antenna-based applications including highly sensitive biosensors and extremely fast photodetectors, which could play an important role in future biomedical diagnostics and information processing.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am

Beating The Back-up Blues: Research Advances 'Racetrack' Memory

That sinking feeling when your hard disk starts screeching and you haven't backed up your holiday photos is a step closer to becoming a thing of the past thanks to research into a new kind of computer memory.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Pregnancy Hormone HCG Protects Against Breast Cancer Even In Short-term Treatments

Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) hormone is what enables a full-term pregnancy to protect against breast cancer. Researchers have previously shown in rat models that hCG, when given during a 21-day period (the average period of rat gestation), can prevent breast cancer. Their current studies find an even shorter hCG regimen can prevent breast cancer in rats.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Peanut-shaped Stellar Explosion Spotted By Hubble

Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers have taken the first optical images of a dramatic stellar outburst and discovered a peanut-shaped bubble expanding rapidly into space.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Too Much Sugar Is Bad, But Which Sugar Is Worse: Fructose Or Glucose?

In 2005, the average American consumed 64kg of added sugar, a sizeable proportion of which came through drinking soft drinks. Now, a 10-week study has provided evidence that human consumption of fructose-sweetened but not glucose-sweetened beverages can adversely affect both sensitivity to the hormone insulin and how the body handles fats, creating medical conditions that increase susceptibility to heart attack and stroke.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Republicans push nuclear energy to lower costs (AP)

AP - The U.S. should build 100 more nuclear plants rather than spend "billions in subsidies" for renewable energy if it is truly committed to lowering electric bills and having clean air, the Republicans say.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 10:11 am

Webcam fans mourn Calif. bald eagle chick deaths (AP)

AP - The only bald eagle nest on Santa Cruz Island is now a lonely place, one that webcam viewers were delighted to monitor just a few weeks ago.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 9:42 am

Drilling drives a wedge at climate change summit (AP)

AP - To drill or not drill for new oil and gas.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 8:31 am

Bahrain pounces on trade in wild animals (AFP)

AFP - Bahraini authorities are seeking to tame a roaring trade in wild animals, which are being smuggled in to meet fierce demand for exotic creatures in the tiny Gulf archipelago.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 7:20 am

Arkansas reclaims its status as the Bear State (AP)

AP - The bear cub could be heard but remained unseen among the barren trees and dried leaves blanketing the forest floor.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 6:45 am

NKorea starts reprocessing spent fuel rods (AFP)

AFP - North Korea announced it has started reprocessing spent fuel rods from a pilot nuclear power plant, in protest at international condemnation of its controversial rocket launch this month.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 3:36 am

Hubble telescope repair will be last hurrah for space shuttle

• Swansong of programme raises doubts over success
• Last chance for Nasa to win back public support

It's a deep space mission, more ambitious in scope than anything essayed for almost 40 years. The measure of the risk is that when the Nasa space shuttle takes off next month for its last hurrah a second capsule will sit on the launchpad in case an unprecedented rescue mission is needed.

When seven astronauts board the Atlantis shuttle on 11 May for an 11-day mission to repair the ailing Hubble telescope, they will be aware of the formidable task ahead. Five spacewalks to replace broken parts. No space station nearby as a refuge. Earth more than 350 miles below. But the significance of the Hubble repair mission goes much further than the technical challenges facing the crew. This mission amounts to the swansong of the shuttle, the culmination of a 30-year, $170bn (£115bn) programme to consolidate humankind's mastery over space.

The shuttle was conceived as the world's first reusable spacecraft, designed to launch the human race on a new age of extraterrestrial exploration. The reality was somewhat different and some are left wondering if the programme was a huge anticlimax.

In Houston on Thursday the Atlantic crew and senior space agency officials spoke of the legacy of the shuttle era, which saw its first flight in 1981, nine years after the last moon landing. "It's because of the shuttle that we can go back to Hubble and do this repair mission and the things that allow us to continue to grow as an exploration community and as a space-faring nation," said LeRoy Cain, deputy manager of the shuttle programme.

Though further routine flights are planned before the shuttle is formally retired, the Hubble mission is the last real chance for Nasa to showcase its versatility and win back public support. "The Hubble mission is a hallmark for us, not just for the programme or the agency, but as a country. Folks across the country and around the world are paying attention to what we're doing here," Cain said.

