Science News Digest 19th July 2010
In the science news this week, we learn about a new trial for arthritic knees, find out about the latest controversy surrounding the ‘God particle’, discover a multitude of new species unknown to science, uncover more information about our distant ancestors… and finally learn about the mystery of the missing bats.
I can feel it in my bones.
This year sees the beginning of the first UK trial involving the use of cultured stem cells to treat osteoarthritis.
Funded by Arthritis Research UK, the year long trial run at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital by scientists from Keele University will involve up to 70 participants and focus on the knee joint.
Osteoarthritis affects 8 million people in the UK, and is characterised by damage to the cartilage on the surface of a joint. There is currently little effective treatment, apart from joint replacement, which is a highly invasive procedure.
The trial will test the effectiveness of three therapies. Cartilage cells, known as chondrocytes, will be removed from a patient by keyhole surgery, as will bone marrow stem cells. These cells will be grown in a laboratory and reimplanted into the patient’s damaged knee cartilage. Some patients will receive only the cartilage cells, some will receive only the stem cells and some will receive both.
The patients will be assessed for a year, and the quality of new cartilage will be measured, as will their ability to perform everyday activities.
Professor Sally Roberts from Keele University, lead scientist in this trial says, "We are using the body's own cells to repair damaged joints. The hope is that it will be permanent and long-term repair”
However Prof. Roberts warns, “Stem cells are portrayed as ‘wonder cells’ that can do anything, but they can’t give you the joints of a 15 year old,”
Full story at the BBC
--------------------
No proof of the ‘God Particle’… yet.
Rumours of the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson, the theoretical elementary particle thought to give mass to the universe, have been denied by scientists.
Tommaso Dorigo, a physicist from the University of Padua, hinted in his blog that physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Illinois USA, had discovered the Higgs Boson.
"It reached my ear, from two different, possibly independent sources, that an experiment at the Tevatron is about to release some evidence of a light Higgs boson signal,” he claimed.
This was quickly denied by Professor Stefan Söldner-Rembold, spokesman for the Dzero experiment at Tevatron who said, "Tommaso Dorigo's blog is not a reliable source and is in no way supported by us.”
Tevatron is a particle accelerator found in Fermilab was the largest in the world, until the completion of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern in Switzerland. The primary aim of the LHC is to prove the existence of the Higgs boson and confirm the ‘standard model’ of particle physics. Tevatron was originally planned to be shut down in 2011, superseded by the LHC, but engineering difficulties with the latter mean that the Tevatron may stay operational for longer and beat the LHC to the discovery of the mysterious Higgs boson.
Full story at the Telegraph
--------------------
Kenyan species evolve in splendid isolation.
Scientists have been exploring an isolated area of tropical mountain forest found in the Kenyan Matthews mountain range.
The mountains are surrounded by hundreds of miles of flat savannah, and have been for thousands of years.
This has allowed the animals and plants in the forest to evolve in isolation, as the grasslands surrounding it are too vast for insects and plants to cross.
The area contains multitudes of species currently unknown to science. In two weeks, entomologist Dino Martins was able to catalogue 125 butterfly species, approximately 15% of the total found in Kenya, and more than double the total number seen in the UK. The forest is also home to the Matthews Cycad, an ancient species of palm-like tree, only found in a small number of east African forests.
"Those insects also tell us the ecosystem has been very stable, and the high diversity especially of butterflies suggests that the forest has been here not just for a 1,000 or 10,000 years but actually for several million years," he says.
The forest is threatened by the encroachment of a growing number of local cattle herders. Space is needed for the cattle to graze, and wood is needed for the people to burn.
Full story at the BBC
--------------------
Monkeying around.
The discovery of a 29 million year old skull in the Saudi Arabian hills has lead to a rethink about the evolution of apes and humanoids.
The skull from the primate Saadanius hijazensis is from neither a monkey, nor an ape, but shares characteristics with both, and has lead palaeontologists to rethink when Old World Monkeys and Apes diverged. The find suggests that this occurred millions of years later than previously thought.
Today Old world monkeys are found in Africa and Asia and include the most recognisable species of monkeys. The find of this ancestor sheds more light on when this group of animals split from the higher apes. Dr William Sanders from the University of Michigan who lead the research described the skull as an “extraordinary find”.
"If we knew something about the time period and the condition this animal was living in, we might be able to discover what brought about the changes that led to [the evolution of] apes and humans,” said Dr. Sanders.
Full Story from the Daily Mail
--------------------
And finally...
Where are the girl bats, man?
A species of bat, found only in Madagascar, has been puzzling biologists.
The sucker-footed bat, Myzopoda aurita, roosts in rolled up palm leaves, and gets its name from the suction cups it has on its wrists and ankles.
These pads secrete a fluid which the bat uses to stick to surfaces. The bats live on a diet of moths and beetles.
What is confusing scientists is that in recent studies undertaken on these bats, no females have been found, although hundreds of males have been sighted or captured.
Professor Paul Racey from the University of Aberdeen and his Madagascan colleagues have been studying the bats near the village of Kianjavato for several years, but are still mystified as to where the female bats live.
Professor Racey and his team have identified 133 separate roosts, with each containing nine and 51 individual males, but no females.
Female sucker-footed bats do exist however, and the male bats do find them as juvenile male bats arrive in Kianjavato twice a year. This young bats do not have fully developed wing bones, suggesting they have not travelled large distances and must have been born close by. It is currently thought that the female bats live in seclusion, perhaps choosing a habitat of better quality.
