Science News

Diabetes sugar 'can go too low'

2010-01-26T17:46:00.001-08:00

Diabetes disrupts blood sugar levels

Intense treatment to lower blood sugar in patients with diabetes could prove nearly as harmful as allowing glucose levels to remain high, a study says.

Cardiff researchers looked at nearly 50,000 patients with type 2 diabetes and found the lowest glucose levels linked to a heightened risk of death.

Significant differences in death rates between patients on insulin and those taking tablets are also flagged up.

But there could be various explanations for this, experts noted.

Patients taking insulin-based treatments have been urged not to stop taking their medication as a result of the Cardiff University study, which is published in The Lancet.

Changing treatments

Using data from GPs, the team identified 27,965 patients with type 2 diabetes whose treatment had been intensified to include two oral blood glucose lowering agents - metformin and sulphonylurea.

A further 20,005 patients who had been moved on to treatment which included insulin were added to the study.

Patients whose HbA1c levels - the proportion of red blood cells with glucose attached to them - were around 7.5%, ran the lowest risk of dying from any cause.

For both groups this risk went up by more than half if levels dropped to 6.4%, the lowest levels recorded. For those with the highest levels the risk of death increased by nearly 80%.

But the risks appeared to be particularly pronounced among those on the insulin-based regimen than those on the combined treatment.

Irrespective of whether their HbA1c levels were low or high, there were 2,834 deaths in the insulin-taking group between 1986 and 2008, nearly 50% more than in the combined group.

'Don't stop'

The authors acknowledged there could be various factors associated with this, such as these being older patients with more health problems, who perhaps had had diabetes for a longer period of time. They also make reference to a possible link between use of insulin and cancer progression that had been reported in a different study.

"Whether intensification of glucose control with insulin therapy alone further heightens risk of death in patients with diabetes needs further investigation and assessment of the overall risk balance," wrote lead author Dr Craig Currie.

"Low and high mean HbA1c values were associated with increased all-cause mortality and cardiac events. If confirmed, diabetes guidelines might need revision to include a minimum HbA1c value."

Dr Iain Frame, head of research at Diabetes UK, described the study as "potentially important" but stressed it had limitations.

"It is not clear what the causes of death were from the results reported. Furthermore, when it comes to the suggestion made in this research that insulin could increase the risk of death, we must consider important factors such as age, the duration of their diabetes and how the participants managed their condition.

"It is crucial to remember that blood glucose targets should always be agreed by the person with diabetes and their healthcare team according to individual needs and not according to a blanket set of rules."

While people would be able to manage their condition for a period with diet, exercise and even tablets, many would eventually have to move on to insulin, he noted.

"We would advise people with type 2 diabetes who use insulin not to stop taking their medication. However, if they are worried about blood glucose targets, they should discuss this with their healthcare team."

WHO defends its swine flu warning

2010-01-26T09:20:00.000-08:00

Countries around the world offered swine flu vaccines to people

The World Health Organization (WHO) has defended its handling of the swine flu pandemic last year, after the Council of Europe cast doubt on its actions.

Countries rushed to order thousands of vaccine doses when the pandemic was declared in June, but the virus proved to be relatively mild.

The WHO's links to drug companies were questioned at a hearing by the Council of Europe's health committee.

A WHO flu expert denied there had been improper influence from drug firms.

The WHO's Keiji Fukuda told a hearing in Strasbourg: "Let me state clearly for the record - the influenza pandemic policies and responses recommended and taken by WHO were not improperly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry."

When a pandemic was declared last June most European countries changed their health priorities to accommodate thousands of expected patients, including spending millions of euros on vaccines for H1N1.

A number of European governments signed contracts with drug companies to buy vaccines.

But it has since become clear that although 14,000 people worldwide died from swine flu, and millions more were infected, it is a mild flu with a lower mortality than seasonal influenza.

Allegations from politicians and media about links with drug companies have prompted an internal review at the WHO and the Council of Europe hearings.

Dr Fukuda rejected comparisons between seasonal flu and swine flu - describing them as like comparing oranges to apples.

Seasonal flu figures were based on statistical models, whereas every swine flu death had been confirmed in a laboratory, he said.

He said the WHO response had not been perfect, but a range of experts - including some in the private sector - had been consulted and there had been safeguards to prevent a conflict of interest.

"We are under no illusions that this response was the perfect response," Dr Fukuda said.

"But we do not wait until [these global virus outbreaks] have developed and we see that lots of people are dying. What we try and do is take preventive actions. If we are successful no-one will die, no-one will notice anything," he added.

"We feel we should move quickly. Our purpose is to try to provide guidance, to try to reduce harm," he said.

Part of the WHO review would examine if there was a better way to define outbreaks and severity, Dr Fukuda said.

The past is the future for hi-tech

2010-01-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

Your eyes could become a target for hi-tech hackers.

We still don't think enough about securing our technology, says regular commentator Bill Thompson

As December comes to an end journalists and pundits around the world have been telling us which devices or technologies they think are the most important from the last year.

Here on the BBC tech site Rory Cellan-Jones chooses cloud computing while Jonathan Fildes opts for smartphone applications and Maggie Shiels reveals her love for her Blackberry, to which she is clearly addicted.

Picking one innovation as the most important or as representative of a year is notoriously difficult, but it is at least retrospective.

The iTunes Application Store was one of the year's biggest successes, whatever one might think of Apple's arbitrary approvals process or the constraints placed on application authors, and Google really did launch Wave, albeit as an early, buggy alpha release.

...the sort of systems thinking that would make data security an essential part of the design process is still rare enough to be remarkable.

Bill Thompson

Looking forward is much trickier. When it comes to recent innovations it is simply too early to judge their impact, so there is no way we can tell whether Wave really will bring about a revolution in collaborative working or fade away into technology history.

The rate of technological change is so fast that extrapolation simply cannot be useful guide, with new products and services appearing all the time.

Nobody can tell how the ebook market will adapt to the imminent release of Apple's tablet computer because we don't yet know what the tablet will look, feel or work like.

That doesn't stop us trying, of course, even if we get it painfully wrong.

I recall predicting the imminent death of the analogue modem several years before they even began to decline in popularity, while my final column of 2005 includes an admission that I'd failed to appreciate the disruptive impact of wireless technology in previous years.

On the up side, I did use the same column to point out the danger that the music industry would never learn to trust their customers but try "to exert even more control, and perhaps using their lobbying powers to change laws to make their systems unavoidable".

Looking ahead

However, as we enter the last year of the first decade of the 21st century I am willing to stick my neck out and make a prediction about a technology that is still in the lab and is at least 10 years from being commercially available.

I am confident that at some point around 2020 we will all be distracted by early reports that the latest display technology using smart contact lenses that draw images directly onto the retina using low-powered micro-lasers are being hacked into by unscrupulous criminals.

They will be replacing paid-for adverts with ones for their own illicit services while using the augmented reality data feeds that the lenses offer to steal personal data and infiltrate company networks.

Medical implants may be at risk in the future, says Bill.

At that point the manufacturers of the lenses will scramble to add some high-end security to the data transfer protocol used to link their lenses to the personal data networks we have all adopted by then, but doing so will break lots of applications and services and never be widely adopted.

People will prefer to live with the risk of seeing the odd pornographic image to having to reconfigure a product that was sold as being "as easy as seeing", and the criminal gangs will continue to harvest personal data and sell illicit advertising.

Digital contact lenses are one the technologies that have recently become possible thanks to some breakthrough work in the research labs.

They are under development at the University of Washington, where Babak Parvis has a prototype with a single red LED, powered by radio frequency transmissions like the passive RFID chips in Oyster cards.

Eventually he believes we will have lenses with built-in control circuits, display circuits and miniature antennae that project images directly onto the retina. Although the engineering hurdles to be overcome are enormous this one feels to me like something we will see in the mass market within a decade.

But I have a horrible feeling that in all the excitement about getting the things to actually work the developers will not bother to build encryption into the data transfer protocols, because doing so will delay bringing them to market or add too much to the cost.

