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Researchers report initial success in promising approach to prevent tooth decay
Preventing cavities could one day involve the dental equivalent of a military surgical strike. A team of researchers supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research report they have created a
new smart anti-microbial treatment that can be chemically programmed in the laboratory to seek out and kill a
specific cavity-causing species of bacteria, leaving the good bacteria untouched.
The experimental treatment, reported online in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, is
called a STAMP. The acronym stands for "specifically targeted antimicrobial peptides" and, like its postal
namesake, STAMPs have a two-sided structure. The first is the short homing sequence of a pheromone, a signaling chemical that can be as unique as a fingerprint to a bacterium and assures the STAMP will find its target. The second is a small anti-microbial bomb that is chemically linked to the homing sequence and kills the
bacterium upon delivery.
While scientists have succeeded in the past in targeting specific bacteria in the laboratory, this report is
unique because of the STAMPs themselves. They generally consist of less than 25 amino acids, a relative pipsqueak compared to the bulky, bacteria-seeking antibodies that have fascinated scientists for years. Because
of their streamlined design, STAMPs also can be efficiently and rapidly produced on automated solid-phase
chemistry machines designed to synthesize small molecules under 100 amino acids, called peptides.
The first-generation STAMPs also proved extremely effective in the initial laboratory work. As reported in
this month's paper, the scientists found they could eliminate the cavity-associated oral bacterium Steptococcus
mutans within 30 seconds from an oral biofilm without any collateral damage to related but non pathogenic
species attached nearby. Biofilms are complex, multi-layered microbial communities that routinely form on our
teeth and organs throughout the body. According to one estimate, biofilms may be involved to varying degrees in up to 80 percent of human infections.
"We've already moved the S. mutans STAMP into human studies, where it can be applied as part of a paste
or mouthrinse," said Dr. Wenyuan Shi, senior author on the paper and a scientist at the University of California
at Los Angeles School of Dentistry. "We're also developing other dental STAMPs that target the specific oral
microbes involved in periodontal disease and possibly even halitosis. Thereafter, we hope to pursue possible
medical applications of this technology."
Shi said his group's work on a targeted dental therapy began about eight years ago with the recognition
that everyday dental care had reached a crossroads. "The standard way to combat bacterial infections is
through vaccination, antibiotics, and/or hygienic care," said Shi. "They represent three of the greatest publichealth discoveries of the 20th century, but each has its limitations in the mouth. Take vaccination. We can
generate antibodies in the blood against S. mutans. But in the mouth, where S. mutans lives and our innate
immunity is much weaker, generating a strong immune response has been challenging."
According to Shi, a major limitation of antibiotics and standard dental hygiene is their lack of selectivity. "At
least 700 bacterial species are now known to inhabit the mouth," said Shi. "The good bacteria are mixed in
with the bad ones, and our current treatments simply clear everything away. That can be a problem because
we have data to show that the pathogens grow back first. They're extremely competitive, and that's what
makes them pathogenic."
To illustrate this point, Shi offered an analogy. "Think of a lawn infested with dandelions," he said. "If you
use a general herbicide and kill everything there, the dandelions will come back first. But if you use a dandelion-specific killer and let the grass fill in the lawn, the dandelions won't come back."
Hoping to solve the selectivity issue, Shi and his colleagues began attaching toxins to the homing region of
antibodies. They borrowed the concept from immunotherapy, an area of cancer research in which toxin-toting
antibodies are programmed to kill tumor cells and leave the nearby normal cells alone.
Despite some success in killing specific bacteria in the oral biofilm, Shi said his group soon encountered the
same technical difficulty that cancer researchers initially ran into with immunotherapy. Their targeting antibodies were large and bulky, making them unstable, therapeutically inefficient, and expensive to produce. "That's
when we decided to get higher tech," said Dr. Randal Eckert, a UCLA scientist and lead author on the study.
Or, as Eckert noted, that's when they turned to the "power of genomics," or the comparative study of DNA
among species. Eckert and colleagues clicked onto an online database that contains the complete DNA sequence of S. mutans. They identified a 21-peptide pheromone called "competence stimulating peptide," or
CSP, that was specific to the bacterium. From there, they typed instructions into an automated solid-phase
chemistry machine to synthesize at once the full-length CSP and a 16-peptide anti-microbial sequence, and
out came their first batch of STAMPs.
After some trial and error, Eckert said he and his colleagues decided "to get even shorter." They ultimately
generated a STAMP with the same anti-microbial agent but with a signature eight-peptide CSP sequence to
target S. mutans. "We pooled saliva from five people and created an oral biofilm in the laboratory that included a couple hundred species of bacteria," said Eckert. "We applied the STAMP, and it took only about 30 seconds to eliminate the S. mutans in the mixture, while leaving the other bacteria in tact."
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As dentists sometimes wonder, what would happen if S. mutans is eliminated from the oral biofilm? Does
another equally or more destructive species fill its void, creating a new set of oral problems? Shi said nature
already provides a good answer. "About 10 to 15 percent of people don't have S. mutans in their biofilms, and
they do just fine without it," he said. "Besides, S. mutans is not a dominant species in the biofilm. It only becomes a problem when we eat a lot of carbohydrates."
Looking to the future, Shi said new STAMPs that seek out other potentially harmful bacterial species could
be generated in a matter of days. He said all that is needed is the full DNA sequence of a microbe, a unique
homing sequence from a pheromone, and an appropriate anti-microbial peptide. "We have a collection of antimicrobial peptides that we usually screen the bacterium through first in the laboratory," said Shi. "We can employ the anti-microbial equivalent of either a 2,000-ton bomb or a 200-pound bomb. Our choice is usually
somewhere in the middle. If the anti-microbial peptide is too strong, it will also kill the surrounding bacteria,
so we have to be very careful."
---------------------------This research also was supported by a University of California Discovery Grant, Delta Dental of Washington, Delta
Dental of Wisconsin, and C3 Jian Corporation. The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research is the nation's
leading funder of research on oral, dental, and craniofacial health.
Vegetables, Not Fruit, Help Fight Memory Problems in Old Age
Eating vegetables, not fruit, helps slow down the rate of cognitive change in older adults, according
to a study published in the October 24, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
In determining whether there was an association between vegetables, fruit and cognitive decline, researchers from Rush University Medical Center studied 3,718 residents in Chicago, Illinois, who were age 65 and older. Participants completed a food frequency questionnaire and received at least two cognitive tests over a sixyear period.
“Compared to people who consumed less than one serving of vegetables a day, people who ate at least 2.8
servings of vegetables a day saw their rate of cognitive change slow by roughly 40 percent, said study author
Martha Clare Morris, ScD, associate professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. “This decrease is equivalent to about 5 years of younger age.”
Of the different types of vegetables consumed by participants, green leafy vegetables had the strongest
association to slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study also found the older the person, the greater the
slowdown in the rate of cognitive decline if that person consumed more than two servings of vegetables a day.
Surprisingly, the study found fruit consumption was not associated with cognitive change.
“This was unanticipated and raises several questions,” said Morris. “It may be due to vegetables containing
high amounts of vitamin E, which helps lowers the risk of cognitive decline. Vegetables, but not fruits, are also
typically consumed with added fats such as salad dressings, and fats increase the absorption of vitamin E. Further study is required to understand why fruit is not associated with cognitive change.”
Morris says the study’s findings can be used to simplify public health messages by saying people should eat
more or less of foods in a specific food group, not necessarily more or less of individual foods.
The study was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging.
------------------------------------CHICAGO -
Rush University Medical Center is an academic medical center that encompasses the more than 650 staffed-bed hospital (including Rush Children’s Hospital), the Johnston R. Bowman Health Center and Rush University. Rush University,
with more than 1,270 students, is home to one of the first medical schools in the Midwest, and one of the nation’s topranked nursing colleges. Rush University also offers graduate programs in allied health and the basic sciences. Rush is
noted for bringing together clinical care and research to address major health problems, including arthritis and orthopedic
disorders, cancer, heart disease, mental illness, neurological disorders and diseases associated with aging.
Mayo Clinic study suggests that a central nervous system viral infection can lead to
memory deficits
In one of the first known laboratory studies that explores memory deficits associated with a
viral infection of the central nervous system, Mayo Clinic researchers have evidence that this infection can lead
to memory loss late in life. The study, which was conducted in animal models, suggests that over the lifetime
of an individual, a picornavirus-related infection could possibly have a permanent effect on memory late in life.
"Our study suggests that virus-induced memory loss could accumulate over the lifetime of an individual and
eventually lead to clinical cognitive memory deficits," according to Charles L. Howe, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic neuroscientist and corresponding author of the study that appears on the cover of the November issue of Neurobiology of Disease. The study's first author is Eric J. Buenz, Ph.D., a recent graduate of the molecular neuroscience program at Mayo Graduate School.
ROCHESTER, Minn. --
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Picornaviruses are the most common infectious viral agents in humans. They are a family of viruses that
include rhinoviruses, which is a virus associated with the common cold; enteroviruses, a virus associated with
respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments; encephalitis, inflammation of the brain; myocarditis, inflammation of
heart muscle; and meningitis.
Other viruses in this family include those that cause foot-and-mouth disease, polio and hepatitis A. Researchers were intrigued by the possibility of a link between picornavirus infections and memory loss. Little
has been published in this area, Dr. Howe says.
In the study, mice were infected with Theiler's murine (mouse) encephalomyelitis virus (comparable to the
human poliovirus). Researchers looked for signs of spatial memory loss in the mice. Mice that contracted the
virus had difficulty learning to navigate a maze designed to test various components of spatial memory. The
degree of memory impairment, which ranged from no discernable damage to complete devastation, was directly correlated to the number of dead brain cells in the hippocampus region of the mouse's brain.
Picornaviruses infect more than one billion people worldwide each year. Generally individuals contract two
or three enterovirus and/or rhinovirus infections each year. In some cases the viruses get into the brain, and
in some children these viruses can cause long-lasting brain injuries. "We think picornavirus family members
cross into the brain and cause a variety of brain injuries. For example, the polio virus can cause paralysis. It
can injure the spinal cord and different parts of the brain responsible for motor function. In the murine virus
we studied, it did the same thing and also injured parts of the brain responsible for memory," Dr. Howe says.
Enteroviruses and rhinoviruses are among the most common in the picornavirus family. Certain enteroviruses (gastrointestinal illnesses among others), such as enterovirus 71, are common in Asia, particularly
southeast Asia where many children are infected. Once the virus infects the host due to unsanitary conditions,
it can cross over into the brain and cause encephalitis, which can lead to conditions ranging from lethargy to a
coma. In recent years, scores of children have died from infection.
The degree of brain damage in humans infected with a picornavirus infection is not known, but the evidence from the mouse study suggests this is an area of research that should be explored further.
"Our findings suggest that picornavirus infections throughout the lifetime of an individual may chip away at
the cognitive reserve, increasing the likelihood of detectable cognitive impairment as the individual ages. We
hypothesize that mild memory and cognitive impairments of unknown etiology may, in fact, be due to accumulative loss of hippocampus function caused by repeated infection with common and widespread neurovirulent picornaviruses. Further analysis of such deficits and exploration of potential therapeutic interventions is
clearly needed," the authors wrote.
Clinical case studies indicate that picornavirus infections in humans may be associated with inflammation of
the brain and damage to the hippocampus -- the part of the brain responsible for forming, storing and processing memory. Inflammation-induced damage to the brain is believed to be associated with learning and
memory deficits.
Because picornaviruses are widespread and infection is common, the potential for this family of viruses to
damage the human brain presents a very real medical problem, Dr. Howe says.
In general, viruses that kill neurons in the hippocampus are not uncommon. For example infections caused
by the herpes virus or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can lead to the loss of brain cells, but while brain
damage from these viruses is based on a persistent infection, brain damage from a picornavirus infection occurs only during the acute phase of infection.
"Because they are all related, by studying one, we may learn something about all of them. My hope is that
we will learn something about the virus and the serious illnesses associated with other viruses in this family,"
Dr. Howe says.
"Because hippocampus injury was correlated with reduced spatial memory formation across a range of
damage and a range of memory performance, we suggest that picornavirus infection of the human central
nervous system is likely to result in at least some degree of neurological deficit," the authors write.
---------------------------------------The study was funded by grants from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society; National Institutes of Health; a gift from
Donald and Francis Herdrich; and the Mayo Graduate School.
Diversity promotes cooperation among microbes
Understanding how cooperation evolves and is maintained represents one of evolutionary biology's thorniest problems. This stems from the fact that freeloading cheats will evolve to exploit any cooperative group
that doesn't defend itself, leading to the breakdown of cooperation. New research using the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens has identified a novel mechanism that thwarts the evolution of cheats and broadens our
understanding of how cooperation might be maintained in nature and human societies. The new findings are
reported by Michael Brockhurst of the University of Liverpool and colleagues at the Université Montpellier and
the University of Oxford in the October 24th issue of the journal Current Biology, published by Cell Press.
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Pseudomonas fluorescens "wrinkly-spreader" colony. Credit: Andrew Spiers
Bacteria are known to cooperate in a wide variety of ways,
including the formation of multicellular structures called biofilms. P. fluorescens biofilms are formed when individual cells
overproduce a polymer that sticks the cells together, allowing
the colonization of liquid surfaces. While production of the polymer is metabolically costly to individual cells, the biofilm
group benefits from the increased access to oxygen that surface colonization provides. However, cheating types rapidly
evolve that live in the biofilm but don't produce the polymer.
The presence of cheats weakens the biofilm, imperiling its survival by causing it to sink.
In the new work, the researchers studied the effect of
short-term evolution of diversity within the biofilm on the success of cooperation. The researchers found that within biofilms,
diverse cooperators evolved to use different nutrient resources,
thereby reducing the competition for resources within the biofilm. The researchers then manipulated diversity within experimental biofilms and found that diverse biofilms
contained fewer cheats and can produce larger groups than non-diverse biofilms. The findings indicate that,
as in ecological communities, biodiversity within biofilms is beneficial--moreover, the authors point out that
this is the first time that such ideas have been applied in the context of social evolution, and it represents a
new way in which cooperation can survive in the face of cheating. Furthermore, the new work sheds light on
how division of labor within multicellular organisms may initially have evolved in order to minimize functional
redundancy among cells and to increase efficiency.
------------------------------The researchers include Michael A. Brockhurst of University of Liverpool in Liverpool, UK and Université Montpellier II in
Montpellier, France; Michael E. Hochberg of Université Montpellier II in Montpellier, France; Thomas Bell and Angus Buckling of University of Oxford, South Parks Road in Oxford, UK.
This work was supported by grants from Les Fonds National de la Science, Programme Microbiologique (France), and the
Royal Society (UK).
Brockhurst et al.: "Character Displacement Promotes Cooperation in Bacterial Biofilms." Publishing in Current Biology 16,
2030–2034, October 24, 2006 DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2006.08.068. www.current-biology.com
Healthy men who drink moderately have reduced risk of heart attack
For men with healthy lifestyle habits, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol may be associated with a lower
risk of heart attack than drinking heavily or not drinking at all, according to a report in the October 23 issue of
Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Previous studies have found that adults who drink moderate amounts of alcohol have a lower risk of myocardial infarction (heart attack) than those who do not drink at all, according to background information in the
article. Researchers suspect this is due to increased levels of HDL or "good" cholesterol in the blood. Because
there are many risks associated with heavy drinking, physicians do not typically recommend that patients
begin drinking alcohol to reduce their heart disease risk--instead, they focus on other proven lifestyle interventions, including diet and exercise. However, these habits are not mutually exclusive, the authors write. "For
individuals who exercise, abstain from smoking, maintain optimal weight and adhere to an appropriate diet,
there may be few other standard lifestyle interventions to lower risk," the authors write. "Whether alcohol intake is related to a lower risk for myocardial infarction in such individuals is unknown."
Kenneth J. Mukamal, M.D., M.P.H., M.A., Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, and colleagues
assessed the connection between drinking alcohol and heart attack in 8,867 healthy men who were part of the
Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which began in 1986 and included 51,529 dentists, pharmacists, veterinarians and other health care professionals age 40 to 75. At the beginning of the study and at regular intervals afterward, the participants filled out questionnaires about their diets and medical conditions, reported the
frequency with which they consumed particular substances and specified the types of alcohol they drank. All
of the men in the current study had healthy lifestyles, defined as not smoking, having a body mass index
(BMI) of less than 25, getting at least 30 minutes of exercise per day and eating a healthy diet, including large
amounts of fruits, vegetables, fish and polyunsaturated fats and low amounts of trans-fats and red meat.
Between 1986 and 2002, 106 men had heart attacks. This included eight of the 1,282 who drank 15 to 29.9
grams of alcohol per day (about two drinks), nine of the 714 who drank 30 grams or more per day, 34 of the
2,252 who drank .1 to 4.9 drinks per day and 28 of the 1,889 who did not drink at all. Those who drank 15 to
29 grams per day had the lowest risk for heart attack and those who did not drink at all had the highest. The
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researchers also performed an analyses comparing those who drank 5 grams per day or more and those who
drank less than 5 grams a day. For the latter, "we estimate that 25 percent of the incidence cases of myocardial infarction in this population were attributable to consuming less than 5 grams per day," the authors write.
"There is a complicated mix of risks and benefits attributed to moderate drinking in observational studies,
and the individual and societal complications of heavy drinking are well known," the authors conclude. "It is
easy to understand why clinical guidelines encourage physicians and patients to concentrate on seemingly
more innocuous interventions, despite the relative paucity of effective, straightforward and generalizable
methods for encouraging regular physical activity, weight reduction and abstinence from smoking in clinical
practice. Our results suggest that moderate drinking could be viewed as a complement, rather than an alternative, to these other lifestyle interventions, a viewpoint espoused by some authors."
---------------------------------(Arch Intern Med. 2006;166:2145-2150. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.)
Editor's Note: This study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health. Co-author Dr. Rimm has received honoraria for occasional speaking engagements at research conferences from industry-related organizations (Distilled Spirits Council and National Beer Wholesalers Association). Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Steep oxygen decline halted first land colonization by Earth's sea creatures
Vertebrate creatures first began moving from the world's oceans to land about 415 million years ago, then
all but disappeared by 360 million years ago. The fossil record contains few examples of animals with backbones for the next 15 million years, and then suddenly vertebrates show up again, this time for good.
The mysterious lull in vertebrate colonization of land is known as Romer's Gap, named for the Yale University paleontologist, Alfred Romer, who first recognized it. But the term has typically been applied only to predinosaur amphibians, and there has been little understanding of why the gap occurred.
Now a team of scientists led by University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward has found a similar gap
during the same period among non-marine arthropods, largely insects and spiders, and they believe a precipitous drop in the oxygen content of Earth's atmosphere is responsible.
"These two groups acted exactly the same way. They proliferated, then they went away, and then they reappeared and multiplied like crazy," said Ward, a UW professor of biology and of Earth and space sciences.
He notes that atmospheric oxygen rose sharply at the end of the Silurian period about 415 million years
ago, to reach a level of about 22 percent of the atmosphere, similar to today's oxygen content. But 55 million
years later, atmospheric oxygen levels sank to 10 percent to 13 percent. The level remained low for 30 million
years – during which Romer's Gap occurred – then shot up again, and vertebrates and arthropods again began moving from the sea to land.
"It matches two waves of colonization of the land," Ward said. "In the first wave the animals' lungs couldn't
have been very good and when the oxygen level dropped it had to be hard for the vertebrates coming out of
the water. I wonder if there is a minimum level of oxygen that has to be reached or nothing could ever have
gotten out of the water."
Dinosaurs first appeared in the last part of the Triassic period, about 230 million years ago. That was during one of the lowest ebbs of atmospheric oxygen content of the last 500 million years, but he speculates that
it took some time, until oxygen levels rose appreciably, before dinosaurs grew to their familiar gargantuan sizes.
"Dinosaurs thrived and nothing else did. There's an explanation for that, and it is that the air sac breathing
system in dinosaurs and their descendants, modern birds, is more efficient than systems used by other organisms," Ward said.
He and his colleagues tested that hypothesis by examining the breathing system used by birds. They found
that at sea level birds breathe 30 percent more efficiently than mammals and at 5,000 feet in elevation birds
are 200 percent more efficient.
