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Top Stories in Science
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August 2005 Issue |
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| [D] Defence and security |  |
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Preventing pandemics UK and US teams have modelled possible scenarios if the virus H5N1 developed the capability to spread from human to human. The models were based on detailed data for Thailand, such as population densities, household sizes, age distribution, and distances travelled to work. The results show that an outbreak could be contained if it was recognised very quickly, if schools and communal places were closed, and if antivirals were distributed within three weeks to tens of thousands of individuals nearest those infected and those linked to them in social networks. If the virus were highly infective, house quarantine would also be necessary. The model showed that an international stockpile of 3 million courses of antivirals would be sufficient to prevent a pandemic provided enough doses could be delivered rapidly to wherever they were needed. To act sufficiently quickly and effectively would require unprecedented international openness and co-ordination. [D][H][K][R][S][X]
Spread of bird flu Bird flu is spreading across Asia, killing birds in Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The strain found in Russia appears to be the same H5N1 genetic sub-type that was recently found in migratory birds in China. This increases concern that the virus could be carried by migratory birds as far as Europe and the Americas. [D][H][E]
Risks of H5N1 pandemic Flu viruses can swap many genes simultaneously to make new resistant strains more quickly than was previously thought, according to research at NIH. The findings explain why in some years the flu variant turns out to be significantly different from that predicted when producing vaccine. It also increases concern over H5N1 bird flu. The UK government has announced that it will stockpile two million doses of vaccine to combat H5N1 in order to protect key medical and emergency workers across Britain if a pandemic occurs. [D][H]
DNA-based bird-flu vaccine A UK firm has developed a DNA-based bird flu vaccine that could be mass produced much more easily and quickly than traditional flu vaccines grown in eggs. The vaccine is produced by cloning a gene from the current bird flu strain and slotting it into an existing DNA backbone vaccine. The company believes that enough vaccine could be mass produced in three months to vaccinate the entire population. The vaccine, which may also be more effective in the way the immune system reacts to it, is expected to enter clinical trials in 2006. [D][G][H]
Lifetime flu vaccination Current flu vaccines work by giving immunity to two proteins, haemagglutinin and neuraminidase, on the surface of flu viruses. However, because these proteins constantly change as the flu virus mutates, a new vaccine is needed each year. A UK company has developed a vaccine that uses a different protein, M2, that does not change. This could lead to a lifelong vaccination. So far, the vaccine has only been tested in animals, and it could take a decade to bring it into widespread human use. [D][H]
Plague vaccine At the University of Chicago, researchers have shown how the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, manages to outsmart the victim's immune system. Key to this attack is a protein LcrV, which enables Y. pestis to inject toxins into the immune cells. LcrV also causes affected cells to release 40 times the normal levels of interleukin 10 (IL-10), which dampens down the immune response, and it prevents secretion of tumour necrosis factor (TNF), which would otherwise cause inflammation. The researchers have found that a particular truncated version of LcrV appears to work well as a vaccine against plague, whilst producing only small amounts of IL-10 and having little effect on TNF secretion. Mice immunised twice over six weeks developed antibodies that protected them from many times the lethal dose of the bacteria. [D][H]
Nerve agents and health A US study has compared causes of death in a group of 100,487 US Army Gulf War veterans that were possibly exposed to nerve agents during weapons demolitions in Iraq with those among 224,980 Army Gulf War veterans who were not exposed to nerve agents. Whilst the study showed no difference in overall mortality or all-cancer mortality, it did find that the exposed veterans seemed to be twice as likely to have died from brain cancer as unexposed veterans. [D][H]
Depleted uranium Sandia National Laboratories has completed a two-year study on the potential health effects associated with accidental exposure to depleted uranium (DU) during the 1991 Gulf War. The conclusions are consistent with the findings from earlier studies. Apart from individuals who received very high levels of exposure to DU dust, the evidence and veteran medical statistics do not support the reports of serious health risks from DU exposure. [D][H]
EU Security Research Programme The European Commission has outlined how it is contributing to tackling terrorism through its Preparatory Action for Security Research. One project highlighted is a security system architecture that combines information from sensors, remote control or autonomous cameras, ground penetrating radars and line scanners. Other selected projects will address improving surveillance of European harbours and coastlines, and creating integrated protection systems for the complete air transportation system. [D][A][E][K][R][S]
UN treaty on terrorism In the wake of the bomb attacks in London and Egypt, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged world leaders to agree on a universal definition of terrorism in order to assist united action. A UN treaty on terrorism has been stalled since 1996 by differences of view over what constitutes terrorism as opposed to a legitimate struggle against oppression or misrule. A new UN proposal defines terrorism as "any act intended to intimidate a population or to compel a government or an international body to act". [D]
Emergency aid UN researchers predicted the current food crisis in Niger as early as October 2004, following the devastating failure of the 2004 harvest. The crisis demonstrates the need for the international community to act more urgently to avoid climate events leading to mass starvation. [D][E] |
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| [A] Aeronautics and space | |
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Reducing contrails The contrails that form behind aircraft flying through supersaturated air can create cirrus clouds, which can trap heat radiating from the Earth's surface and thus add to global warming. It was thought that to avoid this problem, aircraft would need to fly as low as 24,000 feet. However, research at the German Aerospace Centre has found that the regions of supersaturated air are only about 500 metres thick and could easily be avoided if their location could be measured using sensors on the aircraft or on the ground. [A][E][R][S]
Safety in space A study carried out for ESA recommends that much better understanding and monitoring of space weather is needed to make manned space voyages safe, such as the proposed US manned mission to Mars. The particular danger is from solar proton events (SPEs), particularly those that follow coronal mass ejections (CMEs). A huge event occurred in August 1972 right between the Apollo 16 and 17 missions. Simulations show that if this event had occurred during an actual mission, the astronauts would have received lethal doses of radiation within just 10 hours. Recommendations include using data from upcoming space weather missions to develop a more robust model of how events propagate in the inner solar system, and developing on-board sensors to give astronauts some early warning of bad space weather. [A][I][X]
Space weather Researchers from the UK and France have used SOHO, ACE and the four Cluster spacecraft to study a huge eruption on the Sun, tracing its progress from birth to when it reached Earth. In the future, identifying an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME) as it leaves the Sun and working out how it will evolve will give much better warning about geomagnetic storms that may cause electrical power outages and damage to communications networks and satellites. [A][I][P]
Space weather Less than one percent of all the energy carried by the solar wind and hitting the Earth’s magnetosphere actually manages to penetrate through. This generates turbulence in the plasma surrounding Earth, similar to that in fluids but with more complex forces involved. The four Cluster satellites reported in the year 2004 the existence of large scale turbulence, with vortices up to 40 000 kilometres wide. Now small scale turbulence, predicted by theory, has also been observed. Understanding this complex turbulence is relevant to plasma theory and nuclear fusion, as well as in understanding the magnetosphere and magnetic storms. [A][I][P]
Space elevator Carbon-nanotube-based materials could potentially be a hundred times stronger than steel, at one-sixth the density. This strength and lightness is three times better than is needed to make a space elevator, according to a recent study for NASA. The proposed space elevator cable would be anchored at a point on the equator and would rise straight up for 100,000 km, terminating in a 600-ton counterweight. By keeping its centre of mass at the geostationary distance of 36,000 km, the elevator would rotate with the Earth. The cable would be a flexible ribbon, a metre wide and thinner than paper so that space debris would pass through without severing it. The cable would be assembled progressively, starting with a 20-cm-wide ribbon that could support 1-ton climbers, and using this to ferry up further ribbons and to add to the counterweight. A metre wide cable could support a 20 ton climber, which would be powered by a laser beam from Earth. [A][M][N][O][P]
