Nature Newsblog
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Boosting killer T cells shows promise with skin tumours.
An experimental gene-therapy technique has sent two patients with skin cancer into partial remission. It is the first successful use of gene therapy to treat a cancer.
Read the story here.
From mice to monkeys to chimps to people, a brain-protein gene pumps up.
A newly discovered mystery gene may have helped build the modern human brain, researchers report today.
Read the story here.
The lunar orbiter SMART-1 is due to crash-land on the Moon on 2 or 3 September: dates chosen to help ground telescopes spy on the impact.
Find out how to watch it happen here.
If you saw it, let us know, and send us your pictures...
PLUS
Find background features and interactive graphics of the past and future of Moon research in our special.
As the conference winds down, I think it was, all in all, a good thing. It will be interesting to see how it develops. Will it become a mega-meeting, like the ACS meetings, or will it find some sort of niche, disciplinary or otherwise?
It was quite windy for most of the week, with the main plenary tent creaking and popping like a schooner in full sail. I thought about making some corny pun about these being the winds of change sweeping over European chemists, as they find their collective identity and become a force to reckon with. This would have been just too pat though, and in any case, we will have to wait and see.
And so, Viszontlátásra from Budapest!
A big conference just isn't a big conference without a lot of handing out of medals. So here's congrats to Jonathan Nitschke of the University of Geneva, for winning the European Young Chemist's award. He got an IOU from the Italian Chemical Society for 1,800 €, and a nice gold medal. Lee Cronin promised me that if he didn't win, he would get up and shout 'It's rigged! It's rigged!', but unfortunately, he got one of the silver medals, and so we didn't get to see a temper tantrum in the tent.
Analytical chemists won't run out of work any time soon. The world is reassuringly full of unknowns. Perhaps less reassuring is the nature of some of these unknowns. Koni Grob at the Kantonales Laboratory in Zurich, which he calls 'a nano FDA', has been looking at the compounds that food packages shed into the food we eat. His most recent focus has been on the plastic gaskets found inside jar lids. He finds that when oil–like that in tomato sauce, for example-touches these gaskets, all sorts of known and unknown things leach out into the food.
'Many people want to have bio or organic food, but I think that they are not aware that by far the highest source of contamination is food packaging.' Many compounds, like epoxidized soybean oil and Bisphenol-A diglycidyl ether are present in oily jarred foods in levels far exceeding the maximums for contamination at the plant. And there are hundreds or thousands of other things in there that he has found with gas chromatography but not yet identified.
However, there is no need to ditch all your tasty oily foods in a panic. Grob is clear that this is a challenge for analysts, not a worry for consumers. In fact, he's ambivalent about getting media coverage of his project. 'Our philosophy is to inform those really involved and not the consumers, he says. 'It is the authorities that have to do a lot more about this.'
Imaging study shows that godly experiences trigger a network within the brain.
Neuroscientists have identified a network of brain regions activated when nuns feel that they are at one with God. Artificially stimulating the brain in this way, they say, might allow people to have mystical experiences without believing in God themselves.
Read the story here.
Unapproved food additive could make baked goods safer.
Acrylamide, when it was found in food in 2002, seemed to be the ultimate confirmation that everything tasty is bad for you. Here was a compound that was a probable carcinogen and possible neurotoxin, lurking in practically every fried or baked good.
Read the story here.
Astronomers petition against new definition of a planet.
The future of the Solar System — or at least that of some of its nomenclature — may be thrown into turmoil by scientists who are calling for a boycott of a new definition of a planet.
Read the story here.
This week's Nature Podcast investigates male infertility, examines how the brain categorises visual information, heralds SMART-1's last hurrah, and has more on RNAi and indefinite inheritance, size and the death of a star, and gamma-ray bursts.
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- Kosuke Yoshida of Tokai University in Shizuoka, Japan has found a marine microalga, with the handsome name Nannochloropsis oculata, that can be trained to chop the noxious chemical formaldehyde into relatively benign ethyl formate. Yoshida is interested in using the trained strain to mitigate formaldehyde used to control parasites that live on fish gills in aquaculture.
- Hungarian Chemistry celeb George Olah was here yesterday, promoting his new book, Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy. He chatted with invitees just a few yards from where he is immortalized on a plaque listing Hungarian Nobel prize winners.
- A chat in the hotel bar with a fellow attendee reveals to ignorant old me that there is such a thing as Philosophy of Chemistry, and that it’s main journal is elegantly named Hyle, after the ancient Greek for “matter”. Further investigation reveals that Nature regular Phil Ball has a paper in the latest edition examining attitudes towards chemists in recent American fiction. The rest of the issue, all about the public image of chemistry is also very interesting. Awesome.
- Mobile phones might be bad for you, especially if your head is a vat of solution of lactoperoxidase, according to Roberta de Carolis of the University of Rome.
- Broccoli sprouts have more glucosinolates—a precursor to cancer-preventing Isothiocyanates—than full grown broccoli.
- The Seine is filled with caffeine and pain relievers.
Mission managers announced today that they're moving the vehicle back to the pad ahead of Ernesto, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm. But it's unclear when the vehicle will be able to lift off.
That means the shuttle could still miss its rendezvous date with the International Space Station. The launch window is set to close on 14 September, and, complicating the situation are plans to launch a Russian Soyuz capsule to the station later in the month. The Russians have requested that the shuttle not launch after 7 September in order to prevent a scheduling conflict. NASA officials are now pleading with the Russians for more time, but it’s unclear whether they’ll get it.
If the September launch window is missed then Shuttle planners will have a small, two day window in late October, and a day in December when the launch pad and station will line up correctly. The next siginificant launch window will not open until February. Waiting that long would be a setback, though not a devastating one, according to John Logsdon, Director of the Space Policy Institute at Geroge Washington University. “I wouldn’t call it minor, but I wouldn’t call it major either,” he says. While it will put pressure on plans to finish the station and retire the shuttle by 2010, the construction “remains doable.”
When it does eventually fly, the Atlantis will deploy a massive solar array that will provide additional power for an upcoming space station expansion. It will be the first mission to continue construction of the International Space Station since the break up of the shuttle Columbia upon reentry in 2003.
Disaster-plagued Indonesian island faces new threat.
For 3 months a sea of hot mud has been gushing from the ground in Sidoarjo, East Java, 35 kilometres south of Indonesia's second largest city, Surabaya. The steaming mud pool is growing at an estimated 50,000 cubic metres a day, accompanied by hydrogen sulphide gas, and now reportedly covers more than 25 square kilometres. The flow has not yet been stopped; thousands of people have lost their homes.
Read about it here.
Su Doku, the number game that is sweeping the world, has been adapted by the Royal Society of Chemistry into a puzzle where each square must have only one of nine elements listed at the bottom of the page. The play is exactly the same as the digit version, except that one contemplates the likes of lanthanum and cerium while one plays. Check it out at www.rsc.org/puzzle.
The big tent where we saw the folk dancers was packed this morning for Jean Marie Lehn's plenary on self-organizing systems. I heard lots of ebullient murmuring on the way out, so I think it went well, though some of it may have been the celebrity-induced glow of those who have just heard a Nobel laureate speak.
The general idea is that if one works hard, one can find molecules that when introduced, get along and immediately start building complex structures on their own. Lehn showed us grids and other cunning structures that had been got up by molecules that recognized each other and then bound predictably.
Much of his work was on those superstructures bound together with metal ions, so that one way to look at his grids was a field of regularly spaced metal ions, potentially useful as a computer chip. So these "supramolecules" are, he said, "a powerful alternative to nanofabrication. Don't make components, design them to make themselves."
He also showed how mixed soups of molecules will segregate themselves into structural units—so you'll have a bunch of double helixes forming alongside a bunch of triple helixes. This relies on recognition, and then selection of the appropriate molecule to fraternize with. In a challenging finale, Lehn wondered if this effect might not represent a kind of "chemical Darwinism."
His other quoteable moment: "Chemistry is the science of informed matter".
To comment, click on headline
I heart food chemistry, and for more than one reason. First of all, it is easy to get into the science when you can immediately relate it to cheese or grapes or Parma ham or something nummy like that. And secondly, it demonstrates how seriously we take the pleasure of eating. Much of food chemistry is concerned with ensuring that when we decide to spend an evening eating bon bons and drinking champagne in the bath our chocolate is not adulterated with inferior cocoa butter fat equivalents and our champagne is actually from Champagne.
Elke Anklam, of the European Community Joint Research Centre in Belgium, gave a nice overview of food authentication this morning, which revealed that despite being armed with electronic noses, chromatography of various kinds, spectroscopy ditto., natural isotope fractioning, and PCR, they still can't easily tell if olive oil is being cut with hazelnut oil…"even if you can taste it."
Ha ha! So the best and least scientific means of authentication is still the human tongue. That being said, I was recently informed that most people cannot tell red wine from white with their eyes shut. Incredulous, I put it to the test. I shut my eyes and had my companions at dinner hand me glasses. I called the first red, the second white, and, taking a cue from the snickering I heard, the third a mixture of the two. Turns out it was the same glass of red wine all three times. Oh!
To comment, click on the headline of this post.
Ernesto has taken a turn for the worse and is heading straight towards Florida. The mission management team announced this morning that they will be moving the shuttle as soon as possible, likely early tomorrow morning.
If they do, it will be over a week before a launch will be possible. I’m headed home ahead of the weather.
Today's programme is chock full of environmental chemistry, including a few sessions on pharmaceuticals in the environment. In the last few decades chemistry has given us more and better drugs, and we have not been shy about taking them. One graph of pharmaceutical consumption in France from 1970 to the present was hair-raisingly steep. All those drugs that aren't broken down by our bodies are, well, let's be scientific here, excreted and enter the waste-treatment stream. Some end up in rivers and lakes.
So it is good that chemists are busy inventing new tools to understand the scope of the problem and what it's implications might be—beyond trout blissed out on Prozac or crustaceans with the caffeine shakes.
Outside the environmental session room, a poster by Mei-Fang Chou and colleagues from Tri Service General Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan, gives me pause. They've managed to tweak the non-speedy alertness enhancer and mood brightener modafinil (sold as Provigil) so that it also is an anti-inflamatory pain reliever. Holey moley—what a blockbuster that could be. A cure for pain, sleepiness and unhappiness in one drug. Look out fish.
Mark Peplow, former Nature staffer, and current editor of the Royal Society of Chemistry's Chemistry World is here in Buda, and he's recording his impressions on a brand new soft-launched blog, which is available here: http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw.
Well, the reception was delightful. The food was excellent and the wine got good reviews. But before the eating and drinking came the speeches by chemistry worthies from across the continent. Generally, they were short and expressed pleasure in European chemistry coming together in this conference, and in the umbrella organization, EuCheMS. The MS on the end stands for "molecular science," and is part of a decided emphasis on the molecule which seems to me to be a bit of an attempt to grab more territory for the field.
More inside...
Peter Elvending, the head of the European Chemical Industry Council gave a short presentation on the stiff competition facing its members, especially from the East. The solution, he says, is innovation. "This old continent currently does not stand up to competition," he said. "It is very important that we get our act together in the European Union."
The same sentiment was expressed at a press conference for SusChem, the group of chemical companies, chemists and governments trying to shape the research agenda for Europe. "Commodities will be made elsewhere," said Alfred Oberholz, head of the scheme, "we must have innovation and sustainability."
The research the group thinks is worth doing will cost 1,400 million euros a year, half to be supplied by governments and half by industry. I am not sure yet how that compares to the current figures. Their goal is to get the plan linked into the EU's Seventh Framework Programme, which is no doubt being hammered out in smoke-filled rooms even as we speak.
If you want to see if your pet project is one of the SusChem fave raves, check out their draft at http://www.suschem.org/.
Oh, one last thing about the reception: it's one thing to present musicians in Hungarian costume and young men in tight crimson trousers pirouetting with gals decked out like the St. Pauly girl, but give your guests a drink before rather than after.