A successful mission could also be crucial to Nasa's hopes of swaying Barack Obama's apparent ambivalence towards US efforts in space. Despite a proposal to maintain the agency's 2010 budget at $18.7bn, close to Bush-administration levels, Obama has yet to appoint a new Nasa administrator, clouding the development of the next-generation Orion spacecraft and Ares rockets designed to return man to the moon by 2020.

Much of the criticism of the shuttle programme was the result of Nasa's perceived lack of ambition. Compared with the milestones of the earlier Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes, the spacecraft's reach was minimal. In 125 shuttle flights since 1981 humans have never travelled further than 370 miles from Earth's surface, a fraction of the half-million-mile adventures undertaken by astronauts who reached the moon during six Apollo missions in four years from 1969. Two catastrophes cost the lives of 14 astronauts, the crews of the shuttle Challenger, which blew apart shortly after liftoff in January 1986, and of Columbia, which disintegrated on its return to Earth's atmosphere in February 2003 when deadly hot gases seeped into a damaged wing.

The outgoing Nasa administrator, Michael Griffin, who stood down when Obama took office in January, has described the shuttle programme, and the construction of the space station in an orbit 200 miles above Earth, as "inherently flawed" and not worth the difficulty, risk or expense of flying humans into space.

Astronauts who have flown the shuttle have mixed views on its retirement.

John Young, one of only 12 men to have walked on the lunar surface, and later the commander of Columbia's maiden flight in 1981, said: "Taking a complete vehicle into space and bringing it back again is an achievement the public often overlooks. We did as good a job as we could do in the circumstances."

Eileen Collins, the shuttle's first female pilot and commander who flew on four missions, said it was time to say goodbye. "It will be sad to see the programme end, but you don't make decisions with emotions and it's time to move forward."

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 24 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

From fish oil to the snake oil of fake trials

Welcome back to the only home-learning statistics and trial methodology course to feature villains. You will remember the comedy factory of the Equazen fish oil "trials": those amazing capsules that make your child clever and well behaved. A new proper trial has now been published looking at whether these fish oil capsules work.

It took 75 children aged eight to 18, split the group in half randomly, and gave each child either genuine fish oil capsules, or dummy capsules. It measured ratings scales, and a clinical global impression (CGI) scale, but there was no difference between the two groups. The fish oil pills did nothing, as in many previous studies, so this trial has not been press released by the company, nor has it been covered in the media. The funder of this study, Equazen, will doubtless have been disappointed with a negative result. But some children were found to respond: "A subgroup of 26% responded with more than 25% reduction of ADHD symptoms and a drop of CGI scores to the near-normal range."

Subgroup analyses are widely derided in academia, and for very good reasons. And yet this optimistic over-analysis is seen echoing out from business presentations throughout the country, every day of the week. "You can see we did pretty poorly overall," they might say: "but interestingly our national advertising campaign did cause a massive uptick in sales for the Bognor region."

Interestingly it turns out that you can show significant benefits, using a subgroup analysis, even in a fake trial, where the intervention consists of doing absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Thirty years ago Lee et al published the classic cautionary paper on this topic in the journal Circulation: they recruited 1,073 patients with coronary artery disease, and randomly allocated them to receive either Treatment 1 or Treatment 2. Both treatments were non-existent, because this was simply a simulation of a trial.

They were not disappointed. Overall, as expected, there was no difference in survival between the two groups. But in a subgroup of 397 patients the survival of Treatment 1 patients was significantly different from that of Treatment 2 patients. This was entirely by chance.

You can also find spurious subgroup effects in real trials, if you do an analysis that's foolish enough. Close analysis of the ECST trial found that the efficacy of a procedure called endarterectomy depended on which day of the week you were born on. Base your clinical decisions on that: I dare you.

Furthermore there is a beautiful, almost linear relationship in this trial's results between month of birth and clinical outcome: patients born in May and June show a huge benefit, then as you move ahead through the calendar, there is less and less effect, until by March it starts to seem almost harmful. If this had been a biologically plausible variable, like age, this subgroup analysis would have been very hard to ignore.

It goes on. The ISIS-2 trial compared the benefits of aspirin against placebo during a heart attack. Aspirin improves outcomes, but a mischievous subgroup analysis revealed that it is not effective in patients born under the star signs of Libra and Gemini.

The CCSG trial found that aspirin was effective in preventing stroke and death in men but not in women, and as a result, women were undertreated for a decade, until further trials and overviews showed a benefit.

And sometimes there can be what we might call proper mischief. The CLASS trial compared a painkiller called celecoxib against two older pills over six months: this new drug showed fewer gastrointestinal complications, and so it was prescribed more.

