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Major Statin Study Reveals Several Important Findings For Reducing Prostate Cancer And DiseaseStatins, drugs widely prescribed to lower cholesterol, may have protective effects on prostate health.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm Got An Itch? New Study Shows How Scratching May Relieve ItEvery dog and cat knows that scratching relieves an itch. But for ages, not even neuroscientists knew why. Now, a new study shows that scratching turns off activity in spinal cord nerves that transmit the itching sensation to the brain. The researchers hope eventually to learn just how the inhibition works.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm Singing Screws Reveal Sick StructuresIn 2006, a concrete panel weighing several thousand pounds fell onto traffic in Boston's Big Dig tunnel, crushing a car and killing a motorist. The alleged cause -- and subject of a multi-million dollar settlement -- was faulty epoxy that allowed bolts in the ceiling to wiggle loose.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm Lower Dementia Drug Dose Boosts Brain Function, Cuts Side EffectsSometimes less is more: Lower doses of an Alzheimer's drug delivered via skin patches improve cognition with fewer serious side effects than higher doses, researchers have found in an updated review.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm More Than One Nanostring To Their Bow: Scientists Moving Closer To 'Artificial Noses'These days, chemical analysts are expected to track down even single molecules. To do this highly sensitive detective work, nano researchers have developed minute strings that resonate in characteristic fashion. If a molecule docks onto one of the strings, then it becomes heavier, and its oscillations become measurably slower. However, such "nano-electromechanical systems", or NEMS, have been short of practical applications -- until now.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm Depression Linked With Accumulation Of Visceral FatResearchers have shown that depression is linked with the accumulation of visceral fat, the kind of fat packed between internal organs at the waistline, which has long been known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm 'Nature Vs. Nurture' Study Of Deceased Donor Pairs In Kidney TransplantationThe implications of a new study could improve the outcomes, and potentially survival rates, for some of the thousands of individuals who undergo kidney transplants each year. The study concluded that donor-related risk factors, yet to be identified, make a measurable contribution to the ultimate success or failure of a kidney transplant.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm Did Comets Contain Key Ingredients For Life On Earth?Comets have always fascinated us. A mysterious appearance could symbolize God's displeasure or mean a sure failure in battle, at least for one side. Now new research justifies our fascination -- comets might have provided the elements for the emergence of life on our planet.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm Universal Flu Vaccine Holds PromiseAn influenza vaccine that protects against death and serious complications from different strains of flu is a little closer to reality, vaccine researchers have found. This is a significant first step in developing a universal vaccine to help protect against pandemic influenza, according to researchers.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm Satellite Imagery Shows Fragile Wilkins Ice Shelf DestabilizedSatellite images show that icebergs have begun to calve from the northern front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf – indicating that the huge shelf has become unstable. This follows the collapse three weeks ago of the ice bridge that had previously linked the Antarctic mainland to Charcot Island.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm Russia mulls rocket power 'first'Russia's next-generation manned spaceship might use thrusters to perform a precision landing on its return to Earth.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Apr 2009 | 12:59 pm Hypersonic 'WaveRider' Poised for Test FlightThe X-51 is designed to fly more than six times faster than the speed of sound.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Apr 2009 | 12:50 pm Obama marks whirlwind first 100 days in office (Reuters)Reuters - Barack Obama on Wednesday will mark the 100th day of his presidency after a whirlwind start in which he has signaled a new approach on policies from the economy to climate change to U.S. relations with Iran.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 12:07 pm Satellite eye on Earth: AprilSnow-capped craters, sinking atolls and cloud streets were all captured by Nasa's Earth Observatory and the European Space Agency satellites this month
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 29 Apr 2009 | 11:24 am S.Korea lifts ban on stem cell research (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 10:44 am South Korea moves for first stem cell study in 3 yearsSEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea has moved to allow human stem cell research for the first time since about three years ago when its pre-eminent researcher was accused of fraud for his work in the subject, officials said Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 10:44 am Report: Most Americans in areas with unhealthy air (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 10:28 am Waiting to flyScientists cross fingers for future of space experimentSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Apr 2009 | 10:20 am Sun-like star's 'oddball' planetAstronomers have discovered a strange Jupiter-sized world circling a star similar to our own Sun.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Apr 2009 | 9:53 am Shell profits plunge 62% with oil prices (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 9:09 am SKorean experts claim to have cloned glowing dogs (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 7:40 am Dino-mite: Utah quarry gets explosive treatment (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 7:30 am Astronomers take peek at oldest event ever (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2009 | 7:15 am Mexico imposes swine flu measuresMexico City bans restaurants and cafes from serving all food except takeaways as cases of deadly swine flu virus continue to rise.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Apr 2009 | 3:58 am WHO: Governments must prepare for swine flu pandemic• Poorest nations would be hardest hit by a swine flu pandemic, says WHO The World Health Organisation yesterday called on all governments to prepare for a swine flu pandemic and warned that if the disease took hold across the globe it could prove a disaster for poorer countries. The call came as the number of confirmed infections rose above 100 on four continents and the head of the US Centres for Disease Control, Richard Besser, said the virus is almost certain to claim lives in America. "I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection," he said. In New York officials said 18 children from two schools were being tested for swine flu after showing symptoms, and the city's health commissioner said "many hundreds" more children who have fallen sick may be infected with the virus, although all appear to be recovering. The possible infection of large numbers of children in the city could be evidence of human-to-human transmission of the disease outside the source of the epidemic, Mexico. A group of children from a New York school who visited the country recently may have spread the illness to other children since their return. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, appeared at a press conference to calm fears in the city. He said that so far the virus had behaved according to the pattern of normal seasonal flu. "Additional cases do not come as much of a surprise – flu spreads, that's what a virus does. But the good news is that all our cases are mild, and are recovering." Last night, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, declared a state of emergency following the confirmation of 13 cases of the illness. The Mexican authorities said that 159 people are believed to have died from swine flu, but the health minister confirmed the death toll has been reduced from 20 to seven. Mexico City's mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, ordered the closure of gyms, sports clubs and swimming pools. Schools, theatres and many other public places are shut and the city authorities are considering closing the extensive underground system. Mexicans stripped supermarket shelves bare yesterday, prompted by growing concerns that the outbreak could result in a nationwide curfew. Dr Keiji Fukuda, the WHO assistant director general for health security, said that while the organisation continued to say that a pandemic was not inevitable, the rising number of infections meant that governments should plan for the worst. "Countries should take this opportunity to really prepare themselves for the possibility of a pandemic," he said. The number of confirmed infections in the US, the largest outside Mexico, rose to 65 with new