New Human Movement Model Can Aid In Studying Epidemic Outbreaks, Public Planning

Researchers have developed a new statistical model that simulates human mobility patterns, mimicking the way people move over the course of a day, a month or longer. The model is the first to represent the regular movement patterns of humans using statistical data. The model has a host of potential uses, ranging from land use planning to public health studies of epidemic disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Eating Fatty Fish And Marine Omega-3 Fatty Acids May Reduce Risk Of Heart Failure

Eating fatty fish and marine omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in fish oil, seems to protect men from heart failure, according to one of the largest studies to investigate the association.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

New Blow Against Dinosaur-killing Asteroid Theory, Geologists Find

The enduringly popular theory that the Chicxulub crater holds the clue to the demise of the dinosaurs, along with some 65 percent of all species 65 million years ago, is challenged in a new article. A impact didn't lead to mass extinction 65 million years ago, geologists find.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Buddhist Deity Meditation Temporarily Augments Visuospatial Abilities, Study Suggests

The results showed that following the meditation period, practitioners of the DY style of meditation showed a dramatic improvement on both the mental rotation task and the visual memory task compared to OP practitioners and controls. These results indicate that DY meditation allows practitioners to access greater levels of visuospatial memory resources, compared to when they are not meditating.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Exploding Bubbles Trim The Prostate

In the traditional treatment for prostate growths, a rigid instrument is inserted through the penis and used to scrape away cells lining the walnut-sized gland. Urologists are developing a less invasive way to remove tissue using focused pulses of ultrasound. Their technique, histotripsy, has now been used to safely trim the interiors of aging prostates in the body.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Double-lung Transplants Work Better Than Single For Long-term Survival

Having both lungs replaced instead of just one is the single most important feature determining who lives longest after having a lung transplant, more than doubling an organ recipient's chances of extending their life by over a decade, a study by a team of transplant surgeons shows.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Climate change hitting entire Arctic ecosystem, says report

Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme study tells of profound changes to sea ice and permafrost, among others

Extensive climate change is now affecting every form of life in the Arctic, according to a major new assessment by international polar scientists.

In the past four years, air temperatures have increased, sea ice has declined sharply, surface waters in the Arctic ocean have warmed and permafrost is in some areas rapidly thawing.

In addition, says the report released today at a Norwegian government seminar, plants and trees are growing more vigorously, snow cover is decreasing 1-2% a year and glaciers are shrinking.

Scientists from Norway, Canada, Russia and the US contributed to the Arctic monitoring and assessment programme (Amap) study, which says new factors such as "black carbon" – soot – ozone and methane may now be contributing to global and arctic warming as much as carbon dioxide.

"Black carbon and ozone in particular have a strong seasonal pattern that makes their impacts particularly important in the Arctic," it says.

The report's main findings are:

Land

Permafrost is warming fast and at its margins thawing. Plants are growing more vigorously and densely. In northern Alaska, temperatures have been rising since the 1970s. In Russia, the tree line has advanced up hills and mountains at 10 metres a year. Nearly all glaciers are decreasing in mass, resulting in rising sea levels as the water drains to the ocean.

Summer sea ice

The most striking change in the Arctic in recent years has been the reduction in summer sea ice in 2007. This was 23% less than the previous record low of 5.6m sq kilometres in 2005, and 39% below the 1979-2000 average. New satellite data suggests the ice is much thinner than it used to be. For the first time in existing records, both the north-west and north-east passages were ice-free in summer 2008. However, the 2008 winter ice extent was near the year long-term average.

Greenland

The Greenland ice sheet has continued to melt in the past four years with summer temperatures consistently above the long-term average since the mid 1990s. In 2007, the area experiencing melt was 60% greater than in 1998. Melting lasted 20 days longer than usual at sea level and 53 days longer at 2-3,000m heights.

Warmer waters

In 2007, some ice-free areas were as much as 5C warmer than the long-term average. Arctic waters appear to have warmed as a result of the influx of warmer waters from the Pacific and Atlantic. The loss of reflective, white sea ice also means that more solar radiation is absorbed by the dark water, heating surface layers further.

Black carbon

Black carbon, or soot, is emitted from inefficient burning such as in diesel engines or from the burning of crops. It is warming the Arctic by creating a haze which absorbs sunlight, and it is also deposited on snow, darkening the surface and causing more sunlight to be absorbed.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 28 Apr 2009 | 12:18 pm

Live-in Domestics: Mites As Maids In Tropical Rainforest Sweat Bee Nests

Mites not only inhabit the dust bunnies under your bed, they also occupy the nests of tropical sweat bees where they keep fungi in check. Bees and their young are healthier when mites live-in, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 12:00 pm

Presto! Fast Color-changing Material May Lead To Improved Sunglasses

Researchers in Japan are reporting development of a new so-called "photochromic" material that changes color thousands of times faster than conventional materials when exposed to light. The development could lead to a wide range of new products including improved sunglasses, more powerful computers, dynamic holograms, and better medicines, the researchers say. 
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 12:00 pm

Researchers Identify Gene Associated With Muscular Dystrophy-related Vision Problems

A new study sheds light on a possible genetic cause of the world's third most common type of muscular dystrophy, facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy or FSHD.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 12:00 pm

Autism May Be Linked To Being Firstborn, Breech Births Or Moms 35 Or Older

Children who are firstborn or breech or whose mothers are 35 or older when giving birth are at significantly greater risk for developing an autism spectrum disorder, according to a new study with Utah children.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 12:00 pm

More countries confirm swine flu

Cases of the deadly swine flu virus are confirmed as far afield as New Zealand and Israel as the UN warns it cannot be contained.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:57 am

Earth Watch

Europe's invaders are pushing the green button
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:34 am

Swine flu: WHO raises pandemic threat level

• World is at a 'turning period'
• Britons told not to travel to Mexico
• Mexican death toll passes 150

The World Health Organisation warned today that swine flu can no longer be contained as the virus spread to Asia and the Middle East, with the first cases confirmed in New Zealand and Israel.