Lessons to learn

The past may not always be a good guide to the technological future, but sometimes it is, and the development of medical implants offers a salutary lesson here.

Pacemakers and other devices have been implanted in people for many years, and more and more of them have some form of wireless monitoring and control.

Over the years we've looked at many on Digital Planet, the World Service radio programme I appear on as studio expert because they are an important medical advance, not least because they reduce the need for repeat surgery.

Smart contacts could help mix real and virtual

And in March 2008 researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst demonstrated that you could snoop on the radio signal coming from a combination pacemaker/defibrillator and reprogram it to deliver a potentially lethal electric shock to a patient.

Their experiment required several students and some expensive equipment to monitor and decode the signals from a Medtronic Maximo pacemaker, but it prompted significant concern within the medical profession because of the danger it exposed.

Up to that point the manufacturers had been worried about possible interference with the implants from external radio sources like metal scanners or store alarms, and the potential for hacking seems not to have occurred to them.

I fear that we will see the same pattern repeat itself again and again, because the sort of systems thinking that would make data security an essential part of the design process is still rare enough to be remarkable.

The first generation of analogue mobile phones sent conversations in the clear, and it was only when they went digital that some encryption was built in, and this sort of short-sighted thinking still seems prevalent.

Experts stunned by swan 'divorce' at Slimbridge wetland

2010-01-24T18:03:00.000-08:00

Staff were initially concerned when Sarindi arrived with a new mate

Experts have told of their surprise after witnessing a rare "divorce" between a pair of swans at a Gloucestershire wildfowl sanctuary.

The Bewick's swans have returned to winter at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust centre at Slimbridge - but both have brought new partners.

It is only the second time in more than 40 years that a "separation" has been recorded at the centre.

Staff have described the new couplings as "bizarre".

It is not unheard of for the birds, which usually mate for life, to find a new mate but it tends to be because one of the pair has died, they said.

During the past four decades 4,000 pairs of Bewick's swans have been studied at Slimbridge, with only one previous couple moving on to find new partners.

Normally loyal

First suspicions of the rare event were raised when male swan Sarindi turned up in the annual migration from Arctic Russia without his partner of two years Saruni and with a new female - newly-named Sarind - in tow.

The pair's arrival led conservationists to fear the worst for Saruni.

But shortly afterwards Saruni arrived at the wetlands site - also with a new mate, Surune.

And after observing them, the experts discovered the old relationship had ended and new ones had begun.

Julia Newth, wildlife health research officer at Slimbridge, said the situation had taken staff by surprise.

She said swans tended to have "real loyalties to one another" and long partnerships.

"As long as they are both still alive, they will try to stay together. If they have a change of mate it is perhaps because of mortality, not necessarily through choice," she said.

In this case, however, both swans and their new partners are now over-wintering in close proximity on the lake at Slimbridge.

Ms Newth said the old pair had not acknowledged each other with any signs of recognition or greeting - even though they are occupying the same part of the small lake.

As for why they may have split, she said: "Failure to breed could be a possible reason, as they had been together for a couple of years but had never brought back a cygnet, but it is difficult to say for sure."

Bewick's swans are the smallest and rarest of the three species found in the UK and each individual can be identified by their unique bill pattern.

Copenhagen 'fails forest people'

2010-01-22T18:19:00.000-08:00

Deforestation is a major source of greenhouse gases

A multi-billion dollar deal tabled at the Copenhagen climate summit could lead to conflicts in forest-rich nations, a report has warned.

The study by the Rights and Resources Initiative said the funds could place "unprecedented pressure" on some areas.

Six nations offered $3.5bn as part of global plans to cut deforestation, which accounts for about 20% of all emissions from human activity.

Campaigners warn the scheme fails to consider the rights of forest people.

The money - tabled by Japan, Norway, Australia, France and the US and UK - was made available under the UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd) scheme.

However, delegates in the Danish capital failed to reach agreement on the mechanisms needed to monitor and manage the framework.

Decision time

"One of the things that the world has learned over the years is that Redd is far more difficult than many people imagined," said Andy White, co-ordinator of RRI, a US-based think-tank, and one of the report's lead authors.

"The forested areas of the world - by and large - have very high levels of poverty, low levels of respect for local rights, and a very low level of control among local people to shape and control their destiny.

"So the rather simplistic notion that money from the rich North can control or limit deforestation was unrealistic."

Redd was developed as a global concept that would provide developing countries with a financial incentive to preserve forests.

The Copenhagen conference was expected to finalise an international Redd finance mechanism for the post-2012 global climate change framework.

The RRI's report, The End of the Hitherlands, said that there would be "unparalleled" attention and investment in forests over the coming year.

It asked: "But who will drive the agenda and who will make the decisions?"

The authors said studies showed that there was the potential for "enormous profits", but this would lead to increased competition for forest resources between governments and investors on one hand, and local communities on the other.

Dr White told BBC News that the UN-Redd scheme still had "tremendous potential".

"It requires, from our perspective, that the governments who tabled the $3.5bn quickly get together and decide on the standards and mechanisms that they will set up," he suggested.

"This would send the necessary signals to the private sector, as well as forest-rich nations, about what is expected from them in order to comply with the policy.

"Sorting out the institution arrangements in developing nations in order to manage the forest market is a huge undertaking."

But the report said that the "unprecedented exposure and pressure" on forest regions was being met by a rise in local groups setting up co-operatives and representative bodies.

The authors added that it gave "nations and the world at large a tremendous opportunity to right historic wrongs, advance rural development and save forests".

Leukaemia cell 'breakthrough' offers treatment hope

2010-01-22T18:16:00.000-08:00

T-ALL is a form of childhood leukaemia

Scientists believe they have made an important breakthrough in attempts to treat a form of childhood leukaemia.

In mice tests, Australian researchers found that a cell, which plays a key role in T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, survives radiotherapy.

The Melbourne University team believes targeting this cell may help to stop this disease returning, but they warned much more research was needed.

UK experts said the findings may eventually lead to better care.

T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is a rare form of leukaemia which is most common in older children and adolescents, although adults can also be affected.

About a fifth of children suffer relapses after radiation therapy.

In the tests, the team found that 99% of cells in the thymus, a small organ in the upper chest which helps protect people from infections and as a result plays a key role in leukaemia, were killed by radiation.

Resistance

But the Lmo2 gene was able to recover because of its stem-cell like properties, suggesting it could be responsible for the disease, the Science journal reported.

Lead researcher Dr Matthew McCormack said: "The cellular origins of this leukaemia are not well understood.

"Our discovery that these cells are similar to normal stem cells explains why they are capable of surviving for long periods.

"It also explains why they are remarkably resistant to treatment."

The team is now planning to focus on novel treatment capable of killing these cells, but warns it is still many years away from clinical trials.

Ken Campbell, of Leukaemia Research, said: "This is an interesting piece of research that increases our understanding of this small sub-set of childhood leukaemia patients.

"However, while the research could reduce relapse rates in the future for this group, it is likely that current treatment regimes will continue to be used."

Microsoft patches Internet Explorer hole

2010-01-21T18:03:00.000-08:00

Microsoft recommends that people upgrade to IE8

Microsoft has released a fix for a hole in Internet Explorer that was the weak link in a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack on Google.

Microsoft recommends that customers install the update as soon as possible or update to the latest version of the web browser for "improved security".

Microsoft normally issues patches monthly but the high-profile nature of the attacks led it to act more quickly.

The patch - MS10-002 - was released worldwide at 1000 PST (1800 GMT).

"It addresses the vulnerability related to recent attacks against Google and small subset of corporations, as well as several other vulnerabilities," the firm said.

"Once applied, customers are protected against the known attacks that have been widely publicised."

Microsoft has admitted that it has known about the vulnerability since "since early September" 2009 and had planned to patch it in February.

Trojan Horse

Google threatened to withdraw from the Chinese market following attacks on its infrastructure.