Ward pictures a world in which dinosaurs were able to adapt to low atmospheric oxygen content relatively
easily, and when oxygen levels rose the dinosaurs developed into giant creatures that dominated the Earth.
"I think of dinosaurs as the high-altitude Denver athletes of their day. They ran rings around their prey," he
said.
Ward also began to wonder whether respiratory needs dictated how other organisms' bodies developed. He
thought that perhaps, rather than being based on feeding and movement, body shape and design might largely be determined by respiratory efficiency. For instance, a mollusk shell is typically thought of as protection for
the marine creature, he said, but it turns out the shell actually channels water across the gill to deliver oxygen.
"An unshelled mollusk has a far greater respiratory problem than a shelled mollusk," Ward said. "In many
groups the shell is an active part of the respiratory system."
Analysis: Condition could predict life or death in heart patients
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A growing health problem affecting older Americans puts them at higher risk for dying after heart surgery
and other interventional procedures, such as heart catheterizations, according to findings published in the current edition of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and co-authored by two leading University of
Kentucky cardiologists.
The study analyzed the results of eight major research trials involving nearly 20,000 patients who underwent interventional heart procedures, such as balloon angioplasty or stent placement. Patients with peripheral
arterial disease (PAD), which mainly includes blockages in leg arteries, were found to be more than twice as
likely to die within a week after interventional heart procedures compared with patients free of PAD. This doubling in mortality rates persisted at 30-day and later follow-up. At one year following the heart procedure, 5
percent of patients with PAD had died versus 2.1 percent of patients without PAD. However, while nearly half
of Americans 65 or older are expected to have the condition by 2050, only a quarter of PAD patients presently
receive treatment. Further, patients with PAD undergoing heart interventions were also more at risk for other
complications, including blood clots and bleeding requiring a transfusion.
The study was authored by 13 internationally recognized cardiology researchers, including Dr. David J.
Moliterno, Gill Heart Institute medical director and professor and chief of cardiovascular medicine in the UK
College of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine, and Dr. Steven R. Steinhubl, associate professor and
director of cardiovascular education and clinical research at UK.
"Peripheral arterial disease is prevalent in Kentucky and throughout much of the United States, yet it is
strikingly under diagnosed and certainly under treated. It is undeniably easy to ask patients if their legs cramp
when they walk, and if so to take a blood pressure recording in not only their arms but also their legs. These
steps could be life-saving," Moliterno said.
While the study does not indicate that patients with PAD should avoid interventional procedures, it is a
strong reminder that extra precaution should be taken when treating these patients.
Bargain or waste of money? Consumers don't always agree
CONTACT: Nancy Gardner [email protected] 206-543-2580
Once consumers buy an item, it is often difficult for them to get rid of it, even if it makes rational sense to
do so. This is even the case if those purchases might include shoes that cause blisters or clothes that no longer fit, said Erica Okada, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Washington Business School.
In their minds, she said, it would be a "waste" of good money to throw a purchased item away, even if the
money has already been spent and further use of the item isn't going to bring the money back.
In a study published in this month's Journal of Marketing, Okada found that in markets where there are
frequent, successive introductions of new and enhanced products, consumers who have bought an older model have a similarly difficult time upgrading to a new version.
"Consumers don't always seek value in a consistent or rational way as economists assume they do," she
said. "For example, in upgrading from a portable MP3 player purchased a few years ago to a newer one with
more enhanced capabilities, the consumer wouldn't necessarily have to get rid of the old one, but the old one
would presumably no longer be used once a new model is purchased. In effect, the old one would become
redundant and be taken out of commission, which would again, be a 'waste' of good money."
According to Okada, it's the psychological cost of upgrading that hinders the purchase of newer models by
consumers who have an older model. But for consumers who are first-time buyers, she found there are no
psychological barriers preventing them from buying the newest model.
"People keep a mental account of the costs and benefits over time," she said. "As the cumulative enjoyment from consumption increases, the consumer gets his or her money's worth from the purchase. The account is closed once the consumer finishes using the product. If an upgrader purchases an enhanced product,
he or she will no longer use the existing product, which triggers the closing of that mental account. There is a
psychological cost associated with closing the existing account before consumers have gotten their money's
worth out of the existing product."
For the paper, Okada did a number of studies to test her theory, including what consumers would be willing to pay for new cell phones in different situations. She asked 179 cell phone users how much they would
pay for a new phone, either as an upgraded model or as a replacement purchase. On average, the users perceived the new phones to be superior to the phones they already owned. In the replacement scenario, participants were asked to imagine they had lost their existing phones. This created a situation in which there would
be no existing phone to become obsolete as a result of the new purchase, and would resemble a new purchase because there would be no mental cost. Ninety people were assigned the replacement condition; 89 to
the upgrade condition.
People in the replacement purchase group were willing to pay considerably more for the phone than were
people who would purchase the phone as an upgrade. That makes sense, said Okada, since people in the replacement condition effectively had no working phone and the new phone's marginal benefit would presuma6
bly be greater. Replacement buyers were also willing to pay more for the new phone when they thought the
features of their existing phones were made better. However, in the upgrade group people were willing to pay
more for a phone with new features than they were for phones offering improved features. For example, a
new cell phone with a camera feature would be more appealing than one with improved sound quality to a
consumer who already has a phone without a camera.
These findings demonstrate how the decision-making process is different when there is a mental cost vs.
when there is not, and they apply to the comparative preferences of upgraders vs. first-time buyers, she said.
First-time buyers do not incur any mental cost in purchasing a new model, and upgraders do.
Okada theorizes that marketers can introduce an enhanced product to consumers by adding new features
or improving existing features, and because the decision-making is different for those who upgrade vs. firsttime buyers there is a difference in the relative preference for the two types of product enhancements. Adding
new features would be more attractive to upgraders, and improving existing features would be more attractive
to first-time buyers.
"There are intrinsic differences between a consumer who already has a product and is considering an upgrade, and a consumer who is purchasing for the first time," she said. "The existing assumption is that they
would be the same, but in actuality the first-time buyer may have more to gain marginally because he or she
starts out with nothing and may be less knowledgeable about the product category."
Popular ADHD drug safe and effective for pre-schoolers
Monitor youngsters closely for side effects, researchers caution
A new study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and five other medical centers concludes that carefully measured, low doses of methylphenidate (Ritalin) are safe and effective for attentiondeficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in preschoolers. Investigators warn, however, that 3- to 5-year-olds
appear more sensitive to the drug's side effects, which include irritability, insomnia and weight loss, than are
older children with ADHD and require closer monitoring.
Children who took the drug also experienced somewhat slower growth rates. On average, children on the
drug grew half an inch per year less than expected and gained 2.9 pounds less than expected. Researchers
recommend that pediatricians weigh the risks of slowed growth rates against the benefits of treatment. Children on long-term treatment with methylphenidate should be monitored carefully several times a year to assess growth changes over time.
Methylphenidate is the most widely prescribed drug for the treatment of ADHD in children but is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in children younger than 6.
Results of the federally funded research, the first large-scale, long-term study of the safety and value of the
drug in younger children, appear in a special section of the November issue of the Journal of the American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
"These results give us the missing links in the decision to prescribe a drug that's been widely used off-label
in preschool-age children," says Mark Riddle, M.D., director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Children's Center and a co-author on the study, which followed 303 children between 3 and 5 over 70 weeks. "We
were able to confirm what many already suspected-that even lower doses in preschoolers can safely achieve
the desired therapeutic effect and indeed that low doses are often optimal."
Children in the study were started on a low-dose regimen of medication ranging from 3.75 mg total daily to
22.5 mg total daily. By comparison, the cumulative daily dose for older children ranges from 15 mg per day to
50 mg per day. The optimal dose needed to reduce symptoms ranged widely in preschool-age children, but on
average, 14 mg daily was effective in reining in symptoms.
"One of the surprises was that in some cases, doses as low as even 3 to 4 mg a day were helpful to some
preschoolers, which goes to show that lower doses need to be given a chance before higher doses are tried,"
Riddle explains.
About 11 percent of those enrolled in the study experienced side effects severe enough to drop out. These
included weight loss, anxiety, skin picking, mood disturbances and insomnia.
"We want parents to know that trained professionals can make an accurate diagnosis and prescribe helpful
and safe treatment in preschoolers with ADHD," Riddle says. "But do expect your prescribing physician to
monitor side effects closely and regularly and to tweak the dose if necessary."
ADHD is characterized by a wide range of symptoms, including inability to concentrate, being easily distracted, fidgeting and restlessness, among others. Left untreated, ADHD can interfere with academic progress
and social and emotional development. More than 4.4 million children in the United States have ADHD, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 2 percent of preschool-age
children are believed to have ADHD.
------------------------------Johns Hopkins Medicine Media Relations and Public Affairs October 23, 2006
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Other Hopkins researchers included Elizabeth Kastelic, M.D., Golda Ginsburg, Ph.D., Margaret Schlossberg, Ph.D.., Alexander Scharko, M.D., now at the University of Wisconsin, and Jaswinder Ghuman, M.D., now at the University of Arizona.
The study was led by Laurence Greenhill, M.D., of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Other study sites included Duke University, New York University, the University of California-Los Angeles, and the University
of California-Irvine.
Far more than a meteor killed dinos
There's growing evidence that the dinosaurs and most their contemporaries were not wiped out by the
famed Chicxulub meteor impact, according to a paleontologist who says multiple meteor impacts, massive volcanism in India, and climate changes culminated in the end of the Cretaceous Period.
The Chicxulub impact may, in fact, have been the lesser and earlier of a series of meteors and volcanic
eruptions that pounded life on Earth for more than 500,000 years, say Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller and her collaborators Thierry Adatte from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and Zsolt Berner
and Doris Stueben from Karlsruhe University in Germany. A final, much larger and still unidentified impact
65.5 million years ago appears to have been the last straw, exterminating two thirds of all species in one of
the largest mass extinction events in the history of life. It's that impact – not Chicxulub – which left the famous extraterrestrial iridium layer found in rocks worldwide that marks the impact that finally ended the Age
of Reptiles.
"The Chicxulub impact could not have caused the mass extinction," says Princeton University paleontologist
Gerta Keller, "because this impact predates the mass extinction and apparently didn't cause any extinctions."
Keller is scheduled to present that evidence at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in
Philadelphia, 22-25 October. The results of her research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, will be discussed in two technical sessions and a public lecture sponsored by the Philadelphia Geological
Survey.
Marine sediments drilled from the Chicxulub crater itself, as well as from a site in Texas along the Brazos
River, and from outcrops in northeastern Mexico reveal that Chicxulub hit Earth 300,000 years before the
mass extinction. Small marine animal microfossils were left virtually unscathed, says Keller.
"In all these localities we can analyze the marine microfossils in the sediments directly above and below the
Chicxulub impact layer and cannot find any significant biotic effect," said Keller. "We cannot attribute any specific extinctions to this impact." No one has ever published this critical survival story before, she said. Keller's
research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
The story that seems to be taking shape is that Chicxulub, though violent, actually conspired with the prolonged and gigantic eruptions of the Deccan Flood Basalts in India, as well as with climate change, to nudge
species towards the brink. They were then shoved over with a second large impact.
The Deccan volcanism did the nudging by releasing vast amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
over a period of more than a million years leading up tothe mass extinction. By the time Chicxulub struck, the
oceans were already 3-4 degrees warmer, even at the bottom, she says.
"On land it must have been 7-8 degrees warmer," says Keller. "This greenhouse warming is well documented. The temperature rise was rapid, over about 20,000 years, and it stayed warm for about100,000 years,
then cooled back to normal well before the mass extinction."
Marine species at the time suffered from the heat. Most adapted to the stress conditions by dwarfing,
growing less than half their normal size and reproducing rapidly with many offspring to increase the chances
for survival. The Chicxulub impact coincided with this time. By the time climate cooled back to normal, most
tropical species were on the brink of extinction. Then the second large impact hit and pushed them over the
brink – many straight to extinction.
As for how the dinosaurs were affected, that's a bit harder to say specifically, since dinosaurs did not leave
a lot of fossils behind to tell the tale.
"Dinosaur fossils are few and far between," Keller said. "People love the dinosaurs but we can only really
study what happened to them by looking at microfossils because these little critters are everywhere at all
times. In just a pinch of sediment we can tell you the age, the prevailing climate, the environment in which it
was deposited and what happened. It's remarkable."
What the microfossils are saying is that Chicxulub probably aided the demise of the dinosaurs, but so did
Deccan trap volcanism's greenhouse warming effect and finally a second huge impact that finished them off.
So where's the crater?
"I wish I knew," said Keller. "There is some evidence that it may have hit in India, where a crater of about
500 kilometers in diameter is estimated and named Shiva by paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee from the Museum of Texas Tech University in Lubbock. The evidence for it, however, is not very compelling at this time."
Mineral discovery explains Mars’ landscape
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A Queen’s University researcher has discovered a mineral that could explain the mountainous landscape of
Mars, and have implications for NASA’s next mission to the planet.
“Satellites orbiting Mars show us images of canyons and gullies that appear to have been created by a flood
or rapid out-washing,” says Ron Peterson, Queen’s geologist. “Exploration rovers, currently moving about on
the planet’s surface, also show us that there is no visible water on the surface of Mars, but that there was in
the past.”
Dr. Peterson suggests that Mars was likely wetter in the past. All of the images that are coming back from
the rovers show layering in the rock which is indicative of sediment manipulated by water. This kind of outwash would require a fair amount of water on the planet at some point.
The study, published this week in GEOLOGY, a publication of the Geological Society of America, suggests
that these findings may provide insight into how to retrieve a sample of Mars' surface and return it to earth.
Dr. Peterson will share his findings with NASA at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston next week to provide insight into designing the next Mars exploration rover and planning its mission.
The discovery was made in Dr. Peterson’s unheated garage using epsomite, also known as Epsom salts.
The solution was left to crystallize for several days at temperatures below freezing, which formed crystals that
have unusual properties. The crystals were then rapidly melted, which created mould-like channels and gullies
– similar to what we see on the surface of Mars.
Martian terrain may have been created in a similar fashion. Dr. Peterson suggests that many years ago,
water interacted with rocks on the surface of the planet to create an acidic cocktail, which created layers of
material. When the surface layer melted, it created the topography that exploration rovers show us today.
“These findings may help us better understand the surface of Mars,” says Dr. Peterson, expert in geological
science and engineering. “These possible new minerals that may be found on Earth help us see that although
there are many differences between Earth and Mars, such as atmosphere and gravity, there are many things
that are the same – it is another world, but there are certainly similarities.”
PLEASE NOTE: A PDF copy of the study is available upon request. To learn more about Research at Queen's ... Contact:
Molly Kehoe, (613) 533-2877, [email protected] Lorinda Peterson, (613) 533-3234, [email protected]
Cell wall of pneumonia bacteria can cause brain and heart damage
Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered in mouse models how cell walls from
certain pneumonia-causing bacteria can cause fatal heart damage; researchers have also shown how antibiotic
therapy can contribute to this damage by increasing the number of cell wall pieces shed by dying bacteria.
The team also demonstrated in a mouse model how to prevent this from happening.
The study shows that pieces of cell walls from Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria "hijack" a protein on the
lining of the blood vessel wall and use it to slip out of the bloodstream and into the brain and heart. A report
on this study appears in the November 1 issue of the Journal of Immunology. These findings explain why
blood stream infection with S. pneumoniae commonly leads to temporary impairment of heart function, and
they suggest a way to prevent that from occurring, according to Elaine Tuomanen, M.D., chair of the St. Jude
Department of Infectious Diseases. S. pneumoniae is a leading cause of pneumonia, sepsis (a potentially lifethreatening bloodstream infection) and meningitis (inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and
spinal cord).
The St. Jude team found that pieces of cell wall from S. pneumoniae that escape from the bloodstream enter neurons (brain cells). In a previous report published in the July issue of Infection and Immunity, St. Jude
researchers reported that in the mouse model, cell wall fragments damaged neurons in the part of the brain
called the hippocampus. Tuomanen is senior author of both reports.
In the current study, the researchers showed how the cell wall fragments escape the bloodstream and enter cells. Specifically, they demonstrated that pieces of the bacterial cell wall bind to the vascular endothelium
(inner surface of the blood vessel) by hooking onto a protein called platelet activating factor receptor (PAFr).
Platelet activating factor (PAF) is an immune system signaling molecule that activates certain white blood cells.
It normally binds to PAFr on the cell lining. The St. Jude team demonstrated that phosphorylcholine, a molecule on the bacteria's cell wall, resembles PAF and exploits this similarity to bind to PAFr.
The researchers demonstrated the role of PAFr by injecting fragments of S. pneumoniae cell wall into normal mice as well as mice that lacked the gene for PAFr (Pafr-/- mice). None of the regular mice survived after
eight hours, and cell wall was found in their hearts and brains. However, all of the Pafr-/- mice survived and
almost no cell wall was found outside the blood stream. This suggests that PAFr is required for cell walls to
escape the bloodstream and enter cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) and neurons. Moreover, cell wall fragments lacking phosphorylcholine did not bind to the inner lining of the blood vessels of the animal models, a
finding that demonstrates S. pneumoniae cell walls use this molecule to latch onto PAFr.
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"S. pneumoniae have learned how to exploit PAFr and use it as a ferry to cross the endothelium of the
blood vessels and escape from the bloodstream," Tuomanen said. "From there they enter the cardiomyocytes
or neurons in the brain by binding to PAFr on those cells as well."
The investigators used laboratory culture studies to show that while neurons and endothelial cells remained
healthy after cell wall uptake, a rapid decline occurred in cardiomyocytes' ability to contract as they do in the
heart. The researchers were able to block this effect by first treating the cardiomyocytes with a molecule
called CV-6209, which blocked PAFr, preventing the cell wall from binding to it. In fact, mice pretreated for 16
hours with CV-6209 survived, while mice treated after inoculation of cell wall did not.
"Our success in preserving cardiomyocyte function even in the presence of cell wall suggests that it might
be possible to safely pre-treat people infected with S. pneumoniae with a drug that blocks PAF before we administer antibiotics," Tuomanen said. "This might protect the heart from the build-up of cell wall fragments
released from bacteria killed by the antibiotic."
Tuomanen's team has also developed evidence that explains how the S. pneumoniae cell wall binds to PAFr
on the surface of endothelial cells, neurons and cardiomyocytes and triggers a cascade of biochemical signals
called the PAFr-beta-arrestin 1 pathway. The St. Jude researchers reported that this pathway is responsible for
bacterial uptake into these cells. Furthermore, the researchers succeeded in blocking a key enzyme of this
pathway in cardiomyoctyes using a molecule called PLC inhibitor U73122. The treatment prevented the cell
from taking up the fragments but did not appear to interfere with the cell's normal functions. This suggests
that a drug that blocks the pathway responsible for pulling cell fragments into the cell might not have serious
side effects on the cell.
----------------------------------------Other authors of this paper include co-first authors Sophie Fillon, Konstantinos Soulis and Surender Rajasekaran, Heath
Benedict-Hamilton, Jana N. Radin, Carlos J. Orihuela, Karim C. El Kasmi, Gopal Murti, Deepak Kaushai and Peter Murray
(all of St. Jude); Waleed Gaber (University of Tennessee, Memphis); and Joerg Weber (Charite-Universitaetsmedizin, Berlin, Germany). This work was supported in part by ALSAC.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is internationally recognized for its pioneering work in finding cures and saving children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. Founded by late entertainer Danny Thomas and based in Memphis,
Tenn., St. Jude freely shares its discoveries with scientific and medical communities around the world. No family ever
pays for treatments not covered by insurance, and families without insurance are never asked to pay. St. Jude is financially supported by ALSAC, its fund-raising organization. For more information, please visit www.stjude.org.
Viking landers may have found Martian life after all
* 22:19 23 October 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Mark Buchanan and David L Chandler
A flawed test on NASA’s twin Viking spacecraft may have fooled scientists into overlooking signs of life during their examination of the Martian surface 30 years ago. Researchers now say that one of the landers’ experiments was not sensitive enough to find organic molecules in the soil, despite signs of life shown by another test. Other researchers say the team may also have been fooled by the strange forms that Martian life
might take.