As Britain advised holidaymakers not to travel to Mexico, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said the world was now at a "turning period" where it would become clear whether the virus was capable of sustained movement between humans on a large scale, bringing the likelihood of a pandemic a step closer. So far community transmission had been seen in Mexico and the US, he said.

Hartl said it was not clear whether the British couple confirmed to have the virus, Iain and Dawn Askham, had both been infected in Mexico or whether one had infected the other.

Some flights to Mexico from the UK were cancelled this morning and arrangements were being put in place to bring British holidaymakers home after the Foreign Office advised against all but essential travel to the country. All Thomson and First Choice flights to Mexico from Manchester this week have been grounded until restrictions are lifted.

The 11 cases in New Zealand, among students and teachers from a single school who reported fevers and other flu symptoms upon return from a visit to Mexico, are the first in the Asia-Pacific region.

A 26-year-old patient in Netanya, a coastal city north of Tel Aviv in Israel, was infected but was said to have recovered fully.

Passengers due to fly to Mexico with Thomson this morning said they had been offered their money back or an alternative holiday. The company said it was making arrangements to get customers home from Mexico, with repatriation flights starting today.

The Foreign Office advised British citizens living in Mexico to "consider whether they should remain". The Mexican government has closed schools across the country.

Spain confirmed a second case of a patient with swine flu today and South Korea said a woman there had tested positive for swine flu, making her a "probable" case.

The prime minister, Gordon Brown, who will join a meeting of the government's Cobra emergency committee chaired by health secretary Alan Johnson today, said he would take "all urgent action necessary" to try to halt the virus.

Brown said he understood the "very real concern" of Britons but added that the UK was among the best prepared countries in the world.

Last night, the WHO's emergency committee raised the pandemic threat level to phase four out of a possible six, after the death toll in Mexico rose to 152, with nearly 2,000 people believed to be infected, the number of cases in the US doubled and the first infections were confirmed in Britain.

Phase four means that the crisis had taken a significant step towards pandemic, but does not mean one was inevitable. Nonetheless, the WHO said, the virus had spread so far that containment was "not a feasible operation" and the international response should be to try to limit its transmission and treat those affected.

The Scottish couple suffering from swine flu, from Polmont, near Falkirk had been in Mexico on honeymoon in Cancún.

About 22 friends, family and colleagues who had close contact with them were being observed and had been given antiviral drugs. Seven of these were showing "mild symptoms" of the illness. The group being monitored reportedly includes a five-year-old child.

Last night, the Scottish health secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, said the couple were recovering well at Monklands hospital in Airdrie, Lanarkshire.

Medics at Manchester airport treated a passenger arriving from Mexico this morning who had complained of feeling unwell on the flight, the Health Protection Agency said. She has been sent home and has been tested for swine flu.

The first confirmed case in Europe came yesterday in Spain, where 26 other cases are suspected. There are four suspected cases in the Irish Republic.

In an indication of the seriousness with which the threat is being taken in the UK, the Guardian has learned that if the situation deteriorates, Johnson is considering warning the entire population to set up a support network of friends and relatives, so they can be quickly quarantined at home if they are thought to have symptoms. The friends would then collect medicine on their behalf. He abandoned plans to give this advice as one of his four key messages yesterday in a Commons statement.

He told MPs it was too early to say if there was a pandemic, but the UK had been preparing for one for five years and had a stock of 33m anti-flu drugs. He said it was important to note that outside Mexico all those who had shown symptoms of swine flu had recovered.

Mexico's health secretary, José Ángel Córdova, said he expected more people to die. Nearly 2,000 people had been treated in hospital for suspected infection, he said. Half of them had been released.

Córdova admitted that the health authorities lacked the staff to check on all suspected cases. Some foreign health officials fear such difficulties may be contributing to the disease's spread.

In New York, the number of confirmed cases among students at a school rose to 28, with more than 100 suspected. That brought the number of confirmed cases in the US to 42 in five states, twice as many as reported at the weekend.

Peru and Guatemala reported the first suspected infections in other parts of Latin America, where health officials fear swine flu has already spread but so far gone undetected.

Gauging the spread: WHO viral infection phases

Phase one: No animal viruses circulating are causing infections in humans.

Phase two: An animal flu virus is known to have caused human infection and is considered a potential pandemic threat.

Phase three: Limited human-to-human transmission may occur. This does not indicate the virus has gained transmissibility that would cause a pandemic.

Phase four: Human-to-human transmission able to cause "community-level outbreaks". Significant increase in pandemic risk but it is not a foregone conclusion.

Phase five: Human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. A strong signal that pandemic is imminent.