Shuttle The shuttle Discovery has touched down successfully in California after the first mission since the Columbia disaster. However, despite the many improvements to make the Shuttle safer, multiple chunks of foam were still shed at Discovery's launch, one of which was only slightly smaller than the chunk that doomed Columbia in 2003. The Shuttle will therefore be grounded again until this can be finally fixed. The continuing problems leave doubts about the Shuttle's future. [A]
Space tourism According to the New Scientist, Virgin Galactic hopes to start operating in 2008 and to carry 400 tourists into space in its first year, scaling up to 2000 in its second year and 3000 in the third. [A]
Infecting Mars Recent discoveries of hardy microbes that can survive in extreme environments on Earth suggest that they might also be able to survive in some spots on Mars. To avoid colonising Mars with terrestrial life, NASA needs to clean its robotic spacecraft and landers more reliably, according to a US expert panel. NASA could improve its decontamination process by using better sensor technology, including fluorescence techniques that measure levels of specific biomolecules such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Using genetic tests would allow NASA to tailor sterilisation procedures to particular microbial species. The reforms will probably take at least a decade to put in place, raising the chance that life could stow away on spacecraft scheduled to visit Mars before then, assuming that Mars has not already been infected by current and past missions. [A][S][U]
Life on Mars Evidence from Martian meteorites indicates that Mars has been very cold for most of its 4.6 billion year history, making it less likely that life can have developed. Researchers at Caltech used the fact that radioactive decay of potassium 40 in the meteorites produces argon 40, which diffuses out of the rock at a rate dependent on temperature. From the published data on potassium 40 and argon 40 in two Martian meteorites they conclude that average temperatures were too low to keep bodies of liquid water on the surface for long periods of time. However, because the meteorites came from somewhere below the surface of Mars where they were not warmed by sunlight, it is still possible that liquid water might have been able to flow on the planet's surface during the warmest part of the day. [A][E]
Ice on Mars The High Resolution Stereo Camera on board Mars Express has found a giant patch of frozen water within an impact crater on Mars. This boosts the potential for future manned missions to Mars, because they would probably need accessible water to survive. [A][R]
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will be the largest spacecraft ever to be sent to Mars. The prime objective of the mission is to determine the history of water on Mars. A suite of instruments will capture extreme close-up images of the Martian surface, analyse minerals, look for subsurface water, trace how much dust and water are distributed in the atmosphere, and monitor the daily global weather. The Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) on MRO will profile the atmosphere of Mars, detecting vertical variation in temperature, dust and water vapour concentration. [A][R]
ESA CryoSat ESA is carrying out final checks on the ice monitoring craft, CryoSat, in preparation for an autumn launch. The three-year CryoSat mission will monitor how the world's ice sheets are changing, and particularly how fast they are now thinning. Measurements carried out by submarines in the 1960s and 1970s, and by scientific vessels in the 1990s, suggest that Arctic sea ice has thinned 40 percent in draught over the period. [A][E][R] |
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| [U] Unmanned vehicles and robotics | |
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Hale UAVs High-altitude long-endurance (hale) UAVs can provide a cheaper and more flexible alternative to low-orbit satellites. They can play a crucial role for defence, disaster relief, mapping, crop improvement and coastal management. The goal is to develop hales that can remain airborne indefinitely, using solar power during the day, while recharging their batteries to provide enough power to fly at night. A new hale, which exploits the latest advances in light-weight solar cells and rechargeable batteries, should be able to complete a full day-night cycle carrying a 2 kg payload, according to its developers at QinetiQ. Initial tests on a 40 percent scale model have proved successful. [U][A][E][I][M][P][R]
Passive dynamic robots Traditional humanoid robots, such as Honda's Asimo, use motors to control every motion. This control enables them to cope with a wide range of situations and tasks, but also makes them massive and very power hungry and expensive. An alternative approach, first pioneered in the late 1980s, uses the principles of passive dynamics to produce humanoids with efficient gaits similar to those of humans. These can be very light and power efficient. The first passive dynamic robots could only stroll downhill, relying on gravity and the natural swinging of their limbs to move forward. More recently, with the addition of some motors, researchers at MIT and Delft have enabled them to walk on flat ground. The robots are still too unstable to be widely useful. However, many researchers think that a combination of control and passive dynamics may prove the best approach for bipedal robots. [U][A][T][V] |
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| [P] Propulsion and energy | |
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Plug-in hybrid cars An unlikely alliance of environmentalists and security hawks is pressing for much greater US investment in hybrid vehicles. Hybrids such as the Prius, if equipped with larger capacity batteries, can be propelled exclusively by their electric motors for, in some cases, more than 30 km without their gasoline engines ever turning on. This is enough for a daily commute with recharging overnight or at work. Advocates argue that plug-in hybrid cars can greatly reduce US dependence on imported oil and help greenhouse gas emissions. Given that hydrogen-propelled cars are still a decade or two away, plug-in hybrids provide a good near-term approach. [P][D][E][M]
Fuel reforming The catalytic reforming of liquid fuels offers an attractive solution to supplying hydrogen to fuel cells while avoiding the safety and storage issues related to gaseous hydrogen. Existing catalytic support structures, however, tend to break down at the high temperatures needed to prevent fouling of the catalytic surface by soot. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois have developed porous support materials that can withstand the rigours of high-temperature reforming of hydrocarbon fuels. [P][M]
Future automobile The US FreedomCAR (Cooperative Automotive Research) and Fuel Partnership is a research collaboration through which the US Department of Energy, the Big Three US automakers, and five major energy companies are seeking to develop emissions-free and petroleum-free vehicles. The long-term goal is to develop technology that will help automakers decide by 2015 whether it is possible to manufacture and sell hydrogen-powered vehicles on a large scale. The toughest challenge is hydrogen storage in vehicles. Short-term activities, such as research on advanced combustion engines and electric batteries, receive 30 percent of the funding; long-term research on hydrogen energy technologies receives 70 percent. [P][E]
Hydrogen storage Scientists in Canada and Germany have proposed that graphite could provide a practical hydrogen-storage material if it can be made in the form of thin sheets of carbon atoms spaced between 6 and 7 Angstroms apart. Their model indicates that, in this form, graphite could store hydrogen at room temperature and moderate pressures of just 10 MPa, and at a density close to the goal of 62 kg per cubic metre set by the US Department of Energy. The model also indicates that the hydrogen can be released by only moderate warming. The researchers say they could create "tuneable" graphite nanostructures with different hydrogen storage properties by interposing "spacer" molecules between the graphite layers. These spacers would also keep out contaminants, such as nitrogen and carbon monoxide. Previous research on hydrogen-storage compounds has focused mainly on carbon nanotubes and hydrogen clathrate hydrate compounds. However, these materials only work in fuel cells at low temperatures or high pressures. [P][M][N]
Small scale wind power Engineers at the University of Alberta have developed a wind energy generator that they believe is simple and cheap enough to be used for individual homes. The generator can operate at wind speeds as low as 10 km/hour, compared with 18 km/hour minimum needed by conventional wind turbines. [P]
Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate The world’s four largest coal-consuming countries have announced a pact to share technology for limiting emissions of greenhouse gases. The pact has been signed by the US, China, India and Australia, together with Japan and South Korea. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, it allows the countries to set their own goals for emissions of greenhouse gases, with no enforcement measures. The European Union says it will still push for long-term legally binding global restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. [P][E]
