Science & Technology

Poultry cull starts at Japan farm hit by bird flu outbreak

2007-01-26T23:37:00.000+01:00

Officials began slaughtering tens of thousands of chickens at a poultry farm in southern Japan on Friday, following a new outbreak of bird flu this week.

It was not yet clear whether the virus that killed 3,000 chickens at the farm in Hyuga, in Japan's southern Miyazaki prefecture (state), was the deadly H5N1 strain.

A state laboratory near Tokyo was analyzing a virus taken from the dead chickens, and results were expected over the next few days.

About 150 officials from the prefectural government began culling about 49,000 remaining chickens at the Hyuga farm and packing the dead birds in bags, said official Hisao Takase.

Later Friday, the prefectural government announced a plan to kill 50,000 more chickens at a next-door farm as a precaution, another Miyazaki official Mamoru Tsunekichi said.

In another Miyazaki town earlier this month, 4,000 chickens died from the H5N1 strain.

The H5N1 virus has ravaged poultry stocks in Asia since 2003 and has killed at least 163 people around the world, according to the World Health Organization.

One human H5N1 infection has been confirmed in Japan, but no reported human deaths.

Bird flu remains hard for humans to catch, but international experts fear it may mutate into a form that could spread easily among humans and potentially kill millions around the world.

Miyazaki, about 900 kilometers (560 miles) southwest of Tokyo, is Japan's main chicken-producing region.

Virus Death Toll Rises In Kenya

2007-01-26T23:36:00.000+01:00

Officials in Kenya are trying to stop the spread of Rift Valley Fever, which has killed at least 148 people.

Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said the Rift Valley Fever death toll had gone up by 95 since the previous week with 380 confirmed cases of the disease caused by eating infected animals, the Kenya Times reported Friday.

Mutua denied reports the fever had entered Nairobi but said the fever had spread into Kenya's central provinces.

Police outside of Nairobi were under orders to erect roadblocks in an effort to keep infected animals out of the city.

The Kajiado district medical officer of health called on residents to help stop the spread of the disease.

"We need help from all areas to conduct awareness campaigns to the residents to avoid consuming raw animal products," Margaret Macharia told the Kenya Times.

NYC to Launch Official Condom

2007-01-26T23:34:00.000+01:00

Available soon from City Hall: an official New York City condom.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration is focused on reducing rates of sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS, and part of the strategy is the aggressive promotion of free condoms. Officials are banking on the idea that more people will use condoms if they're wrapped in jazzy packaging.

One idea for the design of the official city condom is a subway theme, with maps and colors of the different lines emblazoned on the wrappers. The health department says a number of possibilities are under consideration.

"Brands work, and people use branded items more than they use non branded items, whether it's a cola or a medicine even," Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said in an interview. "Brands add value and they increase use."

New York is already a big player in the condom market. The city hands out 1.5 million free condoms each month, or about 18 million a year. Hundreds of organizations get free condoms from the city and distribute them at various locations, including health clinics and advocacy groups, bars, restaurants, nail salons, nightclubs and even prisons.

By comparison, the Los Angeles County health department gives out just over a million condoms per year, according to Peter Kerndt, director of the department's STD program. In Los Angeles, health and advocacy organizations request and then restribute condoms, and individuals can order up to 10 at a time by calling a hot line.

New York negotiated a deal with the maker of the Lifestyles brand for 4 cents per condom, putting the expense to the city at just $720,000 annually, according to health officials.

Once the newly-designed condoms are available, city officials hope the distinctive wrapper will enable them to better understand the effectiveness of their distribution program. They plan to do that through the annual community health survey that polls 10,000 New Yorkers by telephone.

"We ask, 'Did you use a condom the last time you had sex?' And once this is launched, the next time we ask that question, of those people who say yes, we'll say, 'What did the wrapper look like?'" Frieden said. "And if they describe our wrapper, then we'll know that they would have used our condom."

Right now, it is difficult to know. The free condoms given out by the city are wrapped in the red packaging from the Lifestyles brand, a product of Ansell Healthcare Products LLC. The company declined to discuss its contract with the city and referred all questions to the health department.

The number of condoms distributed by the city multiplied several times over after the health department launched its online ordering system in 2005. Individuals cannot order there, but any other type of organization or venue can request unlimited free condoms through the Web site.

The Duplex, a bar in the West Village, offers free condoms in a bowl at its entryway and on a table by the restrooms. Day manager C.T. Cook said they order about 3,000 per month from the city.

"It's very important to show that we encourage safe sex and for people to be responsible," he said. "If you're under the influence, you might make poor judgements and act without thinking, so if it's easier to obtain condoms, this can probably help prevent mistakes."

Gay Men's Health Crisis, an non-profit dedicated to fighting AIDS, orders half a million free condoms each year, spokeswoman Lynn Schulman said. It is one of about 800 groups that did so last year.

The group offers the condoms in bowls scattered throughout their organization's offices, hands them out at the annual AIDS walk, and gives them to establishments like gay bars.

Widespread free distribution started after Frieden became health commissioner in 2002 and discovered that the city's STD disease clinics were limiting each patient to just a small number.

"I thought that was nuts _ of all the people you'd like to have an unlimited supply of condoms, it's people who have an STD," said Frieden. "Condoms work, they're just not where they need to be as often as they need to be."

There is now even a bowl of condoms outside Frieden's office.

More than 100,000 New Yorkers are living with HIV and AIDS. And city officials are troubled by one subcategory in particular _ the 1,000 or so people each year who find out they have AIDS, but never knew they even had HIV. AIDS remains the third-leading cause of death among New Yorkers under 65.

It can take years for AIDS to develop in HIV-infected people, which means they can unknowingly infect others during that time if they don't know they have the virus and aren't using condoms.

New York officials don't yet have their own data on the effectiveness of their free condom program, but many experts say large-scale free distribution is a crucial tool of public health policy.

Dr. Thomas Farley, a former state health official for Louisiana and now a professor at Tulane University's School of Public Health, oversaw a condom-distribution program in the 1990s. For the first three years of the initiative, condoms were provided free at health clinics, bars, restaurants, liquor stores, supermarkets _ everywhere possible.

During that time, surveys found that condom use increased substantially. Then, during a budget shortfall, condoms were offered at 8 cents each to those venues, which could then sell them for 25 cents each. Condom use decreased dramatically.

Health officials reinstated the free program, and condom use rose again.

"The conclusion was that condoms needed to be free and freely available," he said. "As a public service, it's much less expensive than the cost of HIV treatment, which is heavily government-subsidized."

Indonesia asks troops to fight bird flu

2007-01-26T23:33:00.001+01:00

Indonesia has called on the military to help fight bird flu, a day after a young girl became the country's sixth victim this month.

In Azerbaijan, officials feared a return of the H5N1 bird flu virus after a 14-year-old boy was sent to hospital as a suspected case.

Adding to global worries, Japanese officials were awaiting test results to confirm if the virus had killed poultry at a farm in the south, while Vietnam is trying to control the disease spreading among birds in the Mekong Delta.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered the military chief to deploy soldiers to help fight the disease, Cabinet Secretary Sudi Silalahi told reporters.

"He called on governors, regents, mayors to be more active in leading efforts to fight bird flu in affected areas," Silalahi said after ministers held talks with Yudhoyono.

The sense of alarm was highlighted by the country's welfare minister earlier in the day.

"Even though our continued effort is giving some significant progress, we are still on highest alert," Aburizal Bakrie, said at a ceremony to receive 100,000 sets of protective equipment donated by the United States.

Indonesia has the highest bird flu death toll and is stepping up efforts to stamp out the disease after a flare up in cases this year.

"Indonesia is very serious in addressing this threat," Bakrie said a day after a six year-old girl died - Indonesia's 63rd victim of the disease that has killed 164 people globally since 2003.

He said the government had succeeded in containing human infections in nine of the 30 high risk provinces.

The disease, however, remains endemic in fowl in some of the most densely populated parts of Indonesia, including Java.

In Azerbaijan, health authorities said the 14-year-old boy's sister was one of five people who died last year in an outbreak of H5N1 in the former Soviet republic between Turkey and Russia.

A health ministry official said tests by a laboratory in Azerbaijan were negative for bird flu and doctors were awaiting results from a laboratory in London that is endorsed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The first outbreak of bird flu in the European Union this year was confirmed on Wednesday after the Commission said the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain had been detected in geese in Hungary.

EU governments have approved security measures taken by Hungary against the spread of the virus detected in the south-east of the country, saying the outbreak likely stemmed from wild birds. Russia has banned poultry imports from Hungary to prevent the spread of the bird flu virus, the Agriculture Ministry said.

The WHO says bird flu has infected 269 people worldwide since late 2003, not including the latest death in Indonesia. Experts fear the more the virus spreads in birds, the greater the chances it might mutate into a form that causes a flu pandemic in humans. Millions of people could die.

Japan confirmed another case of H5 bird flu at a poultry farm in the south-western prefecture of Miyazaki on Friday, an agriculture ministry official said. Further tests were needed to confirm if the virus was H5N1.

Earlier this month, Japan suffered its first outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in poultry in more than three years. No human infections have been reported.

In southern Vietnam, the virus has flared up in seven provinces and a city since last month, but the spread of the disease has slowed in recent days.

Animal health officials said the danger was still very high because authorities were unable to stop farmers letting their ducks roam rice fields to eat spilt grain.

Ducks can carry the H5N1 virus without showing symptoms and the waterfowl has been the main source for outbreaks in the country where 42 people have died of the disease since 2003. Vietnam has not detected any human cases since November 2005.

Two flu shots needed to protect young children

2007-01-26T23:31:00.000+01:00

Infants and toddlers given two doses of the influenza vaccine are less likely to contract flu, pneumonia and influenza-like illnesses, but one dose does not appear to have any effect, according to findings published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Dr. Mandy A. Allison, of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and colleagues examined the effectiveness of the currently recommended two-dose influenza vaccine for young children, as well as the effect of one dose of the vaccine, in preventing visits to the doctor for influenza-like illness.

They analyzed data for 5193 healthy children between the ages of 6 and 21 months who were seen at five Denver pediatric practices during the 2003-2004 flu season. The average age of the children was 15.5 months.

The kids were defined as being partially vaccinated if they had one shot more than 14 days before the first influenza-like illness visit, and fully vaccinated if they had the full two shots more than 14 days before the first visit.

Overall, 28 percent of the children were seen for influenza-like illness and 5 percent had a visit for pneumonia/influenza.

Full vaccination was 69 percent effective in preventing office visits for influenza-like illness and 87 percent effective in preventing office visits for pneumonia/influenza. This is comparable to the effectiveness of the vaccine in adults.

However, the partially vaccinated children were just as likely to be seen for influenza-like illness or pneumonia/influenza as were unvaccinated children.

The results confirm the effectiveness of two doses of flu vaccine and "lend support to the recommendation for universal immunization against influenza in 6- to 23-month-old children," Allison's team concludes.

Millions of children saved by groundbreaking vaccine programme

2007-01-26T23:30:00.000+01:00

Record numbers of lives have been saved by Bill Gates' programme to distribute cut-price vaccines to the poorest children in Africa, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda said at the World Economic Forum on Friday in Davos, Switzerland.

According to figures published Friday by the World Health Organization, an estimated 2.3 million deaths have been prevented since 2000 when the GAVI immunization programme (funded by the Gates Foundation) was launched. As many as 600,000 deaths were prevented in 2006 alone.

The Gates told a press conference that up to 10 million children a year die from illnesses and disease but a quarter of those deaths could be avoided simply through vaccinations.

Bill Gates called vaccines 'a miracle thing,' adding that he hoped the GAVI programme would 'be dramatically bigger in years to come.'

'Certainly over the years we will be adding more vaccines and the number of lives saved should go up dramatically,' he said.

The programme, he said, aimed to force the price of vaccines down as well as make more types available to parts of the world where access historically has been restricted to just six different vaccines compared with up to 20 in the world's richest countries.

GAVI had committed 2.6 billion dollars to support national immunization programmes in more than 70 developing countries since 2000. WHO figures confirmed 28 million more children had been protected against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (whooping cough) in that time.

A total of 138 million children had received vaccines for hepatitis B and yellow fever through the programme, which now has the support of 17 donor governments which has helped secure funding.

'When GAVI started out we were the primary backer but year by year the generosity of governments coming in as donors has been absolutely fantastic,' said Bill Gates.

'There are still many, many children in the world who die of vaccine-preventable diseases, said Melinda Gates. 'I think every one of those deaths is unacceptable.'

Brazil maps farms spreading into Amazon

2007-01-26T23:28:00.000+01:00

New maps detail how soybean and other farmers are spreading into the Amazon, the world's biggest rainforest, the government's National Statistics Office (IBGE) said.

In a statement on Thursday, it said that the southern savannah area of the Amazon region, notably Mato Grosso, Tocantins and southern part of Maranhao state, offered the greatest potential for soy farmers.

The map of the Amazon agricultural frontier, based on 2003 data, was one of 10 covering political, social and logistical themes which for the first time summarize the effects of human activity on the region.

Deforestation was greatest in Para where 207,000 square kilometers of trees have been felled, notably along the Trans-Amazon highway and the BR-163 linking the region with Mato Grosso and southern Brazil.

In neighboring Mato Grosso, Brazil's No. 1 soy state, tree felling was greatest along the state's main highways.

Production of soybeans and other grains is also expanding in Tocantins, Maranhao and in some parts of Amazonas, Roraima and Rondonia states, IBGE said.

Rondonia, bordering Bolivia, was the most severely affected with 28.5 percent of the state deforested, IBGE said.

The Amazon, the world's largest tropical rainforest covering an area larger than India, is estimated to provide a habitat for a quarter of all species.

Preliminary figures last September showed that Amazon deforestation slowed 11 percent in 2006.

A government program had cut the rate of land clearance by 52 percent over the past four years, Environment Minister Marina Silva was quoted by Agencia Brasil as saying.

But an estimated 16,700 square kilometers of forest -- an area about the size of Hawaii -- was lost during the 2005/06 logging season.

The Amazon covers 10 Brazilian states and 3.8 million square kilometers, or 59 percent of the country. It was also home to 20.3 million Brazilians, or 12.3 percent of the population, according to the 2000 government census.

Population growth, due to government policies encouraging migration and expansion of timber, livestock and soy farming, was the main cause of deforestation, IBGE said.

Deforestation accelerated in the 1970s with the arrival of ranchers and a fresh surge started in the 1990s as large scale soy farmers moved in.

China to overtake US in Internet population size within 2 yrs

2007-01-26T23:26:00.000+01:00

The number of netizens in China soared to 23.4 per cent in 2006 to touch 137 million and is expected to overtake the United States in Internet population size within two years.

The number of Internet users rose to 137 million last year, up 23.4 per cent to comprise 10.5 per cent of the country's population of 1.3 billion, the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) said in a report.

"We believe it will take two years at most for China to overtake the United States," an official with CNNIC, Wang Enhai was quoted as saying by `China Daily'.

However, that could be a bullish prediction. The United States now has about 210 million Internet users, according to industry estimates. A research report by JP Morgan earlier this month forecast China's Internet population could hit 190 million by 2010, the paper said.

The growth in China's Internet population showed some signs of tapering off since a peak of 75.4 percent in 2002. In 2004 and 2005, the rate was 18.2 per cent and 18.1 per cent.

"The growth is now gaining much momentum. We are expecting even faster growth in 2007 and 2008 given that Internet penetration now has exceeded 10.5 percent in the country," Wang said.

The statistics were based on telephone sample surveys of 32,325 Chinese, and only those above the age of six and use the Internet for at least one hour a week on average were counted as Internet users, it said.

Online services like e-mail, search engines, e-commerce, blogs, online news and games saw rapid development, while new technologies had brought new opportunities for the development of the Internet.

Broadband users exceeded 100 million for the first time to reach 104 million, or 75.9 per cent of all Internet users.

Another 17 million Chinese went online via mobile phones, accounting for 12.4 per cent of the Internet population.

Director of CNNIC, Mao Wei said an increasingly mobile lifestyle in China could help spark an even bigger Internet boom.

High costs and low speed were the major factors that prevented more Internet users from going mobile, said the report.

Most of the country's Internet users were male, accounting for 58.3 per cent of the total.

The report shows a yawning disparity between the urban and rural areas, with Internet use in cities 6.5 times that in the countryside.

A lack of knowledge of computers and the Internet as well as inadequate access to equipment and networks remained the main difficulties for those who failed to get online, the report said.

The growth of China's Internet population could get a boost after the country rolls out 3G (third generation) mobile telephony, which promises faster Internet access and downloads of data-heavy services such as videos, Mao said.

China had 461 million mobile phone users by the end of 2006, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Information Industry on Monday.

'Early dinosaur glided with four wings'

2007-01-26T23:23:00.000+01:00

The early flying dinosaur probably spread two pairs of feathered wings like early aviation's biplane to glide between trees, according to a study released on Monday.

With long feathers on its hands and legs, the small four-winged Microraptor would drop from its perch, swoop back up and fly up and down in an undulating motion from tree to tree, the study said.

The bird's ancestor could potentially cover a distance of at least 40 meters, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It seems likely that Microraptor invented the biplane 125-million years before the Wright 1903 Flyer," wrote research authors Sankar Chatterjee
of Texas Tech University and Canadian collaborator Jack Templin, who used a computer simulation to study possible flight patterns.

The 77-centimetre long, tree-dwelling dinosaur, which weighed nearly one kilogram, also had a long feathered tail offering additional flight and stability and controlled pitch, the study said.

Chatterjee and Templin's conclusions are an alternative to an initial assessment of the fossils that found that the Microraptor flew like a dragonfly, spreading its legs out laterally and maintaining its wings in a tandem pattern.

But the dragonfly theory would not have given the dinosaur suitable lift or enabled it to walk on the ground, Chatterjee and Templin said.

Their research found that the leg wings were probably under the body with the top wings slightly ahead like a biplane. By gliding, the
dinosaur also saved a lot of energy.

"Merely by stretching both its wings, Microraptor would have been able to glide in much the same way as a mechanical glider without muscle power," the study said.

The fossils of "Microraptor gui," a dromaesaur, were discovered among hundreds of small, well preserved feathered theropods from the Early
Crestaceous Jehol Group of northeastern China.

Fox Goes After YouTube for '24' Leak

2007-01-26T23:16:00.000+01:00

Legal experts say that Fox's move to subpoena YouTube and LiveDigital is simply the first necessary step in the process of obtaining information that would identify the uploaders of the episodes of "24" and "The Simpsons," and hold them responsible for copyright infringement.

In a move to uncover who uploaded pirated episodes of popular television series "24" and "The Simpsons," Twentieth Century Fox has subpoenaed video-sharing sites YouTube and LiveDigital, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The News Corp. studio filed the subpoenas on January 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. According to the Journal, the subpoenas ask YouTube and LiveDigital to divulge identifying information for the subscriber who posted the shows so Fox can stop the infringement.

Fox's subpoenas noted that the entire four-hour premier of "24" appeared on YouTube before it was originally broadcast on television. Twelve episodes of "The Simpsons" were also being distributed on YouTube, according to the Journal.

Notice and Takedown

Legal experts say that Fox's move to subpoena YouTube and LiveDigital is simply the first necessary step in the process of obtaining information that would identify the uploaders of these episodes and hold them responsible for copyright infringement.

Under the "notice and takedown" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), sites that receive notice from copyright holders are required to remove the infringing content. However, these communities would not be required to release information about the identity of the posters.

In fact, YouTube and LiveDigital are bound by privacy policies that limit the information they can provide without a subpoena or court order, according to Michael R. Graham, intellectual property attorney and partner with Marshall Gerstein & Borun LLP in Chicago.

"It appears that both sites have acted in accordance with the DMCA and I presume they will also provide the information requested by the subpoena," Graham said. "While this process may appear complex to some ... it is actually quite straightforward and ensures protection of both Fox's copyrighted programs and the privacy of site users."

Hitting the Circuits

According to the Journal, Fox said it officially notified YouTube about the pirated episodes and requested that the Google property immediately remove or disable access to the service.

Fox also issued a subpoena to LiveDigital after it discovered that the same group of episodes were uploaded there by a user named "Jorge Romero."

Even with the information these sites can legally provide to copyright holders, it might be difficult or impossible to track down posters of illegal videos if those individuals used any of the various anonymizer programs that are available, Graham said. To prevent continued posting of copyrighted works, both YouTube and LiveDigital need to cooperate, he added.

"In these cases, some solution needs to be arrived at that prevents users hiding behind such systems from repeat postings," he concluded. "Copyright owners and digital content sites would be well-served to work together to develop workable procedures and practices to assist each other in preventing and prosecuting such infringements."

Pancreas cancer vaccine hopeful

2007-01-23T22:27:00.001+01:00

Cancer researchers continue to plug away in attempts to treat one of mankind`s worst malignancies: pancreatic cancer.

In a series of studies presented at this weekend`s 4th Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, doctors suggested different strategies for combating pancreatic cancer, including a novel vaccine that appears to extend survival in those pancreatic-cancer patients who undergo surgery to try to check the disease.

Unfortunately, pancreatic cancer is a silent killer, and only in a few cases is the disease detected in time to permit radical surgery to remove the organ -- and even in these cases, survival is limited.

'We seem to run into a wall about 18-19 months after surgery,' Charles Staley, professor of surgery and chief of surgical oncology at Emory University in Atlanta, told United Press International.

The American Cancer Society estimates that 33,730 new cases of pancreatic cancer are diagnosed in the United States and 32,300 patients die due to the disease each year.

Staley was upbeat about the report from Dan Laheru, assistant professor at John`s Hopkins University in Baltimore, that suggested that patients given a vaccine derived from other pancreatic cancer cell lines survived an average of 26.8 months after surgery.

'Those six to seven extra months are important,' Staley told UPI.

Laheru and colleagues at Johns Hopkins recruited 60 patients to test the vaccine. The patients first underwent surgery to remove the cancer. If the patients remained cancer-free after one month following surgery, they received the first infusion of 25 million cells from each of two cell lines.

The vaccine was constructed of lethally irradiated pancreatic cancer cells, engineered to include a granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) gene that recruits immune-system cells to seek and destroy microscopic cancers.

The patients received additional infusion of the engineered cells at four-week intervals for three cycles, followed by a fifth infusion six months later. Overall, from surgery to final infusion of the vaccine cells, 18 months passed.

'Our initial review suggests that the vaccine could provide additional benefit over chemoradiotherapy, but prospective randomized trials are needed to confirm this observation,' Laheru said.

He said the researchers are in the process of reviewing the data before moving on to phase 3 studies with the vaccine. He suggested that those studies might commence by the end of 2007.

Two other studies suggest that giving patents with pancreatic cancer more intense radiation and chemotherapy could extend survival.

'Our findings show that surgery should be complemented by both radiation and chemotherapy for best results,' said Robert Miller, a radiation oncologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Mayo researchers reviewed results of 254 patients who had undergone surgery at Mayo facilities in Minnesota and Arizona from 1975 to 2005. They found that the 26 patients who had surgery, then underwent chemotherapy plus radiation therapy, and then had additional chemotherapy, achieved a 61-percent two-year survival and a 40-percent five-year survival.

On the other hand, 187 patients who underwent similar surgery -- but did not receive any additional treatment -- had a 39-percent two-year survival and a 19-percent five-year survival.

In a French study about 71 percent of patients survived at least one year without recurrence. FranÃ§oise Mornex, professor of radiation oncology at Centre Hospitalier Lyon-Sud, said, 'The study treatment, including induction chemotherapy plus chemoradiation, was feasible and well-tolerated.'

Mornex and colleagues enrolled 54 patients in the clinical trial. In their report they discussed outcomes on 49 patients -- 26 men and 23 women. After surgery the patients were given courses of chemotherapy, then underwent more chemotherapy along with radiation therapy.

While the treatments seem beneficial, doctors noted they have to perform additional trials for longer periods before they can accept the new therapies as viable treatments.

One of those treatments that was put to a rigorous phase 3 study proved disappointing. Researchers hoped to show that by adding bevacizumab (Avastin) to gemcitabine (Gemzar) outcomes in pancreatic cancer would be improved.

'This study did not confirm the promising data reported for gemcitabine and bevacizumab in the prior phase 2 trial, likely because that small study had proportionally more patients with good prognostic factors,' Hedy Lee Kindler, associate professor of medicine and medical director of gastrointestinal oncology at the University of Chicago Hospitals, told UPI.

Kindler said there was no statistical significance in patient survival. The median survival for patients taking both Avastin and Gemzar was 5.7 months compared with 6.0 months for patients taking Gemzar alone. Gemzar treatment is now considered the standard of care for pancreatic cancer following surgery.

Similarly, she said there was also no statistical significance in the progression-free survival. Median progression-free survival with both medications was 4.8 months compared with 4.3 months if the patients were on Gemzar and placebo.

The study researchers assigned 302 patients to receive Avastin and Gemzar and assigned an additional 300 patients to receive Gemzar plus placebo. The study was halted prematurely in June 2006 when the Data Monitoring and Safety Board determined that there did not appear to be any benefit to patients in continuing to take bevacizumab.

Kindler said those patients who appeared to be having a positive effect with bevacizumab were allowed to continue on the drug.

The study was sponsored by Genentech.

'Pancreatic cancer remains a huge problem,' Daniel Chung, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told UPI. 'We still may be able to use drugs such as bevacizumab against pancreatic cancer in combination with other agents that also target angiogenesis -- how the tumor develops its blood supply.'

The symposium is jointly sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, the American Gastroenterological Association Institute and the Society of Surgical Oncology.

Microwaves zap sponges clean

2007-01-23T22:26:00.000+01:00

Two minutes in a microwave oven can sterilise most household sponges, US researchers report.

A team of engineering researchers at the University of Florida found that 2 minutes of microwaving on full power killed or inactivated more than 99% of bacteria, viruses or parasites, as well as spores, on a kitchen sponge.

"People often put their sponges and scrubbers in the dishwasher, but if they really want to decontaminate them and not just clean them, they should use the microwave," says Gabriel Bitton, a professor of environmental engineering who led the study.

Writing in the Journal of Environmental Health, Bitton and colleagues say they soaked sponges and scrubbing pads in raw wastewater containing faecal bacteria such as Escherichia coli, viruses, protozoan parasites and bacterial spores.

Then they used a common household microwave oven to heat the sponges. It took 4-10 minutes to kill all the spores but everything else was killed after 2 minutes, they say.

Spores of the food spoilage organism Bacillus cereus were the hardest to destroy.

"The microwave is a very powerful and an inexpensive tool for sterilisation," says Bitton, who specialises in studying wastewater microbiology.

He says it's the heat, rather than the microwave radiation, that probably kills the pathogens.

And because the microwave works by exciting water molecules, it's better to microwave wet rather than dry sponges.

UN Calls for Renewed Vigilance as Bird Flu Outbreaks Increase

2007-01-23T22:25:00.002+01:00

Fresh outbreaks of bird flu have triggered a renewed United Nations call for vigilance against the spread of the disease. But as Ron Corben reports from Bangkok, despite the concerns, U.N. officials say the world has made progress in containing bird flu outbreaks over the past three years.