Phase six: Pandemic phase, characterised by community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region along with phase five.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 28 Apr 2009 | 10:57 am

Central Asia holds water summit

The presidents of five Central Asian nations are discussing the contentious issue of regional water supplies.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 10:26 am

BP profit tumbles 62% on sliding oil prices (AFP)

AFP - Oil major BP on Tuesday reported a 62-percent slide in first-quarter net profits to 1.639 billion pounds, as the price of crude halved.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 9:04 am

Forest friends

Keeping the dream of saving tropical forests alive
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 8:36 am

UK funds sea acidification study

The UK government is funding research into ocean acidification, saying it is one of the century's "biggest environmental concerns".
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 5:00 am

Science cash 'to beat food riots'

Food riots are a real threat in some developing countries unless agricultural research funds are boosted, says a UK scientist.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Apr 2009 | 11:48 pm

Parasites Could Be Good for You

In a therapeutic development that makes leeching look positively appealing, scientists say exposure to parasites might actually be good for your immune system.

That icky idea has moved from fringe theory to large-scale clinical trials in recent years, and gained a bit more momentum last week when researchers reported that louse-infested wild mice had very different immune systems than their parasite-free, lab-raised counterparts.

Lice apparently suppressed mouse immune systems, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Since mammals and parasites have co-evolved for millions of years, we might actually rely on parasites for some baseline immune calibration. The modern lack of parasite exposure is one proposed reason for a recent boom in autoimmune diseases, which now afflict about 20 million Americans.

The theory is hypothetical, but it fits with a growing scientific recognition of just how important bacteria are to human health. Large-scale human trials of parasite therapies have already started.

“The dawning realization is this: You are not just your genetic self. You are a community of interacting organisms,” wrote Moises Velasquez-Manoff in a New York Times Magazine article on parasite therapies. “Your ecosystem includes the bacteria that outnumber your genetic cells by 10 to 1, various fungi, viruses and just maybe a few parasites as well. Disturb or remove any key player, and the whole system can come unbalanced.”

See Also:

• Cats Control Rats … With Parasites
• Parasites May Fuel AIDS Epidemic
• Even Viruses Get the Blues
• Gut Bacteria Affect Almost Everything You Do

Citation: “Immunomodulatory parasites and toll-like receptor-mediated tumour necrosis factor alpha responsiveness in wild mammals.” By Joseph A Jackson, Ida M Friberg, Luke Bolch, Ann Lowe, Catriona Ralli, Philip D Harris, Jerzy M Behnke and Janette E Bradley. BMC Biology, Vol. 7, April 22, 2009.

Image: Flickr/Benimoto (Wired Science loves science fairs!)

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 27 Apr 2009 | 11:43 pm

Testing times

Polar bear casts shadow over climate scientists
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Apr 2009 | 11:41 pm

Hospital wards get a makeover to reduce spread of superbugs

Furniture and fittings including chairs, curtains, bedside cabinets and commodes have been redesigned to eliminate any nooks and crannies where bacteria can lurk

It could be the greatest hospital makeover since Florence Nightingale lit an oil lamp and set off on her first ward round.

British designers have come together to give the grim and functional hospital ward a much-needed revamp, and in doing so, they have thrown out the clunky old bedside cabinets, the tired mattresses and dubious-looking commodes and replaced them with more futuristic versions.

The makeover has been prompted not by aesthetic shame, but by medical prudence. The NHS sees the redesign as a way of slashing levels of lethal superbugs in hospital wards.

The results are the culmination of months of work by more than 70 designers at the Design Council, who teamed up with manufacturers to develop new furniture and fittings that are less likely to harbour bugs such as MRSA and C. difficile. The prototypes will be unveiled today at the Design Council's offices in London, before touring the country to give NHS trusts a chance to cast an eye over them.

"There are huge issues with superbugs in hospitals, but it's likely that if we can make the environment easier to clean, we will go a long way to improving the situation. A lot of hospital furniture has nooks and crannies that are repositories for bugs, so the challenge was to design those out," said David Kester, head of the Design Council.

Design teams were despatched to hospitals to look over wards and talk to doctors and nurses about how curtains, bedside cabinets, commodes and other ward furniture were used. The Council then called on designers to come up with smooth, cheap and simple alternatives.

Tom Lloyd, director of London-based Pearson Lloyd, set a team the task of redesigning patients' bedside chairs. The sleek version they arrived at has a smooth plastic shell and magnetised cushions that are easy to remove for cleaning. "If someone has an accident on it and the chair becomes contaminated, it can be cleaned very quickly," Lloyd said.

His team also came up with a redesign of the hospital commode that has fewer than 10 parts, compared with the usual 40 or so.

"A lot of products in hospitals have clips and hinges, latches and catches, bolts and rivets, and you can be sure you will never get those completely clean," Lloyd said. "You have to minimise the ability for germs to become established and breed."

One team of designers was surprised to discover that patients' mattresses are only checked for damage once a year. They designed an intelligent mattress that changes colour if it has been punctured and contaminated with body fluids. The design means nurses can see immediately when a mattress may harbour dangerous bugs.

Another team videoed hospital staff as they pulled the curtains around patients' beds. The footage revealed a "grab zone" where staff always took hold of the curtain. They designed a curtain grip that snaps onto the grab zone, but can be removed and washed. "Curtains are difficult to clean, and this is simple and practical. It makes life a hell of a lot easier," said Kester.

