Justastory

I loved this story well put together by Tom Lamont in the Observer this weekend. My keep-fit-mad 17 year old son is a prime candidate for this US survivalist stuff. Hand him an AK47 and wait until you see the whites of their eyes.

Abandon any notion of surviving the apocalypse by doing anything as boringly obvious as running for the highest hill, or eating cockroaches. The American firm Vivos is now offering you the chance to meet global catastrophe (caused by terrorism, tsunami, earthquake, volcano, pole shift, Iran, “social anarchy”, solar flare – a staggering list of potential world-murderers are considered) in style.

Vivos is building 20 underground “assurance of life” resorts across the US, capable of sustaining up to 4,000 people for a year when the earth no longer can. The cost? A little over £32,000 a head, plus a demeaning-sounding screening test that determines whether you are able to offer meaningful contribution to the continuation of the human race. Company literature posits, gently, that “Vivos may prove to be the next Genesis”, and they are understandably reluctant to flub the responsibility.

Should you have the credentials and the cash, the rewards of a berth in a Vivos shelter seem high. Each staffed complex has a decontamination shower and a jogging machine; a refrigerated vault for human DNA and a conference room with wheely chairs. There are TVs and radios, flat-screen computers, a hospital ward, even a dentist’s surgery ready to serve those who forgot to pack a toothbrush in the hurry. “Virtually any meal” can be cooked from a stockpile of ingredients that includes “baked potato soup” but, strangely, no fish, tinned or otherwise. Framed pictures of mountain ranges should help ease the loss of a world left behind.

Vivos says it has already received 1,000 applications. (more…)

The Hadron Collider uses a special kind of liquid helium that is incredibly expensive to produce – even worse it is physically very difficult to contain – across 27 kilometers of its run I would say it’s next to impossible. No surprises this morning when they tried to run it again it had to stop within minutes. 2.6 billion quid. The Telegraph covers it more kindly than I would today.

Dubbed the world’s largest scientific experiment, the giant atom smasher holds the promise of revealing details about theoretical particles and microforces, scientists say.
But initial attempts on Tuesday were unsuccessful because problems developed with the beams, said scientists working on the massive machine.

That meant that the protons had to be “dumped” from the collider and new beams had to be injected.
“It’s a very complicated machine and we have ups and downs,” said Michael Barnett of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Right now we have a down.”
Two beams of protons began 10 days ago to speed at high energy in opposite directions around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva.
The beams were pushed to 3.5 trillion electron volts in recent days, the highest energy achieved by any physics accelerator — some three times greater than the previous record.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, is trying to use the powerful superconducting magnets to force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles.
They could have been successful immediately, but such huge machines can be so tricky to run that it could take days.
When collisions become routine, the beams will be packed with hundreds of billions of protons, but the particles are so tiny that few will collide at each crossing.
Steve Myers, CERN’s director for accelerators and technology, describes the challenge of lining up the beams as being akin to “firing needles across the Atlantic and getting them to collide half way.”
He said the problems on Tuesday started with a power supply that tripped and had to be reset. The second time, the system designed to protect the machine shut it down.
That was likely to have been a misreading by the system rather than any basic problem, said Barnett.
The collisions will come over the objections of some people who fear they could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
CERN and many scientists dismiss any threat to Earth or people on it, saying that any such holes would be (more…)

We have all seen and heard this story about successful attempts at communicating with people in a Vegetative State – this is a very well informed article about the topic from the New Scientist this week written by Celeste Biever.

THE inner voice of people who appear unconscious can now be heard. For the first time, researchers have struck up a conversation with a man diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. All they had to do was monitor how his brain responded to specific questions. This means that it may now be possible to give some individuals in the same state a degree of autonomy.

“They can now have some involvement in their destiny,” says Adrian Owen of the University of Cambridge, who led the team doing the work.

In an earlier experiment, published in 2006, Owen’s team asked a woman previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state (VS) to picture herself carrying out one of two different activities. The resulting brain activity suggested she understood the commands and was therefore conscious.

Now Owen’s team has taken the idea a step further. A man also diagnosed with VS was able to answer yes and no to specific questions by imagining himself engaging in the same activities.

The results suggest that it is possible to give a degree of choice to some people who have no other way of communicating with the outside world. “We are not just showing they are conscious, we are giving them a voice and a way to communicate,” says neurologist Steven Laureys of the University of Liège in Belgium, Owen’s collaborator.

When someone is in a VS, they can breathe unaided, have intact reflexes but seem completely unaware. But it is becoming clear that some people who appear to be vegetative are in fact minimally conscious. They are in a kind of twilight state in which they may feel some pain, experience emotion and communicate to a limited extent. These two states can be distinguished from each other via bedside behavioural tests – but these tests are not perfect and can miss patients who are aware but unable to move. So researchers (more…)

I read this story on the BBC website today. US sharpshooters are using a sophisticated light-enhancing gunsight – par for the course in this day and age of advanced weaponry. However the sights are engraved with Biblical texts. Reminded me of Pulp Fiction when the scary hitman (samuel Jackson) reads you a passage from the Bible before bumping you off. Also made me think of a recent conversation with a friend about Holy War – it’s getting just like it used to be in the days of the Crusades.

acog gunsight $998 retail

Coded references to biblical passages are inscribed on gunsights widely used by the US and British military in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has emerged.

The markings include “2COR4:6″ and “JN8:12″, relating to verses in the books of II Corinthians and John.

Trijicon, the US-based manufacturer, was founded by a devout Christian, and says it runs to “Biblical standards”.

But military officials in the US and UK have expressed concern over the way the markings will be perceived.

The company has added the references to its sights for many years, but the issue surfaced only recently when soldiers complained to an advocacy group.

Versions of Trijicon’s Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight (Acog) are used by the US Special Operations Forces, the US Marine Corps and the US Army.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence has just ordered 480 Acog sights for use on its new Sharpshooter rifles – to be used by troops in Afghanistan. Other versions of the Acog sight are “widely in service”, the ministry says.

The inscriptions are subtle and appear in raised lettering at the end of the stock number.

John 8:12 reads: “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

The nod to part of the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians, found on the company’s Reflex sight, references the text: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

An MoD spokesman told the BBC the ministry appreciated the biblical references could cause offence and was talking to its supplier, but was “not aware at the time of purchase that these markings had any broader significance”.

The US Defense Department is a major customer of Trijicon’s, signing deals for $66m (£40.3m) of the company’s products in 2009 alone.

The US Marine Corps told the BBC they were “concerned with how this may be perceived” and were meeting with the company to “discuss future sight procurements”.

We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow those morals
Trijicon

The US Army said it was looking into any potential policy violation.

The issue has been thrust into the spotlight by the US Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) – an advocacy group that seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military.

On 14 January, the MRFF received an e-mail, purportedly from a Muslim US Army infantryman, complaining about the markings.

“Many soldiers know of them and are very confused as to why they are there and what it is supposed to mean.”

The email adds: “Everyone is worried that if they were captured in combat that the enemy would use the Bible quotes against them in captivity or some other form of propaganda.”

MRFF president Mikey Weinstein says the inscriptions could give the Taliban and other enemy forces a propaganda tool.

“I don’t have to wonder for a nanosecond how the American public would react if citations from the Koran were being inscribed onto these US armed forces gunsights instead of New Testament citations,” he said.

A Trijicon spokesman told the BBC the company “has been working to provide America’s military men and women with high quality, innovative sighting systems for the weapons they use”.

“Our effort is simple and straightforward: to help our servicemen and women win the war on terror and come home safe to their families.

“As part of our faith and our belief in service to our country, Trijicon has put scripture references on our products for more than two decades.

“As long as we have men and women in danger, we will continue to do everything we can to provide them with both state-of-the-art technology and the never-ending support and prayers of a grateful nation,” the spokesman added.

The company states on its website: “We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow those morals.”

I found this appalling story in The Independent this week. Fancy being told you were all clear then – oh surely some mistake, you have got cancer after all….