cases in Indiana and New Jersey. The US homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, said: "We anticipate that there will be confirmed cases in more states in the coming days." Napolitano said the US will begin isolating people arriving at airports and borders who exhibit flu-like symptoms. President Obama has asked Congress for $1.5bn to build antivirus drug stockpiles and to monitor the spread of the disease. But American officials were keen to keep the threat in perspective, noting that 36,000 people a year die of flu. The number of confirmed swine flu cases continued to rise across the world to more than 100 outside Mexico. Yesterday there were 11 new cases of the disease in New Zealand and two in Israel, all among people who recently travelled to Mexico. Canada said it had seven more cases, bringing its total to 13. A second case was confirmed in Spain. But while the latest confirmations were in developed nations, Fukuda warned that the greatest threat is to the poorest countries: "We know from history … that the poorer countries are the ones who really get hit the hardest, they are really hit disproportionately hard, and they also have the least resources to deal with these kind of situations," he said. Suspected infections are being investigated in Brazil, Guatemala and Peru, all countries that would struggle to cope with a large-scale swine flu outbreak. Although the flu season is passing in the northern hemisphere, the onset of winter in southern Africa and parts of South America means that the impact of any pandemic could be particularly severe on countries with fragile health services. Fukuda said the WHO is still investigating why all the deaths have so far been confined to one country and is looking to see if infections are becoming established in communities or countries outside Mexico. But he warned that even if the disease does not take hold immediately, that does not mean the threat has passed. "Even if activity goes down and quiet over the next few weeks, I think it would be very hard to know if it has disappeared," he said, noting that the 1918 flu pandemic was not initially taken seriously, fell into a lull for a few months, and then returned to claim millions of lives. The authorities ordered all restaurants in Mexico City – there are more than 30,000 – to serve only takeaway food to reduce the risk from people congregating to eat. For the third consecutive day, pharmacies were sold out of face masks, prompting media advice on how to make home-made versions with cloth and tape. US health officials said it would take several months to ready a vaccine. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 29 Apr 2009 | 2:52 am Genes 'have key role in autism'Scientists produce the most compelling evidence to date that genetics play a key role in autism and related conditions.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:50 pm Pentagon may reach satellite analysis goal earlyWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military may reach its goal of doing collision analysis on 800 maneuverable satellites before October, and is examining the possibility of tracking 500 more satellites that cannot be maneuvered, a top Air Force general said on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:31 pm Scientists stand by to turn swine flu virus into a vaccinePharmaceutical companies prepare for WHO call to start producing prevention treatment for swine flu A global race to prepare a vaccine against swine flu was under way yesterday as health officials confirmed that the disease had spread to at least seven countries. The World Health Organisation has contacted vaccine manufacturers, who are on standby to produce the vaccine should the virus continue to spread. A WHO spokesman said it had not yet advised pharmaceutical companies to begin producing a vaccine, but he confirmed that work had already begun at collaborating laboratories in the US. British scientists at the Health Protection Agency's high containment laboratories in Potters Bar, north London, are due to receive samples of the fresh virus today. They will spend the next three to four weeks making it safe but it will take a further three to five months before it will be ready as a vaccine. It is likely that the WHO would raise the threat level of the flu outbreak to phase five before ordering a vaccine to be made. A phase five alert means the virus is spreading freely between humans in at least two countries in one WHO region, a strong indication that a pandemic is imminent. On Monday night, the threat assessment was upgraded from three to four, as it became clear the disease was causing "community-level outbreaks". In Britain, the pharmaceutical company GSK will take the lead in manufacturing the new vaccine under a "sleeper contract" with the Department of Health. The contract is agreed in advance to avoid tendering delays in the event of a global pandemic. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, has isolated the swine flu virus from a patient in California and work is under way to make it usable by vaccine manufacturers. It could take between four and six months to make a vaccine. The US lab will receive support from scientists at the HPA's National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in Potters Bar. A specialist courier used to handling infectious material is due to deliver to them a sample of the California swine flu strain today or tomorrow. "It's too risky to depend on just one laboratory making these viruses, you need to have back-up. If for some reason, the CDC has a problem with this, we're there," said John Wood, a principal scientist at the Potters Bar lab. The virus will be transferred to a high security room at the lab and disassembled using a technique called "reverse genetics". Scientists will then take the genes that make the swine virus's outer coating and attach them to a harmless human virus called PR8. This reconstructed virus is safe for humans, but triggers an immune response that specifically protects against the swine flu strain. Wood said there was some concern over pharmaceutical companies being able to manufacture any new vaccine while still making enough seasonal flu jabs for the coming winter. Most have already begun and would have to halt production before switching to a new vaccine. "This is the difficulty with all flu manufacturers at the moment," said Wood. "They are two months into production, and if they have to stop now, there could be shortages of the seasonal vaccine in the winter." A spokesman for GSK confirmed that discussions were taking place between the company, WHO and the CDC about a vaccine for swine flu, but refused to elaborate on its strategy for making enough of both vaccines. "We have a lot of product capacity around the world and we have a flexible approach to moving things around," he said. The company has sent 170,000 doses of its seasonal flu vaccine to Mexico at the request of local health officials. WHO has also contacted Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, about its ability to make swine flu vaccine at its plant in Liverpool. The facility produces a small amount of seasonal flu vaccine for Britain, but most is exported to the US. "We are in the middle of producing flu vaccine for next season, and we'd have to stop that before we can start making another vaccine. It's not that there is spare capacity just waiting there for a pandemic to happen," a Novartis spokesman said. WHO may consider adding a swine flu component to the seasonal vaccine in time for a second wave of infections that many scientists expect to strike in the autumn. The seasonal flu vaccine protects against three strains of influenza virus, and each component has to be grown in a hen's egg, meaning three eggs are needed to make one flu jab. The swine flu vaccine is expected to protect against only one strain, so only one egg will be needed for each shot. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm The climate engineersSchemes to reflect sun or absorb CO2 warrant study - to sort the real science from the science fiction Emissions of carbon dioxide are rising even faster than was expected, and if they continue to do so we are on track for global temperatures which are likely to be 4C higher, or even more, by 2100, with disastrous consequences. With no action agreed by the recent G20 meeting, there is still no sign that we are even beginning to control emissions, let alone reduce them by the target of at least 50% by 2050, widely regarded as the minimum necessary to avoid that. Some people are therefore now suggesting that we should seriously consider geoengineering - that is, intervening directly to engineer the climate system, so as to moderate the rise of temperature. Is this possible? How? At a reasonable cost? Without undesirable side-effects? Who could do it? Who should control it? It is to answer just these questions that the Royal Society has set up a study group on geoengineering climate. Without the answers there will be no way to take sensible decisions on this issue, based on evidence and facts rather than beliefs and suppositions (either for or against the idea). It may well be that our study will conclude that such schemes are not feasible, or too costly, have serious side-effects, or are too difficult to control. But it may not; and it is likely that we will need a lot more information before we can really decide. Geoengineering is not an alternative to transforming our economies in order to achieve a low-carbon energy future; we will need that anyway, when the fossil fuels run out. But it is possible that it could at least make a contribution to reducing the damage which is otherwise expected. We would, in effect, at least be treating the symptoms, to buy some time while we seek a cure. But this will only be an option if we get the information to assess the credibility and potential of these ideas as soon as we can. Geoengineering schemes for moderating climate change come in two main flavours. First there are those that aim to increase the amount of sunlight that is reflected away from the Earth (currently about 30%) by a few percent more. Second there are some that aim to increase the rate at which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, by enhancing the natural sinks for CO2, and maybe even by deliberately scrubbing it out of the air. It's pretty clear that some of the reflection schemes could successfully reduce temperatures, because that's just what happens after major volcanic eruptions. This method acts fast and the effects, like those of volcanoes, would decline after a few years, so it wouldn't be irreversible. This approach, however, would only be treating the symptoms, and could be used to allow even more CO2 to build up in the atmosphere. Then, if we were ever to stop enhancing the reflectivity, all that pent up global warming would happen very fast indeed, and we should be in serious trouble. This method also does nothing to moderate the "other CO2 problem", ocean acidification. The CO2 removal schemes avoid these difficulties, since they attack the problem at its source; but they would only operate slowly, taking many decades to reduce CO2 to safer levels. They may not be able to achieve enough to make a real difference, and they may be very costly. And some CO2 reduction schemes, like ocean fertilisation, involve the large-scale manipulation of natural ecosystems, with effects that are very hard to predict. It is no surprise that people's opinions on these ideas vary enormously; all the way from those who think we should get started right away, to those who think that we should not even consider them, let alone research them properly. The latter group say that simply doing the research may lead some people to believe that there may be a silver bullet for the climate problem after all, and if so they may reduce their efforts to get CO2 emissions under control. Such views are not unreasonable, and some of the schemes may have potential environmental impacts such that even the research needs to be internationally agreed and controlled. However, the Royal Society believes that decisions based on knowledge are better than those based on ignorance, and that public policy should be based on the best evidence we can get. If world leaders are unable to agree on effective action to deal with climate change, and fail to implement practical measures to reduce CO2 emissions very soon, we may in future be glad that someone took these ideas seriously. Seriously enough to separate the real science from the science fiction, anyway. We intend that our study will be a useful contribution to doing just that. • Professor John Shepherd is deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Southampton, and Chair of the Royal Society study group on Geoengineering Climate, which will report in September guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm Genetic clues to how autism can develop• Studies could help in diagnosis and treatment Scientists have found the first substantial evidence that autism may be caused by genetic differences that damage the connections in the brain in early childhood. Three studies have identified genetic variations which may help explain the origins of the condition, including one that could account for as many as 15% of autism cases. The researchers believe the findings could help the process of identifying people with an autistic spectrum disorder, improve medical treatments, and potentially lead to diagnostic tests for the condition. About 500,000 people in Britain are autistic, including some 133,500 children, according to the National Autistic Society (NAS), which campaigns on their behalf. People with autism have difficulty relating to those around them and often have higher than usual rates of mental illness, unemployment and social exclusion. Two papers published online in Nature, by Hakon Hakonarson and colleagues at the Centre for Applied Genomics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, show that mutations in genes that play a role in establishing connections within a child's brain increase his or her chances of developing autism. While a single genetic variant may pose a small increased risk for a child, the researchers claim to have identified variants that may explain up to 15% of the prevalence of autism. Philip Johnson, the hospital's chief scientific officer, likened the significance of the findings to previous breakthroughs in knowledge about the links between genetics and cancer. "It moves the field of autism research significantly ahead, similar to the way oncology research progressed a few decades ago with the discovery of specific genes that give rise to cancers," he said. "Our extensive paediatric genomics programme has pinpointed particular genes and biological pathways, and this discovery provides a starting point for translating biological knowledge into future autism treatments." The third paper, published in Molecular Psychiatry, sets out research among those with autism and their families work by a team led by Professor Tony Monaco, of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University. It also shows that genes involved in the growth and development of nerve cells in the brain could increase someone's susceptibility to autism. "This does seem to fit with what we know from brain scans - that people with autism may show different or reduced connectivity between different parts of the brain," said Monaco. However, Richard Mills, research director of the charity Research Autism, cautioned that the research did not answer many key questions. "People shouldn't get too excited about thinking that this research identifies a gene for autism. These studies add to the overall picture of how genes interact with each other and how they influence connections within the brain, but it's not groundbreaking in terms of telling us which genes are implicated and their interaction with the overall environment." The NAS welcomed the new research. A spokeswoman said: "There is evidence to suggest that genetic factors are responsible for some forms of autism. However, the difficulty of establishing gene involvement is compounded by the interaction of genes with environmental factors. Various studies over many years have sought to identify candidate genes, but so far inconclusively." The exact causes of autism are still unknown, and many experts believe the type of behaviour that leads to people being diagnosed with autism may have more than one cause, she added. Other theories advanced in recent years as potential contributory factors include drinking during pregnancy, older fathers and early television viewing, though none has been substantiated. The government today starts a 20-week consultation into how support and services for people with autism can be improved in areas such as health, employment and training. The Office of National Statistics research shows that about 90 in 10,000 children have an autistic spectrum disorder. No study has been undertaken into the prevalence of autism among adults. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm Swine flu? A panic stoked in order to posture and spendDespite the hysteria, the risk to Britons' health is tiny - but that news won't sell papers or drugs, or justify the WHO's budget We have gone demented. Two Britons are or were (not very) ill from flu. "This could really explode," intones a reporter for BBC News. "London warned: it's here," cries the Evening Standard. Fear is said to be spreading "like a Mexican wave". It "could affect" three-quarters of a million Britons. It "could cost" three trillion dollars. The "danger", according to the radio, is that workers who are not ill will be "worried" (perhaps by the reporter) and fail to turn up at power stations and hospitals. Appropriately panicked, on Monday ministers plunged into their Cobra bunker beneath Whitehall to prepare for the worst. Had Tony Blair been about they would have worn germ warfare suits. British government is barking mad. What is swine flu? It is flu, a mutation of the H1N1 virus of the sort that often occurs. It is not a pandemic, despite the media prefix, not yet. The BBC calls it a "potentially terrible virus", but any viral infection is potentially terrible. Flu makes you feel ill. You should take medicine and rest. You will then get well again, unless you are very unlucky or have some complicating condition. It is best to avoid close contact with other people, as applies to a common cold. In Mexico, 2,000 