The mission management team announced tonight that they are holding off on the decision to roll the shuttle back into the Vertical Assembly Building until 7:00am tomorrow. But LeRoy Cain, the highest ranking member of the shuttle team, sounded downbeat about the threat posed by Ernesto: “It would take a relatively significant change from the current forecasts that we’re seeing to prevent us from going into rollback preparation.”
The good news is that the shuttle and its booster rockets appear undamaged from the lightning strike, so it would be capable of launching Tuesday if the weather holds.
Today was supposed to be launch day, but instead, journalists walked out of the afternoon press briefing wondering if there would be any launch at all. Weather seems to be conspiring against the lift off.
First, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, announced that Friday’s lightning strike required further evaluation of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. Mission engineers are fearful that the booster’s pyrotechnic bolts and other systems may have been damaged by the strike. The launch has been pushed back until Tuesday afternoon at the earliest.
Second, hurricane Ernesto, the year’s first, has taken an unexpected turn. NASA officials are now concerned that the hurricane could strike Cape Canaveral. “We’d like to have the vehicle back in the vertical assembly building before high winds hit the Cape,” says Gerstenmaier. “That forces us to start taking some action fairly soon.”
The team is in a quandary, Gerstenmaier continued. On the one hand, they want to get the shuttle ready to fly. On the other, they need to prepare to move it into the relative safety of the vehicle assembly building. At some point, they will have to choose which they will do. “That point in time hasn’t occurred yet,” he said. “But it’s coming this evening.”
Jó napot kívánok from Budapest, where the European chemistry community has decided to get together in the first ever European Chemistry Congress. The scale of the thing is impressive for it being a first: 2,500 registrants from 65 countries and an abstracts book the size of a phone book (do they still make those?).
Before the official start, I sat down with organizer Gábor Náray-Szabó, and asked him the obvious question: is this conference a challenge to the American Chemical Society meeting, that twice-annual mass migration of chemists?
Click below to read on...
"They do it very well," says Náray-Szabó. "We don't have to fight. But we can show that we can do something like that."
Náray-Szabó says that the time seemed ripe for European chemists to come together. The meeting has been taking shape for the last several years, but a turning point, he says, is when Jean-Marie Lehn signed on to give a plenary talk and help develop the programme. More Nobel laureates followed. Right now, Náray-Szabó is confident of the congresses success, and it looks like others chare his confidence. The Societá Chimica Italiana will host the next one in Torino in 2008. I withhold my vote until after the opening reception. Will there be adequate nibbly things and drinks? Will the chatter be lively?
Right now, the exhibitors are setting up, and everywhere knots of people are huddled, pouring over the dense program. Young people in pale blue polo shirts are registering people at a furious pace, and the Eötvös Loránd University chemistry building, on the bank of the Danube, smells strongly of newly printed programs. If only one could absorb all the presentations just by breathing in that inky smell!
At the afternoon press conference, we learned that launch pad 39B was hit yesterday by the largest lightning strike the shuttle programme has ever seen. One hundred thousand amps coursed through the tower’s lightning rod. The arc may have affected an arm on the ground structure that’s meant to swing away at launch, as well as one of the shuttle’s primary electrical systems, according to LeRoy Cain, the senior shuttle programme manager at the site. “At this point we don’t really have enough data yet to really know whether or not we have any problems.”
Cain says that the team has decided to delay the launch by at least 24 hours to assess the strike.Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that engineers will be able to go out and inspect the shuttle or the launch pad anytime soon. A second round of thunderstorms has rolled in this afternoon, and the pad will probably have to be kept clear until the late evening or early morning hours.
They've scrapped launch for at least 24 hours. I'll know more when I get back from our afternoon press conference.
Another reporter (for an unnamed rival British publication) and I spotted NASA administrator Michael Griffin in the cafeteria this afternoon. He was sporting a bright blue NASA polo and seemed busy rallying the troops.
I hope he likes thunderstorms, those clouds are gathering.
But there are clouds on the horizon. NASA forecasters have upgraded the chances of rain tomorrow to 60%, making a launch seem unlikely. Complicating things, this afternoon’s anticipated thunderstorms will likely further complicate preparations.
The weather folks are more sanguine about Monday, when rain has only a 20% chance of spoiling the show.
Nature’s conference blogs usually finish when the meeting about which they are written winds up. But the wrangling over what defines a planet, the source of the buzz at this year’s general assembly of the International Astronomical Union, is gathering new pace. The meeting is done and I am home, but here’s one more update.
To recap, astronomers in Prague on 24 August voted to define a planet by its roundness, also requiring that a planet proper had swept up the small fry from its orbit. You can read the news story here. Round objects that failed on the second count, including Pluto, became ‘dwarf’ planets (emphatically not planets).
I caught up with Richard Binzel, a member of the planet definition committee, immediately after the vote on Thursday. He said with relief, “it’s over, it’s done.”
Oh no, it’s not.
The embattled Binzel had spoken too soon. Many members of the IAU were not present in Prague to vote, and some are furious at the outcome.
“I am just disgusted by the way the IAU, which is supposed to represent the best in science, handled this matter. The definition they have is patently absurd,” says Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. He thinks that requiring a planet to have cleared its orbit rules out some of the eight planets the IAU says we are left with, including Neptune, whose orbit is crossed by Pluto, and Jupiter, which circles the sun among the Trojan asteroids.
Now, Stern has been a long-time supporter of the idea that a planet should be defined as something big enough to be round – the definition originally put forward by Binzel and his colleagues on 16 August, which was revised after much argument.
Stern is also principle investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission, until this week on its way to the ninth planet of our solar system, now on its way to the ‘dwarf’ planet Pluto. So, it’s perhaps not suprising that he should feel strongly that the IAU have messed things up.
But Stern is not alone. He’s one of 12 scientists, including some rather recognisable names, who have sponsored a petition. That petition is now circulating by email among astronomers and planetary scientists. The email arrives with the subject line “Petition Protesting the IAU Planet Definition” and invites the recipient to register their displeasure at a website.
The statement on the website reads: “We, as planetary scientists and astronomers, do not agree with the IAU's definition of a planet, nor will we use it. A better definition is needed.”
I’m not going to post the web link, since those involved have said they want the petition to represent the views of the scientific community, rather than the public at large. But I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a public petition somewhere else on the web aiming to save Pluto. Anyone know of one?
I've put the full text of the scientists’ email, minus the web link, in a separate post here. On Friday evening (GMT) I was told that the petition had already hit the 100-signature mark. And that was only a few hours after the first email was sent out.
To be honest, I’ve no idea what might happen from here. Altogether, the IAU has nearly 9000 members. The number of people voting on the resolution that's now being contested was not counted, but judging by the hands shown in favour and against another bit of the planet definition (described in an earlier post here), it would have been a few more than 400.
It’s therefore possible, in principle, that more IAU members could add their name to the petition statement against the planet definition than were in Prague to vote for it. But changes to the IAU’s resolutions are usually made only at their General Assemblies, which are triennial. I wouldn’t mind (in fact, I might rather enjoy) being in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil for the next one in 2009. But I suspect that the IAU will want this debate to be ended before then.
The next update will be online and in Nature’s news section later this week.
Oh dear, look what’s circulating on the web. Here we have a petition against the new definition of a planet, seeking scientists’ support for a boycott of the IAU resolution. I will provide some context in my next post, here.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Sent: Fri 8/25/2006
Subject: Petition Protesting the IAU Planet Definition
Dear Colleagues -
Less than 5% of the astronomical community voted at the Prague IAU for a definition of 'planet' that uses dynamics (location) rather than intrinsic properties to decide if an object is or is not a planet. This result is counter to other classification schemes in astronomy (e.g., stars, galaxies, nebulae, even asteroids) in which dynamical context does not play a controlling role.
Furthermore, it produces results that are incongruous and cannot be extended within our own solar system or to extra-solar planetary systems without producing immediate results that are patently absurd: e.g., a Neptune-sized object discovered beyond 150 AU could not be a planet, the presence of an Earth orbiting its star between a Jupiter and a Saturn would mean the Earth could not be considered a planet since it could not clear its "neighborhood".
This definition also excludes Pluto from planethood in our solar system, something that is both scientifically questionable and publicly problematic. Both Pluto and a distant Neptune would be classified as a "dwarf planet", which is not to be considered a subcategory of "planet".
If you agree that this process and its consequences are flawed, you are invited to sign a web-petition protesting this action at
**********************
The petition will be transmitted to the IAU.
Please redistribute this message to planetary and astronomical colleagues only. It is not meant to be a public petition. Thank you.
Mark Sykes (Planetary Science Institute)
S. Alan Stern (Southwest Research Institute)
Faith Vilas (MMT Observatory)
Christopher T. Russell (University of California, Los Angeles)
Larry Lebofsky (University of Arizona)
Ted Bowell (Lowell Observatory)
Carolyn Shoemaker (US Geological Survey)
David Levy (Jarnac Observatory)
David Grinspoon (Denver Museum of Nature & Science)
Harold Weaver (Applied Physics Laboratory)
David Weintraub (Vanderbilt University)
Amy Lovell (Agnes Scott College)
*Weblink removed to respect the organisers’ wish that the petition represent the views of the scientific community.
I showed up at the press centre at around noon, and almost as soon as I pulled up it started pouring. At its heaviest, the rain was so thick that you could just barely make out the fifty-story tall vehicle assembly building across the street. We found out at an evening press conference that Pad 39-B, where Atlantis is fueling up, was actually struck by lightning around that time. They’ve got ways (i.e. ¾” steel lighting rods) of deflecting the strike, and it looks like none of the shuttle’s systems were damaged.
So fortunately, launch is still scheduled for just under forty-eight hours away. At least tentatively: first Lieutenant Kaleb Nordgren of the Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron tells us that there’s a 40% rain will spoil the show on Sunday.
And there are bigger rain clouds hanging over the launch plans. A tropical storm is forming in the Gulf of Mexico, and it appears to be headed towards Houston, where mission control is based. If the storm were to turn into a full-blown hurricane, and Houston had to be evacuated, planers say that they would have to abandon the entire mission.
That’s a pretty big if, with the storm still so far out to sea (and pretty weak), but it didn’t stop us reporters from speculating wildly about it.
So here I am at my very first shuttle launch. The space shuttle Atlantis will be carrying a roughly 16,000 kg truss, complete with solar arrays, into orbit. It’s an essential part of the International Space Station (ISS), which will need the extra juice to keep growing. It’s also an important test in the return to normal shuttle flights, because it’s the first flight to resume construction of the ISS, something that ended after the break-up of the Columbia upon re-entry in 2003.
Mission planners are telling us that this is one of the most logistically complex shuttle flights ever attempted. For starters, that truss is heavier than any payload ever carried into orbit. Furthermore, assembling it will require three separate space walks.
Astronomers tear up textbooks over stellar nurseries.
In a complex Universe, astronomers thought they had at least one simple system to tell them how stars are born. Turns out they were wrong.
Read the story here.
Debate over tiny human’s evolutionary status is set to rage on.
For the past two years, researchers have been hotly debating (and coming dangerously close to fighting over) whether the fossils of a diminutive hominin found in Indonesia are those of a previously unknown species. The publication this week of some long-standing doubts over the ‘hobbit’ fossils show the debate is far from over.
Read more here
Emma Marris heads to Budapest this weekend to attend the first European Chemistry Congress - a meeting whose goal is to promote cutting edge science, foster collaboration, and "enhance the image of chemistry". Join us here for daily diary reports from the meeting, from 27-31 August.
NASA’s shuttle Atlantis is due to launch at 4:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday 27 August – only the third launch since Columbia broke up in re-entry in 2003.
Geoff Brumfiel will be on the site and blogging here with live updates. So stay tuned this weekend for behind-the-scenes reports.
You can also catch up on the shuttle programme with our interactive special.
Tense debate ends with a definition of 'planet'.
Pluto has been kicked out of our Sun's planetary family by astronomers who voted today to define a planet by three criteria. It failed on one of them.
Read the story here.