Fourteen women in Britain have been told they have breast cancer after a hospital radiologist wrongly gave them the all-clear.

The unnamed member of staff at Accrington Victoria Hospital, Lancashire, was responsible for 355 screenings that later came under scrutiny.

A total of 85 women were asked to have a second breast examination and of these the 14 were found to have cancer.

They have yet to learn whether the late diagnosis will affect their chances of survival.

A further four patients were found to have abnormal cells. However, health officials said the prognosis in each of these cases was unaffected by the radiologist’s errors.

Senior officials at East Lancashire NHS Trust have confirmed that the radiologist has since left the hospital.

Accrington Victoria carries out breast cancer screenings for the whole of East Lancashire.

The women affected by the error are understood to live in and around Burnley, Blackburn, Darwen, Accrington, Rossendale and the Ribble Valley.

Rineke Schram, the trust’s medical director, issued an apology “for any distress and anxiety caused.”

She went on: “The delay in identifying the women with breast cancer does mean there has been a delay in these cancers being treated.

“It is unfortunately not possible to state with certainty whether this delay in treatment has affected the prognosis, other than to state that early-stage breast cancers have a good prognosis.

“The cancers have been picked up through screening, albeit with a delay.”

Regional breast cancer experts were drafted in to Accrington after the initial concerns were raised last year.

An independent review concentrated its attention on the work carried out by a single radiologist over a period of three years.

Officials have refused to reveal the extent of the delay between the original scans and the eventual diagnosis in each case.

It is known that the radiologist involved in the alert carried out his last screenings in December. He left the trust in April.

Mrs Schram said: “The work of the trust’s other breast screening radiologists has been independently assessed and found to be of a high standard.

“The trust will be commissioning a further independent review to provide further assurance and ensure lessons are learned.”

Dr Ellis Friedman, director of public health for NHS East Lancashire, said: “The incident team, which I chaired, has thoroughly reviewed the incident and will ensure that lessons will be learned.”

Thanks once again to the heroic Richard Dean for this story – which ran in the Daily Telegraph originally. Apparently a huge nuclear plant in Scotland is being effectively cleansed of plutonium deposits using Cillit Bang – which also did a very good job on the greasy deposits in my cooker extraction hood last weekend incidentally. Hmm I wonder whether Cillit Bang do affiliate links……

Decontamination experts at the former nuclear site at Dounreay, northern Scotland, are using the Cillit Bang household cleaner to remove radioactive plutonium stains.The huge site in Caithness is in the process of being decommissioned but workers found their normal cleaning fluid was slowing down the job of dismantling an experimental chemical plant used in the 1980s to recycle plutonium liquor.

One of the team suggested £1.99 Cillit Bang after watching a television advertisement that shows dirt being stripped from a 10p coin.

The four-storey chemical plant consists of a series of vessels, pipes and boxes made from steel and toughened glass. The solutions which ran through it left the steel stained with plutonium, creating a hazard for the team taking it apart.

David Hanson, project manager with Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd, said the efficacy of Cillit Bang was helping drive down the £2.6 billion cost of demolishing the site.

He said: “We need to decontaminate as much of the surfaces as possible before we can cut them up. The normal agents we’d use on steel and glass need time to dry and this slowed us down.

“The acids that had been used years ago also created problems. It meant we had to think carefully about the most effective way to wipe the plutonium from the steelwork before we could cut it up.

“One of the guys suggested Cillit Bang. He remembered seeing it dissolve the grime on a coin in an advert on TV and thought it was worth looking at. I’m very glad we did. We tested it and found it very effective.”

The 15-strong clean-up team wear whole-body plastic suits with their own oxygen supply and often need four or even five layers of gloves to protect them from radiation.

Mr Manson added: “The ductwork is stainless steel and contamination levels have been significantly reduced following spray and wipedown with Cillit Bang.”

Bosses at the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, which is also being decommissioned, are among those who have been in touch to learn more about the discovery.

This article in the New Scientist caught my eye today – and then I thought – what if this weapon DID catch your eye? It would still be shocking you while you were reeling from a serious and very painful injury.

THE manufacturer of the Taser stun gun is sparking new controversy with the commercial launch of a long-range version that can be fired from a 12-bore shotgun.

Government-funded tests on initial versions of the new Extended Range Electronic Projectile (XREP) have revealed possible health risks to people on the receiving end, New Scientist has learned. The manufacturer, Taser International of Scottsdale, Arizona, says the issue has been addressed in redesigned devices, but these have yet to be independently tested.

Unlike the current Taser X26, which fires darts attached to short wires, the XREP is wire-free. Its projectile, the size of a shotgun cartridge, is designed to pierce the target’s skin and contains battery-powered circuits that deliver a debilitating shock. It has a range of 20 metres or more, compared with 5 metres for previous Tasers.

A team led by Cynthia Bir, a trauma injury specialist at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, found that some of the 275 XREP cartridges that Taser supplied for testing last year were capable of delivering an electric shock for more than 5 minutes, rather than the 20 seconds of shocking current they are supposed to generate. Previous Taser stun guns shock for only 5 seconds per discharge, though that can be repeated.

Bir’s team reported their findings at a conference on non-lethal weapons in Ettlingen, Germany, in May. Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK, who has studied electric shock weapons, says Bir’s report that the device can carry on shocking for 5 minutes is worrying. The effects of prolonged shocking are not known, he says, but the finding raises concerns about the potential damage to a victim’s mental health.

Bir also found problems with the weapon’s accuracy. In test firings, it proved difficult to aim, as the aerodynamics of the projectile caused it to fall below the aiming point at a range of 20 metres. “Any lack of accuracy means a greater risk of hitting an unintended part of the body and therefore greater risk of injury,” says security researcher Neil Davison, author of a recent book on non-lethal weapons.

Steve Tuttle, a vice-president of Taser International, says the XREP munitions supplied for Bir’s tests were early pre-production versions. He says a redesign of the projectile has greatly improved its aerodynamic accuracy, and the fault in the munition’s “firmware” – its built-in software – that led to it being capable of providing an extended shock has also been corrected.

The two production versions of the XREP device include features said to improve aiming accuracy. One version, for use with rifled shotguns, has a plastic cap that engages with the rifling and gives the projectile a stabilising spin. The version for smooth-bore shotguns sprouts stabilising fins when it leaves the barrel.

Tuttle says, however, that Taser did ship some pre-production batches to US police departments.

Bir and her team have not had a chance to test the newly modified production rounds that Taser says are more accurate and reliable. Some of them have, however, already been purchased, delivered and used by unnamed “agencies” in the US, Tuttle says. Tests funded by Taser showed the rounds to be safe in terms of their impact effects on cadavers, he says. “There was no internal damage in the vicinity of the XREP impact.” There is no requirement under US law for them to undergo independent pre-sales testing.

Bir’s tests are being funded by the UK Home Office, the US National Institute of Justice and the Canadian Police Research Centre. All want to know whether the weapon can do what Taser International claims: allow police officers to incapacitate people at greater distance.

For this, the ability to take precise aim is seen as crucial. “In public disorder situations accuracy at range will be particularly important, perhaps to target individuals within a tightly packed group,” a review of “less-lethal” technologies by the Home Office states. Such weapons will help contain crowds or prevent them re-forming, the review says.

Shooting cadavers is one thing. But what happens when the weapons are fired at pregnant women, people with health problems or the very young, Wright asks.

I read this story this morning in the Independent written by Michael McCarthy. The soil in Easter Island appears to contain a substance that actually prolongs life. Is that what those lovely Modiliagni style heads have been trying to tell us all these years? Do you think maybe the ancients were showing us an emblem of people who were “longer”?  Geddit? OK call me stupid, you’re right…..

A drug originating on Easter Island, the mysterious South Pacific home of a lost statue-building people, may become the first substance to slow down human ageing, new research indicates.