people have been diagnosed as suffering swine flu. Some 150 of them have died, though there is said to be no pathological indication of all these deaths being linked to the new flu strain. People die all the time after catching flu, especially if not medicated. Nobody anywhere else in the world has died from this infection and only a handful have the new strain confirmed, most in America and almost all after returning from Mexico. A couple from Airdrie who caught the flu on holiday in Cancun are getting better. That tends to happen to people who get flu, however much it may disappoint editors. We appear to have lost all ability to judge risk. The cause may lie in the national curriculum, the decline of "news" or the rise of blogs and concomitant, unmediated hysteria, but people seem helpless in navigating the gulf that separates public information from their daily round. They cannot set a statistic in context. They cannot relate bad news from Mexico to the risk that inevitably surrounds their lives. The risk of catching swine flu must be millions to one. Health scares are like terrorist ones. Someone somewhere has an interest in it. We depend on others with specialist knowledge to advise and warn us and assume they offer advice on a dispassionate basis, using their expertise to assess danger and communicating it in measured English. Words such as possibly, potentially, could or might should be avoided. They are unspecific qualifiers and open to exaggeration. The World Health Organisation, always eager to push itself into the spotlight, loves to talk of the world being "ready" for a flu pandemic, apparently on the grounds that none has occurred for some time. There is no obvious justification for this scaremongering. I suppose the world is "ready" for another atomic explosion or another 9/11. Professional expertise is now overwhelmed by professional log-rolling. Risk aversion has trounced risk judgment. An obligation on public officials not to scare people or lead them to needless expense is overridden by the yearning for a higher budget or more profit. Health scares enable media-hungry doctors, public health officials and drugs companies to benefit by manipulating fright. On Monday the EU health commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, advised travellers not to go to north or central America "unless it's very urgent". The British Foreign Office warned against "all but essential" travel to Mexico because of the danger of catching flu. This was outrageous. It would make more sense to proffer such a warning against the American crime rate. Yet such health-and-safety hysteria wiped millions from travel company shares. During the BSE scare of 1995-7, grown men with medical degrees predicted doom, terrifying ministers into mad politician disease. The scientists' hysteria, that BSE "has the potential to infect up to 10 million Britons", led to tens of thousands of cattle being fed into power stations and £5bn spent on farmers' compensation. A year later, the scientists tried to maintain that BSE "might" spread to sheep because, according to one government scientist, "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". The meat industry was wrecked and an absurd ongoing cost was imposed on stock farmers with the closure and concentration of abattoirs. This science-based insanity was repeated during the Sars outbreak of 2003, asserted by Dr Patrick Dixon, formerly of the London Business School, to have "a 25% chance of killing tens of millions". The press duly headlined a plague "worse than Aids". Not one Briton died. The same lunacy occurred in 2006 with avian flu, erupting after a scientist named John Oxford declared that "it will be the first pandemic of the 21st century". The WHO issued a statement that "one in four Britons could die". Epidemiologists love the word "could" because it can always assure them of a headline. During the avian flu mania, Canada geese were treated like Goering's bombers. RSPB workers were issued with protective headgear.The media went berserk, with interviewers asking why the government did not close all schools "to prevent up to 50,000 deaths". The Today programme's John Humphrys became frantic when a dead goose flopped down on an isolated Scottish beach and a hapless local official refused to confirm the BBC's hysteria. The bird might pose no threat to Scotland, but how dare he deny London journalists a good panic? Meanwhile a real pestilence, MRSA and C difficile, was taking hold in hospitals. It was suppressed by the medical profession because it appeared that they themselves might be to blame. These diseases have played a role in thousands of deaths in British hospitals - the former a reported 1,652 and the latter 8,324 in 2007 alone. Like deaths from alcoholism, we have come to regard hospital-induced infection as an accident of life, a hazard to which we have subconsciously adjusted. MRSA and C difficile are not like swine flu, an opportunity for public figures to scare and posture and spend money. They are diseases for which the government is to blame. They claim no headlines and no Cobra priority. Their sufferers must crawl away and die in silence. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm Obituary: Jack GoodBletchley codebreaker, he worked closely with Alan Turing Irving John "Jack" Good, who has died aged 92, was a statistician and mathematical genius who, having shown his talent in childhood, made crucial contributions to the successful assault on German codes and ciphers at Bletchley Park during the second world war. Two decades later the director Stanley Kubrick called on him while making 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). On 27 May 1941, fresh from gaining his doctorate at Cambridge, Good walked into Hut Eight, scene of Bletchley Park's attack on German naval ciphers, for his first shift. This was the day that the Royal Navy caught, and destroyed, the battleship Bismarck after it had sunk HMS Hood, the British fleet flagship. Bletchley's contribution had been tangential but important: the discovery by wireless-traffic analysis that the German flagship was bound for Brest in France rather than Wilhelmshaven, from which she had set out, when signals to her started coming from the French port instead of the German one. But Hut Eight had not been able to decipher in real time the 22 messages sent to the Bismarck because the Kriegsmarine was better at protecting its wireless traffic than the German army or the Luftwaffe, whose ciphers had been well penetrated the previous year. Naval signals were taking three to seven days to decipher, which usually made them operationally useless for the British. Yet this was about to change. In his book Enigma: the Battle for the Code, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore describes how Good annoyed Alan Turing, the great mathematician and guiding intelligence of the Bletchley operation, by taking a nap on the floor of Hut Eight during his first night shift. Turing refused to speak to him afterwards - until the new boy used his statistical expertise to demonstrate how an essential trial-and-error method of attacking Enigma traffic could be accelerated . The two men were thus reconciled. On another night shift, Good made a discovery missed by the old hands at Hut Eight. This helped them to work out which pairs of dummy letters the German encoders were adding to the twice enciphered, three-letter group at the start of each signal, telling the recipient how to set his machine to decipher it (for the British this became the achilles heel of the system). Good worked out that the "padding" was not random but came from a table, just as the setting itself did. Some sensitive or important Enigma messages were enciphered twice, once in a special variation cipher and again in the normal cipher. Clearly a man who needed his sleep, Good dreamed one night that the process had been reversed: normal cipher first, special cipher second. When he woke up he tried his theory on an unbroken message - and promptly broke it. He also worked closely with Turing and others on the pioneering Colossus computers used to tackle other German ciphers. By now he was principal statistician. Good was born Isidore Jacob Gudak to Polish-Jewish parents in London. His father was a watchmaker. He was educated at the Haberdashers' Aske's boys' school then in Hampstead, north London, where he effortlessly outpaced the mathematics teaching curriculum. In 1938 he graduated with first-class honours in mathematics from Jesus College, Cambridge and stayed on to work for his PhD. While still at Cambridge, in 1941, he was approached by Bletchley recruiters. These included Hugh Alexander, twice British national chess champion, with whom he was to work closely, Good had won the 1939 Cambridgeshire chess championship. He reported for work within days. His service with Turing lasted nearly two years until he transferred to a team led by Max Newman, working on Colossus. In 1947 Newman invited Good to join him and Turing at Manchester University. There for three years he lectured in mathematics and researched computers - including the Manchester Mark 1. Then, in 1948, he was recruited by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the successor to Bletchley Park, where