Scientists and philosophers gathered in Helsinki last week for TransVision, a conference about 'enhancing' humans. Kerri Smith talks to Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, UK, about what's on the table.
Read the interview, complete with memory-enhancing drugs, implants, and 'virtue engineering' here.
Agreement reached, in principle, to release avian influenza data.
Researchers studying avian influenza say they have agreed to share data that were previously being kept behind closed doors — a move they hope will speed insights into the virus that threatens to spark a human pandemic.
Read the story here.
The final part of the planet definition resolution offered astronomers the chance to save Pluto fans from despair. If accepted, resolution 6A would make the planet (oops, of course I mean 'dwarf' planet, since Pluto is no longer a planet proper) the first of a new category of objects orbiting at our solar system's edge.
The vote was close: they had to count."If you’ve voting in favour of 6a, please stand with your little yellow card in front your heart," prompted the count's coordinator.
A little chaos later, the results were in. Verdict: 237 votes in favour, 157 [*] against and 17 abstentions. Pluto is, officially, "the prototype of a new category of tran-Neptunian objects".
But the resolution to name Pluto and the other 'dwarf' planets that will occupy this category "plutonian objects" was voted down. It was close. Very close. First we had 183 votes in favour. "Mr President, you’re going to love this," said the coordinator. "We have 186 votes against."
There was almost a vote to revote, after the incoming IAU president Catherine Cesarsky urged her colleagues not to leave the category nameless. "We will look a little stupid if we define a new category but have not given it a name," she warned.
It didn't happen. For now the new Pluto-like objects are to be known by nothing. But Ron Ekers, current president of the IAU, got the last laugh anyway. He pointed out that IAU rules allow the organisation to set up a body to decide a name for the category, without going having to go through the kerfuffle of a vote at a General Assembly. Maybe, just maybe, plutonian objects will be back.
That's it for now. Thanks for reading this blog. A proper news story will appear on the news@nature site shortly.
*An earlier version of this post said the number of votes against was 257. Thanks to the commenters who queried how this could mean the vote had passed. This was a typo -- the number of votes against 6a was 157. Jenny
At last, the vote. Astronomers waived little yellow cards in the air to indicate their support for resolution 5A - that's the one that defines planets, 'dwarf' planets and other solar system bodies. A few people waived their cards to vote the resolution down, a few obstained.
A moment's hesitation from the chair: "I believe the resolution is clearly carried."
Amazing! A decision! I wouldn't have predicted that at the week's beginning.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell dived under the table on stage to demonstrate where this left us. Out came a blue balloon - to represent the eight planets. A box of cereal and a stuffed Disney Pluto stood in for the 'dwarf' planets, then something lumpy for everything else, the small solar-system bodies.
Next, a vote on resolution 5B. Do we have classical planets, and 'dwarf' planets, giving us two classes of planets, with a total of 12 or more. This would make "planet" an umbrella term: out came an umbrella labelled "planets". What a photo opportunity.
Controversy courts this part of the definition because some astronomers don't like the idea that debris rings like the asteroid belt, and as found at the edge of our solar system, could harbour planets. They're counting the votes.
"We looked into the cost of electronic voting but dec the money was better spent on scientific meetings," quipped the chair.
They counted 91 in favour. The number against was overwhelming -- no need to count again.
"It’s clear that Res 5b is not passed," the chair reported. So, we have eight planets only. Pluto is out.
Will Pluto at least be allowed to give its name to a crowd of "plutonian" objects? That's what gets decided next. (Excuse my brevity, I'm trying to listen.)
Attendees were asked to amend the planet definition resolution, as printed in the newspaper. "You will need a pen or a pencil," said Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who is chairing the session. The audience duly rummaged in their bags. The changes were the addition of a few inverted commas for the category of ‘dwarf’ planets and a clarification on the situation of satellites.
Comments were taken, but no further changes were made to the first and main part of the resolution – that which defines planets, ‘dwarf’ planets and the rest. That was despite one man’s suggestion that “nearly round” and “has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit” required so much interpretation that the resolution had no meaning. “There is so much common sense in the resolution that I would propose to drop all the resolutions and keep footnote 1,” he said.
Oh yes, they laughed. Footnote 1 of resolution 5A, to remind you, stated that “The eight classical planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.”
A television crew, just before the ceremony started, was looking for a miserable American.
Pluto may be about to lose its planet status. Surely protecting this body's planethood would be a matter of pride for citizens of the United States? Pluto, after all, was discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, by the American Clyde Tombaugh.
The astronomer the reporter asked in front of me said "no, not really". We've had lots of 'no's, the reporter replied. She then raised her voice to ask if there were any upset Americans in the area. Now, I did see someone waving a picture of Pluto the Disney dog somewhere near the front...
The final opportunity for astronomers to comment on the resolution to define a planet passed quietly. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a member of the IAU’s resolution committee who chaired one of the earlier meetings (blogged here), fielded a series of gentle questions. I eavesdropped.
One rather shy astronomer pointed out to Bell Burnell that moons now fell through the cracks of the resolution (version 4). Were they meant to count as ‘small solar system bodies’?
“He’s quite right. There’s a loophole in the drafting,” she told me afterwards. Satellites will be their own class of objects.
Otherwise, the debate has degenerated to the level of hyphens and commas. When the Resolution committee removed the hyphen from the “dwarf-planet” category of version 3, settling on “dwarf planets”, they created some ambiguity about whether this second category, which includes Pluto, were really planets or not.
One solution put forward this morning (see post IAU:invasion!) was to say “planetinos” instead of dwarf anything. But Bell Burnell said at lunchtime that that was out of the question. “We don’t introduce any new names at this stage, that’s out of the question”. The option tabled instead was the introduction of inverted commas around the dwarf, to give ‘dwarf’ planets. Personally, I can’t see how this is supposed to help*.
Despite the calm at her stand, Bell Burnell was uncertain whether the resolution, after final tweaks, would pass muster. "It's very hard to predict how it will go this afternoon," she said.
We're about to find out. The closing ceremony is beginning now, with some beautiful a cappella singing. The vote should be done by 4pm. (First we have to sit through votes on a few other uncontroversial resolutions.) I’ll post news as it happens.
*Update: the quotes, I have since learnt, are intended to go around both dwarf and planet to give 'dwarf planet', which makes slightly more sense.
What a madhouse. I was skipping down the stairs of the conference centre on my way to a 10.30am interview (not about planets) when I encountered a charge of scientists led by the esteemed Brian Marsden. “You’re the press,” one of his cohort noticed. “Show us to the press room.”
I retraced my steps. Marsden had, for many years, been responsible for cataloguing asteroids and other lumps of rock in his role as the head of the Minor Planet Center. He retired recently *, but made the invasion of the press room with youthful vigour. The battalion had an announcement to make.
Marsden held up an A4 sheet of paper, on it was written in very large letters the word planetino. “Planetino is what they say in the resolution is a dwarf planet,” Marsden proclaimed. The category of objects that is to include Pluto, he said, should be renamed.
Pointing to the ten or so astronomers straggling in behind him, Marsden said the proposal had support from representatives of Uruguay, Brazil, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Norway, Serbia and the UK – at least. The press room descended into a hubbub as reporters grabbed their notepads or leapt to their laptops. The press officers trying to run the show looked on, bemused.
“This is the ad-hoc international committee,” Brian Marsden told me. He wanted to replace “dwarf planet” with “planetino” to avoid the confusion about how many planets the solar system has, he said. I mentioned that murkiness earlier here.
The group were on their way to a meeting of IAU Division III, the official coordinators of planetary nomenclature, to put their proposal. And I ended up rather late for my interview.
* Correction: he is to retire today.
Today's the day on which astronomers will decide whether or not the world gets a new definition of planet. The final text of the resolution -- to be voted on this afternoon at the meeting's closing ceremony -- is posted in today's edition of the conference newspaper, Nuncio Sidereo III. It is preceded, after a turbulent week of revisions, by the warning: "only minor corrections can be accommodated at this stage".
According to this resolution (version four by my count), the solar system has eight top-flight planets, with Pluto in a second class of dwarf planets. Separate votes will be held on whether to label these top-flight planets "classical planets" and what, if anything, to do about putting Pluto and other round trans-neptunian rocks into a "plutonian object" category.
A short opinion article arguing for the "classical" category says it's good because it allows people to say "Pluto is a planet, but in the dwarf planet category". A counterpart article putting the opposing viewpoint says it confuses the answer to the simple question "How many planets are there?" and encourages astronomers to reject the idea.
You can read these pieces in full in edition 9 of the newspaper here (on page 8). For readers' convenience, I have also copied over the fold the full text of the resolution, which is in two parts, each with two sub-parts, and has added footnotes.
IAU Resolution: Definition of a Planet in the Solar System
Contemporary observations are changing our understanding of planetary systems, and it is important that our nomenclature for objects reflect our current understanding. This applies, in particular, to the designation ‘planets’. The word ‘planet’ originally described ‘wanderers’ that were known only as moving lights in the sky. Recent discoveries lead us to create a new definition, which we can make using currently available scientific information.
Resolution 5A
The IAU therefore resolves that planets and other bodies in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:
(1) A planet[1] is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
(2) A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape[2], (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.
(3) All other objects[3] orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as “Small Solar System Bodies”.
1 The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
2 An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either dwarf planet and other categories.
3 These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.
Resolution 5B
Insert the word “classical” before the word “planet” in Resolution 5A, Section (1), and footnote 1. Thus reading:
(1) A classical planet[1] is a celestial body . . .and
1 The eight classical planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
IAU Resolution: Pluto
Resolution 6A
The IAU further resolves:
Pluto is a dwarf planet by the above definition and is recognized as the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects.
Resolution 6B
The following sentence is added to Resolution 6A:
This category is to be called “plutonian objects.”
New observations may help extend the periodic table.
Research unveiled this week may help pinpoint the 'island of stability' — a theoretical region of relatively stable but very heavy elements beyond the limits of the current periodic table.
Read the full story here.
Receptor found that is triggered by acidic foods.
Researchers have worked out how a mammal's tongue detects sour tastes: it's all down to a single, specialized receptor, they say.
Read the story here.
This week's Nature Podcast makes ethically-acceptable stem cells, targets bacterial secretion, hears what 'Science Foo' had to say about citizen science, and has more on superheavy elements, radio magnetars, the Earth's archaic oxygen, and why Dictyostelium keeps it in the family.
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Everyone has something to complain about. The astronomers who aren't disgruntled about the planet definition are mostly moaning that the subject has taken over the meeting.
They say the outside world's impression of the 2006 IAU General Assembly is that 2,500 astronomers have met in Prague to talk about nothing but what makes a planet. They're probably right.
If the media coverage of the planet issue has been a flood, other stories have come out in a trickle. In the press room yesterday, there were even a few reporters wondering what they were meant to do on Wednesday. There's no activity on the planet front whatsoever today (at least in the open). The definition on which the IAU members will vote is not released until tomorrow morning.
But, really, the question of what defines a planet is a bit of a sideshow here. It has consumed the lives of the committee members involved in making a definition, and upset a portion of people that deal with planets, but many of the astronomers registered for the meeting are going about their business unbothered. Their interests run the gamut from the Milky Way's black hole to convection in stars and the International Year of Astronomy (assigned to 2009). I spent the morning, for example, in an interesting session on globular clusters , which are great balls of stars. More on that later.
Update: The promised more on globular clusters has become a news story, Key stars have different birthdays.
By 5.30pm local time in Prague (GMT+2), we were on version three of the planet definition. A second discussion had been scheduled, after lunchtime saw vociferous opposition to version two (which I blogged about here). A crowd gathered outside the designated room.
I was expecting to be treated to another lively exhibition of dissent – but it was not to be. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the astronomer who discovered pulsars and a member of the IAU’s resolution committee, took formidable control of the meeting.
With only 45 minutes set aside, she said, comments were to be no more than “elevator pitches” – an idea sold in the time it takes a lift to travel one floor. “And I will cut you off if you are not brief,” she warned. The astronomers meekly followed orders.