Rapamycin, a pharmacological product used to prevent rejection in organ transplants, has been found to extend the lifespan of mice by up to 38 per cent, raising the possibility that it may delay ageing in people.

Hitherto a matter for science fiction, the idea of an anti-ageing drug which would allow people to prolong their natural lifespan and also to avoid age-related diseases is now being seriously considered for the first time as a result of the findings by American researchers.

Rapamycin is a bacterial product originally found in a soil sample from Easter Island, the Polynesian extinct volcano famous for its monumental statues erected hundreds of years ago by the island people, and known in the region as Rapa Nui – hence the drug’s name. Originally developed as an anti-fungal agent, rapamycin was soon found to have powerful immuno-suppressant properties and thus be valuable for preventing rejection of transplanted organs. It was also found to delay the ageing process when used experimentally with three sets of lower organisms: yeast, nematode worms and fruit flies.

Now, however, it has been shown to affect the ageing of mice – the first time that this has ever been shown with a mammal.

A team of 14 researchers from three institutions, led by David Harrison from the Jackson Laboratory at Bar Harbor in Maine, fed rapamycin to mice late in their life – at 600 days of age – and showed that both the median and maximal lifespan of treated animals were considerably extended. Currently, the only way to extend the life of a rodent is by severely restricting its diet, so this marks the first report of a pharmacological intervention that lengthens the life of mammals – with clear implications for humans.

The results, published today in an online paper on the website of the journal Nature, are attracting considerable excitement, and an accompanying article in Nature by two of the world’s leading experts on the ageing process, Matt Kaeberlein and Brian K Kennedy from the University of Washington, Seattle, headed “A Midlife Longevity Drug?” openly asks the question: “Is this the first step towards an anti-ageing drug for people?”

Their answer is that it may well be. Dr Kaeberlein and Dr Kennedy first issued a warning to people not to start taking rapamycin at once in the hope of prolonging their lives – “the potential immuno-suppressive effects of this compound alone are sufficient to caution against this,” they advised.

But they added: “On the basis of animal models, however, it is interesting to consider that rapamycin … might prove useful in combating many age-associated disorders. Also … it may be possible to develop pharmacological strategies that provide the health and longevity benefits without unwanted side-effects.

“So, although extending human lifespan with a pill remains the purview of science fiction writers for now, the results of Harrison et al provide a reason for optimism that even during middle age, there’s still time to change the road you’re on.”

Rapamycin was known to have an influence on ageing in the lower organisms by disrupting the influence of an enzyme known as TOR, which regulates cell growth. Dr Harrison and colleagues found that this was also the case with mice, and found that rapamycin feeding could extend mouse lifespan even when started late in life.

The maximum lifespan went up from 1,094 days to 1,245 days for female mice, and from 1,078 to 1,179 for male mice – a striking increase of life expectancy of 38 per cent for females and 28 per cent for males.

Dr Harrison and his colleagues conclude: “An effective anti-ageing intervention that could be initiated later than the midpoint of the lifespan could prove to be especially relevant to clinical situations, in which the efficacy of anti-ageing interventions would be particularly difficult to test in younger volunteers. Our data justify special attention to the role of the TOR pathway in control of ageing in mammals and in the pathogenesis of late-life illnesses.”

Also known as sirolimus, rapamycin was first discovered as a product of the bacterium Streptomyces hygroscopicus, which was found in an Easter Island soil sample.

Probably the world’s most remote and least-visited inhabited island, Easter Island is globally famous for its haunting monumental stone statues of human faces, set up around the coast, known as Moai. Weighing as much as 80 tonnes, they were carved by a lost people, whose society may have collapsed, according to the American environmental geographer Jared Diamond, when they overexploited their forests. Volcanic, hilly and now treeless, and a territory of Chile, the island is situated 2,180 miles west of Chile itself and 1,290 miles east of Pitcairn Island; its European name comes from its discovery on Easter Sunday 1722, by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen. Its oldest known Polynesian name is thought to be Te Pito O Te Henua, meaning “the navel of the world”. Rapa Nui is a name given to it by Tahitian sailors in the 19th century.

Today’s Daily Telegraph runs a short feature quoting the UK Health Secretary Andy Burnham predicting a real surge in the swine flu numbers. We’ve had this illness in our house already – but that doesn’t mean we’re immune as the virus mutates.

Andy Burnham has warned that swine flu could reach 100,000 cases a day by August

The UK has moved past the stage of containing the swine flu outbreak and into the “treatment phase”, he said.

“We have reached the next stage in management of the disease,” Mr Burnham said on Thursday.

“The national focus will be on treating the increasing numbers affected by swine flu.

“We will move to this treatment phase across the UK with immediate effect.”

There are now 7,447 laboratory-confirmed cases in the UK, he said.

London and the West Midlands have already had sufficiently high numbers to move towards a policy of outbreak management, which saw people with swine flu clinically diagnosed rather than being confirmed by laboratory reports.

Mr Burnham said that last week saw a “considerable rise” in swine flu cases.

“There are now on average several hundred new cases every day,” he said.

“Our efforts during the containment phase have given us precious time to learn more about the virus.

“We have always known it would be impossible to contain the virus indefinitely and at some point we would need to move away from containment to treatment.”

He added: “We have now signed contracts to secure enough vaccine for the whole population.”

The first will become available next month, with 60 million doses available by the end of the year.

Spencer S. Hsu tells us today in the Washington Post  that “A Pentagon Cyber-Command Is in the Works”. The story is dry and factual. But……anyone think of Isaac Asimov? Or something more recent perhaps?

The Obama administration is finalizing plans for a new Pentagon command to coordinate the security of military computer networks and to develop new offensive cyber-weapons, sources said last night.

Planning for the reorganization of Defense Department and intelligence agencies is underway, and a decision is imminent, according to a person familiar with the White House plans.

The new command would affect U.S. Strategic Command, whose mission includes ensuring U.S. “freedom of action” in space and cyberspace, and the National Security Agency, which shares Pentagon cybersecurity responsibilities with the Defense Information Systems Agency.

The Pentagon plans do not involve the Department of Homeland Security, which has responsibility for securing the government’s non-military computer domain.

But President Obama must approve the changes and Congress must be notified of them before they can be implemented, said this source, who has spoken with several White House and military officials. This individual spoke on the condition of anonymity because the process is still “in motion.”
ad_icon

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the plans last night.

One question is whether the new command’s leader would be a military commander with a four-star rank. The NSA is currently led by Army Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, who has three stars.

News of the proposal comes on the heels of a 60-day White House review of cybersecurity efforts. Federal agency deputies are expected to meet Friday to consider the recommendations of the review team.

I read this story this morning by Kari Lydersen in The Washington Post.  Apparently the current tornado warning system in the States gives ordinary people an average of  13 minutes warning. That means some people only get 7 minutes to get out. Presuming you are fit and able of course.

When a tornado is about to cut a devastating swath through an American town, those in its path get a warning lead time of 13 minutes on average to try to reach shelter.

“If you live in a trailer community, is 13 minutes enough to wake your family and get them bundled up and outside?” asks tornado researcher Joshua Wurman, head of the nonprofit Center for Severe Weather Research. And “if you are elderly or handicapped, you’re going to have a hard time getting to a shelter in 13 minutes,” he said.

And that’s the average; many times people are warned about six or seven minutes earlier. That is because although scientists know that certain kinds of “supercell” thunderclouds can spin off tornadoes, they know very little about the exact conditions that indicate a tornado will occur and whether it will be a mild twister or a violent killer.

In the mid-1990s, a two-year study called Vortex had a phalanx of scientists chasing tornadoes around the Great Plains, inspiring much public fascination, daredevil amateur tornado-chasers and the 1996 movie “Twister.”

Vortex (which stands for Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment) resulted in significant advances, including the revelation that tornadoes can occur on smaller time and space scales than previously thought and that sometimes they do not show up on radar. Knowledge gained from the study led to an increase in average warning times, but it did not unlock the secrets of exactly when and why tornadoes form.