A year later, it emerged that the original intention of the trial had been to follow up for over a year. The trial had shown no benefit for celecoxib over a year, but when they only looked at the subgroup of results at six months, the drug shined.

You are unlikely to find the answers to complex problems such as school performance and behaviour in any pill, whether it's ritalin or fish oil, and yet despite the rather desperate anti-establishment swagger of the $60bn (£40.8bn) food supplement pill industry, time and again we see that they use the exact same tricks as the $600bn pharmaceutical industry. Although Equazen, we might finally mention, is wholly owned by the £1.6bn pharmaceutical company Galenica.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 24 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Mexico Swine Flu Deaths Spur Epidemic Fears

A unique strain of swine flu is the suspected killer of dozens of people in Mexico.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Apr 2009 | 10:12 pm

Open Data: FAA Releases Bird Strike Database

The Federal Aviation Administration released its database of wildlife strikes on planes this week in an abrupt about-face from previous policy.

The data is now available through web forms as well as in a downloadable Microsoft Access database.

There is a detailed record for each incident including the species of animal (when known), the airline, the airport, the height and speed of the plane, and occasionally intriguing notes ("FOUND FEATHERS AND REMAINS ON NOSE COWL. INGESTION").

While it contains tens of thousands of records, the database is not comprehensive. The FAA believes that only 20 percent of birdstrikes are reported and they caution that "comparisons between individual airports or airlines may be misleading."

Still, it's useful information and shows that the spirit of transparency that Barack Obama has promised to bring to the Executive branch might actually yield some results. As Dave Demerjian reports over on Autopia, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood forced the data out of the agency. 

"The Department of Transportation is, among other things, a safety agency," LaHood wrote on his blog. "Public disclosure is our job. The sea change in government transparency is beginning, and we are happy to be a part of it."

We applaud the release, even though the formats in which the data was provided don't encourage reuse. So, as part of our ongoing attempt to open up government data, Wired.com has posted the data as text files that can be imported into the data manipulator of your choice.

• All the wildlife strike data zipped up (hat tip to Michael Garcia)
• Wildlife strikes from 1990-1999
• Wildlife strikes from 2000-2008

There's a ton of data, so we can't post it all to Google Documents, but just so you can play with it, we've made the key data from the set of 2008 strikes available in a Google Spreadsheet.

See Also:

• Open Data: Help Migratory Bird Observations Fly into the Digital
• Open Data: Shuttle Impacts From Space Junk
• Open Data: Rare Trove of Army Medical Photos Heads to Flickr

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed, and book site for The History of Our Future; Wired Science on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Apr 2009 | 9:41 pm

Enjoy the Beauty of a Thin Crescent Moon (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Do you have a favorite phase of the moon?  Romantics will almost certainly be drawn to the full moon, but during its 29.5-day cycle, going from one new moon to the next, our satellite offers up plenty of other choices. 
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Apr 2009 | 8:20 pm

The Geomagnetic Apocalypse — And How to Stop It

For scary speculation about the end of civilization in 2012, people usually turn to followers of cryptic Mayan prophecy, not scientists. But that's exactly what a group of NASA-assembled researchers described in a chilling report issued earlier this year on the destructive potential of solar storms.

Entitled "Severe Space Weather Events — Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts," it describes the consequences of solar flares unleashing waves of energy that could disrupt Earth's magnetic field, overwhelming high-voltage transformers with vast electrical currents and short-circuiting energy grids. Such a catastrophe would cost the United States "$1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year," concluded the panel, and "full recovery could take four to 10 years." That would, of course, be just a fraction of global damages. 

Needless to say, shorting out the electrical grid would cause major disruptions to developed nations and their economies.

Worse yet, the next period of intense solar activity is expected in 2012, and coincides with the presence of an unusually large hole in Earth's geomagnetic shield, meaning we'll have less protection than usual from the solar flares.

The report received relatively little attention, perhaps because of 2012's supernatural connotations. Mayan astronomers supposedly predicted that 2012 would mark the calamitous "birth of a new era."

But the report is credible enough that some scientists and engineers are beginning to take the electromagnetic threat seriously. According to Lawrence Joseph, author of "Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End," "I've been following this topic for almost five years, and it wasn't until the report came out that this really began to freak me out." 

Wired.com talked to Joseph and John Kappenman, CEO of electromagnetic damage consulting company MetaTech, about the possibility of geomagnetic apocalypse — and how to stop it.