Version three, distributed as we filed in for more drama, was a compromise that also seemed to have dissipated much of the earlier anger. It differed from version two mostly in emphasis.
That earlier definition had required first and foremost that a planet be round, then lumped planets that were not “dominant” in their local population into a subcategory of dwarf planets. The new definition required that a planet be both round and dominant, then put any round objects left over into a “dwarf-planet” category.
The details get confusing, but Bell Burnell spelled out the consequences of shuffling the priorities, “this means that Pluto is a dwarf-planet, but it is not a planet.”
Would that be acceptable to the assembled astronomers?
It seemed so. A quick show of hands suggested that the situation of earlier in the day had been inverted. More arms were raised in favour than against.
Gonzalo Tancredi*, one of the people to oppose the earlier definition, was first to make a comment. “We think this is a very good compromise,” he said. What? No shouting?
Other astronomers joined the line to praise the IAU for listening. It was almost a warm and fuzzy moment. But there were still a few wrinkles.
One concern raised, in particular, struck me as worrisome. Brian Boyle, director of the Australia Telescope National Facility, felt the new definition’s complexity would cause a problem. He’d supported version two – “I could explain [that] to Queenslanders at 6am this morning,” he said – but didn’t care for version three. “It may be untenable for the broader public,” he cautioned.
The IAU had purposefully chosen a planet definition committee with a broad background – scientifically, culturally and geographically. The members of this committee preferred the idea that a planet was something round (as a result of its gravity squeezing its shape into what’s technically known as “hydrostatic equilibrium"). This was their pick, even with its messy consequences at the edge of the solar system, where thousands of such “planets” may lurk.
At a meeting of 2,500 astronomers, it’s easy to lose persective (as the length of this post will testify).
But for the IAU, it’s time to move on, and whatever definition appears likely to get most support here will be put to a vote.
The second part of the resolution may still fail. This declared Pluto the first of a category of “plutonids”– much as before, but with a new name. It came complete with typos “apologies,” said Bell Burnell, “we did this in quite a rush this afternoon”.
Some argued that the category was pointless. Brian Marsden, formerly director of the Minor Planet Center, wondered why, if we were going to have a special class of “plutonids”, we didn’t give the asteroids another category, named after Ceres. He suggested “Cereals” – causing much chuckling.
Owen Gingerich, a historian of science and chair of the Planet Definition Committee, made the case for a Pluto-led class of dwarf-planets. “There is a large Pluto fan club out there which is going to be incensed by our actions,” he warned. Making Pluto the prototype of a new class of object “gave a nod to those people who are Pluto fans, just so they can come away with something.” Not very scientific, perhaps, but as Gingerich pointed out, it could save astronomers a lot of trouble later.
More trivially, plutonids proved an unpopular name. “Plutonian objects” was suggested as an alternative, along the lines of the Jovian moons.
And for the sake of completeness, I’ll tell you about the final shift in the resolution. The distinction made between binary planets and planet satellite systems, based on the position of their centre of mass, was chopped altogether. Oh, and now this applies only to our solar system and objects in orbit around our sun, rather than all planets everywhere. That will be changed, said a representative of the IAU, when extrasolar planets and the upper mass limit have been more carefully thought about.
Bored of this yet? Let’s hope they make a decision in the vote on Thursday. Otherwise you’ll be reading about the arguments again during the next IAU general assembly, three years in the future.
[*An earlier version of this post incorrectly named the first person to speak as Andrea Milani.]
I’m just back from the open discussion on what makes a planet. It stopped just short of fisticuffs. For people who argue that defining a planet is a meaningless labelling exercise, astronomers seem to care a great deal.
Within seconds of comments being invited, queues formed at the microphones. One by one the waiting astronomers denounced, in tones ranging from offended to furious, the idea of a planet that had been put forward by the IAU. As this went on, the representatives of the planet definition committee sitting at the front slumped into their chairs, heads propped on hands.
The hour allocated for discussion today wasn’t enough for everyone to vent their views. At one point, the meeting chair, president of the IAU Ron Ekers, tried to hurry things along. This prompted someone near the front of the cavernous hall to shout out:
“If this is a democracy, listen to the questions. You don’t have to speak so much, let the people speak!” And that was just for starters.
The session had begun with short presentations on the definition to be discussed, which differs slightly to that put forward on 16 August. You can read Nature’s story on the original definition here. The new resolution was given to delegates as they entered the cavernous hall, rival definitions were handed out inside.
The official resolution has now been divided into three, each of which will be voted on separately on Thursday 24 August (although it may change again - discussions continue). The new resolutions cover the requirements of roundness; the distinction between a binary planet and a planet-moon system; and the naming of Pluto-like objects. There are now alternatives to the problematic "plutons". For now, they are a class called “XXXXX” – with a set of names to choose from. What do you think of plutonids, plutians, or Tombaugh Planets, after Pluto’s discoverer?
Complaints against this new definition ranged from the way the process had been handled to fundamental differences of opinion. Astronomers divided into tribes to battle the definition – those who count themselves as “dynamicists” want to see planets defined as the leading objects in their orbits, those interested in planetary structure want something else, astrophysicists something else again.
Andrea Milani was first to reach a microphone. He became more incensed as he spoke, ending by saying “your paper is a kind of offence to the entire dynamical community”.
Like many of the others, the comments were not only personal opinions. Milani spoke for one of the groups within the IAU. Another presented the views of the German astronomical community: “the attempt to come up with a physical definition is honourable, but it is bound to fail”.
Other astronomers railed against being kept in the dark. “It is a pity that although I occupy a seemingly high post in the IAU, I only learn about the proposal when I come here, not before.”
Those who work on extrasolar planets felt that their field – full of massive planets, with many times the mass of Jupiter – had been wrongly neglected. Why did the definition not set an upper mass limit?
As this point was raised again and again, Ron Ekers, attempting to herd cats, became more and more frustrated. “We want your input, but not right now. You might think adding one more step is simple. It isn’t,” he eventually snapped.
These astronomers are clearly self-selecting – only the angry ones scrambled out of their seats to speak. But the underlying emotion is clear. As Paul Murdin, a UK professor, remarked to me afterwards: “the comments were intelligent, but they came out with a passion that makes me think this debate has a non-intelligent dimension to it”.
I had to fight the urge to stand up and tell the lot of them to get a grip. Various people within the IAU, and people appointed by them, have spent two years discussing this already. The same arguments are going round and round again. You could argue, as some did, that the best option is not to offer any definition at all. But where does that leave the waiting public? Astronomers realise that this whole debacle, if it fizzles into nothing, is going to make them look stupid. So why not accept some compromise?
Simple strategy may give tired T cells a boost.
Why does the human body fail to defend itself from the virus that causes AIDS? The answer, researchers are finding, could be that HIV triggers a natural mechanism that impairs the main cells responsible for fighting the virus.
Read the story here.
Grigory Perelman a no-show for his Fields Medal.
Four mathematicians were today due to collect gold medals and glory in Madrid, Spain, having been declared winners of the 2006 Fields Medals — referred to as the 'Nobel prizes' of mathematics. But only three turned up.
Read the story here.
Oh goodness, I'm disappointed I missed this. Scroll down to the last item. It recounts how, last week, cake was served to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of a supernova that went off in 1006 AD, the brightest in recorded history. I love cake. And this one had a picture of a supernova remnant in icing. How briliant!
But, obviously, there's more to SN1006 than cake (consumed in less than 1000 seconds, according to the report). Wikipedia provides a brief account here. The supernova was also the inspiration for a two day discussion meeting "Supernovae: one millennium after SN1006" at the IAU General Assembly.
Before the meeting, I asked one of the session organisers, Wolfgang Hillebrandt of the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany why people were still interested in something that happened so long ago. Was there really anything left to learn? He said that astronomers were looking for the companion star that triggered SN1006 to explode, but didn't think that anyone had found it. "I don’t think there is anything close to being published," he said.
Unfortunately, I can't give you an update from the session, because I was still slaving in Nature's London office when it was taking place on 17-18 August. The program, if you want to check it for yourself, is here.
In conjuring up a new category of planets to be known as "plutons" to tidy away Pluto and its cousins, the International Astronomical Union has attracted a hail of criticism.
My colleague Geoff Brumfiel reports here on the angry reaction of one geologist who studys a type of rock formation already known as a "pluton". This geologist was concerned at the term being hijacked, and he's not the only one upset.
My dinner companions tonight included some (very tired) members of the planet definition committee. They said that they'd received hundreds of emails over the past few days from geologists complaining about the use of "pluton" in the proposed planet definition. Many of these emails, they noted, came from Australia. Is someone over there running a campaign?
Another problem has emerged in translation. The french name for Pluto is -- you've guessed it -- Pluton. The definition committee thought this linguistic borrowing would give the pluton label special appeal for French-speaking astronomers, but apparently some object.
All this leads to speculation that tomorrow's revised definition, whatever other changes it contains, will include a replacement word for "pluton".
Ants escape danger by snapping their jaws.
When trap-jaw ants need to get out quick, they use their heads, not their legs to escape. This large species of Costa Rican ant smashes its jaw into the ground, causing the ant to catapult up and away from danger.
Read the story here.
Triggering cold receptors blocks off pain signals.
Here's a cool strategy for relieving pain: scientists have found that cold temperatures and even cool-sensation chemicals can be used to treat chronic pain.
Read the story.
So, the solar system as we know it isn’t going to go without a fight. Astronomers here in Prague are unhappy with the proposed new definition of a planet, which would see the current tally of planets swell to twelve (and counting).
The formal discussion of the proposal is scheduled to take place tomorrow, over an hour at lunchtime. But already many astronomers have conveyed their objections to the Executive Committee of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) by email – and some are supporting a second, rival definition.
Today’s edition of the conference’s daily newspaper, distributed to all meeting-goers, Nuncio Sidereo III, carried a news flash beneath its masthead: “Planet redefinition proposal defeated by alternative idea in internal test vote!”
The alternative definition of "planet" argues that, on top of the IAU’s requirement that a planet be round, it must also be “by far the largest object in its local population”. The details are given in an online supplement to the newspaper. This definition knocks Pluto off its planetary pedestal (although offering it concessionary "dwarf planet" status), and destroys Charon and Ceres’ chance of promotion.
It was put forward on Friday 18th August at a meeting of the IAU working group concerned with the planets. Of the 100 people in this closed meeting, 50 voted for the new proposal, only 20 for the IAU’s suggestion.
Richard Binzel, one of the astronomers involved in coming up with the definition in the first place, says the IAU is doing its best to listen. He has been in a meeting all afternoon with the Executive Committee, revising the resolution proposal. Tomorrow’s newspaper, he says, will carry notice that a new definition is to be issued for discussion. That will be handed out on bits of paper at the lunchtime debate. I’ll be there to watch the arguments unfold.
[posted on behalf of Jenny]
Geologists and astronomers wrangle over words.
On 16 August the International Astronomical Union (IAU) floated a proposal for a definition of the word 'planet', in part to end the confusion about whether Pluto is a planet or not. But their solution, which assigns Pluto and its neighbours to a subset of planets called 'Plutons', is so far just creating more confusion and angst.
Read the story here.
Early success in AIDS prevention may have been overturned.
Hard-earned gains in the fight against AIDS may be eroding in Uganda, according to data presented Thursday at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada.
Read the story here.
The United States gives more to global AIDS prevention programmes than any other country. But its flagship programme is controversial; some say it pushes abstinence too heavily. Erika Check sat down with Mark Dybul, US Global AIDS Coordinator, at the international AIDS meeting in Toronto this week, to discuss US strategy.
Read the interview here.
"Stop homosexuals, or they’ll infect us all,” screamed the headline of an opinion piece by a Baptist minister, Greg Dixon, in USA Today on June 22, 1983. Americans must “smash the homosexual movement” or it would destroy American civilization, Dixon maintained. His plea wasn’t logical, but it did reflect the fear and hatred felt by many people.