he stayed until 1959. This did not prevent him from taking up a brief associate professorship at Princeton University and a short consultancy with IBM. From 1959 until he moved to the US in 1967 he held various government-funded posts and a senior research fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford. He was made a doctor of science at Cambridge in 1963 and at Oxford in 1964. Three years later he was appointed professor of statistics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. As the author of such treatises as Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine and Logic of Man and Machine (both 1965), Good must have seemed the obvious man for Kubrick to consult when making 2001; one of the main characters in the film is the super-computer HAL 9000, which shows intelligence and emotions but goes rogue. Good's published work ran to more than three million words. Slender and sporting a bushy moustache, Good was not without humour. He published one paper under the names IJ Good and K Caj Doog, his own nickname spelt backwards. In one paper in 1988 he solemnly reviewed other writings on the subject, mainly his own, on the grounds that: "I have read them all carefully." In Virginia, where car owners can invent their own numberplates, he chose 007 IJG in a coy reference to his wartime intelligence role. • Irving John "Jack" Good, mathematician, born 9 December 1916; died 5 April 2009 guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm Obituary: Alan VinceArchaeologist who transformed the study of Anglo-Saxon and medieval ceramics Eschewing traditional art-historical approaches, Alan Vince, who has died of cancer aged 56, transformed the study of Saxon, medieval and early modern ceramics by applying geological and archaeological techniques. He examined the petrological composition of pots, comparing their constituents with rocks from known geological deposits. Working from microscope slides and later also with chemical analysis of the clay, he could deduce the geographical origin of the pot - sometimes even the precise kiln that had produced it centuries ago. In many hands such information would be of purely academic value. But Alan compared tens of thousands of potsherds, from dozens of sites, deploying statistical techniques to transform understanding of conditions in English towns. In London it emerged that the Norman Conquest of 1066 made little difference to trade in pottery, to the types of vessel in use or, by inference, to the domestic way of life of most Londoners. Equally unexpected was the discovery, in 1984, of Saxon London. Because the medieval city lay within the walls of Roman Londinium, historians had assumed that Saxons lived there too from AD 400 to 800. Yet, numerous digs had produced no evidence. Then, within a month, both Alan and Martin Biddle, working independently, published articles proposing that previous searches had been in the wrong place. Saxon Lundenwic lay not within the Roman walls but to the west near Aldwych, "the old wic". Excavation proved them right. Whereas Biddle had marshalled the requisite historical and place-name data, Alan, typically, had drawn his conclusion from meticulous study of artefacts that had been dug up over centuries and largely disregarded. His Saxon London (1990) is a readable reassessment of this fascinating episode in London's history. Born in Bath, Alan was educated at Keynsham grammar school and at Southampton University (1970-78). There he was influenced by David Peacock, who had pioneered the application of geological techniques to the study of Roman pottery. Alan's doctoral thesis, The Medieval Ceramic Industry of the Severn Valley, surveyed the region of his birth and, besides pottery vessels, covered floor-tiles and other ceramic building materials - a subject upon which he became an authority. Alan also helped supervise digs in Gloucester and at St Albans Abbey where, prophetically, he was involved in unravelling that city's Saxon history. Alan then joined the Museum of London (1980-88), eventually managing research and publication of artefacts of all periods excavated in the City. The museum already classified ceramics according to geological principles, but it required someone with Alan's vision to show how to process thousands of potsherds and interpret them in the context of the buildings and rubbish dumps that had produced them. Aided by the nascent science of tree-ring dating, which provided a chronological framework, he rapidly produced a detailed type-series of all the pottery used in London from the mid-ninth to the mid-15th centuries. The results, published in a series of books and journal articles, are a cornerstone of medieval ceramic studies. From 1988, a senior position in the City of Lincoln archaeology unit enabled Alan to study urban life from Bronze Age origins, through Roman and Saxon settlements, to the emergence of an ecclesiastical centre and, ultimately, a Victorian city. But in Lincoln, as elsewhere by the late 1980s, so many sites had been excavated that the data threatened to overwhelm attempts to analyse it. Recognising the potential of embryonic geographical information systems, Alan devised a database in which every discovery could be assessed in terms of its contribution to reconstructing the city's history. The resulting The City by the Pool: Assessing the Archaeology of the City of Lincoln (2003), co-written with Mick Jones and David Stocker, sets the agenda for research and excavation. One of the first to recognise that the personal computer would transform archaeology, Alan was the first editor of a new online journal, Internet Archaeology. Based at York University (1995-99), he laid the foundations for a 25-issue series. He also established a consultancy to provide analytical services in ceramic petrology. A database, with thousands of chemical samples from hundreds of kilns and other sites, was a signal achievement of the last decade. A fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists, Alan was also interested in glass (he once excavated a 17th-century glasshouse at Newent, Gloucestershire), clay tobacco pipes and decorated tiles. An imposing figure and a fine teacher, whose critical acuity was mixed with humour and generosity, he mentored a succession of assistants, many of whom have become ceramics experts. His wife, Joanna, whom he met on a dig in Coddenham, Suffolk, in 1973, and married in 1976, survives him, along with their three children, Leon, Amy and Kate. • Alan George Vince, archaeologist, born 30 March 1952; died 23 February 2009 guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm US more optimistic about climate deal after talks (AP)AP - The top U.S. negotiator on climate change said Tuesday that he is slightly more optimistic about striking a new international agreement to curb global warming after a two-day meeting with the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:00 pm Researchers find first common autism geneWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have found the first common genetic link to autism and said on Tuesday it could potentially account for 15 percent of the disease's cases.Source: Reuters: Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:00 pm New York City-sized ice collapses off AntarcticaTROMSOE, Norway (Reuters) - An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:00 pm Space Junk Forcing More Evasive Maneuvers
American spacecraft had to dodge space debris four times in 2008, NASA revealed Tuesday, a fact that highlights both the extent of the space junk problem and the primary mitigation option open to NASA. By tracking pieces of debris larger than around four inches, space engineers can identify some dangerous space junk and meteoroids. If a satellite or spacecraft is in danger of getting hit, they simply move it out of harm’s way. The International Space Station, for example, had to make an evasive maneuver back in August 2008, to avoid a piece of an old Russian craft. “On average, Shuttle and ISS have conducted several collision avoidance maneuvers over the past then years on the order of about one per year,” said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist at NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office, in a teleconference with reporters ahead of a House subcommittee on space and aeronautics meeting about space debris. Space debris is an increasing problem. Johnson noted that from the 1960s until the past year, orbital debris had increased linearly, despite advances in decreasing the amount of debris left behind per trip to space. But recently, a Chinese missile test on a satellite and the collision of two satellites in orbit, sent the amount of space debris up considerably. The satellite collision alone increased the risk to the upcoming May shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope by 8 percent. That complicated an already unusual mission. The Hubble Space Telescope, orbiting at 340 miles above Earth’s surface, has a far more densely crowded space debris environment than the ISS. The orbits near 560 miles are the most crowded with junk. “The orbit of the telescope is up in a higher risk region than the Space Station is,” said Bryan O’Connor, chief of safety and mission assurance at NASA.