Wired.com: Do you think it's coincidence that the Mayans predicted apocalypse on the exact date when astronomers say the sun will next reach a period of maximum turbulence?

Lawrence Joseph: I have enormous respect for Mayan astronomers. It disinclines me to dismiss this as a coincidence. But I recommend people verify that the Mayans prophesied what people say they did. I went to Guatemala and spent a week with two Mayan shamans who spent 20 years talking to other shamans about the prophecies. They confirmed that the Maya do see 2012 as a great turning point. Not the end of the world, not the great off-switch in the sky, but the birth of the fifth age.

Wired.com: Isn't a great off-switch in the sky exactly what's described in the report?

Joseph: The chair of the NASA workshop was Dan Baker at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Some of his comments, and the comments he approved in the report, are very strong about the potential connection between coronal mass ejections and power grids here on Earth. There's a direct relationship between how technologically sophisticated a society is and how badly it could be hurt. That's the meta-message of the report.

I had the good fortune last week to meet with John Kappenman at MetaTech. He took me through a meticulous two-hour presentation about just how vulnerable the power grid is, and how it becomes more vulnerable as higher voltages are sent across it. He sees it as a big antenna for space weather outbursts.

Wired.com: Why is it so vulnerable?

Joseph: Ultra-high voltage transformers  become more finicky as energy demands are greater. Around 50 percent already can't handle the current they're designed for. A little extra current coming in at odd times can slip them over the edge.

The ultra-high voltage transformers, the 500,000- and 700,000-kilovolt transformers, are particularly vulnerable. The United States uses more of these than anyone else. China is trying to implement some million-kilovolt transformers, but I'm not sure they're online yet.

Kappenman also points out that when the transformers blow, they can't be fixed in the field. They often can't be fixed at all. Right now there's a one- to three-year lag time between placing an order and getting a new one.

According to Kappenman, there's an as-yet-untested plan for inserting ground resistors into the power grid. It makes the handling a little more complicated, but apparently isn't anything the operators can't handle. I'm not sure he'd say these could be in place by 2012, as it's difficult to establish standards, and utilities are generally regulated on a state-by-state basis. You'd have quite a legal thicket. But it still might be possible to get some measure of protection in by the next solar climax.

Wired.com:  Why can't we just shut down the grid when we see a storm coming, and start it up again afterwards?

Joseph: Power grid operators now rely on one satellite called ACE, which sits about a million miles out from Earth in what's called the gravity well, the balancing point between sun and earth. It was designed to run for five years. It's 11 years old, is losing steam, and there are no plans to replace it.

ACE provides about 15 to 45 minutes of heads-up to power plant operators if something's coming in. They can shunt loads, or shut different parts of the grid. But to just shut the grid off and restart it is a $10 billion proposition, and there is lots of resistance to doing so. Many times these storms hit at the north pole, and don't move south far enough to hit us. It's a difficult call to make, and false alarms really piss people off. Lots of money is lost and damage incurred. But in Kappenman's view, and in lots of others, this time burnt could really mean burnt.

Wired.com: Do you live your life differently now?

Joseph: I've been following this topic for almost five years. It wasn't until the report came out that it began to freak me out.

Up until this point, I firmly believed that the possibility of 2012 being catastrophic in some way was worth investigating. The report made it a little too real. That document can't be ignored. And it was even written before  the THEMIS satellite discovered a gigantic hole in  Earth's magnetic shield. Ten or twenty times more particles are coming through this crack than expected. And astronomers predict that the way the sun's polarity will flip in 2012 will make it point exactly the way we don't want it to in terms of evading Earth's magnetic field. It's an astonoshingly bad set of coincidences.

Wired.com: If Barack Obama said, "Lets' prepare," and there weren't any bureaucratic hurdles, could we still be ready in time?

Joseph: I believe so. I'd ask the President to slipstream behind stimulus package funds already appropriated for smart grids, which are supposed to improve grid efficiency and help transfer high energies at peak times. There's a framework there. Working within that, you could carve out some money for the ground resistors program, if those tests work, and have the initial momentum for cutting through the red tape. It'd be a place to start.