The hacks - thought to have originated in China - targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Following Microsoft's revelation that Explorer had been used in the attacks, the French and German governments advised their citizens to switch to a different browser until the hole had been closed.

The UK government downplayed the threat and said there was "no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure".

However, Microsoft has taken the unusual step of patching the hole nearly three weeks ahead of its regular security update.

The new patch is available via the Microsoft Update site and will also be fed out to those who have their machines set to update automatically. All versions of Internet Explorer will receive the update.

Malicious code exploiting the weakness is known to be circulating on the web, said security experts.

If a web user were to visit a compromised site using a vulnerable browser, they could become infected with a "trojan horse", allowing a hacker to take control of the computer and potentially steal sensitive information.

Microsoft said on 18 January that the firm had only seen malicious code that targeted the older version of its browser, IE6 and that there were "very few" infected sites on the web.

But security firms had said they had seen "copycat" sites trying to exploit the vulnerability.

The bad publicity has allowed rivals such as Firefox to gain market share.

According to web analytics company StatCounter Firefox is now a close second to Internet Explorer (IE) in Europe, with 40% of the market compared to Microsoft's 45% share.

In some markets, including Germany and Austria, Firefox has overtaken IE, the firm said.

Mozilla, the foundation behind Firefox has just released the latest version (3.6) of the open-source browser.

MRSA superbug strain 'tracked' via genome

2010-01-21T18:02:00.000-08:00

The appearance of MRSA has been linked to widespread antibiotic use

Researchers have developed a technique for precisely tracking the spread of the superbug MRSA in hospitals.

The team from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge looked at the genomes of MRSA strains from across the globe and at one hospital in Thailand.

They were able to spot small changes that allowed them to track the strain back to an individual patient.

They say this adds to the understanding of how MRSA can spread so rapidly and should lead to better treatments.

DNA sequencing

The research, which is published in the journal Science, involved teams in the UK, Thailand, Portugal and the United States.

Scientists used new high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies to compare MRSA samples from patients to show how they were genetically related.

They were able to spot single-letter differences in the genetic code.

They looked at two different sets of samples: one set taken from people across the globe and another from a single hospital in Thailand.

They sequenced the entire genomes of each sample.

In the hospital setting it revealed single letter genetic changes in the samples showing that no two infections were caused by entirely identical bacteria.

This allowed them to discover whether one patient had infected another or whether the infection had come in from another source.

They found that the MRSA strain studied acquired about one single-letter change in its genetic code every six weeks.

Worldwide search

They also looked at samples from hospitals in several parts of the world collected over more than 20 years.

The rate of mutation apparently supports the theory that MRSA emerged in the 1960s at the time of widespread antibiotic use.

Professor Sharon Peacock, a microbiologist at the University of Cambridge said: "The implications for public health are clear. This technology represents the potential to trace transmission pathways of MRSA more definitively so that interventions or treatments can be targeted with precision and according to need."

Researchers say it would be too expensive to use the technology widely at present but the cost should fall in the next few years.

Professor Mark Enright, an expert in molecular epidemiology at Imperial College, London, said the work gave researchers "a good idea as to how this particular type of MRSA has evolved and how it behaves in and out of hospitals".

"This work is a great demonstration of new, rapid DNA sequencing that in the near future will be how important pathogens such as MRSA will be identified," he said.

"Such unambiguous identification will form the basis for rapid diagnostics of microbial infection and will tell us how they spread in hospitals identifying each human host and surface in chains of transmission between patients."

Drug firm boost to malaria fight

2010-01-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

All the molecules have been tested against the Plasmodium parasite, seen above invading a blood cell, which is known to cause malaria.

Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is to reveal previously confidential data on thousands of potential anti-malaria compounds.

In addition to this, the company is to pump millions into an 'Open Lab' for independent research teams.

The company has 13,500 molecules which have been tested against the parasite which causes malaria.

One expert said more sharing of data could trigger advances like those that came from the human genome project.

The way in which pharmaceutical firms guard the secrets of their drugs and research has long been cited as an obstacle to disease research.

The latest announcement by GSK chief executive Andrew Witty, follows an earlier decision to set up a "patent pool" where information about patented drugs could be shared.

In a speech in New York, he said that it was important to "earn the trust" of society.

"The measures we have announced today are characterised by a determination to be more flexible, open and willing to learn.

"GSK has the capability to make a difference and a genuine appetite to change the landscape of healthcare for the world's poorest people."

Millions scanned

The data in question is the result of a year's effort by GSK scientists to study a disease which still claims almost a million lives a year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.

The company holds a "library" of millions of different molecules, and each of these was tested against the Plasmodium parasite which causes malaria.

The result was 13,500 which appeared to have an effect on it, although extensive further research would be needed to narrow down this list into those most likely to succeed as new drugs.

Dr Timothy Wells, Chief Scientific Officer of the Medicines for Malaria Venture, which has worked with GSK on the project, said it had the potential to "dramatically alter" the way the world approached malaria research.

"By sharing the data, the research community can start to build up a public repository of knowledge that should be as powerful as the human genome databases and could set a new trend to revolutionise the urgent search for new medicines to tackle malaria."

Dr Mallika Kaviratne, from the Malaria Consortium, a not-for-profit organisation, said it could boost access to medicines for developing countries, as resistance to existing drugs was an important issue.

She added: "The release of 13,500 molecules made to the public is very important - we have nothing else in the pipeline - and new drugs need to be developed, but they're expensive."

Professor Peter Winstanley, from the Liverpool School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that the decision was a "step in the right direction".

He said: "It looks like the chief executive has said: 'What's the sense of sitting on 13,500 molecules which perhaps have antimalarial properties when other people might be more interested in them than we are?'.

"How, while there's a slight possibility that we may have new drugs from this in the next five years, it is more likely to happen over the next 10 to 20 years, and that will take a lot of work, some luck, and a lot of money."

Esa mission concepts vie for position

2010-01-20T18:17:00.000-08:00

Euclid would map the distribution of dark matter

The competition to find the next great European space mission has seen three ideas move to the front of the field.

The European Space Agency's (Esa) Science Programme Committee (SPC) will meet next month to consider the current status of the candidates.

The committee members will have in front of them a report from an advisory group that has done a ranking on science.

A final decision is unlikely to be made for a year or so.

And to secure the opportunities available, the various competitors will have to show not only that their science is compelling but that their technological ambition is realistic and affordable.

Even then, only two missions can be afforded out of the three.

The concepts include a satellite that would map the "dark Universe" (called Euclid), a probe to study the Sun up-close (Solar Orbiter), and a telescope to find distant planets (Plato).

At the moment, the trio are in the lead, jockeying for position for the earliest launch opportunities in Esa's Cosmic Vision programme. The first launch could come in 2017.

However, the missions still have much to prove if they are ever to be flown by the agency.

Costs division

A further concept known as Spica (a contribution to a Japanese-led infrared telescope that builds on Europe's heritage with its Herschel observatory) is relatively low budget, and again has compelling science.

However, its special nature means it may now be treated in a separate way, depending on how the partner state's side of the project evolves and the budget that ultimately becomes available.

The scientific community ran the rule over the concepts in December

Two other ideas put forward for consideration in the competition have not been put out of the long-term picture. They seem though to be too far from the SPC's budget constraints to progress in this round.

They are Marco Polo (an asteroid sample-return mission) and Cross-Scale (to study space plasmas). Again, these concepts were considered to have excellent science credentials, according to the Space Science Advisory Committee.

But the high prospective cost of implementing these concepts means they would have to acquire additional partners to bring their foreseen budgets back into contention.

Very similar ideas to Marco Polo and Cross-Scale could well return to run in future competitions if the right international cooperation can be found.

Esa has budgeted up to 475 million euros (£430m) (at 2010 prices) for its contribution to the Cosmic Vision winners. The expectation is that the cost of the instruments that fly on the spacecraft will be borne directly by the member-states that provide them.

All the concepts were presented to the scientific community in December in what amounted to a kind of space "beauty contest".