Nuclear waste and terrorism A report by the US National Academy of Sciences last April warned that ponds holding spent nuclear fuel are vulnerable to attack by knowledgeable terrorists. Such an attack could partly or completely drain a pond, so that the fuel would ignite, releasing large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment. The NAS in a second report has advocated that as soon as spent fuel has cooled sufficiently in the ponds to be handled safely, it should be transferred to dry casks, which are much less vulnerable to attack. [P][D] |
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| [M] Materials, structures and surfaces | |
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Biomimetic materials US researchers have discovered the enzyme that is involved in the hardening of the exoskeleton of insects. They believe that biomimetic materials based on the chemistry of the exoskeleton might be developed to make lightweight structures for aircraft and military armour. [M][A][D]
Molecular bone structure The individual collagen fibrils in bone are held together with glue filaments. Using atomic force microscopy, researchers at UCSB have found that the glue exploits sacrificial bonds that uncoil when the bone is stressed, enabling it to absorb shock, and then recoil when the stress is removed. These mechanisms give young healthy bone its tremendous resiliency and resistance to fracture, and help heal small microcracks soon after they are formed. Understanding how bone works at this molecular level should help in reducing the risks of bone fracture, particularly in elderly people. [M][H]
Tissue engineering To repair serious bone breaks, surgeons currently remove small pieces of bone from a patient's rib or hip and fuse them to the broken bone. The same technique is used for spinal fusions. Unfortunately, the bone removal is extremely painful and can produce serious complications. However, numerous attempts to grow pieces of bone by tissue engineering outside the body have proved unsuccessful. Now an international team of biomedical engineers has demonstrated that it is possible to grow healthy new bone reliably in one part of the body and then to use it to repair damaged bone at a different location. The technique, which uses the body's own natural wound-healing response, has been proven in rabbits. It may work for many other types of tissue as well as for bone. [M][H]
Two dimensional crystals A standard technique that uses nanopeeling to produce two-dimensional crystals just one atomic layer thick has been developed by physicists in the UK and Russia. The crystals are stable and could be used to make transistors and sensors. The technique appears to work on almost all layered materials in which individual atomic planes are bound together only weakly. The researchers have made 2D crystals from boron nitride, several dichalcogenides and various complex oxides. [M][J][N][S]
Nanotube composites Researchers at NIST have shown that carbon nanotubes suspended in viscous fluids will self-sort by length under modest flow conditions. This is an important step to being able to exploit carbon nanotubes in polymer composites. [M][N]
Ice-shelf building The design of the British Antarctic Survey’s new base has provided a grand challenge for building structures for extreme conditions. The winning design will be built on skis that will allow the entire building to move position on the ice several times per year. This is essential, since the base will be built on the floating Brunt Ice Shelf, which drifts 400 metres per year towards the ocean. Halley V, the current Antarctic station, has already drifted so far that it risks being calved off the shelf onto an iceberg unless it is dismantled soon. [M][E]
Quantum turbulence Studying the constrained turbulence in superfluids may help in unravelling the more complex problem of turbulent motion in normal fluids, which is one of the great challenges in physics. For decades, physicists have suspected that the quantum turbulence in a superfluid arises when vortex lines and rings become so dense that they interact and tangle with each other. Researchers at the University of Lancaster have now found experimental confirmation for this by measuring the behaviour of vortex rings in a pure superfluid state of liquid helium-3 at temperatures around 100 microkelvin. Their results are the most direct observation yet of the transition from smooth flow to turbulence in a superfluid. [M][A][E][F][P][R] |
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| [E] Environment, transport and marine | |
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Methane and global warming NASA research suggests that methane may be having twice as much impact on climate change as previously estimated. The NASA calculations indicate that methane, whose atmospheric concentration has doubled over the past 250 years, may account for a third of the climate warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases over that period. The finding is encouraging because, if correct, it means that controlling methane emissions can make a worthwhile contribution to reducing global warming. [E][P]
Climate and the carbon cycle If fossil fuel emissions continue unabated, the capacity of the lands and oceans to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will decline, according to a new climate model that includes the Earth's carbon cycle. Currently, the land and oceans absorb about half of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity. It was hoped that this absorption might be increased by faster plant growth as temperature and carbon dioxide levels rise. However, the increased growth and absorption due to warmer and wetter springs is already being completely negated by the lower growth in hotter dryer summers. This is likely to worsen, but not enough is yet known to predict how quickly. Estimates from CarboEurope suggest that before the 2003 drought, European ecosystems were absorbing 7 to 12 percent of the continent's man-made carbon emissions. In 2005, CarboEurope estimates that the European ecosystems will probably be net releasers of carbon dioxide. [E][C][P][X]
Forests and water sustainability The World Commission on Water estimates that the demand for water will increase by around 50 percent in the next 30 years, and that by 2025 half of the world's population will live in conditions of severe water stress without enough water for drinking and washing to stay healthy. A report by the UK Department for International Development concludes that, in arid or semi-arid regions, trees reduce water supply by increasing transpiration without benefiting rainfall. The report recommends that governments should impose limits on forest plantation if water shortages are a problem. In contrast, in tropical forests, upland trees trap water from clouds and feed tropical rivers, while losing little water through transpiration. Rainfall in tropical forests can also be increased by enclosed areas of deforestation which act to increase cloud cover. However, managing catchments to make water supplies sustainable is a very complex problem. In many parts of the world, existing schemes to improve water supply by planting forests are in fact making water shortages worse. [E][D][H][X]
Biocidal bursting bubbles It may be possible to purify water cheaply in third world countries by using bubbles, according to research at Coventry University. The very high temperatures and pressures caused by the implosion of bubbles can kill bacteria and other organisms. Work so far has shown that this can make water sufficiently pure to wash in or for animals to drink. The researchers hope to make water pure enough for people to drink. [E][D][H]
Ocean spray and hurricanes According to a theoretical study by US and Russian mathematicians, the water droplets kicked up by rough seas serve to lubricate the swirling winds, letting them build to hurricane speeds. Their model, which has not been tested experimentally, predicts that larger droplets in the spray raining back into sea, suppress turbulent vortices in the air in a way analogous to combing unruly hair. Calculations suggest that the turbulence could otherwise limit the wind speed to little more than 25 miles per hour. The researchers propose that it might be possible to prevent hurricanes by delivering fast-decaying harmless surfactants rapidly by air to key locations on the ocean in order to suppress the large droplets as potential hurricanes are forming or developing. They observe that, in the past, mariners poured barrels of oil on the sea surface to calm storms. [E][M]
Hurricane damage and global warming Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 caused unprecedented damage to oil and gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico, not only to rigs but more importantly to the undersea pipelines. The eye of the hurricane also, fortuitously, passed directly over an array of wave/tide sensors operated by the Naval Research Laboratory. At mooring 3 of the array, located under the most intense winds, the maximum measured wave height was 27.7 metres. This was part of a group of large waves with periods of approximately 10 seconds where several waves reached heights of about 20 metres. Analysis of the wave data with the winds suggests that the wave heights probably exceeded 40 metres near the eye wall of the hurricane. The measurements are very valuable since they can be used to provide an assessment of potential impacts to offshore structures and operations by energetic storm waves. Recent modelling suggests that the destructive power of North Atlantic storms may have more than doubled over the past 30 years and that storm intensity is strongly related to sea surface temperature and hence to global warming. [E][P][X] |