The results from Vikings’ onboard experiments are confusing because some tests suggested the presence
of organisms capable of digesting organic molecules. But a gas-chromatograph mass spectrometer (GCMS)
found nothing when the soil was heated to release organic molecules, causing most scientists to doubt the
results of the life-detection tests. Instead they put the soil reactivity down to the presence of peroxides or
other reactive substances.
Now, a paper by Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the University of Mexico and others demonstrates that the
GCMS instrument was incapable of detecting organic compounds even in Mars-like soils from various locations
on Earth. This includes parts of Chile's Atacama desert where other tests prove that living microbes are indeed
present.
In some soils – including samples taken from Rio Tinto in Spain, which contain iron compounds similar to
those detected in Mars soils by NASA's rover Opportunity, the sensitivity of the GCMS was actually a million
times lower than its claimed threshold for detection, says Navarro-Gonzalez.
Outstanding puzzle
Gilbert Levin, one of the Viking scientists who has long argued that the GCMS test was flawed, told New
Scientist that the new study provides "strong support" to the idea that life was indeed detected on Mars.
Geophysicist Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, US, says the
study adds to a body of evidence that increasingly leaves the Viking results open to other interpretations.
The outstanding puzzle is to explain what causes the high reactivity of the Martian soil, coupled with an apparently very low level of organics despite a constant influx of organic material from asteroids, comets and
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other planetary sources. Most astrobiologists assume that some mysterious oxidising material in the soil is destroying the organic material but other possibilities are emerging.
Schulze-Makuch and Joop Houtkooper of the Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen, Germany, suggest that an
exotic form of Martian life might provide a tidy explanation. They propose that an organism might have
evolved on the Red Planet to use a solution of water and hydrogen peroxide as an intracellular fluid, rather
than just water as Earth organisms do.
Mysterious oxidant
This has the advantage of staying liquid at very cold temperatures, allowing organisms to survive in the
cold Martian climate. This internal hydrogen peroxide might then be the “mysterious” oxidant.
“We just may find life to be a bit different from life on Earth,” says Schulze-Makuch. “But wouldn’t you expect that on another planet?”
Navarro-Gonzalez says further tests should be done on Mars to answer the questions once and for all. Unfortunately, none of the experiments now slated for upcoming missions could definitively reveal whether there
is life in the soil, although they could prove the presence of organic compounds and identify what they are.
And there may still be time to add instruments that could look for microbial life to NASA's planned Mars
Science Laboratory, set for launch in 2009, or the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission to be launched
in 2011 or 2013, he said. Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (vol 103, p 16089)
Naturally occurring enzyme can break down key part of Alzheimer's plaques
Scientists have identified a naturally occurring enzyme that can break down a key component of the brain
plaques characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. The finding may provide researchers with new opportunities to
understand what goes wrong in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and could one day help them seek new
therapies.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis showed earlier this summer that the
enzyme, matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9), degrades abnormally aggregated proteins known as amyloid
fibrils, a main ingredient of brain plaques. In the brain, MMP-9 is made by support cells known as astrocytes.
MMP-9 is already well-known because of its links to cancer metastases, vascular disease, arthritis and other
pathologies. Scientists called the new link to Alzheimer's encouraging, noting that previously identified enzymes only degrade a smaller, nonaggregated component of Alzheimer's plaques.
"We already knew of three enzymes that break down amyloid beta (Abeta), a protein fragment that clumps
together with itself to form the fibrils," says Jin-Moo Lee, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of neurology. "But
the thinking up until now had been that Abeta might be clumping together so tightly that the fibrils were indestructible."
In a new study, appearing October 25 in The Journal of Neuroscience, Lee's group found that disabling the
mouse gene for MMP-9 increased levels of Abeta in the spaces between brain cells. The finding proves that
MMP-9 contributes to clearance of Abeta from extracellular spaces and suggests its dysfunction could potentially contribute to the development of Alzheimer's.
"MMP-9 and other enzymes like it are secreted from brain support cells and active in the spaces outside of
cells, and that's where we saw an increase in Abeta levels in the mice that lacked the gene for MMP-9," Lee
notes. "That's relevant to Alzheimer's because all the amyloid plaques are extracellular, and the formation of
the plaques seems to be related to an elevated level of Abeta that accumulates over time in those spaces."
In earlier studies, Lee's lab analyzed the production of MMP-9 in astrocytes. They found astrocytes close to
amyloid plaques increased their MMP-9 production. Imaging studies also showed that MMP-9 levels increased
around blood vessels laden with amyloid.
"Astrocytes become activated around plaques as they develop, and then eventually form a wall surrounding
the plaques," he says.
Lee's results have led him to formulate a provocative but as yet unproven theory about an old mystery of
Alzheimer's disease: why plaques continue to increase in number over time but only grow to a certain size.
"Even though everything we know about the fibrils suggests they should constantly grow, plaques reach a
mature size and stop growing," Lee says. "It's possible that production of MMP-9 and other similar substances
by support cells in the brain is establishing a balance that prevents the plaques from growing beyond a certain
size."
To follow up, Lee plans to crossbreed mice lacking MMP-9 with a line of mice genetically modified to develop an Alzheimer's-like condition. Scientists want to see if removing MMP-9 causes the mice to develop Alzheimer's more quickly.
In a parallel project that will test MMP-9's potential as a therapeutic, Lee and his collaborators will use viruses to alter production of MMP-9 in the mouse model. Researchers want to learn if increasing levels of the
enzyme present in the brain can delay onset of Alzheimer's.
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News Release - heic0616:
Hubble yields direct proof of stellar sorting in a globular cluster
A seven year study with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with the best
observational evidence yet that globular clusters sort out stars according to their mass, governed by a gravitational billiard ball game between stars. Heavier stars slow down and sink to the cluster’s core, while lighter
stars pick up speed and move across the cluster to its periphery. This process, called “mass segregation”, has
long been suspected for globular star clusters, but has never before been directly seen in action.
Imagine trying to understand how a football game works based on just a few fuzzy snapshots of the game
in play. This is the just the kind of challenge faced by astronomers trying to understand the dynamics of the
swarm of stars in the globular star clusters that orbit our Milky Way Galaxy. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided the best observational evidence to date that globular clusters sort stars according to their
mass, governed by a gravitational billiard ball game between stars. Heavier stars slow down and sink to the
cluster's core, while lighter stars pick up speed and move out across the cluster to its periphery. This process,
called mass segregation, has long been suspected for globular star clusters, but has never been seen in action
directly before.
A typical globular cluster contains several hundred thousand stars. Although the density of stars is very
small at the outskirts of such clusters, near the centre it can be more than 10,000 times higher than in the
local vicinity of our Sun. If we lived in such a crowded region of space, the night sky would be ablaze with
10,000 stars, all closer to us than the nearest star to the
Sun, Alpha Centauri, which is 4.3 light-years away (or approximately 215,000 times the distance between Earth and
the Sun). Just as bumps and jostles are much more likely in
a crowded commuter train, so are encounters between stars
in a densely populated cluster more likely than here in our
quiet stellar backwater. These encounters can be as dramatic as collisions or even mergers. Theory predicts that the
cumulative result of many such encounters is mass segregation, but the crowded conditions make it extremely difficult
to identify individual stars accurately.
Astronomers needed Hubble’s pinpoint resolution to trace
the motions of many thousands of stars in a single globular
cluster. Highly accurate speeds have been measured for almost 15,000 stars at the very centre of the nearby globular
cluster 47 Tucanae – one of the densest globular clusters in
the southern hemisphere. 23 of these stars are of a very
rare type known as "blue stragglers": unusually hot and
bright stars thought to be the product of collisions between
two normal stars.
This photo was taken by the Japanese astrophotographer Akira Fujii and shows a wide-angle view of
the globular cluster 47 Tucanae and the Small Magellanic Cloud. Credit: Akira Fujii
The slower measured velocities of the blue straggler stars agree with the predictions of mass segregation.
In particular, a comparison between blue stragglers (that have twice the mass of the average star) and other
stars shows that, as expected, they do move more slowly than the more typical, lighter stars.
Georges Meylan of the École Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Sauverny, Switzerland and collaborators took ten sets of multiple images of the central region (within about 6 light-years of the centre) of
47 Tucanae using Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and the newer Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Images were taken at regular intervals over nearly seven years. Extremely small position changes could be
measured over time by carefully measuring the positions of as many as 130,000 stars in every one of these
“snapshots”, revealing the motions of the stars across the sky.
The velocities of 15,000 stars were measured precisely. This is the largest sample of velocities ever gathered for a globular cluster in the Milky Way by any technique with any instrument. The results were also used
to look for the gravitational pull of a black hole to check whether one exists in the cluster’s core. The measured stellar motions have ruled out the presence of a very massive black hole.
The study would have been impossible without Hubble’s sharp vision. From the ground, the smearing effect
of the Earth’s atmosphere blurs the individual images of the numerous stars in the crowded cluster core. The
typical angular motion of even the normal stars in the centre of 47 Tucanae was found to be just over one ten
millionth of a degree (equivalent to the angular size of a 10 cent coin seen from 7,000 kilometres away) per
year.
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To take full advantage of these exquisite Hubble images, astronomers developed entirely new data analysis
methods that eventually provided measurements of proper motions (velocities) that corresponded to changes
in the positions of stars at the level of about 1/100th of a pixel (picture-element) on Hubble’s digital cameras.
Vital Signs
Safety: ICE on Cellphones: An Acronym for Emergencies
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
A simple acronym entered into people’s cellphone listings, ICE, can help emergency room doctors who are
trying to track down a patient’s family.
It stands for In Case of Emergency, and a report presented at a recent gathering of the American Conference of Emergency Physicians said doctors should encourage their patients to start using it.
“We are always faced with situations where patients come into the emergency room and for one reason or
another are not able to communicate with us,” said the author of the report, Dr. Dennis McKenna of the Albany Medical Center.
Traditionally, hospital workers have searched for a wallet and then tried to find relatives through the identification inside - a slow and not always successful method.
But with cellphones so common, Dr. McKenna said, hospitals now often search through cellphone address
books for clues about whom to contact. While efforts to teach people to add an emergency contact listing
have begun, doctors can do more to popularize the idea, he said.
For the study, researchers surveyed more than 400 emergency room patients and the people accompanying them and asked if they knew about ICE entries and if they would be willing to use them.
Although about a sixth of those surveyed said they had heard of the idea, less than a tenth had the listing
on their phones. When hospital staff members offered instructions or help, however, more than half of those
who had phones with them agreed to put the listing in.
Vital Signs
Performance: Researchers Test Meditation’s Impact on Alertness
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
Meditation is often credited with helping people feel more focused and energetic, but are the benefits
measurable?
A new study suggests that they are. When researchers tested the alertness of volunteers, they found that
the practice proved more effective than naps, exercise or caffeine. The results were presented at a recent
conference of the Society for Neuroscience.
The researchers, led by Prashant Kaul of the University of Kentucky, took 12 students who did not meditate
and taught them the basics in two short sessions.
Then, over a series of weeks, the students were asked to come in and take a test devised to measure skills
like reaction time. The tests involved a series of visual cues on a display screen that the volunteers had to react to by pushing the correct button.
The students were asked to take the tests in mid- to late afternoon, when people tend to be sleepiest.
They did so before and after 40 minutes of meditating, napping or exercising, or after taking caffeine. Napping
produced poor results, presumably because of “sleep inertia,” the researchers said.
Caffeine helped, and exercise was unpredictable.
Earlier studies have found that people are awake while meditating but that their brains undergo changes
similar to patterns found in sleep. Some studies have found that people who meditate a lot report sleeping
less, so the researchers were curious to see if meditation could serve the same function as sleep. The results
support the idea that it can.
In fact, when some of the students were asked to skip a night’s sleep and then take the test, the researchers said, meditation was even more helpful.
They said they did not know if caffeine and meditation combined would be even better.
Where the Doctors Recognize Leprosy
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
The patient looked sheepish as he showed Louis N. Iannuzzi the new burn on his leg, the skin puckering
where it was seared.
It was a classic injury for a leprosy victim, said Mr. Iannuzzi, the physical therapist for the leprosy clinic at
Bellevue Hospital in New York. The man, a middle-aged Pakistani immigrant who works as a motorcycle mechanic, had not been able to feel a hot tailpipe when it touched him.
“He’s a tough case,” Mr. Iannuzzi said. “He’ll touch an engine manifold and not know it’s hot. He’s always
kneeling, and he gets pressure ulcers.”
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The mechanic was suffering from more advanced leprosy than most patients
who come to the clinic, which allowed a reporter to visit on the condition that no
patients be named.
The mechanic’s eyebrows were gone, his nose had flattened slightly, and his
toes were just nubs - not a result of dropping off, as is popularly believed, but
because they had been injured so often that the body had reabsorbed some of
the bone.
A patient’s feet are cared for in the leprosy clinic at Bellevue Hospital. Loss
of feeling in toes can lead to repeated injuries.
Despite the notion that leprosy is inevitably disfiguring, he was the only patient at the New York Hansen’s Disease Clinic at Bellevue on a recent Tuesday
who looked unusual. Although the disease is famous for the “leonine faces” of its
victims, modern antibiotics can prevent that effect.
None of the Bellevue patients have leprosy as a consequence of AIDS treatment, said the clinic’s director, Dr. William Levis. But that could change, Dr. Levis said, because the clinic
draws immigrants from countries where both diseases are widespread.
The clinic - one of 16 in a national network overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services has about 400 patients and sees about 25 of them on two mornings a week in the hospital’s dermatology department. Most of the work involves adjusting drug regimens and treating the consequences of long-lasting
nerve damage like the motorcycle mechanic’s.
Almost all American leprosy cases are in immigrants, and on a recent morning at the clinic, the patients
were from Pakistan, India, Guyana, Brazil, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic. But a handful of cases
have probably been transmitted domestically, experts believe, so as of 2003, leprosy was officially considered
endemic to the Northeastern United States. (It existed in the South in the 19th century.)
The mechanic has lived in the United States for 20 years. When he first went to a hospital in Pakistan,
about 25 years ago, he said, “they said I have nothing.”
But the disease grew gradually worse, he said, deadening his hands so that he frequently cut himself, and
covering his face with bumps and making his eyebrows fall out.
About five years ago, he said, he was at last sent to the Bellevue clinic.
“Now, thanks God, I am 1,000 percent better,” he said.
Dr. Levis said the disease often went undiagnosed. “We’ve had patients see up to 16, 17 physicians before
they’re sent here,” he said. “I had one patient, a Chinese woman who’d lived in Brooklyn for 40 years. She
had severe loss of feeling, she was going blind, she wasn’t diagnosed in all that time. Doctors just don’t recognize it.”
Another patient, an engineering student from Guyana, said that when he went to an emergency room one
night after a reaction to antibiotics and explained what he was being treated for, “everybody knew nothing.”
“Everybody that came to see me that night was basically dressed in a spacesuit,” the student added.
Only when the hospital’s infection-control chief was consulted the next day, he said, did the staff stop
treating him as if he were infectious. Leprosy is transmitted only through long, close contact, and is not
thought to be transmissible at all once a patient has been on antibiotics for three days.
The student said he looks much better now. His earlobes, once distended by nodules, have shrunk to nearnormal size. The nerve damage has abated, he rarely stumbles and he has regained enough feeling in his feet
to be able to drive again. His girlfriend and his family are understanding. At work and at school, he said, “they
notice the scarring, the nodules, but they don’t ask.”
“I say I’m being treated and getting better,” he went on. “I don’t say what for.” He fears explaining, he
added, “because they’d say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe it.’ ”
“They’d look at me in a different way,” he said. “And I imagine they’d be afraid of me.”
Dr. Levis concurred. Though the disease is curable, and not transmissible when a victim is in treatment, the
special stigma of the word “leper” remains.
“People used to be warehoused for life for this,” Dr. Levis said. “We don’t recommend revealing it.”
Government Panel Recommends Shingles Vaccine
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An influential government advisory panel recommended that Americans 60 and older be vaccinated against
shingles, an excruciatingly painful rash caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. The recommendations of the panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, are usually accepted by federal health
officials, and they influence insurance companies’ decisions on which vaccinations to cover. No vaccine was
available until May, when the Food and Drug Administration licensed Zostavax, made by Merck & Company.
The vaccine is a modified version of Merck’s chickenpox vaccine for children, with a live virus that is 14 times
more potent.
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Doctors Say Slow Action on Stents Leads to Heart Deaths
By BARNABY J. FEDER
Although a few thousand Americans might be dying needlessly from overuse of heart
stents, prominent cardiologists said Thursday that far more are being killed each year by the failure of doctors
to promptly clear coronary arteries and install stents when patients arrive at a hospital during a heart attack.
Stents are tiny mesh cylinders that are placed in arteries to keep blood flowing after blood vessels have
been cleared of plaque.
The doctors, at a convention here, noted that study after study has shown that clearing the blockages
through the technique used by the stenters increases the survival rates of people who have had heart attacks,
compared with relying on clot-busting drugs like tPA and streptokinase.
But tens of thousands of Americans each year go to hospitals that do not have the catherization labs where
stents are implanted. Instead, they are given drugs rather than being transferred to other medical centers that
have stenting capabilities.
And at small hospitals that do have the capability, but do not have stenting experts on hand in the evening
or on weekends, patients often receive the drugs if they do not arrive during weekday hours.
“Survival should not be dependent on going to the right hospital,” said Dr. William O’Neill , a nationally
known cardiologist who recently became executive dean of clinical affairs at the University of Miami School of
Medicine.
He and other doctors have called for a nationwide policy of transferring patients, if necessary, so they can
be quickly stented, an approach shown to be effective in Sweden and Denmark.
The stent doctors, mostly specialists called interventional cardiologists, are not alone on the issue. The
American Heart Association has also been pushing for more cooperation among hospitals to ensure that more
emergency stenting occurs.
Dr. O’Neill is here for the annual gathering of doctors who specialize in use of stents and similar technologies for treating heart disease.
Much of the talk at this meeting, the Transcather Cardiovascular Therapeutics show at the Washington
Convention Center, has involved emerging evidence that the newest and most popular type of stents - ones
with drug coatings - pose a long-term risk of potentially fatal blood clots.
For Dr. O’Neill and some others here, that risk does not offset the far greater dangers they say that people
who have had heart attacks face if they do not get immediate artery-clearing treatment.
The rescue procedure begins with angioplasty, in which a catheter is inserted in the patient’s groin and
threaded through the circulatory system to the blockage. A balloon is then inflated to clear the plaque.
In 90 percent of the cases, the next step is inserting a stent to keep the artery open while the patient recovers. But the more crucial step, Dr. O’Neill and others say, is the balloon inflation.
The type of heart attacks that occur when fatty plaques break loose in arteries and shut down blood flow to
the heart is known as acute myocardial infarction. It strikes about 400,000 Americans annually and is a leading cause of death in many other developed nations.
The model for what should be done throughout the nation, Dr. O’Neill said, has been set up by the Minneapolis Heart Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital. Dr. Timothy Henry, who organized that system, told
the audience in a crowded meeting room Thursday afternoon that he was tired of hearing that such programs
could only be set up only in small countries like Denmark.
Dr. Henry’s group began in 2002 by developing a standardized treatment plan for hospitals within 60 miles.
A second ring reaching out 120 miles has a second plan, using different drugs to help patients survive until
they can be transferred to the Heart Institute’s high-volume catheter lab or other primary hospitals. More than
two-thirds are ferried by air.
Dr. Henry presented data showing that the system has been able to produce the same mortality rates for
patients within all the zones, even though it often takes as long as two hours for those furthest away to get
their blockages cleared and stented after reaching the initial hospital.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 -
Self-Portraits Chronicle a Descent Into Alzheimer’s
By DENISE GRADY
When he learned in 1995 that he had Alzheimer’s disease, William Utermohlen, an American artist in London, responded in characteristic fashion.
“From that moment on, he began to try to understand it by painting himself,” said his wife, Patricia
Utermohlen, a professor of art history.
Mr. Utermohlen’s self-portraits are being exhibited through Friday at the New York Academy of Medicine in
Manhattan, by the Alzheimer’s Association.
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The paintings starkly reveal the artist’s descent into dementia, as his world
began to tilt, perspectives flattened and details melted away. His wife and his
doctors said he seemed aware at times that technical flaws had crept into his
work, but he could not figure out how to correct them.