Over the years that fear – that AIDS would “break out” of the gay community and infect “the rest of us” – was always just beneath the surface. “Is AIDS really spreading among heterosexuals?” asked an editorial in a medical magazine in 1989. They cited figures to show that it was, never mind that most were intravenous drug users. And, in a Point/Counterpoint in a medical newspaper in 1996, primatologist and AIDS researcher Max Essex answered “Yes” to the question, “Is the U.S. vulnerable to a new wave of heterosexual HIV transmission?” He argued by extrapolation from the situations in Africa and India, where HIV is passed heterosexually.
During this AIDS conference, a Canadian columnist, Margaret Wente, writing in The Globe and Mail on August 15, noted that HIV infection rates among sub-Saharan African immigrants are “far higher than among the general population.” Wente complained about HIV-positive immigrants adding cost to the system, but I wonder if underlying this are worries that 'disease-ridden blacks' might “infect us all.”
Enter Michael Fumento, a policy fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute who wrote “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS” in 1990. In a commentary in the National Post on Thursday, Fumento argued against the notion that heterosexuals are at risk for HIV. But he is not motivated by a desire to correct the record. Fumento minimizes the threat posed by HIV, arguing that figures for the epidemic in Africa are “grossly exaggerated”. He seems to think that treatment of 1.3 million Africans with AIDS (out of almost 5 million) is sufficient and that spending on the epidemic is for the benefit of “the AIDS industry”. This is just another version of classifying those with HIV infection as “the Other” -- it’s all right if they have it as long as we don’t get it.
With these attitudes, it’s surprising to me that progress continues to be made against the epidemic, particularly the beginnings of treatment in Africa. It’s a good thing that most folks don’t draw the line between “us” and “them” so closely.
A ‘cosmic stocktake’ announced today at the IAU in Prague estimates that about 20% of the ordinary matter in the Universe has been ‘used up’ by being turned into such things as stars, planets and black holes. The rest resides in the enormous gas clouds that envelop old galaxies and can become the birth places of new galaxies.
Nature doesn’t have a reporter at the IAU quite yet, but we thought this was interesting enough to make a few phone calls. Here’s what reporter Lucy Heady found out…
The numbers aren’t surprising – they’re exactly what would be expected from other surveys of the Universe’s constituents. But it was done in a novel way, and has produced very quotable results.
The project, headed by Simon Driver of St Andrews University, used telescopes in Australia, Spain and Chile to obtain accurate distance information for over 10,000 giant galaxies. This allowed the team to measure the total mass of stars within a representative volume of the local Universe.
To measure the amount of mass contained in supermassive black holes at the centre of each galaxy, Driver and his team calculated how many stars in each galaxy are in the central ‘bulge’ surrounding the black hole. Astronomers know from measurements of nearby galaxies that that there is an extremely tight correlation between various properties of the bulge, such as the concentration of stars, and the mass of the black hole at its centre.
Once these masses had been determined “it was a simple task of summing them up to determine how much of the Universe's matter is locked away," explains Driver.
As it turns out, only about 0.01% of the normal matter in the Universe can be accounted for by black holes and only 0.1% is dust (including the large bits of ‘dust’ called planets); star formation, at 20%, has certainly cost the Universe far more ordinary matter than any other activity.
Although these “ultimate big picture calculations” can capture the imagination, “they don’t really tell us anything new about the physics of the Universe” says Mike Merrifield of Nottingham University.
The calculation by the Driver team gives an estimate that all of the ordinary matter in the Universe will be used up in about 70 billion years – after that point there will be no suitable material left to make new stars. But this doesn’t say anything about the lifespan of the Universe itself. “It just tells you when the Universe is going to become a rather dull place,” says Merrifield.
Find out about the greatest mysteries of the universe: from "how did it all begin?" to "just what is a planet, anyway?". Here we blog news and diary reports from the astronomy meeting in Prague, from 18-25 August.
Erika, I’ve been fulminating all week about how AIDS differs from other medical conditions. Well, here’s one way in which they are the same: drug therapy is the cornerstone of treatment.
At the 1996 Vancouver conference, articles in the first issue of the conference newspaper noted that three-drug combinations reduced viral load and death of HIV-infected patients. These combinations included two types of drugs: protease inhibitors (PIs) and reverse transcriptase inhibitors. Combining the two types of drugs changed HIV from a death sentence to a chronic disease, and opened up a tantalizing possibility: “Can combination therapies eradicate HIV?” the conference newspaper asked.
Many new and improved PIs have been introduced in the last ten years, but today’s first-line regimens use the same two classes of drugs as those initial combinations. Six of the 18 late-breaking reports presented at this year’s meeting simply evaluate new ways of using those drugs.
Already at the 1996 meeting, emergence of drug resistance stimulated one scientist to warn that new drug classes were needed. Only this year is that happening. Five late-breakers reported on early tests of compounds that inhibit a viral protein called the integrase, and two proteins that help the virus attach to cells in the body. Basic research reported here also raises the possibility that inhibitors of another viral protein - Vif - may eventually prove useful.
Will any of these potential drugs be as potent as existing agents? Will combinations that inhibit three viral proteins be even more effective than current regimens? Hopefully we won’t have to wait another ten years for the answers.
When I covered my last AIDS conference, in Geneva in 1998, already most of the cases of HIV infection around the world were in Africa and it was clear that AIDS would devastate that continent. Also unanimous, in my perception, was a sense of helplessness about doing anything to stop that ongoing disaster.
That has all changed. This week I covered sessions about provision of antiretroviral therapy (ART) to adults and children in many African countries as well as programs to prevent mother-to-child transmission. One million people are now in treatment in Africa.
These accomplishments “have turned out not to be so difficult,” Joy Phumaphi, assistant director general of WHO, told me. Contrary to Western worries, people in developing countries do adhere to ART. Delivery of anti-HIV drugs is facilitated by integrating it into existing programs to treat TB and antenatal care programs. Next comes introduction of ART into primary care programs. Financial obstacles were overcome by formation of the Global Fund to coordinate donations, by the U.S. PEPFAR program and by Medicin sans Frontiers, Phumaphi said. Drug donations from pharmaceutical companies have also played a major role.
Despite these advances, in sub-Saharan Africa, the epicenter of the HIV pandemic, only 23% of persons who need treatment are getting it. Calls echoed throughout the halls this week to build on the hope that early success has generated and finish the job.
Study shows life-saving potential of dual treatment.
A huge and growing tuberculosis (TB) epidemic threatens to crush the world's efforts to fight AIDS, health officials, scientists and activists warned at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, this Wednesday.
Read the story here.
I can't give my dad the last word on a vaccine!
He points out that there's a lot of optimism these days about an AIDS vaccine due to the creation of a whopping new entity called the "Global HIV/AIDS Vaccine Enterprise," with $300 million from the Gates Foundation. [As he also points out, people simply refer to this entity as "The Enterprise," which leads him to ask, "Was Adel Mahmoud the second choice for chief executive behind Jean-Luc Picard? And if Picard had accepted the job, could he have succeeded simply by saying 'Make it so'?"]
(Apologies to all the non-Trekkies in the audience.)
But this, to me, shows how both he and I are right.
The search for an HIV vaccine hasn't always been efficient; scientists have wasted money by running many trials on similar products, even when the products didn't seem very likely to work. The Enterprise is supposed to solve this problem. It's supposed to get everyone on the same page, so that people can coordinate thir efforts, share their data, and make sure the most promising possible vaccines make it down the long road from lab to clinic.
Now, researchers are trying not to make the same mistake with research on cool new prevention technologies, such as microbicides and oral prevention drugs.
So, my dad is right: designing an AIDS vaccine is a huge and complicated problem, and it's too early to call it a defeat. And I'm right: we need to spend precious research dollars wisely, and make some hard choices about those investments.
Ah, the wisdom of age! Looks like the crusty old-timer has taught a lesson to the brash youth...
This time, anyway...
A new project is aiming to predict the potential spread of the world's only prion disease found in wild animals. The research aims to second-guess the effects of chronic wasting disease (CWD), a fatal condition similar to mad cow disease that affects several species of deer. Given the conservation implications of the deadly disease for the deer, and the uncertainty over whether it can be spread to humans, it's a timely research effort.
CWD is endemic in parts of the United States such as the mid-northwest, but is a newcomer to upstate New York. (It was first spotted in April 2005 when a deerhunter provided a fawn for a firemen's dinner; subsequent tests showed that it was infected with deformed prion protein but by then the diners had already eaten it. Whether they will develop mad cow-like symptoms in the coming decades remains to be seen.)
Amy Dechen of the State University of New York in Syracuse has been fitting healthy deer with GPS collars in the New York woodlands in a bid to find out where they roam and how these patterns of movement might influence the spread of the contagion by infected individuals. The capture and tagging of infected deer is not allowed. Although Dechen only has preliminary results, the information on range size and roaming patterns of the deer could prove valuable in calculating where and when the disease might spring up in other wild deer. As for whether it can be transmitted to humans, the jury is still out. The WHO states in its factsheet on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies that no material from infected deer or elk be used in human or animal food, but adds that there is so far no evidence that the disease can be spread to humans.
Helen Pearson finds out how far we have come, and have to go, to cure cancer.
Read the story here.
New drug targets could combat resistance.
Biologists have uncovered subtle variations in the structure of a key flu virus enzyme, a finding that might lead to better anti-flu drugs.
Read the story here.
Bill Clinton joins the opposition to the United States' stance on AIDS education.
Former US president Bill Clinton became the most prominent leader yet to criticize US AIDS policy at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, yesterday.
Read the story here.
One of the most thought-provoking discussions at the meeting has been on the welfare of captive non-human primates. We share an undeniably close kinship with these animals, particularly in the case of chimps, but interpreting their behaviour and trying to act in their best interests seems as thorny as ever. Some experts argue that, if we give them the chance, the chimps will tell us exacty what they want. But the problem is that in learning to communicate with us, the chimps must necessarily adopt a more human lifestyle than they would otherwise have.
In the 1960s, Allen and Beatrice Gardner of the University of Nevado, Reno, began a project to raise chimps in exactly the same way as human infants. Over several years they taught these 'crossfostered' chimps to use American Sign Language, and watched as they developed the ability to communicate, use doors and light switches, and even help out with household chores (the project did not last long enough to see whether the chimps would become typical sulky teenagers).
Several of Gardner's lab members were at the meeting to present images and movies from the project, which as ever made fascinating viewing. And there is perhaps no better indication of chimpanzee intelligence, and the 'humanity' of which they are capable. But it tells us next to nothing about how chimpanzees actually live. What would a wild chimp make of a cross-fostered one? What does cross-fostering tell us about the best way to make chimps comfortable in captivity, whether they're in zoos, sanctuaries or research facilities? Not much.
Part of the problem with addressing primate welfare in captivity is the wide range of different circumstances in which they live. Chimpanzee sanctuaries often house chimps rescued from the pet or entertainment trade, and view any further human interaction with them as 'unnatural'. In zoos and research institutions, apes live in much closer proximity with humans. And in research institutions, other primates such as rhesus monkeys are housed for invasive experimental procedures. Welfare considerations are important in making them as comfortable as possible, but the issue is clouded by the fact that many believe that such animals shouldn't be living there at all.
The best clues to how best to provide for an animal's welfare are gained by observing the animal itself. As the biologist Robert Trivers put it, "animal behaviour is a guide to what's important in the animal's life". Terry Maple, president of Florida's Palm Beach Zoo, outlined some of the obvious steps that can be taken to safeguard animals' welfare, such as enriching their environment with novel items, providing adequate social opportunities, and avoiding 'hard' architecture (a case in point being London Zoo's infamous art deco penguin enclosure).
But when it comes to chimps, with their almost human-like qualities, the issue can be clouded - they can begin to 'want' things that they wouldn't even know existed if it weren't for their artificial association with humans. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh of the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, which runs a bonobo sanctuary, told the meeting about her work with bonobos that live in a 'Pan-Homo culture' and can even understand spoken English, and reply using a chart of symbols. She spoke of the idea of referring to male and female chimps as 'men' and 'women', and the fallacy of assuming that they don't know they are in captivity, and don't yearn to see the world.
