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Muscular Dystrophy: Exon Skipping Shows Dramatic Effects In Preventing, Treating Muscle-wasting Disease In MiceResearchers have released details of a breakthrough which holds promise of a new therapeutic approach for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), an incurable muscle-wasting disease. The research has demonstrated that a process known as exon skipping has shown dramatic effects in the prevention and treatment of severely affected, dystrophin and utrophin-deficient mice, preventing severe deterioration of the treated animals and extending their lifespan.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Spiraling Flight Of Maple Tree Seeds Inspires New Aerial Surveillance TechnologyMaple tree seeds and the spiraling pattern in which they glide to the ground have delighted children for ages and perplexed engineers for decades. Now aerospace engineering graduate students have learned how to apply the seeds' unique design to aerial devices that can fly, hover and perform surveillance in defense and emergency situations.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am 'Bionic Eye' May Help Blind See: Retinal Prosthesis Shown To Restore Partial VisionA new artificial retina, an array of electrodes implanted on the back of the eye, has been found to restore partial vision to totally blind people. In a study focused on 15 blind participants who had the implant for at least three months, 10 of the patients subsequently tested were able to identify the direction of moving objects.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Presidential Election Outcome Changed Voters' TestosteroneYoung men who voted for Republican John McCain or Libertarian candidate Robert Barr in the 2008 presidential election suffered an immediate drop in testosterone when the election results were announced, according to a new study. In contrast, men who voted for the winner, Democrat Barack Obama, had stable testosterone levels immediately after the outcome.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Self-assembly Used To Make Molecule-sized Particles With Patches Of ChargePhysicists, chemists and engineers have demonstrated a novel method for the controlled formation of patchy particles, using charged, self-assembling molecules that may one day serve as drug-delivery vehicles to combat disease and perhaps be used in small batteries that store and release charge.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am New Explanation For Controversial Old Patient-care Technique To Prevent RegurgitationResearchers have used magnetic resonance imaging of the neck region to show that an under-fire medical maneuver often practiced when patients receive anesthesia is effective, but not for the obvious reasons. Sellick's maneuver involves pressing the fingers against a patient's throat to prevent regurgitation and spilling of stomach contents into the airway and lungs while anesthesia is being administered.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Blood Clots In Lungs Might Not Always Originate In Deep Veins Of Legs And Pelvis In Trauma PatientsFew trauma patients who develop potentially deadly blood clots in the lungs (pulmonary embolism) also have clots in the deep veins of their pelvis and legs (deep venous thrombosis), challenging commonly held beliefs about the association between the two conditions, according to a new report.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Fracture Zones Endanger Tombs In Valley Of KingsAncient choices made by Egyptians digging burial tombs may have led to today's problems with damage and curation of these precious archaeological treasures, but photography and detailed geological mapping should help curators protect the sites, according to a researcher.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Tool-making Human Ancestors Inhabited Grassland Environments Two Million Years AgoResearchers report the oldest archaeological evidence of early human activities in a grassland environment, dating to two million years ago. The article highlights new research and its implications concerning the environments in which human ancestors evolved.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Transplanted Tissue Improves Vision: Study Shows Enhanced Visual AcuityA clinical study is the first to show that advanced stages of incurable retinal diseases can be stopped and improved by a cell replacement technique. The researchers transplanted intact "sheets" of fetal retinal cells that develop into light-sensitive nerve cells, along with a supporting layer of tissue, into damaged human eyes.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am NASA moon crash data 'exciting' (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 4:09 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 4:02 am Developing nations join West in deforestation fight (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 3:49 am Turtles prefer the 'city life'Suburban turtles in Australia outperform their counterparts living in nature reserves, surprising scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Oct 2009 | 3:43 am Asia demand for ivory, sharks' fins set for scrutiny (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 3:39 am Maldives plans climate meet for threatened nations (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 3:31 am Lazy male spiders avoid dinner dateTrespassing redbacks reap the rewards of reproduction without the costs of courting.