“The spatial sense kept slipping, and I think he knew,” Professor Utermohlen
said. A psychoanalyst wrote that the paintings depicted sadness, anxiety, resignation and feelings of feebleness and shame.
Dr. Bruce Miller, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco,
who studies artistic creativity in people with brain diseases, said some patients
could still produce powerful work.
“Alzheimer’s affects the right parietal lobe in particular, which is important for
visualizing something internally and then putting it onto a canvas,” Dr. Miller said.
“The art becomes more abstract, the images are blurrier and vague, more surrealistic. Sometimes there’s use of beautiful, subtle color.”
Mr. Utermohlen, 73, is now in a nursing home. He no longer paints.
His work has been exhibited in several cities, and more shows are planned.
The interest in his paintings as a chronicle of illness is bittersweet, his wife said,
because it has outstripped the recognition he received even at the height of his
career.
“He’s always been an outsider,” she said. “He was never quite in the same
time slot with what was going on. Everybody was doing Abstract Expressionist,
and there he was, solemnly drawing the figure. It’s so strange to be known for
something you’re doing when you’re rather ill.”
Dr. Miller, Professor Utermohlen and others will lecture about art and Alzheimer’s on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the New York Academy of Medicine. For
more information: (212) 822-7272; www.nyam.org/events.
A self-portrait of William Utermohlen in 1967, top, and 2000, above.
Advertising
The Hidden Life of Paper and Its Impact on the Environment
By LOUISE STORY
MEDIA companies have published numerous articles on global warming and
greenhouse emissions in recent years. Now, a couple of large publishers are starting to think about their own impact on the environment.
Time Inc. participated in a study published this year by the Heinz Center that
calculated the amount of carbon dioxide emissions produced over the entire process of publishing Time and In Style.
Other magazine companies, including the Hearst Corporation, now say they are
studying the Heinz report to consider the implications for their magazines, and
Rupert Murdoch recently announced that the News Corporation is developing a
plan to become entirely carbon neutral, meaning the company will reduce its carbon emissions and try to offset the emissions left over.
“We’ve recognized that these are issues that are important to our readers and,
increasingly, important to our advertisers,” said David J. Refkin, the director of
sustainable development for the Time Inc. division of Time Warner and a member
of the board of the Heinz Center. “We’re starting to see a movement where becoming carbon neutral is something many companies are considering.”
•Large-scale manufacturing is, of course, better known as a source of the greenhouse gases that many scientists say cause global warming. Electric power production represents about 40 percent of emissions in the
United States, and private motor vehicle use accounts for about 20 percent, said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University.
Still, the paper industry is not without its impact. Because of its consumption of energy, the industry which includes magazines, newspapers, catalogs and writing paper - emits the fourth-highest level of carbon
dioxide among manufacturers, according to a 2002 study by the Energy Information Administration, a division
of the Department of Energy. The paper industry follows the chemical, petroleum and coal products, and primary metals industries.
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“Few people realize the sheer scale and magnitude of activities it takes to produce millions of copies of a
magazine,” said Donald Carli, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Communication, a nonprofit group in New York that is working to help advertisers estimate their ads’ greenhouse emissions. “There’s
a hidden life that products have, and one of the challenges of sustainability is to make these lives known.”
The life of a magazine or a newspaper starts with trees being cut down in a forest and ends with the burning or recycling of old magazines or papers. The most harmful part of the process is paper production. Breaking down wood fiber to make paper consumes a lot of energy, which in many cases comes from coal plants.
Time Inc. and the News Corporation are ahead of most publishers in their public commitment to reducing
carbon emissions. Other media companies contacted for this article- including Dow Jones, The New York
Times Company and Condé Nast - would not comment on the levels of emissions produced by their publications.
“It’s something new to the industry, apparently,” said Jan Angilella, spokeswoman for Newsweek, which is
owned by the Washington Post Company. “We’re working with printers and paper mills to see if there’s something more to be done.”
Recent reductions in paper size at many newspapers and declining circulation at many newspapers will, of
course, also reduce the level of carbon emissions at paper mills. Numerous publications have taken steps to
use more recycled paper - which helps decrease the number of trees used.
Time Inc.’s study found that greenhouse emissions from one of its paper mills accounted for 61 percent of
the emissions from Time magazine and 77 percent of In Style’s emissions. In May, Time Inc. announced that
it had asked the company’s paper suppliers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2012.
Mr. Refkin said the idea of sustainability - an emphasis on improving society and the environment for future
generations - had come up recently in discussions with advertisers like Aveda, a beauty products company
owned by Estée Lauder. Aveda sends sustainability surveys to publications to help decide where to place its
ads. The surveys include questions about greenhouse emissions.
“As a company that advertises in magazines, we play an important role in encouraging publishers to better
their environmental practices,” said Tanya Rogosheske, an advertising manager for Aveda. “Magazine publishers pay close attention to our interests and are receptive to environmental concerns. They become more receptive when they realize how important it is to their advertising revenue.”
A number of companies, including General Electric, Home Depot, Ford Motor, BP and Wal-Mart Stores, have
been putting greater emphasis on reducing the environmental impact of their products. And Time Inc. admits
that environmentally focused companies are particularly interested in advertising in Time Inc. magazines when
they run articles and special editions about the environment.
Consumers are also becoming more aware of the impact of greenhouse emissions. Mr. Refkin of Time Inc.
said he thought some of that awareness came from Al Gore’s recent movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and from
coverage of Hurricane Katrina that said the hurricane’s extreme force might have been related to global warming.
“Probably five years ago, if somebody said something about carbon, the average consumer wouldn’t know
what you were talking about,” said Tom Pollock, project manager at Metafore, a nonprofit environmental
group. Metafore helped organize the Paper Working Group, which is trying to change paper-buying practices.
“CO2 and other greenhouse gases are subjects that people are looking to now since global warming is
more and more in the public eye,” Mr. Pollock said.
Time Inc. is the only media company that is a member of the Paper Working Group, which also includes
McDonald’s, Starbucks and Bank of America.
One way companies can become carbon neutral is to buy offsets: guarantees that carbon-lowering actions
like planting trees will take place to make up for greenhouse emissions. If Time Inc., for example, wanted to
buy offsets to make up for the emissions from Time magazine, it would cost about $2,500 weekly, Mr. Refkin
said. Time’s study found that an average copy of Time caused about 0.29 pound of greenhouse gas emissions.
It is unclear whether In Style’s and Time magazine’s levels of greenhouse gas emissions are representative
of other publications because emissions depend heavily on the source of paper. Time does not currently plan
to become completely carbon neutral in the future, Mr. Refkin said.
•One In Style advertiser is currently creating a way for it to pay for its own carbon offsets. John Hardy, a
luxury jewelry company based in Bali, has formed a partnership with the Institute for Sustainable Communication to request that publishers release information on their paper and printing sources. Mr. Carli of the institute will then estimate the total carbon emissions for all of John Hardy’s advertising across several publications.
Mr. Carli plans to develop a repository of information about many publications’ practices so that he can give
greenhouse gas estimates to any other advertiser that also wishes to offset the emissions from its ads.
Mr. Carli estimates that John Hardy’s advertisements this year account for roughly 451 metric tons of
greenhouse gases. To convert enough carbon dioxide into oxygen to offset the company’s magazine ads, the
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company plans to plant bamboo on the Balinese island of Nusa Penida. The bamboo needed will cover an area
about the size of four football fields.
Worrisome New Link: AIDS Drugs and Leprosy
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
With affordable AIDS drugs arriving in many poor countries, experts say a startling and worrisome side effect has emerged: in some patients, the treatment uncovers a hidden leprosy infection.
No one knows how widespread the problem is. Only about a dozen cases have been described in medical
literature since the first one was found, in London in 2003. But AIDS specialists in Brazil, India, Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere are reporting that some patients on life-saving antiretroviral drugs are developing painful facial ulcers or losing feeling in their fingers and toes.
And in the third world, where 300,000 new cases of leprosy were discovered last year and where 38 million
are infected with the AIDS virus, the problem will inevitably get worse, experts say.
“This is just the peak of the iceberg,” said Dr. William Levis, who treats leprosy patients at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. “It’s early in the game. Most physicians don’t even think about leprosy, so there’s probably much more around than we know.”
Dr. Gilla Kaplan, a professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and one of the first
to study connections between AIDS and leprosy, agreed.
Antiretroviral treatment, she said, “is going to flush out the silent leprosy by making it symptomatic.”
Because leprosy, a bacterial disease, can be treated with specialized antibiotics that are supplied free by
the Novartis pharmaceutical company, there is little prospect of a worldwide epidemic or large numbers of
deaths. “It’s a matter of concern for the individual patients,” said Dr. Denis Daumerie, who leads the efforts by
the World Health Organization to eliminate leprosy. “It’s not a matter of concern for public health.”
Still, the disease requires taking multiple pills for six months to two years - an added burden for people
who typically already take three AIDS drugs. And because the problem is little known, it often takes doctors
weeks to figure out what new ill is besetting their AIDS patients.
Experts say the problem arises when the AIDS drugs cause the immune system to recover. It then generates new white blood cells that carry the bacteria from old, silent leprosy infections to the skin of the face,
hands and feet.
That is a new twist on a medical paradox that has confounded tropical-disease specialists for 20 years.
In the mid-1980’s, as it became clear that AIDS was not primarily a disease of gay American men but was
killing millions of people - men, women and children - in poor countries, many public health doctors prophesied that it would be a double disaster for those with leprosy.
It seemed a logical assumption since leprosy is caused by a germ from the same family of waxy-walled
bacteria as those that cause tuberculosis and mycobacter avium, two major killers of AIDS patients. But it
proved a false alarm.
“People expected a big surge in leprosy, but it didn’t happen,” said Dr. Diana N. Lockwood, a leprosy expert
at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
When the predictions did not come true, she said, “we assumed that co-infected people just died before
their leprosy became manifest.” The incubation period for the most easily diagnosed form of leprosy is 8 to 13
years, while the incubation period for AIDS is 8 to 10.
But leprosy in people known to have been already infected did not seem to worsen when those patients
developed AIDS, too, showing that the two diseases can apparently coexist without reinforcing each other.
So it came as a shock to doctors when AIDS treatment caused hidden cases of leprosy to appear.
The first such patient described in a medical journal was Dr. Lockwood’s, a Ugandan exile in London who
was being treated for both tuberculosis and AIDS, and suddenly developed a swollen lesion on his face.
“It took us a while to realize it was leprosy,” Dr. Lockwood said. “Since then, we’ve seen more cases in
people from Brazil and India.”
Depending on symptoms, leprosy is often initially misdiagnosed as arthritis or lupus. Painful facial lesions,
which are less common, can have many causes; in the Uganda man’s case, doctors said, his immune system
probably formed nodules around bacteria next to a facial nerve.
Dr. Michael S. Glickman, a bacteriologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who treated the only
co-infected case known in New York, said he too had some difficulty diagnosing his patient’s leprosy.
Dr. Glickman’s patient, a man from Burkina Faso, was suffering from advanced AIDS when he first saw Dr.
Glickman six years ago, with a CD4 cell count below 10 (normal is 500 or more). As the patient recovered on
antiretroviral therapy to a CD4 count of 600, he developed a lighter-colored patch of skin. Dr. Glickman noticed that it was slightly numb to the touch. Fortunately, he had once visited Dr. Levis’s clinic at Bellevue, and
made the connection.
“It was so unremarkable that, if I hadn’t seen leprosy patients, I wouldn’t have known what it was,” he said.
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His patient’s leprosy was eventually cured, but he had to have an unusual drug regimen because one typical leprosy drug reacts badly with the protease inhibitors taken by AIDS patients.
Treatment in cities like New York and London is relatively easy, but the real crisis, experts said, will evolve
in poor countries with dual epidemics.
In French Guiana, for example, Dr. Pierre Couppié, chief of dermatology at the Central Hospital in Cayenne,
said he believed that about 1 in every 500 AIDS patients would develop leprosy lesions soon after starting
treatment.
Brazil has the world’s highest per-capita leprosy rate and also one of the most effective AIDS treatment
programs in the developing world, and seven Brazilian cases have been mentioned in medical literature. No
countrywide study has been done, but Dr. Patricia D. Deps, a leprosy expert at the Federal University of
Espirito Santo in Brazil, said it was “becoming more and more common.”
“We don’t have good numbers, but we think about 2 percent of the leprosy cases in Brazil are co-infected
with H.I.V.,” Dr. Deps said. The country that most worries experts is India. Not long ago, it had 70 percent of
the world’s leprosy cases. Its official caseload is a bit of a mystery now. After an aggressive 20-year campaign
to find and treat new cases, India officially declared leprosy “eliminated as a public health issue” last year.
However, that statement was carefully crafted: it means there is a national average of lower than 1 case per
10,000 citizens, which could be as many as 100,000 new cases a year.
At the same time, with about 5.2 million people infected with the AIDS virus, India is poised to outstrip
South Africa as the country with the most AIDS victims. But its epidemic began much later than South Africa’s
or Brazil’s, and it has been slow to roll out AIDS treatment. As treatment grows, leprosy may surge along with
it.
Other countries with high numbers of leprosy victims are Myanmar, Madagascar, Nepal and Mozambique.
But there are also great unknowns. “It depends on how good the medical system is,” Dr. Lockwood said.
“For example, last year, Congo discovered 11,000 new cases.”
Novartis provides the W.H.O. with clofamizine, rifampicin and dapsone, the standard leprosy regimen, in
blister packs and boxes so patients can be handed six months of treatment at a time, already divided into daily doses.
But treating leprosy in AIDS patients may turn out to be more difficult, doctors say, because rifampicin
cannot be used. And treatment in wealthy countries includes more expensive anti-inflammatories, as well as
thalidomide, which blocks a common inflammatory complication.
Because thalidomide causes severe birth defects, the World Health Organization opposes its use in the third
world.
Doctors have long known that dormant diseases can surge as a weak immune system recovers. The threat
is sometimes called “Haart attacks” - a grim pun on the medical acronym for “highly active antiretroviral therapy.”
The recovering immune system regains its ability to create fevers, flood infected tissue with white blood
cells, break bacteria down into toxic waste products and build nodules around bacteria it cannot kill.
But in a weakened patient, that inflammatory response itself can be dangerous. For example, when doctors
know that an AIDS patient has tuberculosis, they often try to give TB drugs for two months to suppress the
bacteria before starting antiretrovirals, because the patient’s own immune attack on the tuberculosis bacteria
in the lungs can be fatal.
Scientists Endorse Candidate Over Teaching of Evolution
By CORNELIA DEAN
In an unusual foray into electoral politics, 75 science professors at Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland have signed a letter endorsing a candidate for the Ohio Board of Education.
The professors’ favored candidate is Tom Sawyer, a former congressman and onetime mayor of Akron.
They hope Mr. Sawyer, a Democrat, will oust Deborah Owens Fink, a leading advocate of curriculum standards
that encourage students to challenge the theory of evolution.
Elsewhere in Ohio, scientists have also been campaigning for candidates who support the teaching of evolution and have recruited at least one biologist from out of state to help.
Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve who organized the circulation of the letter, said
almost 90 percent of the science faculty on campus this semester had signed it. The signers are anthropologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, physicists and psychologists.
The letter says Dr. Owens Fink has “attempted to cast controversy on biological evolution in favor of an illdefined notion called Intelligent Design that courts have ruled is religion, not science.”
In an interview, Dr. Krauss said, “This is not some group of fringe scientists or however they are being portrayed by the creationist community,” adding, “This is the entire scientific community, and I don’t know of any
other precedent for almost the entire faculty at an institution” making such a statement.
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But Dr. Owens Fink, a professor of marketing at the University of Akron, said the curriculum standards she
supported did not advocate teaching intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. Rather, she said,
they urge students to subject evolution to critical analysis, something she said scientists should endorse. She
said the idea that there was a scientific consensus on evolution was “laughable.”
Although researchers may argue about its details, the theory of evolution is the foundation for modern biology, and there is no credible scientific challenge to it as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of
life on earth. In recent years, with creationist challenges to the teaching of evolution erupting in school districts around the country, groups like the National Academy of Sciences, perhaps the nation’s pre-eminent scientific organization, have repeatedly made this point.
But the academy’s opinion does not matter to Dr. Owens Fink, who said the letter was probably right to say
she had dismissed it as “a group of so-called scientists.”
“I may have said that, yeah,” she said.
She would not describe her views of Darwin and his theory, saying, “This isn’t about my beliefs.”
School board elections in Ohio are nonpartisan, but Dr. Owens Fink said she was a registered Republican.
Her opponent, Mr. Sawyer, was urged to run for the Seventh District Board of Education seat by a new organization, Help Ohio Public Education, founded by Dr. Krauss and his colleague Patricia Princehouse, a biologist
and historian of science, and Steve Rissing, a biologist at Ohio State University.
At the group’s invitation, Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, will be in Ohio today through
the weekend campaigning for other school board candidates who support the teaching of evolution. Dr. Miller,
an author of a widely used biology textbook, was a crucial witness in the recent lawsuit in Dover, Pa., over
intelligent design. The judge in that case ruled that it was a religious doctrine that had no place in a public
school curriculum.
After that decision, Dr. Owens Fink said, the Ohio board abandoned curriculum standards that mandated a
critical look at evolution, a decision she said she regretted. “Some people would rather just fold,” she said.
But Dr. Miller said it was a good call, adding, “We have to make sure these good choices get ratified at the
ballot box.”
Rays and Neutrons, for Art’s Sake
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Eager for precision in a field notorious for ambiguity and frustration, curators at top museums in Europe and the United States have long reached for the instruments of nuclear science to hit treasures of art
with invisible rays. The resulting clues have helped answer vexing questions of provenance, age and authenticity.
Now such insights are going global. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations unit best
known for fighting the spread of nuclear arms, is working hard to foster such methods in the developing world,
letting scientists and conservators in places like Peru, Ghana and Kazakhstan act as better custodians of their
cultural heritage.
“It’s very exciting,” said Matthias Rossbach, an agency official who helps direct the endeavor. “I learn so
much.”
The agency runs the program as an adjunct to its global advancement of nuclear and related technologies
for peaceful uses. In a way, it is one of the carrots meant to offset the intrusive policing that the agency does
around the world to try to make sure nations refrain from secretive cheating in pursuit of nuclear arms.
Here at the agency’s headquarters, in late September at its annual conference, Dr. Rossbach and colleagues set up a booth to publicize the program and took time to explain analytic gear and its applications to a
reporter and delegates from the agency’s 140 member states. The booth brandished the team’s credo: “Protecting the Past for the Future.”
In a nearby building, beneath a rotunda decorated with flags from around the world, a display featured
some of the collaboration’s recent findings. Exhibited were dozens of scientific papers and abstracts describing
how research projects had used the nuclear methods to address historic and artistic riddles.
For instance, Chinese scientists had fired the subatomic particles known as neutrons at ancient pottery
from the Tang dynasty, which ruled China from A.D. 618 to 906. The analysis is helping them uncover the
artworks’ origins in regional workshops.
In an interview, Feng Songlin, a scientist at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing, said he found
the agency’s program “very helpful for Chinese archaeology research and for me.” He said it had helped him
ascertain the best analytical methods, prepare samples and learn how to interpret the findings.
Mexican scientists have also applied such methods to colonial-era pottery. Pieces once thought to have
been imported from Spain turned out to have been made locally.
Dr. Rossbach said his own part of the collaboration extended to 15 countries, involved about 60 scientists
and would run from 2005 to 2008 at a cost of about $230,000. His regular job involves no nuclear arms policing but rather helps industries use atomic technologies.
VIENNA -
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“We don’t have a lot of money,” he said as delegates looked around the booth. Even so, he added, his art
collaborators were accomplishing much. “It’s exciting to see the progress.” Dr. Rossbach said that during the
annual conference, he and his colleagues were repeatedly meeting to compare notes and discuss plans for
future investigations.
The methods they use, some of the most fundamental in nuclear science, include neutron activation analysis, proton-induced X-ray emission, accelerator mass spectrometry and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. In
many cases, developing states have already acquired some of the expensive technologies in efforts to aid the
analytical work of industries and governments, so the added costs of art analysis can be relatively low.