In the past few weeks, new outbreaks of the H5N1 bird flu virus have been found in Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Egypt and Nigeria. On Tuesday, officials with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization called for renewed vigilance against the disease.

Thailand Tuesday confirmed the second outbreak of the H5N1 virus among chickens in the country's northern provinces.

Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam are the countries hit hardest by the virus since it re-emerged in Asia in late 2003. More than 120 of the global total of 163 human deaths have occurred in those three countries.

Governments around the world have countered outbreaks by culling millions of poultry and starting public education campaigns.

At a meeting in Bangkok Tuesday, FAO officials said the efforts are paying off.

"Where the virus is occurring certainly in mainland Southeast Asia I would say that the outbreaks are under control," said Laurence Gleeson, an FAO veterinarian. "If you want to compare that situation with what existed in 2004, I mean, it was a galloping epidemic in 2004, but that's not the situation today."

FAO officials say the latest outbreaks of the virus can be explained in part by slightly cooler weather in much of the region, which is when flu viruses can be most active.

But Juan Lubroth, a senior officer with the FAO's Animal Health Service, says the recent outbreaks still highlight the need for vigilance.

"Recent outbreaks do follow a seasonal pattern and this should not come as any great surprise," said Lubroth. "But we should remain alert as the recent outbreaks show. It is crucial that countries themselves set up surveillance, detection, and rapid response measures."

The FAO's deputy regional director, Hiroyuki Konuma, says only a long-term global commitment will succeed in eradicating the virus.

"It will probably take several years to contain and finally eradicate the H5N1 virus from the poultry sector," said Konuma. "This requires a strong commitment from government, poultry farmers and the international community."

The H5N1 virus is deadly to poultry and can wipe out farmers' entire flocks quickly. But it is difficult for humans to catch - most human victims contracted the virus from sick birds. Scientists, however, fear the virus could mutate and become more contagious among humans, setting off a pandemic.

The FAO officials meeting in Bangkok this week also will focus on improved communications and education programs to raise awareness about the virus, especially in poor rural communities.

Skin patch used to treat Alzheimer`s

2007-01-23T22:25:00.001+01:00

U.S. medical scientists have found a transdermal approach is safe and effective in clearing brain plaque in mice bred to develop Alzheimer`s disease.

The University of South Florida researchers say use of a skin patch vaccination might offer a simpler way of preventing or treating the neurodegenerative disease, with less likelihood of adverse immune reactions.

Although previous studies showed vaccinating against the beta amyloid protein can reduce Alzheimer-like pathology, including certain cognitive deficits, the University of South Florida scientists say their study is the first to demonstrate transdermal immunization may be effective in reducing pathology.

The Alzheimer`s vaccine works by triggering the immune system to recognize beta amyloid -- a protein that builds up in and attacks the brains of Alzheimer`s patients.

Previous human research on an injectable Alzheimer`s vaccine was suspended when the initial clinical trial caused brain inflammation and death in some patients.

The University of South Florida researchers targeted the skin as the route of vaccine delivery in mice bred to develop age-related brain degeneration that mimics Alzheimer`s. They found transdermal immunization does not appear to trigger toxicities associated with past immunization strategies.

The study appears in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Some TB patients could be forcibly quarantined

2007-01-23T22:24:00.000+01:00

Doctors have recommended forcibly detaining people in South Africa who refuse treatment for a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, an extreme measure meant to keep the infected away from others to curb the spread of the disease, according to a paper published Monday in an international medical journal.

Since detecting extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, also known as XDR-TB, in South Africa last year, health officials have called for increased measures to combat the strains, including better surveillance, diagnostics and drugs.

In their paper in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, physicians Jerome Amir Singh, Ross Upshur and Nesri Padayatchi propose that XDR-TB patients who refuse treatment be involuntarily detained in hospitals or other health care facilities. Singh and Padayatchi are at the Centre for AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa, and Upshur is the director of the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto.

Ronnie Green-Thompson, an adviser to the South African Department of Health, said the idea had been discussed by health experts in South Africa and elsewhere, and was a possibility.

"Holding the patient against their will is not ideal but may have to be considered in the interest of the public," Green-Thompson said in a statement issued by the South African Department of Health. "Legal opinion and comment as well as ... the opinion of human rights groups is important.

In the 1990s, New York City health authorities authorized the forcible detention of people who rejected TB treatment, some for as long as two years, ultimately leading to a significant dip in cases. The detainees were held in Bellevue or Goldwater hospitals.

Last September, the World Health Organization announced there were 53 confirmed XDR-TB cases in South Africa, of which 52 were fatal. Most of the patients were also HIV positive. To date, more than 300 cases have been identified, and at least 30 more are picked up each month.

Though extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis exists worldwide, including in eastern Europe, Russia and the United States, Africa's high number of HIV/AIDS patients makes it particularly worrying. Not only does HIV/AIDS fuel the spread of tuberculosis, but infection with both HIV/AIDS and XDR-TB means an almost certain death. Weak African health systems lack the means to treat XDR-TB patients, for whom the only drugs that might work are much more expensive than regular TB drugs.

There are also social conditions in South Africa to foster the spread of XDR-TB, including a population of migrant laborers and an active tourism industry. In addition, South Africa routinely suspends social benefits to people when they are hospitalized, so many patients avoid treatment.

In their paper, the doctors recommend that XDR-TB patients be paid while being detained.

"This isn't a carte blanche to public health authorities to start locking people up," Upshur said. "If we ask individuals to forgo their rights, they need to be supported."

Some public health experts say South Africa and the international community haven't taken basic outbreak response steps, such as drafting an emergency plan, conducting a proper investigation and reinforcing surveillance. WHO and its partners have held a flurry of international meetings since XDR-TB in South Africa was identified, but little has changed for patients in Africa.

Antidepressants Double Risk Of Bone Fracture

2007-01-23T22:23:00.002+01:00

A Canadian study suggests that people over 50 on a certain type of antidepressant are twice as likely to suffer bone fractures.

The study is published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The research was conducted by a team of scientists from various Canadian research centres.

They looked at data from a group of patients of average age 65.1 who were aged 50 and over who were taking SSRI antidepressants on a daily basis. These patients were part of a larger study under the umbrella of the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study (CaMos) Research Group. The CaMos group comprises a randomly selected, population-based cohort of 5008 adults aged 50 and over who are followed over 5 years for incident fractures.

The patients had been filling in questionnaires about their bone breakages cause by various minor events such as falling out of bed, off a chair, or similar minimal trauma incidents. All the fractures had been confirmed with radiographs.

The researchers found 137 patients within the CaMos cohort who were using SSRIs on a daily basis. The SSRIs they were using included: fluvoxamine (brand name uvox), citalopram (Celexa), fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft) and paroxetine (Paxil). These were the ones that were on the market at the start of the CaMos study.

After correlating the data from the bone fractures with the data on the SSRI intake, the results showed that taking SSRI antidepressants every day doubled the risk of "clinical fragility fracture" in adults aged 50 and over, even after taking into account various other factors such as age, hip bone mineral density, and estrogen levels.

The also found a dosage effect, where a 1.5 increase in risk of bone fracture was linked to a doubling of daily dose of SSRI.

Since fragility fractures are already common in the over 50s, this additional risk could have significant health consequences for them.

The motive for the study came from knowing that fragility fractures and depression are not uncommon in the over 50s, and SSRIs are a commonly prescribed medication for depression in this age group. But the researchers were not aware of any studies that had tried to link the two together.

The researchers suggest that doctors should take into account the risk of fragility fracture when they prescribe SSRI antidepressants to patients in this age group.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are antidepressants used to treat anxiety and personality disorders and depression. They increase the level of serotonin in the brain by stopping it being reabsorbed by the presynpatic cell, which leaves more of it around to produce its mood-altering effects.

"Effect of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors on the Risk of Fracture."
J. Brent Richards, Alexandra Papaioannou, Jonathan D. Adachi, Lawrence Joseph, Heather E. Whitson, Jerilynn C. Prior, David Goltzman.
Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:188-194.

Sweet natural solution to treating disease

2007-01-23T22:23:00.001+01:00

A spoonful of sugar may soon take the place of pills and other medicines, thanks to Leeds scientists. A team led by Professor Simon Carding has adapted a bacterium in our own bodies to make it produce substances called human growth factors which help to treat Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

The bacterium has been engineered so it makes these factors only when a special type of sugar - called xylan, which is found in tree bark - is eaten. The treatment is switched off simply by stopping consumption of the sugar.

'Current bacteria and virus delivery systems produce their drugs non-stop,' said Carding. 'However, it is vitally important to be able to control when and how much of the drug is administered and we believe our discovery will provide that control."

'Now we are looking at using the same technique for colorectal cancer.'

Discovery may herald new RNA therapeutics

2007-01-23T22:22:00.000+01:00

British scientists have taken an important step toward preventing tumor growth by finding a way of switching off a gene involved in cell division.

The Oxford University researchers say the mechanism involves a form of ribonucleic acid, or RNA, a chemical found in cell nuclei. RNA plays a direct role in the synthesis of proteins, but scientists have known for some time that not all types of RNA are directly involved in protein synthesis.

Now, in research funded by the Wellcome Trust and Britain`s Medical Research Council, the Oxford scientists have shown one particular type of RNA plays a key role in regulating the gene implicated in control of tumor growth.

'There`s been a quiet revolution taking place in biology during the past few years over the role of RNA,' said Alexandre Akoulitchev, a senior research fellow at the university. 'Scientists have begun to see `junk` DNA as having a very important function. The variety of RNA types produced from this 'junk' is staggering and the functional implications are huge.'

The study is detailed in the current issue of the journal Nature.

Zune Wants Europe. Does Europe Want Zune?

2007-01-23T22:21:00.000+01:00

From a European’s perspective, the announced launch of Zune for the end of 2007 is apparently not an event to make you anxiously shiver or rejoice.

A recent announcement made by Jason Reindorp, marketing director for Zune at Microsoft, indicates that the Redmond behemoth plans to introduce its… MP3 player (I would have said iPod-killer but that’s not the case) in Europe by the end of this year.

Reindorp also said that the Zune managed to grab since its launch about 10.2 percent market share in the U.S. in the 30 gigabyte MP3 player category. That seems pretty impressive considering the short period (although I do advise you to take Reindorp’s allegations with a grain of salt) and is in accordance with the company’s forecast for the first half of 2007: 1 million Zune owners by June. Alexa.com also reports that Zune.net, the official site where you can find out about Zune and buy songs or download short videos, has made it to the 5,711th place, which indicates that it has between 50,000 and 100,000 visitors per day, but is now way below the peak registered in November (and apparently dropping).

Reindorp, quoted by Reuters, said at the annual music industry Midem Net conference in France “"You couldn't get a more entrenched competitor. But we feel really good about the first steps that we've taken."

"The industry moves in this sort of Christmas to Christmas cycle. So you can expect that there will be more devices, more features in the market at that point," he said.

"Our next round of introductions will probably be in time for the holiday of this year."

"We're not simply trying to play catch up with Apple," he said. "We are very realistic, we have what is essentially a three-year plan to firmly and solidly get on the radar.”

Well, from hopes to reality is a long way. At least for Zune.

I have unofficially made an ad-hoc poll among my friends on IM clients, all of them being involved in the tech or the news industry here in Europe, and the results are disappointing for Microsoft: Zune apparently doesn’t exist in the EU.

I asked them first whether they know what Zune is. Friends from France, Sweden or Italy have not even heard of this name, and if they did (and associated it by contrast with the iPod, after viewing some photos) they firmly declared that they’ll stick to the iPod. They were on the other side attracted by the wireless sharing feature of the Zune (after I mentioned this to them), but were disappointed by the fact that only around 58% of the songs were actually transferable from one gadget to another (let’s hope that rate will improve).

Concerning Zune’s interoperability with Windows Vista or Xbox or even SoapBox (Microsoft’s new video service which is in Beta - I told them about it because I have a beta-tester account), they didn’t seem to be impressed, all of them saying that they prefer to wait and see how Vista or SoapBox behave on the market before taking a decision.

The interoperability between Zune and Xbox 360 has been made available in advance. In October, MS released a software update for its famous gaming console, through the Xbox Live Marketplace service, explaining that the update will let the Xbox 360 stream music, pictures and video from a Zune device, and from the Zune software on a Windows PC. The Xbox 360 will also stream content from the new Windows Media Player 11 PC software.

I repeat: this is not an official point of view and might not reflect real life situations. But in the next days I will certainly include a poll on the site where users from all over the world (but especially Europeans) will be able to express their thoughts about Zune, so… stay Zuned.

Intel set to back VIA's Mini-ITX for SFF PCs?

2007-01-23T22:20:00.002+01:00

Intel may be set to promote a motherboard form-factor developed by rival chip maker VIA, it has been claimed, in a bid to beat AMD's recently announced would-be small form-factor PC standard, DTX.

The claim that Intel intends to back the 17 x 17cm Mini-ITX mobo form-factor comes from Taiwanese motherboard maker moles cited by local newssite DigiTimes. They say the chip giant will push the format next quarter for SFF machine and mini PCs.

They also claim Intel will tout SiS' SIS662 integrated chipset as the foundation for Mini-ITX mobos, though it's odd it would push a rival firm's product. That said, Intel has used third-party chippery in its own motherboards, most notably ATI chipsets when it's own production of low-end parts was being scaled back. Perhaps the sources are actually referring to product from Intel's own mobo division rather than the company as a whole.

Either way, the move - if true - can be seen at least in part as a response to AMD's recent launch of DTX, a putative standard for mini PCs. VIA has been touting Mini-ITX for some time, primarily as a product for PC enthusiasts who want to build PCs into unusual cases. It's also had some success pitching the format at embedded applications, but it has yet to have Mini-ITX adopted as the de facto standard for mini PCs

Blu-ray DRM defeated

2007-01-23T22:20:00.001+01:00

The copy protection technology used by Blu-ray discs has been cracked by the same hacker who broke the DRM technology of rival HD DVD discs last month. The coder known as muslix64 used much the same plain text attack in both cases. By reading a key held in memory by a player playing a HD DVD disc he was able to decrypt the movie been played and render it as an MPEG 2 file.

The latest Blu-ray hack was performed by muslix64 using a media file provided by Janvitos, through the video resource site Doom9, and applied to a Blu-ray copy of the movie Lord of War. In this case, muslix64 didn't even need access to a Blu-ray player to nobble the DRM protection included on the title.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray use HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) for playback display authentication and similar implementations of AACS (Advanced Access Content System) for content encryption.

The hack sidesteps, rather than defeats, the AACS encryption used as part of the content protection technology used by both next-generation DVD formats. The approach relies on obtaining a particular movie's unique "key" and can't therefor be trivially replicated to rip content across all titles encoded via a particular format, as tools like DVD Decryptor make easy with standard DVD titles.

muslix64 has however posted a 18KB tool that allows other to try their hand at extracting the keys of other Blu-ray Disc movies

BD+, the second type of content protection on Blu-ray, is yet to fall by crackers but this is something of a moot point today as the technology is yet to be widely applied on discs.

Blu-ray and HD DVD both allow for decryption keys to be updated in reaction to attacks, for example by making it impossible to play high-definition movies via playback software known to be weak or flawed. So muslix64 work has effectively sparked off a car-and-mouse game between hackers and the entertainment industry, where consumers are likely to face compatibility problems while footing the bill for the entertainment industry's insistence on pushing ultimately flawed DRM technology on an unwilling public.

Indian space makes a splash

2007-01-23T22:17:00.000+01:00

It was a perfect fall that marked the rise of India into an orbit of excellence in space science.

A 550-kg satellite that India’s own rocket launched into orbit 12 days ago, was successfully brought back to earth and retrieved on Monday after deft manoeuvres lasting 64 minutes.

The Space capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1), as the satellite is called, was launched by PSLV-C7 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota on January 10. It splashed down at 9.46 am in the Bay of Bengal after it was brought down from its 637-km high orbit in space.

With this, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has demonstrated its skill in re-entry technology, vital for future space projects like re-usable launch vehicles and manned missions. The others to master the technology are the US, China, Japan and the European Space Agency.

The wait for the capsule started on Monday, after ISRO scientists in Bangalore issued commands to change the SRE’s orbit from a circular one to an elliptical one on January 19. At 8.42 am on Monday, scientists started the re-orientation of the satellite before firing the onboard rocket motors to push it back to the atmosphere.

As the SRE made its re-entry, the indigenously developed thermal protection system helped the capsule withstand the 2,100 degrees Celsius heat as it entered the dense atmosphere with a velocity of 29,000 km per hour.

ISRO chairman Madhavan Nair and his team of scientists waited at Sriharikota, 140 km away from where SRE would splash in the sea 12 minutes later. At a safe distance from the splash point, two Navy ships and a Coast Guard vessel with scientists and divers waited while a chopper and a droner aircraft hovered around.

By the time SRE descended to an altitude of 5 km, the aerodynamic breaking had reduced its velocity to 363 km/hr, which was further brought down to 47 km/hr by two parachutes. The satellite finally came down at a velocity of 43 km/ hr. A floatation device was immediately triggered to keep the capsule floating before the ships recovered it and brought to Chennai and later to Sriharikota.

“I never had any doubt about SRE’s safe return and retrieval. Only that I could not witness the splashdown,” SRE project director A Subramanian told DNA.

Texas study suggests link between pollution, cancer

2007-01-21T21:41:00.001+01:00

A University of Texas study found a possible link between childhood leukemia and living close to the city's refinery row along the Houston Ship Channel, one of the study's co-authors said on Thursday.

The study found that living within two miles of elevated levels of 1,3-butadiene around the ship channel's petrochemical complex was associated with a 56 percent increased incidence of childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia compared with those living more than 10 miles away, according to a statement from the city of Houston, which financed the study.

"When we looked at distance from the ship channel we find data that suggests there is an association with chemicals in the air and childhood leukemia," said Ann Coker, professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston.

Houston Mayor Bill White said the city would use the study to support efforts to reduce pollution from petrochemical plants.

"The science supports our claim that reducing hazardous air pollutants must be a high priority for Houston," White said in a statement.

White has used the threat of tougher enforcement of anti-pollution laws to win agreements from petrochemical plants to reduce pollution.

The substance 1,3-butadiene is used to make petrochemicals like ethylene.

Next up in the battle against cancer

2007-01-21T21:40:00.000+01:00

The precipitous drop in U.S. cancer deaths reported by the American Cancer Society is a testament to the successful efforts of cancer prevention, research and treatment, experts said.

Yet they cautioned obstacles such as lack of access to healthcare hamper efforts to drive the rate down further.

From 2003 to 2004, the most recent mortality data available from the National Center of Health Statistics, cancer deaths fell by 3,014. In 2006 the ACS announced a decrease of 369 deaths between 2002 and 2003 -- the first time in more than 70 years cancer deaths had declined.

"What we reported last year was not a fluke, and it's much larger than was reported before," report author Ahmedin Jemal, strategic director for cancer occurrence at the ACS, told United Press International. "It's very exciting, and very good news."

Jemal mainly credits prevention for the drop: Smoking rates have gone down in recent years, and more people are getting screened for colorectal, breast and cervical cancers. Treatments have also vastly improved. For instance, new, sophisticated drugs are now tailored to attack certain cancers and extend the lives of those with cancers that have already spread. Researchers are regularly discovering genes behind types of cancers, which also aids in developing new treatments.

The drop in cancer deaths has even outpaced the exploding population of older Americans, Jemal said -- remarkable considering cancer is a disease of aging.

"We have the right to be cautiously but increasingly enthusiastic about the data," said Dr. Gabriel Hortobagyi, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The enormous investment in cancer research has also shown substantive results, particularly in clinical trials and drug development, Hortobagyi said.

Indeed, scientists are now reaping the benefits of the cancer research effort that began in the 1970s, and as a result, winning the war on the disease, said Dr. Geoffrey Wahl, president of the American Association for Cancer Research.

More research is needed to investigate the unknowns of cancer; for example, environmental agents may play a role in cancer development, Wahl said.

Yet the report's results should be tempered by the failure of many Americans to take control of their cancer risk, experts said.

For instance, if doctors applied everything they know about early diagnosis and treatment of cancer to all Americans, tens of thousands of lives would be saved, said Hortobagyi -- and that's just with existing knowledge.

"The reality is that we as a profession have not done our utmost to convince our society that these things need to be done," he said.

Wahl also emphasized Americans aren't getting the message that, at least to a degree, they can prevent cancer through healthy diets, limiting sun exposure and not smoking.

Around 20 percent of the U.S. adult population smokes cigarettes, despite overwhelming evidence of its detrimental effects. One in four Americans are now obese, an increase of 110 percent since 1990 and an increase of 6 percent since 2005. Obesity increases risk factors for certain types of cancer.

Breast cancer and colorectal cancer screening compliance stands at about 70 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

Excellent screening tools are meaningless if a person can't pay for the procedure -- a reality for about 46 million Americans who live without health insurance. In poor communities, many women do not get breast and cervical cancer screenings at the same frequency as their wealthier counterparts. The government does fund programs to fill these gaps, but funding is often unreliable.

The new report, published in the January/February issue of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians and Cancer Facts & Figures 2007, also lays out a new model for more accurately predicting deaths. In 2007 experts believe 1.44 million Americans will get cancer and 560,000 will die from it.

The report also found:

-- Mortality rates have continued to decrease across all four major cancer sites in men and in women except for female lung cancer, in which rates continued to increase by 0.3 percent per year from 1995 to 2003.

-- Death rates from all cancers combined peaked in 1990 for men and in 1991 for women. Between 1990 and 2003, death rates from cancer decreased by 16.3 percent among men and by 8.5 percent among women.

-- Lung-cancer incidence rates are declining in men and appear to be leveling off in women after increasing for many decades.

-- Colorectal cancer incidence rates decreased from 1998 to 2003 in both males and in females.

Jemal and others are confident the decrease will continue in coming years, and the statistical model in the new report suggests the numbers will stay stable, said Linda Pickle, senior math statistician at the National Cancer Institute.

But Pickle also stressed the obvious: No one can safely predict the future. There could be a sudden change, either societally or otherwise, that shifts the outcome.

For instance, when former first lady Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1970s, breast cancer diagnoses spiked because more women got screened. And in the 1990s men began to heed messages to get PSA tests for prostate cancer; rates for that cancer also spiked but have since fallen.

Whatever lies ahead, "we have to keep the momentum going," Jemal said.

Poor Get Less Chemotherapy

2007-01-21T21:38:00.002+01:00

Breast cancer patients who are less educated and have a lower household income are more likely to receive reduced doses of chemotherapy — leading to undertreatment for their disease — new research suggests.

Overweight and obese women are also more likely to receive less chemotherapy.

The report is published in this month's issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Researchers looked at 764 women with early breast cancer who were enrolled in a prospective, multi-center study of cancer patients starting chemotherapy.

Using U.S. Census Bureau statistics and zip codes, the study authors estimated each woman's household income and poverty status. The women were also interviewed to determine their level of education.

What they found was that women with less education were more than three times as likely as those with more education to receive reduced levels of chemotherapy.

Undertreatment with Chemotherapy "a Broad Problem"

Typically, doctors use a formula — based on a patient's height and weight — to determine what dose of chemotherapy patients should receive during treatment. But the women in this study didn't always receive as much chemotherapy as they should have, according to the study.

"What we saw was that women who had not completed high school were far more likely to be started on a lower dose [of chemotherapy]," said study co-author Dr. Gary Lyman, professor of medicine and oncology at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y.

"Why that might be, we really don't know," Lyman said. "We are collecting more data and hope to dissect out to the reasons for this undertreatment."

Undertreatment with chemotherapy is a very serious problem for breast cancer patients and cancer patients in general.

This finding sheds light on a very real discrepancy — women with less money and less education are being given less of the medicine they need.

The study is an important first step in addressing the discrepancies, cancer experts say.

"This study is significant," said Dr. Clifford Hudis, Chief of the Breast Cancer Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
"Undertreatment of patients with chemotherapy is a broad problem," Hudis said. "It has been called 'killing with kindness," and it is important to understand where and how it happens so that we can address the issue."

Folic Acid Increases Mental Agility In The Elderly

2007-01-21T21:38:00.001+01:00

Taking supplements of folic acid may significantly improve cognitive function in older men and women.

This is the conclusion of a Dutch study to be published in the Lancet.

The study was led by Jane Durga from the Wageningen University in The Netherlands.

Diminshing cognitive functions such as deterioration in memory, reduced ability to process information quickly, and reduced verbal fluency have been linked to risk of dementia in old age.

Dr Durga and colleagues followed a group of 818 over-50s for three years. Some were given 800 micrograms of a synthetic form of folic acid per day, the rest took a placebo. A synthetic version of the vitamin was used because the naturally occurring form degrades more easily, for example with storage and cooking, and that would make any results less reliable.

The scientists found that the group who took the folic acid improved on all aspects of cognitive functioning compared to the group that took the placebo.

Folic acid is a water soluble B vitamin and is found in yeast extract, green leafy vegetables, for example spinach, in dried beans and peas, some organ meats such as liver, fortified cereals, certain fruit and vegetables, and certain seeds, for example sunflower seeds. It plays an important role in the production of new cells, especially in the spinal cord an embryo, which is why it is important that pregnant women have their reference daily intake (RDI).

Adults and children need folic acid to generate red blood cells and DNA, and insufficient daily intake can result in anemia. The vitamin also helps to digest protein and make effective use of the resulting amino acids, and also to produce proteins that the body may be lacking. It also plays a role in regulating appetite.

Because of the discovery of the link between neural tube defects (NTD, such as that occurring in infants born with spina bifida), and insufficient folic acid governments have gradually introduced regulations that require certain foods to be fortified with folic acid, such as cereals, and in some countries bread and flour also.

Different countries recommend different RDI amounts, ranging from 400 micrograms a day in the US to 200 in Japan.

Some research studies have linked folic acid supplement taking with reductions in various age-related impairments such as hearing loss and Alzheimer's. Others are not so clear, but there seems to be consensus that it helps improve cognitive function in elderly people with high concentrations of the amino acid homocysteine in their blood, which could indicate increased riks of stroke, heart disease and Alzheimer's.

Concerns have been raised that folic acid interacts with Vitamin B12 and taking too much of it can cause problems, such as masking a deficiency in B12. This is particularly relevant to older people (over 50), who should ask their doctor to check their vitamin B12 levels if they considering taking folic acid supplements.

Indonesian authorities clearing capital of backyard chickens

2007-01-21T21:37:00.000+01:00

Indonesian authorities slaughtered thousands of backyard chickens and pet birds Sunday to halt the spread of bird flu that has killed five people in the country in two weeks.

Edi Setiarto, a leading animal health official in Jakarta, said at least 10,000 chickens, ducks, quail and doves would be culled Sunday, part of a campaign to rid the capital of around a million birds by the end of January.

"Ideally, the capital should be free of backyard chickens," said Setiarto.

"We urge Jakarta's residents to no longer allow their poultry to run loose," he said.