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/_gVgS8pv8Oc" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 20 Oct 2009 | 10:01 pm Genes May Link Hip Fractures and Heart Disease (HealthDay)HealthDay - TUESDAY, Oct. 20 (HealthDay News) -- People with cardiovascular conditions such as heart failure and stroke -- and probably their close relatives as well -- may have an increased risk for hip fractures, a new study has found.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Oct 2009 | 9:49 pm 'Giant' orb web spider discoveredScientists identify a new and elusive species of "giant" golden orb-weaving spider which is the biggest of its group.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Oct 2009 | 8:21 pm Scientists ID fossil bones of smallest dinosaur (AP)AP - Fossil bones housed at a Los Angeles museum belong to the smallest dinosaur discovered in North America, scientists said Tuesday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Oct 2009 | 8:18 pm World must use GM crops, says UK science academyLONDON (Reuters) - The world needs genetically modified crops both to increase food yields and minimize the environmental impact of farming, Britain's top science academy said on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:50 pm World must use GM crops, says UK science academy (Reuters)Reuters - The world needs genetically modified crops both to increase food yields and minimize the environmental impact of farming, Britain's top science academy said on Wednesday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:50 pm NASA rolls out new moon rocket for test flightCAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA on Tuesday carted a sleek, towering rocket out to the launch pad to test the vehicle planned to replace the retiring space shuttles and return U.S. astronauts to the moon.Source: Reuters: Science News | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:40 pm Red kite numbers hit record highScotland's populations of a bird of prey hunted to extinction by the Victorians are in their healthiest state for 150 years.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:29 pm UK urged to lead on future foodThe UK should plough £2bn into food research to help stave off world hunger, says the Royal Society.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:24 pm Largest Web-Spinning Spider DiscoveredLargest orb-weaving spider turns up in museum collections.Source: Livescience.com | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:07 pm New Kidney Stone Treatment Would Nudge Rather Than Blast (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Passing kidney stones is often described as the worst pain people have ever experienced. Even worse, about half of kidney stone sufferers will get another stone within the following five years. Worse still, it's often the initial treatment that leads to the subsequent stones.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:07 pm Sparrows 'learn song by twitter'Young sparrows learn to sing by listening in on other birds' conversation, a study by US researchers suggests.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:02 pm Even-More-Gigantic Giant Orb Spider Discovered
Scientists have found the world’s largest species of golden orb-weaver spider in the tropics of Africa and Madagascar. The discovery marks the first identification of a new Nephila spider since 1879. Females of the new species, Nephila komaci, measure a whopping 4 to 5 inches in diameter, while the male spiders stay petite at less than a quarter of their mate’s size. So far, only a handful of these enormous arachnids have been found in the world. “We fear the species might be endangered, as its only definite habitat is a sand forest in Tembe Elephant Park in KwaZulu-Natal,” ecologist Jonathan Coddington of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History said in a press release. “Our data suggest that the species is not abundant, its range is restricted, and all known localities lie within two endangered biodiversity hotspots: Maputaland and Madagascar.”
The first potential specimen of the new species was uncovered by Coddington and his colleague Matjaz Kuntner of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2000. They found a huge female orb-weaver among a museum collection of spiders in Pretoria, South Africa, and she didn’t match the description of any known spider. Although they hoped the unusual-looking giant represented a new species, several dedicated expeditions to South Africa failed to find any live spiders of a similar description. Then, in 2003, a second specimen from Madagascar was found at a museum in Austria, suggesting that the first spider hadn’t been a fluke. But despite a comprehensive search through more than 2,500 samples from 37 museums, no additional specimens turned up, and the researchers assumed the biggest of all orb-weavers was probably extinct. Finally, three live spiders have been found to prove the scientists wrong: A South African researcher found two giant females and one male in Tembe Elephant Park, proving that the new species was not extinct, just incredibly rare. “Only three have been found in the past decade,” Kuntner wrote in an e-mail to Wired.com. “None by our team, despite focused searches. Only an additional two exist in old museum collections. Compared to thousands of exemplars of other Nephila species in museums, that is disproportionately rare.” The two biologists named the new species after Andrej Komac, a scientist friend of Kuntner’s who died in an accident near the time of the discoveries. Like all Nephila spiders, females of the new species spin huge webs of golden silk, often more than 3 feet in diameter. In the report of the discovery of this rare spider, published Tuesday in PLoS One, the researchers also addressed the