The advances are striking because the world of art, when limited to its own techniques, often finds itself
hard pressed to achieve basic goals like verifying the origins of pieces, especially very old ones. The standard
historical approach of comparing style and iconography, even when coupled with painstaking detective work in
archives and distant collections, has often proved inconclusive or at times even deceptive.
The atomic methods, some applied to artistic analysis for the first time in the 1970’s and 80’s, have revolutionized the field of art history.
For instance, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York gained a wealth of insights into the provenance
of old sculptures in its collection, including some sculptured heads separated from torsos during the French
Revolution. The trouble arose when radicals, mistaking statues of religious figures for royalty, developed a
taste for decapitation.
The museum’s detective work began at a nuclear reactor, where operators would bombard detached bits of
the artwork with speeding neutrons. The resulting showers of gamma rays revealed the presence of trace elements in distinct patterns.
These identifying signatures let museum curators make matches with the similarly revealed signatures of
European churches, quarries and carvings. For instance, they recently found that one of the sculptured heads
in a current exhibition, “Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture,” came from a quarry that supplied statuary to either Notre Dame or another 13th-century Parisian church.
The show features a companion exhibit on how neutron activation analysis can help solve the mysteries of
provenance.
The Louvre in Paris has a very long accelerator in its basement that fires subatomic particles at artwork to
discover compositional clues. Maria Filomena Guerra, a specialist there in ancient gold artifacts, traveled to
Vienna last month to help the international atomic agency with its outreach program.
The agency is now fostering the development of such techniques in Hungary, among other countries. In
Budapest, scientists are using a cousin of the neutron technique to study Stone Age pottery, including a graceful bowl from a cave in the Bukk mountains. The method is known as prompt gamma activation analysis.
The Hungarian scientists are using the gamma method to compare pottery from eight sites with a variety of
clay samples in hope of establishing where the pots arose. The trace elements so far identified include vanadium, neodymium, samarium and gadolinium.
The scientists, Zsolt Kasztovszky, Katalin Brio and Katalin Gherdan, plan to expand the number of investigated sites and soils to produce a comprehensive portrait of artistic evolution in Stone Age Hungary.
Despite the chaos of war, Lebanese scientists recently traveled to Vienna to continue their investigations.
In Beirut, they made use of a particle accelerator at the Lebanese Atomic Energy Commission that spews out
ions, or electrically charged atoms. They fired these at clay storage jars of antiquity that were used to hold
things like wine, olive oil, honey and fish.
The speeding ions caused the amphorae to glow in characteristic X-rays that revealed, again, distinctive
patterns of elements, including gallium, strontium, zirconium and niobium.
Preliminary results of the signature analysis, they reported, linked an amphora found in France to pottery
made in Beirut during the Roman period. Another analysis discovered family relationships between Beirut ceramics and those in Syria at Amrit and Ras-al-basit.
Mohamad Roumie, a nuclear physicist at the Beirut center, called the agency’s program “a good opportunity to learn and to see what is new.” He said, for instance, that he had learned a lot about computer programs
that can make interpretative results more precise.
Dr. Rossbach of the international atomic agency said he had recently administered a kind of proficiency test
to the program’s members. They were sent bits of powdered Chinese porcelain for analysis, and the results
they obtained were then compared with the agency’s findings. “It was,” he said, “like a teacher grading a report. The objective was to help them improve their method.”
At the booth, other scientists from the agency spoke of its recent aid to foreign analysts.
“In developing countries, many laboratories are asked to help” address questions of art, said Mohammad
Haji-Saeid, a physicist. “So they approach the agency for support and after that will become the service provider to their national museum.” Peru, he said, had recently asked for such aid.
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At the booth, the scientists had set up one of their instruments, a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer,
a device little bigger than a golf bag. When in operation, its beam of X-rays stimulates material under observation to glow at various wavelengths, allowing the identification of constituent elements.
The method is cheaper, easier and faster than the neutron technique, though slightly less precise. The scientists said the agency had developed the portable device for use in art museums, and they demonstrated
how it worked by training it on a piece of painted canvas.
To the naked eye of an observer, admittedly no art expert, the paint looked dull and drab, almost too plain
for words. But the X-rays revealed a kaleidoscope of pigment elements, rendered on the computer monitor as
a series of wiggly lines. The scientists identified the peaks as sulfur, calcium, titanium, iron and zinc. Such
chemical signatures, they said, could help confirm whether the pigment and painting were actually made at an
advertised date, because paint formulas often changed over the decades. In this case, the paint was modern.
“All these blueprints and technical details are available cost free to all member states,” Dariusz Wegrzynek,
a physicist who leads the X-ray fluorescence lab, said of the machine. States that have inquired, he said, include Syria and Poland.
23
Dr. Rossbach said the program excited him because in the process of teaching he discovered so much
about global art as well as its diverse ranks of scientific custodians.
“I’ve learned about pottery in China and icons in Poland,” he said. “I know the techniques they’re using and
can discuss whether they’re doing it right. So that, I think, is a very good exchange.”
OLDEST COMPLEX ORGANIC MOLECULES FOUND IN ANCIENT FOSSILS
Find offers a new way to track how species evolved
Ohio State University geologists have isolated complex organic molecules from 350-millionyear-old fossil sea creatures -- the oldest such molecules yet found.
The molecules may have functioned as pigments, but the study offers a much bigger finding: an entirely
new way to track how species evolved.
Christina O'Malley, a doctoral student in earth sciences at Ohio State, found orange and yellow organic
molecules inside the fossilized remains of several species of sea creatures known as crinoids. The oldest fossils
in the study date back to the Mississippian period.
She reported the find Wednesday at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Philadelphia.
Crinoids still exist today. Though they resemble plants, they are marine animals. They cling to the seafloor
and feast on plankton that float by.
The crinoids in this study had flower-like fronds capping skinny stalks about six inches high -- a look resembling "starfish on a stick," said William Ausich, professor of earth sciences and O'Malley's co-advisor with
Yu-Ping Chin, also a professor of earth sciences.
Today's crinoids display a range of colors, some variegated shades of red, orange, and yellow, so the geologists weren't surprised that some of those colors turned up in the 350-million-year-old crinoids, Ausich said.
"People have suspected for a long time that organic molecules could be found inside fossils," he added.
"This is just the first time that scientists have succeeded in finding them."
Though the organic molecules could be classified as pigments, nobody can be sure that they functioned as
pigments inside these ancient animals, the geologists emphasized. They may have served some other purpose
besides coloration -- perhaps to defend the animal from predators by making it less palatable.
Because the molecules appear to be a little different for each species of crinoid, scientists can now use the
pigments as biomarkers to map relationships on the creatures' family tree. Until now, they could only infer crinoid lineage based on the size and shape of key features on the animals' skeletons.
"This could be a new tool for figuring out how long-dead creatures became so prolific and successful. We
can't travel back in time, but now we can look for clues about these creature's lives in a way that hasn't been
attempted or taken advantage of before," O'Malley said.
Scientists can only view fossilized plants and animals in the grays and tans of sedimentary rock, such as the
limestone fossils in this study. Rock is inorganic, and replaces organic molecules such as pigments during fossilization. What O'Malley and her colleagues discovered is that some organic molecules occasionally survive
the process.
"Crinoid skeleton is very porous, and we think that when inorganic molecules filled in the spaces of the
skeleton during preservation, some of the organic molecules were trapped inside the fossil," she said.
O'Malley found pigments in every crinoid specimen that she sampled from three fossil sites, one in Switzerland and two in Indiana.
The Indiana samples date back to 350 million years ago, during the Mississippian period, when much of
North America was covered by a shallow inland sea. The Switzerland fossils date back to 60 million years ago,
during the Jurassic period. The sites preserved the crinoids exceptionally well, probably because a sudden
storm buried them in sediment.
Should pigments be found in other fossils, the technique could prove to be a reliable way to trace species'
evolution. So far, the crinoid biomarkers mesh well with scientists' concepts of how those species are related.
O'Malley isolated the pigments by grinding up small bits of fossil and dissolving the organic molecules into a
solution. Then she injected a tiny sample of the solution into a machine called a gas chromatograph mass
spectrometer. The machine vaporized the solution so that a magnet could separate individual molecules based
on electric charge and mass. Computer software then identified the molecules.
Orange and yellow organic molecules emerged, along with several other molecules that the geologists have
yet to identify. The off-the-shelf software was only designed to identify common laboratory compounds,
O'Malley explained. She would like to generate her own database of fossil organic molecules, and also extract
pigments from other marine fossils, including some from sites in Iowa.
The Geological Society of America supported this work with a Graduate Student Research Grant. Other funding
was provided by the National Science Foundation.
PHILADELPHIA --
Moon and rain could mean quakes
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A full moon may have triggered the Indian Ocean earthquake that caused the tsunami on 26 December
2004, a new study concludes.
Between October 2004 and August 2005 Robin Crockett from the University of Northampton, UK, and his
colleagues monitored tremors and collected tidal data along the Java/Sumatra trench. They found that major
quakes were 86 per cent more likely around new and full moons, when tides are at their greatest.
"At new and full moons the biggest mass of water is being loaded and unloaded at the plate boundary,"
Crockett says. That might be the final push that initiates a quake.
Meanwhile Sebastian Hainzl from the University of Potsdam, Germany, and his colleagues have noticed that
rain can also trigger quakes. In 2002 they monitored tremors, rainfall and groundwater pressure in south-east
Germany.
They found that water from a heavy rainstorm can reach spots underground where masses of rock are trying to move past each other but are stuck together by friction. The water can ease the friction, releasing pentup tension so that the rocks jerk past each other and initiate tremors as deep as 4 kilometres underground
(Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2006GL027074 and 10.1029/2006GL027642).
Telescopes can tune in to alien TV
Radio telescopes designed to study the primordial universe could also eavesdrop on extraterrestrial civilisations similar to our own. "By a happy accident," says abraham Loeb of Harvard University, "the telescopes will
be sensitive to justthe kind of radio emission that our civilisation is leaking into space."
The next generation of radio telescopes are designed to pick up radio waves emitted by neutral hydrogen
molecules in the early universe. These signals originally had a wavelength of 21 centimetres, but the universe
has expanded since they were emitted, stretching the waves in the process. Today, these signals have a
wavelength of several metres, corresponding to a frequency of tens or hundreds of megahertz. "This overlaps
with our civilisation's radio emissions, which are in the range 50 to 400 megahertz," says Loeb.
Loeb and his Harvard colleague Matias Zaldarriaga say that the most powerful emissions from our own
planet come from military radars, and TV and FM radio transmitters. They span a small range of frequencies,
and if ET is producing similar signals, these "spikes" in the radio spectrum will be discernible by telescopes
such as the Low- Frequency array (LoFaR) which is now being built in the Netherlands
(http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0610377). "This is radio SETi, but at wavelengths that SETi experiments
haven't probed in the past," says Seth Shostak of the SETi institute in Mountain View, California. "That by itself is reason enough to recommend it."
The ability of telescopes such as LoFaR to detect spectral spikes means they will also be able to detect the
doppler shift in wavelength as an ET planet orbits its parent star. according to Loeb and Zaldarriaga, this will
make it possible to deduce the shape of the orbit, the tilt of the planet as it spins on its axis, and the planet's
distance from the star. "This in turn will allow an estimate of the planet's surface temperature, indicating
whether liquid water is a possibility," he says.
Loeb and Zaldarriaga say that the technique would pick up radio leakage from alien civilisations within
about 1000 light years of Earth. By some estimates, there could be as many as 100 million stars with planets
within this volume of space. Of course, the success of Loeb and Zaldarriaga's proposal depends crucially on
how many of these planets have civilisations that are roughly at the same stage of development as ours. "This
is very difficult to quantify," says Loeb.
There are practical difficulties, too. "By looking in the bands that we humans fill with signals – radar, TV
and so on – the SETi researchers are guaranteed to encounter enormous terrestrial interference," Shostak
says. Sorting out ET from the BBC will be a substantial challenge."
Women's education is strongly related to husband's income
Much has been written about the income returns to education, but women have been largely ignored by
this literature, having historically spent significant periods of time outside the formal labor market. In a
thought-provoking new study, economists from Brigham Young University correlate women's education to future quality of life through an examination of husband's earnings. Specifically, the researchers find that a
woman's college completion predicts an average increase in her husband's earnings of more than $20,000 relative to women who only attended some college.
"Women's education does not have a strong effect on the probability of being married but dramatically increases husband's income," write Lars Lefgren and Frank McIntyre in the current issue of the Journal of Labor
Economics.
Consistent with the observation that school has become an increasingly important place to meet potential
partners, women who attended college are much more likely to marry college-educated husbands. Education
may also change a woman's social circles, or make them more desirable to high-ability men. It has also been
well established in other literature that married men earn more than unmarried men.
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However, given that women who choose to invest heavily in education may be systematically different than
women who invest less, Legren and McIntyre wanted to even more firmly establish a causal relationship between education and marriage outcomes.
Using Census data from 1980 broken down by birth quarter, the researchers analyzed how enrollment cutoff dates and differences in the amount of compulsory schooling can affect husband's earnings. They found
that an extra year of schooling – that is, the difference in compulsory schooling between a child born in midDecember, just before the cutoff, and a child born a month later in mid-January, just after the cutoff – increases husband's earnings by about $4,000.
"Inasmuch as marriage generates nonpecuniary benefits as well, the marriage market could be an even
more important avenue through which education increases women's welfare," the authors write.
-----------------------------------Since 1983, the Journal of Labor Economics has presented international research that examines issues affecting the
economy as well as social and private behavior. Lars Lefgren and Frank McIntyre. "The Relationship between Women's
Education and Marriage Outcomes," Journal of Labor Economics 24:4.
Vitamin C and water not just healthy for people -- healthy for plastics, too
New manufacturing techniques may lead to cheaper, 'greener' plastics
Two new laboratory breakthroughs are poised to dramatically improve how plastics are made by assembling molecular chains more quickly and with less waste. Using such environmentally friendly substances as
vitamin C or pure water, the two approaches present attractive alternatives to the common plastic manufacturing technique called free radical polymerization (FRP).
"The methods both present novel and complementary ways to dramatically improve efficiency, product control, and cost for the polymer industry," said Andy Lovinger, the National Science Foundation program director
who oversees funds for the two projects. "Each of these approaches could have a very significant impact on
polymer manufacturing."
Plastics are polymers, long, potentially complex, molecule chains crafted from an array of smaller chemical
units. Using FRP, chemical engineers can create the right plastic for a range of applications, such as a specific
trim for a car door or soft foam for a pillow.
For some plastics, the building-block molecules do not easily link together. To surmount this problem, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., devised a process called atom transfer radical
polymerization (ATRP), which provides creative ways to coax the chemical subunits into chains. However, this
method comes with certain costs, such as the need for a copper catalyst that can become unwanted waste.
Now, the Carnegie Mellon researchers have discovered that adding vitamin C, glucose, or other electronabsorbing agents to the ATRP process can reduce the amount of copper catalyst by a factor of 1000. Because
the catalyst often needs to be removed from the end products, less copper means far less waste and drastically reduced removal costs. Mass manufacturing could become more affordable for a range of items such as advanced sensors, drug delivery systems, paint coatings, and video displays.
The research is described in a paper in the Oct. 17, 2006, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences.
At the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), researchers are using a different approach to improve FRP.
Called single electron transfer-living radical polymerization, the new method relies upon relatively low-energy
reactions, uses elemental copper (copper metal, as opposed to copper in a chemical solution) as a catalyst to
limit byproducts and allows manufacturers to use one of the most environmentally friendly solvents in the arsenal, water. The entirely new method of polymerization builds upon existing mechanisms to craft large molecules very quickly.
Nuclear security: Diaster waiting to happen
SPONTANEOUS combustion is not high on most people's list of worries, but when it happens to materials at
one of the world's oldest and largest storage centres for weapons-grade uranium, it is a different matter.
On 22 September, the plastic wrapping around some uranium at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak
Ridge, Tennessee, burst into flames as a technician was removing it inside a glovebox. Exposed to air, the
uranium had heated up and ignited the plastic.
The fire took place in a large wooden warehouse built in 1944 to help the Manhattan Project, set up to develop nuclearweapons. The warehouse is one of the facility's main stores for its 400 tonnes of highly enriched
uranium, and is now officially rated as a fire hazard, according to an assessment in 1996 by the US Department of Energy (DoE).
In this case the incident was contained, but a major fire would have catastrophic consequences. The DoE
says a fire could result in uranium containers breaking open and releasing their contents in a plume of toxic,
radioactive smoke. About 700,000 people live within a 160-kilometre radius of Y-12, including 174,000 in
Knoxville 25 km away and 28,000 in Oak Ridge itself. In the worst case, the DoE estimates that the local
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population could receive radiation doses of up to 900 millisieverts, enough to cause nausea, hair loss and in
some cases death.
The dangers at Y-12, revealed in a study this week, are not unique. Worldwide more than 1750 tonnes of
highly enriched uranium have been produced over the last 62 years to supply bombs, submarines and research reactors. "Significant amounts are stored at dozens of sites in Russia and other countries, often inadequately accounted for, protected and controlled," says Morten Bremer Mærli, a nuclear expert from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo. "Many of the stores are old, some pose environmental threats
and some may be at risk from terrorists. International standards are currently too weak to ensure safety and
security." But what is surprising about Y-12 is that the world's richest nation has allowed it to deteriorate to
such a poor state.
It has been "festering for decades", says Robert Alvarez, a senior environmental adviser to the Clinton administration now with think tank the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC.
"While a considerable amount of attention has been drawn to dubious storage conditions in Russia and
former Soviet states, long standing nuclear weapons material storage problems in this country pose unacceptable risks to workers and the public," he says. Alvarez is the author of the detailed study of safety at Y-12
due to appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Science and Global Security, published by Princeton University. He reveals that the incident on 22 September is just the latest of 22 fires and explosions that have
beset the Y-12 complex since 1997, a rate of about two a year.
MODERATE DRINKING MAY BOOST MEMORY, STUDY SUGGESTS
In the long run, a drink or two a day may be good for the brain.
Researchers found that moderate amounts of alcohol – amounts equivalent to a couple of drinks a day for
a human – improved the memories of laboratory rats.
Such a finding may have implications for serious neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, said Matthew
During, the study's senior author and a professor of molecular virology, immunology and cancer genetics at
Ohio State University .
“There is some evidence suggesting that mild to moderate alcohol consumption can protect against diseases like Alzheimer's in humans,” said During. “But it's not apparent how this happens.”
He and his colleague, Margaret Kalev-Zylinska, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Auckland, in
New Zealand, uncovered a neuronal mechanism that may help explain the link between alcohol and improved
memory.
“We saw a noticeable change on the surface of certain neurons in rats that were given alcohol,” During said.
“This change may have something to do with the positive effects of alcohol on memory.”
The researchers presented their findings at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in Atlanta.
During and Kalev-Zylinska designed a special liquid diet for the rats. One formulation included a low dose of
alcohol, comparable to two or three drinks a day for a human, while the other diet included a much higher
dose of alcohol, comparable to six or seven drinks a day for a human. A third group of rats was given a liquid
diet without alcohol. All animals were given their respective diets daily for about four weeks.
The researchers measured the rats' blood-alcohol levels three times throughout the study. Toward the end
of the study, they subjected the rats to two different memory tasks.
For the first task, the rats were given several minutes to examine two identical, square plastic objects. After
a certain amount of time, a researcher replaced one of the objects with a new, round object made of glass.
The researchers measured the amount of time that each rat spent checking out the new object – an indication
that the animal recognizes it as a new object.
Rats given low doses of alcohol spent about three times longer examining the new object than did rats on
the alcohol-free diet. Rats given the high dose of alcohol spent equivalent amounts of time checking out both
objects, suggesting that they were unable to differentiate the old object from the new one.
For the second task rats were placed in a box with two chambers separated by a door. One chamber was
well-lit, while the adjacent chamber was dark. After placing a rat in the well-lit chamber and then lifting the
door, the researchers timed how quickly the rats entered the dark chamber (rats are nocturnal, and naturally
prefer dark spaces.) Once inside the dark chamber, the rat received a mild electric shock to its feet.