Noncommercial fowl kept as pets, songbirds or for educational purposes would be spared if owners obtain bird flu-free certificates.
On Sunday, healthy birds were slaughtered and returned to be eaten. Infected birds had been killed and burned since Friday.

Hundreds of onlookers, many among them children, stood by and lined-up for free meat.

Maruf, 55, a resident who gave up his two chickens for Sunday's slaughter, hoped more residents would join him to help prevent the virus from taking more victims.

"I am a bit worried to eat these actually, but I guess as long as I cook them well, everything should be OK," said Tini, 29, who came with her two children.

The birds being cleared in recent days were voluntarily handed over by owners, but from February authorities have vowed involuntary clearing.

The most recent human casualty was on Friday, when a woman died of avian influenza, the fifth fatal case since Jan. 9. Before that, Indonesia had not recorded a single infection for six weeks — a lull that led some Indonesian officials to say they were succeeding in beating the disease.

But others warned that with winter flu season here, authorities should remain vigilant.

There are an estimated 350 million backyard chickens in Indonesia, many of them being kept outside houses in the capital and surrounding towns.

The health minister said last week that nine other provinces hard-hit by bird flu would also soon ban chickens from residential areas.

Bird flu remains hard for humans to catch. But international experts fear it may mutate into a form that could spread easily between humans and potentially kill millions around the world, including in wealthy nations that have so far been spared human cases.

Backup on ill-fated flight heads for stars

2007-01-21T21:36:00.000+01:00

Like millions of others, Barbara Morgan was watching as the ill-fated Challenger spacecraft lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on a chilly winter morning in 1986.

But her connection to that flight was more intimate than most. The elementary-school teacher from Fresno was the backup to Christa McAuliffe, the bubbly woman chosen to be the first teacher is space.

If McAuliffe had fallen ill, it would have been Morgan on that flight, which ended with the deaths of all seven astronauts.

Two decades and one more shuttle accident later, Morgan, 55, is finally getting her chance to go to space, this time aboard Endeavor on an assembly mission to the International Space Station. She has no trepidations.

"I'm really, really excited," Morgan said Friday in an interview from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"I was really lucky to be Christa's backup," she said. "They were all absolutely wonderful people."

Morgan said she understood the dangers of her flight, scheduled for no earlier than June 28. "We know spaceflight is a very risky business," she said. "You can't get rid of all the risk."

After the Challenger accident, Morgan returned to the classroom. She taught in McCall, Idaho, before being selected in 1998 to be the first of NASA's "Educator Astronauts." NASA sees the program as a way to interest young people in space.

Morgan has been training full time as an astronaut for the last seven years, according to NASA. She had been scheduled to fly in November 2003, but that flight was canceled after the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed on reentry, killing seven astronauts.

Morgan will be a mission specialist on the Endeavor flight. The crew's job will be to continue building the space station. It will deliver a starboard truss segment, a part of the station's spine. The other crew members are shuttle commander Scott Kelly and pilot Charlie Hobaugh, and mission specialists Tracy Caldwell, Rick Mastracchio and Dave Williams.

The mission will also transport flight engineer Clayton Anderson to the space station.

Morgan, who is married with two children, said her family was "behind me all the way. They would like to bump me off and go in my place."

After her flight, she said, she will return to teaching. Three more teachers are in training as astronauts, she said.

Some astronauts take keepsakes aboard to memorialize their flights.

Morgan said she hadn't thought "a whole lot" about what she would take. Patting her heart, she said she would be carrying McAuliffe's memory inside.

"She made all of us proud," Morgan said.

'Storm Worm' rages across the globe

2007-01-21T21:35:00.002+01:00

"Storm Worm," one of the larger Trojan horse attacks in recent years, is baiting people with timely information about a deadly, real-life storm front, security researchers said Friday.

Over an eight-hour period Thursday, malicious e-mails were sent across the globe to hundreds of thousands of people, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for F-Secure.

People who open the attachment then unknowingly become part of a botnet. A botnet serves as an army of commandeered computers, which are later used by attackers without their owners' knowledge.

Storm Worm carries the subject line "230 dead as storm batters Europe," Hypponen said, noting the unusual twist to the e-mail.

"The e-mail was started 15 hours ago, when the storm was peaking in Central Europe," Hypponen said. "This is unusual in that it was very timely."

Storm Worm is a Trojan horse with an executable file as an attachment. Cybercriminals took advantage of social engineering, using the news of the European storm to get people to open the attached malicious file, which promises more news on the weather emergency. The recipient must open the file for it to execute.

The file creates a back door to a computer that can be exploited later to steal data or to use the computer to post spam.

Storm Worm is already close to being as large as the bigger attacks of 2006, Hypponen said, though it's still smaller than Sasser and Slammer.

Hypponen also noted that this Trojan horse is unusual because most attacks these days tend to be smaller and targeted, as criminals seek to pilfer personal information for financial gain, rather than fame.

Though Storm Worm is widespread, the damage may ultimately be minimal in the U.S. because most tech security companies will have already added it to their blocking list before people get into work, he added.

Other e-mail subject lines for it include "U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza..." and "A killer at 11, he's free at 21 and..."

According to the Associated Press, the European storm has killed at least 41 people.

Spacecraft hurtles toward Jupiter

2007-01-21T21:35:00.001+01:00

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is zooming toward a close encounter with Jupiter to study its atmosphere, ring system and four of its moons before dashing off to see Pluto in 2015, scientists said Thursday. It will be the seventh probe to visit the solar system's largest planet.

After 12 months of flight, the probe is due to make its closest pass by Jupiter on Feb. 28, flying within 1.4 million miles. NASA scientists said the main purpose for visiting Jupiter is to exploit the giant gas planet's gravity to slingshot New Horizons at 52,000 mph toward Pluto.

IBM code to go aloft with NASA space telescope

2007-01-21T21:34:00.000+01:00

IBM has won a deal to supply NASA with software to build the James Webb Space Telescope, which is set to launch in 2013 and study the origins of the universe.

A successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope will showcase cutting-edge technologies and instruments, including a 21-foot folding primary mirror and a near-infrared camera.

The project will also rely on software, with 200,000 lines of C++ code anticipated to help operate the telescope and gather and transmit data.

Rather than write out each line of code, engineers will create a detailed model of the required software, which will act as a blueprint for the entire system. IBM's development tool software from its Rational division will automatically generate the code, according to Big Blue.

The NASA contract, announced Friday, is a validation for modeling standards and the application of modeling in real-time systems, said Grady Booch, an IBM fellow and the chief scientist of Rational. Booch is also a co-developer of the Unified Modeling Language (UML), a variant of which will be used on the NASA project.

"This is a tough software problem. Increasingly, the birds that NASA sends up are very, very software intensive. And it's not like you go up and reboot the thing," Booch said.

Standardization will speed up development time and ease collaboration among the 50 programmers at NASA and the European and Canadian space agencies, he added.

Modeling has been around for several years, and UML was first standardized in 1997. But the approach is still not routinely used because most programmers have not adjusted their methods, said Jerry Krasner, chief analyst of Embedded Market Forecasters.

Krasner advocates UML 2.0, the latest version of the standard, because it makes development faster and makes it easier to change complex systems.

"When I go and talk at places like Detroit (to auto industry people), it's like I'm Moses coming down from the mountain. People say, 'Wow, you can do that?'" he said.

Krasner said his research has found that companies that use modeling can speed their software development by 30 percent for large projects.

The James Webb Space Telescope project is a "good story because it illustrates what's happening...and the power of modeling and code generation," he said.

The telescope's namesake ran NASA throughout most of the 1960s.

Nobel Prize Winners Live Longer, Research Shows

2007-01-21T21:33:00.000+01:00

Winners live longer, at least when it comes to the Nobel Prize, new research shows.

An analysis of 524 nominees for the Nobels physics and in chemistry between 1901 and 1950 showed that the group’s 135 winners lived about two years longer than the also-rans. The finding points to the health benefits of social status and suggests that status benefits the bodies of the cerebrally normal too.

Anyone can see that the rich and famous tend to live better and longer than the poor and ordinary, but scientists have been unclear on whether social status was an indirect or direct cause of longevity.

The new research by an economist at the University of Warwick in England and his colleague argues that the link is direct, at least for Nobel Prize winners, upon whom status is suddenly dropped. And the research rules out the possibility that intervening prize-related money itself adds the years through improved prosperity. The research paper was posted Wednesday to Research Papers in Economics (repec.org).

“Status seems to work a kind of health-giving magic,” said Andrew J. Oswald, the lead scientist on the study. “I was quite surprised to find a clear effect on longevity within this elite sample of scientists.”

The average lifespan for the nominees (including winners) was 76 years. Winners worldwide lived 1.4 years longer on average, and winners from the same country as non-winning nominees lived another two-thirds of a year, on average.

Bored with money

Nobelists are awarded a percentage of their income as prize money, currently ranging from $1 million to $1.5 million, but most laureates donate at least a portion of their award money to charity and academia. Also, Oswald compared the possible effects of variations in the real value of the purse size during the 1901 to 1950 era and found no effect on longevity, suggesting that it is the sheer status of the Nobel on scientists that performs the magic.

“They are obsessive thinkers,” Oswald told LiveScience. “They are mostly not hugely interested in dollars, per se.”

Oswald and his colleague Matthew D. Rablen, with the University of Warwick when the research was conducted, also found that the number of nominations for a Nobel that a person might receive had no effect on longevity. Actually winning the Nobel was what counted, they said.

James P. Smith, an expert on social status and health at the RAND Corporation, said the findings came as little surprise. “My research consistently shows that money does not matter for health and [Oswald and Rablen’s] paper confirms it,” Smith told LiveScience. “Other research shows that status matters, an equally controversial conclusion. But their research is well done, so it will add to the debate.”

Two status studies in 2001 focused on Oscar winners. One found that Oscar winners live 3.6 years longer than nominees. Another on Oscar-winning and nominated screenwriters found the exact opposite — nominees lived 3.6 years longer than winners. Smith said this new research on Nobel winners and nominees is a much stronger study methodologically.

Physics pay-off

Oswald also said he thinks the status from a Nobel Prize could amount to even more today than it did early in the previous century.

“If anything, the global society has made the super-star phenomenon more intense,” he said. “I imagine in 2007 you get a bigger status boost from winning the Nobel Prize than in 1907.”

And if you’re one of those fortunate folks with a talent for both chemistry and physics, you might want to choose the latter for your career. Oswald and Rablen found that Nobel laureates in physics lived an average of almost a year longer than laureates in chemistry.

Scientists Report Breakthrough in Battle Against Deadly 'Superbug'

2007-01-20T00:41:00.002+01:00

Scientists desperate to find a cure for a fast-spreading "superbug" that attacks the lungs of healthy young people with a deadly toxin that kills within 72 hours believe they've unlocked its secrets, according to a report published Friday in the journal "Science."

The news comes just two days after a British biologist reported a possible breakthrough in the search for a cure for PVL-MRSA, a virulent and highly resistant strain of the relatively common Staphylococcus aureus bacteria — the staph infection commonly found in hospitals and locker rooms — that produces the toxin Panton Valentine leukocidin (PVL).

Already responsible for two recent deaths in Britain, experts there and in the United States fear they are seeing the early stages in both countries of what already is the largest bacterial epidemic in the world.

The superbug generally attacks the body through open wounds and can cause necrotising pneumonia, a disease that rapidly destroys lung tissue and kills in 75 percent of cases, scientists said.

This "community-acquired MRSA", or CA-MRSA, produces and releases PVL toxin, which destroys white blood cells. While the bacteria is relatively harmless on the skin, this new toxified CA-MRSA can be deadly if it gets into the bloodstream through a cut.

British health officials reported this week that one victim, an 18-year-old Royal Marine, died after the bacteria entered a scratch on his leg received during a training exercise. An outbreak last month at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital in England killed a baby and infected five others.

College and school sports programs in the U.S. have reported more than 5,000 cases of CA-MRSA in the last two years. British health officials, meanwhile, say more than 7,000 cases were reported in the U.K last year alone, but at least 100 of those cases turned into the potentially fatal PVL-MRSA, according to the Web site MRSA Watch.

"The virulence of CA-MRSA strains that produce the PVL toxin presents a nightmare scenario," according to Gabriela Bowden of the Texas A&M Health Science Center in Houston, who led a breakthrough study of the deadly bacteria published in "Science."

"If the community-acquired strain establishes itself in the hospital setting, it will be difficult to contain," Bowden warned.

One positive aspect of the disease is that its victims quickly develop a high fever allowing for fast diagnosis and treatment, Bowden said.

Bowden's researchers found that a gene passed between the CA-MRSA bacteria causes it to produce the deadly PVL toxin.

"This is a scary situation," Bowden told NewsMax.com. "We are trying to put the word out and to educate people about it."

Bowden also said that their new understanding of how the bug works gives them hope of heading it off before it finds a home and spreads through hospitals.

Staphylococcus aureus bacteria — also known as S. aureus — is the most common cause of hospital-acquired infections, and can cause inflammation of the heart, toxic-shock syndrome and meningitis.

The S. aureus bacterium is found on the skin or in the nose of about 25 percent to 30 percent of people. It also can cause minor skin infections such as pimples.

"We've shown that not only is PVL responsible for causing necrotising pneumonia, but it somehow also causes over-production of these other proteins which cause damage and help the infection spread," Bowden told The Guardian newspaper in London.

"We now have targets to go for."

On Wednesday the Guardian newspaper reported that mathematical biologist Malcolm Young of Newcastle University claimed to have discovered that the commonly used antiobiotic ETS 1153 was effective in fighting the MRSA bacteria.

Neither U.S. or British health officials commented on Young's claim.

Sanitation Has Been The Greatest Medical Advance

2007-01-20T00:41:00.001+01:00

According to a poll of more than 11,000 readers worldwide, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) says that sanitation is the greatest medical advance since 1840, the year that the BMJ was born.

Sanitation, defined as access to clean water and the disposal of sewage, got 15.8 per cent of the votes, just ahead of other advances such as antibiotics (14.5 per cent), anaesthesia (13.9 per cent) and vaccines (11.8 per cent).

The poll was conducted to celebrate the launch of the new format BMJ. The poll was launched by asking readers to say what they thought the best medical advance was since 1840. They received more than 70 categories, which a panel of experts narrowed down to 15 "milestones".

Readers were then invited to vote for one of the 15. Each of the 15 categories also had a "champion" in the form of a leading doctor or expert with some connection to the "milestone". For instance Doctor Stephanie J Snow, a descendant of John Snow, who developed the first anaesthetic, ether, that was later replaced with James Young Simpson's chloroform.

The champion for sanitation was Johan Mackenbach, Professor of Public Health at the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam. He was said to be delighted that so many people acknowledged this important milestone. He said that the general lesson that still holds true "is that passive protection against health hazards is often the best way to improve population health".

In his defence of the sanitation milestone where he explains why he thinks that deserves the number one place, he describes the history of sanitation. John Snow, the same guy again, proved that cholera was being spread in piped water when he shut off a pump in a district of London and stopped the spread of the disease in that area.

Edwin Chadwick thought about linking up homes to clean drinking water and properly drained sewage to reduce the spread of illnesses. Between 1901 and 1970, as a result of taking up his ideas, deaths due to diarrhea and dysentery went down by 12 per cent in England, Wales and the Netherlands.

Professor Mackenbach says that "environmental measures may be more effective than changing individual behaviour", explaining that installing pipes and sewers is more effective at reducing death and disease than trying to persuade people to change their health and hygiene habits.

Poor sanitation is still a significant problem in the developing world says Professor Mackenbach.

In the developed world sanitation has advanced technologically to include not only the removal of sewage but also the treatment of wastewater, including for reuse in cities and urban areas.

A more recent advance, and in most instances still at the experimental stage, in the technology of sanitation has been the idea of ecological sanitation, where urine and feces are separated at source. This removes the fecal pathogens from the wastewater which can then be treated as "greywater" which is kept for non-sanitary use such as to water the garden.

Stomach cancer likely killed Napoleon

2007-01-20T00:40:00.000+01:00

Napoleon Bonaparte died a more prosaic death than some people would like to think, succumbing to stomach cancer rather than arsenic poisoning, according to new research into what killed the French emperor.

Theories that Napoleon was poisoned with arsenic have abounded since 1961, when an analysis of his hair showed elevated levels of the toxic element.

But the latest review of the 1821 autopsy report just after he died concludes the official cause of death - stomach cancer - is correct.

The autopsy describes a tumor in his stomach that was 4 inches long. Comparing that description to modern cases, main author Dr. Robert M. Genta of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and an international team of researchers surmised that a growth so extensive could not have been a benign stomach ulcer.

"I have never seen an ulcer of that size that is not cancer," said Genta, a professor of pathology and internal medicine.

Further analysis suggested that his stomach cancer had reached a stage that is virtually incurable even with modern medical technology. People with similar cancers today usually die within a year.

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The autopsy and other historical sources indicate that the rotund French leader had lost about 20 pounds in the last few months of his life, another sign of stomach cancer. His stomach also contained a dark material similar to coffee grounds, a telltale sign of extensive bleeding in the digestive tract. The massive bleeding was likely the immediate cause of death, Genta and his colleagues concluded.

Historical sources also don't mention many typical signs of arsenic poisoning, such as discoloration of the fingernails, pre-cancerous blemishes on the feet and hands, cancers of the skin, lung and bladder and bleeding from the wall that separates the heart's lower chambers.

"Can we rule out the arsenic theory? I think we have some evidence against it," Genta said. "We cannot exclude it 100 percent, but I think we are pretty confident it's unlikely."

Dr. Steven B. Karch, who has also studied the case, believes Napoleon still could have been killed by arsenic or one of several medicines he received in his final days. Arsenic alone or in combination with other substances can cause fatal heartbeat irregularities, he said.

Napoleon died at age 52 while in exile on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena where he was banished after his defeat at Waterloo.

"I would say this was death by medical misadventure," said Karch, who works as an assistant medical examiner in San Francisco.

Some medical historians have pointed out that Napoleon's father died of stomach cancer or something like it, suggesting a possible family history of the disease. But Genta and his team speculate that Napoleon's cancer was most likely triggered by an ulcer.

He could have been infected by the ulcer-causing bacterium Helicobacter pylori during one of his military campaigns, when a diet high in salted meats and low in fresh vegetables would have made him particularly susceptible.

The study appears in the January issue of Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology, which is available online. Besides Genta, study authors include researchers from the University Hospital of Basel and the Canton Hospital of Aarau, Switzerland; and McGill University in Montreal.

Folic acid pills 'can slow mental decline'

2007-01-20T00:38:00.001+01:00

Taking folic acid supplements can slow the mental decline in older people, a study suggests.

A Dutch team studied 400 people aged between 50 and 70 who were split into two groups. Those in one group were given 800 micrograms of folic acid a day; the others were given a placebo.

Their memory and brain functions were measured at the beginning and end of the study, using a set of established tests. People gradually lose brain function as they age, but in the group given folic acid these changes were slowed, the team reports in The Lancet.

In some cases, the folic acid group actually showed improvements over the three years. In memory power, for example, three years of folic acid provided a benefit equivalent to being 4.7 years younger.

On other tests the effects were smaller. For information processing, the gain was the equivalent of being 2.1 years younger, and for global cognitive function 1.5 years. Nevertheless, these effects were significant, say the researchers, led by Jane Durga, of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

“We have shown that three-year folic acid supplementation improves performance on tests that measure information processing speed and memory, domains that are known to decline with age.

“Trials similar to our own should be repeated in other populations to provide greater insight into the clinical relevance of folic acid supplementation, such as in populations with mild cognitive impairment and dementia.”

The people studied in the trial had low folate intakes of about 200 micrograms a day but this would be not be untypical of those eating northern European diets.

Intake can be increased by taking daily folic acid supplements, or by fortifying flour, such as is done in the US and Canada. Britain has been discussing fortification of white flour for years, without reaching any conclusion.

Folic acid pills 'can slow mental decline'

2007-01-20T00:38:00.000+01:00

HD DVD or Blu-ray? Even the Porn Industry Won't Touch It

2007-01-20T00:37:00.000+01:00

It's a dirty little secret that's not all that dirty (or secretive) for those who follow technology trends. The porn, or "adult industry" —to use today's preferred nomenclature—tends to serve as something of an oracle when it comes to predicting which technologies eventually make their way into the marketplace and which ones don't. If you want to know where consumer technology is heading, look to porno and war, or so the axiom goes.

Twenty-five years ago, it was the adult industry that played a major role in shaping the future of American home entertainment, at least for the following 15 years or so. Suffering from stagnant theater and video-booth revenues, the industry made a bold decision to shift toward a new method for distributing its content. In the process, porno cozied up to a budding VHS format in lieu of what many considered to be its superior Betamax cousin. Granted, Sony (the progenitor of Betamax) had a lot to do with that ultimate decision, essentially refusing to let its burgeoning format be sullied by pornography hawkers. But nevertheless, when the adult industry gave the thumbs up to VHS, the result of the format war was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

What followed is now common knowledge. The explosion in the early 80s of VCRs and home-video rentals did for the adult industry pretty much what TV did for pro football.

Today, of course, there is a new format war at hand, one between two high-definition discs whose similarities far outweigh their differences. Nevertheless—whether it be out of habit or simply a wish for the whole thing to be over and done with—many have started looking toward the adult entertainment industry to get a better feel of which way the high-definition winds are truly blowing.

As was expected, the 2007 CES saw even more posturing and politics between the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps, with each side announcing a new set of alliances and predicting that the end of the war was imminent. Indeed, the success of this high-definition duel, as many have noted, will likely hinge on the partnerships that each coalition creates both with the consumer electronics and film industries. And while today's home video market environment is far different from that of the 1980s, the adult industry is again poised to play another leading role in the final outcome. That is, if it can choose.

Porn outsells Hollywood

Although the vagaries of entertainment accounting have become legendary, it is universally acknowledged that the U.S. adult-film industry, at around $12 billion in annual sales, rentals, and cable charges in 2006, is an even grander and more efficient moneymaking machine than legitimate mainstream American cinema (the latter's annual gross came in at $9 billion for 2006).

During this year's AVN Awards—AVN (or the Adult Video News) is a glossy magazine that's basically the Variety of the U.S. porn industry—the media network released its annual survey of the U.S. adult entertainment industry. The figures were impressive. Total revenue for 2006 came in at an astounding $12.92 billion. Overall, delivery costs were down for the year, according to AVN, a fact that supposedly accounted for the industry's continued growth.

On the video side of things, while the adult industry saw a significant decrease (15 percent) in sales and rentals last year, the sector managed to remain the largest (28 percent) in the adult entertainment market, accounting for $3.6 billion in 2006 -- this, despite increasing competition from alleged Internet-based methods of pornographic distribution.

And with video sales remaining the industry's main breadwinner, it was only a matter of time before the first high-definition adult film made its way to the public. The industry, not so surprisingly, chose HD DVD. Like with a 108-inch LCD television, it wasn't really about practicality as much as it was being first to market—and finding a cheap way of doing so.

In December of last year, Wicked Pictures released the industry's first HD DVD title, Camp Cuddly Pines Power Tool Massacre. Vice President of DVD Production, Jackie Ramos, characterized it as a movie about people having sex…and then getting killed. Camp Cuddly also happened to be one of Wicked's more popular titles (it had already seen a DVD release earlier in the year) and the company felt there would be continued demand for the movie in glossier high-definition iteration.

Are HD breasts better breasts?

"A lot of people are, like, you sure you want to see porn in HD?" said Ramos at this year's Adult Entertainment Expo. "We happen to feel that they do. We didn't negate…we still haven't negated Blu-ray, but it was much more cost effective to go with HD DVD."

As Ramos puts it, Wicked chose HD DVD primarily because of Blu-ray's prohibitive expense and lack of market share, as well as the fact that it is generally cheaper and easier to produce using the format.

"Right now, [HD DVD and Blu-ray] are so new that people are confused. They don't know which format they want. Our primary goal was to bring some sort of high-definition product to the consumer. There's something to be said about planting a flag and being first, and we wanted to stay ahead of the curve as much as we can in terms of technology."

In addition to being first, the plan for now, according to Ramos, is for Wicked to continue presenting its most popular titles on HD DVD and eventually move to a day-and-date DVD and HD DVD release scheme. Again, he stressed that the company was not ruling out Blu-ray.

"At Wicked, we put a lot of work into our bigger titles," Ramos explained. "We put a lot of work into our special features. With HD DVD, we can offer a lot of cool features for fans, which we plan on doing as we move along in the year—picture-in-picture, commentaries, games—it's going to take a little bit of time to do that, but that's our goal."

Jay Grdina, president of Club Jenna (and husband to the industry's most recognizable performer), seems to agree with Ramos for the most part.

"It's hard because I keep flipping back and forth between Blu-ray and HD DVD," explained Grdina. "I just got a PS3, and I'm thinking maybe Blu-ray is really going to take off."

But for the moment, he remains business-minded and bottom-line oriented, like any good adult industry executive.

"For the adult industry, no one is really replicating on Blu-ray right now. The process is really difficult, obviously. The render times are two weeks or more and the costs associated with it are really high."

Grdina even went one step further, adding that even releasing HD DVDs at this point isn't necessarily a sound business decision. "It's just not lucrative to make HD movies at the moment. Right now, you're basically doing it just to say you have it. The players are still really expensive and most people don't even have a way to watch the content."

While HD DVD certainly seems to have its foot in the porn industry door, Vivid Entertainment, another high profile adult movie studio, announced plans to release on Blu-ray later this year, or at least to begin burning to the format.

Steve Hirsch, who is head of Vivid, said he will also be using the HD DVD format due to its greater market saturation. But he also said the studio will begin burning to Blu-ray as soon as it's feasible (i.e. affordable).

Is Sony blocking HD porn?

But Vivid may very well run into problems with the Sony format. Indeed, what all the adult industry execs seemed to either be avoiding, or at least not aware of, was Sony's continued resistance to pornographic material migrating to the Blu-ray format.

During an interview with AVN earlier this month, Joone (a pseudonym used by Ali Davoudian, an AVN award winning pornographic film director/producer and founder of the company Digital Playground), said that he was basically forced to use HD DVD because no Blu-ray manufacturer would make his discs. While it's true that Sony has said it would not "replicate" adult titles on any format—meaning that it won't use its factories to produce Blu-ray porn—the Blu-ray alliance is saying something different.

In fact, the veracity of Joone's claims were called into question earlier this week when Marty Gordon, vice chair of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), was quoted as saying that there is no specific anti-porn mandate when it comes to adult material on the format.

"There is not a prohibition against adult content," Gordon said in a statement this week. "The BDA is an open organization that welcomes the participation of all companies interested in using and supporting the format, including those that represent the full spectrum of genres in the content industry."

Because of Blu-ray's late arrival into the marketplace, many are saying that Sony would do well to play nice with the adult industry, if it wants to have a fighting chance against HD DVD. Gordon's stance on adult content may be indicative of Sony's increased awareness of the role that the adult industry can and does play in such battles.

