Tumor Mutations Can Predict Chemo Success

Cancer biologists show that the interplay between two key genes that are often defective in tumors determines how cancer cells respond to chemotherapy. The findings should have an immediate impact on cancer treatment, according to researchers. The work could help doctors predict what types of chemotherapy will be effective in a particular tumor, which would help tailor treatments to each patient.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Crystal Ball For Brain Cancer? New Method Predicts Which Brain Tumors Will Respond To Drug

Researchers have uncovered a new way to scan brain tumors and predict which ones will be shrunk by the drug Avastin -- before the patient ever starts treatment. By linking high water movement in tumors to positive drug response, the scientists predicted with 70 percent accuracy which patients' tumors were the least likely to grow six months after therapy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Males Of High Genetic Quality Are Not Very Successful At Fertilizing Eggs

Contrary to predictions, males of high genetic quality are not very successful when it comes to fertilizing eggs. A new study on seed beetles shows that when a female mates with several males, the males of low genetic quality are the most successful in fertilizing eggs.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Marine Microbes Creating Green Waves In Industry

New technology designed to analyze large numbers of novel marine microbes could lead to more efficient and greener ways to manufacture new drugs for conditions such as epilepsy, diabetes, flu and other viruses, as well as improving the manufacture of other products such as agrochemicals.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

How To Manage Dental Erosion Caused By Everyday Beverages

Researchers have outlined the acidic content of beverages, such as soda; lemon, grapefruit and orange juice; green and black tea; and revealed three steps to rehabilitate teeth that suffer from dental erosion as a result of the excessive consumption of these products.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Itch-specific Neurons Identified In Mice Offers Hope For Better Treatments

Researchers have discovered that itch-specific neurons exist in mice, and their studies suggest that itch and pain signals are transmitted along different pathways in the spinal cord. The researchers say they can knock out an animal's itch response without affecting its ability to sense pain.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Douglas-fir, Geoducks Make Strange Bedfellows In Studying Climate Change

Scientists are comparing annual growth rings of the Pacific Northwest's largest bivalve and its most iconic tree for clues to how living organisms may have responded to changes in climate.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

Bladder Cells Feel Stretch: Molecular Mechanism Of Sensing Fullness Of Urine Found

Scientists have found that bladder urothelial cells have a sensor for stretch stimulation.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

Surface Features On Titan Form Like Earth's, But With A Frigid Twist

Saturn's haze-enshrouded moon Titan turns out to have much in common with Earth in the way that weather and geology shape its terrain, according to two new pieces of research. Wind, rain, volcanoes, tectonics and other Earth-like processes all sculpt features on Titan's complex and varied surface in an environment more than 100 °C colder on average than Antarctica.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

Antibody Linked To Chemotherapy Drug Inhibits Ovarian Cancer In Lab

A novel anticancer agent, consisting of a monoclonal antibody linked to a chemotherapy drug, showed substantial anti-tumor activity in ovarian cancer cell lines and in mice, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - Rain is forecast in the Intermountain West and Northern Rockies Saturday. The wet weather is expected to move gradually into the Northern Plains, where heavy rain and some thunderstorms are possible.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 3:43 am

Particle collider: Black hole or crucial machine? (AP)

AP - When launched to great fanfare nearly a year ago, some feared the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole that would suck in the world. It turns out the Hadron may be the black hole.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 12:44 am

Birthplace of Roman emperor found in Italy (AP)

AP - Archaeologists have unearthed a sprawling country villa believed to be the birthplace of Vespasian, the Roman emperor who built the Colosseum, they said Friday. The 2,000-year-old ruins were found about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of Rome, near Cittareale, lead archaeologist Filippo Coarelli said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 12:43 am

SD Zoo's online Panda Cam crashes due to overload (AP)

AP - The San Diego Zoo's pandas have become such cyber-stars that their Panda Cam got caught in a popularity crunch.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Aug 2009 | 12:01 am

Powerful Mars Orbiter Switches to Backup Computer (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars has inexplicably switched to its backup computer, temporarily stalling science operations until it can be fixed, the space agency said late Friday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Aug 2009 | 10:32 pm

U.S. Stem Cell Research Seems to Focus on Two Lines (HealthDay)

HealthDay - FRIDAY, Aug. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Only two of 21 approved human embryonic stem cell lines are routinely used by researchers in the United States, says a new study.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Aug 2009 | 9:48 pm

Extinction hits 'whole families'

Groups of closely-related species are likely to become extinct at the same time, according to research in Science journal.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Aug 2009 | 5:24 pm

Shuttle Astronauts Practice Launch Pad Escape (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Seven astronauts climbed aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery Friday for a vital drill to practice escaping from the spacecraft at the launch pad and go over plans for their late August blast off.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Aug 2009 | 5:16 pm

Cassini Spacecraft Spots New Object in Saturn’s Rings

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has discovered a new object in Saturn’s rings.