The researchers repeated this same experiment 24 hours later, and kept track of how long it took the animal to enter the dark chamber. Many of the animals re-entered the dark area, yet the rats given alcohol waited anywhere from 2.5 to 4.5 times longer to enter the dark chamber than did the animals given the alcoholfree diet.
“The results suggest that both doses of alcohol moderately improved the animals' ability to remember this
negative event, since they seemed hesitant to go into the dark area,” During said. “It also suggests that high
levels of alcohol can reinforce bad memories.
COLUMBUS , Ohio –
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“People who drink to forget bad memories may actually be doing the opposite by reinforcing the neural circuits that control negative emotional memory,” he continued.
At the end of the study, the researchers analyzed brain and liver tissue from each animal.
They found that low levels of alcohol increased the expression of a particular receptor, NR1, on the surface
of neurons in a region of the brain, the hippocampus, that plays a role in memory. Researchers think that NR1
plays a role in memory and learning.
In a separate set of experiments, During and Kalev-Zylinska increased the number of NR1 receptors in another group of rats, and found that this boost improved the animals' memories to an extent similar to the improvement seen in the rats given low doses of alcohol. They also they used a new gene transfer technique to
knock down the NR1 receptors in a group of rats given alcohol – alcohol had no memory-enhancing effects on
these animals.
“These experiments suggest that the effect of alcohol works through the NR1 receptor, at least where
memory and learning are concerned,” During said.
“We didn't see any toxic effects of low-level alcohol consumption on the brain or the liver,” During said. “It
didn't damage neurons nor did it cause liver damage during the short study. But the higher dose of alcohol
damaged both.”
Erotic images prove useful in coaxing out unconscious brain activity
When your eyes are presented with erotic images in a way that keeps you from becoming aware of them,
your brain can still detect and respond to the images according to your gender and sexual orientation, a team
of University of Minnesota psychologists has found. The team, led by graduate student Yi Jiang and his adviser,
psychology professor Sheng He, found that even when unaware of erotic images in their field of vision, research subjects shifted the focus of their visual attention according to whether they were straight males, gay
males, straight women or gay/bisexual women. The researchers, who have published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online, stressed that while differences among the groups are
clear, individual differences are not and so could not be used to determine a person's sexual orientation.
The purpose of the work was to uncover mechanisms by which the brain processes visual information that
is not consciously perceived by the subjects. When subjects become conscious of images, the sequence of
steps in brain processing becomes very complicated because neurons engage in all sorts of feedback and
crosstalk--especially with emotionally charged information. The researchers were studying the flow of visual
information at an earlier stage, while it is still traveling along a one-way path.
"We're trying to reveal what happens when one doesn't have a conscious visual perception. That is, how
the brain processes visual information independent of consciousness," said He.
The researchers chose to generate brain activity by using erotic pictures because they promised to elicit
strong responses and clear patterns in the data. But the researchers believe the mechanisms by which the
brain processes such images are universal.
"This definitely doesn't just work for erotic pictures," said He. "But erotic images stand out in terms of potency to generate a response."
In the experiments, subjects were seated at a stereoscope, which allows different images to be simultaneously displayed to the left and right eyes. Each eye was presented with a square screen that was divided into
two patches sitting side by side. One eye was presented with an intact picture of a nude person in one patch
and the same picture scrambled in the neighboring patch. The other eye was presented with twin patches
containing moving, high-contrast noise patterns similar to "snow" on a TV screen. As seen by the subjects, the
screens from both eyes overlapped. The moving images had the effect of suppressing the information coming
from the other eye, rendering the intact pictures invisible.
The subjects were then tested to see if their visual attention had shifted toward or away from the part of
the visual field where the intact erotic image had appeared.
The strongest shift in attention toward the area where the image had been was in heterosexual men who
had been shown nude female images. Those subjects also tended to be repelled by nude male images. Among
heterosexual women, nude male images induced a less strong attention shift toward the image site but no
significant shift in response to nude female pictures. Gay men behaved similarly to heterosexual women, and
gay/bisexual women performed in between heterosexual men and women.
The divergent results among the groups of study subjects provide evidence that the subjects' brains were
processing the visual information in a selective manner.
"Selective attention helps us to quickly process what is important while ignoring the irrelevant," the researchers write. "In this study, we demonstrate that information that has not entered observers' consciousness, such as [invisible] erotic pictures, can direct the distribution of spatial attention. Furthermore, invisible
erotic information can either attract or repel observers' spatial attention depending on their gender and sexual
orientation."
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The images in the study were likely processed by the amygdala, a brain center that plays a critical role in
processing emotional information, said He. But the researchers believe that the information about the images
is probably destroyed at an early stage of processing by the cerebral cortex, where information from our two
eyes is combined.
Scientists find major susceptibility gene for Crohn's disease
Discovery offers hope of better-targeted therapy for millions of people with inflammatory bowel diseases
Oct. 26 -- A consortium of American and Canadian researchers report in Science Express, a rapid online
publication by the journal Science, the discovery of a new genetic link to Crohn's disease. Mutations of a gene,
which codes for a receptor in a major inflammatory pathway, are strongly associated with Crohn's disease, the
researchers found. Surprisingly, one type of mutation appears to confer significant protection, prioritizing a
crucial target for drugs that might better manage Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
More than 1 million Americans have Crohn's or colitis, known collectively as inflammatory bowel disease
(IBD).
The study's authors represent the IBD Genetics Consortium, which is funded by the National Institute of
Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Consortium's member institutions include Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the University of Chicago, Johns
Hopkins University, Université de Montréal, the University of Pittsburgh, Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and
the University of Toronto, and Yale University.
According to senior author Judy H.Cho, M.D., associate professor in the departments of medicine and genetics at Yale School of Medicine, the findings highlight a major inflammatory pathway and change in thinking
about disease-associated genetic variation. "This pathway is particularly intriguing because we appear to have
identified a gene variant that protects against development of IBD, a finding that may lead us to think about
the genetics of health as much as about the genetics of disease," said Dr. Cho, who also is director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Yale.
Because IBD tends to run in families and is more frequent in certain ethnic populations, especially Ashkenazi Jews, scientists have long suspected a significant genetic component. Although previous genetic studies
found a link between Crohn's disease and mutations in a gene known as CARD15, those mutations alone are
not considered to account for all of the genetic components of the disease.
To identify additional genes that are associated with IBD, the international team of researchers scanned the
genome--all 22,000 or so genes--by testing more than 300,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, in
people with Crohn's disease. They looked for the presence of these SNPs in a similar number of people without IBD for comparison.
Out of the hundreds of thousands of SNPs, the genome-wide scan found three that were most strongly associated with Crohn's disease. Of those, two were in the CARD15 gene. However, the third SNP was in a different gene on a different chromosome.
When the researchers looked at the specific gene where the third SNP resided, they found that it coded for
a protein that is part of the immune cell receptor for interleukin-23 (IL-23), an important mediator of inflammation in the body. However, when they began looking for all of the polymorphisms in the IL-23 receptor
gene of affected individuals to determine which ones were the most detrimental, they made an unexpected
discovery.
Although several polymorphisms were associated with a significantly increased risk of developing IBD, one
appeared to confer a very strong protection against IBD.
"Of all the SNPs we studied in people with and without IBD, this protective SNP was the most statistically
significant finding in our study. So, it took us a bit by surprise," said first author, Richard H. Duerr, M.D., associate professor of medicine and human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh. "What it means in terms of
improving treatments for IBD patients, we are not sure yet. But, we speculate that it may be possible to mimic
the conditions within the IL-23 inflammatory pathway that result from the chain of events initiated by this particular genetic variant."
Members of the consortium are attempting to tease out the specific downstream effects of this protective
polymorphism. Yet, because IL-23 plays an important role in activating inflammation, including in the organs
of the digestive tract, it could be an extremely important target for improving the management of Crohn's disease and other IBDs.
"We identified multiple genetic signals in the IL-23 receptor gene that were strongly associated with
Crohn's disease. In fact, the statistical significance for some IL-23 receptor SNPs was two orders of magnitude
greater than that of other SNPs in other genes. So, we believe that blocking the activity of IL-23 or manipulating its pathway will be an effective way to manage IBD," said Dr. Duerr, who also is head of the Inflammatory
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Bowel Disease Genetics Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and co-director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
In a previous study by other investigators, an early stage clinical trial showed that IBD patients exhibit improvement when given a monoclonal antibody that blocks IL-23 and a related inflammatory mediator. Furthermore, recent studies in mice in which the gene for IL-23 is deleted demonstrated that IL-23 is essential for
the development and maintenance of chronic intestinal inflammation. Such evidence, combined with the current discovery, suggests therapies that target the IL-23 pathway may lead to more individualized, betterdirected therapies for IBDs, the authors say.
"This important discovery not only offers new hope for better therapies for patients with Crohn's disease, it
also highlights the promise of the human genome project and subsequent investments by the NIH in large
scale, collaborative research projects to unravel the causes of, and hopefully better treatments for complex,
enigmatic diseases," said Stephen P. James, M.D., director of the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition
at the National Institutes of Health's NIDDK.
Dr. Cho offers a cautionary note, however. "The IL-23 pathway may serve a very useful purpose in protecting us from other diseases, so when seeking to block or manipulate its activity with drugs or other means, we
need to take this balancing act into consideration," she said.
Healthcare staff under report child physical abuse and 1 in 5 worry about getting it
wrong
Sixty per cent of healthcare professionals have seen a child they suspect was being physically abused, but
only 48 per cent reported it to the authorities, according to research published in the latest Journal of Advanced Nursing.
Just under three-quarters of doctors, dentists and community nurses said they were aware of some of the
mechanisms of reporting child physical abuse, but 79 per cent felt they needed further information.
Over a fifth (21 per cent) said they were worried about getting it wrong. Confronting families, inexperience
and fear of litigation were also common barriers to reporting.
"The ability to recognise physical abuse and willingness to report it varied between the groups" says lead
researcher Dr Anne Lazenbatt, from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland.
"Our survey of 419 healthcare professionals showed that community nurses were most likely to recognise
and report physical abuse.
"It also revealed that fears, anxieties and lack of knowledge stop primary healthcare professionals from reporting abuse and that they need more education, training and support in this area."
74 per cent were aware of the mechanisms for reporting – with community nurses showing the highest
levels of awareness, followed by doctors and dentists. 99 per cent said recognising and reporting child physical abuse should be part of undergraduate and postgraduate training and 79 per cent wanted further inservice training.
Research published by the United Nations in 2002 suggests that 3,500 children under the age of 15 die
from child physical abuse every year in the industrialised world.
And seven per cent of children in the UK have been reported as suffering from physical abuse from a parent or carer, according to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Lazenbatt's research, carried out with Professor Ruth Freeman from the University's School of Dentistry,
drew questionnaire responses from 139 Community Nurses, 147 General Medical Practitioners and 133 General Dental Practitioners in Northern Ireland – a response rate of 43 per cent.
The majority were in the 30-49 age group (71 per cent) and 43 per cent were male. They had been in
practice for an average of 15 to 16 years.
Four key issues arose during the research:
* Healthcare professional were worried about misidentifying physical abuse and unwilling to confront the family. They wanted to remain anonymous and feared hostility, damage to their relationships with families and
repercussions for the child and the family. They were also concerned about possible legal action.
"The barriers for me are an uncertainty about what I am looking for and not wanting to start a problem for
the family" said one of the Dentists who took part.
"I would be hesitant to get involved in child protection work for fear that this would trigger a formal complaint, a disciplinary hearing or even litigation" added one of the Doctors.
* Respondents cited lack of clear guidelines and protocols as a barrier to reporting abuse. They were also
concerned about their inexperience and poor interview techniques, especially when they were faced with parents who were keen to avoid detection.
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"Recognising child abuse is always going to be a difficult and emotive area" said one Community Nurse.
"Often parents, as carers, can give a plausible explanation for any injuries, bruising etc. Frequently this is the
explanation people want to believe, as it will be less difficult to deal with by everyone concerned. What makes
management of suspected cases of child abuse easier is having clear protocols and guidelines."
"Identifying and reporting is always more difficult when a child is seen infrequently" pointed out one Dentist.
* Other barriers to reporting included workload pressures, red tape and hierarchy, reporting procedures and
lack of sensitivity and support from social services and colleagues. Some Dentists felt that child abuse was not
relevant to their profession and another burden in an already stressful occupation.
"I understand the child's welfare is paramount, but living in small communities it is difficult for social services to be seen to be sensitive or impartial" said one Community Nurse.
And a Doctor expressed frustration with colleagues. "In one case of suspected neglect/abuse it was reported several times and nothing was done. I eventually reported it to an on-duty social worker who dealt
with it, but there was a time lapse of 12-18 months."
* The majority of participants wanted multidisciplinary workshops, in-service education and accessible
training tools. They also highlighted perceived deficiencies in the education they had already received.
"There is no more time for complacency" said one Doctor. "To do this we need knowledge and input from a
wide range of professionals and agencies, all of whom should be communicating, working in partnership and
educated at all levels with a multi-professional / agency framework. This should be mandatory and frequent."
"The findings suggest that recognising child physical abuse is both a complex and difficult task for primary
healthcare professionals and illustrates a substantial gap between their ability to recognise maltreatment and
knowledge of the pathways for reporting it" concludes Dr Lazenbatt.
"Although the consequences of failing to identify child physical abuse can be catastrophic, it is also essential that professionals are educated to recognise conditions that might inadvertently be mistaken as abuse so
that unnecessary distress can be avoided.
"Child abuse is an important global problem and primary healthcare professionals can play an essential role
in recognising and reporting abuse, but only if they receive the education and support they need to make informed decisions.
"Developing clear policies and co-ordinated local responses that involve all those concerned with the welfare and protection of children is also essential."
-------------------------------------Notes to editors
* Recognizing and reporting child abuse: a survey of primary healthcare professionals. Lazenbatt A and Freeman R,
Queen's University Belfast, UK. Journal of Advanced Nursing. Volume 56.3, pages 227-236.
* Journal of Advanced Nursing, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2006, is read by experienced nurses, midwives, health visitors and advanced nursing students in over 80 countries. It informs, educates, explores, debates and
challenges the foundations of nursing health care knowledge and practice worldwide. Edited by Professor Alison Tierney,
it is published 24 times a year by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, part of the international Blackwell Publishing group.
New genetic analysis forces re-draw of insect family tree
The family tree covering almost half the animal species on the planet has been re-drawn following a genetic analysis which has revealed new relationships between four major groups of insects.
Scientists have found that flies and moths are most closely related to beetles and more distantly related to
bees and wasps, contrary to previous theory.
The findings are published in the special Honey Bee Genome issue of the journal Genome Research which
coincides with Nature's publication of the honey bee genome sequence (also Thursday 26 October 2006).
The results are based on an analysis of the same 185 genes found in the genomes of eight different insect
families, which together represent 45 per cent of all known animal species.
This enabled the international group of scientists to work out the evolutionary relationships between the
insects based on changes and mutations within those genes.
Previously scientists had assumed that flies and moths were most closely related to bees and wasps, with
beetles more distantly related to these groups.
This new family arrangement also brings the different species of social insects, such as termites and bees,
closer together - suggesting that the ability of insects to cooperate in social groupings may have evolved just
once, rather than independently in several different species.
“About half of all animal species belong to just four groups of insects but, surprisingly, we never knew for
sure how they are related to each other,” said Dr Martin Lercher from the University of Bath, who lead the research.
31
“While there was never unequivocal evidence for it, scientists believed for a long time that, based on
morphology, flies and moths were most closely related to bees, with beetles more distantly related to these
three groups.
“By comparing genetic information from 185 genes that were sequenced in species from all of these
groups, we found that in fact flies and moths are most closely related to beetles, and more distantly related to
bees.
“This sheds new light on a large number of evolutionary questions, as a correct understanding of the evolutionary relationships is fundamental to any interpretation of similarities or differences among species.
“For example, social colonies are common among bees and
wasps and their relatives, ants, as well as among more distantly
related insects, such as termites and aphids.
“That beetles don't show this tendency, known as eusociality, has been interpreted as a sign that eusociality has evolved
several times independently.
“Now that we know that bees, wasps and ants are in fact
the closest relatives to the more distantly related (or ‘basal’)
species, it appears more likely that the genetic basis for eusociality may have evolved only once, and was lost in the common
ancestor of beetles, moths, and flies.”
The researchers used the genomes of six different insects
from the holometabolous group of insects (insects which undergo complete metamorphosis): fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), mosquito (Anopheles gambiae), silk moth (Bombyx mori), flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum), honey bee (Apis mellifera) and sibling parasitic wasp species (Nasonia vitripennis and
Nasonia giraulti).
These insects represent the four major orders of holometabolous insects, beetles (Coleoptera), moths (Lepidoptera), flies
(Diptera) and bees and wasps (Hymenoptera), which together
represent 45 per cent of the animal species on earth.
They also included one orthopteran (the grasshopper Locusta migratoria) and one hemipteran (the pea aphid
Acyrthosiphon pisum), both of which are uncontested outgroups to the holometabolous insects.
The researchers are from the University of Cologne (Germany), Baylor College of Medicine (USA), University of Rochester (USA), the Institute for Genomic Research (USA), the University of Bath (UK) and the European Molecular Biology
Laboratory (Germany).
The research was funded by the Human Frontier Science Program Organization, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG), the Royal Society and the 21st Century Research & Technology Fund.
The University of Bath is one of the UK's leading universities, with an international reputation for quality research and
teaching. In 16 subject areas the University of Bath is rated in the top ten in the country. View a full list of the University's press releases: http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/releases
Three-in-one virus killer prevents common, often fatal infections
A novel combination therapy drastically reduces the infection rate of three viruses – and risk of death – in
transplant patients with compromised immune systems. The findings, to be reported in the Nov. 1 print edition
of Nature Medicine, originate from a study conducted at Baylor College of Medicine, The Methodist Hospital,
and Texas Children's Hospital.
The journal has posted the findings online.
The phase 1 trial, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, one of the National Institutes of
Health, tested the first multivirus killer of its kind, called Trivirus-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs),
which control infections caused by three commonplace viruses – cytomegalovirus (CMV), Epstein-Barr virus
(EBV), and adenovirus. Although benign in people with normal immune systems, the viruses can cause lifethreatening illnesses in transplant patients and others with compromised immune systems.
The CTLs proved effective and safe in all 11 bone marrow transplant patients, who recovered completely
within two to four weeks of being treated without any side effects or toxicity. Preexisting therapies for adenovirus have had little success – there is an 80 percent chance of death following the development of adenovirus.
"Not only were patients prevented from getting these infections after transplant, but those patients who
had infections responded to the T-cell therapy and did not require any other treatment," said senior author Dr.
32
Catherine Bollard, assistant professor of pediatrics, immunology, and medicine at BCM and a researcher at the
Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at BCM, Methodist and Texas Children's. "To make dramatic recoveries like
these was really quite something."
The research team drew cells from bone marrow donors and "trained" T-cells to target the three viruses
before injecting them into transplant recipients.
"Drugs only control the virus. They don't cure the underlying problem," said Bollard. "Whereas by introducing these specialized T-cells, we are fixing the underlying problem. Using your own immune system is preferable to chemical agents, which can have toxic side effects."
Although the CTLs must undergo further testing, the early results suggest the combination therapy to be
more, cost-effective, and safe than traditional therapies and more practical than cell-based therapies that target EBV and CMV separately, both of which are carried in roughly 80 percent of all people. Adenoviruses are
common viruses carried in all populations.
"There is no safe and effective therapy for patients with adenovirus infections at the moment, so if you get
an infection after a transplant it becomes very problematic," said first author Dr. Ann Leen, BCM instructor of
pediatrics at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy. "So we trained certain T-cells to target this virus."
Bollard envisions one day extending the application of CTLs to other people with compromised immune systems, such as cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. The therapy could also potentially be used in babies,
who are more susceptible to adenovirus infections than other age groups.