Even though plenty of people will readily admit to Blu-ray's technical superiority (the format with a larger, um, storage capacity than its rival) history has already shown that the market does not always operate in a strictly Darwinian fashion.

"You have to remember that the adult industry is low entry," Grdina explained. "It's a low hanging fruit. You grab it in a few seconds. It's not necessarily about what's best but what is cheapest, what's most accessible."

"I think whatever we [the adult industry] actually pick, the market is going to follow. But that's still very much up in the air."

Apple to charge $1.99 for 802.11n update

2007-01-20T00:36:00.000+01:00

Apple has confirmed that it intends to charge customers a fee to download the software that will enable the built-in 802.11n functionality in its Wi-Fi cards which shipped in some MacBook and MacBook Pro systems. Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that all Core 2 Duo and Intel Xeon-based Macs -- with the exception of the 17-inch 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo iMac -- already has the 802.11n chip during his keynote speech at Macworld. The fee, which Apple says amounts to $1.99, will appear on the company's website once its new AirPort Base Station begins shipping next month. Customers who purchase the new Base Station will receive the software update for free, but Apple has said it is required to charge customers for the software upgrade due to generally accepted accounting principals, according to News.com.

"The nominal distribution fee for the 802.11n software is required in order for Apple to comply with generally accepted accounting principles for revenue recognition, which generally require that we charge for significant feature enhancements, such as 802.11n, when added to previously purchased products," said Apple spokeswoman Lynn Fox.

The new wireless standard boasts a large increase in bandwidth over the previous 802.11g standard, offering a longer range while providing backward compatibility with older wireless standards. The 802.11n standard will likely see ratification later this year, but the Wi-Fi Alliance has said it will begin certifying products based on a draft of the standard.

Belgian copyright group warns Yahoo

2007-01-20T00:35:00.000+01:00

A group representing French- and German-language Belgian newspaper publishers has sent legal warnings to Yahoo about its display of archived news articles, the search company has confirmed.

Copiepresse, which has previously tussled with Google and Microsoft's MSN, has been leading the battle against search engines that publish news articles and photos via their news aggregators and search engine results. The group argues that the practice violates copyright laws, even if sites link to the publisher's Web site.

When it comes to Yahoo, Copiepresse objects to "the display of archived results" on Yahoo France's site, according to the No. 2 search engine, which said in an e-mailed statement that it "respects the copyright of content owners," and that it would respond "appropriately" to the Belgian organization.

Microsoft, since being contacted by Copiepresse, has been working out an agreement to remove certain links from its Live Search engine to French- and German-language Belgian newspapers.

In September, a court ordered Google to remove its Copiepresse results. Google removed the content from its Google.be and Google News sites, but it has filed an appeal, according to its official blog.

Copiepresse isn't the only news organization to take issue with search engines posting its content. The third-largest news agency in the world, Agence France-Presse, has sued Google for copyright violations.

'Storm Worm' rages across the globe

2007-01-20T00:34:00.000+01:00

First Person in U.S. Convicted for Spam E-mailing

2007-01-20T00:32:00.000+01:00

A report on the Mercury News revealed that a man from Los Angeles has been criminally convicted of spam e-mailing and is the first person to be convicted of such a crime in the U.S. Forty-five year old Jeffery Goodin was found guilty of running a running scam that fooled users into giving out personal information. E-mails that Goodin sent out made users believe that they were cooperating with a legitimate business when in fact they were not.

Goodin is convicted under the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act, which makes it illegal for marketers to send out false or misleading information to users. Goodin sent millions of these e-mails over the course of his spam career. The CAN-SPAM Act also dictates that legitimate e-mails such as newsletters and advertisements must feature a way for recipients to remove themselves from the mailing list.

Prosecutors provided evidence to a jury that Goodin also compromised AOL accounts to send out e-mail to users. Goodin's spam made it appear like his e-mails were being sent from AOL's billing department and told users that if they did not update their information via a website, their accounts would be closed.

Goodin is being convicted of spam, and ten other counts that include wire fraud and unauthorized access to AOL accounts and company trademarks for illegal purposes. He is to be sentenced on June 11th of 2007 and faces up to 101 years in prison.

Microsoft Vista delay to dampen quarterly earnings

2007-01-20T00:24:00.000+01:00

Microsoft is expected to announce a drop in quarterly earnings next week, largely because it is deferring $1.5 billion in revenue related to delays of its Vista and Office products, analysts say.

For the fiscal second quarter, the software giant is expected on Thursday to report earnings of 23 cents a share on revenue of $12.9 billion, according to analysts' estimates compiled by Thomson Financial. Microsoft posted earnings of 34 cents a share on revenue of $11.84 billion for the same period a year ago.

The disconnect between the second-quarter lower earnings yet higher revenue comes as a result of Microsoft's upgrade promotion to Vista from Windows XP. Under the Vista "Express Upgrade," users who purchase a computer with XP or Office 2003 will be eligible for an upgrade to Vista or Office 2007 at a steep discount or for free.

As a result of the program, which spans five months and ends March 15, Microsoft cannot claim revenue booked under this program until the users take advantage of the vouchers or coupons, said Charles Di Bona, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein.

The size of this revenue deferral is $1.5 billion.

In March, Microsoft announced the delay of Vista, noting it would miss the holiday selling season and ship the following year. The company started selling Vista and Office 2007 to business customers in November. The products will be available to consumers on Jan. 30.

That delay caused Microsoft to inform Wall Street that its second-quarter earnings would be in the range of 22 cents to 24 cents a share when it announced its first-quarter results in October. At the time, analysts' estimates were 34 cents a share.

"People initially thought, oh my god, their earnings are going to be down, but then they remembered why," Di Bona said, noting Wall Street has not reacted as a result.

Microsoft's stock has increased slightly since the October announcement: Shares closed at $31.11 Friday, up from $28.35 when Microsoft announced its first-quarter results.

David Dropsey, a research analyst with Thomson Financial, noted the delay in revenue recognition will result in that revenue being pushed into Microsoft's third or fourth quarter--and, as a result, not changing the overall effect on the company's 2007 fiscal year.

"It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul," Dropsey said.

When the software giant reports its second-quarter results on Thursday, Di Bona and other analysts will be focused on comments about Vista, Microsoft's latest operating system, which has been plagued with delays.

Sales of Microsoft's gaming console, the Xbox 360, as well as its server software are expected to be strong, Di Bona said.

Di Bona noted, however, it may be too early to see stabilization within the company's online group, which is facing increasing competition from Google. Last year, Microsoft's top executive of its MSN unit, David Cole, resigned after helping orchestrate the merger of MSN with the Windows division. And Google last year added a Web-based beta version of business applications such as word processing and spreadsheets to its lineup--pitting it directly against Microsoft's Word and Excel products.

eBay acquires controversial StubHub, an online ticket reselling market

2007-01-17T23:03:00.000+01:00

StubHub, an online ticket reselling market not too different from eBay, has made it through its legal troubles with sports teams (for the time being). Several sports teams encourage their fans to use the service, but others like the New England Patriots, aren’t so fond of them due to their scalping-like nature.

eBay has just announced plans to acquire StubHub for $310 million. For years, the service has been skimming people away from eBay, and brought them into an all-tickets, all-the-time atmosphere - which is exactly what sports-fans were looking for. Now, eBay has done what most major companies would do (or at least try to do), and bought up their competition.

StubHub was founded back in 2000 by Fluhr, and Baker (pictured above) and made $100 million in revenue just last year. Sounds like a wise investment on the part of eBay.

1918 Flu Pandemic Virus Overwhelmed Lungs: Study

2007-01-17T23:02:00.002+01:00

An international team of scientists say they've uncovered an important clue as to why the 1918 Spanish flu virus was so lethal, killing over 50 million people worldwide.

Reporting in this week's Nature, the scientists say the virus caused an immune response that destroyed the lungs within a few days. It appears to disrupt the body's typical reaction to viral infection, causing the immune system to attack the respiratory system. As a result, victims' lungs fill with fluid, and they essentially drown.

The 1918 virus was the most deadly influenza strain in modern history.

A similar excessive immune system reaction has been noted in patients with the H5N1 avian flu virus, which has killed about 150 people worldwide. So far, the H5N1 virus has not developed the ability to spread easily among people.

The findings of study on the 1918 virus may lead to new ways to fight influenza and suggest that early intervention in patients may help prevent large death tolls in future outbreaks of highly pathogenic flu.

For this study, conducted at a government lab in Canada, scientists infected seven monkeys with a reconstructed 1918 virus. It was reconstructed using genes collected from the tissues of victims of the pandemic. Within 24 hours of being infected with the virus, the monkeys showed clinical signs of influenza. Within eight days, the monkeys were so sick that they had to be euthanized.

The rapid progression of the disease in the monkeys was similar to that noted in human victims of the 1918 outbreak.

The rapid growth of the virus in the monkeys after they were infected suggests that the virus somehow sets the stage for virulent infection, noted research team member Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Somehow, early in infection, this virus does something to the host that allows it to grow really well. But we don't know what that is," Kawaoka said in a prepared statement.

By learning more about what's happening at the early stage of infection, scientists may be able to develop ways to halt the process, the researchers said.

Brazil Develops Gel To Fight HIV

2007-01-17T23:02:00.001+01:00

Brazilian scientists have developed a gel made from indigenous algae they say could help protect women from HIV, Folha de Sao Paulo reported Tuesday.

Though initial tests said it was 95 percent efficient, researchers said it would not be on the market for up to seven years.

The algae tests are part of a wide-ranging program to create a line of contraceptives for women that would prevent the spread of the deadly disease.

Brazil's national AIDS and HIV prevention program is widely considered the best in the world.

Chewing gum drug could help curb obesity epidemic

2007-01-17T23:01:00.001+01:00

An appetite-suppressing chewing gum or injection could be used to tackle Britain's obesity epidemic. Scientists are developing a way to emulate the body's natural signals for feeling full using a drug based on a natural gut hormone produced after every meal.

It is likely to be developed as as an injectable drug, but the scientists also believe it could eventually be taken orally and incorporated into a gum, or used in a nasal spray.

"We weren't looking at a toxic drug, which has all sorts of side effects; we were looking at the body's own way of switching off appetite after a meal," said Steve Bloom, of Imperial College, who is leading work on the new treatment, based on a hormone produced by the body called pancreatic polypeptide (PP).

In Britain, more than a fifth of adults are obese and of the remaining population half of men and a third of women are classified as overweight. In early trials, volunteers' appetites were reduced by a fifth after being injected with the experimental new drug.

Drugs to tackle obesity often have unpleasant side effects. Orlastat prevents the absorption of fat but can cause vitamin deficiencies and has to be carefully administered; Sibutramine, originally developed as an antidepressant, can drive up heart rate and blood pressure; and Rimonobant, which reverses the "munchies" associated with cannabis use, can cause nausea.

Professor Bloom said that in contrast, PP looks as if it will be free of side effects because it already circulates in the body. The body produces the hormone after every meal to ensure eating does not run out of control. There is evidence that some people have more of the hormone than others, and becoming overweight reduces the levels produced.

Prof Bloom tested the hormone in 35 overweight volunteers who were otherwise healthy. Participants were split into two groups - one was given the hormonal jabs, the other a placebo injection. They were then asked to eat as much as they liked from a buffet meal and asked questions about how hungry they felt.

Those given the treatment felt less hungry and ate less than those who received the placebo. The effect was statistically significant, reducing the amount of food eaten by 15% to 25%.

It is not the first time scientists have looked into using the body's hormones to control appetite. Several years ago, researchers pinned their hopes on leptin, a chemical also produced naturally by the body to keep a lid on appetite. Unfortunately, it did not work in trials. "Leptin is made by fat and fat people have very high levels of leptin and develop resistance - we have tested PP in fat people and it works fine," said Prof Bloom.

Prof Bloom has been awarded £2.3m by the Wellcome Trust to develop his idea, one of the first awards made in the charity's £91m Seeding Drug Discovery Initiative.

The cash will go into developing a way to get around PP's one weakness: when it gets into the blood, the hormone is immediately broken down by enzymes and quickly becomes ineffective.

One approach is to identify how the hormone is broken down in the body and then chemically modify it to resist attack. Another tactic will be to investigate a way to put the hormone into a capsule so that it can leak out slowly into the blood over a week or so.

Growth Hormone No 'Magic Bullet' for Aging

2007-01-17T23:00:00.000+01:00

Human growth hormone is being sold in increasing amounts as a cure-all for the ravages of aging, but new research shows no evidence for these claims -- and even possible dangers from the treatments.

So concludes a study from Stanford University researchers reported in the Jan. 16 Annals of Internal Medicine.

Growth hormone is widely promoted on the Internet and its use as an anti-aging drug has been touted in media ranging from NBC's Today show to Business Week.

However, Dr. Marc Blackman, clinical director of the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, who was not involved in the new study, said: "I'm concerned this is a substantial and growing problem. In an aging society, wanting to age healthfully and well has included the use of this very powerful hormone, the effectiveness and safety of which are still under investigation and have not been proved for this purpose."

The negative side effects of growth hormone include joint swelling and pain, carpal tunnel syndrome and a trend toward an increased risk of diabetes or pre-diabetes, according to the study.

"Human growth hormone is not the fountain of youth," said the study's lead researcher, Dr. Hau Liu, a research fellow in the division of endocrinology at Stanford's Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research.

Liu noted that as many as 30,000 people in the United States are taking growth hormone to try to stop the aging process. "They are spending anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month," he said. "They are spending this amount of money and getting only a slight, if any, benefit, but increasing the risk of serious side effects."

The researchers looked at 31 studies that included just 220 patients. "There is very little scientific evidence evaluating growth hormone for aging," Liu said. "This limited evidence suggests that there is very modest benefit and a potential for side effects."

Growth hormone caused small changes in body composition, such as a small gain in muscle mass and a small decrease in fat -- about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds), Liu said. This is no more than you would get from moderate exercise, he noted.

However, there was a potential for some serious side effects, including, in men, the risk for abnormal breast development, Liu said. These side effects are reversible when one stops taking the hormone, he said.

Liu noted that growth hormone is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use as an anti-aging medication.

"If you want to increase your probability of living a long, healthy life, [then] eat right, get some exercise, get enough sleep. Those things probably increase your probability of living a long, fruitful life," Liu said.

One expert believes that growth hormone has no place as an anti-aging remedy and may come with dangers.

"The hucksters touting growth hormone as a magic bullet against aging claim that thousands of studies have been conducted on the hormone. Liu demonstrates definitively that this is not true -- only a handful of studies have ever been conducted using growth hormone in adults," said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health and senior research scientist at the Center on Aging at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Olshansky also accused people who dispense growth hormone of acting irresponsibly.

"If those running anti-aging or so-called longevity clinics continue to openly and brazenly administer growth hormone to their patients as an anti-aging intervention, they will not only be openly violating the law, they may very well be jeopardizing the health of their patients," he said. "This thorough analysis suggests that the time has arrived for the FDA and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to crack down on this illegal and potentially harmful activity."

As men and women age, there is a progressive slow decline in the release of growth hormone, Blackman said. By the time people reach their late 60s or 70s, the reduction in the production of growth hormone is as much as 50 percent to 75 percent less than when they were in their 20s, he explained.

He noted that there are older people with a deficiency in growth hormone who can be successfully treated by replacing growth hormone. However, taking growth hormone to retard aging is not a proven therapy.

Cancer Deaths Decline for Second Straight Year

2007-01-17T22:59:00.000+01:00

The number of cancer deaths in the United States dropped in 2004 for a second straight year, the American Cancer Society reported today.

The finding suggests that a small drop reported last year for 2003 — the first in more than 70 years — was real, possibly the start of a continuing decrease and not merely a statistical fluke, the society said.

From 2003 to 2004 cancer deaths fell by 3,014, considerably more than the previous year’s decline of 369. (These are the latest years for which figures are available.)

Much of the decrease was a result of reductions in smoking and improved detection and treatment of colorectal, breast and prostate cancers, the American Cancer Society said. By far the greatest decreases in mortality have been in colorectal cancer, with 1,110 fewer deaths in men and 1,094 fewer in women.

Dr. Elizabeth Ward, a managing director in epidemiology and surveillance at the cancer society, said the biggest contributor to the decrease in deaths is the use of screening tests for colorectal cancer, which can detect the disease early when it is most treatable or even prevent it entirely by finding precancerous polyps, which can be removed before they turn malignant.

Progress on colorectal cancer has been notable even though only about half the adults who should be screened have undergone the needed tests. If more people were screened, there would likely be even steeper declines in death and the incidence of the disease.

Dr. Alfred I. Neugut, the head of cancer prevention and control at Columbia University Medical Center, said colorectal screening was comparable to the Pap test, which led to an 85 percent decrease in the incidence of cervical cancer in this country

Improved treatment and drugs have also played a part in lowering the death rate from colorectal cancer, Dr. Neugut said.

“There was a revolution in treatment between 1998 and 2000, and revolution is a mild word,” Dr. Neugut said. “We went from having one drug to having six or seven good drugs. The cure and survival rates have increased dramatically as a result.”

Although the drop in deaths is notable, it still pales in comparison to the total of 553,888 cancer deaths in 2004.

The death rate from cancer has been falling by slightly less than 1 percent a year since 1991, but until 2003 the actual number of deaths kept rising because the population was growing and aging. Then, in 2003, the cumulative drop in death rates finally became large enough to outpace aging and population growth.

“The decline in the cancer death rates, which has ultimately resulted in a decline in the total number of deaths, really reflects the years of effort and investment in tobacco control, programs for early detection and screening, and programs in clinical and basic research,” Dr. Ward said. “We’ve made a great deal of progress, but we still have a long way to go.”

One area of great concern, Dr. Ward said, is that African Americans have markedly higher death rates than whites from nearly every type of cancer. Researchers do not fully understand why. Disparities in income, education and access to health care could account for much of the difference, but not all of it, researchers say.

“If we really want to continue to make progress by applying what we know, we have to figure out a way to make sure to reach all populations with the information they need to prevent cancer and make sure that all populations have access to early detection and treatment — quality treatment — so that 10 to 20 years from now we don’t see the same big differences,” Dr. Ward said.

Originally, the new cancer figures were to be made public on Friday, but the cancer society changed the release date to today at the request of the head of the National Cancer Institute, who wanted the announcement to coincide with a visit by President Bush to the institute.

Indian Ocean shift seen stoking Indonesia droughts

2007-01-17T22:58:00.000+01:00

Indonesia and perhaps Australia risk more droughts because of shifts in Indian Ocean temperatures and stronger monsoons widely linked to global warming, scientists said on Wednesday.

They said studies of 6,500-year-old fossil corals had helped to reveal unexpected links between monsoons, droughts and periodic cooling of the eastern Indian Ocean known as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).

A trend toward stronger monsoons in Asia "will probably serve to prolong IOD-related droughts in western Indonesia, and possibly also southern Australia", the scientists wrote in the journal Nature.
Reuters Pictures

More droughts could disrupt agriculture, slow an Indonesian drive to end poverty, lead to more wildfires that cause both smog and deforestation, threaten wildlife habitats and disrupt hydropower generation.

The scientists said recent stronger monsoons had been widely linked by scientists to a global warming blamed on human burning of fossil fuels. But most studies of monsoon have focused on the likelihood of more rains in India and other parts of Asia.

"Our findings suggest that the some of the knock-on effects will cause more widespread consequences ... than previously thought," said Nerilie Abram of the Australian National University of the report in the journal Nature.

She said that the Dipole oscillation of the Indian Ocean, reversing usual winds and disrupting ocean temperatures, was similar to the better-known El Nino shifts in the Pacific Ocean.

"With a Dipole we get very cold temperatures off the coast of western Indonesia," she told Reuters of a report written with colleagues in China, the United States and Indonesia.

"Those cold temperatures reduce the amounts of rainfall so you end up with intense droughts in western Indonesia and then you don't get the cloud bands forming there that travel across to parts of Australia," Abram said.

The last Dipole peaked in October-November 2006, following monsoon rains that typically last from May-September. The previous Dipole was in 1997-98.

A current El Nino event in the Pacific also tends to draw rainfall eastwards from Indonesia, aggravating droughts.

"If the consensus holds true that the Asian monsoon will intensify with climate warming, Indonesia can expect more frequent and longer droughts," Jonathan Overpeck and Julia Cole, both of the University of Arizona, wrote in a separate commentary in Nature.

"Rural livelihoods and natural resources will thus be at greater risk as drought undercuts regional food supplies and stokes wildfires that also generate exceedingly poor air quality in the region."

Is Yahoo hijacking browsers?

2007-01-17T22:56:00.000+01:00

Several articles on Slashdot and other websites are reporting that, in an attempt to gain more of a foothold on browser searching, Yahoo is employing some shady tactics.

One way for a search engine to gain a popular place among internet users, is to become the default search tool of choice in the browser. You see this in the upper right portion of the browser in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Being the default search engine builds brand loyalty and can return millions in advertising revenue for the company who gets the most searches and the most results. The fight for default search on browsers is well known. Google threatened a lawsuit when Microsoft made its MSN Live the default search in Internet Explorer 7. Google has also signed deals with Firefox and Opera, successfully beating out the competition, as most people often do not change the default settings.

Yahoo is taking a different approach. When you install or download a Yahoo program you are given the option to include several ‘features’ things like a tool bar for internet explorer, links added to your desktop, your bookmarks to other Yahoo portals and services. Some users are complaining that even after opting out of these extras, Yahoo changed their default searching function.

The new software for ‘Y! Messenger’, Yahoo’s own instant messenger program, comes with and ‘auto update function’ using this will allow Yahoo to alter your browser. You are told this in the fine print when you install the program, but as one comment on TechDirt put it, “*looks for the "yes, I agree" box*” often no one notices until it’s too late. Many people are aware that by adding a new Yahoo services, they will be adding features and programs to their computers, but seldom do they realize they will be inundated with programs and updates that they have no particular interest in obtaining. Browsing the comments on TechDirt one can see other examples.

“Yes, I was baited with this Yahoo thing late one night while not thinking clearly! I thought I was downloading an upgrade to Windows. Next thing I knew my whole page had changed, with Yahoo crap everywhere...it eliminated my Favorites, something I use continually. Thankfully my son was able to get rid of it. It was very annoying.”
- Megan White.

User Chaos reports, “Few weeks ago I downloaded the most recent YIM install and unchecked everything extra and still got [Internet Explorer] loaded down with Yahoo crap and links to games I'll never play dropped everywhere.”

While brand loyalty is how smart business is done, isolating your customers and forcing them to remain loyal is the fastest way to lose them. It is interesting to note that most ‘bloat ware,’ or applications that install other things aside from the intended program usually focuses on Internet Explorer users. This is mainly due to the large market share Internet Explorer commands on the internet.

However, its users are quickly moving to other browsing solutions. Firefox and Opera are fast becoming the browser of choice, and often these ‘extras’ don’t work or will not install on them.

Climate resets 'Doomsday Clock'

2007-01-17T22:52:00.000+01:00

Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind.

As a result, the group has moved the minute hand on its famous "Doomsday Clock" two minutes closer to midnight.

The concept timepiece, devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, now stands at five minutes to the hour.

The clock was first featured by the magazine 60 years ago, shortly after the US dropped its A-bombs on Japan.

Not since the darkest days of the Cold War has the Bulletin, which covers global security issues, felt the need to place the minute hand so close to midnight.

'Perilous choices'

The decision to move it came after BAS directors and affiliated scientists held discussions to reassess the idea of doomsday and what posed the most grievous threats to civilisation.

Growing global nuclear instability has led humanity to the brink of a "Second Nuclear Age," the group concluded, and the threat posed by climate change is second only to that posed by nuclear weapons.

"When we think about what technologies besides nuclear weapons could produce such devastation to the planet, we quickly came to carbon-emitting technologies," said Kennette Benedict, executive director of the Chicago-based BAS.

The announcement was made at simultaneous events held by the magazine in London and in Washington DC that included remarks from the English Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, and physicist Stephen Hawking.

"Humankind's collective impacts on the biosphere, climate and oceans are unprecedented," said Sir Martin.

"These environmentally driven threats - 'threats without enemies' - should loom as large in the political perspective as did the East/West political divide during the Cold War era."

A number of alarming nuclear trends led to a statement by the Bulletin that "the world has not faced such perilous choices" since the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The worries include Iran's nuclear ambitions, North Korea's detonation of an atomic bomb, the presence of 26,000 launch-ready weapons by America and Russia, and the inability to secure and halt the international trafficking of nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

Ice evidence

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded by former Manhattan Project physicists, has campaigned for nuclear disarmament since 1947.

Its board periodically reviews issues of global security and challenges to humanity, not solely those posed by nuclear technology, although most have had a technological component.

Nuclear war would itself bring about climate changes

Climate 'would reel from A-bombs'

This is the first time it has included climate change as an explicit threat to the future of civilisation.

A less immediate threat, but included in the assessment, is the one posed by emerging life science technologies, such as synthetic biology and genetic modification.

While the harm done to the planet by carbon-emitting manufacturing technologies and automobiles was more gradual than a nuclear explosion, nonetheless, it could also be catastrophic to life as we know it and "irremediable", the board said.

It cited in support the conclusions of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its broad assessment is that the warming over the last few decades is attributable to human activities, and that its consequences are observable in such events as the melting of Arctic ice.

In the years ahead, rising sea levels, heat waves, desertification, along with new disease outbreaks and wars over arable land and water, would mean climate change could bring widespread destruction, the board said.

It also warned against the use of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels.

'Optimistic' view

While the technology had the potential to alleviate the climate warming effects of burning coal, its development raised the spectre that nuclear materials would be available for nefarious ends as well, the board argued.

Some scientists - even climate scientists - may not support the comparison of global warming to the catastrophe that would follow a nuclear engagement.

"Whether it's a threat of the same magnitude or slightly less or greater is beside the point," said Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist from Princeton University, US.

"The important point is that this organisation, which for 60 years has been monitoring and warning us about the nuclear threat, now recognises climate change as a threat that deserves the same level of attention," he said.

Both the nuclear menace and a runaway greenhouse effect were the result of technology whose control had slipped from humans' grasp, the BAS directors said. But it was also within our power to pull them back under control, they added.

"We haven't figured out how to do that yet, but the potential is within our institutions and our imaginations," said Dr Benedict.

Dr Oppenheimer agrees that people should not despair. After all, he said, for a long time the world took the nuclear threat seriously and reduced the numbers of weapons.

"I'm optimistic that we can address climate change," he said. "We've dealt with such problems before, and we can do it again."

Over the past 60 years, the Doomsday clock has now moved backwards and forwards 18 times. It advanced to two minutes before midnight - its closest proximity to doom - in 1953 after the United States and the Soviet Union detonated hydrogen bombs.

Its keepers last moved the clock's hand in 2002 after the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and amid alarm about the acquisition of nuclear weapons and materials by terrorists.

Amul India woos diabetics and obese with safe, new delicacies

2007-01-17T07:37:00.002+01:00

With a growing number of diabetics, and a burgeoning population of obese urban dwellers, the ice-cream industry in India is indeed worried about the 'melting' market for its products.