Peter Wilson, a consultant microbiologist at University College Hospital in London, sat on an expert panel convened by the Design Council to assess the new products. He said that doctors and nurses usually pick up bugs from the furniture and fittings around patients, rather than patients themselves.

"If you can make the whole environment smooth and easy to clean with a single wipe, you're going to reduce the number of bugs on staff hands and also on patients," Wilson said. "A lot of the things you see around hospital wards have hardly changed since the war, so it's high time this was done."

The new designs are expected to go on trial in hospitals at the end of the year.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 27 Apr 2009 | 11:13 pm

U.S. pledges to make up for lost time in climate fight (Reuters)

Reuters - The United States gathered China, India and the world's other top greenhouse gas polluters in Washington on Monday to "make up for lost time" and lay the groundwork for a U.N. deal to fight climate change.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Apr 2009 | 11:07 pm

Swine flu: Symptoms and precautions

What is swine flu?

Swine flu normally infects pigs. The virus has "crossed over" to humans before, but previous outbreaks have been small and short-lived. The latest strain is a mixture of pig, avian and human virus. Health officials are concerned that the new strain could cause a wave of infections around the world.

How do humans catch it?

The disease was initially spread by infected pigs, but it spreads between humans in the same way as normal flu, through coughs and sneezes and by touching surfaces contaminated with the virus and then touching the nose or mouth.

What are the symptoms?

Feverish illness, sore throat, headache, tiredness and muscle aches. Some people have reported diarrhoea and vomiting. In young children, warning signs include fast or troubled breathing, a bluish skin tone and irritability.

What should I do if I think I'm infected?

If you have recently returned from Mexico, the US or another country affected by swine flu, the Health Protection Agency advises you to monitor your health for seven days. If you develop flu symptoms, stay at home and phone your GP or NHS Direct. You may need tests. Until you have your results, avoid contact with other people and take precautions. Cover your nose and mouth when you cough or sneeze using tissues and dispose of them immediately. Wash hands regularly with soap and water. Clean surfaces such as door handles.

How can I protect myself?

Follow the hygiene precautions above and keep away from sick people. Standard surgical masks offer some protection, but the most effective are called N-95 masks, which can keep out small infectious viruses.

What treatments are there?

The virus can be treated with Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (zanamivir). Both block the viruses' ability to replicate in the body. The drugs should be given within two days to be most effective. The WHO yesterday ordered the production of a vaccine to combat the swine flu virus.

Will the flu jab help?

The seasonal flu jab might help to reduce symptoms in infected people, but is unlikely to stop the disease.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 27 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Frankenfood Gets Supersized

For the first time, scientists have used genetic modification to increase the levels of multiple, rather than single, nutrients in a crop.

The first corn produced through the technique hasn’t yet been tested for dinner-table safety, but if it succeeds, it may signal the development of a new, super-nutritious generation of GM foods.

“The major message of the paper is that it’s possible to engineer crops with multiple nutrients,” said study co-author Paul Christou, a plant biochemist at Spain’s University of Lleida. “If you look at other nutritionally enhanced GM crops, up until now people have only been able to increase levels of one nutrient or vitamin.”

An estimated 40 to 50 percent of the world’s population suffers from nutrient deficiencies. The reasons for this are complex and sometimes political, but often involve reliance on a few staple crops that do not provide the nutrient balance common to mixed diets in the developed world.

Both conventional plant breeding and the high-tech activation of dormant genes are useful for adding some traits to crops, but they can’t provide a sufficient nutritional boost. Neither can traditional forms of genetic engineering. When researchers attempt to add more than one new nutrient pathway, the genes tend to become scrambled in subsequent generations.

The approach used by Christou’s group debuted last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the same journal that published the latest corn research on Monday. It involves the bombardment of seed genomes with metal particles coated with desired nutrient-boosting genes. This produces a variety of different genomic configurations, some of which prove to be stable.

The researchers hope it will be more helpful than traditional techniques of nutritional genetic modification.

“We’re aiming to produce transgenic plants in which you can provide as many nutrients as possible in one and the same seed,” said Christou.

Christou’s team tested the technique on a variety of corn common in South Africa that’s known to produce low levels of beta carotene. Low levels of the nutrient can lead to blindness.

The resulting plants had double the usual amount of folate, sixfold levels of ascorbate and 169 times more beta carotene. At that level of expression, a single serving of corn can provide a recommended daily beta carotene intake.

The researchers are now experimenting with the addition of genes that enhance production of vitamin E, iron, zinc, calcium and other micronutrients, said Christou.

The study “shows the potential of this transgenic technology for accumulating genes that lead to micronutrient-enhanced crops,” said Rodomiro Ortiz, a researcher at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

Further studies are needed to see if the new nutrients are correctly metabolized by humans, and if the plant is environmentally and toxicologically safe.

According to Christou, the research was funded entirely by public money. The team is trying to convince holders of patented techniques used in their process to allow researchers in the developing world to freely develop the technology. A model for this is the intellectual property guidelines of beta-carotene–enhanced Golden Rice.

“This is not a commercial story,” said Christou. “This is aimed at people in developing countries.”
See Also:

• Monsanto’s Genetically Modified Beets Return
• Plant Tweak Could Let Toxic Soil Feed Millions
• Drought-Resistant Grass Genes Could Spur 21st Century Crops …
• Genomics Could Help Wine Grapes Survive Global Warming

Citation: “Transgenic multivitamin corn through biofortification
of endosperm with three vitamins representing three distinct metabolic pathways.” By Shaista Naqvi, Changfu Zhu, Gemma Farre, Koreen Ramessar, Ludovic Bassie, Jurgen Breitenbach, Dario Perez Cones, Gaspar Ros, Gerhard Sandmann, Teresa Capella and Paul Christou. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 17, April 27, 2009.