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| [R] Remote sensing and sensor systems | |
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Possible new planet Astronomers have discovered a possible new planet in the outer solar system. It is larger than Pluto and 97 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, where 1 AU is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. Pluto, by comparison, is about 39 AU from the Sun. The new planet is the largest body yet found orbiting in the Kuiper belt, the group of icy bodies, which orbit beyond Neptune and which include Pluto, Quaoar and Sedna. The discovery of two other large bodies in the Kuiper belt has also been announced. One of these is about two-thirds the size of Pluto and is about 51 AU from the Sun. [R][A]
Life on other galaxies Spectroscopic measurements of eight galaxies at an average distance of about 10 billion light years from Earth reveal the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on two of the galaxies. This shows that the molecular building blocks of life had already formed by the time the universe was only a quarter of its present age. This suggests that life may have evolved in many galaxies, where the temperatures and radiation fields have been low enough to allow complex organic molecules to survive. [R][A][F]
Tsunami warning system The Indian Ocean tsunami warning system will involve a network of seabed sensors and relay buoys, with warning centres located in Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Centres will also be located in Iran and Pakistan because of concern that a fault line in the Arabian Sea might trigger a huge tsunami there. The sensors will detect the slightest changes in water column pressure and will transmit information to sea-level buoys. Having so many warning centres is politically expedient, but combining information without creating confusion presents a significant challenge. [R][D][E][S]
Geoneutrino remote sensing A detector in Japan called KamLAND (for Kamioka liquid scintillator antineutrino detector) has detected electron antineutrinos produced by beta-decay of uranium-238 and thorium-232 deep inside the Earth. These "geoneutrinos" can be distinguished from background neutrinos by their energy. The experiment, which detects about one of geoneutrino per month, has placed an upper limit on the heat generated by these radioactive decay processes, which drive mantle convection, and hence drive plate tectonics and earthquakes. The results suggest that about half of the heat inside the Earth comes from the radioactive decay and that the rest comes from processes in the iron-rich core and from the fact that the core is still cooling from its formation 4.5 billion years ago. A more sensitive detector than KamLAND is due to begin operating in 2006 under the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy. More detailed geoneutrino measurements should provide valuable inputs to models of the Earth's convection. [R][E][F]
Tracking transportation The EUREKA project 'Logchain Translog Safety' has developed a satellite-based system for monitoring the transportation of hazardous rail freight between Europe and Asia. [R][A][D]
Sensing crop health Firing rapid pulses of polarised light at corn, spinach and other crops, can differentiate minute differences in leaf colours that can indicate over- or under-fertilisation, crop-nutrient levels and perhaps even disease. It is hoped that this portable technology can enable farmers to use fertilisers more effectively and frugally. [R][E][O]
Debris detecting radar Vancouver airport is to install the Tarsier radar system, which can automatically detect debris on the runway. The mm-wave radar, developed by QinetiQ and tested at Vancouver, Heathrow and JFK, detects small objects including metal, plastic, glass, wood, fibre glass and animal remains. Currently, the airport staff check runways manually, but they can make mistakes in bad weather. [R][A]
MARSIS radar MARSIS, the sounding radar on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, is collecting the first data about the surface and the ionosphere of Mars. It is capable of operating at different frequency bands. Lower frequencies are best suited to probe the subsurface and the highest frequencies are used to probe shallow subsurface depths, while all frequencies are suited to study the surface and the upper atmospheric layer of Mars. The surface measurements taken so far match almost perfectly with the existing models of the Mars topography, and this gives good confidence about the radar's performance. Initial analysis of subsurface data is concentrating on flat regions where hopefully the subsurface layers should be easier to identify and interpret. [R][A] |
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| [S] Sensor devices | |
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Neutron tomography NASA scientists have conceived of a way that one might use neutron tomography, mounted on a future lander, to generate three-dimensional images of fossils embedded in an outcrop of rock or beneath the soil of Mars or another planet. [S][A][R]
TeraHz imaging Two UK spin-out companies are commercialising tera-Hz imaging for use in the pharmaceuticals industry and medical fields, and in security. [S][D][H][O][R]
Tracking fluid flow US researchers have shown that a modified MRI technique can be used to track fluid flow through a porous material, and specifically to track how a gas flows through a porous rock. This has possible applications in oil exploration, for in situ monitoring of natural and manmade structures, and for industrial processes where the flow of a fluid through an opaque material is important. Normally in MRI, a single coil is used to excite atomic nuclei in a sample and subsequently to detect the RF signal emitted by the target nuclei. In the modified technique, one coil surrounds the porous sample and can, in combination with magnetic field gradients, selectively disturb and hence tag nuclei of the fluid in a tiny volume element anywhere in the sample. A second independent coil, positioned at the exit of the sample, subsequently detects the tagged material where and when it emerges. [S][E][M][N][P][R][W]
Molecular imaging Disease is usually detected only once structural changes in a tissue or organ have occurred. Molecular imaging techniques may in the future allow people to be screened for pre-disease states when the first genomic and proteomic errors have happened that will lead to disease. Molecular imaging also promises to reveal the dynamic underlying causes of disease, and to provide better treatment monitoring. The development of molecular imaging techniques is involving interdisciplinary partnerships between imaging companies and pharmaceutical companies, integrating new imaging technology with new molecular agents. [S][G][H][R][T]
Instant-response trace sensors Researchers in the US and Israel have exploited quantum cascade lasers to produce handheld gas and liquid phase sensors that provide instantaneous and continuous detection of trace elements. Potential applications include chemical weapon detection, monitoring water supplies, and diagnosing illnesses through detecting specific chemicals in breath. The researchers believe that the technology could lead to sensors that can continuously measure parts per billion trace levels in water, with molecular selectivity and instantaneous response. [S][A][D][E][H][M][O] |
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| [O] Optoelectronics, optics and lasers | |
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Far infrared quantum cascade laser Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a quantum cascade laser (QCL) that operates at room temperature with a continuous output of more than 100 mW at 9.5 micron wavelength. This research is part of a three-year DARPA programme exploiting laser photoacoustic spectroscopy with mid- and far-infrared diode lasers. It is aimed at developing a man-portable system for detecting explosives, chemical warfare agents and other threats, and distinguishing them from benign chemicals. [O][D][J][M][S]
Small CO2 laser A US company has unveiled what it claims is the smallest 10W CO2 laser on the market. Measuring just 8.8 x 10.3 x 37.5 cm, the Cipher-V10 uses a V-folded cavity and can write up to 700 characters per second for laser marking on a wide range of substrates. [O][R][W]
Laser stabilisation NIST researchers have developed a compact, inexpensive method for stabilising lasers for use as a reliable reference oscillator for systems such as optical clocks and light-based radar (lidar). They claim that the new design reduces sensitivity to vibration and gravity by a factor 100 compared with similar approaches. [O][R]
Optical clocks A new form of laser spectroscopy developed at NIST could allow highly accurate measurements on ions that are not suitable for conventional precision spectroscopy. This could lead to optical clocks several orders of magnitude more accurate than current atomic clocks. An aluminium ion is a good candidate for making an optical clock because it has a very narrow transition between two of its energy states. Unfortunately it cannot be cooled or measured with existing laser techniques. The NIST researchers overcame this problem by coupling the aluminium ion to a beryllium ion, and using this to cool the aluminium ion and to probe its internal state. The technique could also be used to investigate the possibility of using boron, helium and other atoms for optical clocks. [O][A][F][R]