According to the World Health organisation, of 1.5 billion overweight adults globally, 400 million live in India. The figure is expected to double over the next eight years. India is also the diabetes capital of the world, with 37 million diabetics.

But leading producer of milk and indigenous dairy products, including ice cream, Amul, has decided to take on the 'battle of the bulge' by introducing a new range of 'sugar-free' and 'probiotic' products for diabetics, the obese and the health conscious.

For many diabetics, consuming ice-cream remains a tempting longing. Amul wants to make it a reality with the launch of its specially created sugar-free, low fat diabetic delight. In Amul Sugarfree Probiotic Diabetic Delight Frozen Dessert, sugar has been replaced with zero calorie and low calorie sweeteners.

Amul Sugarfree Probiotic Diabetic Delight contains 50 per cent less fat and half of the calorie than normal ice cream. It has also been supplemented with pro-biotic cultures for health improvement.

Fructo-oligo saccharides are soluble dietary fibre that improve the mineral absorption and bone health in addition to increasing the disease fighting ability of the body.

Digestive enzymes sparingly digest these sweeteners in stomach or small intestines and therefore do not cause fluctuations in blood sugar levels unlike in a diabetic condition where intake of digestible sugar causes fluctuation in the blood sugar level, says the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd, India's largest food products marketing firm, which owns the Amul brand. The federation is the apex body of 2.9 million milk producers of Gujarat.

Amul has also launched a probiotic ice cream - Amul ProLife Probiotic Wellness Ice Cream. Probiotics are live beneficial culture which, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a beneficial health effect on
the host.

They help in digestion, improve the immune system,fight against allergic reactions and are effective in controlling travellers' diarrhoea, claims the federation.

Probiotics also help in the prevention of formation and growth of colon cancer and enhances brain activity.

Britain Sees Rise In Gambling Addiction

2007-01-17T07:37:00.001+01:00

Doctors in Britain say the country is on its way to a gambling epidemic, The Independent reported.

The British Medical Association predicts the number of women gamblers will rise over the next 20 years, and children are at more risk of becoming problem gamblers because of the liberalization of gaming.

There are an estimated 300,000 gambling addicts in Britain, the newspaper said. Gambling has grown dramatically in Britain due to relaxed laws and easy access to online gambling.

A report from the BMA is expected to call for more treatment centers and more research into gambling addiction.

More side effects than any gain, HGH not safe

2007-01-17T07:35:00.000+01:00

Stanford University Researchers said in a report on Tuesday that growth hormone injections, which people take to increase life span and fitness, has adverse affects on the well being and health of the individuals.

They held that it does not potentially contribute to the increase in life span and fitness, but causes side effects like joint swelling and pain, carpal tunnel syndrome and a tendency toward diabetes.

After amassing results from 31 studies, Dr. Hau Liu of Stanford and his colleagues at Stanford and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System elucidated the fact that there was no principle for the elderly to use the treatment.

"You are paying a lot of money for a therapy that may have minimal or no benefit and yet has a potential for some serious side effects," Liu said.

"The appropriate conclusion is that it is premature to be using human growth hormone for this purpose," said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was not involved in the study. "It is also illegal."

Olshansky and his colleagues reported in 2005 that as many as 20,000 to 30,000 people in America were taking the human growth hormone in 2004, and spending at least $1,000 per month. By some estimates, the market for HGH and related products totals more than $1.5 billion per year.

Books, magazine articles and Internet advertisements "claim that the benefits of HGH have been proved in thousands of studies in tens of thousands of patients," Olshansky said. "The fact is, that is not true. The actual number of person-years studied is very limited."

HGH is produced by genetically engineering techniques and is used to treat growth problems in children. In adults, it is used for wasting syndrome caused by AIDS and growth hormone deficiency.

All other uses in adults are specifically disallowed, but many physicians and patients are not aware of that, Olshansky said.

Liu and his colleagues studied reports that involved controlled treatments in adults, and found out that treatment for six months produced an increase of less than 5 pounds of muscle mass and a similar decrease in fat.

"If you went to a gym pretty regularly, you might get that change without breaking into too much of a sweat, and you wouldn't spend $1,000 to $2,000 per month," Liu said.

Growth hormone is secreted by the pituitary gland and is necessary for growth and cell production. In the past, GH was extracted from human pituitary gland and given to children with the hormone deficiency.

However, with progress in technology and science, GH is now produced synthetically and given to both children and adults for a variety of reasons. GH therapy has been a focus of social and ethical controversies for 50 years.

Other risks of the treatment are SCFE, which causes pain in the hip region; pseudotumor cerebri, which is manifested by severe headache, papilledema, nausea, and visual changes; fluid retention and edema; pancreatitis has been reported in a few patients too; altered body composition, which refers to the tendency of GH to build bone and muscle mass and reduce body fat; decrease in insulin sensitivity; and IGF1 levels may be raised above normal.

Serious problems like Type 2 diabetes has been reported in a few adolescents treated with GH. Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer, occurring in about 1 in 40,000 children each year. Because leukocytes have GH receptors, leukemia cases have been cautiously counted since synthetic GH was introduced.

Space Station Exchanges Cargo Ships

2007-01-17T07:34:00.000+01:00

The crew of the International Space Station was preparing Tuesday for an exchange of cargo spaceships.

The Progress 22 cargo craft was to undock from the International Space Station Tuesday, beginning its final journey into the Earth's atmosphere.

The Russian-built spacecraft, filled with trash accumulated on the space station, will be destroyed during re-entry.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration controllers in Houston said the undocking will clear the station's Pirs Docking Compartment for the Friday arrival of a new cargo craft -- Progress 24 -- which is to be launched at 9:12 p.m. Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Progress 24 will deliver propellant, oxygen, spacewalk gear, clothing and other items to the space station.

The Progress 24 launch will also commemorate the 100th birthday of Sergei Korolev who was born Jan. 12, 1907. Russian space officials say Korolev is recognized as the "great designer" of Soviet spacecraft.

Small drives cross performance threshold

2007-01-17T07:32:00.000+01:00

Seagate announced a new, faster class of 2.5-inch hard drives on Tuesday, an important part of the effort to get the smaller devices to replace the 3.5-inch drives that currently prevail in much of the server market.

Seagate's new Savvio 15K spins at 15,000 revolutions per minute, which means data can be found and retrieved faster than with preceding 10,000rpm 2.5-inch models.

That's important in particular for servers, which often run multiple jobs simultaneously and therefore need to access data scattered across the drive. And computing jobs often are constrained by the time it takes for a hard drive to start sending requested data as well as the speed with which it can send it.

The feature is arriving later than expected, though. Hewlett-Packard had hoped for 15K 2.5-inch drives by the end of 2005; the company is a major proponent of the smaller drives for its ProLiant line of x86 servers.

The 15K drives take up less room, which is important for small systems such as blade or rack-mounted servers, but Seagate also said the drives consume 30 percent less power than current 3.5-inch 15K drives.

The Savvio 15K drives are Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) models geared for servers.

Statins may thin out brain disease

2007-01-15T23:14:00.000+01:00

THE cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins, taken by more than one million Australians, may be linked to lower rates of the degenerative brain condition Parkinson's disease.
Researchers are now planning a huge trial involving more than 16,000 patients to test the association, which has been suggested by the findings from a small initial study.

Statins are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in Australia and one - Pfizer's Lipitor - was the single biggest drain on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in 2005-06.

In the year to June 30, 2006 there were 17,365,169 PBS prescriptions processed for "lipid-modifying" drugs that alter blood fat levels, most of which were in the statin class.

In 2004 there were an estimated 1.2 million Australians using statin drugs, which help prevent heart attacks and strokes by cutting levels of the dangerous low-density lipoprotein, or LDL cholesterol, which furs up arteries.

However, Australian experts have reacted with scepticism to the findings.

Cardiologist Murray Esler, assistant director of Melbourne's Baker Heart Research Institute, said the initial US study, by researchers from the University of North Carolina, was based on too few patients to be reliable and its findings were contradictory.

In the study, the US researchers compared a group of 124 Parkinson's patients with 112 "control" participants.

They found those with reduced LDL levels were up to three times more likely to be in the Parkinson's group.

"Interestingly, use of either cholesterol-lowering drugs, or statins alone, was related to lower PD (Parkinson's disease) occurrence," the authors wrote.

Professor Esler said the study was "pretty weak" and the authors' conclusion was "reading a lot into rather confusing data". It was more likely patients developed low cholesterol as a result of having Parkinson's because the disease made it harder for them to feed and look after themselves, he said.

Roger Allan, chairman of the clinical issues committee for the National Heart Foundation, said statins had proved to be very effective at cutting cardiovascular deaths. If they either increased or decreased Parkinson's cases, this would probably already have become apparent, he said.

Uterus Transplant Would Offer Chance For Women To Bear Children

2007-01-15T23:13:00.000+01:00

Doctors at a New York hospital plan the first uterus transplant to allow women with defective or removed wombs to bear children, news reports said Monday. A cancer specialist, Dr. Giuseppe Del Priore, and gynecologist surgeon, Dr. Jeanetta Stega, of the New York Downtown Hospital, which is part of the New York-Presbyterian Health Care system, revealed steps that would lead to the first uterus transplant. He said it was a natural progression after the successful transplants of limbs and partial facial replacements.

"I believe it's technically possible to do," said Del Priore, the lead physician. He was quoted by the New York Post.

"If this is a passionate desire for a woman who's had surgical removal of a uterus, I would think this would be something she'd really want to pursue," said Julia Rowland, director of the National Cancer Institute's Office of Cancer Survivorship.

Rowland said, however, that the risks should be carefully weighed. Other scientists said the uterus transplant should be done first on animals to see whether they would produce healthy offsprings.

The Post said the news of the first uterus transplant has drawn different views. Thousands of women had become pregnant after receiving kidney, heart and other transplants, and advocates believe a uterus transplant would help women who strongly desire to have children.

News reports said the wombs would come from dead donors - the normal practice to obtain organs - and would be removed after the recipient gives birth to avoid the constant need of anti-rejection drugs.

They said the New York hospital's ethics board had conditionally approved the transplant, but warned that the transplant would not be anytime soon in the near future. Some scientists warned that the bold idea of a uterus transplant is "not really ready for prime time."

But the reports said doctors at the New York Downtown Hospital did a six-month experiment, which showed that wombs could be had from organ donors and they were screening for potential recipients.

Designer Hens Lay Anti-Cancer Eggs

2007-01-15T23:12:00.002+01:00

Scientists at Scotland's Roslin Institute that produced Dolly the Sheep have genetically modified "designer" hens to lay eggs containing proteins that can fight human forms of cancer and other diseases. It is thought this will make a range of existing drugs easier and cheaper to produce.

The hens are producing proteins that have the potential to treat arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and malignant melanoma, or skin cancer.

The results of this research are to be published in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Roslin team genetically engineered the hens by inserting the gene for the desired proteins into the ovalbumin gene, a protein in egg white. They chose two proteins: human interferon b-1a, which is used to treat a range of tumours and virus infections, and miR24, a monclonal antibody used in the treatment of skin cancer.

They started by using a virus to insert the protein DNA into the DNA of chick embryos. The chicks were hatched and the researchers found that the male ones had DNA in their semen. These were bred with normal hens and the female chicks that carried the new genes then went on to produce the eggs containing the desired proteins. Some 500 genetically modified, or "transgenic" hens have now been created in this way.

The news was welcomed by the UK's leading cancer charity, Cancer Research UK, at the weekend. Herbie Newell, director of translational research at the charity said that anything that speeds up the number of new treatments available and reduces their cost "must be welcomed".

Dr Helen Sang of the Roslin Institute and lead scientist on the project has been working on this for 15 years. It could still be another 15 years before drugs become available because of the long development cycle of such innovative treatments. First the patent trials have to be completed, that takes about 5 years, and then the drug development and approval takes another 10 years.

The idea is to produce the protein-based drugs in flocks of birds reared as "biofactories" much in the same way as chickens are for normal eggs. The proteins are quite straightforward to harvest from the egg-white.

Using genetically modified organisms to create drugs for treating humans is not new. Insulin for treating diabetes is produced in genetically modified bacteria. Other more complex proteins have been produced in the milk of sheep, goats, cows and rabbits. However this is the first time that birds have been used and the researchers think this method could lead to cheaper and faster drug production because of the shorter life cycle of hens and eggs.

This latest Roslin work forms part of the Avian Transgenic Project, which includes the biotechnology firms Viragen and Oxford BioMedica

Bird flu spreads in Asia

2007-01-15T23:12:00.001+01:00

AN Indonesian hospital was overwhelmed with patients suffering bird flu symptoms as the disease spread further in Vietnam and Thailand reported its first case in poultry in six months.

But farm ministry officials in Japan said there was no evidence of the disease spreading there following confirmation at the weekend of a bird flu outbreak at a poultry farm in the southwest in which 3800 chickens died.

A recent spurt of infections of the H5N1 bird flu virus, which re-emerged in Asia in late 2003, has alarmed health officials.

Four Indonesians have already died this year after a six-week lull in cases, taking the number of human deaths from bird flu in the country to 61, the highest in the world.

At Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital, where doctors were treating nine people with bird flu symptoms, including a five-year-old girl in intensive care, its isolation wards were overwhelmed.

Scientists Discover Second Gene Linked To Alzheimer's

2007-01-15T23:11:00.001+01:00

Scientists have discovered that the gene SORL1 is likely to be involved in the development of Alzheimer's in the elderly.

The international team of researchers was led by scientists from Columbia University Medical Center, Boston University School of Medicine and the University of Toronto. The study is published in the January 14th online issue of the journal Nature Genetics.

The researchers examined the blood of 6,000 men and women from 4 different ethnic and racial groups: white Europeans, blacks, Israeli-Arabs and Caribbean- Hispanics, and found that a faulty variant of SORL1 was more common among those with Alzheimer's than those without. They also found that people with the faulty SORL1 also had lower levels of normal SORL1 in their blood.

What makes this study significant is the fact the results were the same for each of the four racial and ethnic groups.

Alzheimer's disease is thought to be caused by the development of abnormally folded amyloid proteins in the brain, leading to what has become known as amyloid plaques. Normal SORL1 produces a protein that prevents the development of amyloid plaques.

This is the second genetic variant for late onset Alzheimer's that has been discovered. The first was ApoE4, which was discovered in 1993. It explains about 20 per cent of late onset Alzheimer's cases and elevates the risk of onset by some 30 or 40 per cent.

Genetic variants have also been discovered in early onset Alzheimer's, a much rarer form of the disease that strikes people aged between 30 and 60.

This study has not identified how many cases of late onset Alzheimer's are down to the SORL1 variant. It is not a straightforward deduction since, as one of the lead researchers, Dr Richard Mayeux, co-director of New York's Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's and the Aging Brain explained, it involves "multiple genes and maybe some environmental factors", and it could be that "some people carry a risk gene but don't get the disease."

It is hoped this discovery will contribute, as has the discovery of ApoE4, to improved screening for Alzheimer's risk factors.

Alzheimer's Disease is the most common form of dementia which affects 24 million people worldwide. This is estimated to reach over 80 million by 2040. There are 4.5 million Americans with Alzheimer's, a figure which is expected to double in the next 25 years as baby boomers reach the 65+ age bracket

Probe Going To Pluto To Have Jupiter Flyby

2007-01-15T23:10:00.000+01:00

The itinerary for NASA's New Horizons probe headed for Pluto includes an image-recording Jupiter flyby, agency officials in Florida said.

New Horizons took black-and-white images of Jupiter and scanning the planet's moon Callisto as it prepared for the closer flyby in February, Space.com said.

"They're certainly all we could have hoped for," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said Thursday of the new Jupiter images, noting that the probe would get about 50 times closer to the planet next month. "They are very nice."

The probe is scheduled to make its closest pass by Jupiter Feb. 28, a little over a year after launch, coming within 1.4 million miles of the planet.

New Horizon's Jupiter flyby and subsequent gravity boost will shave a full three years off the probe's journey to Pluto. But Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., attributes it to the January 2006 launch that put the spacecraft on target for a 2015 rendezvous.

"We are really healthy," Stern said of the spacecraft. "We don't have a single device that's broken on the spacecraft."

Japan set to cancel delayed moon probe mission

2007-01-15T23:08:00.000+01:00

Japan's space agency on Monday said it had recommended cancelling a much-delayed unmanned mission to the moon in the latest setback to the nation's ambitions to explore the final frontier.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) planned to call off its Lunar-A mission, which was intended to shed light on the moon's origin and evolution using a module to land on its surface, a spokesman said.

"The mother ship was built 10 years ago and over the years it has been deteriorating, and it has come to a point where it can no longer be used," project manager Takashi Nakajima said.

"Instead of refurbishing the mission's mother ship or building a new one, we made a recommendation that we would like to pursue other possibilities. We do not want to build another similar space craft," he added.

The mission had intended to release two devices to penetrate the lunar surface and transmit information to the mother ship orbiting the moon.

A final decision on the fate of the project will be made early next month. Te agency is considering alternative exploration missions, or the possibility of other countries' craft taking the devices into space.

Japan's space program had been on a rebound with a series of satellite launches, after a series of embarrassments.

In November 2003, Japan suffered a humiliating failure when a rocket carrying a satellite to monitor North Korea had to be destroyed soon after lift-off due to technical problems.

iPhone skins irk Apple

2007-01-15T23:07:00.000+01:00

Australian Apple devotees may not have to wait until next year to get their hands on the iPhone, as its user interface (UI) can be downloaded onto competing devices that are available now.

Savvy coders have developed iPhone "skins" that work with most smartphones based on the Windows Mobile and Palm operating systems.

The issue has angered Apple to such an extent that it has sent its lawyers after a number of those involved - both directly and indirectly.

The skins don't add any new functionality to the devices, but make use of the iPhone's copyrighted icons to create a UI that distinctly resembles Apple's hybrid mobile phone.

Soon after the skins were uploaded to the Brighthand and Xda-developers internet message boards, Apple unleashed its legal team, who sent removal letters to at least one of the websites hosting the files.

Apple's lawyers also sent letters to journalists who simply reported on the fact that the skins were available.

"It has come to our attention that you have posted a screenshot of Apple's new iPhone and links that facilitate the installation of that screenshot on a PocketPC device," law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP wrote to Paul O'Brien, who runs the MoDaCo website.

"While we appreciate your interest in the iPhone, the icons and screenshot displayed on your website are copyrighted by Apple.

"Apple therefore demands that you remove this screenshot from your website and refrain from facilitating the further dissemination of Apple's copyrighted material by removing the link to http://forum.xda-developers.com, where said icons and screenshot are being distributed."

Apple's actions have sparked fury among tech industry watchers, who have accused the company of bullying and being notoriously litigious.

"I think this is all complete nonsense," Michael Arrington, of the influential technology blog TechCrunch, said.

"If Apple wants to go after the guy that made the Windows Mobile skin that looks like the iPhone, fine. But to bully bloggers who are simply reporting on this is another matter."

Ironically, Apple's attempts to have the files removed from the web have only given the skins greater publicity, and they have already begun spreading to other websites.

The issue marks a distinct change in tone for many bloggers and journalists, who just last week praised Apple for its "revolutionary" and "game-changing" phone despite being unable to conduct a proper hands-on test of the product.

But this isn't the first example of Apple's legal team targeting individual bloggers and website owners.

In a high-profile US lawsuit that was filed in late 2004, Apple sued three bloggers after they published information - which Apple labelled "trade secrets" - of an unreleased Apple product.

By filing the suit, Apple hoped to determine who in the company was leaking information to the media.

The court initially ruled in favour of Apple, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the organisation representing the bloggers, lodged an appeal.

Judge Franklin Elia of the 6th District Court of Appeal rejected Apple's arguments that the bloggers were not true "journalists" protected by First Amendment rights to keep their sources secret.

"All you want here is the name of a snitch, so you're saying you have the right to invade the privacy of the email system and to trump the First Amendment ... just to find out who in your organisation is giving out inappropriate information?" Judge Elia asked Apple's attorney.

Apple later dropped the case, deciding against taking it to the Supreme Court.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment for this story.

New Paypal Key to Help Thwart Phishers

2007-01-15T23:06:00.001+01:00

Over the next few months, Ebay Inc. will be offering its PayPal users a new tool in the fight against phishers: a $5 security key. The key is a small electronic device, designed to clip on to a keychain, that calculates a new numeric password every 30 seconds. PayPal users who sign up to use the device will need to enter their regular passwords as well as the number displayed on the key whenever they log in to the online payment service.

"The key is really going to give users one more layer of security for their accounts," said Sara Bettencourt, a PayPal spokeswoman.

Because the numeric password changes so frequently, even successful phishers will end up with obsolete numeric passwords and will be unable to empty PayPal accounts.

"If you fall for a phishing scam and give away your user name and password ... if you used the PayPal Security Key, a third party couldn't get to your account because they wouldn't have this dynamic digit," Bettencourt said.

The Security Key could be an important tool for PayPal, whose Web site is frequently spoofed by phishers looking to steal user account information.

The PayPal Security Key is being tested by PayPal employees right now, and the test will be opened up to beta users in the U.S., Germany, and Australia "in the next month or so," Bettencourt said. Later this year, the company plans to begin promoting the devices to all PayPal users. News of the new PayPal system was first reported on AuctionBytes.com

PayPal users who want this extra level of security will be able to buy the devices for $5, but this fee will be waived for PayPal business accounts.

PayPal's device is based on VeriSign Inc.'s One-Time Password Token product, which is also being tested by Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. and U.S. Bancorp.

ETrade Financial Corp. also uses a similar system, based on RSA Security's SecurID tokens.

Over the past year, online financial companies have paid more attention to authentication technologies such as the VeriSign tokens, which add a second layer of authentication to online transactions. Adoption of these "two-factor" authentication techniques has been further boosted by new federal guidelines, which require stronger authentication for online transactions.

Still, phishing attacks are becoming increasingly lucrative for criminals.

Research company Gartner Inc. estimates that phishers cost U.S. financial institutions about $2.8 billion last year. The average loss per phishing attack was $1,244, up from $256 in 2005.

Cisco has barely used iPhone name

2007-01-15T23:04:00.000+01:00

Just imagine they have worked out how Apple will take the iPhone name off Cisco in its trademark dispute with the outfit.

According to information from the US Patent and Trademark office, the name was abandoned in late 2005/early 2006 because Cisco was not using it.

The Cisco iPhone trademark was registered 11/16/1999 (Reg. No. 2293011). To keep the trademark registration active, you have to file a Declaration of Use before the sixth anniversary of the registration date. In this declaration you say that you have been using the name continuously for six years.

Cisco filed this a bit late, but as evidence that it was still using the name supplied a picture of the iPhone box it was selling.

The picture shows a box for the Linksys CIT200 Cordless Internet Telephony Kit, with a sticker showing the word "iPhone™" stuck to the back, outside the shrink wrap. The front of the box is not shown, but it doesn't appear that the word iPhone appears anywhere else on the box, or the manual.

According to ZDNet this means that Cisco did not actively offer a product named "iPhone" between 1999 and December 2006. However it kept control of the name because it had been approached by Apple to ask if it could have the name.

If Apple can prove in a federal court that there was no continuous use, then Cisco's registration could be cancelled

Virtual reality embraced by businesses

2007-01-14T19:21:00.000+01:00

The pillars glide by as you float through the courtyard of an ancient palace. Moments later, the world turns blue as you slip along the ocean floor and poke through the Earth's crust in search of oil.

The journeys take place in Room 278 at the Joshi Research Center, a data-crunching, virtual-reality hub where visitors are immersed in a dizzying array of computer-generated 3-D images.

Long a darling of the military, aviation and video-game industries, virtual reality is being embraced by more businesses as the falling cost of computer power makes it more affordable.

Manufacturers of farm equipment, car seats, mufflers and other products have joined automakers and aircraft manufacturers in using the technology to speed up and improve product design, train workers and configure factories and stores.

The $2 million Vis Lab at the Joshi center opened in October at Wright State University just outside Dayton, allowing businesses to outsource virtual-reality work without having to buy the technology themselves. Companies pay $1,000 a day to use the lab and its high-powered computers.

The floor of the Gulf of Mexico floats in the air there on a screen 8 feet by 14 feet — about the size of a small billboard — awash in the glow of a deep-sea blue. It twists and turns, revealing cracks and fissures. Then it nearly pokes the viewer in the eye — or seems to.

A Houston energy company this year will feed seismic data into the center's computers. The company will sink virtual probes through the virtual crust looking for salt domes that may hold oil deposits. That could give the business an idea of where the oil is — or isn't — and save millions of dollars in drilling costs.

In virtual reality, high-performance computers connected to projectors throw alternating left-eye-right-eye images of a 3-D object on a large screen in a way to create depth. Viewers wear specialized light-polarizing glasses that synchronize the images to complete the 3-D effect.

In immersive visualization, images are projected on all four walls, the ceiling and the floor. As viewers move and turn their heads, the images change to create the illusion of walking or floating.

"It's reaching a level of maturity," said James Oliver, director of the Virtual Reality Applications Center at Iowa State University. "And you can get a very compelling virtual-reality system without having a huge, huge budget."

The center at Iowa State has been used to lay out the floor plans of new factories for maximum efficiency and to design tractors, mechanical cotton pickers and other farm equipment.

"When you stand in one of these immersive rooms, it's as if you're standing in front of the vehicle itself," Oliver said.

Farm equipment maker Deere & Co., based in Peoria, Ill., is using virtual reality at the Iowa center and its own labs to test-drive products not yet built and make sure the equipment will be easy to maintain.

"These experiences help identify design problems with products or work environments that traditionally might not have been noticed until prototypes were built," company spokesman Ken Golden said. "Our vision in VR is to have only one physical build of our products before we move into production."

Mechanical simulation — which is used, for example, to predict the crashworthiness of a new car design — is a $1.5 billion business and is growing at 10 percent to 12 percent a year, said Marc Halpern, research director at Gartner Inc. He says using virtual reality is less expensive and quicker than building and testing complex prototypes.

Virtual-reality systems gained popularity in the 1980s, but they usually required clunky headsets that produced fuzzy images and a stuttering effect as the computers struggled to spew out the data necessary to create the effect.

Now, advancements in projectors, computer software and graphics cards can produce higher-resolution images, and the computer power needed is cheaper.

Automakers and aircraft makers began using virtual reality and immersive visualization in the early 1990s. The military embraced it at about the same time and has since used it to train pilots and tank operators and to improve the design of aircraft, helmets and uniforms.

Imagery that once required a million-dollar supercomputer can be done with a cluster of desktop computers costing less than $100,000, said Jeff Brum, vice president of development for Fakespace Systems, a Marshalltown, Iowa-based company that sells virtual-reality systems to businesses and researchers.

Monica Schnitger, senior vice president of market analysis for the technology research firm Daratech, said immersive visualization is becoming more widely used by large companies. Prospective owners of power plants and ships have used it to experience what it is like to walk through the control room, for example.

"Simulation of almost any kind usually leads to a better end product, and that's always a good strategic move," Schnitger said.