See Also:

• Sunspot Appearance Marks Beginning of New Solar Cycle
• Apocalypse Prep Friday: Step One, Buy an Ark
• Yucatan Jungles Are Feral Maya Gardens
• Scientists Discover What Makes Northern Lights Dance

Images: 1. NASA  2. MetaTech

Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Apr 2009 | 8:09 pm

Methane Climate Shock Unlikely, Study Says

Catastrophic climate change from methane release may be less likely than thought.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Apr 2009 | 7:12 pm

SLIDE SHOW: The Week's Top Stories

Browse through images from the week's top stories here.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Apr 2009 | 7:12 pm

Why NFL Draft Picks Often Fail (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Every April, general managers and head coaches fear that their NFL Draft selection of "can't miss" college players may end up being added to the long list of past multi-million dollar draft mistakes.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Apr 2009 | 6:48 pm

How to keep clean in space

The International Space Station has no shower, so how do astronauts wash themselves? The European Space Agency astronaut Frank de Winne answers your questions

The next time you play "Name a Famous Belgian", instead of rattling off the usual suspects, such as Poirot, Eddy Merckx and Audrey Hepburn, throw Frank de Winne's name in there.

Frank is a legend in the making. He graduated from the Empire Test Pilots' School at Boscombe Down, won the McKenna Trophy there, landed a crippled F-16 that could otherwise have crashed in a populated area, and will soon become the first European commander of a Space Station expedition.

I was lucky enough to chat to Frank at what turned out to be a delayed launch of the European Columbus module back in 2007. Some astronauts are almost robotic in nature and tough conversationally, but Frank was great fun and fascinating to chat to.

The European Space Agency is now inviting anyone out there to submit questions to Frank about life as an astronaut. I'm going to think some up over the weekend...such as what Britain loses out on by refusing to fund an astronaut through the ESA corps.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 24 Apr 2009 | 5:44 pm

Speculation swirls over the cause of death of polo horses in Florida

• Report: Chemist mistakenly added too much sodium selenite
• University of Florida concludes investigations
• Questions raised over the lack of regulations

Speculation over the cause of the deaths of 21 of the world's finest polo horses at the US Open championships last Sunday is focusing on a naturally occurring chemical that may have been administered to the animals at a dosage high enough to render it poisonous.

The horses died in quick succession amid scenes of pandemonium in Wellington, Florida, where the championships, one of the highlights of international polo, are held every year. The animals grew overheated, collapsed and had heart attacks.

Yesterday a pharmacy in Ocala, Florida admitted that it had wrongly concocted a cocktail of vitamins and minerals that was given to horses belonging to the Venezuelan-based Lechuza Caracas team. Franck's Pharmacy said that it had incorrectly gauged the strength of one ingredient.

According to La Nación, the national Argentinian newspaper, the ingredient in question was sodium selenite, a salt made from selenium. The paper, citing anonymous sources, said that the prescription had requested 0.5 mg of sodium selenite per millilitre of horse supplement, but the chemist had mistakenly included 5 mg, or ten times that amount. Selenium is regarded as harmless at low doses, but as potentially poisonous at higher concentrations.

Experts at the University of Florida's college of veterinary medicine, who have been carrying out tests on the dead horses, said that they have completed their investigations. They are understood to have identified the likely chemical culprit behind the tragedy and have passed the details on to the authorities, but are not commenting on the nature of their findings.

As the focus narrows on selenium, questions are certain to be raised with the US Polo Association, which manages the sport, as to why it has failed to impose regulation of the drugs and supplements administered to polo horses. There are no rules over what the ponies can be given, unlike in the UK where random testing is carried out.

A committee of the USPA meets tomorrow in Wellington for its yearly discussion on the welfare of polo horses. The organisation is likely to address mounting calls to reform its guidelines.

The supplement given to the Lechuza Caracas horses was a cocktail modelled on a commercial drug called Biodyl. It is made in France, and is widely used legally there and in other countries, but it has never been approved in the US.

The US food and drug administration, which regulates animal treatments of this sort, allows the compounding of commercial drugs only under highly limited circumstances. It is carrying out its own investigation into whether the events that lead up to last Sunday's disaster were unlawful.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 24 Apr 2009 | 5:33 pm

Tiddles the cat enjoys better protection from charlatans than you or I

Only fully trained vets are allowed to use homeopathic remedies to treat pets, but anybody can call themselves a homeopath and start treating people

I am about to embark on a series of lectures, debates and discussions to promote the paperback publication of our book Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. The first event is a public debate organised by King's College School of Medicine: "This house believes that complementary and alternative therapies do more harm than good."

One of the therapies under discussion will be homeopathy, and the evidence from clinical trials suggests that homeopathic pills are nothing more than placebos. Bearing in mind that homeopathic remedies are generally so diluted that they contain no active remedy, it seems obvious they can be nothing more than placebos. However, if previous outings are anything to go by, it will not be very long before someone at the King's College debate sticks up a hand and says: "Homeopathy must work, because it helped my pet cat!"