Optoelectronic tweezers A new device developed by UC Berkeley engineers will enable researchers to easily manipulate large numbers of microscopic objects. Dubbed the "optoelectronic tweezer," the device uses optical images projected onto a glass slide coated with photoconductive materials to round up and sort microparticles and individual cells. [O][G][M][N]
LED lighting Philips Lighting has supplied a series of LED street lights which have been installed in Ede, a town in the Netherlands. As well as giving better energy efficiency and lower environmental impact, the lamps also have lower maintenance costs. With a lifetime of 50,000 hours, they may well last as long as the lamp posts. [O][E]
Photonic and atomic qubits Photonic qubits and atomic qubits can perform complementary roles in a quantum communication network. Photonic qubits can transfer quantum information over reasonably long distances, whilst atomic qubits can store quantum information for a reasonably long time. Unfortunately, using isolated atoms as qubits is very difficult. Instead, physicists at Georgia Tech have succeeded in entangling a photon and a single atom located in an atomic cloud. They were able to store quantum information in the atomic cloud for several microseconds. [O][C][I] |
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| [I] IT, communications, networking and secure systems | |
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Future of telecoms The fixed-line telecoms sector is under attack from three sides: from mobile phones, from cable giants offering a “triple-play bundle” of TV, broadband and telephony services, and from VoIP providers. Every big telecoms firm is investing to migrate from old, circuit-switched networks to new internet-based ones, with Britain's BT probably moving fastest, so that they too can offer entertainment, internet access and voice services over their networks. The future, however, is fraught with risk and uncertainty, not only from the commercial battle between those who control content and those who control communications, but possibly also from cyber threats to internet services including VoIP. [I][D][K][T]
Future of the Internet The ARPAnet, the precursor of the internet, was developed by the US Department of Defense in 1970. Today, the US Department of Commerce still retains overall control of the master computers that direct traffic to and from every web and email address across the internet. The UN's Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) is now calling for an end to US domination, proposing that instead a multinational forum of governments, companies and civilian organisations is created to run the net. WGIG argues that US control hinders improvements, including efforts to give the developing world more affordable net access and the development of globally agreed and enforceable measures to boost net privacy and fight cybercrime. [I][C][D][K][T]
Mobile phones and global poverty Mobile phones can make a major contribution to prosperity and security in Africa. Research has shown that increased mobile accessibility in Africa is boosting countries' economies in the same way that fixed-line installation in the West did in the 1970s. In Tanzania, some 97 percent of people say they can access a mobile phone. [I][D][K][W][X]
Countering spam The deluge of spam could by curtailed using software that learns to identify the routes taken by unwanted messages across the internet, according to researchers from IBM and Cornell. They have developed an anti-spam technique called "SMTP Path Analysis" that exploits information about the route taken that is embedded in each email message. [I][K]
Mobile media services In developed countries, sales of converged mobile devices, such as smart phones and the BlackBerry emailer, are booming, whilst sales of PDAs that provide only personal information management have fallen for the fifth quarter in succession. The increasing connectedness on mobiles, and the ability to get straight onto the net, is opening up a huge market for mobile entertainment, including music, games and gambling. [I][C][K][T]
Phishing and spear phishing Net criminals and hackers are increasingly targeting their attacks at specific organisations, particularly government departments, financial services, manufacturing and healthcare. In the first half of 2005, IBM's Global Business Security Index recorded 35 million phishing attacks. Highly targeted and co-ordinated attacks on a specific organisation, known as spear phishing, increased more than ten-fold in the period. The proportion of emails infected with some sort of malicious security threat also increased, rising from one in 52 in January to one in 28 by June. [I][D][K]
Anomaly detection technology As cyber attacks become more sophisticated, it is no longer enough to identify attackers by detecting well understood patterns and well documented assaults. One needs to look for anomalies that might indicate potential threats. Anomaly detection technology can alert network analysts to abnormalities and assist them in learning what a normal network looks like by defining aberrant behaviour and unusual occurrences. [I][T]
Information and identity assurance The US DOD is introducing new metrics and training to tackle the challenge of improving information and identity assurance whilst, at the same time, being able to share information more flexibly, as required for network-centric capability and for preventing terrorism. The ability to combine data rapidly from many sources is important for producing timely intelligence, but this compounds the security problem from data aggregation. Wider networks increase the danger of weak links. Sophisticated users may tune their systems to make their job easier, but may unintentionally make networks more vulnerable to attack. The desire to disseminate information down to handheld devices in the battlefield, or to those used by civil security forces or by humanitarian organisations, demands better identity assurance to positively and uniquely identify individual users. Commercial organisations, particularly in finance, face similar challenges. According to the Federal Trade Commission, identity theft of all kinds is costing US businesses $50 billion to $60 billion a year, with 56 percent of the reported incidents related to banking activity. [I][D][K][S][T][V]
Identity authentication A unique 'fingerprint' is formed by microscopic surface imperfections on almost all paper documents, on metal and ceramic, and on plastic cards and product packaging, according to researchers at Imperial College and Durham University. They propose that this fingerprint could be the basis of a cheaper method to combat fraud and to confirm identity. Their Laser Surface Authentication (LSA) system scans laser speckle from the tiny surface variations to detect the naturally occurring pattern of imperfections. These sub-micron scale features are practically impossible to replicate, and each fingerprint requires only between 200 and 500 bytes of storage space in a database. In tests, different materials were handled roughly, placed in water, burnt, scoured with an abrasive cleaning pad and covered in black marker pen, and the system was still able to read the surface fingerprint. [I][D][K][M][N][O][S][V] |
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| [K] Knowledge, information and technology management | |
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Charitable search engine A new on-line search engine, called Rectifi, has been launched, which aims to use online spending to help alleviate world poverty. Unlike Google and Yahoo, Rectifi will donate to charity 90 percent of the money raised from online sales commissions and sponsored links. The remaining 10 percent will go towards running costs. More than 400 shops have signed up, including Apple, Sony and eBay. As well as providing search facilities and the ability to compare prices, the site will also offer tips on ethical shopping and investment. [K][D][E][H]
Optimising web presence Search engine rankings are a vital component of an Internet presence. More than three quarters of hits on Internet home pages are directed there via a search engine, and half of e-shoppers research online prior to making purchases. The proliferation of search engines and various innovations in the way web searches are conducted are making it much harder for sites to optimise their search engine ranking. But, on the other hand, as search technology becomes more personalised, this may make it easier for sites to reach the most appropriate users. [K][I][T][V]
Trends in e-commerce As online selling grows, e-commerce technology is entering a new phase that emphasises improving customer service. Better web analytics, personalisation and ease of check-out are making web sites feel as if they have an experienced virtual sales person helping the customer. Web content management has matured and back office systems such as SAP have improved their integration capabilities. Better integration of data is improving the understanding of customer behaviour, and this allows businesses to deliver content that is more specifically relevant to individual customers. Techniques such as behaviour modelling and personalisation are data hungry, but with powerful real-time processing, tailored offers can be made to customers as they are browsing. Voice interaction is also now possible using VoIP. Progress in search engine analysis technology is making it possible to build up a cognitive and behavioural profile of each user as well as a search history, and to identify the customers that matter, and how best to cherish them online and offline. [K][I][C][T]
