Science News Digest - 23 January 2009
In the science news this week: stem cell therapy that could prevent permanent spinal cord damage in accident victims, DNA analysis suggests mountain gorilla numbers overestimated, and The Italian Job cliffhanger is solved after 40 years…
The major news of the week was the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States. Many scientists welcomed the results of the presidential election last year and expect positive policy changes, reports BBC News. As Nobel prize-winner Sir John Sulston put it, ‘We’re expecting Obama to swing the thing around. He’s got good advisors on board.’
President Obama has previously stated that, ‘Today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet.’ In his inaugural address, he pledged to ‘restore science to its rightful place’.
One of his pledges was to lift restrictions that President Bush had imposed on stem cell research. Already, the Food and Drug Administration has passed a ruling that will allow doctors to inject specialised cells grown from embryonic tissue into patients who have recently been paralysed from the chest down. This will be the first human clinical trial of the therapy that it is hoped will restore spinal cord function and prevent lifelong paralysis.
Dr Thomas Okarma, Chief Executive of Geron Corporation, the company which has developed the stem cell therapy, told the Times that the length of time it had taken for the therapy to reach clinical trials was the direct result of the Bush administration’s restrictions on stem cell research. ‘It has had huge implications.. It just froze the field. The FDA has not been able to compare our evidence with work from federally funded scientists because there isn’t any. The delay caused by the White House has meant that there are people out there who might have benefited, but who now cannot.’
Animal experiments suggest that the therapy is unlikely to be able to help people who are already paralysed, but rather be most effective if administered in the first two weeks after spinal cord injury.
In general, the spinal cords of most patients paralysed after injury are not severed, but bruised. This leads to severe inflammation that in turn kills of oligodendrocyte cells. These cells have an important protective function because they produce the myelin that coats the shafts of nerve cells, functioning like a kind of electrical insulation and allowing the nerve cells to send signals between the brain and body. When oligodendrocytes die off after spinal trauma, the nerve cells lose their protective sheath and cease to function.
Researchers hope that by injecting oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, they will cause the regrowth of myelin and restore the function of the damaged nerves.
--------------------
Meanwhile, back on the other side of the Atlantic, UK MPs have criticised the government’s chief scientific advisor, Professor John Beddington, for failing to question the government’s use of scientific evidence in making policies.
A report published this week by the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee, states: ‘In both the case of cannabis reclassification and homeopathic treatments we are concerned that the government chief scientific adviser has not chosen to challenge departments where no evidence was produced.’
Phil Willis, who chairs the committee, said: ‘The government should be using scientific evidence to make policy and the chief science adviser should hold the noses of ministers and departmental chief scientists to the grindstone on that.’
A spokesman for Professor Beddington said: ‘There will of course be times when contradictions exist between scientific advice and other policy imperatives but the chief scientist has and will continue to challenge policy on scientific grounds when he feels it is right to do so.’
(Read more in the Guardian)
--------------------
BBC News reported that a Japanese satellite has been launched that will map the abundance and location of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Gosat (Global Greenhouse Observation by Satellite) will orbit Earth and measure two key greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, over nearly the entire surface of the planet.
Gosat’s main purpose is to identify and monitor sources of carbon dioxide, to ensure compliance with international treaties. However, its data could also be used to quantify ‘sinks’ – forests and oceans that ‘mop up’ carbon dioxide.
--------------------
Also this week, research published in the journal Science revealed that trees in the western United States are dying twice as quickly as they did in 1955. In the Pacific north-west and British Columbia, death rates of trees had doubled in 17 years.
’The trend was pervasive across a wide variety of forest types, across all elevations, in trees of all sizes and among major species,’ said Phillip van Mantgem of the US Geological Survey. ‘At the same time, the rate of new establishment of trees didn’t change.’
The researchers think that warming global temperature is the most likely cause, reported the Guardian, as it lengthens the summer drought and encourages the growth of insects and diseases that attack the plants. Factors such as overcrowding, forest fragmentation and air pollution were ruled out.
Ecologists expressed concern that rather than acting as carbon sinks, the affected forests could turn into a source of carbon dioxide as the dead material decays. Mark Harmon, a forest ecologist at Oregon State University, said that the study raised the possibility that a climate feedback loop could develop from the increased death rate of trees, as the increased release of carbon dioxide and reduced absorption would lead to even higher levels of global warming.
--------------------
The Guardian also reported that new data from Antarctica has shown that overall the region is warming in step with the southern hemisphere as a whole.
There had previously been an apparent contradiction between global warming and the observation that East Antarctica has been getting slightly colder over the last few decades.
The new information from the remote and inaccessible West Antarctic region, based on ground measurements and satellite data, has shown that this region has warmed rapidly, by 0.17 degrees Celcius each decade sicne 1957, outweighing the cooling seen in East Antarctica. The work has been published in Nature.