A nursing institute and a company that handles hazardous materials have expressed interest in using the lab at Wright State for training, said Paul Cashen, president of daytaOhio, the research group that operates it.

Trucking companies are using virtual-reality simulators around the country to train drivers before they take their driving tests.

The virtual cab, which in some cases is attached to a motion platform, enables drivers to practice turning, parking and docking and puts them through driving scenarios in cities, the suburbs and rural areas, said Ron Tarr, a program director at the Institute for Simulation & Training at the University of Central Florida, who has designed applications for the simulators.

Since the technology was rolled out two years ago, more than 450 drivers have used it, at truck depots in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin. In some cases the virtual reality is a little too real. Some drivers get carsick.

Werner Enterprises, an Omaha, Neb.-based trucking company with 12,000 drivers, sends 30 drivers through a simulator each week to improve their skills. In the simulator, winds blow hard, ice and snow fall, accidents happen and deer run across the highway.

"The drivers love it," said Della Sanders, the company's vice president of safety compliance. "A truck will pass on the other road and they'll wave at them."

Cheaper LEDs from nanowire breakthrough

2007-01-14T19:20:00.001+01:00

IN A Light Emitting Diode (LED), when an electron meets a `hole,' it falls into a lower energy level and releases energy in the form of a photon of light.

Now, Deli Wang, an electrical and computer engineering professor from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD)'s Jacobs School of Engineering, and colleagues at UCSD and Peking University, report synthesis of high quality p-type zinc oxide nanowires in a paper published online by the journal Nano Letters.

These nanoscale cylinders transport positive charges, according to a UCSD press release. To build an LED, you need both positively and negatively charged semiconducting materials.

The synthesised so-called `p-type ZnO nanowires' are endowed with a supply of positive charge carrying `holes' that, for years, have been the missing ingredients that prevented engineers from building LEDs from ZnO nanowires.

Relative overabundance

For years, researchers have been making electron-abundant n-type ZnO nanowire crystals from zinc and oxygen.

Conductive properties

Missing oxygen atoms within the regular ZnO crystal structure create relative overabundances of zinc atoms and give the semiconductors their n-type, conductive properties.

The lack of accompanying p-type ZnO nanowires, however, has prevented development of a wide range of ZnO nanodevices.

To make the p-type ZnO nanowires, the engineers doped ZnO crystals with phosphorus using a simple chemical vapour deposition technique that is less expensive than the metal organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) technique often used to synthesize the building blocks of gallium nitride LEDs.

Adding phosphorus atoms to the ZnO crystal structure leads to p-type semiconducting materials through the formation of a defect complex that increases the number of holes relative to the number of free electrons.

A variety of applications

The starting materials and manufacturing costs for ZnO LEDs are far less expensive than those for gallium nitride LEDs.

Having both n- and p-type ZnO nanowires — complementary nanowires — could also be useful in a variety of applications including transistors, spintronics, UV detectors, nanogenerators, and microscopy.

In spintronics applications, researchers could use p-type ZnO nanowires to make dilute magnetic semiconductors by doping ZnO with magnetic atoms, such as manganese and cobalt.

Volcanic fallout reveals secrets of past eruptions

2007-01-14T19:19:00.000+01:00

IMPORTANT INFORMATION about a past volcanic eruption's impact on climate is provided by determining the height of the eruption.

Eruptions that reach higher, up to the stratosphere, have a greater influence on climate compared with the case when volcanic material only reaches the lower atmosphere wherein the effects are relatively local and short term because the material is washed out by rain.

A method to determine the influence of past volcanic eruptions on climate and the chemistry of the upper atmosphere, and significantly reduce uncertainty in models of future climate change, has been developed by a team of American and French scientists.

To distinguish eruptions that made it to the stratosphere from those that did not, the researchers examined the isotopes of sulphur in fallout preserved in the ice in Antarctica.

Chemical fingerprint

In the January 5 issue of the journal Science, the researchers from the University of California, San Diego, the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Grenoble in France report that the chemical fingerprint of fallout from past eruptions reveals how high the volcanic material reached, and what chemical reactions occurred while it was in the atmosphere.

"In predictions about global warming, the greatest amount of error is associated with atmospheric aerosols," explained Mark Thiemens, Dean of UCSD's Division of Physical Sciences and professor of chemistry and biochemistry in whose laboratory the method, which is based on the measurement of isotopes — or forms of sulphur — was developed.

"Now for the first time, we can account for all of the chemistry involving sulphates, which removes uncertainties in how these particles are made and transported. "

Sulphuric acid droplets

"In the stratosphere, sulphur dioxide that was originally in the magma gets oxidized and forms droplets of sulphuric acid," said Joël Savarino, a researcher at the CNRS and the University of Grenoble.

Acts as a blanket

"This layer of acid can stay for years in the stratosphere because no liquid water is present in this part of the atmosphere.

The layer thus acts as a blanket, reflecting the sunlight and therefore reducing the temperature at ground level."

Sulphur that rises as high as the stratosphere, above the ozone layer, is exposed to short wavelength ultraviolet light. UV exposure creates a unique ratio of sulphur isotopes. Therefore the sulphur isotope signature in fallout reveals whether or not an eruption was stratospheric.

To develop the method, the team focused on two volcanic eruptions, according to a UCSD press release. Both eruptions, one in 1963 and the other in 1991, were stratospheric according to the isotope measurements.

Modern intruments

"Young volcanoes have the advantage of having been documented by modern instruments, such as satellites or aircraft," said Savarino.

"We could therefore compare our measurements on volcanic fallout stored in snow with atmospheric observations."

Not only did their isotope measurements match the atmospheric observations, they were also able to distinguish the Pinatubo eruption from the eruption of Cerro Hudson that occurred the same year.

Cerro Hudson did not send material as high as the stratosphere and the fallout had a different sulphur isotope fingerprint than the fallout from Pinatubo.

Chemical reactions

Data from eruptions in the recent past revealed what chemical reactions of sulphates occur in the upper atmosphere.

Sulphates can cause warming or cooling depending on how they are made. They are usually white particles, which tend to reflect sunlight, but if they are made on dark particles like soot, they can absorb heat and worsen warming.

Organic sugarcane: profitable through innovative initiative

2007-01-14T19:18:00.000+01:00

CHEMICAL PESTICIDES and fertilizers have always been considered `manna' from heaven for Indian ryots, especially after the second green revolution. Farmers believe that by applying potash and urea to the soil their crop can be made to yield more.

But a vast majority of them have failed to realise that excessive application of these chemicals over the years has poisoned the land, water and the environment.

Health hazard

More than 75 per cent of the food crops grown today have toxic residues of chemicals used for growing them andthey are hazardous for human health, according to Mr. R. Ranganathan, President of Organic Farmers Association in Chennai.

Mr. Ranganathan, an organic farmer himself, is growing sugarcane in his 8-acre farm in Mayiladuthurai taluka, Nagapattinam ditsrict of Tamil Nadu.

Use of organic methods for crop cultivation is no rocket science, according to him. "These traditional methods were used for decades, but forgotten along the way and now have been rediscovered as safe and affordable alternatives," he explains.

Expected yield

He is expecting to harvest about 40-50 tonnes of sugarcane per acre, compared with farmers who use chemicals in the area who harvest about 30-40 tonnes.

His farm is a model for other aspirants and he is also teaching other farmers the benefits of use of various plant leaves such as neem, castor, custard apple, cow's urine, dung and curd to make insect repellents and vermiwash.

Horizontal planting

Detailing his cultivation technique, Mr. Ranganathan said, "The field was ploughed well into furrows by applying about 1,000 tonnes of vermicompost.

The sugarcane setts were planted on the furrows horizontally at a spacing of about 4x4 feet between them."

In addition to vermicompost, several earthworms were also released into the field.

Irrigation was done twice every week initially after planting and later continued once every 15 days. About 20 litres of diluted Panchangavya was also sprayed twice over the crop.

The first spray was done 15 days after planting the setts in the main field and the second in the third month, according to him.

Dethrashing of the dried leaves and removal of weeds, which are usual practices in crop cultivation, were not done.

No weeding

"The dried leaves and weeds were also allowed to grow, as they are also a part of the ecosystem," he explained.

Once a month the dried leaves were pulled manually and left to rot in the field, as they are a good source of manure to the plants. The duration of the crop is about one year and Mr. Ranganathan is expecting four ratoons from his crop. Like other sugarcane growers, he is not selling his produce to the local co-operative sugar mills.

"The recent price hike announced by the government is an eyewash, he claims. A farmer gets about Rs.1,200 per tonne of sugarcane, but he is not paid for the by-products such as ethanol or molasses," he said.

He, along with other organic sugarcane farmers in the area, are planning to manufacture moulded jaggery (called achu vellam in Tamil) from the harvested sugarcane.

Organic jaggery

Moulded organic jaggery gets a good price especially during the festival season and also creates employment opportunities for the several persons who produce it, according to him.

He plans to sell the moulded jaggery through the several organic product outlets established by his association in the country.

Marketing outlets

The organic farmers association has about 10,000 farmers as its members all over the country.

It has around 200 outlets all over the country under the brand name `Poison-free-food' through which the farmers market their produce.

Nano-solution to a mega-problem

2007-01-14T19:15:00.000+01:00

BANGLADESH HAS been battling with a silent public health disaster for the past thirty years. The culprits are the deadly arsenic compounds present in the country's tube-well water.

Earlier to the 1970s, health authorities there found an epidemic of gastrointestinal diseases, due to the contamination of surface water from the lakes and rivers by disease-carrying microbes.

Well-intentioned move
In a well-intentioned move, they embarked on a programme, in collaboration with UNICEF and private parties, of digging tube-wells, so as to provide safe drinking water. By the end of 1997, over 80 per cent of its population had access to tube-well water.

Alas, tube-well water is not safe either. It contains arsenic salts at levels far higher than permissible. The problem is not a directly man-made one. Silt from rivers upstream has been, over the centuries, collecting and depositing arsenic in subterranean layers.

A silent killer
Tube-well water arsenic contamination is thus not restricted to Bangladesh alone, but is also seen in Bihar and Eastern UP, but it is Bangladesh that has been hit so calamitously.

Arsenic is a silent killer. It causes skin lesions, affects the stomach, liver, lung, kidney, and blood, disabling them over time. It combines with proteins and enzymes, inactivating them and thus causing slow metabolic disorders.

Past examples
At the extreme, it causes cancers. History is replete with examples of arsenic-induced poisoning and death. Two Popes and even Napoleon Bonaparte are thought to have been murdered through arsenic poisoning. But the scale in Bangladesh is massive, over 40 million of its 130 million are affected. The first case was detected in 1983 by Dr. K. C. Saha of the dermatology department of the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine. Since then, thousands of cases have been reported.

Professor Dipankar Chakraborty of Jadavpur University, Kolkata, has written about the problem in detail in the Indian Journal of Medical Research, Nature and other journals.

Some methods have been suggested and used to help clear the body of ingested arsenic and prevent skin lesions. Selenium intake appears to remove some arsenic.

Some have suggested that iron sulphate be used in order to help flush arsenic out of the system. Others have suggested that the amino acid methionine may help in reducing the lesion.

How does one plan to remove the offending arsenic from water? Boiling the water to precipitate the arsenic does not work, since it does not come out of solution, as calcium does from hard water.

Nor does boiling convert arsenic into any harmless form, as happens with water contaminated by microbes. What we are looking for is an efficient, inexpensive method.

Applicable for all

The method should be applicable at all scales, from the individual families to the city water supply agencies. A group of researchers from Rice University at Houston, Texas, U.S. has been working for the last several years on precisely this problem.

They have now come out with a workable solution that appears to satisfy many of the above requirements. And their solution, published in the 10 November 2006 issue of Science, makes use of magnetic nanoparticles of iron oxide.

We humans, with our height and girth in metres, are `metre-particles'.

Tiny ants, fruitflies and lice are `millimetre particles' or `milliparticles', while bacteria, which are a thousand-fold smaller, are `microparticles'. Scaling equally down, we reach molecules and atoms whose sizes are in nanometres or even less.

As we reach this nano-scale, the properties of materials change remarkably. Size matters here; it becomes the determinant of the property. Gold glitters as a nugget, as a millimetre speck, and even as a micron particle. Cut it down to the nano scale; it loses the glitter; even its electrical conductivity changes.

New laws

New laws of physics, of the quantum world, begin to operate here. Chemically it is the same, but in various physical properties, nano-gold is quite different from macro-gold.

Even in the nano-dimension, size matters. A 3 nanometre (nm) particle of cadmium selenide shines green, but emits red when its size increases to a bit more than 5 nm. Take the example of magnets. Magnetite, a composite oxide of iron, is a good magnet.

But its magnetic property changes as we cut chunks of it into smaller and smaller pieces. Below 40 nm in size, its magnetic properties actually become more pronounced, and it becomes what physicists call a superparamagnet.

At the same time, as the particle size reduces, the proportion of surface area it exposes also increases. This allows it to `stick' to material more avidly than in the bulk phase.

What the Rice university researchers have done is to exploit this nano-size behaviour of magnetite. They prepared 16-nm size magnetite particles, stirred up a bit of this material in a beaker-full of arsenic-contaminated water.

Large surface area

Two things happened. Magnetite, being an iron-containing material, has an affinity to bind to arsenic salts, and it did so very avidly, thanks to the large surface area it presents at this nm size.

This removed the dissolved arsenic very efficiently from the water. Secondly, they placed an external magnet under the beaker.

This external magnetic field induced the aggregation or clumping of the magnetite into large chunks, which could be decanted or filtered out, leaving arsenic-free water. What does it mean to Bangladesh, and other areas affected by arsenic-contaminated water?

The use of nano-magnetite and a small magnet helps remove the arsenic quickly and efficiently. Here then appears a method worth trying both at the small scale and at the larger community level. Nano-Davids for Mega-Goliaths!

New study focuses on radiation-associated cancer risks

2007-01-13T13:00:00.000+01:00

This press release issued by Eurekalert says that concerns about the risk of radiation-induced cancer are growing with the increasing number of cancer patients surviving long term.

To address these concerns, Herman Suit and his colleagues Saveli Goldberg, Andrzej Niemeierko, Marek Ancukiewicz, Eric Hall, Michael Goitein, Winifed Wong and Harald Paganetti examined data on radiation-induced neoplastic transformation of mammalian cells in vitro and on the risk of an increase in cancer incidence after radiation exposure in mice, dogs, monkeys, the atomic bomb survivors, persons exposed occupationally, and patients treated with radiation.

The study appears in the January issue of the journal Radiation Research.

The authors found that there is great heterogeneity in the risk of radiation-associated cancer between species, strains of a species, and organs within a species. Currently, the heterogeneity between and within patient populations of virtually every parameter considered in risk estimation results in substantial uncertainty in quantification of a general risk factor.

One implication of their review is that reduced risks of secondary cancer should be achieved by any technique that achieves a dose reduction down to ~0.1 Gy (i.e., the dose to tissues distant from the target). Based on their study, they conclude that the proportionate gain should be greatest for dose decrement to less than 2 Gy.

New group of algae discovered: Picobiliphytes

2007-01-13T12:59:00.000+01:00

An international group of researchers has succeeded in identifying a previously unknown group of algae. As currently reported in the scientific journal Science, the newly discovered algae are found among the smallest members of photosynthetic plankton - the picoplankton ('Picobiliphytes: A marine picoplanktonic algal group with unknown affinities to other Eukaroytes" Science, Vol. 316'). On account of the minute size of the organisms (no more than a few thousandth of a millimetre) and the appearance of phycobili-proteins, researchers have termed the new group Picobiliphyta.

This press release issued by Eurekalert says that approximately 50 percent of global photosynthesis is conducted in the world's oceans where it is dominated by microscopic algae, the so-called phytoplankton.

Scientists estimate that up to 90 percent of phytoplanktonic species are currently unidentified. In the present study, scientists used molecular techniques to investigate the smallest members of the plankton, the picoplankton. Because picoplankton algae are so extremely small, they are almost impossible to study by means of microscopy.

Researchers investigated gene sequences of the 18S gene, common to all cells. The identity of new organisms can be deduced from a comparison of familiar and unfamiliar gene sequences.

"The gene sequences found in these algae could not be associated with any previously known group of organisms", explain Dr Klaus Valentin and Dr. Linda Medlin, co-authors of the study and molecularbiologists at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven. The algae in this study were found in plankton samples originating from various regions of the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The scientists have discovered a group of organisms which, despite being completely new to science, have a wide distribution.

"This is a good indication for how much there is still to discover in the oceans, especially using molecular tools", says Valentin. Apart from the unfamiliar gene sequences, the researchers also extracted phycobili-proteins from the algae. In red algae, for example, these proteins occur as colour pigments. However, in the newly discovered algal group, the phycobili-proteins are found at the sites for photosynthesis, i.e. in the plastids.

This location of pigment proteins represents a novelty in that it has not been reported for any other algal species. Hence, it provides a clear indication that the researchers are dealing with a previously unidentified species of algae. Referring to their small size and the presence of phycobili proteins, the researchers named the new group Picobiliphytes.

Scientists find potential 'off-switch' for HIV virus

2007-01-13T12:58:00.002+01:00

While there is no cure for lingering viral infections such as HIV and herpes, a recent study at Princeton University suggests it may be possible to deactivate such viruses indefinitely with the flick of a genetic switch.

Princeton scientists Leor Weinberger and Thomas Shenk hope their work will illuminate the processes by which human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other viruses transition into dormant phases in their hosts.

This press release issued by Eurekalert says that the researchers have discovered a specific genetic trigger that makes HIV fall into its latent phase, where the virus essentially hibernates, relatively harmlessly, but awaiting an opportunity to re-emerge and wreak havoc.

Weinberger and Shenk studied how an HIV protein, called Tat, plays a major part in initiating and also interrupting the cascade of chemical reactions that leads to full-blown infection. Based on their work and previous studies by others, they have proposed that the Tat protein and the enzymes that modify it serve as a "resistor," a component of an electrical circuit that reduces the flow of current.

"The resistor paradigm is a helpful way to think about how HIV enters and exits latency, and it might serve as a useful model for latent infections by other viruses, as well," said Shenk, Princeton's James A. Elkins Jr. Professor in the Life Sciences in the Department of Molecular Biology. "Understanding how to activate the Tat resistor to interrupt the reactions leading to viral infection could one day have repercussions in both the lab and the clinic."

Weinberger and Shenk share their findings in a research paper appearing in the Dec. 26 issue of the online journal Public Library of Science Biology.

"We have helped understand how HIV can turn off, and in doing so I believe we've uncovered an important component of the biological switch," said Weinberger, a Lewis-Thomas Fellow in Princeton's Department of Molecular Biology. "If we can figure out how such resistors affect viruses, it might lead to a whole new class of drugs that can treat some of the world's most dangerous illnesses."

Though Weinberger emphasized the significance of the discovery was primarily for fundamental science research, he said that potential applications to HIV might be an improvement over drug cocktails, which are the mixtures of antiviral agents that have been the best-available treatment for the disease for a decade.

"Drug cocktails extend the life of the patient, but they do not completely alleviate the symptoms of HIV, nor do they work for all victims," Weinberger said. "Even when the cocktails get most of the infectious virus in a victim's body, some viruses will escape because they have hidden by going dormant. Eventually, these dormant viruses wake up and the infection returns, so it makes sense to try to keep the virus asleep if possible."

HIV weakens the body's immune system by invading CD4+ T cells, which in essence serve as the metaphorical generals in the body's defense system against illness. When an HIV virus particle invades a T cell, most often it converts the cell into a factory for making other viral particles, killing the cell in the process. Without these T cells, the body loses its ability to repel other infectious bacteria and viruses, and eventually dies from assaults from these other "opportunistic" infectious invaders.

On rare occasions, however, a virus will infect the T cell and become dormant. Why this individual viral infection would not begin to replicate when others do remains a mystery.

"It's somewhat like the unpopped kernels of corn left in the bottom of the bag when you take it out of the microwave," Weinberger said. "They were exposed to the same heat as the others but did not pop. We wanted to know why about one in a million HIV particles didn't 'pop' immediately like all the rest did."

Weinberger and Shenk found the answer in a strand of HIV's DNA where a genetic circuit exists -- not an electrical circuit, but a set of chemical reactions that runs in a loop. First, one of HIV's genes creates the Tat protein, which is part of the chemical signal for the virus to begin replicating. An important player to complete the signal is an enzyme within the T cell called p300 that decorates the Tat protein with a small chemical tail. The p300 enzyme converts the Tat protein into a message that activates the virus and creates more Tat protein, and eventually converts the T cell into an active HIV factory.

"The more of these [messages] sensed within the cell, the more Tat proteins the gene creates, resulting in a snowball effect that is difficult to stop," Weinberger said of the onset of full-blown infection.

Mechanisms do exist to halt the process, however. For example, another enzyme within the affected cell called SirT1 is capable of pulling the chemical tail off the Tat protein, rendering it silent. The interplay between p300 and SirT1 comprises the resistor and can effectively keep the virus in its dormant phase.

"SirT1 reduces the strength of the signal to replicate," Weinberger said. "It may prove to be the key part of the resistor in the circuit, as our mathematical models are strongly suggesting."

Not all the molecular players are known yet, nor how their relative roles determine whether the virus becomes dormant, but Weinberger said his and Shenk's results lead them to think they are on the right track. If their theories prove correct, they could form the basis for therapies that combat HIV and other viruses that possess these genetic circuits within their own DNA.

"SirT1 and related processes might eventually turn off viral activation in T cells all by themselves, but the cell is usually dead before it can happen," Weinberger said. "If we can create drugs that target these enzymes, perhaps we can get SirT1 and related enzymes to assert themselves immediately, forcing HIV into hibernation with high frequency and reducing the threat to the host."

Weinberger said that drugs already exist that target other cellular enzymes, so there is reason to hope the approach will work.

"There is precedent for this type of treatment," he said.

Though more research will be needed to develop drugs based on the Princeton scientists' "resistor" model, Weinberger said he hopes the discovery stimulates more research into potential gene-targeted therapies.

"It would be wonderful to learn more about how these genetic circuits work so that we can enter a new age of drug design," he said. "Rather than just giving a static drug, we might one day design therapies that are precisely timed to turn off viruses just like a natural genetic circuit might."

A new target for the treatment of breast cancer

2007-01-13T12:58:00.001+01:00

This press release issued by Eurekalert says that the active ingredient in a drug currently being tested to treat rheumatoid arthritis might also one day serve as an effective means of treating one of the deadliest forms of breast cancer.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have demonstrated that inhibiting the activity of the protease enzyme known as TACE can deprive tumor cells of a key factor needed for their proliferation. TACE is strongly present in a form of breast cancer which responds poorly to current therapies.

"We have shown that inhibition of the TACE protease in breast cancer cells blocks the shedding of two critical growth factor proteins and results in an inhibition of a key signaling pathway that controls cell division," said Paraic Kenny, a post-doctoral cell biologist with the research group of Mina Bissell in Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division. "Based on analysis of cells grown in three-dimensional cultures, the inhibition of this protease results in the reversion of the malignant phenotype of these breast cancer cells and switches their behavior back to a phenotype very reminiscent of non-malignant breast epithelial cells."

Kenny is the co-author along with Bissell of a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation entitled: Targeting TACE-Dependent EGFR-ligand Shedding in Breast Cancer. This paper presents the latest experimental results from an on-going investigation led by Bissell into the ecology of tumors.

It has long been Bissell's contention that "no tumor is an island." Tumor cells, she maintains, exist in the same microenvironment as healthy cells and must therefore appropriate normal physiological processes to facilitate their growth and spread. As she and her colleagues have repeatedly demonstrated, this idea can open up potential new avenues and targets for diagnostic and therapeutic applications.

For this latest paper, Kenny and Bissell looked into the pathway by which the EGFR signal is carried. EGFR, which stands for Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor, is the protein on the outer surface of a cell that is activated by EGF and related growth factors and signals for the cell to divide. Given that one of the hallmarks of cancer is cell division run amok, the reduction of high levels of EGFR activity has long been a primary target for anti-cancer drug development. So far, however, drugs aimed at directly inhibiting EGFR activity have met with only limited success in the cancer clinic, primarily in a small number of lung cancers.

"Because of this, we turned our attention to the processes that regulate the production of the ligands which bind and activate EGFR," Kenny said. "We reasoned that this binding and activation is essential for EGFR activation and that finding a way to block this interaction might prove to be an important additional approach to explore for inhibition of this pathway."

Earlier studies had indicated that TACE (tumor necrosis factor-alpha-converting enzyme) acts like a "molecular scissors" that releases from the cell surface a pair of ligands, called Amphiregulin and TGF-alpha, which activate EGFR. Bissell and Kenny found that by targeting TACE (also known as ADAM17) with either molecular inhibitors or short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) that silence the TACE gene, they could effectively block the shedding of Amphiregulin and TGF-alpha ligands. This resulted in the inhibition of EGFR signaling and the reversion of malignant characteristics in tumor cells. It is the first reported use of protease inhibitors to stop breast cancer cell proliferation and restore the normal breast tissue structure.

"We have designed an entirely new way of targeting EGFR signaling in breast cancer," said Kenny. "Almost all the work to date has involved the use of antibodies that stick to kinases or drugs that block kinase activities."

These newest results are very much in keeping with Bissell's contention that cancer growth and spread is not solely a tumor cell-autonomous process brought on by a genetic mutation. Bissell is one of the leading proponents of the idea that a cell's genetic information is supplemented by contextual information encoded within the microenvironment that surrounds the cell.

"It is becoming increasingly apparent that, as with other organs, the biogenesis of the tumor represents an interaction between the tumor cell, other types of cells and the rest of the microenvironment," she said.

Kenny and Bissell successfully tested their protease blocking approach on several different breast cancer cell lines. In addition, they examined the data from 295 breast cancer patients and found that tumors which produced the highest levels of TACE and the TGF-alpha ligand posed the greatest risk to women.

"Women with those types of tumors would seem to be poorly served by existing treatments and may stand to benefit from therapies that are based on the inhibition of TACE activity," said Kenny. "We would like to see some of the companies who have developed the new generation TACE inhibitors for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis also consider evaluating them in cancer patients."

Kenny stressed that the importance of EGFR to so many different tumor types, including lung, head and neck, bladder, colorectal and kidney, makes it likely that "TACE inhibition has the potential to be an effective means of stopping tumor growth for EGFR-dependent cancers outside the breast as well."

AMD Unveils Digital Cable Tuner

2007-01-13T12:57:00.000+01:00

AMD has unveiled the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner, claimed to be the industry's first and only device that enables users to watch and record premium HD digital cable content, such as HD ESPN and HD HBO, on PC.

The ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner turns a PC into a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) with easy to use Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center menus and interfaces.
Also, it is claimed to be the industry's first DTV receiver for Windows Vista that combines premium digital cable programming with media center PC functionality.