evolution of the dramatic size difference between male and female orb-weavers. By mapping out the evolutionary tree of all known orb-weaver species, the scientists discovered that as the spiders evolved, females got bigger and bigger, while males stayed roughly the same size. “It is good for females to be big, because they can lay so many more eggs,” Coddington wrote in an e-mail. In addition, large size probably helps females avoid being eaten by predators. “Relatively few groups can safely pluck an orb-weaving spider from its web,” he wrote, “because you have to be able to hover to do so (hummingbirds, wasps, damselflies come to mind). None of these are large enough to tackle an adult Nephila, or even a large juvenile.” Males, on the other hand, are better off staying small and reaching sexual maturity at a young age. Because males spend most of their time underground, hunting for a mate is one of the most dangerous activities they undertake. “So males risk everything to find, probably, just one, huge female, inseminate her, and probably do not willingly leave her web to search for another,” Coddington wrote. “Nothing about sex says males must be big.” Image 1: Tiny male Nephila spiders are dwarfed by their female counterparts. Matjaz Kuntner and Jonathan Coddington/PLoS ONE. See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:00 pm Tinniest North American Dinosaur Lived Among GiantsOne diminutive dinosaur found in Colorado comes close to being the world's smallest, but not quite.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 Oct 2009 | 5:15 pm Mysterious Patches of Color Mapped on Saturn's Moons (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - New maps reveal colorful patterns on the surfaces of Saturn's five innermost icy moons.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Oct 2009 | 4:45 pm US scientist charged with spyingA US scientist who used to work for the Pentagon and Nasa appears in court charged with attempting to spy for Israel.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Oct 2009 | 3:15 pm Life Ingredients Found on Extrasolar Gas Giant
The basic ingredients for life have been found around a second extrasolar planet, scientists reported Tuesday. Although the planet itself is not habitable by life as we know it, the discovery could mean that the basic components of life are widespread in the atmospheres of many kinds of exoplanets. The new find was made by training both the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes on HD 209458b, a hot Jupiter that orbits very close to its sunlike star. It’s located 150 light years away in the Pegasus constellation. In December of last year, Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer Mark Swain and his team found a similar Jupiter-like planet, HD 189733b, with carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. “Detecting organic compounds in two exoplanets now raises the possibility that it will become commonplace to find planets with molecules that may be tied to life,” Swain said in a press release. The study of exoplanets has exploded since the first were discovered in the early 1990s. Just Monday, astronomers announced the discovery of 32 new exoplanets. And detections aren’t just growing in number, but sophistication as well. Exoplanetary scientists are learning more and more about the systems in which the planets are found.
Early exoplanet discoveries were made using a variety of techniques, but primarily by measuring the “wobble” a star exhibits in the presence of another massive body. In more recent years, scientists have looked for “transiting” planets, which pass in front of and behind their stars. Far more can be learned about these celestial bodies. When an exoplanet passes in front of its star, scientists are able to translate small differences in the color of the light arriving at Earth into a chemical signature for the planet’s atmosphere. For example, HD 209458b has water and carbon dioxide, just like HD 189733b, but it’s also got a lot more methane. “The high methane abundance is telling us something,” said Swain. “It could mean there was something special about the formation of this planet.” Planetary spectroscopy is easiest to do for systems in which a large exoplanet orbits very close to its home star. With smaller planets orbiting farther from their star, it is harder to detect the minute changes in the star’s light. Though the Kepler Space Telescope is likely to find many Earth-like planets, it could be a decade before we have the technological capability to definitively detect a rocky planet with an atmosphere and orbit like ours, an Earth twin. Rendering: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC) See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 20 Oct 2009 | 2:31 pm Space agencies, Google seek ways to save forestsOSLO (Reuters) - Space agencies and Google Inc are helping an international project to monitor forests by satellite to fight global warming, the head of an international earth observation group said on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 20 Oct 2009 | 1:07 pm BLOG: Balloon Hoax Shines Light on Bad TVBeyond the reckless hubris of "Balloon Boy's" dad, the event is an indictment of TV culture.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pm Human Brain Can Control Single Celebrity-Recognizing Neurons
CHICAGO — The Halle Berry fan club is expanding one brain cell at a time. By eavesdropping on the activity of single neurons in the human brain, scientists have figured out which brain cells go wild for superstars such as the popular actress. And the newest research shows that people can activate those cells selectively.