The six concepts in more detail:

EUCLID - MAPPING THE 'DARK UNIVERSE'

Euclid would map the distribution of "dark matter", the matter that cannot be detected directly but which astronomers know is there because of its gravitational effects on the matter we can see. Hubble has done this for a tiny portion of sky measuring two square degrees. Euclid would do it across 20,000 square degrees of sky. The study would yield information also on "dark energy", the mysterious phenomenon thought to be accelerating the expansion of the cosmos.

SOLAR ORBITER - GETTING UP CLOSE TO THE SUN'S 'ENGINE'

This would be a joint venture with the US. Solar Orbiter would circle the Sun, flying to within 35 million km of our star to make detailed measurements of the activity from the equator to the poles. The multi-instrumented probe would both observe the Sun and take in-situ measurements of its environment.

PLATO - SEARCHING FOR PLANETS LIKE OURS

A spacecraft incorporating a suite of telescopes to hunt for planets around nearby bright stars. Crucially, these would include many rocky planets in the "habitable zone" - the region around a star where water can keep a liquid state. Plato would find these worlds by monitoring stars for the tiny dips in light that occur when planets move across their faces.

SPICA - TO FILL THE 'INFRARED GAP'

A joint mission with the Japanese space agency (Jaxa) to send the next generation of infrared telescope into orbit. Europe's contribution would include the 3.5m primary mirror and an instrument. Spica would see targets beyond the vision of the current state-of-the art infrared observatories - Esa's new Herschel telescope and Nasa's soon-to-launch James Webb telescope.

CROSS-SCALE - SAMPLING THE SPACE AROUND US

A constellation of spacecraft that would fly around Earth to sample the charged gas, or plasma, that envelops our world. Esa would provide seven spacecraft; Japan and Canada are considering their own mission (Scope) which could bring an additional five satellites. Together they would sample the plasma and detail its behaviour in three dimensions.

MARCO POLO - GRABBING SAMPLES FROM AN ASTEROID

A mission to a near-Earth asteroid to grab a handful of dust and pebbles off its surface to bring back to Earth labs for study. Marco Polo is a spacecraft that would land on the asteroid to try to drill or scoop up what would be perhaps just tens of grams of material. But even this small sample could give scientists invaluable insight into the formation of the Solar System.

UN climate body admits 'mistake' on Himalayan glaciers

2010-01-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

Neither satellites nor ground observations give a complete picture

The vice-chairman of the UN's climate science panel has admitted it made a mistake in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included the date in its 2007 assessment of climate impacts.

A number of scientists have recently disputed the 2035 figure, and Jean-Pascal van Ypersele told BBC News that it was an error and would be reviewed.

But he said it did not change the broad picture of man-made climate change.

The issue, which BBC News first reported on 05 December, has reverberated around climate websites in recent days.

Some commentators maintain that taken together with the contents of e-mails stolen last year from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, it undermines the credibility of climate science.

Dr van Ypersele said this was not the case.

"I don't see how one mistake in a 3,000-page report can damage the credibility of the overall report," he said.

"Some people will attempt to use it to damage the credibility of the IPCC; but if we can uncover it, and explain it and change it, it should strengthen the IPCC's credibility, showing that we are ready to learn from our mistakes."

Grey area

The claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 appears to have originated in a 1999 interview with Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain, published in New Scientist magazine.

The figure then surfaced in a 2005 report by environmental group WWF - a report that is cited in the IPCC's 2007 assessment, known as AR4.

An alternative genesis lies in the misreading of a 1996 study that gave the date as 2350.

AR 4 asserted: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world... the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."

Dr van Ypersele said the episode meant that the panel's reviewing procedures would have to be tightened.

Slow reaction?

The row erupted in India late last year in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit, with opposing factions in the government giving radically different narratives of what was happening to Himalayan ice.

IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri has been criticised by Jairam Ramesh

In December, it emerged that four leading glaciologists had prepared a letter for publication in the journal Science arguing that a complete melt by 2035 was physically impossible.

"You just can't accomplish it," Jeffrey Kargel from the University of Arizona told BBC News at the time.

"If you think about the thicknesses of the ice - 200-300m thicknesses, in some cases up to 400m thick - and if you're losing ice at the rate of a metre a year, or let's say double it to two metres a year, you're not going to get rid of 200m of ice in a quarter of a century."

The row continues in India, with Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh calling this week for the IPCC to explain "how it reached the 2035 figure, which created such a scare".

Meanwhile, in an interview with the news agency AFP, Georg Kaser from the University of Innsbruck in Austria - who led a different portion of the AR4 process - said he had warned that the 2035 figure was wrong in 2006, before AR4's publication.

"It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing," he told AFP in an interview.

He said that people working on the Asia chapter "did not react".

He suggested that some of the IPCC's working practices should be revised by the time work begins on its next landmark report, due in 2013.

But its overall conclusion that global warming is "unequivocal" remains beyond reproach, he said.

Fight to save dying plant species

2010-01-19T17:59:00.000-08:00

Last chance to see: the tree is the last of its kind

A botanist from Kew Gardens is fighting to save one of the rarest plant species in the world, the Bastard Gumwood tree.

The last tree of this species is found on the tiny South Atlantic island of St Helena, and it is dying.

To keep the Bastard Gumwood in existence, it needs to be pollinated so it will produce a fertile seed from which to grow new seedlings.

Obtaining a pure seed from the tree is no easy task.

The tree (Commidendrum rotundifolium) is enclosed in netting to prevent insects cross-pollinating with its near neighbour, the False Gumwood.

But even then because there are no other individuals in existence, the tree must self-pollinate, which it stubbornly resists.

And so it needs some help.

Every day, botanist Phil Lambdon visits the site along with local conservationists. The team delicately uses small paint brushes to collect pollen grains, which they spread from one flower to another.

But the odds are still against the Bastard Gumwood.

"The tree just doesn't want to pollinate itself," said Dr Lambdon, the botanist visiting from Kew Gardens who is in charge of the effort.

"Only around 1 in 10,000 pollen grains have the small genetic mutation which will allow self-pollination to take place.

"It's like a needle in a haystack. The work is painstaking and very slow."

The Gumwood tree is now enclosed in netting

The only way of knowing whether the seeds produced are fertile is to plant them.

"99.99% will be infertile and not grow, but it's the only way of finding out," said Dr Lambdon.

"It's not called the Bastard Gumwood because of this, incidentally," he added.

In fact there are a number of species beginning with the word on the island - the Bastard Cabbage tree, the Bastard Bell flower and the Small Bastard Cabbage tree.

Phil Lambdon is in charge of the conservation effort

They were named in by botanist John Burchell who was on St Helena between 1806 and1810.

Some think he may have been simply reporting the names given to the species by the locals.

Whatever the truth behind the tree's name, the island hopes these efforts will be more successful than with the St Helena Olive, which was also only found here, but which died out in 2003.

"Many of the tourists who come to the island want to see the island's unique wildlife. Another extinction would be very bad publicity," said St Helena National Trust Director Jamie Roberts.

France joins Germany warning against Internet Explorer

2010-01-18T18:03:00.000-08:00

Cliff Evans of Microsoft says IE8 is more secure than other browsers

France has echoed calls by the German government for web users to find an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) to protect security.

Certa, a government agency that oversees cyber threats, warned against using all versions of the web browser.

Germany warned users on Friday after malicious code - implicated in attacks on Google - was published online.

But Microsoft told BBC News that IE8 was the "most secure browser on the market" and people should upgrade.

Cliff Evans, head of security and privacy, said that so far the firm had only seen malicious code that targeted the older version of its browser, IE6.

"The risk is minimal," he said.

For a web user to be affected, he said, they would have to be using IE6 and visit a compromised website.

"There are very few of them out there," he told BBC News.

However, if this did occur, a PC could become infected with a "trojan horse", allowing a hacker to take control of the computer and potentially steal sensitive information.