By capitalizing on the angle of sunlight cast on the rings as the planet nears its August 11 equinox, Cassini captured the 25-mile long shadow cast on Saturn’s B ring by a tiny moonlet that is probably around 1,300 feet in diameter.

It’s no coincidence that the spacecraft’s rendezvous with the planet coincides with its equinox, which occurs twice a Saturn year, or every 15 Earth years. The mission was planned to take advantage of the 27 months during which the sun is directly over the planet’s equator at noon. This positioning causes any three-dimensional object to cast a long shadow and stand out.

Because Saturn’s main rings, A, B, C and D, are a scant 30 feet thick, Cassini’s cameras can’t even see them, which makes it tough to spot anything sticking out from them. The equinox is the only time these objects will be plainly visible.

Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Aug 2009 | 5:06 pm

Psychopaths have faulty brain connections, scientists find

LONDON (Reuters) - Psychopaths who kill and rape have faulty connections between the part of the brain dealing with emotions and that which handles impulses and decision-making, scientists have found.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Aug 2009 | 5:02 pm

Science called key to economic, energy, health care challenges (McClatchy Newspapers)

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — Science and technology are key to solving the interconnected challenges of the economy, energy, climate change and health care, President Barack Obama's science advisers said this week.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:48 pm

Scientists Track Down Source of Earth’s Hum

You can’t hear it, but the Earth is constantly humming. And some parts of the world sing louder than others.

After discovering the mysterious low-frequency buzz in 1998, scientists figured out that the Earth’s hum is caused not by earthquakes or atmospheric turbulence, but by ocean waves colliding with the seafloor. Now, researchers have pinpointed the source of the Earth’s “background noise,” and it looks like it’s coming primarily from the Pacific coast of North America.

When two waves of opposite direction but similar frequency collide, they create a special kind of pressure wave that carries energy to the ocean bottom. As these waves pound against the sea floor, they generate a constant vibration with a frequency of about 10 millihertz, much too low for humans to hear but easily detectable with seismometers. By comparing the intensity of the hum with the height of waves around the world, scientists can track where the buzz is coming from.

Previous studies suggested that waves from both shallow continental shelves and the deep ocean contribute to the Earth’s hum, but new data indicates otherwise. Based on measurements from a seismic observatory called the USArray EarthScope, most of the hum appears to originate from the Pacific coast of North America, with a smaller contribution from the west coast of Europe. Waves from the deep ocean don’t seem to make much hum at all.

The data for this study, published Thursday in Geophysical Research Letters, was gathered from November 2006 to June 2007, so humming patterns might be different during the summer months.

See Also:

• Things That Make the Earth Go Hm
• Sun Induces Strange ‘Breathing’ of Earth’s Atmosphere
• Earth Gets Billion-Year Life Extension
• First-Ever Asteroid Tracked From Space to Earth

Image: Satellite photo of the US West Coast/NASA

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:23 pm

Freaky Sleep Paralysis: Being Awake in Your Nightmares

You wake up, but you can’t move a muscle. Lying in bed, you’re totally conscious, and you realize that strange things are happening. There’s a crushing weight on your chest that’s humanoid. And it’s evil.

You’ve awakened into the dream world.

This is not the conceit for a new horror movie starring a ragged middle-aged Freddie Prinze Jr., it’s a standard description of the experience of a real medical condition: sleep paralysis. It’s a strange phenomenon that seems to happen to about half the population at least once.

People who experience it find themselves awake in the dream world for anywhere from a few seconds to 10 minutes, often experiencing hallucinations with dark undertones. Cultures from everywhere from Newfoundland to the Caribbean to Japan have come up with spiritual explanations for the phenomenon. Now, a new article in The Psychologist suggests sleep researchers are finally figuring out the neurological basis of the condition.

“This research strongly suggests that sleep paralysis is related to REM sleep, and in particular REM sleep that occurs at sleep onset,” write researchers Julia Santomauro and Christopher C. French of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, Goldsmiths, at the University of London. “Shift work, jet lag, irregular sleep habits, overtiredness and sleep deprivation are all considered to be predisposing factors to sleep paralysis; this may be because such events disrupt the sleep–wake cycle, which can then cause [sleep-onset REM periods].”