As a result, predictions about tornado occurrence are successful only about a quarter of the time.

“Sometimes people will choose not to take shelter even if they’re told to,” said Yvette P. Richardson, a meteorology professor at Pennsylvania State University. “In general, the more we can reduce the false-alarm rate, the more seriously the public will take warnings.”

Now comes Vortex2, a five-week tornado-chasing project beginning next month that scientists hope will finally provide the knowledge to accurately predict when and where a tornado will develop.

“Ultimately we’d like to get to the point where we can put sufficient data into our models so we know when a tornado will happen,” said Stephan P. Nelson, a program director in the atmospheric sciences division of the National Science Foundation, which, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, provided the $12 million funding for Vortex2. “Then you can get first responders to be better prepared — police, fire, medical personnel, even power companies. Now, that’s not even remotely possible.”

As part of Vortex2, about 80 veteran scientists and graduate students will chase storms across a wide swath from South Dakota to Texas and from eastern Colorado to Iowa and Minnesota, with their nerve center in Norman, Okla.

They will be armed with a host of tools, including lasers that measure raindrops, Doppler radar mounted on trucks, high-tech balloons, unmanned aircraft and instruments on tripods anchored in the tornadoes’ path.

“We’re throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it,” said Wurman, who has chased 141 tornadoes over 14 years. “We’ll have a whole potpourri of instruments surrounding the storm, all measuring different things in different ways.”

The technology available this time is far superior. The inaugural Vortex used Doppler radar on planes, which would pass over a tornado at about five-minute intervals. Now radar mounted on trucks, which can get within two miles of a tornado, will provide uninterrupted data.

“We will be able to distinguish between rain, hail, dust, debris, flying cows,” said Howard Bluestein, a meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma and member of the Vortex2 steering committee.

Two ingredients are necessary to form the supercell thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes: a source of buoyant energy, namely warm and moist air near the ground, and a rotational force generated by winds at the surface blowing at a different speed or direction than winds high in the atmosphere.

A typical thundercloud develops as warm air rises into colder air masses above, then usually dissipates quickly once rain falls. Supercell thunderstorms, by contrast, can last for hours and can move rapidly, tracking over 100 miles. Supercell thunderstorms may also create “mesocyclones,” swirling winds embedded within the larger thunderhead that can be as much as six miles in diameter.

About five to 10 percent of these storms actually spin off tornadoes, which are typically about 500 feet in diameter. Scientists know what forms a mesocyclone, but they are largely lost when it comes to understanding which ones will spawn tornadoes and how violent they will be.

“A number of things have to happen sequentially and at the same time and in the right order,” said John Monteverdi, a meteorologist at San Francisco State University who has been chasing tornadoes for 24 years. “You have to start knocking the dominos down to find out what happens in that last stage. I think we’re getting close, and this project should help.”

Risky though it appears, members of the project note that their crews have never logged a death or severe injury. But they say amateur tornado-chasers who follow scientists around with video cameras are endangering themselves and others. Not only do these adrenalin junkies put themselves in harm’s way, the scientists say, they often speed and park their cars in the middle of the road, endangering other motorists and distracting highway patrol officers.

Scientists warn that it is only a matter of time before a major tornado sweeps through a densely populated urban area and causes horrific damage and loss of life.

Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Houston, in particular, are in regions prone to violent tornadoes. Wurman said in a 2007 study that a tornado cutting through Chicago could kill 13,000 to 45,000 people and cause tens of billions of dollars in damage.

“Tornadoes have a great beauty to them sometimes,” Wurman said. “There’s a great elegance to the vortex itself. But when you see it going toward a town or city, there’s a quick change in your impression, and it’s like a tiger: Something beautiful becomes deadly.”

Today’s story is about fat that eats fat. Scientists thought this brown fat, or so it is called, disappeared from our bodies after childhood…………but no, according to the New York Times. What’s it got to do with cold and shivering? Read on…

Illustration showing where brown fat deposits appear in babies.

For more than 30 years, scientists have been intrigued by brown fat, a cell that acts like a furnace, consuming calories and generating heat. Rodents, unable to shiver to keep warm, use brown fat instead. So do human infants, who also are unable to shiver their muscles to stay warm. But it was generally believed that humans lose brown fat after infancy, no longer needing it once the shivering response kicks in.
That belief, three groups of researchers report, is wrong.
Their papers, appearing Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, indicate that nearly every adult has little blobs of brown fat that can burn huge numbers of calories when activated by the cold, like sitting in a chilly room that is between 61 and 66 degrees.
Thinner people appeared to have more brown fat than heavier people, younger people more than older people; people with higher metabolic rates had more than those whose metabolisms were more sluggish, and women had more than men. People taking beta blockers for high blood pressure or other medical indications had less brown fat.
“The thing about this brown fat is that it takes a very small amount to burn a lot of energy,” said Dr. C. Ronald Kahn, head of the section on obesity and hormone action at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.
The fat really is brown, researchers say, because it is filled with mitochondria, cells’ tiny energy factories. Mitochondria contain iron, giving the tissue a reddish brown color.
The hope is that scientists may find safe ways to turn peoples’ brown fat on, allowing them to lose weight by burning more calories. But researchers caution that while mice lose weight if they activate brown fat, it is not clear that people would shed pounds — they might unwittingly eat more, for example. The data on global patterns of obesity are not good enough to say whether living in a cold climate makes people thinner.
The best evidence for the effects of brown fat is from earlier studies in mice, said Leslie P. Kozak, a professor of molecular genetics at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of Louisiana State University.
Recently, Dr. Kozak put mice predisposed to obesity in a cold room, 41 degrees, for a week. The animals activated their brown fat. As a result, they lost 14 percent of their weight, which constituted 47 percent of their body fat, while eating a high-fat diet with two and a half times more calories than they had consumed at room temperature. “That’s just by going out in the cold, without any drug treatment,” Dr. Kozak said. But, he cautioned, mice, small animals with a comparatively huge surface area, are easily chilled. “Put the mouse in the cold,” he added, “and it becomes a heat producing machine.”
Jan Nedergaard of the University of Stockholm did the opposite of Dr. Kozak. He and Barbara Cannon, also at the University of Stockholm, studied mice that were genetically engineered so their brown fat could not burn calories. The animals became fat.
“Until very recently, we would have said that it is doubtful that differences in brown fat really could contribute to obesity,” Dr. Nedergaard said. Now, he said he had changed his mind, at least for mice.
The key to finding brown fat in humans was PET scans, which pinpoint areas where cells are actively burning glucose. Because brown fat rapidly burns glucose to produce heat, it lights up in the scans. In two of the three studies, investigators also studied samples of brown fat that were removed from a few subjects, confirming that the cells had a protein, UCP-1, that is unique to brown fat.
Brown fat in adult humans was in an unexpected place. Infants have it mostly as a sheet of cells covering their backs. Rodents have it mostly between their shoulder blades, just down from the neck. But in adult humans, it showed up in the upper back, on the side of the neck, in the dip between the collarbone and shoulder, and along the spine.
That may be one reason it was missed for so long, Dr. Kahn said.
“There was an interest in looking at humans 20 or 25 years ago with different scanning techniques, but people were always looking between the shoulder blades,” he said. And since there is so little brown fat — just a few grams of tissue — it can be hard to find, Dr. Kahn added.
His study, one of the three published Thursday, involved 1,972 people who had had PET scans for a variety of reasons. The scans showed brown fat in 7.5 percent of the women and 3 percent of the men — an underestimate, Dr. Kahn says, because the people had not deliberately activated brown fat by getting cold.
Dr. Kahn and his colleagues also examined biopsy samples taken from the necks of two patients. They concluded that what looked like brown fat in their scans was indeed brown fat.
A second study, led by Wouter D. van Marken Lichtenbelt of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, involved 24 healthy young men. Ten were lean, the rest overweight or obese.
The scans showed no brown fat when the men had been in a room that was a comfortable temperature. But after they were in a chilly room for two hours, scans showed brown fat in all but one, an obese man.
A third study, led by Dr. Sven Enerbäck of the University of Goteborg in Sweden, involved five healthy adults. Each had two PET scans — one after being in a room at a comfortable temperature, the other after being in a chilly room for two hours. The investigators saw brown fat in their chilled subjects. Three participants allowed the researchers to remove some white fat and some brown fat to demonstrate that what looked like brown fat in the scans really was that elusive substance.
The studies, investigators say, should stimulate research on safe ways to activate brown fat. It is known to be activated not only by cold but also by catecholamines, hormones that are part of the fight or flight response. That is why beta blockers, which block catecholamines, can suppress brown fat activation.
Epinephrine, or adrenaline, and ephedra, a herbal supplement containing epinephrine, can stimulate brown fat, said Dr. Rudolph Leibel, co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at the Columbia University Medical Center. But, he added, the drugs have too many side effects to be used for weight loss. While caffeine can boost ephedra’s effects, Dr. Leibel said, it is easy to eat your way out of a brown fat effect.
Brown fat, he said, “fits the fantasy — I eat what I want and burn it off.”
That, however, is still a fantasy, Dr. Leibel added.
If a drug that stimulates brown fat could be developed, said Dr. Claude Bouchard of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, it would be the first obesity drug to affect energy expenditure rather than appetite.
Then there is the notion of simply hanging out in a cold room.
“We’re thinking of opening a frosty spa,” Dr. Kozak joked.