'Sophisticated attack'

Although the vulnerability has so far been exploited only in IE6, security researchers warned that could soon change.

"Microsoft themselves admit there is a vulnerability, even in IE8," said Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos.

Mr Cluley said that because details of the exploit were now available online, hackers could soon change the code to target other versions of the browser.

He warned web users to be careful about clicking on links in unsolicited e-mails and advised all web users to upgrade their browser to the latest version, no matter which software they used.

The advice follows revelations that a "targeted and sophisticated" attack on Google exploited the vulnerability.

Google said last week that an attack on its corporate network had targeted the e-mail accounts of human rights activists.

The attack led Google to announce that it might withdraw from China, after it revealed that the attacks had probably originated in the country.

Following the news, Germany's Federal Office for Information Security issued a warning against all versions of Internet Explorer and recommended that users switch to an alternative such as Firefox or Google's Chrome.

The French agency Certa issued a similar warning.

"Pending a patch from the publisher, Certa recommends using an alternative browser," it said.

The UK government had said that it would not issue a similar warning. However, it said the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI)was "monitoring the situation" and would "publish further advice if the risks change".

Patch path

But Mr Evans said that calls to change browsers were "not very helpful".

"If you look at other browsers, it's likely they will have other vulnerabilities," he said.

The vulnerability was found to be used in an attack on Google

He pointed to a report by security firm NSS Labs reportedly showing that IE8 provided better security against phishing and malware than other browsers.

"We feel strongly that IE8 is most secure browser on the market," Mr Evans said.

His advice was echoed by Mr Cluley.

"Switching away will get away from this particular problem," he told BBC News. "But all browsers have security flaws."

Mr Cluley said that switching away from IE could create other problems, particularly for companies.

"Some web-based applications may not work at all if you're not using Internet Explorer."

Microsoft is currently working on a patch for the problem, but a spokesperson said it could not commit to a timeframe.

The firm traditionally releases a security update once a month - the next scheduled patch will be ready on 9 February.

Cord blood stem cell transplant hopes lifted

2010-01-17T18:07:00.000-08:00

Matching donors cannot always be found, despite extensive registries

A technique which may eventually remove the need for matched bone marrow transplants has been used in humans for the first time.

It is hoped that "master cells" taken from umbilical cords could be used on any patient without rejection.

The latest advance, published in the journal Nature Medicine, greatly multiplies the tiny number of cells from the cord ready for a transplant.

UK charity Leukaemia Research said this could be the "holy grail" for doctors.

Aggressive treatment

The current system of bone marrow transplantation helps patients who have diseases, such as leukaemia, which affect the stem cells in their bone marrow where new blood cells are grown.

Their own bone marrow cells are killed off by aggressive treatment and cells from a matched donor are introduced in their place.

However, a matching donor cannot always be found, despite extensive donor registries held by organisations such as the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust and, even with a carefully matched donor, there is still a risk that the patient's body will reject the new cells.

Cells extracted from umbilical cords could overcome these problems - they do not have the characteristics which would normally trigger immune rejection, so it is likely that cells from a single baby's cord could be used in any patient, without the need for matching.

However, there is one big disadvantage - there are not enough cells in a single cord to meet the needs of an adult patient.

Scientists have been looking for ways to either combine the cells from more than one baby, or to "expand" the cell numbers in the laboratory.

The second of these options is far from straightforward - simply allowing the stem cells to divide and increase in the laboratory means that many of the resulting extra cells will be simple blood cells, which do not have the ability to produce new cells themselves.

Quick to work

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle believe they may have found a way.

They manipulated a "signalling pathway" in the stem cells to trigger an increase in numbers without losing their stem cell status.

After success in laboratory animals, these cells were used in human patients, and the researchers found that they were accepted by the body more quickly and contributed more to the rebuilding of functioning bone marrow than "non-expanded" cord blood transplants.

Dr David Grant, Scientific Director of charity Leukaemia Research said: "The holy grail is to have an 'off the peg' source of unlimited numbers of 'neutral' stem cells which can be given to any patient safe in the knowledge that they will not cause the very difficult 'graft versus host' problems that lead to rejection and often the death of the patient.

"This is a promising development towards this because the concern has been that once stem cells start 'growing' they lose their stem cell properties and progress to ordinary blood cells with a very limited lifespan."

Henny Braund, chief executive of The Anthony Nolan Trust, said the potential for umbilical cord blood was "huge", and that the charity had already imported well over 250 units of umbilical cord blood.

"Sadly in the UK, despite our scientific expertise, umbilical cord blood is still very much an untapped resource and we are only able to collect and store a tiny amount of the cords we need.

"We really need a properly resourced UK cord blood collection programme.

"Further investment is crucial if we are to capitalise on this amazing resource and save more lives."

UK meeting aims for new global biodiversity deal

2010-01-17T18:05:00.000-08:00

Conserving biodiversity benefits humanity, says the UN

Ingredients of a new deal on protecting global biodiversity are likely to be decided this week at a London meeting.

About 55 nations are sending delegates to the meeting, which will be chaired by UK and Brazilian ministers.

A key aim is to agree what sort of targets should be set at October's UN biodiversity summit for curbing the loss of species and ecosystems.

Governments are keen to avoid the kind of fundamental divisions that dogged last month's climate summit.

Writing on the BBC News website, UK Environment Secretary Hilary Benn argues that humanity's exploitation of the natural world may be approaching a "point of no return".

"The action we take in the next couple of decades will determine whether the stable environment on which human civilisation has depended since the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, will continue," he writes.

Smart targets

In 2002, governments set a target of reducing significantly the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.

There is general agreement that the target will not be met; but at this year's summit of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), held in October in Japan, it is likely that governments will adopt a new set of targets.

According to UN documents prepared following consultations with governments, these could include:

stopping the rate of biodiversity loss by 2020
ending subsidies that harm biodiversity
ending destructive fishing practices
controlling the unintentional transfer of species from place to place
placing at least 15% of land and sea area under protection

This week's meeting will see these options narrowed down, and its conclusions will form the basis of a draft agreement for the October CBD summit.

The UK hosts believe that discussing these ideas in advance among a wide group of nations will help avoid the wide divisions and acrimony evident during last month's climate summit in Copenhagen.

Delegates will also discuss what resources will be needed to ensure that developing countries can meet new targets.

Speaking at a scientific meeting last week, CBD executive secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf acknowledged that the 2010 target had been "a mistake", partly because many governments did not have the capacity to turn them into reality.

Mr Djoghlaf also pointed to a lack of awareness and knowledge about the natural world among the public and politicians, citing a study published last September showing that nearly 40% of British children between five and 10 did not know the difference between a bee and a wasp.

The UN holds that conserving biodiversity is important not just for itself, but for the benefits nature brings to humanity.

Investing in conservation, it argues, is of vital importance to human health and wealth, particularly in poor countries.

"Restoration of our ecosystems must be seen as a sensible and cost-effective investment in this planet's economic survival and growth," writes Mr Benn.

Alligators and birds share lung structure and ancestor

2010-01-17T18:03:00.000-08:00

How do alligators breathe?

Alligators and birds share a breathing mechanism which may have helped their ancestors dominate Earth more than 200 million years ago, scientists say.

Research published in the journal Science found that like birds, in alligators air flows in one direction.

Birds' lung structure allows them to breathe when flying in low oxygen, or hypoxic, conditions.

This breathing may have helped a common ancestor of birds and alligators thrive in the hypoxic period of the Triassic.

Mammals 'hiding'

"It might explain a mystery that has been around for quite some time", Dr Colleen Farmer from the University of Utah told BBC News.

The mystery in question is why the archosaurs came to dominate Earth after the planet's worst mass extinction 251 million years ago.

Archosaurs evolved into two different branches which developed into crocodilians, dinosaurs, flying pterosaurs and eventually birds.

Synapsids, which evolved to include mammals, had been dominant in the Permian period before the mass extinction.

Some survived but were toppled from their perch by the archosaurs.