Social impact of gaming The new generation of video games and games consoles will provide even greater realism and will intensify the debate over gaming and its impact on society. Gaming is still largely the province of the digital generation; only a fifth of gamers are over 50, according to a recent survey. Whilst many games involve violence, there is little or no real evidence that playing violent games increases violent behaviour. On the contrary, many games are morally complex, and gaming could possibly help society grapple better with complex issues. Gaming also has educational benefits and is being used in schools and corporate training. Games are complex, adaptive and force players to make a huge number of decisions. Gamers must construct hypotheses about the in-game world, learn its rules through trial and error, solve problems and puzzles, develop strategies and get help from other players via the internet when they get stuck. This makes gamers skilled at multi-tasking, good at making decisions and evaluating risks, flexible in the face of change and inclined to treat setbacks as chances to try again. [K][C][D][I][T][V][W][X]
Mobile education A convergence of technologies is giving small computing platforms, such as the pocket PC, the ability to support diverse needs. These include telecommunications, audio and video applications, mathematical computations, word processing, electronic spreadsheets, and standard PDA functions. In many countries, from the US to Africa, this is leading to new approaches to education. In the US, teaching using handhelds engages students more fully in learning. It facilitates collaborative learning and may improve understanding of mathematical and scientific concepts. Experience shows, for example, that students will participate far more actively in lectures if they can reply by touching keys than if they have to speak openly. Handhelds also work well as data-gathering devices in mathematics and science classes, and they now have the power to perform extensive calculations and modelling. In third world countries, small computing platforms exploiting the wide availability of mobile communications could have a big impact on education. [K][I][C]
Learning to use symbols What most distinguishes humans from other creatures is our ability to create and manipulate a wide variety of symbolic representations. This capacity enables us to transmit information from one generation to another, making culture possible, and to learn vast amounts without having direct experience. Perhaps no aspect of human development and education is more important than mastering the ever expanding variety of symbols and becoming expertly symbol-minded. Many aspects of symbols that seem intuitively obvious to adults are confusing to infants and young children, and this has led to mistakes in teaching methods that can make it harder for children to master reading and mathematics skills, and to achieve a mature conception of what symbols represent. [K][B][T] |
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| [C] Computing, supercomputing, modelling and simulation | |
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Reinventing computing Embedded systems are the fastest growing area of computing, but computing at present is ill-suited to producing embedded software because it cannot handle timing and concurrency. Prevailing software methods abstract away time, replacing it with ordering, and the prevailing concurrency model in general-purpose software does not meet the high reliability requirements for many embedded systems. In the past, engineers have overcome these limitations by writing embedded software at a very low level in assembly code or C, avoiding operating systems with a rich suite of services, and using specialised computer architectures such as programmable DSPs and network processors that provide hardware support for common operations. However, as applications become highly sophisticated, networked and feature-rich, more efficient programming methods are needed. This means reinventing many aspects of computer science using new architecture techniques, new programming languages and compiler support, and new semantics, such as hybrid systems theory. [C][I][K][R][T][U][V][W]
Petaflop computer Japan has revealed plans to build a supercomputer with a peak performance of 10 petaflops to simulate climate change and galaxy formations, and to predict the behaviour of new drugs. The fastest computer in the world today is Blue Gene/L installed at Lawrence Livermore, with a peak speed of 136.8 teraflops. The Japanese machine, which is scheduled to be completed in 2011, will probably be highly specialised to the target applications in order to achieve such a huge leap in performance. [C][A][E][G][H]
Earth System Modelling Framework Researchers from NASA and several other US government and academic institutions have created four new supercomputer simulations that for the first time combine their mathematical computer models of the atmosphere, ocean, land surface and sea ice. These simulations are the first field tests of the new Earth System Modelling Framework (ESMF). ESMF provides a standard for coupling weather and climate models to achieve a realistic representation of the Earth as a system of interacting parts. Its purpose is to unify the modelling community, to make it easier to share and compare alternative scientific approaches from multiple sources, to use remote sensing data more efficiently, and to avoid individual agencies having to develop their own coupling software. [C][D][E][K][R][X] |
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| [W] Whole life engineering, manufacture and testing | |
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Design of multiprocessor SoCs Systems on a chip (SoCs) need to provide not just high computation rates but real-time performance that meets competing constraints of time, power consumption and cost, which together can be very challenging. Using multiprocessor SoCs can help balance these constraints by adapting the system's architecture to the application's requirements. Putting computational power where it is needed meets performance constraints; removing unnecessary elements reduces both energy consumption and cost. MPSoCs are custom architectures, and combine the difficulties of building complex hardware systems and complex software systems. The use of standards, reference implementations, architecture flexibility, specialised processing elements and memory, highly structured design, and powerful simulation tools, all helps to make the realisation of MPSoCs tractable and affordable. For the future, improving hardware/software interface codesign to integrate embedded software and hardware components holds great promise. [W][C][I][J][T]
Finding program bugs Hackers who seek out loopholes in popular programs could soon get cash rewards for their finds. Security firm Tipping Point is setting up a scheme in which it will spend substantial sums to buy bugs sent in by researchers that join the project. [W][C][I]
Collective innovation According to speakers at the 2005 Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference (TED05), digital technology is changing the way that products are produced, enabling consumers with innovative ideas to join with others to obtain the know-how to realise their ideas. Whilst it is a challenge to get very large, distributed group of people to work in an effective, valuable, collaborative way, companies need to tap this resource for innovation. For the first time since the industrial revolution, the most important means and components of core economies are in the hands of the population. The involvement of users as co-developers in the games industry is a good example of the power of collective innovation. [W][I][K][T] |
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| [X] Systems, complexity and risk | |
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Global workforce The integration of global labour markets is tending to produce what amounts to a single market for jobs that can be performed remotely. Today that global market is small. But as it grows, the demand for offshore labour from the developed world's companies will increasingly affect wage rates and employment levels in the developing world. But, in the view of McKinsey, it is unlikely to create any sudden discontinuities in overall levels of employment and wages in developed countries. [X][D][E][I][K][T][W]
Multicultural mindsets As the world becomes more and more globalised, people may work and live in several different cultures. US researchers have found that when faced with a challenging situation, a bicultural person may decide how to respond based on the cultural mindset that is active in the mind at the time. They found that college students in Hong Kong, when prompted ahead of time with icons of Chinese culture, were more likely to cooperate with friends than were students who had been prompted with American cultural icons. Understanding multicultural behaviour and mindsets could prove to be important in international negotiations and in the decisions of people involved in multinational business. [X][B][D][I][K][V][W]
Future urbanisation The UN demographic model predicts that the proportion of the world population living in towns and cities will rise to 61 percent by 2030. However, this model appears to be overestimating the rate of urbanisation in recent years. A new model developed by IRD predicts that the urban population will reach only 49 percent by 2030, a billion lower. The IRD model also predicts that the urban population is saturating at a lower percentage than previously predicted. Both factors mean that populations in Africa and Asia could remain much more rurally-based than the UN has predicted. This means that they should be less significant as producers of greenhouse gas emissions, but will also make it harder to achieve the millennium health goals. [X][C][D][E][H][P]