But when asking these chimps what they want out of life, they begin to ask for things that humans value, such as travelling in cars and watching television. That might indeed make life more bearable for a captive chimp, but it doesn't get to the root of chimpanzee nature. It seems that great ape experts have a similar problem to that encountered by quantum physicists grappling with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - as soon as you try to measure something, you alter what you're measuring.
This week’s Nature Podcast features bird flu’s structural secrets and silent spread, finds Florida seeking Californian brains, explains cryptic Martian spots, galactic evolution, and has more on methane-producing plants, rewriting the nitrogen cycle, and fast-evolving brain genes.
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Erika, you are so inefficient. You had to interview two people to get pro and con views on the likelihood of an HIV vaccine. I got both sides from one person, Dr. Peggy Johnston, Director of the Vaccine and Prevention Research Program at NIAID. I asked her whether it was possible that we might never have a vaccine. “Yes, that’s possible,” she said. But she was also optimistic that the vaccine campaign would succeed.
Johnston's explanations left me with the conclusion that this is the most difficult vaccine challenge in history, partly because of the evasive behavior of the virus (as you said) and partly because no one knows the proper balance of humoral and cell-mediated immunity to stimulate. Or how to stimulate it. That’s when I asked her about the possibility of – wait for it – failure.
I’m not just writing this to demonstrate the superiority of old guys (though that’s always fun), but to make a point. No one knows whether there will ever be an HIV vaccine. Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or dishonest. Or an administrator. They get a pass on reality.
The International Astronomical Union has (finally) come up with a proposal for the definition of a planet: it's round. If accepted, it means our Solar System has at least 12, not 9, planets.
NEWS Planets are round. Will that do?
EDITORIAL Round objects
Here's an amusing excerpt from the IAU questions and answers factsheet:
Q: Is a "pluton" a planet?
A: Yes.
Q: Is Pluto a "pluton"?
A: Yes.
Q: Is Pluto a planet?
A: Yes.
....so... that clears that up then.
Do you agree with the definition? Disagree? Let us know.
And do you have a handy mnemonic to remember the new planets by? (That's Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon, UB313/Xena). Here's one popular one used to remember the more traditional 9 planets: "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas"
Political leaders rarely get warm fuzzies at these AIDS conferences. But this afternoon, a crowd of hundreds of activists and scientists melted like teenage girls at the sight of former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Prompted by conference co-chair Helene Gayle, the crowd serenaded Clinton, singing “Happy Birthday” to him after he delivered a wide-ranging speech on issues related to HIV and AIDS. Clinton turns 60 on Saturday.
Clinton is the third major celebrity to show up here so far; Bill Gates spoke in the meeting's opening session, and Richard Gere talked about AIDS awareness in India yesterday. But Clinton’s enormous popularity with this crowd is pretty stunning.
Clinton can’t quite compete with Nelson Mandela, who moved people to tears at the last AIDS conference, in Bangkok . But he comes about as close as a former U.S. President could. As Clinton stepped to the microphone to begin his speech today, someone in the crowd yelled out, “We miss you!” Clinton seemed to feel the same way, basking in the adulation of the crowd, and staying late at a press conference to shake reporters’ hands.
Clinton has started a foundation that helps negotiate lower prices for treatments and other HIV interventions in poor countries. But Clinton’s popularity with this audience also comes from the fact that he’s simply not President George Bush, who is generally reviled the liberal and international crowd here. A lot of activists in this community have directed a lot of anger towards the Bush administration, and its flagship program for global AIDS aid – the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Clinton took issue with some controversial aspects of PEPFAR today, such as its requirement that some of the program's funding be spent on abstinence education programs. But, Clinton pointed out, you can’t overlook cold, hard, cash: if Bush meets his $15 billion commitment, the United States will have spent more on bilateral AIDS aid than any other nation. “It’s still a whopping amount of money,” Clinton told reporters after his speech today, “and that’s why I say I believe they’ve done on balance more good than harm.”
How's this for an interesting theory - the dietary switch that paved the way for the evolution of our impressive intelligence also made us more prone to illness.
The suggestion was made by Benjamin Hart of the University of California, Davis, who gave a talk on the four pillars of medicine, and whether they are practised by animals. The four cornerstones of medical practice - medication, nursing, immunization and quarantine - all have equivalents in the animal world, although only humans have adopted them all, perhaps through evolutionary necessity.
In the animal world, chimps medicate themselves by eating leaves to remove intestinal parasites. Elephants are notable nurses - if one of them is unwell, the whole group will slow down to allow them to keep up. Many carnivores drag meat along the ground before feeding it to young, which might partly function to inoculate them with bacteria and build up the immune system. And many animals practise a form of quarantine, by remaining in close-knit tribes to avoid coming into contact with too many individuals who might pass on diseases.
But humans are the undoubted masters of medicine, Hart points out. And he suggests that the switch from a plant diet to a meaty one, which happened several hundred thousand years ago with our ancestors Homo erectus, may have paved the way not only for the rapid expansion of our brains, but also removed many of the valuable, antioxidant-rich plants from our diet, which led to us becoming much more sickly.
A big brain would have come in handy in figuring out how to stave off all this new disease, Hart says. But it's worth noting that animals seem to get sick far less often than we do. Yet another reason why meat-rich diets might give doctors food for thought.
Rats can smell whether two people are related or not, according to new research. The discovery underlines the fact that a person's natural smell can depend on their genes, and that odour similarities between related people are significant enough to be detected by the sensitive nose of a rat.
Erin Ables of Indiana University carried out the slightly bizarre experiment by recruiting groups of women, including pairs of relatives, and asking them to shower in non-scented soap, as well as avoiding smelly foods or cosmetics. She then presented smells to the rats - first from one woman and then another, either related or unrelated to the first. Rats spent longer sniffing the odours from unrelated women, and as rats spend longer investigating novel odours, this suggests that related women bear similar natural smells. The rats were even sensitive enough to spot the difference between a mother-daughter relationship and the more distant aunt-niece link.
It's unclear whether people can consciously detect such differences, but it seems likely that we might appreciate them on some level. A person's natural smell gives subtle clues about the genetics of their immune system, and people naturally tend to prefer the smells of people with different, and therefore complementary, immune genetic complexes to their own - a mechanism that might also help to avoid inbreeding. It's also unclear whether the rats would succeed in the experiment if presented with odours from men - arguably the smellier members of the human race.
Blue whale's aged cousin: small, enormous eyes, ate sharks.
A 25-million-year-old whale fossil from southeastern Australia has revealed a bizarre early type of 'baleen' whale. The creature was an ancient cousin of our modern blue whales and humpbacks, but it was hardly a gentle giant of the sea. Instead it was small and predatory, with enormous eyes and teeth.
Read the story here.
Since my dad covered his first AIDS conference in 1992, a lot has changed. But one thing hasn’t: we still don’t have a vaccine to prevent AIDS.
This is one of the saddest ongoing failures of science. Foundations, governments and a handful of companies have spent billions of dollars over the past 20 years trying to develop a vaccine to protect people from AIDS. But now, you hear scientists openly admitting that we may never reach this goal.
“We don’t know yet whether a peventative vaccine is possible or not,” said virologist Françoise Barré-Sinoussi of the Pasteur Institute this morning. The best we can hope for, she said, is to know by the end of this century whether or not a preventative vaccine will even be possible. Perhaps, she suggested, we will develop a therapeutic vaccine instead – one that can be given after infection, to help the patient fight the disease.
Is this defeatism, or realism? Scientists say HIV is an extremely difficult virus to combat, because it mutates quickly to evade vaccines, infects the body for life, and affects the human body in ways we are only beginning to understand. There are some who are hopeful that as we continue to learn more, we’ll finally come up with a vaccine solution.
Among these optimists are Helene Gayle, co-chair of this meeting, and a former official of the Gates Foundation, which has made major investments in the search for an AIDS vaccine. Gayle strongly disagreed with Barré-Sinoussi’s comments: “I’m fully confident we will have a vaccine,” she said, even if it’s only a therapeutic vaccine.
I wouldn’t ever argue that we should shut down an area of promising research. But as the years drag on, and the millions of dollars pile up, it’s worth asking whether, and when, this investment will finally deliver.
Drug trade from Afghanistan is spreading HIV.
The flourishing drug trade in Afghanistan is fuelling the AIDS epidemic in that country and its neighbours in Asia, warns a World Bank report released at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, this week.
Read the story here.
Drug trade from Afghanistan is spreading HIV.
The flourishing drug trade in Afghanistan is fuelling the AIDS epidemic in that country and its neighbours in Asia, warns a World Bank report released at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, this week.
Read the story here.
Scientists have a new ally in their battle to understand animal behaviour - a robotically animated dead squirrel. Designed by Aaron Rundus of the University of California, Davis, it is helping to show how California ground squirrels protect their pups from rattlesnakes.
Rundus previously discovered that ground squirrels heat their tails and swish them around, presumably to let an approaching rattlesnake know that they are not to be tangled with. Rattlesnakes are adept at sensing infrared radiation, so would be expected to spot the warning sign. But it was unclear if this supposed signal had any effect on the snakes.
Enter Robosquirrel, a stuffed squirrel featuring a heating element in its tail and a realistic remote-controlled swishing action. When Rundus presented this to rattlensnakes in the lab, they were more likely to coil up or poise to strike in fear. But with the heater turned off the rattlers remained unrattled, showing that the squirrels' heat-based signalling is a genuine mode of communication. Robosquirrel Mk II is reportedly in development, promising yet more life-like snake-scaring features.
Mating can be a dangerously passionate affair if you're a redback spider. The pressure to mate successfully inflames males' passions to such an extent that they rip apart their partner's exoskeleton in their desire to consumate their union.
Male redbacks embark on the aggressive mating when the female is in the final subadult stage, on the cusp of full sexual maturity, reports Maria Biaggio of the University of Toronto at Scarborough, who made the discovery. This way, they ensure that they are the first to inseminate a female, which is of crucial importance in the face of potential competition from other males. The tactic arose because the odds are stacked against males, for whom the mating game can be a life-or-death struggle - not least because an adult female will often eat him during courtship. Mating of sub-adult females has never before been seen in this species, but it explains why male redbacks are often seen living with juvenile females, says Biaggio - they are keeping a close eye on them until it's time to mate. Talk about jealous boyfriends...
Sperm frozen for 15 years produces healthy pups.
In a startling testimonial to the resilience of the male reproductive drive, a team of scientists has discovered that sperm recovered from dead, frozen mice are still capable of producing healthy pups.
Read the story here.
You can identify the people from the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles by their black t-shirts. On the front: “Got AIDS”? On the back: “How do you know?” It’s part of their campaign to get all black Americans tested. Also encountered in the halls of the conference center: a clutch of men and women in indigenous African garb, two Vietnamese men in the saffron robes of Buddhist monks, several women from India in brightly patterned saris, and two men excellently dressed as women.
These are sights you don’t see at the typical cardiology or neurology or rheumatology meeting. Sure, medical meetings are all hugely international these days. But people from all countries dress pretty much the same. The only people who stand out are the drug company reps, who are typically younger and much better-dressed than the medical professionals.
All these national costumes make AIDS conferences quite colorful. But they also signal something fundamental – the presence of patients, advocates, and community organizers. I’ve never seen a group of patients with hepatitis C at a virology conference demonstrating for wider liver transplant availability. Or a band of heart failure patients staging a die-in at a cardiology meeting to demand new and better drugs.
But you do see such things at AIDS conferences. At my first AIDS meeting, in Amsterdam in 1992, the first story I wrote was about an ACT-UP march on the opening day that deposited several (empty) wooden coffins in the cemetery of that city’s famous Old Church. Their message: failure to develop more effective drugs was killing people.
Activists and their messages have now been incorporated into the official agenda of the AIDS conferences, so that doctors who treat people with AIDS can learn about their patients’ problems and self-help efforts. This afternoon, in one room a U.S. scientist is talking about “Cell-virus interactions as targets for drug development: theVif-APOBEC3G Axis”. At the same time, in the adjacent room, an organizer from Argentina will speak on “Defending the rights of sex workers to organize.” Which session are you going to?