--------------------------------The other study investigators are Drs. G. Doug Myers, Uluhan Sili, M. Helen Huls, Heidi Weiss, Kathryn S. Leung, George
Carrum, Robert A. Krance, Adrian P. Gee, Malcolm K. Brenner, Helen Heslop, and Cliona Rooney, all of BCM, Methodist
and Texas Children's.; Dr. Chung-Che Chang, of Cornell University and Methodist; and Dr. Jeffrey J. Molldrem, of The
University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Survivors of organized violence often left with traumatic memories
Victims of torture found to have permanent mental trauma
University Park, Pa. October 26, 2006 - A series of studies, conducted by a psychotraumatology research
group headed by Thomas Elbert in collaboration with Penn State psychologist William Ray, has examined a
group of people who have been exposed to different magnitudes of torture and found the appearance of dissociation (mental separation from the incident) long after the event. The research is published in the latest
issue of Psychological Science.
Those who experienced multiple and extreme trauma stopped responding physiologically and began to feel
numb. The researchers believe that, just as the body can turn off some of its stress response during feelings
of great terror or helplessness, the mind has a way of turning off strong emotions in overwhelming situations.
The research group examined the functional architecture of the brain in relation to varying degrees of dissociation. They observed that dissociative experiences are reflected in slow, abnormal brainwaves in an area
that contributes to verbalizing and the ability to plan and prepare for actions.
Observation of structural or functional brain lesions has led the authors to interpret their findings as a sign
of the brain decoupling these regions from sensory experience and action. They believe this is the only response that seems possible during serious torture but note that, when maintained later in life, the long-term
consequences are devastating. This brain reorganization is maintained even when the torture is over.
-----------------------------------------This study is published in the current issue of Psychological Science. Media wishing to receive a PDF of this article please
contact [email protected]
For crying out loud - pick up your baby
Parents should listen to their instincts and pick up their newborn babies when they cry, Queensland University of Technology researcher Professor Karen Thorpe said.
A joint study with QUT and the Riverton Early Parenting Centre has found many parents of infants up to 12
weeks, were uncertain about how best to settle their crying baby and whether or not it was "right" to pick
them up.
"A lot of parents are unsure if they should pick up their baby when their baby cries," Professor Thorpe from
QUT's Faculty of Education said.
"The answer is: you should. Babies in the first 12 weeks of their life need highly responsive parents. They
want and need a parent that is responsive to their cries."
Professor Thorpe said the study was initiated by concerns by clinical nurses from the Riverton centre that
parents were choosing to ignore their crying newborn for fear it would "spoil" their baby to pick them up.
Riverton clinical nurse and co-researcher Claire Halle said parents felt picking up their crying baby would
create "bad habits" which would impact negatively on their child's behaviour in the future.
33
"Parent's felt torn between what they thought and what they felt was the right thing to do, and this uncertainty seemed to heighten their stress levels," Ms Halle said.
The study found about 20 per cent of first time parents and 30 per cent of experienced parents admitted
they were uncertain about picking up their crying baby. It also revealed that almost 25 per cent of first time
parents and just over 10 per cent of experienced parents believed picking up a crying baby would spoil them.
"One parent said 'I feel guilty for not picking him up when he cries'," Ms Halle said. "Another said 'frequent
and sudden changes in baby's behaviour make it hard to judge...too much attention may spoil them'."
But Professor Thorpe said in the first three month's of a baby's life, having responsive parents was very important to the child's emotional and neurological development.
She said the study highlighted there was a problem because parents were getting mixed messages about
how best to settle their newborn baby.
"We need to ensure nurses, educators and health professionals are providing parents with consistent and
appropriate guidelines for caring for their baby," Professor Thorpe said.
"It is also important for parents to have the confidence to trust their instincts when it comes to caring for
their baby."
The study, funded by the Royal Children's Hospital Foundation, is a joint collaboration between Dr Toni Dowd from QUT's
School of Nursing, Professor Karen Thorpe and the Settling Team at the Riverton Early Parenting Centre.
The study was a unique experience for clinical nurses to work as co-researchers and demonstrated the value of engaging
clinical staff, academics and parents in research.
Media contacts - Sandra Hutchinson, media officer, 07 3864 2130 or [email protected]
**Professor Karen Thorpe and Dr Toni Dowd are available for media interviews**
Breastfeeding boosts mental health
A new study has found that babies that are breastfed for longer than six months have significantly better
mental health in childhood.
The findings are based on data from the ground-breaking Raine Study at the Telethon Institute for Child
Health Research, that has tracked the growth and development of more than 2500 West Australian children
over the past 16 years.
Researcher Dr Wendy Oddy said there was growing evidence that bioactive factors in breast milk played an
important role in the rapid early brain development that occurs in the first year of life.
"Even when we adjust the results to take into account other factors such as the parents' socio-economic
situation, their education, their happiness and family functioning, we see that children that were breastfed for
at least six months are at lower risk of mental health problems," Dr Oddy said.
The study found that children who were breastfed for less than six months compared to six months or
longer had a 52% increased risk of a mental health problem at 2 years of age, a 55% increased risk at age 6,
at age 8 the increased risk was 61% while at age 10 the increased risk was 37%.
The analysis is based on a scientifically recognised checklist of child behaviour that assessed the study children's behaviour at 2, 6, 8 and 10 years of age.
Dr Oddy said that children that were breastfed had particularly lower rates of delinquent, aggressive and
anti-social behaviour, and overall were less depressed, anxious or withdrawn.
"These results are powerful evidence for more support to be given to mothers to help them breastfeed for
longer," she said.
Babies say 'thank you' as new research reveals breastfeeding boosts mental health
A new study has found that babies that are breastfed for longer than six months have significantly better
mental health in childhood.
The findings are based on data from the ground-breaking Raine Study at the Telethon Institute for Child
Health Research, that has tracked the growth and development of more than 2500 West Australian children
over the past 16 years.
Researcher Dr Wendy Oddy said there was growing evidence that bioactive factors in breast milk played an
important role in the rapid early brain development that occurs in the first year of life.
"Even when we adjust the results to take into account other factors such as the parents' socio-economic
situation, their education, their happiness and family functioning, we see that children that were breastfed for
at least six months are at lower risk of mental health problems," Dr Oddy said.
The study found that children who were breastfed for less than six months compared to six months or
longer had a 52% increased risk of a mental health problem at 2 years of age, a 55% increased risk at age 6,
at age 8 the increased risk was 61% while at age 10 the increased risk was 37%.
The analysis is based on a scientifically recognised checklist of child behaviour that assessed the study children's behaviour at 2, 6, 8 and 10 years of age.
34
Dr Oddy said that children that were breastfed had particularly lower rates of delinquent, aggressive and
anti-social behaviour, and overall were less depressed, anxious or withdrawn.
"These results are powerful evidence for more support to be given to mothers to help them breastfeed for
longer," she said.
For a World of Woes, We Blame Cookie Monsters
By GINA KOLATA
FIRST we said they
were ruining their
health with their bad
habit, and they should
just quit.
Then we said they
were repulsive and we
didn’t want to be
around them. Then we
said they were costing
us loads of money —
maybe they should pay
extra taxes. Other
Americans, after all, do
not share their dissolute ways.
Cigarette smokers?
No, the obese.
Last week the list of ills attributable to obesity grew: fat people cause global warming.
This latest contribution to the obesity debate comes in an article by Sheldon H. Jacobson of the University
of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and his doctoral student, Laura McLay. Their paper, published in the current
issue of The Engineering Economist, calculates how much extra gasoline is used to transport Americans now
that they have grown fatter. The answer, they said, is a billion gallons a year.
Their conclusion is in the same vein as a letter published last year in The American Journal of Public Health.
Its authors, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did a sort of back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much extra fuel airlines spend hauling around fatter Americans. The answer, they wrote, based on
the extra 10 pounds the average American gained in the 1990’s, is 350 million gallons, which means an extra
3.8 million tons of carbon dioxide.
“People are out scouring the landscape for things that make obese people look bad,” said Kelly Brownell,
director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale.
And is that a bad thing? Dr. Jacobson doesn’t think so. “We felt that beyond public health, being overweight has many other socioeconomic implications,” he said, which was why he was drawn to calculating the
gasoline costs of added weight.
The idea of using economic incentives to help people shed pounds comes up in the periodic calls for taxes
on junk food. Martin B. Schmidt, an economist at the College of William and Mary, suggests a tax on food
bought at drive-through windows. Describing his theory in a recent Op-Ed article in The New York Times, Dr.
Schmidt said people would expend more calories if they had to get out of their cars to pick up their food.
“We tax cigarettes in part because of their health cost,” he wrote. “Similarly, the individual’s decision to
lead a sedentary lifestyle will end up costing taxpayers.”
Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, said his first instinct was to laugh at the gas and
drive-through arguments. But such claims often get wide attention, he says, and take on a life of their own.
“This is like, let’s find another reason to scapegoat fat people,” Dr. Oliver says.
At an annual meeting of the Obesity Society, one talk correlated obesity with deaths in car accidents, and
another correlated obesity with suicides. Dr. Oliver, who attended, said no one in the crowd of at least 200
questioned whether the correlations were really cause and effect. “The funny thing was that everyone took it
seriously,” he said.
Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also wryly cautions against being quick
to link cause and effect. “Yes, obesity is to blame for all the evils of modern life, except somehow, weirdly, it
35
is not killing people enough,” she said. “In fact that’s why there are all these fat people around. They just
won’t die.”
The message in the blame-obesity approach, said James Marone, a political science professor at Brown
University, is that it is so important to persuade fat people to lose weight that common sense disappears.
“Anything we can say to persuade you, we will say,” Dr. Marone added.
So is it working?
It doesn’t seem to be. Fat people are more reviled than ever, researchers find, even as more people become fat. When smokers and heavy drinkers turned pariah, rates of smoking and drinking went down. Won’t
fat people, in time, follow suit?
Research suggests that the stigma of being fat leads to more eating, not less. And if reducing the stigma
suggests a solution, that’s not working either.
“One hypothesis about getting rid of stigma is having more contact with the stigmatized group,” Dr.
Brownell says. But with obesity, the stigma seems to be growing along with the national girth.
He cites a famous study in the 1960’s in which children were shown drawings of children with and without
disabilities, as well as a drawing of a fat child. Who, they were asked, would you want for your friend? The fat
child was picked last.
Now, three researchers have repeated the study, this time with college students. Once again, almost no
one, not even fat people, liked the fat person. “Obesity was highly stigmatized,” wrote the researchers, Janet
D. Latner of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Albert J. Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania
and C. Terence Wilson of Rutgers University, in the July 2005 issue of Obesity Research.
One problem with blaming people for being fat, obesity researchers say, is that getting thin is not like quitting smoking. People struggle to stop smoking, but many, in the end, succeed. Obesity is different. It’s not
that the obese don’t care. Instead, as science has shown over and over, they have limited personal control
over their weight. Genes play a significant role, the science says.
That is not a popular message, Dr. Brownell says. And the notion that anyone can be thin with a little effort
has consequences. “Once weight is due to a personal failing, a lot of things follow,” he said. There’s the attitude that if you are fat, you deserve to be stigmatized. Maybe it will motivate you to lose weight. The opposite
happens.
In a paper published Oct. 10 in Obesity, Dr. Brownell and his colleagues studied more than 3,000 fat people, asking them about their experiences of stigmatization and discrimination and how they responded.
Almost everyone said they ate more.
World's first full-face transplant likely in UK
* 12:40 25 October 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* NewScientist.com and AFP
The world's first full-face transplant may be performed within months after a British hospital was given the
go-ahead by its ethics committee on Wednesday.
Consultant plastic surgeon Peter Butler said he was "delighted" to have been given permission for the pioneering surgery by the committee at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, north London.
"We can now begin to evaluate patients and draw up a shortlist of four people who want to undergo this
procedure," he said. "We will continue to take a cautious and careful approach and we will not be rushed. It
may be many months before we are ready to carry out an operation."
The prospect of a full-face transplant raises hopes for people with severe facial disfigurement – caused by
burns or disease, for example – and comes after surgeons in France carried out the world's first partial face
transplant in November 2005.
Isabelle Dinoire, who had her nose, lips and chin replaced after she was savaged by a dog, is reportedly
happy with the result. "I have now a face like everyone else," she said in February 2006, when she faced the
press for the first time.
In April 2006, a hospital in China conducted what is believed to be the second partial face transplant on Li
Guoxing, aged 30, who had been attacked by a bear.
Patient selection
Patients selected for the proposed full-face transplant will only be considered if they are from the UK or Ireland, due to concerns about the long-term care of overseas patients in Britain's publicly-funded National
Health Service. Butler said he would not be able to carry out the operation on children, because of issues of
consent.
All the patients are likely to have pan-facial disfigurement, where the whole face has been affected by injury, spreading to the scalp or ears.
36
"These patients will have already undergone reconstructive surgery. Perhaps they will have had 50 or 70
reconstructive operations," says Butler, who adds that he has already been approached by 34 patients from
across the world.
"They have reached the end of the reconstructive ladder and there's nothing more it can offer them. They
have the problem of integration into society, of being able to walk down the street in society without anybody
staring at them. That's all these people want – to be normal," he says.
Detailed scrutiny
Computer modelling has shown that the recipient of a full-face transplant would look different to the donor
because of their face shape and bone structure.
Andrew Way, chief executive of the trust that runs the Royal Free Hospital, said the committee gave the
green light only after "the most detailed scrutiny" of more than 10 years' research by Butler's team.
After the first transplant – which is likely to take 10 to 12 hours and involve four to six surgeons – there will
be a six-month gap before the second operation to assess the procedure.
Changing Faces, a UK-based organisation for people with facial disfigurements, said that patients considered for the procedure must have a full understanding of the risks and benefits, especially the risks associated
with taking immunosuppressant drugs for life, which are needed to prevent rejection of the new facial tissue.
“A viable 'Plan B' should be developed and explained in the event of a transplant being rejected and every
effort must be made to protect the patient’s privacy and that of the donor’s family,” the charity added.
Late motherhood may risk infertility in daughters
* 16:16 25 October 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Phil McKenna
Women who put off pregnancy until late in life not only jeopardise their own chances of bearing children,
but may place their daughter’s fertility at risk as well.
A new study found that the mothers of infertile women tended to be older and closer to menopause when
their daughters were conceived compared with the mothers of women who became pregnant. And as women
wait longer and longer to have children, the affects could increase dramatically.
“In one or two generations, we could have serious problems and it could start to accumulate; it could
have an additive affect,” warns Zsolt Nagy of Reproductive Biology Associates in Atlanta, Georgia, US.
Nagy and colleagues examined 74 patients who were using IVF to treat infertility. Women who did not become pregnant were themselves conceived an average of 20 years before their mothers reached menopause,
the team found.
Gene expression
However, women who did become pregnant through IVF had been conceived earlier on in their mothers’
reproductive lives – an average of 25 years before menopause.
Nagy suspects that eggs from older women may have impaired gene expression that goes unnoticed until
their female offspring try to conceive. “All the genes are there,” he says of the daughters' infertile eggs, “but
they aren’t functioning correctly.”
He suggests it is “very likely” that the findings apply to women generally and not just to women seeking
treatment for infertility. Nagy presented his findings at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in New Orleans, US, on Tuesday.
It's the next best thing to a Babel fish
* 26 October 2006
* From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues
* Celeste Biever
Imagine mouthing a phrase in English, only for the words to come out in Spanish. That is the promise of a device that will make anyone appear bilingual, by translating unvoiced words into synthetic speech in another
language.
The device uses electrodes attached to the face and neck to detect and interpret the unique patterns of
electrical signals sent to facial muscles and the tongue as the person mouths words. The effect is like the reallife equivalent of watching a television show that has been dubbed into a foreign language, says speech researcher Tanja Schultz of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Existing translation systems based on automatic speech-recognition software require the user to speak the
phrase out loud. This makes conversation difficult, as the speaker must speak and then push a button to play
the translation. The new system allows for a more natural exchange. "The ultimate goal is to be in a position
where you can just have a conversation," says CMU speech researcher Alan Black.
37
In October 2005 Schultz and her colleague Alex Waibel demonstrated the first automatic translator that
could pick up electrical signals from face and throat muscles and convert them into text or synthesised speech
- a technique called sub-vocal speech recognition. This ran on a laptop and translated Mandarin Chinese to
English or Spanish, but it could only translate around 100 words, each of which had first to be spoken into the
system by the user, to "train" it on their voice.
Now the team has developed a system that can recognise a potentially limitless lexicon. Their secret is to
detect not just words but also the phonemes that form the building blocks of words. The system then uses
these to reconstruct the word. To translate from English to another language, the user only has to train the
system on the 45 phonemes used in spoken English.
The researchers use software that has been taught to recognise which phonemes are most likely to appear
next to each other and in what order. When it encounters a string of phonemes it is unfamiliar with or has only partially heard, it uses this knowledge to come up with a range of sequences that make sense given the
surrounding phonemes and words, assigns a probability to each one, and then picks the one with the highest
probability.
The system still has some way to go. Faced with a sequence of words it has never heard before, it picks
the right phoneme sequence only 62 per cent of the time. This nevertheless ranks as "a very significant
achievement" according to Chuck Jorgensen, who is working on using sub-vocal speech recognition to control
robots at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "This is showing that the technology is really within reach."
Schultz's team plan to attach the phoneme recognition software to their prototype Spanish or German
translators, once they have improved its accuracy.
From issue 2575 of New Scientist magazine, 26 October 2006, page 32
Fasting may boost recovery from spinal injury
* 16:43 26 October 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Roxanne Khamsi
Fasting may improve recovery from spinal cord injury, according to a new rodent study.
Injured rats that were only fed on alternate days showed half the spinal cord damage compared with their
normally fed counterparts after several months. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that calorie
restriction can boost recovery from a variety of injuries.
Ward Plunet at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues created lesions in
the spinal cords of a group of rats. Half of the animals were able to eat whenever they wanted, while the other “fasting” half were fed only every other day.
Over the course of these two months following the initial spinal injury, fasting rats showed slightly better
improvement in their ability to complete a ladder-climbing task than their counterparts. Inspection of the rodents’ spinal cords then revealed that the lesions were 50% smaller in the fasting animals than the control animals.
Overzealous cells
Other studies have shown that a calorie restricted diet started several months before an injury such as
stroke can protect neurons from dying. This is the first to show that calorie restriction can help after injury too,
Plunet believes.
He suspects that fasting helps because it dampens the body’s immune system, causing fewer overzealous
immune cells to reach the site of spinal injury. These cells sometimes block off the site of injury to such an
extent that they prevent nerve regeneration.
Calorie restriction appears to make the cells in the spinal cord more sensitive to growth-promoting proteins,
Plunet adds. Spinal cord biopsies from the animals in his study showed that the cells of fasting rats had more
functional copies of a receptor that responds to a chemical that boosts nerve growth.
Profound changes
The study findings may seem counterintuitive, since people who are sick are often encouraged to eat more
to help their body heal, Plunet admits.
“The findings challenge conventional medical protocols for severely ill, traumatised patients,” says neurosurgeon Michael Fehlings at Toronto Western Research Institute, Canada.
However, he says, patients with spinal cord injury have undergone a major trauma to their body, which can
result in profound metabolic changes that potentially leave them at risk of malnutrition, which fasting may exacerbate.
“Nonetheless, the current research is of major interest and suggests a novel therapeutic approach for spinal cord injury,” Fehlings adds.
Plunet presented the findings at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, last week.
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Introducing humans version 2.0
By James van der Pool
BBC Horizon
The half-human, half-robot cyborg has long been a vision nurtured by science fiction writers and futurologists. But how close are we to humans version 2.0, computer-enhanced people?
Ray Kurzweil, a renowned American inventor and futurist, supplements his daily diet with a cocktail of 250
pills. Now in his mid-fifties, Kurzweil is attempting to extend his life until 2029.
This is when he believes science will have made two huge breakthroughs; understanding how the human
mind works and the creation of computers that are equal to its power.
If Mr Kurzweil is right the implications could be profound.
"In 25 years from now... we will have both the hardware and the software to recreate human intelligence
in a machine," he says.
Once computers have the processing power of the human brain it will be possible to enhance our intelligence with silicon implants and even download the contents of our minds to machines, preserving them forever.
Mr Kurzweil is saying that in just a few decades humans could, in effect, become immortal.
Rehashed sci-fi
Although his vision may sound like rehashed sci-fi fantasy it is based on the closely observed trends in the
fields of computer and neuroscience.