It is an interesting point, and one that sways many people who already have sympathies towards alternative medicine. After all, the placebo effect only works because the patient believes that a pill is supposed to be effective, and presumably Tiddles has no such belief system. So what is going on?

There are three possible explanations. First, if Tiddles has been conditioned to associate taking pills with improved health then it is conceivable that there is a placebo effect. Second, and more likely, it is possible that the owner selectively sees signs of recovery and falsely attributes them to the homeopathic pill, when they might have been due to natural healing processes or a conventional treatment that was happening in parallel. In other words, the owner is a biased observer. Third, we have to consider the unlikely possibility that homeopathy might be genuinely effective.

As it is World Veterinary Day tomorrow, let's celebrate the fact that hard-working veterinary researchers have been busy conducting lots of clinical trials to get to the bottom of the mystery. The evidence is not consistent, but a trend does develop if we focus on the better-quality trials.

For example, in 2003 the National Veterinary Institute in Sweden conducted a double-blind trial of the homeopathic remedy Podophyllum as a cure for diarrhoea in calves, and it found no evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy. In 2005, a Cambridge University research group conducted a double-blind trial to compare homeopathy against a negative control – a "dummy pill" – as a treatment for mastitis in 250 cows. An objective way of checking for any improvement in inflammation of the udder is to count the number of white blood cells in the cow's milk, and the conclusion was that homeopathy was no more effective than the negative control.

In short, the bad and unsurprising news for Tiddles is that homeopathy, with its lack of any active ingredient, does not work.

Nevertheless, a small fraction of vets endorse, promote and practise homeopathy, much to the frustration of their colleagues. Writing in the Veterinary Times in 2005, the Sussex vet Richard Edwards stated: "I used to be a sceptic. Now I am a cynical sceptic and I very much hope that the silent majority of this profession speak up soon and voice their own scepticism. We have all sworn to uphold the welfare of animals in our care, yet we continue to allow practices which prevent the application of conventional treatments, which are proven to work, in favour of remedies which are based on myth, faith and possibly deliberate fraud."

To highlight the problem, one group of vets established a spoof organisation called the British Veterinary Voodoo Society. They were particularly annoyed that the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons was willing to publish an official list of homeopathic vets, thereby giving undeserved credibility to homeopathic remedies.

The only consolation is that homeopathy can only be practised on animals by a fully trained vet or under the supervision of one, because it is forbidden for the average high street homeopath to treat animals on their own. So Tiddles should be safe from the worst excesses of homeopathy.

Unfortunately, humans are not as lucky as pets. High street homeopaths, who typically do not have any serious medical training, are allowed to treat you and me for almost any condition. Indeed, it is an astonishing and shocking fact that anybody reading this column could call himself or herself a homeopath, create a fancy sign, put it on the front door, stick an advert in the local newspaper and start treating people.

Perhaps one day humans will get the same protection from homeopaths that animals already have.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 24 Apr 2009 | 5:28 pm

Gray whales granted rare reprieve

Oil firms shelve plans to carry out undersea seismic work to ensure the gray whales' breeding season is undisturbed.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Apr 2009 | 5:18 pm

Swine flu epidemic kills 16 in Mexico

Fears of a pandemic rise as authorities close public buildings in an attempt to control the spread of the virus

An epidemic of a swine flu never identified before has broken out in Mexico City killing at least 16 people so far and raising fears of a pandemic.

All schools, museums, libraries and state-run theatres in the metropolitan area were closed today in an attempt to control the spread of the virus that authorities say may be linked to a further 45 deaths.

"This is a new virus that we haven't seen before," health minister Jose Angel Córdova said in an interview with MVS radio. "We have taken these measures because this is a virus that has the potential to become a pandemic."

The authorities say they are investigating close to 1,000 suspicious cases of flu that they are concerned may prove to be caused by the new virus. Most are in the metropolitan area of 20 million people, although three other Mexican states have also been affected to a lesser degree.

There have also been seven reported cases of the same virus reported in the United States, five in Southern California and two in Texas. All those patients have recovered.

The Mexican minister said the authorities were considering extending the precautions to include shutting down workplaces as well as public buildings, but for the moment urged employers to be tolerant of absences.

He said that while the situation was "very worrying" he believed the epidemic "is controllable".

The impact of the preventative measures on city life was felt immediately as the population woke up to news of the epidemic that was announced in a late night statement. Radio and TV stations repeated official advice to stay away from crowded places "unless urgently necessary," and to seek medical help at the first sign of the very high fevers and acute respiratory symptoms associated with the illness.