Any mammal-like synapsid survivors "were teeny liittle things hiding in cracks" said Dr Farmer. "I think it's because they couldn't compete.

"It wasn't until the die-off of the large dinosaurs 65 million years ago that mammals made a comeback and started occupying body sizes larger than an opossum."

To demonstrate alligator lung mechanisms, the scientists measured airflow in anesthetised animals, showing it flows in one direction rather than in and out of chambers.

They also pumped water containing tiny fluorescent beads into the lungs of dead alligators to observe the flow.

Studies on these alligators may explain why some animals ruled the Earth.

Puzzle solved

The researchers believe the similarity in lung structure may explain why some animals were better able to adapt after the extinction, when oxygen levels dropped.

"We know that birds are really good at breathing in hypoxic conditions. They can fly at altitudes that would kill a mammal," said Dr Farmer.

"Many archosaurs, such as pterosaurs, apparently were capable of sustaining vigorous exercise. Lung design may have played a key role in this capacity.

"That's been a puzzle, why do birds have these very different lungs? But now we can date it back to the common ancestor of birds and crocodilians.

"It implies that all dinosaurs, herbivores like Triceratops and carnivores like Tyrannosaurus, had bird-like lungs," Dr Farmer added.

New strategies may cut screening errors, says US study

2010-01-16T18:14:00.000-08:00

Radiographers look for abnormalities among many normal cases

US scientists have found a way they believe may cut the number of mistakes made by medical staff looking for breast and cervical cancers.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, the researchers say that people in all walks of life looking for rare events often miss them.

But accuracy improves if people first get used to looking at samples of what they need to find.

Screening professionals said it was a recognised problem.

They carried out a study which showed that the number of mistakes made during a visual search varied according to the chances of finding the "target".

Time searching

Twelve volunteers were asked to identify target items in X-ray images of assorted objects in empty bags.

The accuracy of their search was monitored as the frequency of the target was altered.

The laboratory results are to be tested in clinics and airports.

The study found that the amount of time the observers spent looking for something depended on how often if appeared.

"If you don't find it often, you often don't find it," said lead author, Jeremy Wolfe of Harvard Medical School.

"If you are trying to find 20 cases of breast cancer from 40 mammograms, you'll find more of them than if you look for the same 20 cases from 2,000 mammograms.

"From an evolutionary point of view it makes sense for people to give up searching more quickly if they don't expect to find what they were looking for," he said.

"If you know berries are there, you keep looking until you find them. If they are never there, you don't spend your time hunting."

But this causes difficulties when the aim is to accurately spot rare phenomenon like cancers or bombs in travellers' luggage.

Instant feedback

The authors say that one benefit of staff doing a booster exercise before starting work is that it helps them to visualise what they are looking for and improves their search success rate in the subsequent session.

They say that this kind of exercise could also sharpen search skills by providing instant feedback.

In the real world it often takes many months for radiographers and radiologists to discover if they have made mistakes.

The research has been welcomed by the Society of Radiographers.

Chief executive Richard Evans said: "The difficulty of spotting abnormal results among large numbers of normal cases is a recognised problem.

"I look forward to seeing more details about this research, but radiographers would welcome techniques which help ensure the best possible standards."

He pointed out that the NHS already monitors the performance of everyone involved in breast screening through a regular audit.

German government warns against using MS Explorer

2010-01-16T18:12:00.000-08:00

The warning applies to versions 6, 7 and 8 of Internet Explorer

The German government has warned web users to find an alternative browser to Internet Explorer to protect security.

The warning from the Federal Office for Information Security comes after Microsoft admitted IE was the weak link in recent attacks on Google's systems.

Microsoft rejected the warning, saying that the risk to users was low and that the browsers' increased security setting would prevent any serious risk.

However, German authorities say that even this would not make IE fully safe.

Thomas Baumgaertner, a spokesman for Microsoft in Germany, said that while they were aware of the warning, they did not agree with it, saying that the attacks on Google were by "highly motivated people with a very specific agenda".

"These were not attacks against general users or consumers," said Mr Baumgaertner.

"There is no threat to the general user, consequently we do not support this warning," he added.

Microsoft says the security hole can be shut by setting the browser's security zone to "high", although this limits functionality and blocks many websites.

However, Graham Cluley of anti-virus firm Sophos, told BBC News that not only did the warning apply to 6, 7 and 8 of the browser, but the instructions on how to exploit the flaw had been posted on the internet.

"This is a vulnerability that was announced in the last couple of days. Microsoft have no patch yet and the implication is that this is the same one that exploited on the attacks on Google earlier this week," he said.

Computer expert Alan Stevens: "It's like having a window left open in your house"

"The way to exploit this flaw has now appeared on the internet, so it is quite possible that everyone is now going to have a go."

Microsoft traditionally release a security update once a month - the next scheduled patch is the 9th of February. However, a spokesman for Microsoft told BBC News that developers for the firm were trying to fix the problem.

"We are working on an update on this issue and this may well involve an out of cycle security update," he said.

Fix development

However, this is no easy task. Not only have the firm got to fix the loophole, but they have to ensure it does not create another one and - equally importantly - works on all computers. This is a challenge compounded by the fact they have to fix three different versions of its browser.

Microsoft said that while all versions of Internet Explorer were affected, the risk was lower with more recent releases of its browser.

The other problem facing developers is that the possible risk might not be prevented by anti-virus software, even when recently updated.

"We've been working to analyse the malware that the Chinese are using. But new versions can always be created," said Mr Cluley.

"We've been working with Microsoft to see if the damage can be mitigated and we are hoping that they will release an emergency patch.

"One thing that should be stressed is that every browser has its security issues, so switching may remove this current risk but could expose you to another."

Herschel space telescope restored to full health

2010-01-15T18:19:00.000-08:00

Hifi experienced a damaging voltage peak in August

Europe's billion-euro Herschel Space Telescope is fully operational again after engineers brought its damaged instrument back online.

The observatory's HiFi spectrometer was turned off just three months into the mission because of an anomaly that was probably triggered by space radiation.

The Dutch-led consortium that operates HiFi has now switched the instrument across to its reserve electronics.

It says the failure event has been understood and cannot happen again.

"We've had 30 people working on this," said Dr Frank Helmich, the lead scientist on HiFi, from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

"I don't watch much television but I know Crime Scene Investigation and this was just such an investigation - but in space! We found out what happened and then we designed all the mitigating measures," he told BBC News.

The European Space Agency (Esa) telescope was launched from Earth last May.

THE HERSCHEL SPACE TELESCOPE

The observatory is positioned 1.5m km from Earth

Its instruments sense far-infrared and sub-millimetre radiation

Its 3.5m diameter mirror is the largest ever flown in space

Herschel can probe clouds of gas and dust to see stars being born

It will investigate how galaxies have evolved through time

The mission will end when its helium refrigerant boils off

Its quest is to study how stars and galaxies form, and how they evolve through cosmic time.

The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HiFi) is one of three scientific experiments onboard.

The high-resolution spectrometer is designed to capture and split light into its constituent wavelengths, creating a kind of "fingerprint" that will reveal information on the chemistry of a light source.

HiFi is expected to bring remarkable new insights into the composition and behaviour of the clouds of gas and dust that give rise to stars.

But the instrument was taken offline in August when it started returning anomalous readings.

The detailed inquiry at SRON traced the fault to a failed diode in a Local Oscillator Control Unit (LCU), which is part of the system that helps process the sky signal received by the instrument.

Even though the investigators and their "crime scene" were separated by 1.5 million km, the SRON team was able to establish that the most likely cause was a cosmic ray hitting a microprocessor.

This upset triggered a sequence of hardware and software actions that ultimately resulted in a powerful voltage being sent through the LCU and killing the diode.

HiFi project leader Dr Peter Roelfsema said: "It turned out to be a very complex technological puzzle that we had to solve based on limited information and under a great deal of pressure.

