Greenhouse Gases Continue To Climb Despite Economic Slump

Two of the most important climate change gases increased last year, according to a preliminary analysis for NOAA's annual greenhouse gas index, which tracks data from 60 sites around the world.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Teams Are Not Innovative When Under Constant Time Pressure

Many people work better under a tight deadline, but a new study suggests that it is a mistake to assume that a team can work effectively under constant time pressure and remain engaged and innovative with the work.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

'Non-surgical' Method For Chronic Tendinosis Of The Achilles Tendon

Researchers have found an alternative, "non-surgical" method to treat chronic tendinosis (tendinitis) of the Achilles tendon that fails conservative treatment, according to a study performed at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago, Ill.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

New Effort To Discover Habitable Earth-like Planets Around Other Stars

Astronomers have announced plans to build an ultra-stable, high-precision spectrograph for the Science and Technology Facilities Council's 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope in an effort to discover habitable Earth-like planets around other stars.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Novel Cancer Drug Reduces Neuroblastoma Growth By 75 Percent

Researchers have found a new drug that restricts the growth of neuroblastoma, a childhood brain cancer.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Popular Gaming System May Offer Radiologists An Alternative Way To View Patient Images

The popular Wii gaming remote may offer radiologists a fun, alternative method to using a standard mouse and keyboard to navigate through patient images, according to a study performed at the New-York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, N.Y. The remote may also offer radiologists relief from repetitive motion injuries as a result of using a mouse and keyboard.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Grouping Muscles To Make Controlling Limbs Easier

Researchers have shown that it could be possible to control a limb by stimulating groups of muscles rather than individual muscles -- a finding that could be useful in future treatments of paralysis patients. The research team used a model of the muscles in a frog's hind leg to perform a computational analysis that shows researchers can control the limb using muscle groups just about as well as if they controlled individual muscles.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Drug That Inhibits Acute Leukemia Cell Growth Discovered

Researchers have discovered how to turn off a certain receptor that promotes the growth of leukemia cells.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Ultrasound Can Help Low-risk Patients Avoid Invasive Thyroid Biopsy

The prevalence of benign thyroid nodules is high and there are certain ultrasound features, suggesting malignancy, that can help radiologists determine whether or not a biopsy is needed, according to a study performed at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, San Francisco, Calif.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Anomalous White Dwarfs: Largest Collection Of White Dwarfs Made Of Helium Discovered

Twenty-four unusual stars, 18 of them newly discovered, have been observed in new Hubble telescope images. The stars are white dwarfs, a common type of dead star, but they are odd because they are made of helium rather than the usual carbon and oxygen. These helium-core white dwarfs may have had their lives cut short because of their orbital dance around a partner star.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

10 New Zealand students 'likely' have swine flu (AP)

AP - New Zealand said Sunday that 10 students "likely" have swine flu after a school trip to Mexico, as governments across Asia began quarantining those with symptoms of the deadly virus and some issued travel warnings for Mexico.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Apr 2009 | 11:21 am

Global flu fears as 68 die and virus spreads

• BA cabin steward in isolation ward
• Mexico invokes special measures

A British Airways cabin steward is being treated in an isolation unit at a London hospital after falling ill on a flight from Mexico, where a killer virus is believed to have caused at least 68 deaths and sparked widespread panic. Health experts say it has the potential to become a global pandemic.

The BA steward was undergoing tests in a London hospital for the swine flu virus after arriving on a flight from Mexico City. It is the first suspected case of the new flu strain to be reported in Europe, prompting fears it may have spread across the Atlantic from Mexico.

The World Health Organisation says the swine flu strain - a unique mix of human, pig and bird viruses - constituted a public health emergency of international concern. Twenty people are known to have died in Mexico so far out of a total of 1,004 reported cases, and 48 more deaths are thought to be attributable to the outbreak.