“This type of work gives us some clues about what’s going on in the brain,” comments Christoph Weidemann of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies how the brain processes information. “It’s quite an amazing feat for the brain to make sense of its input and reliably recognize people and objects.” The new study was conducted on people with epilepsy. Doctors had implanted electrodes in these patients’ brains to track where seizures originate. The researchers used these same electrodes to eavesdrop on the activity of single brain cells in a part of the brain called the medial temporal lobe, which is important for “memory, attention, perception — the things that we care about the most,” Cerf said in his presentation.
Before the experiment began, Cerf and his colleagues showed volunteers familiar images of people, objects or places, chosen on the basis of extensive interviews about the patients’ preferences. Pictures included images of Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson and Venus Williams, among others. “We hoped to locate neurons in their brains that respond selectively to one of those concepts,” Cerf said in his talk. In each patient, the researchers found about five neurons that fired when the patient looked at an image of a certain person or object. A person might have, for example, a Halle Barry neuron, a Marilyn Monroe neuron, an Eiffel tower neuron, a Michael Jackson neuron and a spider neuron. Once these neurons were identified, the researchers wanted to know if the patients could control them by thinking about that certain person or object. To do this, Cerf and his colleagues hooked up the neuron-sensing electrodes to a computer that then displayed images representative of the person’s thought. When a patient’s Marilyn Monroe neuron became active, the screen would show an image of Marilyn Monroe. To see how well the patients could control these single neurons, researchers set up what they call the “fade” experiment, which is like a competition between two different neurons. One version of the experiment involved a neuron that responded to Goonies‘ star Josh Brolin and another neuron that responded to Marilyn Monroe. Initially, the person was shown a hybrid image of these two stars overlaid on each other. When the person was told to think of Josh Brolin, the electrodes would record that neuron’s activity and send the data to the computer, causing the Monroe image to fade and the Brolin image to get brighter. The experiment was finished when the picture was completely Brolin or Monroe, or 10 seconds had elapsed. Ten patients underwent this test and successfully directed the pictures between 60 and 90 percent of the time, the researchers found. As the testing went on, the patients became better at controlling the neurons. Scientists are still far from being able to see people’s innermost thoughts, Weidemann says. “When people talk about mind reading, there’s a tendency to think of 1984 and all the negative aspects of it,” he says. “The goal here is to understand cognitive processes.” A better understanding of how the brain encodes information may be useful for building machines that can be controlled directly from people’s brains. Such devices may ultimately help people who are unable to communicate. Images: Monroe: Matty Zimmerman/AP, Brolin: Chris Pizzello/AP (these are not the images used in the study) 2005 discovery of the “Halle Berry” neuron See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 20 Oct 2009 | 12:32 pm Scientists glean lessons from stalled AIDS vaccinePARIS (Reuters) - Merck and Co's failed AIDS vaccine may not have worked, but it probably did not raise the risk of infection either, doctors said Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 20 Oct 2009 | 12:22 pm BLOG: Pterosaur Windsurfed Across Prehistoric SeasOne species of pterosaur was not only an excellent flyer, but also a gifted sailor.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 Oct 2009 | 12:15 pm Women, Girls Created Paleolithic Cave ArtNot all prehistoric artists were male, suggests a study that looked at cave art made by women.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 Oct 2009 | 12:15 pm Alcohol hinders IVF, couples warned• Harvard study reveals impact of drinking Couples who share a bottle of wine a week reduce their chances of having a baby through IVF by more than a quarter, according to a study by American fertility specialists. Research into alcohol consumption among couples being treated at a fertility clinic found fewer successful pregnancies when the women drank several glasses of wine a week, or the man had a daily beer. Doctors at Harvard medical school, in Boston, asked 2,574 couples about their drinking habits shortly before they embarked on a course of IVF treatment. A little over half of the women (56%) and a third of the men had less than one alcoholic drink a week, while 4% of women and 5% of men consumed at least one drink every day. Dr Brooke Rossi, who led the study, said men and women who each drank six units of alcohol a week each or more "significantly reduced their likelihood of pregnancy". At these levels of consumption, women were 18% less likely to have a successful IVF baby, while men reduced their chances of fatherhood by 14%. The effects were particularly strong for women who drank white wine and men who preferred drinking beer, Rossi told the American Society of Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia today. "In general, women are told they should stop drinking when they are trying to achieve pregnancy," Rossi said. The men and women who took part in the study had average ages of 37 and 34 respectively. They were all from the Boston area and completed questionnaires about their drinking habits between 1994 and 2003. Tony Rutherford, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said guidelines from the society and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) advise women to stop drinking completely throughout their pregnancy. "The link between alcohol and conception is an area where the evidence is not clear-cut. It may well be that couples who are already subfertile are more affected by alcohol that those who are perfectly fertile," he said "If you are going to have IVF, my recommendation would be that it makes sense to avoid alcohol all together, from three months beforehand." A previous study, published in the British Medical Journal by Tina Jensen at the National University hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, found that women were less likely to conceive if they drank moderately. But other studies have found that alcohol had little effect on the time it took women to conceive. Rutherford added: "This is further evidence to suggest that alcohol does have an impact and that those women who try for a baby should think about their lifestyle choices. "Eggs and sperm take at least three months to develop so women have got to stop smoking, reduce alcohol consumption or, if you are overweight, correct that weight, that far ahead if you want to maximise your chances of conception." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 20 Oct 2009 | 12:09 pm Apollo-Era Crawler Carries Test Rocket to Launch Pad
The first test flight for NASA’s next-generation rocket rumbled closer when the Ares I-X rocket took a ride to its launch spot aboard a massive Apollo-era crawler Tuesday morning. It reached Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center at 9:17 a.m. Eastern after a 4.2-mile trip that took nearly eight hours. The test rocket incorporates most of the core components of the Ares I, but will not actually be used for missions in the future. The Ares I-X test rocket has more than 700 sensors that will allow NASA to ground-truth some of its calculations about the safety and performance of the rocket. Some critics have argued that the Ares I-X is too different from the real Ares I to provide meaningful data. The Ares I-X is powered by a four-segment solid rocket booster, while the real deal will have five. The Ares I-X is scheduled to launch October 27th, and NASA officials hailed its arrival at the launch pad as a major milestone for the Constellation program, which was former NASA administrator Michael Griffin’s plan to execute President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. Bush laid out an ambitious plan to return to the moon and then continue on to Mars. NASA’s funding levels, though, never matched the grand scheme.
Constellation and the ideas that inspired it have come under heavy criticism over the last five years. Some have questioned technical decisions made by Michael Griffin and the chief architect of the Ares rocket, Scott “Doc” Horowitz, who left the agency in 2007. Commercial space companies like SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace have argued for a larger role for private industry in providing human launch services to low-earth orbit. And some scientists, especially, have wondered why we’re sending humans to space at all. In an effort to address at least some of these concerns, President Obama asked for a special, independent panel to review NASA’s plans for human spaceflight. Chaired by Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, that commission will release its final report on Thursday. In a preliminary summary report, the Augustine panel made it clear that NASA does not have enough money to carry out a human spaceflight program and its other science programs. They presented a series of alternatives to Constellation that would send humans to different destinations and use different rockets. Their original report came under withering attacks when it was presented in the House, but its ultimate audience is President Obama and the head of the Office for Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren. Rumors abound that they might be cooking up major changes to Constellation. While NASA employees wait to hear if their agency will get a new direction, they’ve soldiered on with the Constellation program, assembling and preparing to test the Ares I-X rocket. In trying to return to the moon, NASA has often echoed Apollo, the most popular space program ever. In this case, the Ares I-X took a ride on one of two crawlers built to carry around the Saturn V rockets that sent astronauts to the moon. When they were first completed in 1966, they were technical marvels — and they remain so today. Weighing in at 5.5 million pounds each, the vehicles’ carrying decks are large enough to fit a baseball diamond. The crawlers are powered by twin 2,750-horsepower diesel engines and sit atop enormous tank-like treads. They’ve been kept running by a crack team at Kennedy Space Center, allowing the old machines to keep on trucking all the way through the space shuttle era. These relics from Apollo are a reminder that while many things have changed at the agency, some haven’t had to.