This article ran in the G2 section of the Guardian yesterday – nicely put put together by writer Alok Jha, who had to  wear a wrist band that records walking and exercising movements in order to link up with a computer based personal training system.

Like so many who have gone before me in the fight against flab, I am engaged in an unending war with my body. I don’t mind exercise – I jog, cross-train and swim – but I do love food. Children learn early that when your stomach is full it is a good idea to stop. It is a skill I have yet to develop.

These two sides – the exercise and the eating – are finely balanced. For months at a time, exercise will prevail, but it takes only one missed gym session for the discipline to fall apart.

Enter MiLife, a web-based system that claims to be the world’s first “personalised online coaching system”. As I am never going to get an actual personal trainer (why pay for someone in a tracksuit to shout at you?), I thought a virtual one could keep an eye on my progress and shame me into action.

The system comes with a wristband that records all the movements you make in a day and, when connected to a computer via bluetooth, uploads this data to a personal profile on the MiLife website. Every week, you track your performance with a plethora of bar charts and line graphs and the MiLife software advises you on how to get the best out of your exercise.

To start, you tell MiLife what your goals are. Perhaps you want to raise your activity levels or lose some weight? The website’s virtual trainer will come back with a personalised plan, broken down into daily targets. As you progress, the software automatically adapts the plan during a weekly coaching session to take into account the exercises you seem to be good at and those you’re not.

I chose to give myself both exercise and weight targets, but rapidly regretted the latter. Weight control involves recording a daily food diary, an activity as tedious and irritating as filing tax returns. Every day. I tried, I really did. MiLife even allows you to use your mobile phone to text in how many calories you eat but, seriously, how do you know exactly how many are in a salmon mousse? I gave up after just a few weeks of semi-completed diaries and, during my weekly online coaching sessions, the software duly reminded me of my laziness.

I was more successful with the wristband, which I wore obsessively. MiLife breaks down activity into low, medium and high. Shuffling around my flat was low activity, a brisk walk counted as medium-to-high and a jog or even the odd dash for a bus would rack up minutes in the high-activity section. Like anyone given a target, I did everything I could to get the daily totals up: I walked into work more often, went walkabout at lunchtimes, and avoided buses for all short journeys.

All the information about my activity was recorded with no need for my intervention, and it was useful: days when I took the bus home, for example, instead of walking, appeared as conspicuous gaps among the skyscrapers of activity in the days where I had been more diligent. I could monitor my minutes of high activity from jogging or cross-training to ensure that I kept up the levels suggested by the software. All of this was motivational, too – I was surprised how far I would go to get a perfect set of bar charts.

If you choose, MiLife will email or text to get you exercising, and chide you if you miss too many sessions. The virtual trainer is powered by something called the “Idapt engine”, a computer model that MiLife says is the result of five years of research collating data from hundreds of people to tease out successful strategies to, for example, lose weight or keep motivated to exercise. During the first few weeks of use, this builds up a profile of the kinds of exercise that seem to work for you. By matching this to the profiles it stores, it can suggest exercises or ways to break consistent bad habits. I was advised, for example, to try an exercise bike and do more gentle jogging, but the longer you use the programme the better the suggestions should be.

In a randomised controlled trial of 77 people over nine weeks, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research in 2007, those using the MiLife system ended up doing, on average, two hours more physical activity a week than the control group. This is a good result, but bear in mind that these were probably active volunteers, so likely to be motivated to exercise.

There are niggling problems with the system: the website is slow, badly designed and frustrating to use. As a Mac user, I found the software a small nightmare to set up and the system lost two weeks of my weight and activity data. That meant my programme was all but shot to pieces because the software assumed I had been lying down for a fortnight.

I didn’t manage to make MiLife record my activities for long enough to complete a 12-week programme but, on the evidence I do have, my feelings are mixed. Just knowing that all your movements are being recorded is surprisingly rewarding and motivational. Small bits of low-level exercise can add up, and visualising all the jogging and cycling with the bar charts every day was (when I was wearing my geek hat) addictive.

The weight-loss part of the MiLife programme was defeated by my lack of willpower. But the exercise plan definitely recorded an increase in my activity in the weeks that I used the system. Whether that was entirely due to MiLife, I’m not so sure – most of the increase came in the low-level exercise – the jogging or other aerobic exercise I would have done anyway.

So a partial success for me, but is it worth the £99 it costs for the basic equipment and a year’s subscription to the website? It might not be as expensive as a personal trainer, but if MiLife is hoping people will put their hands in their tracksuit pockets, the technology needs to be more impressive.

• For more information, see milife.com

• This article was amended on Wednesday 14 January 2009. Milife, a computer based personal training system, costs £99 for a year’s website subscription and all the basic equipment, not £200, as we said above. This has been corrected.

I had noticed that last night’s full moon looked unusually large. I read this morning in Scientific American that the moon is at its perigee – the point in its orbit where it approaches nearest to the Earth.

Remember last month’s massive moon, the one that dazzled onlookers on December 12? That moon was 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than a typical full moon.

Well, it’s back tonight. NASA says tonight’s moon will be the biggest full moon of 2009, “almost identical” to the one on December 12.

Here’s what’s going on: The moon’s orbit of Earth is an ellipse, with one end closer to Earth than the other. Tonight, the moon will be near the closer end of the ellipse, a spot known as the perigee. (Apogee is the more distant end.)

NASA is quite excited about the perigee moon, as you might expect: “You can read a newspaper, ride a bike, write a letter, and at the same time count the stars overhead.” (With all due respect to NASA, we would suggest not doing all of those things at the same time.) And tonight’s forecast for much of the Northeast is for snow, according to weather.com, so it may be too cloudy to see the moon there.

If you don’t want to wait to hear about the next perigee moon on 60-Second Science, we’re not offended. You can calculate the schedule and be ready.

Update (12:30 a.m. EST): We’re gathering photos of the perigee with this other blog post. Send yours!

Photo of perigee (left) and apogee (right) moon courtesy of Galileo Project/NASA

The New York Times ran this today as part of their coverage of the huge technology trade show C.E.S. The giant toy firm Mattel have launched a mind control toy – no really. We have one of these gadgets already in our house of course. I think I’ll have a go…

Each year at the Consumer Electronics Show there is at least one bizarre novelty product that captures folks’ attention. This year, the honor belongs to a game coming from Mattel that challenges players to control a ping-pong ball with their minds.