When the initial risk calculations came in for the mission to the Hubble at 1 in 185, they exceeded the general NASA guideline for risk, which states the risk of a catastrophic space debris hit should be less than 1 in 200. That sent the engineers back to the table to figure out ways to reduce that risk. They did so by tilting the orientation of the shuttle to take possible debris hits in less vulnerable parts of the craft and dipping to a lower orbit towards the end of the mission. NASA also reduces the risk that a space-debris-related event will be catastrophic by inspecting the craft before re-entry. It is important to note that this doesn’t decrease the risk of a piece of space junk hitting the shuttle, but rather increases the chance that any problems resulting from such a strike could be fixed on orbit, or the crew rescued by another space craft. Their latest risk estimate is down to 1 in 221. We already know small impacts occur regularly during shuttle flights. Wired Science obtained the Hypervelocity Impact Database last month, which revealed that in the 54 missions from STS-50 through STS-114, space junk and meteoroids hit shuttle windows 1,634 times necessitating 92 window replacements. In addition, the shuttle’s radiator was hit 317 times, actually causing holes in the radiator’s facesheet 53 times. NASA officials downplayed the space debris problem, however, in their teleconference with reporters. “We don’t think this is a page one story,” Johnson said. “There is no serious new issue that we have not been aware of and [that] needs to be addressed. This is just part of what we’ve been working with for many, many years.” That contrasted with the scene during a meeting of the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics in which Dana Rohrbacher, a Republican from California, suggested that the United States needed an active strategy for getting rid of space debris. “If we can chart it, if you’re already charting the course, all we have to do is get something up there that will knock it down,” Rohrbacher said. “That doesn’t have to be something very sophisticated. Just a big bulldozer in the sky, you might say. And perhaps something like that might not be as expensive as you think, especially if we were doing it internationally.” Lieutenant General Larry D. James, commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space for U.S. Strategic Command, described U.S. monitoring capabilities as generally giving an accurate four-day forecast for space junk around our satellites, generally providing ample time for taking evasive action. But he also said that some smaller, more erratic pieces of debris could pop into view less than half a day before they were scheduled to come across a space asset. While that wouldn’t matter to the more mobile shuttle, the International Space Station needs about 30 hours notice to maneuver. Indeed that scenario nearly played out in early March. A previously unknown small piece of debris appeared with too little time for the ISS to move out of its way and its crew members were forced to take refuge in a Soyuz space craft that would have acted as an escape pod in the event of a catastrophic hit. For that reason, James recommended that Congress fund the next generation of orbital sensors, colloquially known as the “Space Fence.” “With the capability to perform 750,000 observations per day and track over 100,000 objects, the Space Fence will significantly reduce coverage gaps and significantly improve our low Earth and medium Earth orbit [space situational awareness],” he wrote in his prepared testimony. See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter , Google Reader feed, and green tech history site, The History of Our Future; Wired Science on Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 28 Apr 2009 | 10:44 pm Gov't revokes rule limiting species protections (AP)AP - Federal agencies again will have to consult with government wildlife experts before taking actions that could have an impact on threatened or endangered species.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 10:35 pm The Human Genome Is So 2003
The X-Prize foundation is auctioning the chance to have your entire genome sequenced. Bidding started Friday on eBay at $68,000, quite a bit more than the several hundred dollars charged by commercial genomics companies. But rather than a readout of several hundred genomic hotspots, you’ll get a full analysis of your every last gene, interpreted by some of the world’s finest geneticists. It’s quite a service. It’s also mind-blowing to think that sequencing the first human genome cost roughly $3 billion. But even at reduced contemporary rates, is it really worth the money, even as a status symbol or for the gratification of being an “early adopter,” in the words of Harvard geneticist George Church? In a series of articles recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, geneticists acknowledge something that’s largely escaped public attention: the sequenced genome just hasn’t been as useful as predicted. Expected to illuminate the origins of complex disease and kick-start an era of personalized medicine, it’s helped researchers looking for clues to disease pathways, but done very little for consumers. In some ways, people expected too much, too soon. But in other ways, expectations for the genome were unrealistic. The genome is only one part of life’s blueprint. The epigenome — a chemical layer of information that determines when genes are turned on and off — is another one, and perhaps just as important. Scientists are still mapping it. Another important part of the blueprint may be chromosome topography. It seems that how genes are physically arranged in the cell nucleus affects how they work. So if you really want to be an early adopter, then stick with commercial genomic services, and save the big money until epigenome maps and chromosome topographs are on the market. See Also:
Image: Temporal variation in gene activation in a mouse/PLoS Genetics Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 28 Apr 2009 | 9:57 pm Swine Flu Genes From Pigs Only, Not Humans or Birds
The deadly H1N1 influenza virus that’s fueling fears of a global pandemic appears to be a hybrid of two common pig flu strains, scientists who have studied the disease told Wired.com Tuesday. Earlier reports called it a combination of pig, human and avian influenza strains. The findings may resolve some uncertainty about the nature of the virus, but much is still unknown about its origins and effects. “This is what we call a reassortment between two currently circulating pig flu viruses,” said Andrew Rambaut, a University of Edinborough viral geneticist. “Why it’s emerged in humans is anyone’s guess. It hasn’t been seen before in pigs as far as I know.” Rambaut analyzed the gene sequences of viral samples taken from two infected California children. The samples were collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and made available to researchers through an international database of flu genomes. His conclusions were echoed by Eddie Holmes, a virus evolution specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, and Steven Salzberg, a University of Maryland bioinformaticist. Both have looked at the CDC-provided sequences. The CDC could not be reached for comment, but a document released to scientists and obtained by Wired.com affirms their analysis. Researchers believe the samples from California represent the same viral strain as one that is believed to have killed as many as 150 of an estimated 1,600 hospitalized Mexicans, and caused hundreds more infections worldwide, including at least 64 in the United States. However, as samples from Mexico have not yet been sequenced, the similarity is not conclusive. The two strains whose genes are found in the California samples belong