The East Antarctic cooling is due in part to the ozone hole that opens in the atmosphere each year. The ozone is expected to recover by mid-century since ozone-destroying gas emission have almost been eliminated. Gareth Marshall, British Antarctic Survey climatologist, says that when this happens, there will be a rapid catch up of temperatures.
--------------------
Scientists have found that a genetic mutation that greatly increases the risk of heart disease in middle age is carried by one in 25 people of Indian origin.
The mutation was originally identified five years ago in two Indian families with a history of heart disease. Its importance was only discovered after the DNA of almost 1,500 people from different regions of India was studied.
’The mutation leads to the formation of an abnormal protein,’ said study leader Kumarasamy Thangaraj, from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad. ‘Young people can degrade the abnormal protein and remain healthy, but as they get older it builds up and eventually results in the symptoms we see.’
According to the international team who conducted the research published in Nature Genetics, it is rare to find a gene which has such a big effect and is so common. People who have the mutation have seven times the risk of developing of heart disease as people without it. ‘The bad news is that many of these mutation carriers have no warning that they are in danger,’ said co-author Perundurai Dhandapany at Madurai Kamaraj University.
Genetic screening would enable early identification of those at risk, although at the moment there are no specific treatment options and doctors would only be able to advise carriers on how to make improvements to their lifestyle. Ultimately though, it may be possible to develop a drug that can boost the body’s ability to break down the abnormal heart protein.
(Read more in the Guardian and at BBC News)
--------------------
Researchers at Imperial College London have identified what could be MRSA’s ‘Achilles’ heel’. It is the first time a key stimulus behind the bacteria’s growth has been isolated and could lead to a novel treatment against the infection that affected more than 700 patients between July and September last year.
The enzyme, LtaS, creates part of the outer layer of MRSA cells, called LTA, that is involved in cell growth and division. Without LTA the cell cannot grow properly and eventually dies.
Dr Angelika Grundling, co-author of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper, told the Telegraph that developing a drug that knocks out the LtaS enzyme ‘will provide us with a new way to disable the growth of these cells, which would represent a novel new treatment for MRSA and other Staphylococcus aureus infections’.
--------------------
DNA tests on the dung of mountain gorillas has revealed that there could be even fewer of the animals left in the wild than previously thought, reported the Telegraph.
Traditionally, species population in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, one of their main habitats, has been estimated by counting their nests. According to this method, 336 gorillas live there. However, genetic analysis of the faeces identified only 302 separate genetic codes. The findings, reported in New Scientist magazine, suggest that some of the animals create more than one nest.
’It is much better to have an accurate estimation of the population,’ said James Burton from the Earthwatch Institute in Oxford. ‘Knowing whether it is increasing or decreasing governs the conservation activities.’
--------------------
The man in the moon may once have faced away from Earth, reported the Guardian. That is, until the impact of a large asteroid billions of years ago set the moon spinning and flipped it around.
Scientists at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics in France analysed the age and locations of 46 craters formed by asteroid impacts into the moon’s surface. The orbit of the moon relative to the Earth means that people looking up from Earth always see the same side. If this side had always pointed towards us then more craters would be expected on the western side of the moon, because that is the moon’s direction of travel. Instead, more older craters were found on the eastern side.
’The simplest interpretation of [our] observations is that the oldest lunar impact basins formed when the present-day “nearside” of the moon was directed away from the Earth and that a single impact subsequently reoriented the moon about its spin axis by 180 degrees,’ wrote the authors in the journal Icarus.
--------------------
And finally...
Just how did Michael Caine’s character Charlie Croker get his gang and gold bullion off the bus that we last saw hanging precariously over a sheer Alpine drop? A Royal Society of Chemistry competition may finally have provided the answer to The Italian Job’s 40-year-old cliffhanger.
At the end of the film, the robbers were celebrating their successful getaway on the way to Switzerland when it skidded off the mountain road, leaving the 1964 Bedford VAL14 coach see-sawing over the precipice – gold bars at the back of the vehicle perfectly balancing the weight of 10 people at the front.
The Royal Society of Chemistry set the challenge to work out a method to extract the gold within 30 minutes without using a helicopter, and to prove it with maths. IT Manager John Godwin, 39, came up with an 3-step solution that won him the competition and a trip to Turin, where the 1969 film was made. His ingenious method was outlined in the Independent.
Step 1: punch out the middle set of windows, relieving weight from the back of the bus and enabling a crew member to lean out and punch in the front windows – so that the weight of the glass wouldn’t be lost from the front. Step 2: lower a crew member out of the window to let down the front tyres. This would reduce the vehicle’s rocking motion. Step 3: empty the fuel tank.