Using the new ATI Digital Cable Tuner, consumers can watch live or recorded HD broadcasts to preserve in a video library or stream to the Xbox 360, if permitted by the content provider. The Cable Tuner is powered by AMD Avivo image technology; therefore consumers can enjoy outstanding picture quality and smooth playback of the premium HD digital cable TV content on their media center PC, along with basic cable channels, traditional analog TV, and free-to-air HD channels.

According to Dr Jon Peddie from Jon Peddie Research, an analyst firm, "ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner demonstrates the maturity of PC-based media centers. It enables the PC to compete on a level footing with traditional consumer electronic devices. For the first time, you can build a media PC and watch, record, and play back any and all of the content you can see on your TV."

The Digital Cable Tuner is certified by CableLabs, which is a cable industry research and development consortium. This certification gives device manufacturers' access to special security certificates required to operate a device on an OpenCable network.

The pricing for the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner will vary depending on the OEM manufacturer, and the level of hardware included. It is scheduled to be available from January 30, 2007 inside desktop and notebook PCs from the industry's top PC manufacturers.

In a separate announcement from AMD, the company has confirmed the development of DTX, an open standard specification designed to enable the broad adoption of small form factor PCs.

According to AMD, the specification is intended to help OEMs and ODMs in developing innovative solutions that are smaller, and quieter. The DTX standard will take advantage of the existing ATX infrastructure and benefits, including cost efficiency, system options and backward-compatibility, to allow for ground-breaking PC design.

Further, the DTX standard will be designed to embrace energy-efficient processors from AMD or other hardware vendors, and allow an optimally designed small form factor system to consume less power and generate less noise. When processor power consumption is reduced, system size and cooling costs can also go down. Moreover, energy efficient processors can help extend the longevity of PCs.

In addition, the DTX will be designed to provide improved motherboard layout standardization, while being sensitive to the needs of OEMs, ODMs, and component vendors. As the desktop market moves to lower thermal design power (TDP) processors and works to lower costs, an eye to balancing interchangeability of components with small form factor products becomes critical.

AMD is of the view that the market pull for small form factors PCs is of particular interest in the small and medium business (SMB) and consumer markets that value the size advantage, power savings, and quiet nature of energy-efficient systems. Therefore, the evolution of desktop systems into smaller form factors with lower thermal design power is a major step forward for the PC industry as a whole.

Painted storks

2007-01-13T12:56:00.000+01:00

Painted storks spend a few months annually as migrant visitors in the Pulicat lake near Sriharikota. This year, nearly 800 birds have been recorded at the site and they depend on these waters heavily for feeding. Some breeding places for these stork s in Vedurupattu nearby were affected by past cyclones, ornithologists say

Tsunami fears ease in Japan after massive 8.3 quake

2007-01-13T12:52:00.000+01:00

Tsunami fears have eased in Japan after a massive 8.3-magnitude Pacific Ocean earthquake as only minor waves hit the country's north and the United States cancelled its tidal wave alert.

The earthquake east of the Kuril Islands at 0424 GMT Saturday rattled northern Japan, prompting authorities to issue a tsunami warning and urge coastal residents to head to higher ground.

But more than three hours later, no major effects had been reported.

Tiny waves just 10 centimetres (3.9 inches) high lapped against Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, while the United States cancelled its warning for Japan, Russia, and a string of Pacific islands.

"For all areas the tsunami warning and tsunami watch are cancelled," the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a statement.

However, waves of 50 centimetres (1.6 feet) were expected on the Pacific coast of Wakayama prefecture, central Japan, at around 4:00 pm (0700 GMT).

"We ask that those who are under tsunami warnings to take this seriously and use caution. We also ask that those under advisories to also be careful," said a Japanese meteorological agency official.

Japan last was hit by tsunami on November 15 after a 7.9-magnitude quake that happened in the same area as the latest quake, but the waves caused little damage.

The November quake triggered tsunami alerts stretching from Indonesia to California, with Japan keeping its warning for hours after the quake.

In November, the biggest of the first series of waves was as high as 40 centimetres, followed by larger waves up to 80 centimetres high hitting small islands off central Japan.

"The latest quake happened at an area that we frequently observe earthquakes," a meteorological agency official said.

"It is not clear whether the previous quake and the latest quake are related, but similar things can happen," he said.

Coastal villages and municipalities under tsunami warnings issued evacuation warnings and advisories to thousands of households.

In Tokyo, the government set up a special communication office to collect information about the possible tsunami.

NHK broadcast live footage from various ports in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, and other coastal areas, but few changes were seen.

The tidal level fell by 10 centimetres (3.9 inches) at Hokkaido's Nemuro city at 2:38 pm (0538 GMT) due to pre-tsunami backwash, followed by a 10-centimetre tsunami at 3:04 pm, the agency said.

A slight dropping of the tide levels, also by 10 centimeters, was also seen at nearby Kushiro and Tokachi areas in Hokkaido around 3:00 pm in a sign of pre-tsunami backwash.

Japan is home to 20 percent of the world's major earthquakes, frequently jolting its cities.

Japan prides itself on having one of the world's most accurate systems for assessing earthquakes and predicting tsunamis.

It helped share information with other countries after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 that killed some 220,000 people, 168,000 of them in the Indonesian province of Aceh.

Russia celebrates 100th birthday of space pionee

2007-01-13T12:50:00.000+01:00

Russia marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Soviet space programme founder Sergei Korolev, the man behind iconic breakthroughs in space exploration including the Sputnik satellite and the first man in orbit.

A concert was held at the Korolev ground control centre just outside Moscow and flowers laid at the space pioneer's grave, which lies alongside those of other prominent Soviet men under the Kremlin's wall on Red Square.

President Vladimir Putin said at a Kremlin ceremony that Korolev was "not only a brilliant scientist. He was a true pioneer, author of the first great victory of space conquest."

There was also a tribute, via videolink, from the current crew on the
International Space Station.

Korolev, who was born in 1907 and died in 1966, was the brains behind many landmark Soviet space advances at a time when keeping a step ahead of the US programme was not only of professional, but of huge ideological importance.

Korolev -- who as a result of obsessive state secrecy was virtually unknown to the Soviet public while alive -- masterminded the 1957 launch of the world's first satellite, the Sputnik, as well as the first manned space voyage in 1961.

He also designed the R-7 inter-continental ballistic rocket, which was the precursor to the Soyuz rocket -- to this day the key workhorse for taking humans to the International Space Station.

Former colleague Vakhtang Vachnadze, 77, who participated in building the Mir space station, said Korolev's dedication was visionary. "He always looked to the future. He told us: 'Space is not empty. It contains huge reserves of energy that we must use properly for the good of humanity."

But, incredibly for someone who rose to the top of such a politically sensitive industry, Korolev almost died young at the hands of the state he served.

In 1938, at the height of Stalin's paranoia-fueled mass repression, Korolev was accused of economic sabotage and sentenced to six years in the Gulag.

For several months he was subjected to inhuman conditions working as a gold miner in the notorious Kolyma facility, effectively a death camp for tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners.

His life was saved with a move to a special prison for scientists, where he continued his work, albeit under close scrutiny, but only winning formal rehabilitation during the Khrushchev thaw of 1957, six months before the historic Sputnik launch.

Despite the historical flavour of the occasion Friday, Russians emphasised that the space programme was looking to an ever-more ambitious future.

"Going to Mars via the Moon -- that's our leitmotif today," said Nikolai Sevastyanov, who succeeded Korolev at the head of the RKK Energiya company, which builds the Soyuz and Progress space vessels.

Part of this spectacular project is to explore the Moon for Helium-3, a substance that is hoped could provide an alternative fuel source to oil and gas on Earth.

As Vachnadze said: "The 21st century will pose great challenges on energy and cataclysmic climate change. We must use space research to save humanity."

One key element in this new wave of space travel will again come from Russia in the form of the Clipper, which will replace the Soyuz, and the Parom cargo vessel, which will replace the Progress.

There are also battles today that Korolev would not be able to recognise.

"Today, state support for the space sector and for science in Russia is negligible," said one of Korolev's former deputies, Boris Chertok, 94.

"If I was president I would fire all these ministers in charge of the economy. We have had enormous losses in science over the last years. But one has to be an optimist."

India raises the ante on its space program

2007-01-13T12:46:00.000+01:00

Wednesday morning, India launched a satellite that makes clear its intentions to join what is emerging as a second space race.

After at least 12 days in orbit, it will attempt something that no Indian satellite has ever before attempted: to return to Earth, splashing down in the Bay of Bengal. If successful, India would join an exclusive group - only the United States, Russia, China, and the European Union have mastered the technology necessary to recover a capsule and its cargo safely.

As India considers setting up its own manned space program, this mission represents an indispensable first step. Yet it is also part of Asia's increasing spaceward gaze, as economic maturity and a desire for international prestige - as well as China's entry into the space sweepstakes - prompt countries into action.

"You see this in East Asia in general," says Jeff Foust, editor of The Space Review, an online journal. "Japan feels it has fallen behind China, South Korea is developing its own launch vehicle, and India slots in very close to China. It is a rising power."

For India, Wednesday's launch was a milestone in more than one respect. Not only did it carry the SRE-1 recoverable satellite, which will perform zero-gravity experiments before plunging into the Bay of Bengal, but it also included three other satellites - the largest and most complex payload ever deployed by an Indian rocket.

These are heady times for the Indian Space Research Organization. Since its inception in 1972, ISRO has concerned itself with only the most practical of space projects, such as communications and mapping satellites to help farmers and villagers. In this way, India's space program "is totally unique," says Will Marshall, an expert at the Space Policy Institute in Washington.

Yet as India's economic reforms take hold, and the aspirations of its governing class broaden, its agenda for space has become bolder as well. Next year, ISRO will launch Chandrayaan to the Moon - the first Indian satellite to venture beyond Earth's orbit. By 2013, it hopes to launch a probe to Mars. Later that decade, it could send up its first "gaganaut" - one suggestion for a Sanskrit version of "astronaut" - and even visit the Moon.

As of yet, India has no official manned space program. In November, however, a gathering of 80 of India's top scientists unanimously endorsed an ISRO plan to begin manned spaceflights by 2014. And though the current mission was not developed as a test for manned spaceflight technologies, "all of it would be useful," says S. Krishnamurthy, a spokesman for ISRO in Bangalore.

India insists that this shift from the practical to the adventurous is purely in its own national interest, and not a reaction to any other nation. Indeed, experts say planetary science and manned spaceflight are a logical next step for India.

"Space agencies tend to be those agencies which push technology into new areas," says Dr. Marshall, adding that ISRO might simply be looking to a new challenge to develop new technologies.

Yet increasingly, keeping up with its peers might be in India's national interests.

In the next two years, the United States, China, and Japan will each send its own orbiter to the Moon. Each has additional plans for a manned Moon mission, with dates ranging from 2018 to 2025; ISRO has said it wants to put an Indian on the Moon by 2020. Meanwhile, South Korea is just establishing a space program, and its recent selection of two astronauts to ride on a Russian rocket became a nationally televised event.

But unlike some of its space-bound colleagues, the Indian government's ambitions are relatively frugal. Its mission to the Moon will cost about $88 million, while America's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been tagged at more than $700 million.

Another impetus for the new Asian space race (aside from prestige) is that this competition is not based solely - or perhaps even primarily - on planetary science. The upcoming lunar orbiters are as much prospectors as scientific probes, sniffing out what natural resources might be available when humans return. The US, China, and Japan plan to return to the moon as early as 10 to 15 years from now. Moreover, India is hoping to parlay its increasing space expertise into more contracts for launches and backroom engineering. Already, one European satellite maker, EADS Astrium, is outsourcing work to India, and Israel has chosen to launch one of its spy satellites from India.

What is less clear is whether the Indian space program's new direction might also help feed a more robust Indian military. To date, ISRO has remained fiercely civilian, and experts doubt that India has done much - if anything - toward weaponizing space. But China's growing might, combined with America's refusal to rule out military uses of space, have created new pressures.

Among Indian analysts, there is the belief that "the Chinese space program is primarily military in nature, and that it is so far ahead of India," says Subrata Ghoshroy of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. "It is a huge concern."

Ancient stone tools found in N.America

2007-01-13T12:43:00.000+01:00

What appear to be crude stone tools may provide evidence that people lived in Minnesota 13,000 to 15,000 years ago, which if confirmed would make them among the oldest human artifacts ever found in North America, archaeologists said Friday.

Archaeologists in the northern Minnesota town of Walker dug up the items, which appear to be beveled scrapers, choppers, a crude knife and several flakes that could have been used for cutting, said Colleen Wells, field director for the Leech Lake Heritage Sites Program.

"They don't look like much," Wells acknowledged. "They don't look pretty."

Several archaeological experts who weren't involved with the dig expressed a healthy dose of skepticism, but they acknowledged they were also intrigued.

Wells and other archaeologists discovered around 50 objects this past year while investigating a route for a planned road that would serve a major community development project in Walker. The items were found beneath a layer of glacial deposits that had been covered by windblown deposits. Based on what's known about the geology of the area, they believe the objects are between 13,000 and 15,000 years old.

"The finding is intriguing but it really needs to have its precise age nailed down and more needs to be known of the artifacts," said David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Much more research needs to be done to allow firm conclusions, Wells and her colleagues acknowledged. "It's bound to be controversial," said Matt Mattson, another archaeologist on the project.

Not only do the age of the items and the soil in which they were found need to be confirmed, it must also be determined whether the objects are really human-made artifacts or merely rocks that were chipped in interesting ways by glaciers during the Ice Age. And it's not yet certain if the items were left at the site by humans, or carried there by glaciers or flowing water.

Other researchers have found that that part of Minnesota apparently was something of an "oasis" around 13,000 years ago, an area free of ice cover with shifting glaciers on most sides but with an access route to the southeast, Mattson said.

Tom Dillehay, chairman of the anthropology department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., was intrigued by the edge he saw on a photo of one of the objects found in Walker, saying it could have been chipped by a human.

"It's probably worth protecting the site and going back in and more systematically excavating with the geologists and other disciplines to see if it's a real site," he said.

Pat Everson, head of archaeology for the Minnesota Historical Society, said she hadn't been to the site or seen the artifacts personally, but she'd read the reports, knows the archaeologists involved and considers them "perfectly credible." Still, she counted herself among the skeptics.

"It's an extraordinary claim and it requires some extraordinary evidence," Everson said. "But it's certainly worth pursuing."

Several experts agreed it is possible people were in Minnesota that long ago.

"It seems to be there is an increasing body of science that there were stone stools and people here in that time period in North America," said Dan Rogers, chairman of the anthropology department at the National Museum of Natural History at the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

The long-accepted theory was that people first arrived in the Western Hemisphere 11,200 years ago — corresponding with the age of arrowheads found in the 1930s near Clovis, N.M. — via a land bridge from Asia over what is now the Bering Strait.

But a consensus is emerging that some humans arrived thousands of years earlier, even if scientists disagree on just how much earlier. And several agreed that if the Minnesota objects do turn out to be 13,000- to 15,000-year-old tools, they'd be among the oldest human artifacts ever found in North America.

That's why the local archaeologists are hoping to get back into the site after this winter, and hope to work out a way with the city of Walker to preserve it for sometime in the future when more advanced testing methods might be available.

"Once it's gone it's gone," Mattson said. "We're looking at absolutely irreplaceable links in human history here. Once it's gone there's no retrieving it."

Japan confirms deadly frog fungus cases

2007-01-13T12:38:00.000+01:00

At least five frogs have died in Japan's first confirmed cases of a fungal infection linked to sharp reductions in amphibians in other parts of the world, an expert said Friday.

The discovery prompted animal and research groups in Japan to jointly declare an emergency, urging frog owners to contact veterinarians immediately for any abnormalities.

Yumi Une, assistant professor of Azabu University in Kanagawa, just west of Tokyo, said at least five frogs tested positive for the chytrid fungus recently.

Two of the five were kept as pets by a couple in Tokyo and tested positive for the fungus in late December while the infection of three other frogs in a pet shop near Tokyo was confirmed earlier this month, according to Une.

The chytrid fungus kills frogs by growing on their skin, making it hard for them to use their pores and regulate water intake. The frogs die of dehydration in the water. The parasitic skin fungus has a more than 90 percent likelihood of killing an amphibian, but is harmless to other species including human beings.

It is believed to be a major cause of the dramatic reduction of the number of amphibians in many parts of the world.

It is the first time that the fungus has been confirmed in frogs in Japan, according to Une. In Asia, only Australia had confirmed cases of the fungus infection.

Une said there had been no reports of massive deaths of wild frogs, a situation more grave because of the difficulties to contain infection.

Survey shows need for oral chemotherapy guidelines

2007-01-13T12:33:00.001+01:00

Clear, standardized guidelines are needed for giving oral chemotherapy drugs to iron out inconsistencies in how patients are given the drugs and monitored, researchers said on Friday.

A survey of 42 National Cancer Institute-designated treatment centers in the United States revealed that while oral chemotherapy drugs were widely prescribed there were variations in the way they were prescribed, coordinated and monitored.

Ten of the centers that responded reported at least one serious adverse event linked to oral chemotherapy in the past year and 13 had a serious near miss. No details were given.

"The growing availability of effective oral chemotherapy, especially the new class of targeted biologic therapies, is one of the wonderful advances in cancer care, as it has given cancer patients unprecedented convenience compared to intravenous infusion therapy," said Dr Lawrence Shulman, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts.

"However, these findings underline the importance of forging a consensus in the oncology field on standardized safeguards and practices for prescribing and monitoring the use of these drugs," he added in a statement.

The survey conducted by the institute and published online by the British Medical Journal revealed inconsistencies in prescribing the treatment and recording the dosage.

Many centers had no formal system for monitoring patients taking the drugs which are becoming increasingly popular internationally.

"Given how quickly oral chemotherapies have become standard care for a growing number of cancers, we were not surprised to find variations in how organizations prescribe and monitor the use of these agents," said Dr Saul Weingart, the president of patient safety at Dana-Farber.

"It is surprising, however, that few of the safeguards used with infusion chemotherapy have been adopted for oral chemotherapy."

Prof rejects calls for 'faith-based' NHS care

2007-01-13T12:31:00.001+01:00

A MANCHESTER University professor has rejected calls from a fellow academic for the NHS to provide "faith-specific" care for Muslims.

Professor Aneez Esmail criticised the ideas put forward by Edinburgh University professor Aziz Sheikh who had suggested allowing male infant circumcision throughout the NHS and providing better access to Muslim prayer facilities for patients and doctors.

Prof Sheikh writes in the British Medical Journal that with a population of about 1.6 million, the faith group has the poorest health profile in the UK and suffers from "endemic" religious discrimination.

To counter this, the professor advocated recording the religious affiliation of patients, possibly with standard codes, allowing Muslim patients to maintain their modesty if required by seeing a clinician of the same sex, and enabling Muslims to avoid pork and alcohol-derived drugs.

But Prof Esmail countered these claims saying specialised services for defined groups risks stigmatisation and stereotyping.

He said it would not be "practical" to meet people's demands based on religious identity.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said services are decided on a clinical need and all patients can choose to see a doctor of a particular sex.

Research shows shrinking telomeres linked to heart disease

2007-01-13T12:29:00.001+01:00

The gradual erosion of telomeres, the strands of DNA capping chromosomes that wear away with each cell division, may play a pivotal role in heart disease, and drugs called statins may limit the damage, the New Scientist reported on Friday on its website.

Researchers from Leicester and Glasgow Universities in the United Kingdom found that people who have much shorter telomeres are more likely to suffer from heart attacks.

In the five-year research, they first took blood samples from 484 middle-aged men with moderately raised cholesterol and from 1058 control subjects, and compared the telomere lengths in their white blood cells.

The researchers eventually found both patients and controls with the shortest telomeres were twice as likely to have developed serious heart disease,

They also found that statins, which are better known for their cholesterol-lowering properties, appeared to alleviate the effects of telomere damage and may even protect telomeres against degradation.

But the protective effect of statins was only seen in patients with comparatively short telomeres.

"In patients whose telomeres were wearing away at a normal rate, statin treatment didn't make any difference. This suggests that statins were protecting against the worst cases of telomere degradation. Without statins they might have been even shorter," Leicester University cardiologist Nilesh Samani, who led the research, was quoted as saying.

For years, doctors and scientists have suspected that another property of statins, unrelated to their cholesterol-lowering ability, explained how they protected patients from heart disease and stroke so effectively.

The discoveries made by Samani's team provide important new insights into the causes of arterial disease.

Samani said exactly how statins might limit the damage caused by telomere shortening or even directly protect telomeres was " speculation at this stage," but his group has already begun laboratory studies to test how the drugs interact with telomeres.

New Blood Test Predicts Cardiac Events In At-Risk Patients

2007-01-13T12:27:00.000+01:00

Can a blood test predict a heart attack? Exciting new research suggests that the simple diagnostic tool of a blood test may help doctors determine the risk of cardiac events in patients with heart disease.

In a California study led by principal investigator Dr. Mary Whooley, 987 men and women with stable coronary heart disease were monitored for an average of 3.7 years each. What the research revealed is that the higher the level of the peptide known as NT-proBNP in a patient’s plasma, the greater the chance that the patient has of dying or having a cardiovascular event such as a heart attack, heart failure, or stroke.

Patients in the study were divided into four quartiles depending on the level of NT-proBNP in their blood. A quartile is a term used in statistics to describe an observation group that is divided into four equal, but distinct parts.

The first quartile contained the study participants with the lowest levels of the peptide and the fourth quartile contained those with the highest levels. A total of twenty-six percent of the stuidy participants died or had a cardiovascular event during the course of the study. Upon examination of these statistics, the researchers discovered that each increasing quartile carried with it a greater risk of cardiovascular events or death.

Patients in the quartile with the highest levels of NT-proBNP were 3.4 times more likely to die or have a cardiovascular event than patients in the group with the lowest levels.

To be sure that plasma levels of NT-proBNP were a true indicator of cardiovascular events or death independent of other available prognostic tests, the researchers adjusted for all other risk factors.

This isn’t the first study to examine the ability of natriuretic peptides like NT-proBNP to predict the risk of cardiac events in patients with known or suspected cardiovascular disease. Dr. Marvin A. Konstam, Chief of Cardiology at New England Medical Center and Professor of Medicine at Tufts University School, also recently published an article in The Journal of The American Medical Association exploring the subject.

The reason these peptides are receiving so much attention is that they are what are known as "biomarkers." A biomarker is a biochemical factor that can be used to measure the progress of disease or the effects of treatment. Natriuretic peptides control the body’s water and sodium levels. They are released when blood pressure elevates, and they act to reduce the water and sodium on the circulatory system, which brings the blood pressure back to more normal levels.

As Dr. Konstam observes in his article, a biomarker may be a by-product of the disease itself and it may also directly participate in its development and the changes the disease undergoes as it develops. The biomarker NT-proBNP goes up during times of cardiac stress. That means that if the heart wall is over-expanded because of too much blood volume, or damaged because of too little blood flow to the heart, the level of NT-proBNP in the blood will elevate to indicate that abnormality.

While this discovery is certainly a milestone in the treatment of cardiac patients, there are still some things to keep in mind.

In the Jan. 9 press release issued by the Northern California Institute for Research and Education, one of the funders of the Heart and Soul study from which the participants for this study were selected, Dr. Whooley was quoted as saying that the NT-proBNP test is "not something that we should order on every patient who comes in for a routine checkup, but would be most useful for patients with known coronary heart disease. In the general population, the incidence of heart disease is so low relative to the incidence in heart disease patients that you may get many more false positive results than true positives, which really lowers the value of the test. It’s much better at predicting risk in a population with a high incidence of heart disease."

Dr. Whooley goes on to add that even among heart patients, the value of the test is limited because all of the available therapies that can be used to prevent cardiovascular events should already be being used among these patients.

The chief benefit of the NT-proBNP blood test is really to identify patients who need more aggressive therapy than they are currently receiving.

Charity hails attempt to kill cancer by giving it the cold

2007-01-13T12:25:00.000+01:00

A CANCER charity has welcomed plans for trials of a radical way of fighting cancer, killing tumours by infecting them with viruses like the common cold.

If successful, the virus therapy could become a third pillar - alongside radiotherapy and chemotherapy in the standard battle against cancer, it was reported.

Professor of gene therapy at Oxford University Leonard Seymour, who has been working in London and the US, will lead the trials later this year.

He has been working with viruses that kill cancer cells while avoiding harming healthy tissue.

Richard Sullivan, Cancer Research UK's director of clinical programmes said today: "We are pleased to be supporting this new and important research.

"Whilst this approach is still at an early stage of development, it has exciting potential, particularly for the treatment of cancer which has spread."

Prof Seymour said the treatment could be "many times more effective than chemotherapy".

He added: "If you can get a virus into a tumour, viruses find them a very good place to be because there's no immune system to stop them replicating.

"You can regard it as the cancer's Achilles' heel."

The Chinese disease?

2007-01-13T12:16:00.000+01:00

Syphilis is spreading fast in China. That raises concerns about HIV and public health more broadly

THE Dutch called it the Spanish disease; Russians the Polish disease; Turks, the Christian disease and Tahitians, the British disease. But syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease (STD), seems more of a Chinese disease these days. In China the chance of catching it is now more than 28 times greater than it was in 1993. Syphilis cases are increasing in many countries but the extent of China’s rise, in relative and absolute terms, dwarfs figures from America, Canada and Europe. That is the conclusion of a study by Zhi-Qiang Chen and his colleagues at China’s National Centre for STD and Leprosy Control published in the latest issue of the Lancet, a medical journal. Both the broader implications of the increase, and its details, are troubling.

Syphilis statistics are of more than just medical importance, says Myron Cohen, another of the study’s authors. The numbers provide a surrogate for the spread of STDs in a whole population. Like HIV, syphilis detection rests on accurate blood tests, whereas other sexually transmitted diseases are diagnosed by analysing genital materials under a microscope. That makes samples easier to come by.

Syphilis infections are assigned categories according to how the corkscrew-shaped bacterium is picked up, and how long it has been resident. Babies with congenital infections caught them from mothers with secondary infections. Primary infections are usually painless because the bacteria numb the nerves around the ulcers they cause. Eventually the bacteria enter the blood, leading to the spotty red rash that is characteristic of secondary infections that sent many an apparently upright Victorian gentleman scurrying to a doctor. But only after years of a latent infection, during which the disease cannot be passed on, does it re-emerge to cause neurological decline and death.

Dr Chen’s data reveal that primary and secondary infections, which indicate the number of new infections, rose sharply in the late 1990s, but have remained roughly flat ever since. Congenital infections, on the other hand, have risen by an average of 72% a year since the early 1990s, and that rate seems to be accelerating. Together, the two trends suggest that many Chinese with the most risky sexual behaviour—prostitutes and their customers, and gay men—now have latent forms of the disease, and that women are more at risk of new sexual infections.

An explosion in infectious diseases is a common side effect for any rapidly growing trading centre where internal and international migration make for a burgeoning population. Quarantine (the “trentina”) was invented in renaissance Venice after an outbreak of bubonic plague. A resurgence of STDs in China has accompanied the re-establishment and growth of the sex trade.