Image: The lower corn is transgenic; the upper is normal. Courtesy PNAS.

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 27 Apr 2009 | 10:58 pm

Tracking Internet Chatter Helps Spot Swine Flu Outbreak

Tech tools for tracking disease outbreaks have been useful for following the spread of swine flu and one startup even claims to have recognized the severity of the outbreak in Mexico before government public health officials.

Veratect, a Seattle-based biosurveillance startup, claims they alerted the Centers for Disease Control to the situation in Mexico — where health officials suspect swine flu has killed up to 149 people — on April 16, before even the Mexican health authorities declared a problem.

How’d they get ahead of the outbreak? By monitoring and analyzing the flow of social media traffic along with more official reports, the company’s CEO said.

“We started picking up the early indicators of social disruption, whether it shows up on blogs or Twitter,” said Bob Hart, the CEO of Veratect. “We can pick up the first indicators of behavioral changes.”

The swine flu outbreak provides an excellent test case for the variety of tech tools that have developed to track disease outbreaks. In the best case scenario, by tracking what average people, professionals and reporters write about disease, you could spot a potentially serious outbreak before it occurs. The Google.org-backed data scraping tool, Healthmap, and a network of health professionals, ProMED, picked up signs the outbreak could be severe, but both organizations said it was difficult to determine how severe the outbreak could be.

“We had many events that we were tracking, and it wasn’t until mid- to late-April that we saw [swine flu] becoming a big deal,” said John Brownstein, founder of HealthMap. “It’s really hard to predict which situation is going to be the one that takes off.”

Larry Madoff, editor of ProMED and a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Boston, echoed those sentiments.

“In retrospect, there were earlier signs that something was going on, but to be honest, we didn’t pick up on those as quickly or as astutely as we might have. If we go back and look now, we see reports of respiratory illness in Mexico that predated the public awareness of what was going on,” Madoff said. “It’s a very hard signal-to-noise problem. There is a lot of noise.”

Veratect says it has partially solved the signal-to-noise problem by hiring dozens of analysts who speak a variety of local languages to monitor what chief technical officer, James Wilson, calls “the pulse” of a community.

Wilson said they recognized the problem might become particularly bad because the Catholic holy week, known in Mexico as La Semana Santa, occurred from April 5 to 12. The holiday increases the amount of travel within the country, creating the perfect opportunity for the disease to spread.

“Monday, I was on the phone talking with CDC, trying to say, ‘Hey guys, I realize that you are focused in California, Texas but we have a four-alarm fire down in Mexico,’” Wilson said.

Centers for Disease Control officials did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication, but ProMED’s Madoff said that he saw the official response as “a success.”

“I’ve been impressed with the transparency and the reasonably early alerts that we saw through official channels go around,” said Larry Madoff, editor of ProMED and a professor of medicine at the University of Massachussets-Boston. “That’s not always the case and we like to think that part of the reason that there is transparency is there are people like us who will encourage it, no matter what.”

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 | 27 Apr 2009 | 10:21 pm

Engineered maize's vitamin boost

European researchers genetically modify a variety of maize to produce high levels of three vitamins.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Apr 2009 | 9:57 pm

NASA's New Moonship Takes Ocean Plunge (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - For the first time since the Apollo era, NASA is testing a new moonship in the turbulent waves of the open ocean.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Apr 2009 | 9:15 pm

Swine Flu Vaccine Could Take 6 Months (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - A vaccine for the new swine flu in humans could take at least six months to manufacture and distribute widely, a British doctor said.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Apr 2009 | 9:15 pm

Swine Flu: What You Need to Know

Since the first reports in early April of several unusual cases of flu in Mexico’s Veracruz state, the world has been increasingly transfixed by the outbreak of a highly contagious and potentially lethal new type of influenza. Here’s a Wired.com primer on what you need to know about H1N1, or swine flu:

Approximately 1,600 cases have been reported so far in Mexico, and 103 people have died. Not all  the cases have been officially confirmed, but it’s believed that the same virus strain is responsible. Many of those who died were between the ages of 25 and 45. This is especially concerning, because flu doesn’t usually kill people in their prime. Twenty cases have been reported in the United States. All of those people were quarantined and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have recovered.

The World Health Organization says swine flu has the potential for becoming a worldwide epidemic. It has urged national public health systems to be vigilant and watch out for flu outbreaks in demographic groups other than children and the elderly. However, WHO says it’s too soon to know if a new vaccine is warranted or international travel should be restricted.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency on Sunday. Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano said at a news conference that the declaration is not reason for alarm, but is standard operating procedure required to allow the release of government funds and drug stockpiles.

WHO and CDC are now scrambling to profile the new strain of swine flu. They know that it contains a cocktail of genes from human-, swine- and bird-flu strains. Mortality rates appear directly related to delay of treatment. If caught in time, the disease can apparently be treated with relative ease.

Speaking of preparedness, congressional Republicans stripped the economic stimulus plan of $900 million for state and local pandemic-readiness programs, and $462 million for the CDC. What does a pandemic have to do with economic recovery? So far, the prospect of worldwide swine flu is causing market panics.