Researchers verify 'cytokine storm' theory of troubled trial.
Doctors who treated the patients in the infamous London drug trial in March have confirmed that they suffered an immune reaction called a cytokine storm. The verdict supports the theories put forward by immunologists in the immediate aftermath of the trial, which put the six participants in intensive care.
Read the story here.
Inhaling antiviral proteins could prevent severe attacks caused by the common cold.
No one likes a cold, but the virus is especially dangerous for asthma sufferers, in whom it can trigger severe asthma attacks. Now research published in Nature Medicine1 shows that asthmatics' low levels of particular antiviral proteins are to blame. The finding suggests a new way to treat virus-induced acute asthma attacks: let the patient inhale the relevant proteins.
Read the story here.
Those interested in the International AIDS conference may also be interested in a news feature by Erika Check, in Nature this week:
AIDS treatment: Staying the course
Some feared that widespread use of AIDS treatments in Africa would encourage drug resistance, with globally disastrous consequences. But there's no crisis yet, reports Erika Check.
Read the feature here (you will need a password).
For those following the International AIDS conference this week, you may be interested in this story in Nature's news section:
AIDS vaccine research becomes 'big science'
But 'mission-oriented' approach has its critics.
With no vaccine to show for more than 20 years of work, the HIV-vaccine community is being forced to radically change the way it works. Funding organizations are insisting on a 'big science' approach involving huge data-sharing collaborations. But AIDS researchers are divided over whether such a strategy will really speed progress towards a vaccine.
Read the story here. (you will need a password)
It might not put Chanel out of business, but for ground squirrels it's the must-have fragrance of the season. Researchers have discovered that several species of ground squirrel coat themselves in rattlesnake scent to confuse their slithering enemies. The wily squirrels splash on the 'eau de rattlesnake' by chewing on the shed skins of snakes and then licking their own fur, giving themselves a coating of snake scent that disguises them from the predators, reports Barbara Clucas of the University of California, Davis.
Ground squirrels are a favourite of animal behaviour researchers because their small size, tameness, complex social communication and wily predator-avoidance tactics makes them good to study. And there's no shortage of them at the Animal Behaviour Society meeting here in the Utah mountains. The surrounding countryside - and the outdoor terraces of the restaurants - are swarming with them.
Every research field has its buzzwords. And for those who study animal behaviour, the latest one is 'behavioural syndromes'. It's kind of like personality profiling for animals, and the concept's originators hope it will offer more realistic ways to think about their behaviour. And as some researchers point out, it could even shine a light on that most infuriatingly complex of animals, humans.
Behavioural syndromes are suites of matching behaviours that appear in different contexts, explains Andy Sih of the University of California, Davis, who has coined the term. For example, an animal might show aggressive behaviour in a range of different situations - say in defending a territory, courting a mate, or foraging for food. Other potential syndromes could include a general tendency towards boldness, or choosiness, or social interactivity, each of which might appear in a range of different situations.
Animal behaviour experts are still arguing over how these 'syndromes' should be defined and investigated, but the theory already promises to shed some light on some interesting questions, such as that of the overaggressive male. If a male has a generally aggressive syndrome, then he might be very good at defending his territory, but rubbish when it comes to attracting a female, because he's so aggressive that he becomes intimidating. We might also expect to see certain syndromes in certain contexts - for example, those who disperse most widely across a terrain are likely to be generally bold in their demeanour. In fact, Sih suggests, this may even help to explain the modern American psyche, given that the founding fathers were undoubtedly bold animals keen to make their mark and expand rapidly. "Now we want to drive hummers; we have a giant ecological footprint; we're obese," he says. "It's a melting-pot of bold colonists."
The idea of behavioural syndromes could shed yet more light on human society and politics, suggests David Wilson of Binghampton University in New York state. Using survey data from US teenagers, he studied the factors that make one more likely to display 'prosocial' behaviour - helping one's fellow man, whether it benefits you or not. One of the most important factors that make a person more likely to act in this neighbourly way is whether or not they live in a generally nurturing community. This leads Wilson to propose that people with different attitudes to helping in the community are like different species occupying different 'niches' in an ecosystem. As long as you're with your own kind you do ok - but as soon as you put a fish out of water, say by plonking a do-gooder in an area where people favour a dog-eat-dog approach, they will struggle to get along and will begin to lose out.
Of course, there are different reasons why people might differ in their levels of prosocial behaviour. Wilson found two general types of prosocial person: religious people who see it as a duty, and those who are not religious but have other moral convictions. Similarly, there are two reasons why someone might adopt a selfish, non-prosocial (antisocial?) stance; Wilson refers to these two types as 'narcissistic' and 'downtrodden'. So, in terms of behavioural syndromes at least, the Wall Street hotshot and the street-corner mugger might have more in common than they think.
This afternoon, as I was walking through an area of community organizations dubbed "The Global Village", a young Thai man handed me a booklet of Asian Programme Activities – including such titles as “Sex, Drugs and ARVs Behind Prison Bars” -- along with a small bag that proved to contain 2 condoms – one lubricated, the other not.
Welcome to Toronto, and the XVI AIDS Conference. This meeting is unlike any other. There are 24,000 scientists, activists, and government officials here. There are celebrities, like Bill Gates and Richard Gere. And there are about 3,000 journalists, including me, William Check, and my daughter, Erika Check.
I’m the crusty old-timer. I’ve been covering HIV and AIDS for 24 years, including four previous AIDS conferences -- Amsterdam, Berlin, Vancouver and Geneva. Erika, a relative whippersnapper, attended the last AIDS conference in 2004 in Bangkok. Welcome to our blog from Toronto. We hope to give you a taste of what this meeting is all about. And if we disagree with each other, just remember: father knows best.
The father-and-daughter team of William and Erika Check will be blogging from the XVI International AIDS Conference here from 13-18 August. Check back for updates.
William Check is also writing for the AIDS conference newspaper, The Daily Voice, this week. But his views expressed here are entirely personal; he is not a spokesperson for the conference.
Erika Check is Nature's Biomedical Correspondent, and is usually based in San Francisco.
News@nature.com gethers our stories on security technologies.
When British authorities announced Thursday that they had thwarted a terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up ten aircraft, the spotlight was thrown once more on airport security. The terrorists planned to smuggle liquid explosives disguised as beverages and other common products in their hand luggage, and set them off with simple detonators, which could take the form of anything from a camera to a digital music player.
Read the 'in focus' piece here.
Rogue golf course strain may harm wild habitats, ecologists warn.
An escaped strain of transgenic grass bred for golf courses could wreak havoc on native grassland species in the northwestern United States, ecologists are warning.
Read the story here.
Glowing molecules can be distinguished one at a time.
Molecules, students are often told, are too small to see with a light microscope. But not any more.
Read the story here.
Learn about the birds and the bees as Michael Hopkin joins the Animal Behavior Society on its annual get-together in Snowbird, Utah.
He'll be blogging from the conference from 13-16 August.
Researchers chart out insertions and deletions in the genome.
The way that some pieces of DNA are chopped and changed within individual genomes has been mapped for the first time. The catalogue of insertions and deletions in the human genome could eventually help scientists to find treatments for diseases, tailored to the genetic makeup of individuals.
Read the story here.
200-year-old tumour has mellowed with age.
A contagious form of dog cancer that is transmitted by sex has been traced back to its probable origins: a single wolf or dog that lived in Asia more than 200 years ago.
Read the story here.
Weather 'hindcast' could spell bad news for sea-level rise.
Southern Hemisphere warming has surprisingly not led to increased snowfall over Antarctica during the past 50 years, researchers report today. If the findings are confirmed, this suggests that global sea-level rise might proceed faster than previously thought.
Read the story here.
Snow leopards tracked by monitoring fright of their prey.
The endangered snow leopard has returned to the valleys around Mount Everest, say wildlife researchers working in Nepal. And how do they know it's back? Because the leopards' traditional prey are terrified.
Read the story here.
And find Mike's blog from this ecological conference here.
Biodiversity loss isn't just bad for the species that go extinct - it can also lead to major increases in human disease. That's the message from ecologists at the ESA meeting, who are today calling for greater awareness of the often complex link between ecosystem harm and human health.
Damage to ecosystems can contribute to human disease in three main ways, says Osvaldo Sala of Brown University, one of the ecologists spearheading the campaign. Species loss can wipe out many plant species of medicinal value; it can reduce ecosystems' ability to regulate the buildup of toxic compounds in food and water; and it can increase the spread of infectious disease by cutting the number of alternative host species besides humans.
That process is illustrated by the rise in malaria in Peru as a result of human development. Jonathan Patz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has discovered that, since the construction of a new road through the Peruvian Amazon in the 1980s, the malaria-carrying mosquito Anopheles darlingi has risen to prominence, bringing with it a severe increase in disease. Previously, this mosquito was hardly present at all, and in its meteoric rise it has outcompeted more than 400 other mosquito species, most of them harmless to humans.
The problem, as with many in the complex world of ecology, is that it's difficult to know how to begin to tackle the problem in a concrete way. With so many variables at play, changing one thing could have unforseen knock-on consequences elsewhere. The Peruvian region that Patz studied, for example, was already colonized by humans, but it was the construction of the road that seemed to boost the mosquitoes. It's not really clear why.
In a bid to form a coherent plan of action, Patz and his colleagues have organized a the first ever 'ecohealth' conference, to be held in Madison in October. The problem extends beyond simple direct increases in disease-related organisms such as mosquitoes. In some cases, for instance where overapplication of nitrogen fertilizer leads to unexpected booms in ecosystem growth that can fuel disease-causing microbes, the picture is so complex as to be almost intractable without a lot of detailed study.
Often, the solution will involve the efforts of scientists who do not have much prior experience of thinking about human disease. "I came to this as a biogeochemist," says Alan Townsend of the University of Colorado. "But we are starting to see that the nitrogen cycle not only has a litany of environmental effects, but also there's a lot of smoke and fire to indicate that it affects human health."
This week’s Nature Podcast tucks into aqua-rice, discovers how plants inherit their parents' stress, examines AIDS drugs in Africa and the ethics of egg donation, and has more on the cosmological conundrums of lithium and sizes up trans-neptunian objects.
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America's obesity is being passed to next generation.
It might not seem inevitable that overweight mothers will have fatter babies. But this is exactly what's happening in the United States, say researchers who have documented how the 'obesity epidemic' is being passed on to the next generation.
Read the story here.
If you've ever tried to eat lunch in an urban park you might know this already, but ecologists have shown that squirrels get a lot more cocky when there are loads of them around. Tommy Parker of the University of Missouri-Columbia studied squirrels in several parks in Baltimore, as well as Lafayette Park in nearby Washington DC - the single place with the highest density of grey squirrels in the world. What's more, it's bang opposite the White House: "It's hard to do science with all the secret service guys around," Parker says.
The results showed that squirrels, like people, get more pushy in crowded urban areas. Parks with the highest squirrel densities witnessed more squirrel-on-squirrel brawls, and the rodents were also less nervous of people. "The Lafeyette squirrels are very aggressive and not wary at all," says Parker. "You could walk directly up to them and they would just lean on your shoe." Yet another reason not to loiter near the White House, then...
Experts turn to old notebooks and photos to press home global warming message.
Climate researchers and ecologists are usually known for using complex computer simulations to study environmental change. But Boston University researchers are using more humble sources to determine the effects of climate change on local flora and fauna.
Read the story here.
Flood-resistant crops could aid developing nations.
Biologists have found a gene that enables rice to live longer underwater. The new breed can survive underwater for up to two weeks, researchers say — most rice plants die within days of being submerged.
Read the story here.
Technique reveals secrets about early animals.
Using techniques borrowed from medicine and particle physics, palaeontologists have reconstructed the three-dimensional structure of tiny fossilized embryos that are more than 500 million years old.
