The BA Science News Digest - 13 January 2006
In the news this week, bird flu appears to be mutating whilst UK levels of winter flu are at an all-time low, South Korea's cloning scandal has unexpected consequences, and scientists explain why you may have been better staying in bed...
Europe – and the rest of the world – has been keeping a close eye on cases of bird flu in Turkey this week, where three children have died of the deadly H5N1 strain and over a dozen others are showing symptoms. And, as the Guardian reports, scientists have found that the strain has begun to mutate.
Whilst all the focus has been on bird flu, the Daily Telegraph this week reported that levels of normal winter flu are at ‘an all-time low and the chances of a bad flu season this year are vanishing’. Scientists claim that this is in part due to the population building up immunity and part due to improved living conditions.
In South Korea, pioneering cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk is in deeper trouble after a university panel found further fabrications in his research, as BBC News Online reports.
Whilst Dr Hwang’s fraud is now almost incontrovertible, it was not always so. The Washington Post reports that when South Korean investigative television reporters originally exposed the fraud and ethical breaches, ‘virtually nobody believed them. Furious viewers demonstrated against their program, PD Notebook, and clogged its computers with e-mails. The show's producer received death threats.’
Writing in the Guardian, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, argues that, although Dr Hwang’s falsifications are inexcusable, there is another, more positive lesson to be learnt...
'Scientists have quickly rooted out a fabrication of staggering proportions, a self-correction which is to science's credit, not shame. What other area of society promotes such persistent self-criticism, acknowledges its errors so transparently, and rewrites its record?’
Back in the UK, scientists are hoping to create hybrid rabbit-human embryos rather than having to rely on human eggs to clone embryos. The embryos will be used to create stem cells for research on motor neurone disease. As the Daily Telegraph reports, the scientists involved claim this is as a knock-on effect of the scandal surrounding Dr Hwang..
'Dr Hwang Woo-suk's team appear to have coerced women into donating eggs. As a result of the scandal, fewer women will now be willing to donate eggs for cloning research in Britain, Prof Chris Shaw of the Institute of Psychiatry, London, predicted.’
Meanwhile in Taiwan, scientists have been carrying out cutting-edge research creating... glow in the dark pigs. As BBC News Online reports, the transgenic pigs were created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo. The researchers hope the pigs will boost the island's stem cell research, as well as helping with the study of human disease.
A direct link has been found between climate change and the extinction of dozens of frog and amphibian species in tropical America, reports the Daily Telegraph. The team behind the research warn that whilst it’s the frogs today, ultimately it will be humans who face extinction.
Scientists this week identified a surprising contributor to greenhouse gases – plants. According a study, reported on National Geographic, grasses and other green growth may produce 10 to 30 percent of Earth's annual methane output.
In other climate change-related news, New Scientist reports that a US environmental think tank has claimed China and India ‘hold the world in balance’. ‘The choices these two countries make in the next few years will lead the world either towards growing ecological and political instability – or down a development path based on efficiency and better stewardship of resources.’
Did Santa bring you an Xbox 360 for Christmas? Or maybe a new game, such as Grand Theft Auto or Resident Evil 4? Then beware...
The Times reported this week that ‘violent computer games trigger a mechanism in the brain that makes people more likely to behave aggressively... [and] become desensitised to shocking acts of aggression. Psychologists found that this brain alteration, in turn, appeared to prime regular users of such games to act more violently.’
Scientists believe they have found the first example of teaching to be found in the animal world. Not, as you might imagine, amongst the primates, but by ants. The insects ‘have been shown to give less alert comrades lessons about locating food’, reports the Daily Telegraph.
‘Although the ants thrive on one-to-one tuition, dullards and dunces will be encouraged by the discovery that it is the value of what is being taught and the teaching style, rather than brain size, that has most influenced the evolution of teaching.’
And finally, do you ever wish you hadn’t got out of bed, that you’d just switched your alarm clock off, snuggled back under the duvet and let the day pass you by? It might have been a good idea...
A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found that your thinking ability may be better when you are drunk than when you first get up, as BBC News Online reports.
Could that explain coming into work with odd socks and jumper on back to front? Or is it just stupidity? I wonder.