When the Communists came to power in 1949, China was suffering from one of the largest syphilis epidemics in history. One in 20 of the urban population, only slightly fewer of the rural population, and 84% of prostitutes were infected. Mao Zedong’s subsequent public-health efforts were effective but typically bullying. He all but eliminated syphilis and other STDs from China by writing off peasant debt, so women faced less pressure to turn to prostitution. He closed brothels and locked up sex workers in “re-education” camps. But less exposure to STD-causing pathogens then means that the modern Chinese population is unusually susceptible to infection now.

Nor does it help that China’s healthcare system has seen serious disruptions. Mao’s public-health system was dismantled virtually overnight in the early 1980s, without the introduction of alternative insurance schemes. It is improving slowly now, but there are few resources at hand. Estimates by the World Health Organisation suggest that the government spent just $22 on health, per person, in 2003, much less than the $96 in Brazil or $98 in Russia. When it comes to STDs, though, policies and spending only work when they are unimpeded by stigma. So it is encouraging that a national study of China has been published at all.

Warm Europe winter has pollen lingering

2007-01-12T08:23:00.001+01:00

Europe's unseasonably mild winter is nothing to sneeze at. Or maybe it is. Experts warned Austrian allergy-sufferers on Wednesday that some species of trees are already flowering and about to release pollen — an annual phenomenon that's usually not a problem until well into spring.

In the Swiss and Austrian Alps, World Cup ski race organizers canceled training runs to avoid chewing up grassy pistes lean on snow and already damaged by rain and warm conditions.

Waiters in Vienna, where the mercury rose to 60 degrees — just edging out Rome's 59 degrees — put tables and chairs back out on the sidewalks. Bulgarians basked in the sun on balmy 62-degree Black Sea beaches.

Roses bloomed in eastern France. In the Netherlands, crocuses started sprouting and birds began nesting. And in Sweden, bears were finally hibernating — two months late — after the weather played havoc with their biological clocks.

With so much spring in the air, many Europeans wonder: Where's winter?

And more importantly, what's to blame: global warming, as many suspect, or just one of those extreme years that roll around every century or so?

"If people would just chat with their grandmothers, they'd probably hear that there have been Januarys before when they could sunbathe," said Helga Kromp-Kolb, an Austrian climate expert who doubts anything as sinister as global warming is the culprit.

Climate change "is a long-term development over decades and centuries," she said. "Individual events can never serve as proof."

In suburban southwest London, where the temperature was forecast to hit 55 by Saturday, trees in gardens have broken into pink blossoms, making some neighborhoods look more like April than January.

Britain has already experienced its mildest autumn in over 300 years, and 2006 was the country's warmest year on record. The winter, however, may be moderated by the lingering effects of El Nino, which in Britain can lead to cooler, drier weather, Meteorological Office spokesman Barry Gromett said.

In the United States, much of the Midwest and the East Coast are going through a remarkably warm winter as well, with temperatures running 10 and 20 degrees higher than normal in many places.

Underscoring how global warming remains a concern, the
European Commission said Wednesday the EU must reduce greenhouse gases by at least 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent serious damage caused by climate change.

In the Serbian capital, Belgrade, Marija Vukajlovic was among scores of residents who complained of headaches and fatigue as the mercury reached 60 degrees.

"I don't like this. We shouldn't have such warm weather now," said Vukajlovic, 55. "It is just not normal."

But Suncica Krajcevic, 31, countered: "I love it. I know it's not the way it should be, but it's still great."

In Vienna, the national weather service said it would issue daily pollen warnings starting Friday after hazel and alder trees blossomed and were close to releasing choking clouds of dust. Norway's weather service also set up pollen registering gear — three months ahead of schedule.

The Dutch Royal Weather Service said volunteers reported seeing more than 240 different types of wild plants in bloom, and another 200-plus garden varieties, "thanks to the unusually gentle weather in December."

That trend continued this week, experts said, with Tuesday the warmest January day since at least 1901.

"Nature is also confused in many other countries," the weather service noted.

That's for sure: At Sweden's Kolmarden zoo, bears went into hibernation only this week when they usually begin their winter slumber by mid-November.

"They've been out wandering around, looking at the weather and searching for food," Mats Hoggreen, the park's zoological director, told Swedish radio.

But brown bears still weren't dozing in Bulgaria's mountains and zoos. They tried, "but in this warm and snowless weather they went out again, so we started giving them food," said Yulian Chukov, an attendant at the Belitza bear park.

In neighboring Romania, agriculture officials warned that rapeseed, barley and rye crops planted last autumn could be ruined because of weather stress and unusually low rainfall.

Ornithologists said that for the first time in 20 years, wild birds opted not to fly farther south because Romania's Danube River delta hasn't frozen over, and in Hungary, scientists said disease-bearing ticks could multiply out of control if it doesn't get chilly fast.

Even so, Europeans in northern climes exulted and enjoyed.

People in Prague, where temperatures reached 57 degrees, prowled the Czech capital in shorts and T-shirts. In Russia, where Muscovites have never seen such a snowless winter in recent memory, the state weather service said the protracted spell of unseasonably warm days was unprecedented for the European part of the country.

"There were no such winters under communism," the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets said in a tongue-in-cheek commentary. "People want to live well, like in Europe. At least the winter here is already like that in Europe."

Mystery of world's biggest, yuckiest flower solved

2007-01-12T08:19:00.000+01:00

photo taken in Batang Palupuh, Sumatra, Indonesia, in July 2005 shows A. Yen examining the plant Rafflesia arnoldii. Scientists have used genetic analysis to solve the long-standing mystery of the lineage of the rafflesia flower, known for its blood-red bloom measuring three feet (1 meter) wide and its nauseating stench of rotting flesh published in the journal Science on January 11, 2007

It's the world's biggest flower, and maybe the stinkiest, too. And now scientists have used genetic analysis to solve the long-standing mystery of the lineage of the rafflesia flower, known for its blood-red bloom measuring three feet (1 meter) wide and its nauseating stench of rotting flesh.

Writing in the journal Science on Thursday, a team of researchers said rafflesia -- discovered in an 1818 scientific expedition to a Sumatran rain forest -- comes from an ancient family of plants known not for big flowers, but for tiny ones.

In fact, many of its botanical cousins boast flowers just a few millimeters wide.

This family, called Euphorbiaceae, also includes the poinsettia, Irish bells and crops such as the rubber tree, castor oil plant and cassava shrub, the researchers said.

Rafflesia's many odd characteristics long had tripped up scientists trying to figure out where it fit on the botanical tree of life. It is sort of a botanical outlaw -- a parasitic plant that steals nutrients from another plant while deceiving insects into pollinating it.

"They really are a funky plant," Harvard University plant biologist Charles Davis, who led the research, said in an interview.

Rafflesia (pronounced rah-FLEEZ-ee-ah) lives inside the tissue of a tropical vine related to the grapevine, with only its flower visible. It is devoid of leaves, shoots and roots, and does not engage in photosynthesis, the process plants use to exploit the energy from sunlight.

Its flowers can weigh 15 pounds (7 kg). They are a blotchy blood red. They smell like decaying flesh. And they even can emit heat, perhaps mimicking a newly killed animal in order to entice the carrion flies that pollinate it.

'TOTALLY FETID'

"They really do look and smell like rotting flesh. They are a totally fetid, stinking, foul kind of flower. It can be totally repulsive to so many of us. But to the flies that visit these things, it's just delightful," Davis said.

There are various species of rafflesia growing on the floor of rain forests in parts of Southeast Asia, with Borneo the center of its diversity, Davis said.

Davis said its lineage dates back roughly 100 million years to the Cretaceous Period, the last act of the Age of Dinosaurs when flowering plants are believed to have first appeared. The researchers determined that over a span of 46 million years, rafflesia's flowers evolved a 79-fold increase in size before assuming a slower evolutionary pace.

Recent efforts to nail down plant lineages have relied on molecular markers in genes relating to photosynthesis, but that was not possible with rafflesia. The researchers had to scour other parts of its genome for clues.

"These plants are so bizarre that no matter where you put them with any group of plants, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do," Davis said. "But what was surprising was that with all of the options available as close relatives, they are nested within this group of plants with absolutely tiny flowers."

Southern Illinois University plant biologist Daniel Nickrent, who took part in the research, said this deeper understanding of rafflesia might aid people keen to develop larger flowers and fruits.

It was discovered on an expedition led by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who founded the British colony of Singapore, and naturalist Joseph Arnold, who died of malaria on the trip.

Why We Procrastinate

2007-01-12T08:18:00.001+01:00

Surfing the Web all night when you should be finishing an assignment that’s due ... yesterday? You’re not alone. About 15 to 20 percent of the general population are procrastinators, with up to 90 percent of college students filling that bill.

Now, a recent study reveals some causes of the foot-dragging phenomenon and what dooms New Year’s resolutions to failure.

"Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task," said lead researcher Piers Steel of the University of Calgary.

Procrastination can do more than set your work or school record back a notch. The daily delay can also drain your wallet. A survey by H&R Block found that waiting until the last minute to file taxes costs people an average of $400 because of rushing-caused errors, which totaled $473 million in overpayments in 2002.

Why dawdle?

Steel analyzed more than 200 past studies on procrastination, dating back to the 1920s through 2006. He found a strong link between impulsiveness and the “I’ll-do-it-tomorrow” phenomenon. The research is detailed in the January issue of the journal Psychological Bulletin.

Impulsive people value today far more than tomorrow. “So they can’t feel motivated, deadlines don’t feel real, they have no energy until just before they happen,” Steel said. These people have the best of intentions, aiming to get started right away, but they don’t end up following through on their self-promises.

The personality trait rears its face in more than just the workplace.

“Impulsive people tend to have self-control problems in general. So they’re more likely to be smokers, more likely to overeat, more likely to gamble. They are the type of people who choose short-term gain and incur long-term pain,” Steel told LiveScience.

However, Steel found in another study that when procrastinators do cram to finish the work, they work at a dizzying pace. “They work almost 11 times the average rate. Real procrastinators, just before the deadline, are mercurial,” he said.

More put-offs

His analysis also turned on its head a widespread notion—one reported in many self-help books—that people put off work because they are perfectionists and fear they will never reach this perfection.

“In fact, perfectionists tend to procrastinate slightly less. They just worry about it more,” Steel said. And perhaps they report it more. Perfectionists tend to feel guiltier about the delay so they complain and even seek clinical advice for it.

People who dislike their jobs or find themselves twiddling their thumbs due to boredom are more likely to put off tasks than those who are passionate about their jobs or schoolwork.

Other predictors of procrastination: high distractibility, lack of self-confidence and a low level of intrinsic motivation, or the drive to check things off the to-do list.

Don’t delay

Does this mean all dawdlers are doomed to a life buried beneath perpetually late assignments and sloppy tax returns? Don’t freak out just yet. Steel has some tips to help put procrastination behind you.

A project due in a month doesn’t get the adrenaline going for a procrastinator, but something due tomorrow might give you that jolt. “Distant goals have very little motivational force. You have to bring them down into the daily goals and make them real in the moment,” Steel said.

Office managers can also take action to help employees. Steel said managers need to figure out which workers are self-motivated “do-ers” and which ones are procrastinators. Then, the manager could set up daily meetings to ask the person their goals for that day and the next, making sure to check up on the person to see whether they’ve accomplished those goals.

Make it harder

Since people are more likely to put off work if it’s boring, managers could make tasks more difficult to reduce the boredom and increase the satisfaction the employee gets from completing it.

And if this doesn’t work, time will, along with willpower. Steel said as people age they grow out of their procrastinating behaviors, because they learn self discipline. He should know. Asked if he is a procrastinator, Steel replied, “I used to be famously so.”

He hopes to refine procrastination diagnoses so that doctors can figure out the specific causes of an individual’s procrastination. Then, they could work out a plan to nip it in the bud.

Russia resumes oil supplies to Europe

2007-01-12T08:17:00.001+01:00

Oil flowed again through the main pipeline from Russia to Europe on Thursday after Moscow and Belarus agreed to settle a dispute that has hurt Russia's reputation as an energy supplier.

Russia restarted pumping through the Druzhba (friendship) pipeline across Belarus early on Thursday, the deputy chief executive of Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, Sergei Grigoryev, said.

Oil "is going through in the direction of our customers", Grigoryev told AFP. "We will even try to increase supplies to make up for losses."

Supplies to several EU countries were halted on Monday when Russia refused to pay a new transit tax imposed by neighbouring Belarus.

The interruption sparked sharp criticism of Moscow's handling of the crisis by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Germany holds the EU presidency and chairmanship of the G8 (Group of Eight) leading economies.

Russia insisted that before resuming supplies, its ex-Soviet neighbour must first pump to Europe about 80,000 tonnes of crude oil it had taken from Russia and stored in lieu of transit tax payments.

Polish pipeline company PERN said that oil deliveries to EU members Poland and Germany had been resumed at the Polish-Belarussian border late on Wednesday.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier welcomed the resolution but said Germany now wanted talks with Russia "to put our future energy ties on a reliable long-term foundation".

The head of the International Energy Agency, Claude Mandil, joined the criticism, urging Russia to recognise that the shut-down was a "grave" incident and that it should draw "clear" lessons.

Rene van der Linden, chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, also said during a visit to Moscow that the row had raised "great concern" in Europe and "raised a question over Russia's reputation."

The resolution came after a telephone conversation between Russian President
Vladimir Putin and his Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and was to be finalised by Friday.

The office of Belarussian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky said that Minsk had accepted Moscow's main demand -- that Belarus cancel the new 45-dollar-per-tonne tax on oil transit through Druzhba, the main export pipeline to Europe.

The pipeline accounts for about a third of Russian oil exports and for about 12.5 percent of total EU oil consumption.

But Sidorsky also signalled he was seeking a concession by Russia as he arrived here for talks.

He said Belarus that wanted Moscow to rescind a tax that Russia imposed on oil exports to Belarus on January 1, a move that prompted Belarus' retaliatory tax on oil transit.

"The introduction of duties on oil was unexpected and a stumbling block not so much for Belarussian enterprises as for Russian companies," Sidorsky said.

Analysts have said that the two countries could agree a new framework for the oil trade underlying the dispute.

Russia imposed its export tax on Belarus in spite of efforts to create a joint state because Belarus was profiting by importing cheap oil, refining it and selling it on to European markets.

Sidorsky hinted that Belarus might be ready to return to an earlier system whereby Belarus transferred to Moscow part of the taxes it collected from refining oil and selling it to the West.

"It will be necessary... to look at the division of duties on shipping oil products outside the union state" of Belarus and Russia, he said.

Russia will now look at ways of diversifying oil export routes as the crisis had shown up "the vulnerability of Russian contracts", Russian Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Sharonov was quoted by Gazeta newspaper as saying.

In Minsk, the newspaper of the Belarussian presidential administration, Belarus Segodnya, said Russia should realise that if it did not fulfil its obligations, Europe would "urgently seek other energy sources".

"In a minute a reputation for being a reliable, solid energy supplier has almost been destroyed. Who is guilty? All those who don't think about the consequences of their swaggering and who think that behaving like a bull in a china shop is a good idea," the paper said.

Harvard unveils big campus expansion

2007-01-12T08:16:00.001+01:00

Harvard University unveiled plans on Thursday for a multibillion-dollar campus expansion that aims to turn America's oldest university into one of the world's top hubs for stem-cell research and other life sciences.

The plan, years in the making, will give a radical new look to Harvard's campus over the next 50 years in the most ambitious expansion in the school's 371-year history.

It calls for a science complex, museum space, new student housing, parks and a public square on more than 250 acres (100 hectares) of land, adding a campus in Boston's Allston district across the Charles River from its main Cambridge campus.

Harvard, the world's richest university with an endowment of nearly $30 billion, submitted the "Institutional Master Plan" to Boston officials on Thursday. It stopped short of saying how much it would cost or who would pay for it.

"This is a framework for a 50-year process that we hope will lead to new interdisciplinary study," Harvard Provost Steven Hyman told reporters by telephone, adding, "We hope it will strengthen Boston's prominence in life sciences." Life sciences involve the study of living organisms.

Dubbed the Allston Initiative, the plan would turn industrial land now used as parking lots and truck and rail yards into an urban center with stores, tree-lined streets, bike paths and access to the Charles River, a popular destination for students and tourists.

During the first 20 years of the expansion, Harvard would build 4 million to 5 million square feet of buildings and create at least 5,000 jobs, university officials said.

Construction in Allston could begin this summer when Harvard hopes to break ground on a 500,000-square-foot (46,450-square-metre) science complex that will house the school's stem-cell researchers and other institutes.

The science complex, university officials said, would be the nucleus for new interdisciplinary research and is expected to go a long way toward boosting Boston's economy by encouraging partnerships with biotechnology firms that may displace the region's long-fading manufacturing base.

Former Harvard President Lawrence Summers made the expansion a priority and some prominent alumni have said they may close their wallets now that he is gone.

But Christopher Gordon, chief operating officer of the Harvard University Allston Development Group that oversees the planning, said: "We are still working on the financing plan and it will be a mix of Harvard funds and philanthropy. We are seeing quite a bit of excitement on the donor side."

Hyman said Harvard did not plan to admit significantly more students whose tuition might help pay for the project.

Harvard has roughly 19,500 students, of whom about 7,000 are undergraduates. Most of them will have graduated by the time the project is finished.

Georgia Aquarium whale shark dies

2007-01-12T08:15:00.001+01:00

A prized whale shark at the world's largest aquarium died Thursday night, the second death of a popular animal at the center in 10 days.

Ralph, one of four whale sharks in the only such exhibit outside Asia, arrived at the Georgia Aquarium in June 2005 from Taiwan, where he had been destined to become seafood. The cause of death was not immediately determined.

"Recently, he has not been eating well and has had some unusual swimming patterns," aquarium spokeswoman Donna Fleishman said. He was moved to another part of the tank after he stopped swimming died eight hours later, Aquarium executive director Jeff Swanagan said.

Ralph was considered a teenager.

Ralph and Norton, the aquarium's other male whale shark, arrived together and were joined a year later by two females, Alice and Trixie, in their 6 million gallon tank.

Whale sharks are the world's largest fish, growing up to 50 feet long.

Gasper, one of the aquarium's five beluga whales, was euthanized Jan. 2 after months of declining health.

Strong quake jolts Indonesia's Maluku

2007-01-12T08:14:00.000+01:00

A strong quake of magnitude 6.1 has hit the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties, the meteorology agency said here.

The earthquake struck at 11:31 PM (1431 GMT) and was centered 58 kilometers (36 miles) under the sea bed, 73 kilometers (45 miles) southwest of Ambon, the capital of Maluku, a province composed of many islands, said Bagyo, from the meteorology agency.

"It was felt strongly here but I don't think there was any damage", Stefie, a telephone operator who lives in Ambon, told AFP Thursday.

The Indonesian archipelago sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire where continental plates meet, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity.

Indonesia was the nation worst hit by the earthquake-triggered Asian tsunami in December 2004, which killed some 168,000 people in Aceh province.

U.S. warns about Canadian spy coins

2007-01-12T08:13:00.001+01:00

Money talks, but can it also follow your movements?

n a U.S. government warning high on the creepiness scale, the Defense Department cautioned its American contractors over what it described as a new espionage threat: Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside.

The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.

Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins.

The U.S. report doesn't suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn't describe how the
Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them.

Further details were secret, according to the U.S. Defense Security Service, which issued the warning to the Pentagon's classified contractors. The government insists the incidents happened, and the risk was genuine.

"What's in the report is true," said Martha Deutscher, a spokeswoman for the security service. "This is indeed a sanitized version, which leaves a lot of questions."

Top suspects, according to outside experts: China, Russia or even France — all said to actively run espionage operations inside Canada with enough sophistication to produce such technology.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service said it knew nothing about the coins.

"This issue has just come to our attention," CSIS spokeswoman Barbara Campion said. "At this point, we don't know of any basis for these claims." She said Canada's intelligence service works closely with its U.S. counterparts and will seek more information if necessary.

Experts were astonished about the disclosure and the novel tracking technique, but they rejected suggestions Canada's government might be spying on American contractors. The intelligence services of the two countries are extraordinarily close and routinely share sensitive secrets.

"It would seem unthinkable," said David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. "I wouldn't expect to see any offensive operation against the Americans."

Harris said likely candidates include foreign spies who targeted Americans abroad or businesses engaged in corporate espionage. "There are certainly a lot of mysterious aspects to this," Harris said.

Experts said such tiny transmitters would almost certainly have limited range to communicate with sensors no more than a few feet away, such as ones hidden inside a doorway. The metal in the coins also could interfere with any signals emitted.

"I'm not aware of any (transmitter) that would fit inside a coin and broadcast for kilometers," said Katherine Albrecht, an activist who believes such technology carries serious privacy risks. "Whoever did this obviously has access to some pretty advanced technology."

Experts said hiding tracking technology inside coins is fraught with risks because the spy's target might inadvertently give away the coin or spend it buying coffee or a newspaper. They agreed, however, that a coin with a hidden tracking device might not arouse suspicion if it were discovered in a pocket or briefcase.

"It wouldn't seem to be the best place to put something like that; you'd want to put it in something that wouldn't be left behind or spent," said Jeff Richelson, a researcher and author of books about the
CIA and its gadgets. "It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense."

Canada's largest coins include its $2 "Toonie," which is more than 1-inch across and thick enough to hide a tiny transmitter. The CIA has acknowledged its own spies have used hollow, U.S. silver-dollar coins to hide messages and film.

The government's 29-page report was filled with other espionage warnings. It described unrelated hacker attacks, eavesdropping with miniature pen recorders and the case of a female foreign spy who seduced her American boyfriend to steal his computer passwords.

In another case, a film processing company called the FBI after it developed pictures for a contractor that contained classified images of U.S. satellites and their blueprints. The photo was taken from an adjoining office window.

Doctor charged with illegal prescribing over Internet

2007-01-12T08:10:00.000+01:00

An Illinois doctor was sentenced Thursday to more than three years in prison for illegally prescribing drugs over the Internet, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Michael Millette, 46, of Crystal Lake, Illinois, is the ninth doctor to be sentenced in an Internet pharmacy investigation conducted by the U.S. Attorney's office for the Northern District of Iowa. U.S. District Judge Linda Reade sentenced Millette to 41 months in prison and a $1.6 million fine.

Millette pleaded guilty in July to conspiring to dispense Schedule III and Schedule IV controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose and outside the usual course of medical practice. He also pleaded guilty to laundering proceeds of the illegal prescriptions.

Schedule III drugs are classified in the U.S. as drugs with potential for moderate physical dependence and include anabolic steroids, codeine, and some barbiturates. Schedule IV drugs have the potential for limited physical dependence and include Valium and Xanax, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

During his plea hearing, Millette said he prescribed more than 62 million doses of drugs illegally over the Internet, the DOJ said in a news release. Millette also said he laundered the money he received from the Internet companies that employed him.

Millette also has pleaded guilty to charges from the Middle District of Florida, where he was charged with a separate drug conspiracy related to the Internet distribution of Schedule III and Schedule IV controlled substances, the DOJ said. The Florida charges were transferred to the Northern District of Iowa for a consolidated sentencing.

It is illegal for a doctor to prescribe controlled substances unless the prescription is based on a legitimate doctor/patient relationship, the DOJ said. Many of the drugs Millette prescribed online are "addictive and dangerous if abused," the DOJ added. The DOJ has made it a priority to crack down on Internet pharmacies because of the potential for death or serious injury if the drugs are not monitored by doctors, it said.

Doctors from Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, and New York have also been sentenced to probation or prison terms in the investigation. Three doctors have pleaded guilty to related charges and are awaiting sentencing.

Among the doctors already sentenced, Millette faces the longest prison sentence and the largest forfeiture of prescription profits.

Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony Sued over Game Controllers

2007-01-12T08:09:00.000+01:00

Texas-based Fenner Investments is suing the big three game console makers -- Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony -- for violating a patent covering a "Low-Voltage Joystick Port Interface."

According to the patent, the invention is a port that interfaces a typical 5-volt joystick device with a computer. The lawsuit claims that the three firms are "now engaging, and will in the future continue to engage, in unauthorized conduct and activities that violate" the patent.

Fenner is demanding compensation for damages it claims to have incurred as a result of the violation, as well as punitive damages, attorney fees, and court costs, according to the suit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Who Owns What?

Although Fenner claims to hold the patent number 6,297,751 for the "Low-Voltage Joystick Port Interface," records show the design was developed by Lucent Technologies in 1998.

It is unclear how Fenner might have acquired legal rights to the patent, and repeated calls to the company's headquarters went unanswered.

Executives from Lucent Technologies, now Alcatel-Lucent, were not immediately available for comment.

This isn't the first legal battle waged by Fenner against big-brand companies. Last year, Fenner lost a lawsuit against wireless companies Alcatel,
Nokia, and Cisco in a patent case.

Litigious Controls

The video game industry has been fraught with all kinds of lawsuits recently. Nintendo, for example, has been forced to defend itself against allegations related to the Wii's uniquely designed controllers, called the Wiimote.

Interlink Electronics filed the lawsuit last month against the Japan-based gamemaker over the Wiimote's trigger button, which Interlink claims is based on its own patented design.

Sony and Microsoft also have had their fair share of legal skirmishes related to their gaming unit controllers. In 2002, Immersion sued Microsoft and Sony over the vibration feature in the
Xbox and PlayStation controllers. Immersion settled with Microsoft for some $26 million and won a court decision against Sony for $80 million.

Representatives for Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony were not immediately available to comment for this report.

Cold medicine risky for babies, toddlers

2007-01-12T08:08:00.002+01:00

More than 1,500 toddlers and babies wound up in emergency rooms over a two-year period and three died because of bad reactions to cold or cough medicine, federal health officials reported Thursday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned parents not to give common over-the-counter cold remedies to children under 2 years old without consulting a doctor.

The deaths of three infants 6 months or younger in 2005 led to an investigation that showed the children all had high levels of the nasal decongestant pseudoephedrine, up to 14 times the amount recommended for children ages 2 to 12. The study found 1,519 ER cases from 2004 and 2005 involving young children and cold medicine.

The
CDC said it's not known how much cold or cough medicine can cause illness or death in children under 2 years old, but there are no approved dosing recommendations by the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration for that age group.

The American Academy of Pediatrics first advised parents in 1997 about the risks of complications and overdose potential with certain cough suppressants. Last year the American College of Chest Physicians advised doctors not to recommend cough suppressants and over-the-counter cough medications to young children because of the risks.

Dr. Michael Shannon, chief of emergency medicine at Children's Hospital Boston, said it's common, especially in the winter, to see emergency room cases of toddlers given cough or cold medicine.

"Pediatricians have for years, particularly for the last five years, been for the most part trying to dissuade parents from giving young children common cold preparations," Shannon said.

Dr. Michael Marcus, director of pediatric pulmonology, allergy and immunology at Maimonides Infants and Children's Hospital in New York, said, "The best thing (parents) can do is support with fluids and lots of kisses and time, because lots of infections are viral and will pass in a few days. The medications have a greater potential for harm than the infections you are trying to treat."