Science News Digest 1st March 2010
In the science news this week, we take a look at new research on repairing damaged hearing, the launch of a new science audio library, seagull shenanigans at Sellafield, new ultra efficient exercise regimes and finally.... why polygamy pays.
Good vibrations
Researchers from Creighton University in Nebraska have made a discovery that could save the hearing of people exposed to exceptionally loud noises such as gunfire or explosions in the future as reported this week in New Scientist. However, they have warned that there is only a ten day window in which they can do this.
Testing on guinea pigs, the researchers used a gene called ‘Math1’ to regenerate the hair cells which are damaged by loud noises. These hairs pick up the vibrations made by sound waves, but if they are exposed to exceptionally loud noises, it can kill them off.
To test the effectiveness of the Math1 gene, the team monitored the electrical activity in the guinea pigs brainstems in responses to different noises and then exposed them to the audio equivalent of 200 rounds of gunfire, leaving them unable to hear anything quieter than a chainsaw.
Yet once the researchers injected the subjects with a virus loaded with Math1 their hearing almost completely recovered.
Upon further investigation, the newly grown cells were viewed under a microscope and they were found to contain a green protein indicating that they had taken up the gene.
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Danger mouse
According to folklore, you’re never more than 8 feet away from a rat in London indicating the scale of the pest problem facing the Capital.
However, news reported in the Times this week, has indicated that Sellafield nuclear plant of all places may also be facing a pest invasion that has become so serious a seabird cull is on the cards.
Dealing with any pest problem can be tricky, but when the added factor that they are also classed as nuclear waste if they die on site makes the situation that much more complex.
The 645 acre site in Cumbria is reported to be suffering from an ongoing offensive by seagulls, mice and stray cats and with open ponds containing plutonium and other radioactive waste, the birds are flying in from the coast and floating round on them, acting as a ‘gateway to poison the wider area’ according to Martin Forwood, of Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment.
The media relations manager for Sellafield, Ali McKibbin said that “the seagull problem was “under control”, there was no danger to the public and any methods used to control bird numbers would be humane.”
There are currently 350 animal carcasses, with about 30 new carcasses collected every month being stored in an industrial freezer on the site, as they must be disposed of as nuclear waste in a special landfill facility onsite.
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Witness the Fitness
Currently in Britain, we are recommended to partake in at least 2.5 hours of moderate exercise per week, but Jan Helgerud, an exercise expert at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology is confident that he has found a quicker, more efficient way.
He said in the Telegraph this week;
"High-intensity interval training is twice as effective as normal exercise, this is like finding a new pill that works twice as well ... we should immediately throw out the old way of exercising."
Interval training was originally developed for Olympic athletes, but it is being increasingly in studies involving older people with positive effects.
The training itself involves working very hard for a few minutes, with rest periods in between sets. Helgerud recommended 4 sessions lasting four minutes each, with three minutes of recovery time in between.
In contrast to the view he feels are currently held by officials, who are deemed to be too afraid of recommending intense training, fearing it might be too much for some people, Helgerud said; "I'm much more afraid of people not exercising at all," "Inactivity is what's killing us."
The results seem to stack up too, as comparisons with a normal exercise routine have shown ‘those doing interval training can double their endurance, improve their oxygen use and strength by more than 10 percent, and their speed by at least 5 percent.’
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Chatalogue
A study carried out by the British Library has found that 30 leading British scientists including 9 Nobel winners have died leaving little or no archive of their work.
Therefore, to ensure that this sort of thing doesn’t continue, they, along with charity National Life Stories and the science museum, are undertaking a project to create a ‘vast, online oral history and archive of British science.’ according to the BBC.
The project is expected to take three years and around 200 British scientists selected by an advisory board will be interviewed and recorded for an audio library.
"We have long been painfully aware that there's a marked absence of significant recordings of scientists," said Dr Rob Perks, curator of oral history at the British Library.
As well as asking the subjects about their work, they will also be asked about their childhood, education, influences, relationships and frustrations to give a fuller picture of their lives.
And finally......
Promiscuity pays…
Monogamy could be our downfall according to reports in the news this week. The stories, based on new research by the Universities of Exeter and Liverpool, has used a study of fruitflies to test the effects of mating with one partner over a course of 15 generations.
The study focused on the sex-ratio distortion (SR) chromosome and found that having multiple partners (polyandry) can suppress the spread of this chromosome, which, left unchecked would wipe out the male ‘Y’ chromosome.
To test this fully, they used two groups of fruit flies. Those who were allowed to mate ‘naturally’ with multiple partners and those who were restricted to one mate each.
Over the 15 generations, five of the 12 populations in monogamous breeding situations were wiped out because there were no males left.
The rationale behind this was that having multiple mates suppressed the spread of the SR chromosome, as males who carry it only produce half as much sperm as those without it, meaning that the sperm of the former will lose out to that of the latter by simple probability and therefore normalising the population.
Lead author Professor Nina Wedell, of the University of Exeter, said: ''We were surprised by how quickly - within nine generations - a population could die out as a result of females only mating with one partner.
Read more in the Telegraph
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