Mexican newspapers report the flu originated in high-density pig farms run by Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest hog producer. Some people say the flu was transmitted in water, others by flies. Similar pig farms exist in the United States, and have been blamed for the rise of lethal, drug-resistant staph infections.

A great deal of information on the swine flu epidemic is on the internet. The most reliable is the CDC’s dedicated swine flu page. They also have a Twitter feed. In general, people might want to avoid Twitter-wide swine flu coverage, which tends toward the sensational and has a very low signal-to-noise ratio. The Biosurveillance blog, maintained by disease-surveillance company VeraTect, is a good source of news and analysis. So are the Aetiology and Effect Measure blogs.

And though it’s far too soon to panic, people who wish to take precautions against infection should see the CDC’s recommendations and Vinay Gupta’s Flu Code.

See Also:

• Tiny Flower Turns Pig Poop Into Fuel
• H5N1 Avian Influenza Goes Undercover
• In the Event of an Avian Influenza Pandemic, Wear a Mask and Cross
  

Image: Flickr/Eneas

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 27 Apr 2009 | 8:38 pm

Top 10 Animals That Carry Flu

As swine flu captures the world's attention, we wondered, which strain is next?
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 27 Apr 2009 | 8:30 pm

Flu cases show need for science spending: Obama

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The outbreak of a flu virus that has led to a U.S. public health emergency highlights the need for a strong government commitment to scientific research, President Barack Obama said on Monday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 27 Apr 2009 | 7:03 pm

Obama: Time Has Come for U.S. Science

The president wants to commit three percent of GDP to scientific research and development.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 27 Apr 2009 | 6:30 pm

Epigenetics: A Revolutionary Look at How Humans Work (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Scientists are now pinpointing exactly how nurture affects nature. Life experiences - from toxin exposure to physical affection - can alter gene expression in dynamic and sometimes reversible ways. These insights - the result of a burgeoning field called epigenetics - were aided by the sequencing of the human genome, completed in 2003. However, the genome itself turns out to have limited value for understanding disease and human characteristics. ...
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Apr 2009 | 5:36 pm

Wide Angle: Swine Flu Outbreak

Get video, interviews, news and more on pandemics and the swine flu.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 27 Apr 2009 | 5:00 pm

Antimatter Scout to Hitch Last Shuttle Ride

A 7.5-ton antimatter detector could help explain the universe's lopsided balance sheet.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 27 Apr 2009 | 4:13 pm

Bertrand Russell as comic book hero

Logicomix is already a bestseller in Greece and has been eagerly picked up by publishers around the world

An unexpected kind of comic book hero is set to emerge this autumn: Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, logician, mathematician and Nobel prize for literature winner who wrote the seminal work on mathematical logic, the Principia Mathematica.

Russell, who died aged 97 in 1970, is starring in a graphic novel based on his life, Logicomix, which portrays the great pacifist's quest to pin down the foundations of mathematics. First published in Greece last year, where it has become an unexpected bestseller, Logicomix, subtitled An Epic Search for Truth, is the brainchild of maths expert and novelist Apostolos Doxiadis, who was admitted to Columbia University at the tender age of 15.

Covering a span of 60 years, it tells the story of Russell's life, taking in his childhood, brought up by his grandparents after he was orphaned aged four, his four marriages, the writing of his great work Principia Mathematica, his rivalry with Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his quest for nuclear disarmament in the last decades of his life.

Peopled with his contemporaries – Alfred North Whitehead, with whom he co-authored Principia, Kurt Gödel, David Hilbert, Ludwig Wittgenstein – it charts the quest for knowledge that Russell described in his autobiography: "I have wished to understand the hearts of man. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved."

Doxiadis, the author of the novel Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture, co-wrote Logicomix with Christos Papadimitriou, a computer scientist and novelist. The artwork was produced by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna. It will be published by Bloomsbury in September – the first adult graphic novel that Bloomsbury has published. "We have really high hopes for it," said spokesperson Jude Drake. "It's been on the bestseller lists for five months in Greece ... It's so accessible, even though it's about logic and maths. It's not preachy and it's not technical – you fly through it."

With publishers around the world – from China to Turkey, Israel to Italy - lining up to publish Logicomix, it has already won praise from authors and mathematicians. "The lives of ideas (and those who think them) can be as dramatic and unpredictable as any superhero fantasy. What could be more natural than a graphic novel to show how intellectual adventure plays out in the world of experience, with all its contradictions?" asked Michael Harris, a professor of mathematics at Université Paris 7 and member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

"This is an extraordinary graphic novel, wildly ambitious in daring to put into words and drawings the life and thought of one of the great philosophers of the last century," said the historian Howard Zinn. "The book is a rare intellectual and artistic achievement which will, I am sure, lead its readers to explore realms of knowledge they

thought were forbidden to them."