Mindflex, as it is called, is drawing large, amused crowds and lots of interested press coverage. Players strap on headsets that are designed to read theta brainwaves, typically associated with alertness and concentration. By focusing or relaxing, a player can control the speed of a fan that elevates a lightweight purple ball, and then must try to turn a knob by hand to guide the ball through various hoops in an obstacle course.

I took a stab at it, and maybe it was Obi-Wan’s instructions to Luke from “Star Wars” distractedly reverberating in my head, but I did not get the ball anywhere close to the hoop.

Mindflex will go on sale this fall for $80.

The New York Times ran a story today about what a cough actually looks like. As everyone I know has one at the moment….I thought you should take a look. And there’s interesting stuff about Schlieren photography, which I had never heard of before…

The image, published online Oct. 9 by The New England Journal of Medicine, was created by schlieren photography, which “takes an invisible phenomenon and turns it into a visible picture,” said the engineering professor, Gary Settles, who is the director of the university’s gas dynamics laboratory.

Schlieren is German for “streaks”; in this case it refers to regions of different densities in a gas or a liquid, which can be photographed as shadows using a special technique.

“In my lab we use this technique a lot,” Dr. Settles said. “Often it’s used for other things, like in supersonic wind tunnels, to show shock waves around high-speed aircraft.”

The process involves a small, bright light source, precisely placed lenses, a curved mirror, a razor blade that blocks part of the light beam and other tools that make it possible to see and photograph disturbances in the air. In the world of gas dynamics, a cough is merely “a turbulent jet of air with density changes.” Though coughs spread tuberculosis, SARS, influenza and other diseases, surprisingly little is known about them. “We don’t have a good understanding of the air flow,” Dr. Settles said.

To map a cough, he teamed up with Dr. Julian Tang, a virus expert from Singapore. A healthy student provided the cough. The expelled air, traveling at 18 miles per hour, mixed with cooler surrounding air and produced “temperature differences that bend light rays by different amounts,” Dr. Settles said.

He went on: “The next thing is, you get a couple of people in front of the mirror talking, or one coughs on another, and you see how the air flow moves, how people infect one another. Or you look at how coughing can spread airborne infection in a hospital. This is really a suggestion for how we might study all that. The techniques used in wind tunnels can be used to study human diseases.”

Other schlieren images show the churning air and shock waves that emanate from a pistol’s firing; an Airedale sniffing a small flower; and the unseen, shimmering world around a candle burning in a breeze.

The final photograph, in a full-scale mock-up of an aircraft cabin, captures in microseconds the flash of an explosion under a mannequin in an airplane seat and the propagation of shock waves into the cabin. The blast was a re-creation of a terrorist’s attempt in 1994 to bring down a Philippine Airlines flight with a nitroglycerin bomb. The plane did not crash, but the explosion did kill the passenger seated over the bomb. The simulation used a less intense explosion than the actual bombing.

“The simulation helps to understand how the energy of an onboard blast reverberates around the cabin,” Dr. Settles said, “and it is also useful to check the results of computer blast simulations.”

I read about this on the internet today then found that the Guardian had reported on it – and included an astonishing and slightly disturbing video – click here to see it. The article is from Apopo’s own website.

To speed up the process of demining, mine detection rats are used to directly indicate the positions of buried landmines. On average, it takes a rat less than half an hour to search a 100m2 box.

The rat is guided by a search string, which is connected between its two trainers. The rat moves systematically up and down the search string, processing lane by lane through the suspected box. Both trainers take position at opposite sides of the box in the safe lane, fixing the search string to the lower leg. When a rat reaches the end of the box, the operators make a lateral step, and the rat moves into the next lane. A box or lane system provides the safe access lanes for the trainers. APOPO is using 5 by 20 meter boxes, which means that the rat has to search 40 lanes of half a meter to clear one box.

The rat indicates the position of a landmine by scratching the surface at the spot. Being lightweight, they do not set off the explosive devices. In a training situation, the trainer clicks upon a correct indication by the rat and the animal will moves to the trainer to get its reward. A second person, the observer, takes notes on the behavior and performance of the rat while working.
Typically, one to three rats are used consecutively to search an area. The number of rats to be used depends on the operational scenario and the combination with other search techniques. Quality control behind other detectors or a confirmation search behind a mechanical clearance will require less animals compared to primary detection.
After the rat has been fully trained on the training fields in Tanzania, a series of blind tests is carried out to assess its performance. If the animal meets the desired requirements, it will be selected for de-mining operations. As with dogs, the rats are re-calibrated on the specific mines found in the demining operations, before being deployed.

I first heard this story on BBC Radio 4 when they were discussing the use of cognitive brain enhancers to boost academic performance. It appears to first come from an article in Nature magazine by Barbara Sahakian and Sharon Morein-Zamir – but I found a version published here.Basically, you’re about to take an exam – would you like an espresso with a double shot of methylphenidate…..or just soft brown sugar?

Would you boost your own brain power? Cognitive-enhancing drugs are increasingly being used in non-medical situations such as shift work and by active military personnel. This is where the debate about their use begins
in earnest. How should the use of cognitive-enhancing drugs be regulated in healthy people? Should their use always be monitored by healthcare professionals? If offered by a friend or colleague, would you, the reader, take a pill that would help you to better focus, plan or remember? Under what conditions would you feel comfortable taking a pill, and under what conditions would you decline? The answers to such questions hinge on many factors, including the exact drug being discussed, its short-term and long-term benefits and risks, and the purpose for which it is used. There are instances in which most people would agree that the use of cognitive-enhancing drugs should be prevented or at least regulated and monitored, such as by healthy children or in competitive settings (including entrance exams to university). There are also situations in which many would agree that the use of drugs to improve concentration or planning may be tolerated, if not encouraged, such as by air-traffic controllers, surgeons and nurses who work long shifts. One can even imagine situations where such enhancing-drug-taking would be recommended, such as for airport-security screeners, or by soldiers in active combat. But there are no straightforward answers and any fruitful debate must address each situation in turn.
How would you react if you knew your
colleagues — or your students — were
taking cognitive enhancers?
In academia, we know that a number of our scientific colleagues in the United States and the United Kingdom already use modafinil to counteract the effects of jetlag, to enhance productivity or mental energy, or to deal with demanding and important intellectual challenges . Modafinil and other drugs are available online, but their non- prescription and long-term use has not been monitored in healthy individuals. For many, it seems that the immediate and tangible benefits of taking these drugs are more persuasive than concerns about legal status and adverse effects. There are clear trends suggesting that the use of stimulants such as methylphenidate on college campuses is on the rise, and is becoming more commonplace in ever younger students.
Universities may have to decide whether to ban drug use altogether, or to tolerate it in some situations (whether to enable all-night study sessions or to boost alertness during lectures).
The debate over cognitive-enhancing drugs must also consider the expected magnitude of the benefits and weigh them against the risks and side effects of each drug. Most readers would not consider that having a double shot
of espresso or a soft drink containing caffeine would confer an unfair advantage at work.
The use of caffeine to enhance concentration is commonplace, despite having side effects in at least some individuals
Often overlooked in media reports on cognitive enhancers is the fact that many of the effects in healthy individuals are transient and small-to-moderate in size. Just as one would hardly propose that a strong cup of coffee could be the secret of academic achievement or faster career advancement, the use of such drugs does not necessarily entail cheating. Cognitive enhancers with small or no side effects but with moderate enhancing effects that alleviate forgetfulness or enable one to focus better on the task at hand during a tiring day at work would be unlikely to meet much objection.
And does it matter if it is delivered as a pill or a drink? Would you, the reader, welcome a cognitive enhancer delivered in a beverage that is readily obtainable and affordable, and has a moderate yet noticeable effect
on your concentration and alertness?……
Technorati Profile
Technorati

I will be looking for more threads on this story in coming weeks.