Business and society According to McKinsey, it is time for big companies to recapture the intellectual and moral high ground from the critics of business, and to build social issues into corporate strategy in a way that reflects their actual importance to companies and their impact on shareholder value. The importance of social and political pressures is shown by the way they have reshaped industries such as tobacco, oil and mining, and the way that current pressures are affecting pharmaceuticals (drug profits), food (obesity), finance (governance), and retail (planning). [X][D][E][H][K][T][W]
Ecological laws Scientists have previously thought that biodiversity at the microbial level was fundamentally different to that of larger organisms, such as plants and mammals. However, research at Oxford University has shown that the processes that structure the communities of large organisms also determine those of microbial communities. The finding will now enable researchers to predict some fundamental diversity patterns of bacterial communities and how they are affected by changes in the environment. [X][E][G][H] |
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| [V] Virtuality and human-machine interface | |
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Electronic paper Flexible colour electronic paper developed by Fujitsu could be used to display adverts as early as 2006. As well as having memory that requires power only to change the image and not to maintain it, the electronic paper is also flexible and is unaffected even when it is bent or pressed with fingers. Because no colour filters or polarizing layers are required, the paper produces colours that are significantly more vivid than conventional reflective-type LCDs. [V][O]
Dual-image display Sharp has developed an LCD that simultaneously displays different, full-screen images in two distinct viewing directions. It can allow two people to use a single display simultaneously for quite different purposes. [V][O]
Map augmentation Researchers at Cambridge University have developed a system that augments an ordinary tabletop map with additional information by projecting it onto the map’s surface. The system makes use of an overhead camera and image recognition software on a connected computer to identify the region from the map’s topographical features. An overhead projector then overlays relevant information, such as the location of a traffic accident or of a moving helicopter, or photographs and video information. [V][D][E][H][K][R][W]
Hearwear Just as people wear spectacles to correct their vision, so people may increasingly use hearwear to improve their hearing. Hearwear could be used, for example, to correct for hearing loss, to block out irritating or dangerously loud sounds, to enable a clear conversation in a noisy bar, or to replay a few moments of conversation that the listener has missed. Hearwear could be designed as fashionable jewellery or must-have gadgets, according to the sponsors of an exhibition of hearwear ideas at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. [V][E][H][K]
Decision support US researchers have shown that decision support software based on the recognition-primed decision (RPD) model can help human teams in making decisions more accurately and quickly under time pressure. The RFD model posits that people make decisions based on their recognition of similarities between past experiences and current situations. Earlier research showed this model addresses situations where there is little or no time for extensive reasoning. The software was tested in a military command-and-control simulation which involved intelligence gathering, logistics and force protection. However, the researchers believe it is applicable to a wide range of decision situations. [V][B][C][D][K][W][X]
Facial recognition New research indicates that seeing the full range of movement in facial motion, in the arching of an eyebrow or the curve of a smile, is an extremely important part of what enables humans to recognise subtle facial expressions reflecting emotions such as anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. [V][R] |
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| [B] Brain research and human science | |
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Adaptive sensor fusion Proprioception involves the brain fusing signals from different senses, including touch, pain, vision and muscles. Researchers have shown that this is a dynamic process in which the brain constantly updates its body map and alters in real time how it interprets individual sensations, such as touch. [B][R][S][U][V]
Blinking Using fMRI, researchers at University College have shown that when the eye blinks, the brain transiently suppresses the areas involved in visual awareness. This may be a neural mechanism for preventing the brain being distracted by the eyelid movement. [B][V]
Pain perception Men and women seem to perceive pain differently, and react differently to pain killers. Women often find nulbuphine, which blocks the kappa pain receptors in the brain, to be more effective then morphine, which binds to the mu pain receptors. In men, however, kappa-receptor agonists, such as nalbuphine, appear to have little or no pain-relieving effect, and nalbuphine has even been found to increase pain. In the future, pain killers may be tailored to individuals based on their sex and their genes. [B][G][H][T]
Cause of schizophrenia Schizophrenia is increasingly viewed as a neurodevelopmental disorder in which environmental influences during early brain development modify risks of developing the disease. A study of children born during the famine in China in 1960-61 shows that around 2 percent developed schizophrenia. This is 2.3 times higher than the normal level, and concurs with a previous study which found that children conceived during the food shortage in Holland in 1944-45 had twice the normal risk of schizophrenia. It supports the theory that foetal malnutrition, possibly related to folic acid, may be a significant environmental factor in causing schizophrenia. [B][H]
Culprit molecule in Alzheimer's One puzzle in research on Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been that mice genetically altered to overproduce mutant human amyloid precursor protein (APP), which underlies Alzheimer's disease in humans, have shown little pathology of the disease. Mayo researchers have now explained this. When clipped by enzymes, APP produces the amyloid beta (Ab) peptide that clusters into the amyloid plaque that clogs the brain and kills brain cells. But, the clipping produces two types of amyloid beta peptide, one 40 amino acid units long (Ab40) and one 42 units long (Ab42). Mayo researchers have found that Ab42 is the culprit molecule. Mice engineered to produce Ab40 showed little amyloid disease pathology, while Ab42 mice showed extensive accumulation of amyloid plaque and resulting neural damage. [B][G][H] |
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| [H] Healthcare and medicine | |
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Evidence based practice In recent years, American hospitals have made significant improvements on standardised, evidence-based measures of clinical performance for several medical conditions, including heart attacks, heart failure, and pneumonia. This should be reflected in better patient outcomes, but puzzlingly there seems to be no evidence of any improvement in public health, especially in reducing morbidity and mortality. [H][K]
Reducing obesity The hormone oxyntomodulin is a peptide produced by the small intestine after a meal. It acts on the brain to reduce appetite, and might provide a way to control obesity. In a trial, a group of 14 obese and overweight subjects self-administered doses of the hormone 30 minutes before breakfast, lunch and dinner. After four weeks they had lost an average of 2.3 kilograms compared with a control group. [H]
Chronic fatigue syndrome Chronic fatigue syndrome is a perplexing condition that is hard to pinpoint. The symptoms, which linger for years, have been compared to those of a really bad hangover: extreme weakness, inability to think straight, disrupted sleep, and headache. Research at UCL has compared levels of gene expression in the white blood cells of 25 healthy individuals with those in 25 patients diagnosed as having CFS according to strict criteria. The researchers found differences in 35 of the 9522 genes they analysed, and 15 of the genes were up to four times as active in people with CFS. A follow-on study in 1000 CFS patients and healthy controls, this time looking at 47,000 gene products, is so far confirming the results. The hope is that this could lead to a blood test for CFS and perhaps to drugs for treating it. [H][G]
Immune system activation Two publications throw important light on how the immune system is activated to seek out and destroy pathogens, such as viruses, bacteria or cancer cells. Research at Scripps Institute has solved a mystery of how the activation of the immune system T-cells occurs, through the combined action of T-cell receptors and coreceptor molecules. Research at the University of Rochester Medical Center has determined how the immune system selects which biochemical feature of a pathogen should be used by the T-cells as the target label (epitope) for identifying the pathogen. The researchers have found that epitopes are selected when they bind particularly strongly to the major histocompatibility complex (Mhc) proteins in the dendritic cells, the specialist cells that roam the body looking for new pathogens and then train the T-cells what to look for. The findings may enable vaccine designers to cause the immune system to select better epitopes, particularly epitopes that pathogens cannot change to escape detection. [H][G]