At least nine swine flu cases have been reported in California and Texas. The most recently reported California case, the seventh there, was a 35-year-old woman who was treated in hospital but recovered. The woman, whose illness began in early April, had no known contact with the other cases.

At least two more cases have been confirmed in Kansas, bringing the US total to 11. State health officials said yesterday they had confirmed swine flu in a married couple living in the central part of the state after the husband visited Mexico. They have not been hospitalised, and the state described their illnesses as mild. Dr Jason Eberhart-Phillips, Kansas's state health officer, said: "Fortunately, the man and woman understand the gravity of the situation and are very willing to isolate themselves."

Additionally, at least eight students at a New York high school were last night also believed to have a form of human swine flu, but authorities are not yet certain if it is the same strain that has killed people in Mexico.

The 38-year-old BA steward is being kept in Northwick Park hospital in north-west London, which has a specialist ward for patients with suspected tropical and infectious diseases, while doctors carry out swabs and blood tests. A Health Protection Agency spokeswoman said: "We are aware of a patient admitted to a London hospital with reported travel history to Mexico. As a precautionary measure the patient is being tested for a range of respiratory and other illnesses ... At present there have been no confirmed cases of human swine flu in the UK or anywhere in Europe."

The crew member, who flew out to Mexico on 20 April, is understood to have shown symptoms of fever before embarking yesterday for the return leg to Heathrow. He had been suffering from high temperature, aches and dizziness the night before the return flight but was allowed through health controls at Mexico City airport to report for duty.

He collapsed around two hours into the flight, and was isolated from the other passengers. None of the other crew members or passengers reported similar symptoms. A BA spokeswoman said: "We can confirm one of our cabin crew felt unwell during the flight from Mexico and was taken to hospital on arrival at Heathrow. The Port Health Authority met the flight at Heathrow and no other passengers or crew were detained."

The Mexican government yesterday issued a decree authorising President Felipe Calderón to invoke powers allowing the country's health department to isolate patients and inspect homes, travellers and baggage. Mexico's health secretary, José Angel Córdova, said: "We are very, very concerned."

Yesterday, people in Mexico City were being ordered not to kiss or shake hands. Football matches went ahead without spectators, theatres, shops and museums were closed, staff were inside locked schools scrubbing classrooms with disinfectant, and health workers patrolled buses, ordering sickly looking people home.

The WHO stopped short of issuing a worldwide alert over the swine flu strain, but its director general, Dr Margaret Chan, said that option remained "on the table".

Scientists have long feared that a new flu virus could launch a worldwide pandemic. Evolving when different flu viruses infect a pig, a person or a bird, mingling their genetic material, a hybrid could spread quickly because humans would have no natural defences.

"We are seeing a range of severity of the disease, from mild to severe, and of course death," said Chan. "The eight cases in the US have been mild in terms of severity and it is too premature to calculate the mortality rate of this disease."

Any doubts over the extent of the emergency were dispelled last night by the sight of soldiers handing out blue surgical masks to pedestrians and motorists along Mexico City's central boulevard, Paseo de la Reforma. With TV and radio calling on the population to seek medical advice for any flu-like symptoms, queues grew at clinics and hospitals across the city.

Calderón said his government learned only on Thursday night what kind of virus Mexico was facing after tests by specialist laboratories in Canada confirmed the outbreak as a type - labelled A/H1N1 - not previously seen in pigs or humans. Few of the cases appear to have had any contact with live pigs.

The WHO said the virus appeared to be able to spread from human to human and contained human virus, avian virus and pig viruses from North America, Europe and Asia.

Given how quickly flu can spread, there might be cases incubating around the world already, said Dr Michael Osterholm at the University of Minnesota: "Hundreds and thousands of travellers come in and out [of Mexico] every day."

It was unclear how much protection current vaccines might offer. A "seed stock" genetically matched to the new virus has already been created by the US Centres for Disease Control. If the US government decides vaccine production is necessary, it would be used by manufacturers to get started.