I found this article in today’s Neurology magazine which amazingly for me anyway shows a strong link between the length of your arms and your likelihood of memory loss in later years. Basically those with shorter arms and legs are almost half as likely to get Alzheimer’s later in life. Almost 3,000 ordinary people were tested to get these results.

People with shorter arms and legs may be at a higher risk for developing dementia later in life compared to people with longer arms and legs, according to a study published in the May 6, 2008, bonus issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers say the association between short limbs and dementia risk may be due to poor nutrition in early life, which can affect limb growth.

Several studies have shown that early life environment plays an important role in susceptibility to chronic disease later in life. “Body measures such as knee height and arm span are often used as biological indicators of early life deficits, such as a lack of nutrients,” said Tina L. Huang, PhD, who was with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, when the study started.

Huang is now with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, MA. “Because the development of the brain region most severely affected by Alzheimer’s disease coincides with the greatest change in limb length, we thought it was possible that men and women with shorter limbs could be at greater risk for developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.”

Researchers from the Cardiovascular Health Cognition Study followed 2,798 people for an average of five years and took knee height and arm span measurements. Most participants were white with an average age of 72. By the end of the study, 480 developed dementia.

Researchers found women with the shortest arm spans were 1.5 times more likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease than women with longer arm spans. For every inch longer a woman’s leg, the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease was reduced by 16 percent.

In men, only arm span was associated with a lower risk of dementia. With every increased inch in arm span, men had a six-percent decrease in risk of dementia. The associations with such measures in men and women were stronger toward Alzheimer’s disease compared to other types of dementia.

Huang says there is a strong correlation between height and socioeconomic background, and trends are reflected as early as the first two years of life. “Reduced height for age, or stunting, is thought to be most closely tied to environment and the quality of diet in early life, which corresponds with periods of the fastest leg growth,” said Huang. “As a result, environment in the first years of life may play an important role in determining future dementia risk.”

“Our findings are consistent with other studies that have been done in Korean populations, where shorter limb length was associated with greater risk of dementia,” said Huang.

This story ran in the Scotsman today. In the past I have shied away from those traditional “News of the World” style stories, but frankly I was fascinated by this and its implications. Mr Beatie appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show and the footage was syndicated all over the world. What I was most taken with was Oprah’s statement at the end of her feature – saying it was a new definition of what diversity means for everybody. Maybe we will look back on this story in fifty years time and find it “everyday”- and not even worthy of comment.

A TRANSGENDER man who is six months pregnant said in a television interview yesterday that he had always wanted to have a child and considers it “a miracle”.
“It’s not a male or female desire to have a child. It’s a human desire,” said thinly bearded Thomas Beatie, who was once a teenage beauty queen.

“I have a very stable male identity,” he added, in an interview, broadcast on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the United States.

Mr Beatie, 34, who lives in Oregon, was born a woman but decided to become a man ten years ago.

He began taking testosterone treatment and had breast surgery to remove glands and flatten his chest.

“I opted not to do anything with my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day,” he said.

Mr Beatie’s wife, Nancy, said she inseminated him with a syringe, using sperm purchased from a sperm bank.

Now, he said, his size 32 jeans were getting a bit tight and his shirts a bit stretched.

Mrs Beatie, to whom he has been married for five years and who has two grown daughters by a previous marriage, also appeared on the show, saying the couple’s roles will not change once the baby, a girl, is born.

“He’s going to be the father and I’m going to be the mother,” she said.

Their marriage is legal and he is recognised under Oregon state law as a man.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s inside me,” said Mr Beatie.

His obstetrician, Dr Kimberly James, who practises in the town of Bend, where the couple live, told Winfrey: “This is a normal pregnancy.

This baby is totally healthy.”

The Beaties said they decided to go public so they could control the way the news got out. “We’re just going to have the baby now,” Mrs Beatie said. “If we have to, we’ll go hide.”

Winfrey called the development “a new definition of what diversity means for everybody.”

Technorati Profile

I read this article in physorg.com today – an amusing notion I thought. However, the thought of a better performing condom certainly would appeal to most people.

You wouldn’t normally associate golf balls with condoms but for University of Queensland researcher Dr Darren Martin, it is all about covering things.

Dr Martin, a materials scientist with UQ’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, has developed a unique polyurethane coating that is thinner, stronger and more flexible than what is currently available and could lead to better golf balls and condoms.

The secret to his discovery is synthetic nanoparticles – nanoscale disc-like particles –that can be added to conventional thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) to extend its benefits and performance. TPUs are used in everything from surfing leg ropes and rollerblade wheels, to soles on shoes and textiles and fabrics like Lycra.

And while many great scientific discoveries can be attributed to a burning desire to help humankind, Dr Martin’s inspiration was much simpler.

“I’m a single-figure golfer and I was getting frustrated with paying a lot of money for balls that only end up getting damaged after a few holes,” Dr Martin said.

“We had been working with these nanocomposites for a while and this just seemed like a natural fit.

“By coating the ball in a thin layer of our new polyurethane it can make them much more scuff resistant.”

While in talks with a golf ball manufacturer now, Dr Martin and his team are also exploring other applications.

“The condom is another example of where our technology might be applied,” he said.

“We could make softer and thinner condoms that allow greater sensitivity and are actually stronger than current ones, while also reducing the risk of allergic response which some people have to latex rubber. We can all see the advantages of that application.”

Not limited to the golf green and the bedroom, Dr Martin said the potential applications for the technology are expanding.

“Wherever polyurethane is used, our technology can be used,” he said.

“Areas such as implantable medical device components, the mining industry and new types of textiles similar to Lycra and Spandex.”

He said he was doing this through TenasiTech Pty Ltd, a start-up company formed around the technology by UniQuest – the main technology transfer company for UQ – with the company driving the business development and capital raising to further develop the technology towards products.

Loss of memory as one ages has been increasingly in the news. I found this superb story in the Independent today about an accidental discovery by scientists that electrically stimulating a deep part of the brain can improve memory radically.

Scientists performing experimental brain surgery on a man aged 50 have stumbled across a mechanism that could unlock how memory works.

The accidental breakthrough came during an experiment originally intended to suppress the obese man’s appetite, using the increasingly successful technique of deep-brain stimulation. Electrodes were pushed into the man’s brain and stimulated with an electric current. Instead of losing appetite, the patient instead had an intense experience of déjà vu. He recalled, in intricate detail, a scene from 30 years earlier. More tests showed his ability to learn was dramatically improved when the current was switched on and his brain stimulated.

Scientists are now applying the technique in the first trial of the treatment in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. If successful, it could offer hope to sufferers from the degenerative condition, which affects 450,000 people in Britain alone, by providing a “pacemaker” for the brain.

Three patients have been treated and initial results are promising, according to Andres Lozano, a professor of neurosurgery at the Toronto Western Hospital, Ontario, who is leading the research.

Professor Lozano said: “This is the first time that anyone has had electrodes implanted in the brain which have been shown to improve memory. We are driving the activity of the brain by increasing its sensitivity – turning up the volume of the memory circuits. Any event that involves the memory circuits is more likely to be stored and retained.”

The discovery had caught him and his team “completely by surprise”, Professor Lozano said. They had been operating on the man, who weighed 190kg (30st), to treat his obesity by locating the point in his brain that controls appetite. All other attempts to curb his eating had failed and brain surgery was the last resort.

The treatment for obesity was unsuccessful. But, while the researchers were identifying potential appetite suppressant points in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain associated with hunger, the man suddenly began to say that memory was flooding back.

“He reported the experience of being in a park with friends from when he was around 20 years old and, as the intensity of stimulation increased, the details became more vivid. He recognised his girlfriend [from the time] … The scene was in colour. People were wearing identifiable clothes and were talking, but he could not decipher what they were saying,” the researchers write in Annals of Neurology, published today.

The man, who has not been identified, was also tested on his ability to learn lists of paired objects. After three weeks of continuous hypothalamic stimulation, his performance on two learning tests was significantly improved. He was also much more likely to remember a list of unrelated paired objects with the electrodes turned on than when turned off.