Images: NASA. 1. The Ares I-X nearly in place. 2. A crawler-transporter carrying a Saturn V rocket into place. See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 20 Oct 2009 | 11:58 am NASA Scientist Accused of Selling SecretsA scientist who worked on moon exploration is accused of trying to sell secrets.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 Oct 2009 | 11:00 am Aids vaccine hopes dashedAnalysis finds surprise claims from US and Thai researchers last month were based on 'statistically insignificant' data The first Aids vaccine to show an encouraging result in clinical trials is only modestly effective and did not protect those at highest risk of HIV, it emerged today, as US and Thai researchers revealed their full results in Paris. The announcement last month that the controversial $105m (£64m) trial carried out in Thailand had unexpectedly been successful took experts by surprise and sparked excitement around the world amid speculation that the steady spread of HIV/Aids could before long be checked. However, it is now clear that this is a long way wide of the mark. The full results, presented at the Aids vaccine conference in Paris and published immediately online by the New England Journal of Medicine reveal that: • The vaccine did not protect those at high risk of HIV infection, such as sex workers and intravenous drug users. • The protective effect was greatest in the first 12 months and then seemed to diminish. • When those who did not get all six vaccine shots were taken out of the analysis, the positive result was statistically insignificant. Some scientists and campaigners in Paris nevertheless hailed the results, if not as a triumph, then as a beacon of hope. Dr Nelson Michael of the US army – the US military had run the research programme with the Thai government – said scientists would now be working intensely to pick up clues to future Aids vaccine development from the results of the trial. "It is a signpost for vaccine development," he said. "This was a yes-we-can moment: the opportunity to become enthusiastic. The door has cracked open. We are all going to try to collectively crash through it." But Seth Berkley, president of the International Aids Vaccine Initiative, which evaluates and channels funds into trials, said he thought the regime tested in Thailand would be taken no further. The vaccines involved – AidsVax, which previously failed in a trial in Thailand on its own, and Alvac – were 15 years old. "That's why there was scientific controversy about starting this trial," he said. "If you were going to start again, you might use one of the more robust vaccines we have [in the lab] today. "We don't have a vaccine on the horizon. It isn't the Thai one or one of the others. That's why we have to have the patience for this marathon rather than a sprint." The Thai trial, given the name RV144, was controversial from the start because it involved two vaccines given together, one of which had previously failed to protect people from HIV while the other had not been tested alone. Many people felt the $105m it cost could be better spent. More than 16,400 Thai men and women aged 18 to 30 who did not have HIV were recruited and randomly assigned to receive the vaccine or a placebo. They were given six shots over six months: two of Alvac followed by two more sessions where they were injected with both vaccines. They were tested for HIV every six months, and counselled on how to avoid it for the next three years. By the end of the trial only 125 people had become infected with HIV. In the announcement of the headline results last month, it was said that 51 of those given the vaccine had become HIV positive compared with 74 in the placebo group, which gives a statistically significant efficacy of 31%. But many volunteers did not get all six vaccinations, taking the numbers down from around 8,000 in each group to around 6,000. Among those people, there were 50 infections on placebo and 36 on the vaccine, which gives an efficacy of 26% but is not statistically significant, meaning it could happen by chance. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 20 Oct 2009 | 10:55 am Fossils Push Back Earliest Complex Animals 40 Million Years
A series of fossils unearthed in southwestern China has revealed the origins of complex life in unprecedented detail, and pushed its beginning back by at least 40 million years. The specimens come from the Doushantuo formation, a layer of sediments deposited about 590 million years ago, just before the Ediacaran period’s primordial fauna gave way to the kaleidoscopically complex creatures of the Cambrian explosion. During the Ediacaran, even the most structurally complicated animals had flat bodies with simple symmetry, like living quilts or mattresses. It was only during the Cambrian that animals developed what’s known as bilateral symmetry — a distinct front and back, top and bottom.