At Mexico City's biggest airport, airlines began requiring passengers checking in for domestic and international flights to fill out forms to help decide who could be at risk of carrying the virus. Anybody deemed to be so was reportedly asked not to fly.

Meanwhile, the media was flooded with questions from city dwellers concerned about everything from the dangers of eating pork to travel on the metro.

Many people heading to work in the morning wore blue surgical face masks, and chemists said their supplies were running out.

The partial shutting down of the metropolis was a dramatic reversal from the government's previous position that minimised the unusual number of flu deaths picked up by the media, saying it was due to an extension of winter.

Córdova said the sudden change of tack happened when samples analysed in highly specialised laboratories in Canada and the US revealed that the virus causing the deaths was a completely different strain.

The Geneva-based WHO said it was concerned about the epidemic and had activated its Strategic Health Operations Centre. The agency added that it was in daily contact with US, Canadian and Mexican authorities.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 24 Apr 2009 | 4:02 pm

Threat to European biodiversity 'as serious as climate change'

Most of Europe's species and habitats are in poor condition and the risk of extinction continues to rise, environment chiefs are to warn at a major biodiversity conference in Athens this week

The natural world across Europe is suffering a crisis as serious as the threat of climate change, Europe's environment chiefs are to warn this week.

A report from the European Environment Agency (EEA) to be published next month sounds the alarm that most species and habitats across the continent are in poor condition and the risk of extinction continues to rise.

New figures for the UK also show that even the most important and rare plants and animals are suffering: eight out of 10 habitats and half of species given the highest level of European protection are in an "unfavourable" condition.

Species at risk in the UK range from insects like the honeybee and swallowtail butterfly, to mammals and birds at the top of the food chain such as the otter and the golden eagle, said the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH).

The losses threaten to undermine vital ecosystem services like clean water and fertile soils, which underpin both quality of life and the economy, said Jacqueline McGlade, the EEA's executive director.

"Much of our economy in Europe relies on the fact we have natural resources underpinning everything," McGlade told the Guardian. The losses of wildlife and habitat are a threat to being able to live sustainably within the enviroment in the future, she said. "Some of the losses are irreversible."

McGlade will present findings from the agency report at a major conference next week called by the European environment commissioner Stavros Dimas. He is worried that the European commission has failed to meet a pledge to halt biodiversity loss by 2010, and recently warned "the loss of biodiversity is a global threat that is every bit as serious as climate change".

"The reasons that we are losing biodiversity are well known: destruction of habitats, pollution, over-exploitation, invasive species and, most recently, climate change," Dimas will tell the conference in Athens. "The compound effect of these forces is terrifying."

At another high-level conference in London on Wednesday, organised by the CEH, leaders from business, government, academics and NGOs will warn that ecosystems underpin human lifestyles from air, water and food to resources for industry.

Professor Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientific adviser and president of the Royal Society, said: "Our massive and unintended experiment on the planet's reaction to unsustainable levels of human impacts is approaching crisis point. The future is not yet beyond rescue, provided we take appropriate action with due urgency."

The EEA report says although there have been some conservation successes, including halting the decline of common songbirds, the "overall status and trends of most species and habitats give rise to concern".

Figures for the habitats and species awarded special protection under the EU habitats directive reveal that across 40 countries of Europe and the former Soviet Union, 50-85% of habitats and 40-70% of species were in an "unfavourable" condition, and many more could not be assessed because of a lack of information.

Across Europe, the biggest declines from 1990 to 2000 had been for bogs and fenland, heathland and coastal habitats. Woodland, forests and lakes had grown, but these increases were dwarfed by the biggest habitat expansion, which was "constructed, industrial, artificial habitats".

Populations of some European common birds stopped falling in the 1990s, but all groups of birds had fallen in numbers since 1980, and other species groups like butterflies, amphibians and pollinating insects had declined dramatically, said the report.

The report notes that habitats and species in the habitats directive were chosen because they were under threat, and so were harder to conserve.

"Ecosystems generally show a fair amount of resilience," it adds. "Beyond certain thresholds, however, ecosystems may collapse and transform into distinctly different states, potentially with considerable impacts on humans."

Reforms to be put to the conference in Athens include better management of protected areas, which now make up more than 17% of the European Union territory; targets for economic sectors, such as transport, to ensure they do not have a negative impact on the environment; and more work on putting a "value" on ecosystem services so conservationists can argue their case against developers, said McGlade.