While Hifi was down, Spire and Pacs took up the observing time

Herschel captures birth of stars

Herschel 'fingerprints' huge star

Herschel scans hidden Milky Way

Herschel shows breadth of vision

Herschel gives glimpse of power

"But for all researchers involved, quickly finding an answer to this question was a matter of professional pride. We had to - and would - crack the problem with HiFi as soon as humanly possible, but we also had to take the time to be thorough."

Like most space equipment, Hifi has redundant electronics and the instrument is now using its reserve LCU. Measures have also been put in place to ensure another cosmic ray event cannot initiate the same failure sequence.

While Hifi was down, its observing time was used by Herschel's two other instruments - Pacs and Spire - to return stunning new images of the far-infrared and sub-millimetre (radio) Universe.

They will now reciprocate by giving HiFi 50% of the sky time in the next few months.

"We will go into a priority science programme," Dr Helmich told BBC News.

"We do not fear that the LCU will misbehave again but we have lost redundancy in our electronics and so we want to do the most important science observations first.

"One of the first targets will be [star forming regions in] Orion. We expect tens of thousands of [spectral] lines to be seen by HiFi that will all need interpretation."

The Herschel mission is expected to last about three years before the superfluid helium that drives its cooling system boils away. At that point, the instruments' detectors will lose their sensitivity.

Gene map of anti-malaria plant could boost supply

2010-01-15T18:14:00.000-08:00

Scientists say they can boost supply of the key anti-malaria drug artemisinin

Global supply of a key, plant-based, anti-malaria drug is set to be boosted by a genetic study, scientists say.

Researchers have mapped the genes of Artemisia annua to allow selection of high-yield varieties.

The study, published in the journal Science, aims to make growing the plant more profitable for farmers.

"It's a major milestone for the development of this crop," Professor Ian Graham from the University of York in the UK told BBC News.

Short supply

The research has been welcomed by Dr Chris Drakeley, director of the Malaria Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "Anything that enables an increased yield of product from something like Artemisia annua is a major step.

"This is the first line anti-malarial in nearly all endemic countries at the moment and supplies can be limited."

Artemisinin combination therapies, or ATCs, are used widely to treat malaria and are seen as the best solution to the parasite's increasing resistance to anti-malarial drugs.

Professor Graham, who led the study, hopes that new higher yielding and more robust varieties could increase global supply of the malaria treatment within three years.

"Our aim is to have hybrid seeds that can be released to farmers in the developing world by 2011 or 2012. With a year lag for planting, this would have an impact on supply in 2012 or 2013."

"We have to wait six to eight months from putting the seed in the ground to harvesting the crop and seeing how it has performed."

Dr Drakeley hopes the new varieties will become available quickly.

"This will allow an increase in the basic compound that forms ATC therapies. If they can get these seeds out in the timeframe they're talking about it'll be a major advance," he said.

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Professor Graham explains how the project works

To identify the best plants for hybrid seed production, researchers measured characteristics of individual plants, for example, the number of artemisinin producing glands on the leaf. They also performed tests to find the plants with the best genetic make-up.

The resulting seeds are being planted in field trials in China, East Africa, India and Madagascar. "We are expecting to end up with not just one hybrid.

Leaf gland which produces artemisinin

"Ideally we would like good hybrids for east Africa and good hybrids for India etc.," explained Professor Graham.

The study is the culmination of three years work funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the genetic maps and markers the researchers have identified will be made available for free all over the world.

"All the information and tools we've developed in this work are free for people to use for the charitable purpose," Professor Graham told BBC News.

"We're also working with seed producers so they can produce the seeds as cheaply as possible for the developing world."

Window of time

Scientists hope a better supply of the drug might also help with the problem of fake drugs being distributed.

Some treatments being sold have been found to have no drug content or to be substandard in quality. This can make them fatal or they can be more likely to encourage resistance rather than combat the disease.

"Hopefully, if the final product is easier and cheaper to procure after this development, it might lessen the production of counterfeit drugs," said Dr Drakeley.

Professor Graham believes that the development of drug resistance by the malaria parasite has made the work more urgent.

"We have a window of time when we can use artemisinin effectively, and we want to have a stable, reliable supply that can be used in that window," he said.

Oesophageal cancer cell errors threaten research

2010-01-14T18:03:00.000-08:00

The samples of adenocarcinoma were widely supplied, the researchers say

Dozens of cancer studies may be thrown into doubt by the discovery that researchers inadvertently used the wrong type of cancer cells.

The "cell lines", according to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, were supplied as samples of oesophageal cancer.

However, tests show they contained other types of tumour, including lung and bowel.

The Dutch researchers say this could put major trials of drugs in doubt.

Many experimental studies on cancer use laboratory-grown "cell-lines", meaning that dozens of studies may rely on cells originally taken from a single patient.

New drugs can be tested on these cells to see if they have an effect before they are tested on real patients.

The problem of "false" - or contaminated - cell lines, is not a new one, and there have been calls for scientists to take more care verifying they have the right sort of cells before continuing with their experiments.

If not, they run the risk that their findings, positive or negative, may be misleading.

The latest example of the problem involved samples widely supplied as oesophageal adenocarcinoma cells, a particular type of cancer affecting the windpipe.

In fact, they came from tumours of the lung, bowel and stomach, said researchers from the University Medical Centre in Rotterdam.

They wrote: "Experimental results based on these contaminated cell lines have led to ongoing clinical trials recruiting patients, to more than 100 scientific publications, and to at least three cancer research grants and 11 US patents - which emphasises the importance of our findings."

Widespread use of these cell lines could threaten the development of new treatments, they said.

In particular, use of the drug sorafenib for some oesophageal cancer patients should be reconsidered, since the wrong cell line was used to assess its potential.

Specialist suppliers

However, writing in the same journal, Professor Robert Shoemaker of the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, said he suspected that a similar study using the right cell lines would support the use of sorafenib.

In the UK, one of the main funders of cancer studies, Cancer Research UK, has said that it uses DNA testing to check its cell lines.

The Health Protection Agency also operates an extensive cell culture collection and a spokesman said it urged scientists to, where necessary, pay for tests to check their cell lines.

He said: "The use of wrongly identified human cancer cell lines is a problem that was first recognised more than 20 years ago.

"We draw attention to this danger on our website, which includes an ever-expanding list of those cell lines known to be incorrectly identified, or cross-contaminated with a cell line of a different type.

"As a national culture collection we, together with other national collections, exhort research scientists to always work with authenticated cell lines of known provenance."

Light shed on fish gill mystery

2010-01-13T17:57:00.000-08:00

Freshwater fish take up chemicals from the surrounding water through their gills

Biologists have cast doubt on the long-held theory that fish gills evolved primarily for the purpose of breathing.

The researchers studied the development of gills in rainbow trout larvae.

Their experiment suggests that it is likely that fish evolved gills for the primary purpose of regulating the chemicals in their bodies.

The team reports in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B that this developmental study gives an insight into the evolution of fish gills.

Clarice Fu, a zoologist from the University of British Columbia in Canada, led the study.

She and her colleagues found, as the larvae matured, their gills developed the ability to regulate the chemicals in their blood earlier than they began to take up oxygen.

To discover this, the team measured the uptake of ions, which are charged chemical particles, such as sodium.

These ions are necessary for the body's cells to function, but they become toxic if their levels in the blood become too high.

Ms Fu explained that fish take up these ions from the surrounding water, to "maintain this delicate ion balance in their blood".

"In freshwater fish, like rainbow trout, they tend to lose ions from their blood to the water, because the ion concentration in blood is greater than that of freshwater," she said.

The team took measurements from the gills of young, developing rainbow trout to find out what functions they were performing.

"When the gills are still immature, a significant portion of ion uptake occurs at the skin. As the fish get older and the gills mature, [this] can gradually shift to... the gills," said Ms Fu.

"We found that ion uptake shifted from the skin to the gills earlier than oxygen uptake. This led us to propose that the gills are needed for ion regulation earlier than they are needed for oxygen uptake."