There should now be enough weight in the front end of the bus to enable one of the gang to get off and gather rocks to further weigh it down so that someone could crawl to the back of the bus and retrieve the gold. Simple really.
The major news of the week was the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States. Many scientists welcomed the results of the presidential election last year and expect positive policy changes, reports BBC News. As Nobel prize-winner Sir John Sulston put it, ‘We’re expecting Obama to swing the thing around. He’s got good advisors on board.’
President Obama has previously stated that, ‘Today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet.’ In his inaugural address, he pledged to ‘restore science to its rightful place’.
One of his pledges was to lift restrictions that President Bush had imposed on stem cell research. Already, the Food and Drug Administration has passed a ruling that will allow doctors to inject specialised cells grown from embryonic tissue into patients who have recently been paralysed from the chest down. This will be the first human clinical trial of the therapy that it is hoped will restore spinal cord function and prevent lifelong paralysis.
Dr Thomas Okarma, Chief Executive of Geron Corporation, the company which has developed the stem cell therapy, told the Times that the length of time it had taken for the therapy to reach clinical trials was the direct result of the Bush administration’s restrictions on stem cell research. ‘It has had huge implications.. It just froze the field. The FDA has not been able to compare our evidence with work from federally funded scientists because there isn’t any. The delay caused by the White House has meant that there are people out there who might have benefited, but who now cannot.’
Animal experiments suggest that the therapy is unlikely to be able to help people who are already paralysed, but rather be most effective if administered in the first two weeks after spinal cord injury.
In general, the spinal cords of most patients paralysed after injury are not severed, but bruised. This leads to severe inflammation that in turn kills of oligodendrocyte cells. These cells have an important protective function because they produce the myelin that coats the shafts of nerve cells, functioning like a kind of electrical insulation and allowing the nerve cells to send signals between the brain and body. When oligodendrocytes die off after spinal trauma, the nerve cells lose their protective sheath and cease to function.
Researchers hope that by injecting oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, they will cause the regrowth of myelin and restore the function of the damaged nerves.
--------------------
Meanwhile, back on the other side of the Atlantic, UK MPs have criticised the government’s chief scientific advisor, Professor John Beddington, for failing to question the government’s use of scientific evidence in making policies.
A report published this week by the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee, states: ‘In both the case of cannabis reclassification and homeopathic treatments we are concerned that the government chief scientific adviser has not chosen to challenge departments where no evidence was produced.’
Phil Willis, who chairs the committee, said: ‘The government should be using scientific evidence to make policy and the chief science adviser should hold the noses of ministers and departmental chief scientists to the grindstone on that.’
A spokesman for Professor Beddington said: ‘There will of course be times when contradictions exist between scientific advice and other policy imperatives but the chief scientist has and will continue to challenge policy on scientific grounds when he feels it is right to do so.’
(Read more in the Guardian)
--------------------
BBC News reported that a Japanese satellite has been launched that will map the abundance and location of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Gosat (Global Greenhouse Observation by Satellite) will orbit Earth and measure two key greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, over nearly the entire surface of the planet.
Gosat’s main purpose is to identify and monitor sources of carbon dioxide, to ensure compliance with international treaties. However, its data could also be used to quantify ‘sinks’ – forests and oceans that ‘mop up’ carbon dioxide.
--------------------
Also this week, research published in the journal Science revealed that trees in the western United States are dying twice as quickly as they did in 1955. In the Pacific north-west and British Columbia, death rates of trees had doubled in 17 years.
’The trend was pervasive across a wide variety of forest types, across all elevations, in trees of all sizes and among major species,’ said Phillip van Mantgem of the US Geological Survey. ‘At the same time, the rate of new establishment of trees didn’t change.’
The researchers think that warming global temperature is the most likely cause, reported the Guardian, as it lengthens the summer drought and encourages the growth of insects and diseases that attack the plants. Factors such as overcrowding, forest fragmentation and air pollution were ruled out.
Ecologists expressed concern that rather than acting as carbon sinks, the affected forests could turn into a source of carbon dioxide as the dead material decays. Mark Harmon, a forest ecologist at Oregon State University, said that the study raised the possibility that a climate feedback loop could develop from the increased death rate of trees, as the increased release of carbon dioxide and reduced absorption would lead to even higher levels of global warming.
--------------------
The Guardian also reported that new data from Antarctica has shown that overall the region is warming in step with the southern hemisphere as a whole.
There had previously been an apparent contradiction between global warming and the observation that East Antarctica has been getting slightly colder over the last few decades.
The new information from the remote and inaccessible West Antarctic region, based on ground measurements and satellite data, has shown that this region has warmed rapidly, by 0.17 degrees Celcius each decade sicne 1957, outweighing the cooling seen in East Antarctica. The work has been published in Nature.