to influenza families known generally as North American and Eurasian pig flu. The former was first described in the 1930s, and the latter in 1979. The Eurasian strain is generally found in Europe and Asia, rather than North America. Neither of the strains have ever proven contagious in humans. One of the genes inherited from the Eurasian strain has reportedly never been seen in humans. It codes for the neuraminidase enzyme — the N1 in H1N1 — which controls the expansion of the virus from infected cells. “The new neuraminidase gene that came in from Eurasian swine is one we’ve never before seen circulating in humans,” said Rambaut. “That’s one of the reasons it’s spreading rapidly. Very few people will have any immunity to this particular combination, which is what gives the concern that this will be a pandemic rather than just a normal seasonal flu outbreak. It remains to be seen how much and to what extent there is existing immunity.” However, understanding the origins could eventually help scientists determine how the virus evolved and where it originally emerged. The earliest cases occurred in the town of La Gloria in the Mexican state of Veracruz, not far from a large and notoriously unsanitary hog farm operated by Granjas Carroll, a subsidiary of giant American food company Smithfield Foods. Vercruz residents and some journalists have alleged that the virus could have evolved in the farm’s pigs, then passed into humans through water or insects tainted by infected waste. Many researchers, including the authors of a report issued last year by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, have warned that unsanitary conditions at industrial hog farms could prove a breeding ground for new forms of influenza. The World Health Organization has sent inspectors to the Granjas Carroll farm. The results of the investigation have not been announced. Smithfield issued a press release on Saturday stating that “it has found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in the company’s swine herd or its employees at its joint ventures in Mexico.” The company declined further comment, though CEO Larry Pope told USA Today that “(The term) swine flu is a misnomer.” Rambaut, Holmes and Salzberg declined to speculate on whether the new H1N1 virus evolved on a hog farm or specifically in the Granjas Carroll facility. However, it seems likely that pigs were the original host. “That’s a logical conclusion,” said Salzberger. “It was probably two different pigs, or one who got co-infected from others. The two strains mixed, and now you have a brand-new strain.” “Presumably somewhere there was a pig infected with both forms. We don’t know where or when. It could have been circulating in this form for a while,” said Rambaut. What comes next is anyone’s guess. “Influenza virus mutates remarkably rapidly so there is no doubt that the virus will mutate and evolve in humans,” said Holmes. “Quite what this evolution will result in is difficult to tell.” See Also: Image: Flickr/sarihuella Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 28 Apr 2009 | 9:40 pm Some Dinosaurs Survived the Asteroid Impact (LiveScience.com)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 9:36 pm BLOG: Health Experts Answer Swine Flu QuestionsInfectious disease experts tackle 20 frequently asked questions about swine flu.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Apr 2009 | 8:10 pm To Understand the Blueprint of Life, Crumple It
An expedition into the chaos of a cell’s control center has returned with intriguing insights into a poorly understood process that shapes every cell in the body. By linking changes in gene activation to changes in their physical arrangement, researchers provided the clearest evidence yet that the genome’s three-dimensional architecture, not just its sequence, determines cell fate and function. “Genes are not randomly placed in the genome, but they’re often next to each other on adjacent chromosomes,” said Northwestern University cell biologist Steven Kosak. “You can only understand the genome by knowing what it looks like.” Kosak’s findings, co-authored with Indika Rajapakse, a Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center biomathematician, are part of a growing scientific focus on how genes are switched on and off at different points in a cell’s life, in patterns that vary between time and place and the body. Many researchers say these so-called epigenetic changes are as important as genomic variation to controlling cell function and, ultimately, an individual’s health. Unlike the human genome, however, the epigenetic code hasn’t been mapped. That missing knowledge could explain why the human genome’s sequencing, finished in 2004, has in some ways failed to fulfill its public expectations. Rather than finding genes easily predictive of disease, researchers have tagged clouds of genes that each possess a fractional connection to disease. Such clouds don’t lend themselves to obvious biological narratives. “The genetic analysis of common disease is turning out to be a lot more complex than expected,” wrote veteran New York Times science journalist Nicholas Wade in a recent article on controversies in genomic analysis. Hoping to understand what’s happening in those clouds, epigenetics researchers have focused on biochemical switches that turn genes on and off. On their fringes are Kosak and other chromosome topographers, who think that shape itself could be a type of switch. Unlike the textbook image of neatly-arranged, X-shaped lines of genes, which are usually photographed during moments of cellular stability, chromosomes assume a highly complicated form as genetic code is transcribed into a buzzing protein swarm. They’re intertwined like balls of loose twine. In the last few years, scientists noticed that certain genes only seem to be activated when arranged in a certain configuration. Though unable to explain exactly why this happens, they’re convinced that understanding chromosomal topography is absolutely essential to understanding the genome. “Pick a random person of the street, say ‘genome,’ and they’ll think ’sequence.’ But what’s becoming clear from the sequencing efforts is that if you want to understand how a genome functions, the sequence won’t tell you,” said Tom Misteli, a National Cancer Institute cell biologist. “How a genome is organized inside a cell is important. It’s a fundamental property of the genome and of cells, but it’s been a little forgotten in the focus on sequence.” Kosak and Rajapakse have delivered the most comprehensive evidence yet of the relationship between gene position and activation. On top of that, they might have uncovered an explanation for the importance of gene positioning. In their study, published in March by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and reviewed in Monday’s issue by Misteli, the researchers took genome-wide chronological readings of gene activation and chromosome shape as a mouse stem cell turned into a red blood cell. Then crunched the numbers through a pattern-analysis program that plotted relationships between the “People have been screaming for this study for the last five or ten years,” said Misteli. “Most of what we’ve known about how genomes change expression comes from looking at one or two or three genes. Kosak does this genome-wide. Critics of chromosome positioning said we needed to look at lots of genes. That’s exactly what they did.” Exactly how chromosomes take their necessary shapes, and how these shapes then affect genes, is still unknown. Misteli called that knowledge the “holy grail.” Researchers do, however, have a few ideas. Some suspect that, rather than sending gene-activating and gene-stifling proteins to particular gene targets, chromosomes adjust their shape in order to bring genes closer to the proteins. Misteli and Kosak describe this as a form of genomic self-organization, and say the findings support it. When Kosak and Rajapakse compared the mathematical patterns derived from their Kosak next plans to study chromosome topography in human stem cells as they become functional tissue. Some caveats apply to the research, which has yet to be replicated. Misteli said that gene activation needs to be measured at other times, and that the computational model of self-organization was relatively rudimentary. “But these are first, early steps,” said Misteli. “Somebody has to make them.” See Also: Image: PNAS Citations: “Self-organization in the genome.” By Tom Misteli. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 16, April 20, 2009. “The emergence of lineage-specific chromosomal topologies from coordinate gene regulation.” By Indika Rajapakse, Michael D. Perlman, David Scalzo, Charles Kooperberg, Mark Groudine, and Steven T. Kosak. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 10, Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 28 Apr 2009 | 7:31 pm Telescope snaps most distant objectWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers tracking a mysterious blast of energy called a gamma ray burst said on Tuesday they had snapped a photograph of the most distant object in the universe -- a smudge 13 billion light-years away.Source: Reuters: Science News | 28 Apr 2009 | 6:23 pm Huge Antarctic Ice Shelf FracturesThe Wilkins ice shelf that once covered 6,000 square miles is breaking apart.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Apr 2009 | 6:10 pm Boots anti-wrinkle cream actually worksFirst reliable clinical trial of a high street anti-ageing product shows No7 Protect and Perfect reduces wrinkles At the time, it probably all seemed like media hype. When a documentary declared that a Boots anti-ageing cream actually worked, stocks of the serum vanished faster than frown lines, with a whole year's supply of the lotion disappearing from the shelves within a fortnight. But the frenzy surrounding the "No7 Protect and Perfect" range may not have been so half-baked after all. The results of what is thought to be the first reliable clinical trial of any anti-wrinkle cream available on the high street suggest that it really does help to reduce wrinkles. In what may spark a second wave of hysteria over the product, scientists at Manchester University concluded that around a fifth of people who used the cream for six months saw some improvement in their skin. The trial, which compared Boots "No.7 Protect and Perfect intense beauty serum" with a moisturiser, was welcomed by scientists who said it "raised the bar" on the kinds of tests cosmetic companies should do before making claims for their products. An independent investigation by the BBC's Horizon programme last year caused a run on a product from the same range of creams after it was found to be the only one tested to have any beneficial effect. "Very few over-the-counter cosmetic 'anti-ageing' products have been subjected to a rigorous, scientific trial to prove their effectiveness," said Chris Griffiths, a dermatologist and leader of the new study. Prescription drugs known as retinoids have been proved to repair skin that has been aged by sun exposure, but there is scant evidence that the plethora of cosmetic anti-ageing products have a similar effect, Griffiths added. In the study, 49 women and 11 men aged between 45 and 80 used either the anti-wrinkle product or a placebo moisturising cream for six months. At the end of the period, 43% of those who used the anti-wrinkle cream saw an improvement in the condition of their skin, compared with 22% of those who used the placebo cream. Tests on the volunteers' skin showed that those who used the anti-ageing cream were producing a protein called fibrillin-1, which makes skin more elastic. The research appears in the British Journal of Dermatology. Richard Weller, a dermatologist at Edinburgh University, said the study was the first proper trial of an over-the-counter cosmetic product. He said the report was unclear about how much the cream reduced people's wrinkles and it was unlikely to be as effective as retinoids, which can only be prescribed through a GP. But the trial suggests that other anti-ageing products might also be effective in reducing wrinkles. "The ingredients in Protect and Perfect are available to other cosmetic companies, and many of them are used in other brands of cosmetics. It would not surprise me if other cosmetics showed similar effects, but it is up to rival cosmetic companies to show this," Weller said. "Most importantly, I think this will raise the bar for what we should expect from the cosmetic companies in showing that their products work." Nina Goad, a spokeswoman for the British Association of Dermatologists, said: "Approximately one in five people using the cream will get something extra for their money over plain moisturisers. It is an interesting step forward in research, although the long-term benefits are unknown. The main preventable causes of skin ageing are sun exposure and smoking, so if you're worried about wrinkles, limiting these factors is sensible." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 28 Apr 2009 | 6:01 pm Cosmic Blast Is Universe's Oldest Object Yet SeenAstronomers spy a burst of energy from a star that died more than 13 billion years ago.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Apr 2009 | 5:40 pm Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About AntimatterWe'll bet an antiproton you didn't know these 10 facts about the antimatter universe.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Apr 2009 | 4:40 pm Asteroids Get 'Sunburned' QuicklySolar wind rapidly turns asteroids red, concludes research that will help trace meteorites.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm Central Asia fails in water talksThe leaders of the five Central Asian states fail to reach a deal on sharing water resources - one of the region's key issues.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 2:40 pm Swine Flu Ground Zero Possibly FoundA U.S.-owned farm in a small Mexican town may be the epicenter of the swine flu outbreak.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Apr 2009 | 2:00 pm GPS and Hair Analysis Reveal Elephant StressesKenya elephants' diets are gleaned from tail hair analysis and GPS tracking.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Apr 2009 | 1:50 pm Telescopes flight given 'go' dateEurope's premier space launch of 2009 - the twin flight of the Herschel and Planck telescopes - is set for 14 May.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 1:35 pm Scientists 'prove' face cream can beat wrinklesScientists say they have clinical proof that a face cream available on the High Street does reduce wrinkles.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 1:18 pm Cosmic blast sets distance markThe cataclysmic explosion of a giant star is the most distant single object ever detected by telescopes.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 1:15 pm Swine Flu Outbreak Tracked With TwitterAdd Twitter to the toolbox for public epidemiologists tracking the spread of swine flu.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Apr 2009 | 1:10 pm Plastic Water Bottles May Pose Health HazardWater bottles made with PET plastic are shown to harbor estrogenic compounds.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Apr 2009 | 1:00 pm Climate change hitting entire Arctic ecosystem, says reportArctic 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. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 28 Apr 2009 | 12:18 pm Earth WatchEurope's invaders are pushing the green buttonSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Apr 2009 | 11:34 am
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