In other words, you experience just a piece of REM sleep.

As David McCarty, a sleep researcher at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center’s Sleep Medicine Program, explained it, humans tend to think about the elements of the different stages of sleep as packaged nicely together. So, in REM sleep, you’re unconscious, experiencing a variety of sensory experiences, and almost all of your muscles are paralyzed (that’s called atonia).

“But in reality you can disassociate those elements,” McCarty said.

In sleep paralysis, two of the key REM sleep components are present, but you’re not unconscious.

Narcolepsy, which can be linked with sleep paralysis, has a similar pathology. For narcoleptics, some of the elements of rapid eye movement can “come out of nowhere,” he McCarty said.

Sleep paralysis was first identified within the scientific community by psychologist Weir Mitchell in 1876. He laid down this syntactically old-school, but accurate description of how it works. “The subject awakes to consciousness of his environment but is incapable of moving a muscle; lying to all appearance still asleep. He is really engaged in a struggle for movement fraught with acute mental distress; could he but manage to stir, the spell would vanish instantly.”

But the condition lived in folklore long before anyone tried to subject it to even semi-rigorous study. The various responses have fascinated some researchers and they were cataloged in the 2007 book, Tall Tales About the Mind and Brain. In Japan, the problem was termed kanashibar. In Newfoundland, people called it “the old hag.” In China, “ghost oppression” was the preferred nomenclature.

A study released earlier this year found that more than 90 percent of Mexican adolescents know the phrase “a dead body climbed on top of me” to describe the disorder. More than 25 percent of them had experienced it themselves.

Having an element of REM sleep mix with your consciousness is scarier than it sounds. I experienced sleep paralysis on several occasions when I was in college. I can testify: It’s run-to-your-mama scary.

In my case, it would happen right as I was falling asleep on the two twin beds that I had taped together. The most vivid time, I “woke up” with the uneasy feeling that something awful was to my left, on the border of my peripheral vision. I couldn’t really see it, but I knew that it was evil and coming closer to me. I felt true terror, like you experience when you are about to get in a car crash. I was sure it was going to hurt me.

After a few minutes, I could finally move and took the opportunity to run across campus to a friend’s house and asked to sleep on the couch. With the lights on. It happened a few more times.

Then, it just stopped. It hasn’t ever happened again.

The good news, McCarty said, is that my experience is actually pretty standard. Sleep paralysis rarely persists or causes serious life damage.

“It’s very common, way more common than people realize, but usually it doesn’t recur,” he said. “It’s not frequent enough to make people come in and ask the doctor for help.”

via Mind Hacks

Image: John Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare

See Also:

• The Uncertain Science of Sleep
• Heated Snoozing Suit Boosts Deep Sleep
• Sleep Hacking Produces Results — For a Time
• Sleep Drug Makers Say Americans Need More Sleep
• To Sleep, Perchance to Learn: The Mind’s Mysterious Nocturnal
• Without Time and Sleep, Facts Are Fragments

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:10 pm

Pipeline leak causes oil spill in southern France (AFP)

AFP - French emergency units were dispatched Friday to contain an oil spill from a pipeline in farm fields west of the southeastern city of Marseille, officials said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Aug 2009 | 12:36 pm

Charge: T. Rex Was a Chicken and a Baby Killer (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Although past research has suggested Tyrannosaurus rex was related to chickens, now findings hint this giant predator might have acted chicken too.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Aug 2009 | 12:16 pm

To Pay for Health Care, Treat Aging

As politicians try to reform a health care system that could swallow one-fifth of the nation’s economic output by 2020, they should consider making a small bet with a potentially huge payoff: research that could slow the process of aging.

“There will never be enough money for the federal government to pay for the demands of health care, because of chronic age-related diseases,” said Doug Wallace, a cell biologist at the University of California, Irvine.

Wallace specializes in mitochondria — cellular power plants that float outside the cell nucleus, turn glucose into usable energy, and wear down over time. He thinks their malfunction underlies nearly every disease whose risks spike after middle age, from cancer to heart disease to dementia.

A decade ago, Wallace’s was a lonely, evangelical voice. But research from multiple groups suggests he might be on to something. Broken-down mitochondria have been found in diseased hearts, brain cells from people with Alzheimer’s, and cancer cells.

This could be an effect rather than a cause of disease, but drugs that target a family of mitochondria-regulating genes called sirtuins have shown promise in preventing age-related diseases, albeit in laboratory mice. One such drug is now in clinical trials for diabetes. Another mitochondria-linked drug has dramatically extended mouse lifespans, and it was given to them during the mouse equivalent of old age.

