Author Archives: Sarah Zhang

US Supreme Court to hear challenge on greenhouse gas limits

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The US Supreme Court agreed today to review the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants — a key piece of  the climate change strategy unveiled by US President Barack Obama earlier this year.

Industry groups and several states are challenging the EPA’s decision to regulate greenhouse gases produced by stationary sources, including power plants, under the Clean Air Act. Oral arguments in the case are expected to take place early next year.

But the court rejected the groups’ request to review whether the EPA has any authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Opponents of the regulations argued that there is insufficient evidence that the gases pose a risk to public health.

In 2007, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA required the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles if the gases endangered public welfare. In 2009, the EPA reviewed the evidence and declared greenhouse gases a threat, setting the stage for the emissions limits.

Rules for automobiles are already in place. The EPA proposed a rule for new power plants last month that would essentially ban the construction of coal-fired facilities. The agency is expected to release a proposal for existing power plants next June. Such facilities account for roughly 40% of US greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Saudi Arabian health official deflects MERS questions

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Saudi Arabia is beefing up its surveillance of a deadly coronavirus in advance of Muslims’ annual pilgrimage to Mecca, or Hajj, which is set to begin on 13 October.

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS) has infected 135 people and killed 58 since it emerged about a year ago. Saudi Arabia has been hardest hit, with 117 confirmed cases and 49 deaths.

Now, with nearly 2 million foreign pilgrims expected to journey to Saudi Arabia for the five-day Hajj, the country is on high alert for signs of new MERS cases, according to Ziad Memish, Saudi Arabia’s deputy minister of health for public health.

Saudi Arabia will have public-health officers staffing all land, air and sea ports of entry day and night during the pilgrimage, Memish said during a 2 October talk at the IDWeek infectious-disease conference in San Francisco, California. Hospitals in the cities of Jeddah, Mecca, and Medina will be actively screening pneumonia patients for MERS using tests that produce results in six hours.

Saudi officials are also asking pilgrims to wear face masks — and for those who are elderly, pregnant or ill to stay home. “The bad news is they still come to the Hajj, so pray for us,” Memish said.

But he deflected questions about what his country is doing to determine the source and transmission patterns of the still-mysterious MERS, despite criticism that Saudi Arabia is moving too slowly on such work. Although Memish confirmed that Saudi Arabia will be conducting a comprehensive case-control study — comparing sick and healthy individuals to look for possible infection sources — he declined to offer further details.

In the lead up to the Hajj, the World Health Organization has also called on countries sending pilgrims to step up surveillance efforts. However, many of those countries, especially in the developing world, lack the resources to do so. Millions of pilgrims, not on the Hajj specifically, have been through Saudi Arabia since the MERS outbreak began without bringing the virus home. But other travellers have, and it remains to be seen what will happen in October and beyond.

 

Nobel prize guessing game begins

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‘Tis the season: with just about two weeks to go until the winners of the 2013 Nobel prizes are announced, speculation about who will win and who will get snubbed is once again brewing. Thomson Reuters — the firm that maintains the Journal Citation Index — released its predictions today based on, of course, citations.

Anyone who takes issue with the disproportionate attention paid to Nobel prizes or citation counts might want to look away now.

Among the noteworthy names on Thomson Reuters’ list are François Englert and Peter Higgs for their prediction of the Brout–Englert–Higgs particle in physics. In medicine, the list is topped by Adrian Bird, Howard Cedar and Aharon Razin for their discoveries in DNA methylation and gene expression. Chemists on the list include M. G. Finn, Valery Fokin and Barry Sharpless for the development of modular click chemistry.

Thomson Reuters’ full list below names multiple teams tipped each for prize. Since this forecast first began in 2002, 27 of those researchers have eventually gone on to win a Nobel.

If this all seems worthy of some (fake) money, the Nobel Exchange run by the science magazine Nautilus is open for speculation.

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CDC issues report on controlling antibiotic resistance

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cdc antibiotic resistanceIn a comprehensive report on antibiotic-resistant superbugs, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn’t shy away from terms like “nightmare”, but its analysis is not completely pessimistic. The takeaway? It’s not too late to combat the emergence of new microbial threats.

“We talk about  the pre-antibiotic era and antibiotic era,” says CDC director Thomas Frieden. “If we’re not careful, we will soon be in a post-antibiotic era.”

Every year in the US, 2 million people are infected with bacteria resistant to at least one antibiotic, and 23,000 people die from those infections. In addition, Clostridium difficile, a hospital-acquired infection that is often caused by antibiotic use,  afflicts another 250,000 Americans.

Much of the antibiotic resistance that has emerged is a product of poor prescribing practices by physicians, the CDC says. It estimates that up to half of all antibiotic prescriptions do not meet current guidelines for antibiotic use.

The agency’s report recommends four core strategies to limit antibiotic resistance: working to prevent infections, improving the tracking of antibiotic-resistant infections, making judicious use of antibiotics and developing new drugs and diagnostic tests. For much of the past century, society has taken the creation of new antibiotics for granted. Without any new drugs in the immediate pipeline, however, better policies are now the key to combating resistance to existing antibiotics.

The CDC also ranked drug-resistant bacteria by the threat they pose. The agency’s list of 18 bugs is topped by C. difficile, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae and drug-resistant gonorrhea (Neisseria gonorrhoeae), all considered ‘urgent’ threats. The complete ranking of antibiotic-resistant bacteria threats is below.

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$2-million X prize seeks new sensors to study ocean acidification

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Stony coral in Micronesia.

Rising ocean acidity threatens reefs like this stony coral in Micronesia.{credit}NOAA Photo Library{/credit}

Scientists who study ocean acidification must confront a fundamental problem: it is hard to measure exactly by how much the ocean’s pH is changing. Today’s sensors don’t work well at depth or over long periods of time, and they are too expensive to deploy widely. That is where the US$2-million Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health X Prize comes in.

The 22-month competition will award two $1-million prizes, one to the best low-cost sensor and one to the most accurate. The competition’s organizers decided to award two prizes because the two goals present different engineering challenges. Registration opens on 1 January 2014.

As carbon dioxide levels rise in the atmosphere, ocean water takes up some of the gas and becomes more acidic. This can harm shell-building marine life such as coral, whose calcium carbonate skeletons dissolve in the increasingly acidic water. All of this research is bedeviled by the simple lack of technology to monitor ocean pH in real time across the world.

“I’m so excited for the potential of this prize because then we will have real understanding,” said Jane Lubchenco, former administrator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in an announcement broadcast today on Huffington Post Live.

This is the second collaboration between the X Prize Foundation of California and Wendy Schmidt, who co-founded the Schmidt Ocean Institute with her husband Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman. In 2011, the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge awarded $1.4 million to projects cleaning up oil spills.

As Nature reported in March, Schmidt and her institute — which launched the private research ship Falkor — are stepping in to replace dwindling public research funds. The X Prize is also meant to attract entrepreneurs and tinkerers who may be outside the traditional science research complex.

The X Prize Foundation’s best known competitions have involved space, such as the Ansari X Prize competition to design commercial spacecraft and the Google Lunar X Prize to explore the Moon. The group had to cancel its genome-sequencing competition earlier this year after receiving only two entries. Critics said the sequencing industry was competitive enough that an X prize didn’t provide much extra incentive.