Using synchrotron radiation microtomography — a microscopy technique that combines thousands of of X-rays taken from different angles — researchers reconstructed the embryos in three-dimensional detail. They found that the embryos were bilaterally symmetrical, and were organized so differently that they belonged to two distinct taxonomic groups. For those groups to be so different, bilateral symmetry must have been around for a while. Some scientists have suspected as much, but without such solid evidence. “These bilaterians had already diverged into distantly related groups at least 40 million years before the Cambrian radiation,” wrote the researchers. “The last common ancestor of the bilaterians lived much earlier than is usually thought. Images: PNAS See Also:
Citation: “Complex embryos displaying bilaterian characters from Precambrian Duoshantou phosphate deposits, Weng’an, Guizhou, China.” By Jun-Yuan Chena, David J. Bottjer, Gang Li, Michael G. Hadfield, Feng Gao, Andrew R. Cameron, Chen-Yu Zhang, Ding-Chang Xian, Paul Tafforeau, Xin Liao, and Zong-Jun Yin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106 No. 42, Oct. 20, 2009. Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecosystem and planetary tipping points.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 20 Oct 2009 | 10:32 am Stephen Hawking's successor namedCambridge University names the man who will succeed Professor Stephen Hawking in one of the world's most prestigious academic positions.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Oct 2009 | 9:55 am Sperm Whales Act as Carbon SinkNew estimates suggest sperm whales' feeding habits help take in carbon.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 Oct 2009 | 9:20 am NASA Readies Ares I for Test LaunchNASA's test vehicle is prepped to blast off as the future of the space program remains uncertain.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 Oct 2009 | 9:10 am Cervical Cancer Vaccine Still QuestionedThe FDA last week approved two vaccines for the prevention of human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer, genital warts and various genital cancers. Yet even some doctors question the benefit of the vaccine.Source: Livescience.com | 20 Oct 2009 | 8:58 am Mysterious Patches of Color Mapped on Saturn's MoonsNew color maps of Saturn's five innermost moon show interesting color patterns.Source: Livescience.com | 20 Oct 2009 | 8:00 am 'Green' Font Saves InkNew font with holes takes less ink to print.Source: Livescience.com | 20 Oct 2009 | 7:41 am Nasa's rocket roll-out completeThe US space agency rolls out its Ares 1-X rocket as it tests the design concept of a future astronaut launcher.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Oct 2009 | 7:33 am HIV vaccine trial was significantA review of a trial of a HIV vaccine in Thailand has concluded that it does show real signs of a protective effect.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Oct 2009 | 7:28 am New Kidney Stone Treatment Would Nudge Rather Than BlastResearchers are developing a new technique to move kidney stones with low-intensity ultrasound wavesSource: Livescience.com | 20 Oct 2009 | 7:25 am U.S. Pets Increasingly PudgyForty-four percent of U.S. dogs and 57 percent of cats are obese, a study finds.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 Oct 2009 | 7:20 am Plants Recognize Rivals and Fight, Play Nice with SiblingsPlants recognize their siblings through chemicals secreted from their roots, a new study saysSource: Livescience.com | 20 Oct 2009 | 7:13 am The next Stephen Hawking: Green gets Cambridge postMichael Green, one of the pioneers of string theory, takes prestigious role at University of Cambridge A Cambridge physicist who pioneered the idea that everything in the universe is made up of tiny vibrating strings of energy is to succeed Stephen Hawking in the most prestigious academic post in the world. Professor Michael Green, a fellow of the Royal Society and co-founder of the fiendishly complex idea of string theory, was offered the position of Lucasian professor of mathematics following a meeting at the university this month. Hawking stepped down from the position at the beginning of the month in accordance with Cambridge rules that stipulate the post must be vacated when the incumbent reaches their 67th birthday. Hawking had been in the job for 30 years. He is now director of research at the university's department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics. The chair was created in 1664 and has been occupied by some of the greatest names in the history of science, with Sir Isaac Newton and Paul Dirac among Hawking's predecessors. Green, who works in the same department as Hawking, played a major role in developing a form of string theory that describes all of the different types of particles in the universe and how they interact with each other. Ahead of the official announcement, one