“There might be a totally different way of treating disease, in which you’re treating the body as a system,” said Wallace. “The idea is that you could have a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease that would also be good for cardiac disease, and that’s exactly what we find with mitochondrial medicine.”

None of these drugs have proved effective in humans, and they might never. But scientists say there’s a chance. And they offer the possibility of not simply holding off one disease until another emerges, or extending life by a few months at tremendous cost, but of nipping age-related disease at the root.

That should be especially appealing as the nation confronts the swelling monster of health care spending, which by 2020 could cost more than $4 trillion. According to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report, chronic diseases — many of them age-related — now already account for three-quarters of U.S. health care spending.

Much of that cost reflects waste and excess, but even were it repaired, a fundamental problem would remain.

“We’re concerned that the disease-specific approach will not only run out of steam, but will in the end prolong the period of disability and frailty,” said Jay Olshansky, a longevity and aging specialist at the University of Illinois School of Public Health.

“Say you come up with a treatment for heart disease, and an individual lives for an extra ten years, but most of that time is spent with Alzheimer’s disease. You’ve purchased survival time that is expensive and unhealthy,” he said.

Olshansky is a member of a MacArthur Foundation-supported network of researchers who are studying the social and economic implications of a society that’s living longer, but not becoming healthier. (He’s also a vocal proponent of another broad-spectrum disease prevention strategy: basic education. “Education has been shown to have an extraordinarily powerful beneficial effect on health. That’s something that’s immediately available,” he said. “Some of the greatest benefits are available to us without improvements in technology.”)

In papers published in The Scientist and British Medical Journal, Olshanksy and International Longevity Center president Robert Butler wrote that drugs that delay aging’s onset by seven years are now a realistic possibility.

They’re currently in the process of calculating this longevity dividend’s economic benefits. Even if the figures aren’t finalized, however, they’re likely to be massive. For Alzheimer’s disease alone, they estimate that the cost of care will rise to $1 trillion by 2050. The Robert Wood Johnson foundation estimates two-thirds of rising health costs come from chronic diseases.

“We need a method of molecular pre-emption. If we’re going to be able to afford health care, that’s what we’ve got to do. That’s going to provide the maximum cost savings, not managing symptoms or curative treatment,” said former National Institutes of Health chief Elias Zerhouni at a symposium held last Friday by the Jackson Laboratory.

The NIH channels almost all U.S. governmental support for age-delaying research through the National Institute on Aging, but its $1 billion budget is a pittance by federal standards. Nearly $5 billion is earmarked for the National Cancer Institute, and that’s just one disease of aging. Of the NIA’s $1 billion, just $180 million is set aside for research on the biology of aging. That figure has barely changed since 2006.

President Obama’s stimulus package did allot $273 million for the National Institute on Aging, but only a small fraction will likely go to potentially age-delaying research, said Peter Rabinovitch, a University of Washington gerontologist. By contrast, the stimulus plan contains $37 billion for electronic health records.

According to Rabinovitch, biology of aging research also doesn’t appear in any of the proposed federal health care plans.

“It’s been an uphill battle to realize that basic research on the biology of aging can have an impact on health care in the long run. You have to be able to look at the longer picture, and that’s a job for politicians and policymakers,” he said. “Just half a billion dollars would transform this field.”

See Also:

• Anti-Aging Drugs Could Change the Nature of Death
• New Longevity Drugs Poised to Tackle Diseases of Aging
• Pharmaceutical Fountain of Youth Could Cost Pennies
• Cancer Drug Delays Aging in Mice

Image: Derrick Tyson/Flickr

Home Page image: Flickr/gagilas

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes, Wired Science on Twitter.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Aug 2009 | 12:07 pm

SLIDE SHOW: This Week's Top Stories

Take a look at the top stories of the past week in the Discovery News Flashback Slide Show.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Charge: T. Rex Was a Chicken and a Baby Killer

Tyrannosaurus Rex was not as fearsome as Hollywood had portrayed.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Aug 2009 | 11:40 am

DNA toolbox

The toolbox of Lilliputian gears, tubes and balls could one day be assembled into medical nanomachines for fixing faulty cells

In the latest phase of the nanotechnology revolution, scientists have built a collection of minuscule objects from DNA, including toothed gears, curved tubes, and a wireframe beach ball five millionths of a centimetre in diameter.