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 27 Apr 2009 | 3:55 pm

Optical disc offers 500GB storage

An optical disc that can store 500GB of data, equivalent to 100 DVDs, is announced by General Electric.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Apr 2009 | 3:49 pm

Task ahead

What UK scientists are doing to combat swine flu
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Apr 2009 | 3:42 pm

Stress Gives Reef Fish Wonky Ears

Reef fish under environmental stress create offspring with asymmetrical ears.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 27 Apr 2009 | 2:40 pm

INTERVIEW: Microbes Spread in the Wind

Dust storms can carry infectious diseases to far-flung parts of the globe.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 27 Apr 2009 | 1:40 pm

Wimps, Fitness Buffs Hear 'Looming' Sounds Differently

Weak people perceive approaching sounds as closer than they really are. But why?
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 27 Apr 2009 | 1:40 pm

Sea Shells Used to Clean Up Heavy Metals

Crushed shells work to remove heavy metals from contaminated water and soils.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 27 Apr 2009 | 1:30 pm

Science Weekly: Life after death

This week we shuffle off this mortal coil as we muse upon the possibilities of life after death. Neuroscientist David Eagleman shares some of the thoughts that inspired him to write Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, a work of fiction that addresses one of the oldest questions humans have confronted.

2009 was meant to be the year of Britain's green budget. But after last week's announcements by the government, many environmentalists were left feeling a bit miffed. We take you through the highlights, the lowlights and the questions that remain for anyone interested in saving the planet.

All that plus how the Great Wall of China just got longer, the smell of the galactic centre and, allegedly, a human clone.

And finally, if you like what you hear, please vote for us in the Webby Awards!

Don't forget to ...

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Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 27 Apr 2009 | 1:03 pm

Is Swine Flu 'The Big One'?

As swine flu spreads, the question arises: Is this the big one, or will it fizzle?
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 27 Apr 2009 | 1:00 pm

Experts identify genes linked to chronic diseases

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Researchers in South Korea have identified genes that are linked to key indicators such as blood pressure and bone density that have a bearing on chronic diseases such as hypertension and osteoporosis.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 27 Apr 2009 | 12:55 pm

Virus may lose virulence as it spreads

The virus is likely to become less virulent the faster it is transmitted, writes Ian Sample, but in the short term the more people it infects the more people will die

Health officials fully expect swine flu to reach Britain and today's confirmation of the first case in Europe suggests we may not have long to wait.

The Spanish health ministry has identified the virus in one patient and is investigating a further 17 people who have fallen sick.

On Saturday night, Britain's chief medical officer Liam Donaldson sent an alert to hospitals with details of how to spot potential cases, and what quarantine precautions to take.

The £500m government stockpile of the antiviral drug tamiflu is largely earmarked for frontline health workers, who may be given the drug early on if a pandemic is thought to be looming. If the disease does spread through Britain, the foremost concern is to keep the health system running smoothly.

This is arguably the most frustrating time for those charged with tracking and responding to the disease. There is as yet too little information to know how it will pan out.

Swine flu is nothing new. The first virus was isolated in the US in 1930, and since then there has been roughly one human case a year there. Occasionally the disease has spread more widely among humans, though only two people have died from the infection since 1976.

The latest swine flu virus is different from those that have caused these more minor outbreaks in the past. It appears to be far more infectious, and could be more lethal. But major questions remain. For example, it is not yet clear that the strain that has killed in Mexico – and so far only in Mexico – is the same strain causing more mild illness in the US, Canada and elsewhere.

There is good reason to suspect the virus will become less lethal as it spreads. The virus is constantly mutating, and the strains that will spread fastest are the ones that do not stop people going about their daily lives and coming into contact with others. The most lethal viruses tend to be short-lived because they kill their host before the virus has had a chance to be passed on.

The complexity of the issue does not stop there. Although the virus is likely to lose potency as it spreads, it will reach more people, so the odds of further fatalities could still rise.

Work at World Health Organisation laboratories is ongoing to figure out what features of the virus make it infectious and virulent.

Another task for WHO researchers is to model the future spread of the disease. This week, epidemiologists will try to find out how many people each infected person spreads the disease to, and how this figure changes with time and place.

Another issue of concern is apparent from looking at a map of confirmed cases to date. In many ways, having the US on Mexico's doorstep ensured that as soon as the infection crossed the border, it was picked up quickly and that crucial information was shared immediately with the WHO. But it is no surprise that most confirmed cases outside Mexico are in developed countries with good surveillance for such diseases. The surveillance in countries south of Mexico – such as Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua – and on to South America, is generally much less effective. The disease could have been there for weeks, but the true nature of the spread in those countries may take some time to emerge.

In the coming weeks, the WHO will decide whether it is necessary to make fresh vaccine to combat the spread of this particular swine flu strain. It is a delicate decision, because overreacting will have serious consequences. It will take between four and six months to develop a vaccine tailored to the virus in Britain, but pharmaceutical companies do not have the resources to make this as well as the seasonal flu virus, which needs to be ready for the winter.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 27 Apr 2009 | 12:26 pm

Brazilian explorers search 'medicine factory' to save lives and rainforest

Quest for cancer cure may also protect rainforest by providing alternatives for those who once earned money by destroying it

The boat ploughs north along this vast, rust-tinted river. Ahead, a white haze of torrential rain and a task as immense as the Amazon rainforest itself: discovering a new treatment for cancer somewhere in the depths of the greatest tropical rainforest on earth.

Onboard three men prepare themselves for their mission into the jungle: Drauzio Varella, a gangly 65-year-old oncologist, broadcaster and best-selling author who is also Brazil's most famous doctor; Mateus Paciencia, 33, a fresh-faced botanist from São Paulo; and Osmar Ferreira Barbosa, 45, a former chainsaw operator turned mateiro or forest guide, armed with a machete and a life-time's knowledge of the rainforest.