Watching evolution

Ms Fu told BBC News that the "pressures" on developing larvae are similar to evolutionary pressures.

"Some of these pressures include an increasingly active lifestyle, greater body size, increasingly thicker skin," she said.

Scientists often study larval development to investigate evolution.

Ms Fu explained that, as the larvae developed, the pressures drove ion exchange to the gills before the animals started to breathe through their gills, so the same thing may have happened as the fish evolved.

Professor Rick Gonzalez, from the University of San Diego in the US, studies the physiology of aquatic animals.

He described the study as a "very interesting first step", but said it wasn't clear if it answered the question of why fish evolved gills.

"Gills combine some of the functions of the lungs and kidneys in mammals, which leads to interesting interactions of function," he told BBC News.

"The physical and chemical nature of the water can play an important role in their function. So how these all work together to get the various jobs done is very interesting and offers insight into how natural selection works."

Arctic tern's epic journey mapped

2010-01-11T19:27:00.000-08:00

The study adds surprising new detail to the Arctic tern's epic migration

The Arctic tern's extraordinary pole-to-pole migration has been detailed by an international team of scientists.

The researchers fitted the birds with tiny tracking devices to see precisely which routes the animals took on their 70,000km (43,000 miles) round trip.

The study reveals they fly down either the African or Brazilian coasts but then return in an "S"-shaped path up the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The long-distance adventure is described in the US journal PNAS.

"From ringing, we knew where the Arctic tern travelled," said Carsten Egevang of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources.

After setting out (yellow line) the birds pause in the North Atlantic (red circle) to feed. Going home (orange line), they follow the winds

Total distance travelled 70,900km

On southbound leg: 34,600km

Daily progress south: 330km

On northbound leg: 25,700km

Daily progress north: 520km

Within Winter grounds: 10,900km

"The new thing is that we've now been able to track the bird during a full year of migration, all the way from the breeding grounds to the wintering grounds and back again."

The avian world is known for its great migrations.

Albatrosses, godwits, and sooty shearwaters all undertake epic journeys. But none can quite match the Arctic tern's colossal trip.

Starting in August and September, this small bird - which weighs little more than 100g (3.5oz) - will head away from Greenland with the intention of getting to the Weddell Sea, on the shores of Antarctica.

It will spend about four or five months in the deep south before heading back to the far north, arriving home in May or June.

A team from Greenland, Denmark, the US, the UK and Iceland attached small (1.4g/0.05oz) "geolocators" to the animals to find out exactly where they went on this polar round trip.

The devices record light intensity. This gives an estimate of the local day length, and the times of sunrise and sunset; and from this information it is possible to work out a geographical position of the birds.

The geolocators were provided by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

"The use of these devices on seabirds is not only revolutionising our understanding of migration patterns, but the resulting data on distribution also help address the requirement to identify important biological hotspots," said Richard Phillips from BAS, a co-author of the PNAS paper.

With such a small bird, the trackers also need to be tiny

The first surprise is that the terns do not make straight for the Antarctic when they leave the Arctic, but make a lengthy stop-over in the middle of the North Atlantic, about 1,000km (620 miles) north of the Azores.

Here, they feed on zooplankton and fish to fuel themselves for the long journey ahead.

"We were able to compare biological productivity in the ocean from satellite imagery and we could see a high productive area that the birds will spend time in," said Mr Egevang.

"Even more importantly, it's the last high productive area before they enter tropical waters where we know productivity is low."

THE LONG DISTANCE FLIER

Scientific name: Sterna paradisaea

Average wingspan of 75-85cm

Breeds in Arctic and sub-Arctic

Lays eggs in small ground scrape

Feeds on fish and crustaceans

Birds live more than 30 years

The birds then head south along the coast of western Europe and western Africa before making a choice, either to continue hugging Africa or sweep across the Atlantic from the Cape Verde Islands to continue the journey along the Brazilian coast.

About half the birds that were tracked decided to take the South American path. It is not clear why, but the researchers believe wind might make either route seem favourable to the terns.

After spending their northern winter months in Antarctic waters, the terns then fly back towards the Arctic.

But rather than retracing their southward flight paths, the birds follow a gigantic "S" pattern up the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

"This is completely new knowledge," Mr Egevang told BBC News.

"They make a detour of several thousand km but once we start comparing the route to the prevailing wind system, it makes perfect sense - moving in a counter-clockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere, and clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.

"It's just more energy-efficient for them to do that even though they are travelling several thousand more km than if they flew in a straight line."

Biodiversity loss is 'wake-up call', warns UN

2010-01-10T18:05:00.000-08:00

The Giant Jewel of West Africa is threatened by loss of forest

The UN launches the International Year of Biodiversity on Monday, warning that the on-going loss of species affects human well-being around the world.

Eight years ago, governments pledged to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, but already it is clear that the pledge will not be met.

The expansion of human cities, farming and infrastructure is the main reason.

Dignitaries including UN chief Ban Ki-moon and German premier Angela Merkel will speak at the launch in Berlin.

Mr Ban is due to say that human expansion is wiping out species at about 1,000 times the "natural" or "background" rate, and that "business as usual is not an option".

The Secretary-General is expected to argue that the failure to protect biodiversity "should be a wake-up call", leading to effective ways of protecting forests, watersheds, coral reefs and other ecosystems.

The UN argues that as natural systems such as forests and wetlands disappear, humanity loses the services they currently provide for free, such as the purification of air and water, protection from extreme weather events and the provision of materials for shelter and fire.

The rate of species loss leads some biologists to say that we are in the middle of the Earth's sixth great extinction, the previous five stemming from natural events as asteroid impacts.

Cash log

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was agreed at the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, alongside the climate change convention.

But it acquired its key global pledge during the Johannesburg summit of 2002, when governments agreed to achieve a "significant reduction" in the rate of biological diversity by 2010.

Conservation organisations acknowledge that despite some regional successes, the target is not going to be met; some analyses suggest that nature loss is accelerating rather than decelerating.

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

"We are facing an extinction crisis," said Jane Smart, director of the biodiversity conservation group with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

"The loss of this beautiful and complex natural diversity that underpins all life on the planet is a serious threat to humankind now and in the future."

A large on-going UN-sponsored study into the economics of biodiversity suggests that deforestation alone costs the global economy $2-5 trillion each year.

In his speech at Monday's event, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director Achim Steiner is due to highlight problems caused by invasive species, and the potential for ecosystems such as forests and wetlands to absorb and store carbon from the air.

The UN hopes some kind of legally-binding treaty to curb biodiversity loss can be agreed at the CBD summit, held in Japan in October.

One element is due to be a long-awaited protocol under which the genetic resources of financially-poor but biodiversity-rich nations can be exploited in a way that brings benefits to all.

However, given the lack of appetite for legally-binding environmental agreements that key countries displayed at last month's climate summit in Copenhagen, it is unclear just what kind of deal might materialise on biodiversity.

Political football

The UN has been pursuing new ways of raising public awareness on the issue, including a collaboration with the Cameroon football team taking part in the African Nations Cup finals.

Many environment organisations will be running special programmes and mounting events during the year.

"The big opportunity during the International Year of Biodiversity is for governments to do for biodiversity what they failed to do for climate change in Copenhagen," said Simon Stuart, a senior science advisor to Conservation International and chair of IUCN's Species Survival Commission.

"They have the chance to make a major difference; and key to this will be halting species extinctions, the most irreversible aspect of biodiversity loss."

WWF is highlighting 10 species it considers especially threatened, ranging from commercially significant ones such as bluefin tuna to the Pacific walrus and the monarch butterfly.

In the UK, the Natural History Museum (NHM) is asking every citizen to "do one thing for biodiversity" in 2010.

Italian scientists' 'wood to bone' medical breakthrough

2010-01-09T18:50:00.000-08:00

Scientists in Italy have discovered a way of making artificial replacement bones out of wood.

Early trials on sheep have showed encouraging results.

The team behind the programme hopes the new bones will soon be available for patients whose own bones have been damaged by accident or disease.