"This is not about putting a price on everything, it's a value. This will transform the discussion because somebody can say 'you're eating away at our capital - grassland', or whatever the landscape or species is."

In a statement, Defra, the UK environment department, said the government fully supported strong international targets, but said many conservation schemes were working.

"For example, England's Sites of Special Scientific Interest are in better condition than ever at 88.4% in favourable or recovering condition compared with 57% in 2003," it added.

Globally, last year's annual "red ist" of endangered species from the IUCN conservation organisation warned that the world's mammals face an extinction crisis, with almost one in four of 5,487 known species at risk of disappearing forever.

Some UK species at risk

Mammals - Dormouse, otter

Birds - Golden eagle, cuckoo

Insects - Swallowtail butterfly, garden tiger moth, stag beetle

Amphibians - Great crested newt

Pollinators - Honeybee, several kinds of bumblebee

Source: Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 24 Apr 2009 | 3:53 pm

Egyptian woman dies of bird flu, 3rd fatality in a week

CAIRO (Reuters) - A 33-year-old Egyptian woman has died of the H5N1 bird flu virus, Egypt's third human death from bird flu in a week, the state news agency MENA said on Friday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Apr 2009 | 3:39 pm

Goal of eliminating malaria in sight: experts

* Disease still infects 500 million a year, kills 1 million
Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Apr 2009 | 3:18 pm

Clones, cowboys and raising the dead

Panayiotis Zavos is trying his best to clone humans. He is unlikely to succeed, but is setting a dangerous precedent

Dr Panayiotis Zavos is dangerous maverick. He is trying to clone babies. If it worked, these babies would be the genetic carbon copies of some existing adult or child.

Scientists have been queuing up to point out the dangers of these human experiments. In the case of Dolly it took hundreds of embryos to get one cloned sheep.

There is a real danger of genetic abnormality, stillbirth, or significant disability. Scientists are also pointing out that there is no evidence that Zavos has in fact cloned a human embryo.

Zavos is also trying to create animal-human hybrids. He is putting DNA from a dead girl into cow eggs to try to produce hybrid embryos. Zavos says that he will not transfer these cowgirls into a woman. He is experimenting to improve the technique. Nevertheless, he suggests that putting DNA first into a cow egg and then later into a human egg might make cloning more efficient. So he is thinking of transferring material from hybrid embryos into a woman.

It is worth noting that this same method of making animal-human hybrid embryos has just been legalised in the United Kingdom. In the debates over the human fertilisation and embryology bill politicians repeatedly stated that hybrid embryos were important for research on diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. I suspected at the time that the whole hybrid-embryo story was a mixture of hype and cruel deception. Tellingly, immediately after the bill was passed, the Medical Research Council announced it would not fund the proposed hybrid embryo research.

It is very unlikely that Dr Zavos will succeed in what he is trying to do. However, the creating of animal-human hybrid embryos may prove helpful to Zavos or to others who follow him. It is hard to tell. It would be a bitter irony if an ethically dubious technique, legalised despite its ineffectiveness in research, proved to be an effective step towards the first clone baby.

What though would be wrong with cloning a baby, if we could overcome the safety problems? For one thing, cloning would create an unfair burden of expectation on any child. Of course every child both benefits from the hopes and suffers from the expectations of their parents. On the positive side most parents I know try to encourage their children to develop their talents. I think of my colleagues ferrying children back from swimming practice or orchestra. On the other side I have friends who suffered from living their parents' dreams rather than their own and who have spent much of their adult life trying to recover from this.

A clone would live his or her whole life in the shadow of someone who had already lived. The existing pressures of expectation on children are bad enough. How much worse to be born as a clone? Worse still to be the cloned replacement for a child who had died. You could never be that child. You cannot replace the irreplaceable. Not even Dr Zavos can raise a child from the dead.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 24 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Hitler Watercolors Draw Big Bid at Auction

Mediocre watercolors, claimed to be the work of Adolph Hitler, sell for $143,358.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Apr 2009 | 2:10 pm

World premiere of brain orchestra

An orchestra that plays music based on measuring brain waves has made its debut.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Apr 2009 | 1:49 pm

Dead Star Debris Reveals Earth-Like Traces

About 1 to 3 percent of dead stars could have hosted Earth-like worlds.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Apr 2009 | 1:30 pm

More magic in gamma ray astronomy

Greater insights into some of the most violent stellar events could come from expansion of the Magic telescope.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Apr 2009 | 1:08 pm