As well as being able to hold vast amounts of information, DNA is tough and flexible, making it an attractive candidate for use as a nanomaterial. Advances in molecular biology in recent decades have meant that scientists are well equipped to work with DNA and program it to do whatever they want.

"The main advantage of DNA is that we understand it," said Hendrik Dietz, now head of the Laboratory for Biomolecular Nanotechnology at München Technical University in Germany. "DNA is the only material that we can program at the nanoscale."

The building blocks of DNA can be made to assemble themselves, piece by piece, into a structure designed by the researcher.

"We have a bunch of small parts that are floating around in solution, bumping into each other," explains William Shih of Harvard University, who also worked on the study. "Sometimes when they bump into each other in the way that we want them to they don't let go, and through many cycles of this bumping into each other and sticking, eventually we end up with the desired shape – if we've programmed the structure of the molecules correctly."

Dietz, Shih and their colleague Shawn Douglas used this method to build tiny components that could, in principle, be assembled into more complex functional devices. A commentary accompanying their paper in the journal Science observes: "It is as if DNA has been subjected to the practice of yoga to display a variety of different postures at the nanoscale."

The structures are made from bundles of double-helix DNA strands. By altering the length, number and arrangement of strands, the scientists were able to construct several 3D shapes.

To make the bundle bend, for example, they added pairs of nucleotides – the basic building blocks of DNA – on one side of the bundle, making that side slightly longer, and deleted nucleotide pairs on the other. This allowed them to finely control the curvature of their structures.

This is the first time that scientists have created truly curved DNA nanostructures. Previously scientists have only managed to make straight or kinked structures.

The next step was to put together a number of curved subunits to make more complex 3D structures, which the researchers designed with the help of a graphical software tool they developed specially for the task. Finally, they photographed the nanostructures using an electron microscope to confirm they had achieved the desired shapes.

Dietz is confident that DNA nanostructures will come into their own in a range of applications.

"In the short term, I would say that the immediate applications are in basic science research. Now we have a biomaterial that we can program at the nanoscale to address questions in biophysics or nanochemistry."

In the longer term, he envisages constructing medical devices "that could get into cells and might be capable of performing some job there".

Like any sensible scientist working at the cutting edge, he acknowledged there was some way to go. "We're still struggling with defects, but I'm optimistic that there are a lot of applications that we can use in the future."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Aug 2009 | 11:36 am

Tiny Bacteria Secret to Cicada’s Success

Researchers learn that cicadas survive on meager nutrition thanks to bacteria inside their cells.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Aug 2009 | 11:06 am

Climate fixes 'pose drought risk'

The use of geo-engineering to slow global warming may increase the risk of drought, according to a paper in Science journal.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Aug 2009 | 11:03 am

Nasa telescope passes planet test

A Nasa space telescope launched in March this year observes a planet circling another star - in a test of its capability.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Aug 2009 | 10:43 am

BLOG: Shark Attack Survival Guide

Shark attack survivors explain how to survive if you end up in a shark's jaws.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Aug 2009 | 10:20 am

Ganges Delta: Gorgeous, Wild and Deadly

Satellite images capture the beauty of a natural disaster hot spot.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Aug 2009 | 9:49 am

Near-Earth Asteroid Found to be Triplets

Radar images taken during flyby show asteroid is actually triple system.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Aug 2009 | 8:52 am

Smallest Known Exoplanet Has Solid Surface

Most known exoplanets are ice or gas giants, but "Super-Earth" has a rocky surface.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Aug 2009 | 8:45 am

WATCH: Meet a Shark Sitter

Find out what it takes to work up close with sharks.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Aug 2009 | 7:45 am

Orbital Gas Station Puts Moon, Mars in Reach

A pit stop for shuttles to refuel opens a world of possibilities for space travel.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Aug 2009 | 7:30 am

Fleet of 'Cloud Ships' Could Cool Climate

Wind-powered fleet of 1,900 ships would crisscross the oceans, sucking up sea water and spraying it skyward.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Aug 2009 | 7:29 am

Is the Future in Good Hands?

Obama says we need to innovate. Is America up to the task?
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Aug 2009 | 7:14 am

Virtual shield

How do countries defend against cyber attacks?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Aug 2009 | 6:06 am

Wildfires May Impact Air Quality, Damage Lungs

As the world heats up, wildfires will become common enough to affect the air we breathe.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Aug 2009 | 6:00 am

Did prehistoric cannibals roam Devon?