"From an amoeba to an elephant… every living thing is a factory of substances, and plants aren't different," enthused Paciencia, as the boat edged ever closer to his group's scientific base, a small wooden shack on the banks of the Cuieiras river, around four hours' boat journey from Manaus, the capital of Brazil's Amazonas state.

"A plant or tree is a small medicine factory. All we need to do is try and find the application for these substances."

The boat is a floating laboratory belonging to São Paulo's Paulista University (Unip) and is on the frontline of a quest for the medicines of the future and part of an innovative drive to save the Brazilian rainforest by providing economic alternatives to those who once destroyed the forest.

The project is the brainchild of Drauzio Varella, a São Paulo-born oncologist who has dedicated much of his career to cancer patients, among them his younger brother, Fernando, a smoker who died of lung cancer in 1991, aged 45.

Today, spurred on by an obsession with the Amazon and nearly 40 years as an oncologist, Varella leads monthly expeditions up the Cuieiras river in search of natural medicines that he believes could change the future of his profession and eventually bring new hope to cancer victims around the world. 

"[As a child] I didn't even know that [the Amazon] existed," Varella told the Observer during his latest mission to the group's base on the Cuieiras river. "I'd heard the children's stories, about the Indians with two feathers in their hair. But you didn't even talk about the Amazon back then. It was such a distant thing."

That changed in October 1992, during a trip to the Amazon with Robert Gallo, the US biomedical researcher credited with co-discovering the HIV virus. One afternoon, while visiting the rivers around Manaus, Gallo inquired if anyone was looking for new medicines in the plants and trees of the Amazon.

"You can see the biodiversity here ," recalled Varella. "And Gallo said to me: 'Who is studying this? [Who is] looking for activity in these species?' And I didn't know what to tell him. This idea stayed in my head."

In 1995 the idea became a reality with the first trip. Since then Varella's team has gathered more than 2,000 extracts from plants and trees in the rainforest. This year sees a step change in activity following a partnership with São Paulo's Sírio-Libanês Hospital, one of Brazil's leading research institutes. The team will explore a new area further up the Rio Negro towards the border with Colombia, and within two years they aim to have set up a third base.

After being plucked from the rainforest the samples are taken to Manaus, where they are dried and transformed into a powder before being shipped to São Paulo for testing. Over 70 extracts have demonstrated some impact on tumour cells while over 50 have shown results against bacterial infections.

"The advantage of these natural products is their unpredictability," said Varella. While molecular design techniques used by laboratories would remain crucial, natural products could suggest paths "we didn't even imagine existed," he said, citing Taxol, a drug which originated from the bark of the North American yew tree and is now widely used to treat ovarian and breast cancer. "You open the door to the unknown."

Paciencia believes medical research could also hold the key to slowing rainforest destruction. Environmentalists claim that almost 20% of the Brazilian Amazon has disappeared, mostly since the 1960s.

"Instead of replacing the forest with cattle we are studying a cure for cancer and for infectious diseases," said the botanist, sporting a goatie beard and a tattoo of Bob Marley on his bicep. "You don't need to chop a single tree down to obtain these resources. You cut a little piece of the plant… [and] next year it will have grown back. I can't see anything more environmentally correct than a project like this."

The group's guide is a case in point. Born in the remote Amazon town of Canutama, a notorious hotspot for illegal deforestation, Barbosa used to work for the loggers as a chain-saw operator. Now the father of three is employed to guide Varella's team through the labyrinthine jungle.

Currently the project focuses on two types of forest environment – the submerged forests or "igapós" and the "terra firme", or dry land. During each visit the team collects samples from families of plants that have shown positive results in the group's São Paulo laboratory, as well as new species.

"We don't know yet if the plants we are going to collect today have [these qualities]. But this group of plants has shown pretty positive results," explained Paciencia, picking his way towards an area of thick rainforest where his team has demarcated three different sectors in which specific trees and plants are monitored. Further on, the group's guide, Barbosa, shimmied up a towering tree and clipped off half a dozen branches. The branches crashed down through the rainforest canopy before settling on the damp earth and being separated into specially marked sacks.

Few doubt that the Amazon rainforest conceals an abundance of medical secrets. But, according to Varella, government bureaucracy is as dense as the forest itself, prompted by a deep fear of bio-piracy. It means foreign scientists or pharmaceutical companies find it hard to join the hunt for natural medicines in the Brazilian Amazon.

"If it is difficult for us, then imagine for people from overseas," says Varella, whose project is one of a tiny number that has official permission from the Brazilian environmental agency, Ibama. "They have no chance."

"Ten to fifteen years is the average time between finding the plant, [identifying its exact use] and patenting it into a drug [so] it is a long-term investment. It is commercially very uninteresting and it will create political problems for the business, so why do it?"

As a pair of toucans peer down at the expedition, their bright yellow beaks poking out from a green mesh of leaves, Pacienca reflects:"The Amazon has something like 20% of all the biodiversity in the world. Just in terms of plants with flowers, there are around 22 or 23 thousand."

"It is impossible to imagine that… not one of them will have an active substance for some disease."

The rainforest, he says, is "an infinite sea of possibilities".

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 27 Apr 2009 | 12:05 pm

Huge rise in abandoned pets as recession bites: RSPCA (AFP)

AFP - Household pets have become the latest victim of the global slowdown, with the number abandoned rising by more than 50 percent in the past year, the RSPCA said on Monday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Apr 2009 | 11:16 am