As far back as 1964, Gordon Moore, a founder of the computer chip firm Intel, predicted that computer
power would double every year.
Moore turned out to be right and his simple idea offers up a staggering statistic, as Kurzweil points out:
"Computers are about a billion times more powerful than they were a quarter century ago and they will become a billon times more powerful than they are today in a quarter century."
But whilst there may be an almost metronomic predictability about the progress of computers toward Kurzweil's dateline, neuroscience inhabits a far more complex and controversial arena.
In order to unlock the secrets of the human mind, neuroscientists often turn to other species, with some
extraordinary results.
At the State University of New York, Professor John Chapin has come up with a unique interface between
animal and machine - a remote control rat.
Prof Chapin transmits radio signals to electrodes placed in the area of the rat's brain that controls its whiskers.
When he sends a signal to the right whisker the rat turns right. If the rat does as asked, Chapin rewards it
with another signal to its pleasure centre.
Rat's mind
Bizarre as it sounds, by commanding the rat's mind, Prof Chapin hopes to discover the exact function of the
different parts of its brain.
Professor Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University in North Carolina, has taken this paradigm of brain machine
interfaces even further.
For the past decade, he has been tapping in to the brains of monkeys by wiring them up to computers and
eavesdropping on their thoughts.
Prof Nicolelis acknowledges how surprisingly fertile this approach has been.
"The brain was considered the last frontier, the impenetrable part of us, and we are just learning that we
can actually go in there and read thoughts," he says.
Prof Nicolelis has refined his decoding of the mind to such a degree that his monkeys are able to control
extraneous devices, such as robotic arms, through thought alone.
'Finally freed'
In doing so, Prof Nicolelis believes they present us with a glimpse of how technology may enhance or even
transform us as "the brain is finally freed from the body and it can act upon the world directly".
This mind reading technology is now appearing in some humans.
Following a devastating car accident, 23-year-old Erik Ramsey was left paralysed form the neck down. He's
unable to move, talk or eat without assistance, yet his brain remains intact.
Now Erik is at the centre of an experimental therapy to try and restore his ability to speak by connecting
his brain to a computer.
When Erik thinks a sound the computer reads Erik's brain activity and turns it in to an actual sound.
To date, Erik and the computer are able to make just a few basic sounds, but the hope remains that within
a matter of years he will be able to make useful, vocal communication once more.
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Earlier this year US scientists implanted a sensor in a paralysed man's brain that has enabled him to control
objects by using his thoughts alone.
Matthew Nagle, 25 at the time of the trial, was left paralysed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001. He was the first patient to try out the brain sensor.
But rather than offer us hope, another leading computer scientist believes these inroads in to the mind
threaten oblivion.
Professor Hugo de Garis is the architect of some of the world's most complex neural networks - computers
that evolve their own intelligence.
Now he is deeply conflicted over the future he is helping to create.
Prof De Garis believes that in a matter of years machine intelligence will supersede our own by a factor of
millions.
These so called artilects - short for artificial intellects - will be so powerful that they will appear "almost
God-like".
But Prof De Garis fears that they may not be quite so benign.
"How will they feel about us - an inferior species?" he asks before drawing a doom-filled analogy.
"...They may treat us like mosquitoes; as pests," and simply wipe us out, he says.
Horizon is broadcast on BBC Two on 24 October at 2100 BST. Or watch online after that at the Horizon website.
Global ecosystems 'face collapse'
Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century, environmental group WWF has warned.
The group's biannual Living Planet Report said the natural world was being degraded "at a rate unprecedented in human history".
Terrestrial species had declined by 31% between 1970-2003, the findings showed.
It warned that if demand continued at the current rate, two planets would be needed to meet global demand by 2050.
The biodiversity loss was a result of resources being consumed faster than the planet could replace them,
the authors said.
They added that if the world's population
shared the UK's lifestyle, three planets would
be needed to support their needs.
LIVING PLANET REPORT
The planet's resources are overused by
25%
Per capita the US uses four times the resources of South Africa
Polar bear populations have declined by
30%
The nations that were shown to have the
largest "ecological footprints" were the United
Arab Emirates, the United States and Finland.
Paul King, WWF director of campaigns, said
the world was running up a "serious ecological
debt".
"It is time to make some vital choices to
enable people to enjoy a one planet lifestyle,"
he said.
Debtor countries are defined as consuming their own natural resources, or resources from elsewhere,
more quickly than they can recover, or they may be releasing more CO2 than they can absorb themselves.
"The cities, power plants and homes we build today will either lock society into damaging overconsumption beyond our lifetimes, or begin to propel this and future generations towards sustainable one
planet living."
The report, compiled by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Global Footprint Network, is based
on data from two indicators:
* Living Planet Index - assesses the health of the planet's ecosystems
* Ecological Footprint - measures human demand on the natural world
The Living Planet Index tracked the population of 1,313 vertebrate species of fish, amphibians, reptiles,
birds and mammals from around the world.
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It found that these species had declined by about 30% since 1970, suggesting that natural ecosystems
were being degraded at an unprecedented rate.
The Ecological Footprint measured the amount of biologically productive land and water to meet the demand for food, timber, shelter, and absorb the pollution from human activity.
The report concluded that the global footprint exceeded the earth's biocapacity by 25% in 2003, which
meant that the Earth could no longer keep up with the demands being placed upon it.
The findings echo a study published earlier this month that said the world went into "ecological debt" on 9
October this year.
Countries are shown in proportion to the amount of natural resources they consume.
The study by UK-based think-tank New
Economics Foundation (Nef) was based on the
Ecological Footprint data compiled by the
Global Footprint Network, which also provided
the figures for this latest report from the WWF.
'Large-scale collapse'
One of the report's editors, Jonathan Loh
from the Zoological Society of London, said:
"[It] is a stark indication of the rapid and ongoing loss of biodiversity worldwide.
"Populations of species in terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems have declined
by more than 30% since 1970," he added.
"In the tropics the declines are even more
dramatic, as natural resources are being intensively exploited for human use."
The report outlined five scenarios based on
the data from the two indicators, ranging from
"business as usual" to "transition to a sustainable society".
Under the "business as usual" scenario, the authors projected that to meet the demand for resources in
2050 would be twice as much as what the Earth could provide.
They warned: "At this level of ecological deficit, exhaustion of ecological assets and large-scale ecosystem
collapse become increasingly likely."
To deliver a shift towards a "sustainable society" scenario would require "significant action now" on issues
such as energy generation, transport and housing.
The latest Living Planet Report is the sixth in a series of publications which began in 1998.
MIT's pint-sized car engine promises high efficiency, low cost
Ethanol empowers the little engine that could
Nancy Stauffer, Laboratory for Energy and the Environment
MIT researchers are developing a half-sized gasoline engine that performs like its full-sized cousin but offers fuel efficiency approaching that of today's hybrid engine system--at a far lower cost. The key? Carefully
controlled injection of ethanol, an increasingly common biofuel, directly into the engine's cylinders when
there's a hill to be climbed or a car to be passed.
These small engines could be on the market within five years, and consumers should find them appealing:
By spending about an extra $1,000 and adding a couple of gallons of ethanol every few months, they will
have an engine that can go as much as 30 percent farther on a gallon of fuel than an ordinary engine. Moreover, the little engine provides high performance without the use of high-octane gasoline.
Given the short fuel-savings payback time--three to four years at present U.S. gasoline prices--the researchers believe that their "ethanol-boosted" turbo engine has real potential for widespread adoption. The
impact on U.S. oil consumption could be substantial. For example, if all of today's cars had the new engine,
current U.S. gasoline consumption of 140 billion gallons per year would drop by more than 30 billion gallons.
"There's a tremendous need to find low-cost, practical ways to make engines more efficient and clean and
to find cost-effective ways to use more biofuels in place of oil," said Daniel R. Cohn, senior research scientist
in the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment and the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC).
Cohn, John B. Heywood, the Sun Jae Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Sloan Automotive Laboratory, and Leslie Bromberg, a principal researcher at the PSFC, have an engine concept that
promises to achieve those goals.
For decades, efforts to improve the efficiency of the conventional spark-ignition (SI) gasoline engine have
been stymied by a barrier known as the "knock limit": Changes that would have made the engine far more
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efficient would have caused knock--spontaneous combustion that makes a metallic clanging noise and can
damage the engine. Now, using sophisticated computer simulations, the MIT team has found a way to use
ethanol to suppress spontaneous combustion and essentially remove the knock limit.
When the engine is working hard and knock is likely, a small amount of ethanol is directly injected into the
hot combustion chamber, where it quickly vaporizes, cooling the fuel and air and making spontaneous combustion much less likely. According to a simulation developed by Bromberg, with ethanol injection the engine
won't knock even when the pressure inside the cylinder is three times higher than that in a conventional SI
engine. Engine tests by collaborators at Ford Motor Company produced results consistent with the model's
predictions.
With knock essentially eliminated, the researchers could incorporate into their engine two operating techniques that help make today's diesel engines so efficient, but without causing the high emissions levels of diesels. First, the engine is highly turbocharged. In other words, the incoming air is compressed so that more air
and fuel can fit inside the cylinder. The result: An engine of a given size can produce more power.
Second, the engine can be designed with a higher compression ratio (the ratio of the volume of the combustion chamber after compression to the volume before). The burning gases expand more in each cycle, getting more energy out of a given amount of fuel.
The combined changes could increase the power of a given-sized engine by more than a factor of two. But
rather than seeking higher vehicle performance--the trend in recent decades--the researchers shrank their engine to half the size. Using well-established computer models, they determined that their small, turbocharged,
high-compression-ratio engine will provide the same peak power as the full-scale SI version but will be 20 to
30 percent more fuel efficient.
But designing an efficient engine isn't enough. "To actually affect oil consumption, we need to have people
want to buy our engine," said Cohn, "so our work also emphasizes keeping down the added cost and minimizing any inconvenience to the driver."
The ethanol-boosted engine could provide efficiency gains comparable to those of today's hybrid engine
system for less extra investment--about $1,000 as opposed to $3,000 to $5,000. The engine should use less
than five gallons of ethanol for every 100 gallons of gasoline, so drivers would need to fill their ethanol tank
only every one to three months. And the ethanol could be E85, the ethanol/gasoline mixture now being
pushed by federal legislation.
Through their startup company, Ethanol Boosting Systems LLC, the researchers are working with their Ford
collaborators on testing and developing this new concept. If all goes as expected, within five years vehicles
with the new engine could be on the road, using an alternative fuel to replace a bit of gasoline and make
more efficient use of the rest.
Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Is an Emerging Threat, Reports International
Team of Researchers
Strains of tuberculosis (TB) that are resistant to both first-line and second-line
drugs could threaten the success of not only tuberculosis programs, but also HIV treatment programs worldwide, according to an article published online this week in The Lancet. The report details a study by a team of
investigators from the United States and South Africa, who found that highly resistant strains of TB were more
common than previously thought in a rural area of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and were associated with high
death rates in patients with HIV infection. TB accounts for approximately 1.7 million deaths worldwide, each
year, and is the leading cause of death in HIV-infected patients in low-income countries.
In the study, presented by Dr. Neel Gandhi, assistant professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of
Medicine of Yeshiva University, the researchers tested patients with suspected tuberculosis for MDR and XDR
strains. They found that of 1,539 patients, 221 had MDR tuberculosis, and 53 of these had XDR tuberculosis.
The prevalence rates in a group of 475 patients with confirmed tuberculosis were 39% for MDR and 6% for
XDR tuberculosis—higher rates than previously reported in the area. All patients with XDR disease who were
tested for HIV were co-infected with the virus, and all but one died.
(Dr. Gandhi conducted this research while he completing fellowships at Yale University School of Medicine
and Emory University. He joined the Einstein faculty in August 2006.)
Further complicating the problem posed by multidrug-resistance is the fact that the epidemics of tuberculosis and HIV in South Africa are closely linked. Risk of tuberculosis disease is greatly increased in people with
HIV infection, and multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis is emerging as a major cause of death in these patients. The term extensively drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis has recently been used to describe strains that
are resistant to second-line drugs—i.e., drugs that are used if the recommended first drug treatment regimen
fails.
October 26, 2006 — (BRONX, NY) —
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Investigation of the patients’ histories and the genetic makeup of the infecting bacteria suggested that
transmission of XDR strains had occurred recently, that transmission between individuals had occurred, and
that some patients had been infected while in hospital. The researchers say that these findings are worrying,
since hospitals in low-income countries have limited infection-control facilities and a high proportion of susceptible HIV-infected patients. They recommend action to tackle the problem of resistant strains that could jeopardise attempts to control tuberculosis and prevent mortality in HIV patients.
In addition to Dr. Gandhi, other researchers involved in the collaborative project were Dr. Gerald Friedland, director of
the AIDS Program at Yale University; Dr. Tony Moll, of the Church of Scotland Hospital in Tugela Ferry, South Africa; and
Drs. Willem Sturm, Robert Pawinksi and Umesh Lalloo, of the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, in Durban, South
Africa.
UWM brain research supports drug development from jellyfish protein
Testing of aequorin yields promising results
With the research support from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a Wisconsin biotech company has
found that a compound from a protein found in jellyfish is neuro-protective and may be effective in treating
neurodegenerative diseases.
Testing of aequorin has yielded promising results, said Mark Y. Underwood of Quincy Bioscience located in
Madison. Researcher James Moyer, Jr., an assistant professor at UW-Milwaukee, subjected brain cells to the
"lab" equivalent of a stroke, and more than half treated with aequorin survived without residual toxicity.
Why does it work? Diseases like Alzheimer's are associated with a loss of "calcium-binding" proteins that
protect nerve cells, said Moyer. Calcium is necessary for communication between neurons in the brain, and
learning and memory are not possible without it. But too much of it leads to neuron death, interfering with
memory and contributing to neurodegenerative diseases.
"There are ways in which cells control the influx of calcium, such as sequestering it by binding it with certain proteins," said Moyer. "If it weren't for these proteins, the high level of calcium would overwhelm the
neuron and trigger a cascade of events ultimately leading to cell death."
Calcium-binding proteins decline with age, however, limiting the brain's ability to control or handle the
amount of calcium "allowed in."
Aequorin, the jellyfish protein, appears to be a viable substitute.
Moyer, like Underwood, is interested in the "calcium hypothesis of aging and dementia," which is just one
of many theories that attempts to explain what is going on in neuron degeneration.
He became interested in aequorin as an undergraduate at UW-Milwaukee, after reading an article that
linked the stings of jellyfish with the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system
that his mother has.
Aequorin was discovered in the 1960s and has been used in research for a long time as an indicator of calcium. But the protein has never been tried as a treatment to control calcium levels. Underwood believes his
company is at about the 12-year mark in the typical 15-year cycle for a new drug to be developed.
Moyer's research centers on brain changes that occur as a result of aging. Specifically, he is interested in
the part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is responsible for forming new memories. These capabilities not only deteriorate in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, but they also become
impaired simply by aging.
Aging increases the number of "doors" that allow calcium ions to enter the cells, he said.
Moyer, who came to UW-Milwaukee from a post-doctoral position at Yale University, performs Pavlovian
trace conditioning experiments to evaluate aging-related learning and memory deficits. These tasks first teach
rodents to associate one stimulus with another and then test their memory of the association. During training,
the stimuli are separated by a brief period of time, which requires the animal to maintain a memory of the first
stimulus. The "stimulus free" period makes the task more difficult, especially for older animals.
Moyer's work also has implications outside of disease. He is able to show that at middle age, when the animal's learning ability or memory is not yet impaired, it already shows a drop in the number of neurons that
contain an important calcium-binding protein.
"That cellular changes precede memory deficits indicates there is a window of opportunity for intervention
before it's too late," he says. "Once the cells are lost, there is little chance of regaining normal brain function."
Profiles of serial killers have limitations
Serial killer profiles
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) – Dennis Rader, the notorious BTK murderer who eluded capture for more than 30 years
until his arrest in 2005, did not fit precisely into the FBI's method for profiling serial killers on the basis of
crime scenes.
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And Aileen Wuornos, the Florida prostitute executed in 2002 for slaying seven men over a two-year period
in the early 1990s, didn't fit at all because the database of convicted serial killers used by the FBI in developing their profiling method did not include women.
The cases of Rader and Wuornos are among the topics to be explored during a panel discussion led by Dr.
Charles L. Scott, a forensic psychiatrist at UC Davis Health System, at the annual meeting of the American
Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Friday at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Chicago. Scott will examine the
way the bureau develops the personality profiles used by investigators in serial murder cases. He also will look
at alternative profiling methods, such as one developed by a crime writer that uses motive to sketch a female
offender's likely character traits.
"The FBI profiling method has many positive attributes. But it also has some inherent limitations," Scott
said. Scott, associate professor of clinical psychiatry with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science,
will be one of four panelists in the talk, dubbed "Serial Killers: From Cradle to Grave." It is one of many events
slated at the meeting, which began Thursday and runs through Sunday. The annual conference seeks to cover
the major issues facing forensic psychiatrists.
Scott has extensive experience in legal psychiatric issues. He directs the psychiatry department's forensic
case seminar, which trains psychiatrists in criminal and civil psychiatric evaluations, including assessments on
insanity, competency to stand trial, personal injury evaluations, medical malpractice and danger assessments.
He also serves as psychiatric consultant to the Sacramento County Jail and directs his department's forensic
psychiatry residency program, overseeing training and education in landmark mental health law cases.
The purpose of Friday's panel discussion is not to critique the FBI, Scott said. Instead, it is to acquaint forensic psychiatrists with how the bureau profiles serial killers, defined as someone who has killed at least three
times.
"Often, forensic psychiatrists are not trained in how the FBI does its analysis," Scott said.
Such training is important, Scott said, because forensic psychiatrists can play "an important collaborative
role" with law enforcement when it comes to profiling. To support his view, Scott will cite a study that found
psychiatrists were more accurate than police in profiling murder suspects. To an FBI agent, the crime scene is
the key.
"The FBI would say the crime scene is like a fingerprint," Scott said. Interpreted properly, "it is likely to
identify the kind of offender who would do this."
According to Scott, the bureau categorizes murder crime scenes as either organized or disorganized. An
organized crime scene is one in which the killer exerted careful control of the environment and left little evidence behind. This suggests a well-educated and socially competent suspect. In a disorganized crime scene,
things are left in disarray and evidence is plentiful. This suggests a murderer with a low level of education and
social competence who may habitually use alcohol or drugs.
The problem with that approach, Scott said, is that crime scenes often have both organized and disorganized components. Take Rader's first crime scene, when he killed Joseph and Julie Otero and their two children on Jan. 15, 1974. There was clear evidence of advance planning and the murderer's domination of the
environment – Rader both strangled and suffocated his victims, forcing them to pass out and then allowing
them to revive somewhat "as a way to extend their death," Scott said.
But, Scott said, there were disorganized elements as well. Rader -- or BTK for Bind, Torture, and Kill -- left
behind the Venetian blind cords he used as a strangling device. He also did not get rid of the bodies. While
Scott stated that he has not seen any FBI profile of the BTK killer, who was sentenced to 10 consecutive life
sentences last summer, Scott said that "Rader had many of the characteristics of an organized killer." For example, Rader, a resident of a Wichita, Kan., suburb, was employed and lived near his crime scenes. As a result,
Scott said the signs of disorganization that were present in his first crime scene and in subsequent ones were
potential red herrings, at least in terms of developing a profile. Rader was not, for example, under the influence of alcohol during his killings, nor did he frequently travel and change jobs -- traits of an organized killer
under the FBI scheme.
When the FBI develops profiles of serial killers, Scott said the bureau is relying on interviews its investigators have conducted with 36 convicted sexual or serial murderers. Scott said a shortcoming with the database
is that it does not include a single female serial killer. Consequently, its applicability to someone like Wuornos,
portrayed in the 2003 movie "Monster" by Charlize Theron, "just isn't there," Scott said.
The database's relevance to non-Caucasian serial killers is also lacking, Scott said, as 90 percent of the men
interviewed were white. It also doesn't explain a "very rare subset -- children who serially kill," Scott said.
Probably the most well-known in this category, Scott said, is Jesse Pomeroy, a Massachusetts boy who, in the
1870s, brutalized other boys when he was only 12 and who killed a 10-year-old girl when he was 14.
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