Speaking to The Independent yesterday, Professor Lozano said: “His performance improved dramatically. As we turned the current up, we first drove his memory circuits and improved his learning. As we increased the intensity of the current, we got spontaneous memories of discrete events. At a certain intensity, he would slash to the scene [in the park]. When the intensity was increased further, he got more detail but, when the current was turned off, it rapidly decayed.”

The discovery surprised the scientists as the hypothalamus has not usually been identified as a seat of memory. The contacts that most readily produced the memories were located close to a structure called the fornix, an arched bundle of fibres that carries signals within the limbic system, which is involved in memory and emotions and is situated next to the hypothalamus.

Professor Lozano is a world authority on deep-brain stimulation who has undertaken 400 operations on Parkinson’s disease sufferers and is developing the technique as a treatment for depression, for which he has performed 28 operations. He said the discovery of its role in stimulating memory had wide implications.

“It gives us insight into which brain structures are involved in memory. It gives us a means of intervening in the way we have already done in Parkinson’s and for mood disorders such as depression, and it may have therapeutic benefit in people with memory problems,” he said.

The researchers are testing the approach in six Alzheimer’s patients in a Phase 1 safety study. Three have so far had electrodes surgically implanted. The electrodes are attached via a cable that runs below the skull and down the neck to a battery pack stitched under the skin of the chest. The “pacemaker” delivers a constant low-level current that stimulates the brain but cannot be perceived by the patient.

Professor Lozano said: “It is the same device as is used for Parkinson’s disease. We have placed the electrodes in exactly the same area of the hypothalamus because we want to see if we can reproduce the findings in the earlier experiment. We believe the memory circuits we are stimulating are close by, physically touching the hypothalamus.

“It is a very effective treatment for the motor problems associated with Parkinson’s disease and it has been used on 40,000 people. We are in the early stages of using it with Alzheimer’s patients and we don’t know if it will work. We want to assess if we can reach the memory circuits and drive improvement. It is a novel approach to dealing with this problem.”

British researchers welcomed the discovery. Andrea Malizia, a senior lecturer in psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol who is studying deep-brain stimulation as a treatment for depression, said: “If they had said let’s stick an electrode in the hypothalamus to modify Alzheimer’s disease, I would have said ‘Why start there?’ But, if they have had a serendipitous finding, then that is as good. Serendipitous findings are how a lot of discoveries in science have been made.”

Ayesha Khan, a scientific liaison officer at the Alzheimer’s Disease Society, said: “This is very cutting-edge research. It is exciting, but the initial result is in one person. It will need much further investigation.”

Deep -brain stimulation has been used for more than a decade to treat a range of conditions including depression, chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders.

It has been so successful in treating Parkinson’s that 40,000 patients worldwide now have electrodes implanted in their brains driven by pacemakers stitched into their chests.

As the devices become smaller, requiring less risky surgery, and the target areas of the brain requiring stimulation are more precisely identified, demand for the treatment is expected to leap. Although it is expensive, the potential savings in care and treatment costs are immense. It does not lead to dependence on drugs and is reversible.

The electrodes are implanted under local anaesthesia while the patient is awake. Before the operation, the neurosurgeon performs an MRI scan and establishes the target location for the electrodes. He then carries out a craniotomy – lifting a section of the skull – and inserts the electrodes and leads. By stimulating the electrodes and checking the patient’s response, the surgeon can check that they are positioned in the right place.

Different areas of the brain are targeted for different conditions. For Parkinson’s disease, they are placed in the subthalamic nucleus; for depression, in area 25 of the cingulate cortex.

Deep-brain stimulation was developed in France and first licensed by the Food and Drug Administration in the US in 1997 as a treatment for tremor. In the UK, the surgery is performed at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, in Bristol, in Oxford and at a handful of other centres.

The name of the procedure is in some ways a misnomer as it often involves inhibiting electrical activity in an area of the brain rather than stimulating it. The technique is as much about restoring balance between competing brain areas which leads to the tremor characteristic of some types of Parkinson’s disease.

I found this story on the BBC news website and have included it because of the fab footage available of this jerboa hopping about in the desert. More info below:

An “extraordinary” desert creature has been caught on camera for what scientists believe is the first time.

The long-eared jerboa, a tiny nocturnal mammal that is dwarfed by its enormous ears, can be found in deserts in Mongolia and China.

Zoological Society of London (ZSL) scientist Jonathan Baillie said the footage was helping researchers to learn more about the mysterious animal.

The species is classified as endangered on the IUCN Red list.

These creatures hop just like a kangaroo; it is amazing to watch. Little hairs on their feet, almost like snow shoes, allow them to jump along the sand,” explained Dr Jonathan Baillie, ZSL

The unusual animals were filmed in the Gobi desert during an expedition led by Dr Baillie.

Until now, the creatures had proven extremely difficult to study, thanks to their minuscule size, nocturnal nature and the harsh desert environment that they inhabit.

“And in terms of mammals, they have one of the biggest ear-to-body ratios out there.”

The footage revealed that the creatures spent daylight hours in underground tunnels beneath the sand, and that their diet was mostly made up of insects.

Dr Baillie added that although there was still much to learn about the rare rodent, it was already believed to be under threat from habitat disturbance.

“We travelled to the Gobi to find out about the animal’s status and learn more about it so we can develop a thorough long-term action plan.”

The expedition formed part of ZSL’s Edge programme, which focuses its efforts on conservation plans for animals that are both endangered and evolutionary distinctive.

The long-eared jerboa is one of 10 species that the programme is looking at this year.

People who get migraines have structural differences in their brains notably in the cortex area that processes pain and other sensory information from the body, scientists said on Monday.

The researchers, whose findings were published in the journal Neurology, said it is unclear whether these brain differences actually cause migraines or are themselves caused by these severe, recurrent headaches.

The researchers performed brain scans on 24 people who had a long history of frequent migraines — about four per month for 20 years — and 12 people who did not get migraines.

The somatosensory cortex — the area of the brain that detects sensations like pain, touch and temperature in various parts of the body — was 21 percent thicker in the people who got migraines compared to those who did not.

The biggest difference was in the part of the cortex responsible for processing sensory information from the head and face, Dr. Nouchine Hadjikhani of Massachusetts General Hospital, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

Hadjikhani said the study illustrated the seriousness of the migraine. “It has to be taken seriously because it can induce changes in your brain,” she said.

Migraines are a type of painful headache commonly accompanied by nausea, vomiting and heightened sensitivity to light and sound. Women are three times more likely than men to experience these headaches. Many people who get them have a family history of migraines.

“The more we understand about the pathophysiology of migraine, the better we will be able to design drugs that work. At the moment, there is no drug for prevention that works well,” Hadjikhani said.

Dr. David Dodick, a professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic who was not involved in the study, said the study shows that migraines are a brain disorder. “And it shows that migraine has some durable, long-lasting morphological or structural changes in the brain over time,” Dodick said.

Dodick said he would be interested to know whether people who get migraines less frequently have the same brain changes.

Hadjikhani said one possibility is that repeated, long-term over stimulation of sensory fields in the cortex may cause it to become thicker over time. Another possibility is that people predisposed to migraines already have this thicker cortex, Hadjikhani said.

According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, researchers suspect migraines are caused by inherited abnormalities in genes that control certain cells in the brain. For many years, scientists had thought migraines were linked to the dilation and constriction of blood vessels in the head.

Dr. Seymour Diamond, executive chairman of the National Headache Foundation and head of the Diamond Headache Clinic in Chicago, said in an interview the findings further confirm that migraines are a neurological disease.

Researchers have seen differences in cortex thickness in other diseases as well. It is thinner, for example, in people with multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and autism.

By WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Report by Will Dunham
(Editing by Maggie Fox and David Wiessler)
Link to where I found original article

My own notes: This site offered interesting advice to migraine sufferers. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/050821232046.htm