Please note that the BA cannot accept responsibility for content of external sites. Also note that some news stories become available to subscribers only after 7 days.
To receive a weekly Science News Digest alert, register here.
Europe – and the rest of the world – has been keeping a close eye on cases of bird flu in Turkey this week, where three children have died of the deadly H5N1 strain and over a dozen others are showing symptoms. And, as the Guardian reports, scientists have found that the strain has begun to mutate.
Whilst all the focus has been on bird flu, the Daily Telegraph this week reported that levels of normal winter flu are at ‘an all-time low and the chances of a bad flu season this year are vanishing’. Scientists claim that this is in part due to the population building up immunity and part due to improved living conditions.
In South Korea, pioneering cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk is in deeper trouble after a university panel found further fabrications in his research, as BBC News Online reports.
Whilst Dr Hwang’s fraud is now almost incontrovertible, it was not always so. The Washington Post reports that when South Korean investigative television reporters originally exposed the fraud and ethical breaches, ‘virtually nobody believed them. Furious viewers demonstrated against their program, PD Notebook, and clogged its computers with e-mails. The show's producer received death threats.’
Writing in the Guardian, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, argues that, although Dr Hwang’s falsifications are inexcusable, there is another, more positive lesson to be learnt...
'Scientists have quickly rooted out a fabrication of staggering proportions, a self-correction which is to science's credit, not shame. What other area of society promotes such persistent self-criticism, acknowledges its errors so transparently, and rewrites its record?’
Back in the UK, scientists are hoping to create hybrid rabbit-human embryos rather than having to rely on human eggs to clone embryos. The embryos will be used to create stem cells for research on motor neurone disease. As the Daily Telegraph reports, the scientists involved claim this is as a knock-on effect of the scandal surrounding Dr Hwang..
'Dr Hwang Woo-suk's team appear to have coerced women into donating eggs. As a result of the scandal, fewer women will now be willing to donate eggs for cloning research in Britain, Prof Chris Shaw of the Institute of Psychiatry, London, predicted.’
Meanwhile in Taiwan, scientists have been carrying out cutting-edge research creating... glow in the dark pigs. As BBC News Online reports, the transgenic pigs were created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo. The researchers hope the pigs will boost the island's stem cell research, as well as helping with the study of human disease.
A direct link has been found between climate change and the extinction of dozens of frog and amphibian species in tropical America, reports the Daily Telegraph. The team behind the research warn that whilst it’s the frogs today, ultimately it will be humans who face extinction.
Scientists this week identified a surprising contributor to greenhouse gases – plants. According a study, reported on National Geographic, grasses and other green growth may produce 10 to 30 percent of Earth's annual methane output.
In other climate change-related news, New Scientist reports that a US environmental think tank has claimed China and India ‘hold the world in balance’. ‘The choices these two countries make in the next few years will lead the world either towards growing ecological and political instability – or down a development path based on efficiency and better stewardship of resources.’
Did Santa bring you an Xbox 360 for Christmas? Or maybe a new game, such as Grand Theft Auto or Resident Evil 4? Then beware...
The Times reported this week that ‘violent computer games trigger a mechanism in the brain that makes people more likely to behave aggressively... [and] become desensitised to shocking acts of aggression. Psychologists found that this brain alteration, in turn, appeared to prime regular users of such games to act more violently.’
Scientists believe they have found the first example of teaching to be found in the animal world. Not, as you might imagine, amongst the primates, but by ants. The insects ‘have been shown to give less alert comrades lessons about locating food’, reports the Daily Telegraph.
‘Although the ants thrive on one-to-one tuition, dullards and dunces will be encouraged by the discovery that it is the value of what is being taught and the teaching style, rather than brain size, that has most influenced the evolution of teaching.’
And finally, do you ever wish you hadn’t got out of bed, that you’d just switched your alarm clock off, snuggled back under the duvet and let the day pass you by? It might have been a good idea...
A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found that your thinking ability may be better when you are drunk than when you first get up, as BBC News Online reports.
Could that explain coming into work with odd socks and jumper on back to front? Or is it just stupidity? I wonder.
Please note that the BA cannot accept responsibility for content of external sites. Also note that some news stories become available to subscribers only after 7 days.
To receive a weekly Science News Digest alert, register here.
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