Heart monitoring By using sound waves Mayo Clinic researchers have described subtle changes in the motion of the heart that are measurable by ultrasound and may improve understanding of heart function. Measuring these changes might possibly provide a non-invasive aid for predicting impending heart attacks or other heart damage, and the findings could also contribute to optimal adjustment of cardiac pacemakers or perhaps better design of artificial hearts. [H][S]
Screening for cancer Scientists from Sweden and Ukraine have discovered three proteins present in the blood of women with breast and ovarian cancer, but not in the blood of women without cancer. This discover has exciting potential to improve the early diagnosis of these cancers through a simple blood test. [H][G][S]
Screening for virulent cancer US scientists have identified a set of genes in breast tumours that appear to be mediators that enable the cancer cells to take root in the lungs. This discovery may enable clinicians to predict whether a breast cancer will spread to the lungs and how virulent it will become. The proteins produced by the genes may also provide a prime target for drug therapy. [H][G]
Cancer immunotherapy The success of the breast cancer drug Herceptin, an antibody that specifically attacks breast cancer cells in which the Her2/neu gene is active, has made immunotherapy an attractive option for treating breast cancer, either using antibody drugs or vaccines. Unfortunately, however, there appear to be very few bona fide targets. After an exhaustive search, US and Canadian researchers have now identified a gene, TRPS-1, as a promising candidate. It is strongly expressed in 90 percent of breast cancers, and at all stages of the disease, but in none of the normal tissues tested, except for low levels found in normal breast tissue. Laboratory tests have confirmed that T-cells trained to detect TRPS-1 would attack and kill breast cancer cells containing the TRPS-1 protein. [H][G]
Nanobodies Monoclonal antibody (Mab) therapy is still very expensive. A big problem is that Mabs are so complex. They cannot be synthesised from chemical building blocks, like conventional drugs, but must be grown in bioreactor vats of mammalian cells engineered to carry the multiple genes needed to make a single antibody. Because of their size, they unravel if exposed to high temperatures or extremes of pH, they are digested quickly in the gut, they are blocked from entering the brain and they are held to the periphery of solid tumours so that many illnesses are unreachable. One approach to overcome these limitations is to use antibody fragments (Fabs). These can be manufactured by bacteria, yeast or fungi, and can sneak into the centre of tumours, carrying toxic payloads. However, Fabs have only a short lifetime in the body. Another approach is to use so-called nanobodies. These are cut-down versions of simpler antibodies found in camels and llamas. These have many advantages and work well in mice. [H][G][N]
Stealth measles Mayo Clinic researchers have shown how to recloak measles virus so that it cannot be detected by the immune system. The technology needs elaborate precautions in order to avoid creating a pandemic super virus. But it holds promise of engineering measles to destroy cancers. Retargeted measles virus can recognise surface molecules found only on cancerous cells, allowing selective killing. [H][D][G] |
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| [G] Genomics, biotechnology and bioinformatics | |
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Controlling gene expression Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have shown that they can efficiently shut down gene expression in cultured cells by blocking the ability of chromosomal DNA to be copied into RNA and made into proteins. Being able to control gene expression by turning genes on or off at the DNA level could lead to drugs for the treatment or cure of many diseases. [G][H]
Parasite genomes Scientists have deciphered the DNA of trypanosomal parasites responsible for three deadly diseases: African sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease, and leishmaniasis. This could open new routes to preventing and treating these conditions, which together kill more than 1 million people worldwide each year. No vaccine exists for these diseases, and the drugs that are currently available have problems of toxicity and of acquired resistance in the parasites. [G][H]
Ageing mechanisms The lifespan of humans and other creatures is determined by a combination of genetic, environmental and chance factors. Twin studies in humans have suggested that genes are only about 15 to 30 percent responsible for a person's age at death. Laboratory experiments have shown that genetically identical organisms raised in identical environments still age at different rates. Now researchers at the University of Colorado, have found that, in the case of genetically identical worms, it is possible to predict individual life span on the first day of the worm's adult life based on how it responds to stress. This suggests that chance metabolic processes in early life may affect lifespan by changing the ability of an organism to deal with the stresses of living. [G][H]
Ageing genes By screening the genome of the laboratory worm, C. elegans, researchers have identified 23 new genes that affect ageing. Each of the 23 genes normally acts to reduce longevity, and inhibiting any one of them increases lifespan, in one case by a factor of two. [G]
Longevity genes Mice, rats, worms, flies, and yeast all live longer on a low-calorie diet, and a low-calorie diet also seems to protect mammals against age-related diseases. A gene called SIR2 is thought to control this process. Now, researchers have discovered four cousins of the SIR2 gene that also extend lifespan, suggesting that the whole family of SIR2 genes is involved in controlling lifespan. [G][H]
Stem cells development Researchers at UCL have outlined for the first time how the structure of the neck and shoulders in vertebrates develops from stem cells. They believe that instead of groups of stem cells creating the skeletal and muscle structure separately, they actually appear to make them together as a sort of 'composite'. For example, the stem cell group that makes the connective tissues of the swallowing/gulping muscles also makes the skeletal regions of the shoulder girdle. This could have significant implications for clinical medicine, and also for understanding vertebrate evolution and interpreting fossil evidence. [G][H]
Stem cells and fertility In 2004, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospitals (MGH) announced surprising findings that female mice, contrary to longstanding theories, retain the ability to make new egg cells or oocytes into adulthood. Now, with the help of several genetic markers that are found in germ cells, the master cells that eventually give rise to the egg and sperm, the MGH team has found evidence for the existence of germ cell progenitors, putative stem cells, in mouse bone marrow and blood. In addition, the researchers also found these markers in human bone marrow and blood. Remarkably, the researchers found that bone marrow or blood cell transplants appear to completely revive the ovaries of female mice sterilised by chemotherapy. Just 24 hours after a transplant, the sterilised mice had new egg cells and follicles, and after two months their ovaries appeared nearly identical to those of normal mice. The work has practical implications for treating infertility and for delaying the menopause. [G][H]
Sources for stem cell therapy A part of the placenta called the amnion is comprised of cells that have striking similarity to embryonic stem cells. This includes the ability to express two key genes that enable embryonic stem cells to develop into any kind of specialised cell, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. Their studies also show that these so-called amniotic epithelial cells could be directed to form liver, pancreas, heart and nerve cells under the right laboratory conditions. The cells do not have the same ability as embryonic stem cells to divide indefinitely. However, this could be an advantage since they are thereby less likely to cause cancer. [G][H]
Genome mining A new statistical method streamlines the computation required to identify all the potential locations in the genome that influence a particular physical trait, or phenotype. The method, which is openly available, bypasses the previously overwhelming computations needed to puzzle together the myriad elements that influence gene expression throughout an entire genome. Unlike earlier approaches to understanding how multiple loci interact, the new technique can distinguish between a group of genes with a linked subset and a group of genes with "joint linkage," where each gene site links to another. [G][C]
Protein analysis A new technique called G-matrix Fourier Transform NMR enables the structure of proteins, including membrane proteins, to be determined in 10-20 days instead of the 6-12 months required by conventional methods. The initial 3D protein structures can be generated automatically soon after data collection and then refined by manual data-analysis methods. NMR is particularly valuable for solving the structure of many important proteins that do not crystallise and that are not therefore amenable x-ray crystallography. [G][S] |
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