At Mexico City's international airport, passengers were questioned to try to prevent anyone with flu symptoms from boarding aircraft and spreading the disease. The Foreign Office issued a warning to UK travellers about the outbreak, but stopped short of recommending people did not visit Mexico. US health officials took a similar line, urging visitors to wash their hands frequently.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Call for fishing ban in a third of oceans

One third of the world's oceans must be closed to fishing for 20 years if depleted stocks are to recover, scientists and conservation groups have warned.

Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at the University of York, has reviewed 100 scientific papers identifying the scale of closure needed. "All are leaning in a similar direction," he said, "which is that 20-40% of the sea should be protected."

Friends of the Earth, the Marine Conservation Society and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds all support the idea of a 30% closure.

The proposal comes in the wake of a green paper calling for radical reform of the common fisheries policy, which EU ministers admit has failed. It reveals that 88% of European Union stocks are overfished (against a global average of 25%), while 30% are "outside safe biological limits", meaning they cannot reproduce as normal because the parenting population is too depleted.

The European Commission suggests a reduction in fleet size and a dramatic cut in fishing among its series of measures, but Roberts believes these will not work without the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs).

"If we are ever going to have sustainable fisheries, MPA networks are essential," he said. In Iceland, Canada and the US, MPAs have "brought real increases in fish populations and real recovery of seabed habitats", he added.

The most convincing example is New England, where stocks, said Roberts, were "in a dreadful state" in the 1990s. Off Georges Bank, nearly 20,000 sq km - a quarter of the fishing grounds - was closed to vessels and fishing was reduced by "a draconian 50%". In the last 10 years, Roberts said, there had been a "spectacular recovery". Off Lundy Island in Devon, one of only three no-take zones (similar to MPAs) in British waters, the lobster population is eight times higher within the reserve. "We have already seen benefits in the lobster fishery immediately outside it," said Giles Bartlett, fisheries policy officer at WWF.

But the fishing industry says that pressure on stocks just outside a protected area can "mitigate against the impact" of the MPA. "It almost creates a bull's-eye for fishermen, who know the area on the periphery isn't protected," said Tom Rossiter, research and development manager at Seafish, the UK seafood industry body. "If you shut off an MPA, it will move the fishing effort elsewhere."

There are currently 4,000 MPAs covering just 0.8% of the world's oceans.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Firms forced to supply cheap medicines

Poor countries get drugs at cost price - or we won't licence our research to you, says Edinburgh University

Edinburgh is to become the first British university to help make cheap medicines available to the developing world by licensing research to pharmaceutical companies only on condition that poorer communities get life-saving drugs at cost price.

One in three people around the world has no access to basic medicines and 10 million children a year die for want of affordable and effective drugs. Now, under pressure from students, Edinburgh aims to force companies to supply cheap drugs in return for using patents held by the university. The idea has built on a World Health Organisation campaign supported by Bill Gates's Gates Foundation, Bill Clinton's Clinton HIV/Aids Initiative and the Department for International Development.

"Our role as a world-leading research university extends beyond innovation. We have a responsibility to make a significant and socially responsible contribution to society at large," said Professor David Webb, of the School of Clinical Sciences and Community Health. "There is a huge amount of work going on in the university at the moment into a range of viruses and conditions such as ticks and tick-borne pathogens, malaria and HIV. Some of the big universities in the United States are already going down the same route as us and Oxford has a similar policy they are looking to put into place.

"Of the challenges facing the world at present, global health and access to medicines is among the most crucial. We are hopeful that by making our medicines as accessible as possible to those in greatest need, we will make a real difference to the millions of people who die from often-preventable diseases every year."

More than a billion people are affected by diseases such as trypanosomiasis - of which sleeping sickness is one form - and cholera, for which there are very few safe and effective treatments. The victims are often from poorer countries, so there is little incentive for western companies to invest in research and development. Where medicines do exist, such as those for HIV, heart disease and diabetes, they are often prohibitively expensive outside of western economies.