Read story here
One way to keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is to put it back in the ground.
Here Nature takes a close look at carbon sequestration.
The hundred billion tonne challenge
When will coal-fired power plants start storing away their carbon?
Black is the new green
Enriching the world's soils with charcoal
EDITORIAL Capturing carbon
Sequestration of greenhouse gases could play an important role in capping emissions.
This week, Nature takes an in-depth look at the practice of donating eggs to research.
You'll need a password to access some of these articles, but the news stories are free for a week, and our discussion page is always open.
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Ethicists and biologists ponder the price of eggs
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Often, the best way to explain a scientific idea to someone is to put it in terms they can easily envisage, using a cleverly chosen metaphor, simile or other quip. A bon mot can clarify a tricky concept more easily than all the powerpoint presentations in the world – a case in point being Mark Twain’s pithy meteorological explanation: “Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.”
So the ESA decided to hold a competition to find the best analogy to explain an ecological concept – in a field where ecologists often have problems explaining ideas to each other, let alone to the public. The runner-up’s prize went to the following explanation of the staggering odds against an individual salmon successfully reproducing: Imagine you have to drive from the centre of a city all the way to the highway on the outskirts without stopping even once. Thus, if you come up against just a single red light anywhere on the journey you don’t make it.
The winning entry sought to explain the complex issue of ecosystem stability in terms of Jenga. Say each brick represents a species – at first, removing a piece makes the system a little more unstable, but overall it still stands up. But remove too many bricks and there comes a point when it all comes crashing down.
Programme aims to use metal taps and work tops to kill hardy bacteria.
In Africa's ongoing struggle against tuberculosis, a group of scientists and industry representatives are now exploring a plan to introduce copper pipes, doorknobs and work surfaces to the country's waterways and clinics. The metal's known antibiotic activity, they say, could provide a simple way to help fight the deadly infection.
Read the story here.
Inflated craft is holding up, but fate of guests remains uncertain.
Nearly a month after the successful launch and deployment of an inflatable model space hotel (see 'The inflatable space hotel'), the craft is still going strong — but the fate of its residents is as yet unknown.
The spacecraft, a 4-metre-wide watermelon-shaped hostelry called Genesis I, was launched on 12 July by US hotelier and millionaire Robert Bigelow. His company, Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace, aims to use the test-run to develop inflatable space habitats for humans.
But for the meantime, this craft carries four Madagascar hissing cockroaches and roughly 20 Mexican jumping beans. News@nature.com set out to discover what had become of these hapless guests, and take a look at the state of their hotel room.
Discover what we found out here.
While it might be true that no man is an island, it seems that his teeth are. According to researchers studying the bacteria that cause gum disease, your pearly whites have more in common with a tropical archipelago than you think.
Clara Long of Stanford Medical School in California (the spritual home of the perfect smile) have been applying the techniques of biogeography - a discipline that more commonly deals with patterns of species distribution on scattered islands of terrain - to work out which bacteria live where in your mouth.
The picture is surprisingly complex. Using DNA-sampling methods, Long and her colleagues estimate that more than 700 different bacterial species make their home in your mouth. And each tooth does indeed seem to be an island - patterns of species colonization are strikingly different between neighbouring teeth. In fact, if one of your teeth succumbs to gum disease (which affects up to 85% of US adults) or the more severe periodontitis, the next tooth to be infected is likely to be one opposite, not the one adjacent.
The emerging picture of the intricate ecosystem inside your mouth suggests that the main benefit of brushing is to prevent the colonizers at the top of the food chain from gaining a foothold - although many bacteria that live in your mouth may actually prevent the disease-causing ones from getting a look-in. So it seems that the cartoon diagrams beloved of toothpaste adverts are lying to us, and that bacteria are an unavoidable ever-present in our mouths. After all, you swallow around 100 million of them every day.
Perhaps most strangely of all, the sacred act of flossing may inadvertently spread infection around the entire body, by causing tiny cuts in the gums that allow bacteria into the bloodstream. This has been linked to a range of medical conditions from cardiovascular infections to early induction of labour. On balance though, as your dentist will tell you, that's not an excuse not to floss...
Cooperative society gets stressed out when babies are involved.
Are meerkats friendly altruistic animals who look after each other's young, or a back-stabbing selfish bunch?
Find out by reading the story here.
Artificial electric currents guide walkers round obstacles.
It sounds like the stuff of magic — or a Harry Potter Imperius curse. But scientists have announced that they can guide your movements by remote control. They've steered blindfolded humans around the paths of a botanical garden in Sydney, Australia, using electric currents applied just behind the walkers' ears to affect their balance and navigation. The same technique, they say, might be used in virtual-reality simulations, or to cure motion sickness.
Read the story here.
Study raises questions over prenatal procedure.
The type of ultrasound used to scan babies in the womb disturbs brain cells in mouse fetuses, say researchers. The finding fuels a debate about the safety of the technique for unborn babies.
Read the story here.
Psychedelic ketamine hits the blues surprisingly fast.
The 'club drug' ketamine may be the fastest-acting antidepressant ever tested, researchers report today.
Read the story here.
Almost a year after Hurricane Katrina, researchers are still wringing their hands over the continued failure to start thinking about how to stop it happening again. The time has come, they say, for some drastic solutions... just don't expect them to be popular.
"We have to get people out of wishful thinking," says Paul Keddy of Southeastern Louisiana University. "The next one is only a matter of time." With huge swathes of land along the Gulf and Florida coasts just a few feet above sea level, the optimism of those trying to carry on as normal is similar to the naivety of the Trojans in letting in the Greeks in their wooden horse, he reckons.
Instead of letting more drown in floods, it's time to get serious, he says. Step one - close the ouflow canal at the end of the Mississippi River (which incidentally flows just metres from the conference hall). This artificial channel was responsible for much of the floodwater surge. Keddy's other ideas are more drastic: stop people building on waterfront property (Keddy says that many Louisiana parishes do not have land-zoning laws because they are viewed as a communist conspiracy); decide which cities you want to keep (New Orleans, Tampa, Miami, etc), build walls around them and declare everything else a 'storm and flood zone'; and give millions of hectares of the southeastern United States back to Mother Nature.
These solutions are as necessary as they are incendiary, Keddy argues. "Don't shoot the messenger," he pleads. "We have to think now about protecting these cities." But resistance from those in the "zone of denial", as he calls it, will be inevitable. Scientists have to meet the challenge head-on, he argues, if they want to remain true to themselves: "What is the function of scholars in an irrational or even anti-rational culture?"
More than 2,500 ecologists have descended on Memphis, Tennessee, for this year's annual conference, which has the them 'Icons and upstarts of ecology'. And the society chose a political upstart (if indeed it's possible to be an upstart at 58 years of age) to give the opening address. Ron Sims, county executive for King County, Washington, is the first county leader in the United States to sign up to the Chicago Climate Exchange, a voluntary counterpart to Europe's formal emissions-trading scheme, which aims to cut emissions by imposing caps on emissions and then trading in the right to exceed them if necessary.
Sims claims that the move, along with a raft of other green initiatives, has the backing of the impressive roll-call of businesses, Microsoft and Starbucks included, that are based in his backyard. But his attitude makes him an upstart as compared with the continued slow progress of the federal government in tackling carbon emissions. In an impassioned speech, he argued that all politics is ultimately local, and that "the federal government will move slowly by design". He also called for scientists to speak up for themselves, citing the oft-quoted example that, among scientists, there is a genuine consensus that man-made climate change is really happening, however much politicians and the media would like to maintain that the issue is shrouded in controversy.
Although this is not a climate conference, there was much nodding of heads, because ecosystems so often hold up a mirror to climate change. And the fact that we're in Memphis, which is currently sweltering under an official severe heat advisory warning, was not lost on anyone either.
Increased tendency to mutate is handed down to next generation.
Plants under stress not only activate their own defences, but also manage to pass on a possible protective strategy to their descendants. That's the surprising conclusion of a study published online today by Nature1.
Read the story here.
Equations get to grips with patterns in a growing cat's coat.
No one knows quite how animals with flashy coats get their patterns. But an equation developed by Alan Turing in 1952 is good at producing dead ringers for zebra hides and leopard spots. Now, the equation has been used to model how spots can morph to more complex patterns as an animal ages.
Read the story here.
Claims of 'neutralizing' radioactivity grab headlines and have even piqued the interest of Madonna. Phil Ball explains, to her and us, whether any of it will solve our problems with nuclear waste.
Read the column here.
Michael Hopkin discusses the health of the world's ecosystems at the Ecological Society of America's meeting in Memphis, Tennessee. Check back here for his diary entries from 6-11 August.
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Volunteers vied to be first to spot an interstellar particle... or a wedding snap.
Just days after its official launch, the Stardust@home project has already run into a slew of problems: bizarre wedding snaps replaced microscope slides, the server went down and now there are accusations of cheating. But the project, which asks volunteers to search images for interstellar particles, seems well organized — and could produce results in a few months' time.
Read the story here.
Ambitious plan surprises fellow space agencies.
Japan's space agency has provoked surprise among other space experts by re-affirming its ambition to build a habitable base on the Moon within decades. At a lunar exploration symposium in Tokyo this week, head of the country's lunar and planetary exploration programme Junichiro Kawaguchi announced a deadline of 2020 for sending astronauts to the Moon, and 2030 for constructing the base.
Read the story here.
Bulging water droplets could make for cheap and simple sensors.
Mini-lenses made out of water droplets have been made to bulge and contract in response to temperature and pH changes in their environment. The clever trick makes for a tiny sensor whose changing focal length could one day be used to quickly and simply monitor all sorts of things, from blood samples to miniature chemical reactors.
Read the full story here.
Jupiter-sized body survives the explosion of its companion star unscathed.
In a stellar version of the tale of Jonah, a 'failed star' known as a brown dwarf has survived being swallowed by the fiery bloat of a red giant in its death throes.
Read the story here.
Protein discovery reveals mechanism of anaphylactic shock.
For some people, it just takes a taste of peanut to induce a sudden and possibly fatal allergic reaction. Now researchers have unpicked the mechanism behind this anaphylactic shock, and have managed to protect mice against the condition.
Read the story here.
On this week's Nature Podcast fly with warmth-seeking bees, check out smart microlenses, get a whiff of human pheromones, then discover atomic ecology, the age of whales, leaf litter secrets, the solution to Poinncare's conjection, and find out what happens when stars collide.
Tell us what you think of this week's stories by posting comments and joining the discussion.
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Primate IQ test hails orang-utans as our smartest relatives.
A survey of primate IQ has cemented apes' reputation as our most intelligent cousins. An analysis of a slew of studies designed to spot smartness has concluded that orang-utans and chimps are the chief eggheads, with monkeys and lemurs trailing in their intellectual wake.
Read the story here.
Attempts to deliberately fashion a deadly strain have fallen flat.
Researchers have tried to create a pandemic H5N1 influenza strain - and failed.
Read the story here.
Recent work confirms proof of century-old problem.
Some speculation always precedes the announcement of the Fields medals, the most illustrious awards in mathematics. But this year rumours have an extra dimension: one of the prizes to be awarded at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid on 22 August may be given for the solution of a century-old problem.
Read the story here.
Better electronic capacitors could come from an unlikely source.
New materials for advanced electronics are usually expensive, high-tech substances. But a team of researchers in France has shown that energy-storage components called supercapacitors can be made from a remarkably cheap and humble material: baked seaweed.
Read the story here.
As two sporting stars undergo doping tests, news@nature.com finds out whether cheaters can really be caught.
In the past week, cyclist Floyd Landis and sprinter Justin Gatlin have both been singled out by doping tests - not for any new-fangled drug, but for the old-fashioned sex hormone testosterone. Landis made a spectacular comeback in the 17th leg of the Tour de France to take first place in the famous cycle race. But urine samples taken following that stunning performance showed unusually high levels of testosterone. And Gatlin, who shares the world record for the 100-metre sprint, tested positive for synthetic testosterone after a race in April this year. Both men maintain their innocence.
Read the story here.