• Deliberate cut marks found on 9,000-year-old arm bone
• Specimen from Kents Cavern was spotted in museum store

Deliberate cut marks on a 9,000-year-old human bone excavated in a west country cave more than a century ago suggest that prehistoric Devonians may have been cannibals.

Scientists at Oxford University have examined a fragment of human bone from Kents Cavern, near Torquay in Devon, after a curator spotted it in a mass of animal bone in a museum store. They concluded that it was part of the forearm of a human adult, and that the seven cut marks were deliberately made with a stone tool around the time of death.

The marks suggest that either the flesh was stripped or the body chopped into pieces – perhaps for ritual reasons or to make it more convenient to handle. The arm appears to have been fractured around the time of death.

Evidence suggesting cannibalism has been found at a number of prehistoric British sites, including Cheddar Gorge, and bones apparently split to extract the marrow found at Eton in Berkshire.

However, there are other possible explanations for what happened to the dead deep inside in Kents Cavern millennia before the time archaeologists had believed complex death rituals evolved.

Rick Schulting, of the university's school of archaeology, said: "We can clearly see a series of fine parallel lines on the bone. These cuts may have been made to help the body decompose more quickly and speed up the process of joining the ancestors. Finds like this highlight the complexity of mortuary practices in the mesolithic period, many thousands of years before the appearance of farming in the neolithic period, which is more usually associated with complex funerary behaviour."

The human bone and the cut marks were spotted in the store of Torquay museum by the curator Barry Chandler. The bone was so well preserved he was shocked when radio-carbon dating gave an age of 9,000 years – the oldest human bone identified from the cave.

The cavern, now a tourist attraction, was one of the sites that helped to demolish the biblical account of the origins of man, when 19th-century excavators found evidence of human habitation mixed with the bones of long-extinct animals including woolly mammoth and rhinoceros. Cave bears once lived at the lowest level, and the tunnels and chambers were still used by humans for shelter and storage into Roman times.

The bone is on display in the Ancestors exhibition at Torquay museum.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Aug 2009 | 5:09 am

Wild senses: Virtual reality lets humans see and hear like animals

Virtual reality allows people to experience the extreme ranges of sight and hearing that many animals have.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Aug 2009 | 4:27 am

The dead end of animal research

Despite persistent lobbying for animal testing, the evidence shows it is of little use in developing medicines for humans

In his Guardian article Of mice and medicine, Alok Jha poses the question: "If a treatment works on rodents, will it cure us?" Although he acknowledges that mice have some limitations, his response to the question is basically "yes".

This is the image that Understanding Animal Research – cited as a source for the article – is keen to promote: that while laboratory animals are not perfect model humans, they are invaluable nonetheless. It should be noted that this organisation is not a charity, as stated, and is funded by the pharmaceutical industry to lobby exclusively for animal research.

My answer to the question "If a treatment works on rodents, will it cure us?" is "probably not, based on the weight of evidence to date". Cancer is a good example: former director of the US National Cancer Institute, Dr Richard Klausner lamented: "We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn't work in humans." Aids is another: while at least 80 vaccines work in animals, all 80 have failed in human trials. Similarly, every one of more than 150 stroke treatments successful in animals has failed in human testing. A study in the British Medical Journal (pdf) found that animal tests accurately predict human response less than 50% of the time.

What other area of science with such a poor track record would be promoted as indispensable? The truth is that animal research is a costly distraction from the real business of medical progress. Most medical breakthroughs are made in human studies, although animal research usually takes the credit. For example, deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease was pioneered in humans, not monkeys, as frequently claimed.

The key to curing human disease is to study human, rather than animal biology – as highlighted for me by my experience as a patient with a pancreatic tumour. During my treatment, researchers announced that the pancreas differs so dramatically between rodents and humans that research in animals is futile: future studies must be human-based.

Leading scientists agree that the best model for human drug development is human beings. At a recent international conference, they showcased a breathtaking array of technologies to develop medicines in a human context. These state-of-the-art techniques promise to reduce the tragic toll of adverse drug reactions, which hospitalise 1 million Britons and kill more than 10,000 every year.

Safety tests on animals are still required by the government, although they have never been compared with the latest human biology-based methods. Many MPs agree that it is time they were. A cross-party group of MPs has launched the Safety of Medicines (Evaluation) Bill 2009, calling on the government to conduct that comparison. Anyone who would like to see animal tests put to the test should ask their MP to sign Early Day Motion 569: Safety of Medicines. We must move safety testing into the 21st century, for all our sakes.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Aug 2009 | 4:00 am

Croc return

The world's most endangered croc is returned to the wild
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:01 am