The East Antarctic cooling is due in part to the ozone hole that opens in the atmosphere each year. The ozone is expected to recover by mid-century since ozone-destroying gas emission have almost been eliminated. Gareth Marshall, British Antarctic Survey climatologist, says that when this happens, there will be a rapid catch up of temperatures.
--------------------
Scientists have found that a genetic mutation that greatly increases the risk of heart disease in middle age is carried by one in 25 people of Indian origin.
The mutation was originally identified five years ago in two Indian families with a history of heart disease. Its importance was only discovered after the DNA of almost 1,500 people from different regions of India was studied.
’The mutation leads to the formation of an abnormal protein,’ said study leader Kumarasamy Thangaraj, from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad. ‘Young people can degrade the abnormal protein and remain healthy, but as they get older it builds up and eventually results in the symptoms we see.’
According to the international team who conducted the research published in Nature Genetics, it is rare to find a gene which has such a big effect and is so common. People who have the mutation have seven times the risk of developing of heart disease as people without it. ‘The bad news is that many of these mutation carriers have no warning that they are in danger,’ said co-author Perundurai Dhandapany at Madurai Kamaraj University.
Genetic screening would enable early identification of those at risk, although at the moment there are no specific treatment options and doctors would only be able to advise carriers on how to make improvements to their lifestyle. Ultimately though, it may be possible to develop a drug that can boost the body’s ability to break down the abnormal heart protein.
(Read more in the Guardian and at BBC News)
--------------------
Researchers at Imperial College London have identified what could be MRSA’s ‘Achilles’ heel’. It is the first time a key stimulus behind the bacteria’s growth has been isolated and could lead to a novel treatment against the infection that affected more than 700 patients between July and September last year.
The enzyme, LtaS, creates part of the outer layer of MRSA cells, called LTA, that is involved in cell growth and division. Without LTA the cell cannot grow properly and eventually dies.
Dr Angelika Grundling, co-author of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper, told the Telegraph that developing a drug that knocks out the LtaS enzyme ‘will provide us with a new way to disable the growth of these cells, which would represent a novel new treatment for MRSA and other Staphylococcus aureus infections’.
--------------------
DNA tests on the dung of mountain gorillas has revealed that there could be even fewer of the animals left in the wild than previously thought, reported the Telegraph.
Traditionally, species population in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, one of their main habitats, has been estimated by counting their nests. According to this method, 336 gorillas live there. However, genetic analysis of the faeces identified only 302 separate genetic codes. The findings, reported in New Scientist magazine, suggest that some of the animals create more than one nest.
’It is much better to have an accurate estimation of the population,’ said James Burton from the Earthwatch Institute in Oxford. ‘Knowing whether it is increasing or decreasing governs the conservation activities.’
--------------------
The man in the moon may once have faced away from Earth, reported the Guardian. That is, until the impact of a large asteroid billions of years ago set the moon spinning and flipped it around.
Scientists at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics in France analysed the age and locations of 46 craters formed by asteroid impacts into the moon’s surface. The orbit of the moon relative to the Earth means that people looking up from Earth always see the same side. If this side had always pointed towards us then more craters would be expected on the western side of the moon, because that is the moon’s direction of travel. Instead, more older craters were found on the eastern side.
’The simplest interpretation of [our] observations is that the oldest lunar impact basins formed when the present-day “nearside” of the moon was directed away from the Earth and that a single impact subsequently reoriented the moon about its spin axis by 180 degrees,’ wrote the authors in the journal Icarus.
--------------------
And finally...
Just how did Michael Caine’s character Charlie Croker get his gang and gold bullion off the bus that we last saw hanging precariously over a sheer Alpine drop? A Royal Society of Chemistry competition may finally have provided the answer to The Italian Job’s 40-year-old cliffhanger.
At the end of the film, the robbers were celebrating their successful getaway on the way to Switzerland when it skidded off the mountain road, leaving the 1964 Bedford VAL14 coach see-sawing over the precipice – gold bars at the back of the vehicle perfectly balancing the weight of 10 people at the front.
The Royal Society of Chemistry set the challenge to work out a method to extract the gold within 30 minutes without using a helicopter, and to prove it with maths. IT Manager John Godwin, 39, came up with an 3-step solution that won him the competition and a trip to Turin, where the 1969 film was made. His ingenious method was outlined in the Independent.
Step 1: punch out the middle set of windows, relieving weight from the back of the bus and enabling a crew member to lean out and punch in the front windows – so that the weight of the glass wouldn’t be lost from the front. Step 2: lower a crew member out of the window to let down the front tyres. This would reduce the vehicle’s rocking motion. Step 3: empty the fuel tank.
There should now be enough weight in the front end of the bus to enable one of the gang to get off and gather rocks to further weigh it down so that someone could crawl to the back of the bus and retrieve the gold. Simple really.
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