Of the 35 million deaths from chronic disease that occurred in 2005, 80% occurred in low- and middle-income countries. However, scientists working within a number of universities have realised the influence they can have to intervene in the situation. Between 1991 and 2005, the number of patents held by universities more than doubled, giving them leverage over how the big pharmaceutical companies use their research.

Students at Edinburgh spent two years campaigning for the university to act. Last November, the Student Association Annual General Assembly voted unanimously in favour of a motion demanding acceptance of the licensing policy.

Mori Mansouri, UK National Coordinator for Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, described Edinburgh's adoption of the policy as a major step forward. "We want to ensure every health-related innovation developed in campus laboratories is made available in the developing world at the lowest possible cost, and increase the amount and impact of university research on neglected diseases," he said.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Risks of taking 'legal-high' drugs

Although we have laws to control access to drugs such as cocaine and cannabis, we tolerate so-called "head shops" on our high streets which sell the paraphernalia (snorters, pipes, rolling paper, scales) used to consume them. Over the last few years, the stimulant tablets and capsules also sold by these shops and market stalls have changed. Previously, they were fairly benign herbal products containing mostly caffeine or ephedrine from the herbs guarana and ephedra, whose effects were not much more than a strong cup of coffee.

Recently, products containing compounds not previously used as drugs have been added. These are intended to be legal alternatives to amphetamine, cocaine or ecstasy. The products originated in New Zealand and contained benzylpiperazine (BZP). A multi-million pound industry exported these products all over the world. BZP has never been tested or marketed as a pharmaceutical, so its health consequences were unknown. It proved to be a moderately powerful stimulant, but with unpleasant side effects. Consequently, New Zealand added it to its controlled drugs legislation, as did the European Union - all member states were required to control it by March 2009 (the UK legislation is expected to be enacted by late summer).

The response of the producers was to market a new generation of "BZP-free" products. They needed to find compounds that were not controlled as drugs and were already available or could be readily synthesised. Many compounds are minor modifications of chemical structures - just enough to bring them outside legal controls.

There is a risk that these minor modifications might result in a dramatically different toxicity profile. They may also interact with legitimate medication; e.g. the contraceptive pill, or HIV medication. The chemicals are also not necessarily very pure. The packaging is usually misleading and they are often marked "not for human consumption", "plant feeder", "plant growth inhibitor", or even "bath salts". This is an attempt to avoid an assertion from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulation Agency (MHRA) that they are illegally selling medicines. There is usually a list of vitamins and a hint at the active ingredient such as "ketones". Products labelled as "BZP-free" have, on our analysis, been found to contain BZP.

No one can know what the risks of taking these products are. Tictac Communications at St George's University of London has, in an ad hoc fashion, monitored the appearance of these products for several years by test purchasing from shops and websites and analysing the contents of club "amnesty bins".

The results are disseminated through Tictac, a drug identification database, to healthcare and law and order professionals.

However, the consequence of controlling emerging compounds is to encourage the production of new ones. In order to get off this treadmill we need to honestly inform retailers and consumers of the risks. People buying a tablet from a high street shop may make unwarranted assumptions about its safety and not expect to end their night out in their local A & E with cardiovascular toxicity or seizures.

• Dr John Ramsey is a toxicologist and director of the Tictac Communications drugs database at St George's medical school in London

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Dinosaurs Lived in the Arctic (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - You know the scenario: 65 million years ago, a big meteor crash sets off volcanoes galore, dust and smoke fill the air, dinosaurs go belly up.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 3:56 pm

Republican senator pushes biotech funding (Reuters)

Reuters - A Senate Republican who could prove a swing vote in the U.S. healthcare debate said on Saturday he wanted a new agency to help struggling biotech companies as part of a future healthcare system.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Apr 2009 | 12:04 pm