scientist said it was an excellent appointment for a physicist who had been a driving force for string theory from the start. Advocates of string theory believe it paves the way to understanding all of nature's forces, including electromagnetism, the strong force that holds atomic nuclei together, the weak force that governs certain forms of radiation, and gravity that keeps our feet on the ground and the Earth in orbit around the Sun. Hawking occupied the position long before he rose to fame on the back of his bestseller, A Brief History of Time. During his time as Lucasian professor, he made appearances in The Simpsons and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and also at the London lap dancing club, Stringfellows, a story covered by one newspaper under the headline: "Stringfellow theory". guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:45 am Tsunami Threat Looms Over Pacific NorthwestA massive tsunami could devastate the Pacific Northwest if precautions aren't taken.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Nasa unveils Ares 1-X rocket amid doubts over fundingSpace agency goes ahead with demonstration despite concerns that it lacks cash to achieve a return to the moon
The slender, 100 metre-high rocket was moved in a delicate, slow operation from its 52-storey assembly hangar at Kennedy Space Centre in Florida this morning to a launch pad about four miles away. The rocket is due to lift off next Tuesday on a $455m unmanned test flight that will allow Nasa engineers to check the rocket's performance and hardware as it soars to an altitude of about 25 miles before crashing down into the Atlantic Ocean. The Ares rocket is the first new design to emerge from Nasa in 30 years and is the workhorse of the space agency's Constellation programme, which combines two rockets and a crew capsule to take astronauts and equipment to the International Space Station, the moon and possibly beyond. The demonstration flight is a milestone in Nasa's plans to ready the Ares rockets for service in 2016. The agency is expected to retire its ailing fleet of space shuttles as early as next year, leaving astronauts reliant on Russia to get them into space. Nasa officials plan to go ahead with the Ares 1-X test flight even as Barack Obama's administration considers plans to shelve the Constellation programme through lack of funding. A detailed review of Nasa's future programmes recently delivered to the White House raised concerns that the space agency does not have deep enough pockets to fulfil its vision for a return to the moon. The review said the agency may have to abandon the Ares rockets and switch to a cheaper design. The demonstrator rocket has been fitted out with more than 700 sensors that will send information back to Nasa engineers throughout its brief flight. The top half of the rocket is a dummy version, combining its upper stage and the Orion crew capsule, designed and weighted to mimic the real thing. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 20 Oct 2009 | 5:48 am 0° 0' 00"How Greenwich become home to standardised timeSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Oct 2009 | 3:44 am Leech helps police catch armed robberTasmanian police match DNA to blood extracted from leech that dropped off robber in 2001 A blood-swollen leech found at a crime scene eight years ago has led Australian police to an armed robber. The leech dropped off Peter Cannon as he and an accomplice tied a 71-year-old woman to a chair in her remote home in the Tasmanian woods and stole several hundred dollars in cash in September 2001, police said. Officials extracted blood from the leech that they believed was likely to have come from one of the two suspects. They identified Cannon as that culprit when he was arrested last year on unrelated drug charges and authorities for the first time recorded his DNA profile. Sally Kelty, a forensic science researcher, said the case could be the first in which investigators had used DNA extracted from a bloodsucker such as a leech or a mosquito to solve a crime. "It's certainly unique and shows how the boundaries of DNA technology have been pushed since it was first introduced to Australia 22 years ago," she said. Cannon, now 54, pleaded guilty in the Tasmanian supreme court yesterday to aggravated armed robbery. He will be sentenced on Friday and faces up to 21 years in prison. Detective Inspector Mick Johnston, who was involved in the police investigation, said the leech was the only forensic evidence found at the crime scene. He said he was happy with the guilty plea, especially for the victim, Fay Olson. "She's waited a long time for closure to this matter and it's nice to be able to deliver that," Johnson told ABC radio. Police are still searching for Cannon's accomplice. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 20 Oct 2009 | 2:47 am
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