Full story at the BBC
I can feel it in my bones.
This year sees the beginning of the first UK trial involving the use of cultured stem cells to treat osteoarthritis.
Funded by Arthritis Research UK, the year long trial run at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital by scientists from Keele University will involve up to 70 participants and focus on the knee joint.
Osteoarthritis affects 8 million people in the UK, and is characterised by damage to the cartilage on the surface of a joint. There is currently little effective treatment, apart from joint replacement, which is a highly invasive procedure.
The trial will test the effectiveness of three therapies. Cartilage cells, known as chondrocytes, will be removed from a patient by keyhole surgery, as will bone marrow stem cells. These cells will be grown in a laboratory and reimplanted into the patient’s damaged knee cartilage. Some patients will receive only the cartilage cells, some will receive only the stem cells and some will receive both.
The patients will be assessed for a year, and the quality of new cartilage will be measured, as will their ability to perform everyday activities.
Professor Sally Roberts from Keele University, lead scientist in this trial says, "We are using the body's own cells to repair damaged joints. The hope is that it will be permanent and long-term repair”
However Prof. Roberts warns, “Stem cells are portrayed as ‘wonder cells’ that can do anything, but they can’t give you the joints of a 15 year old,”
Full story at the BBC
--------------------
No proof of the ‘God Particle’… yet.
Rumours of the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson, the theoretical elementary particle thought to give mass to the universe, have been denied by scientists.
Tommaso Dorigo, a physicist from the University of Padua, hinted in his blog that physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Illinois USA, had discovered the Higgs Boson.
"It reached my ear, from two different, possibly independent sources, that an experiment at the Tevatron is about to release some evidence of a light Higgs boson signal,” he claimed.
This was quickly denied by Professor Stefan Söldner-Rembold, spokesman for the Dzero experiment at Tevatron who said, "Tommaso Dorigo's blog is not a reliable source and is in no way supported by us.”
Tevatron is a particle accelerator found in Fermilab was the largest in the world, until the completion of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern in Switzerland. The primary aim of the LHC is to prove the existence of the Higgs boson and confirm the ‘standard model’ of particle physics. Tevatron was originally planned to be shut down in 2011, superseded by the LHC, but engineering difficulties with the latter mean that the Tevatron may stay operational for longer and beat the LHC to the discovery of the mysterious Higgs boson.
Full story at the Telegraph
--------------------
Kenyan species evolve in splendid isolation.
Scientists have been exploring an isolated area of tropical mountain forest found in the Kenyan Matthews mountain range.
The mountains are surrounded by hundreds of miles of flat savannah, and have been for thousands of years.
This has allowed the animals and plants in the forest to evolve in isolation, as the grasslands surrounding it are too vast for insects and plants to cross.
The area contains multitudes of species currently unknown to science. In two weeks, entomologist Dino Martins was able to catalogue 125 butterfly species, approximately 15% of the total found in Kenya, and more than double the total number seen in the UK. The forest is also home to the Matthews Cycad, an ancient species of palm-like tree, only found in a small number of east African forests.
"Those insects also tell us the ecosystem has been very stable, and the high diversity especially of butterflies suggests that the forest has been here not just for a 1,000 or 10,000 years but actually for several million years," he says.
The forest is threatened by the encroachment of a growing number of local cattle herders. Space is needed for the cattle to graze, and wood is needed for the people to burn.
Full story at the BBC
--------------------
Monkeying around.
The discovery of a 29 million year old skull in the Saudi Arabian hills has lead to a rethink about the evolution of apes and humanoids.
The skull from the primate Saadanius hijazensis is from neither a monkey, nor an ape, but shares characteristics with both, and has lead palaeontologists to rethink when Old World Monkeys and Apes diverged. The find suggests that this occurred millions of years later than previously thought.
Today Old world monkeys are found in Africa and Asia and include the most recognisable species of monkeys. The find of this ancestor sheds more light on when this group of animals split from the higher apes. Dr William Sanders from the University of Michigan who lead the research described the skull as an “extraordinary find”.
"If we knew something about the time period and the condition this animal was living in, we might be able to discover what brought about the changes that led to [the evolution of] apes and humans,” said Dr. Sanders.
Full Story from the Daily Mail
--------------------
And finally...
Where are the girl bats, man?
A species of bat, found only in Madagascar, has been puzzling biologists.
The sucker-footed bat, Myzopoda aurita, roosts in rolled up palm leaves, and gets its name from the suction cups it has on its wrists and ankles.
These pads secrete a fluid which the bat uses to stick to surfaces. The bats live on a diet of moths and beetles.
What is confusing scientists is that in recent studies undertaken on these bats, no females have been found, although hundreds of males have been sighted or captured.
Professor Paul Racey from the University of Aberdeen and his Madagascan colleagues have been studying the bats near the village of Kianjavato for several years, but are still mystified as to where the female bats live.
Professor Racey and his team have identified 133 separate roosts, with each containing nine and 51 individual males, but no females.
Female sucker-footed bats do exist however, and the male bats do find them as juvenile male bats arrive in Kianjavato twice a year. This young bats do not have fully developed wing bones, suggesting they have not travelled large distances and must have been born close by. It is currently thought that the female bats live in seclusion, perhaps choosing a habitat of better quality.
Full story at the BBC
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