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Human error blamed for Fukushima meltdown
K.M. Chaudary/AP/PA
UPFRONT
Polio workers targeted THE push to eradicate polio from the world took more than one bullet last week. On 20 July, Muhammad Ishaq, a local worker with Pakistan’s polio eradication programme, was shot dead in Gadap, a district of Karachi in southern Pakistan. Three days earlier polio drives in the area were suspended when a Ghanaian doctor and his driver were shot and wounded as they drove through Gadap. The shootings follow a ban on polio vaccination in northern Pakistan, declared in June by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a Taliban commander. Bahadur is using the ban in an attempt to force a halt to US drone attacks. Hostility to polio vaccination also rose after US agents used vaccination campaigns to gain access to families during the search for Osama bin Laden.
A Pakistani physician alleged to have helped the CIA was sentenced to 33 years in prison in May. Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan are the only countries where wild polio virus persists, with Pakistan considered the toughest hold-out. Gadap is one of three strongholds for the virus in Pakistan, and as an urban area with many migrant families it is a source of outbreaks elsewhere in the country. Hopes had risen that the programme was working, as no cases of polio have been reported in Karachi so far this year, after nine last year. Also, an independent assessment of the polio eradication drive reported in June that water samples from Gadap were virus-free. The assessors attributed the progress to local workers – like Ishaq.
Gene therapy first
the enzyme, fat clogs up blood vessels in the gut and pancreas of those with LPLD. So they have to avoid all fat in food. The new therapy, called Glybera, is produced by uniQure BV in the Netherlands. It involves injecting a virus containing a healthy copy of the gene into muscle cells in a patient’s leg. On 20 July, the European Medicines Agency recommended that Glybera be approved. The European Commission will make the final decision within three months – however, it usually follows the EMA’s advice.
–Banned in northern Pakistan–
No hacking charges
“We do not have a realistic prospect of identifying the offenders within the time imposed by law” years of the offence. “The complex nature of this investigation means that we do not have a realistic prospect of identifying the offender or offenders and 4 | NewScientist | 28 July 2012
Tokyo Electric Power Company
IT CREATED a media feeding frenzy and dragged climate scientists’ reputations through the mud, but nobody will be prosecuted for the “climategate” email hack. Thousands of emails were stolen from the servers of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in November 2009 and posted on a Russian email server. Climate sceptics seized on them to claim that scientists had conspired to withhold or alter data, unfairly manipulated the peer-review process and smeared their critics. The police investigation has run out of time, as in the UK people have to be charged with a computer crime within three
launching criminal proceedings within the time constraints imposed by law,” Norfolk Constabulary’s Detective Chief Superintendant Julian Gregory said in a statement. There is no evidence that the emails were leaked by a disaffected employee at the university, Gregory added. Since the hack, a series of inquiries have cleared scientists at the CRU and elsewhere of misconduct. However, they were criticised for not consulting statisticians and for their closed and unhelpful culture.
WHAT a milestone. After decades of development, regulators have recommended approval for the first commercial gene therapy in Europe and the US. The therapy is for a rare genetic condition called lipoprotein lipase deficiency. People with LPLD can’t break down fat globules in the bloodstream, known as chylomicrons. They lack the necessary enzyme, lipoprotein lipase, which is normally made in muscle cells. Because of defects in the gene for
Nuclear blame CATASTROPHIC meltdowns of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had less to do with the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on 11 March last year, and more to do with the plant owners’ and government’s failure to anticipate and prepare for emergencies on such an epic scale. That’s according to a report by an independent panel commissioned by the Japanese –Removed for safe-keeping– government. Released on
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
Planet hunter glitch
Monday, the report is the latest of several to surface, and accuses the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of failing to tell the media that the plant’s fuel rods had possibly melted, even though it knew this was likely. Meanwhile, the removal of the rods from a storage pool at the facility started last week. Images aired on TV showed cranes lifting two of the 1535 fuel units from the No 4 reactor building. This was the first stage of a programme to remove unused and used fuel from the reactor to counter the risk of further radiation leakage. The process could take years.
60 Seconds
control the probe’s motion along each axis – the probe resumed its observations on 20 July. If the glitch can’t be fixed, Kepler won’t have a backup wheel, which could halt its mission if another wheel fails.
DOES Earth have a twin in the galaxy? Our chances of finding out may have just shrunk due to a glitch with NASA’s exoplanethunting spacecraft Kepler. Since its launch in 2009, Kepler “We need to operate the has revolutionised our view of mission for another four alien planets. But on 14 July, one of its four reaction wheels – which years to find Earth-size planets in habitable zones” control the probe’s orientation – stopped turning. Ground control “We need another four shut down the malfunctioning years to find Earth-size planets wheel, leading to the loss of in the habitable zone of stars planet-hunting data. exactly like the sun,” says NASA’s As Kepler really only needs William Borucki. three wheels to function – one to
Syria admits chemical weapons
HIV given notice
ap photo/sana
COULD this be the endgame for AS SYRIAN rebels gain ground in fierce fighting, the Syrian HIV? Pioneers of HIV research last government has acknowledged its week announced a united goal: to stockpiles of chemical weapons stamp out the virus forever. (CW) – by announcing that they will “Finding a cure is going to be not be used against Syrians, only one of multiple strategies to end foreign invaders. the epidemic,” says Sharon Lewin However, the regime has insisted of the Alfred Hospital in that the rebellion, which began over Melbourne, Australia, who is one a year ago, is the work of foreigners. of the 34 founders of the global Ironically, the only known plans for scientific strategy called “Towards foreign troops to engage Syria are to an HIV Cure”. The announcement secure the CWs. Leonard Spector of came ahead of the 21st the Center for Nonproliferation International AIDS Conference in Studies in Washington DC told a US Washington DC this week. Congressional committee last week HIV can be suppressed using antiretroviral drugs but not cured, that in a recent military exercise, the US and 18 other nations rehearsed because the drugs only kill cells in which the virus is multiplying. HIV ways to “prevent the transfer of chemical arms out of Syria”. can lay low by inserting dormant copies of itself into the DNA of healthy cells. Lewin and others are researching new approaches to flush out HIV. She is managing a trial exploring a promising avenue – giving people a cancer drug called vorinostat that “wakes up the virus” so it can be destroyed with antiretroviral drugs. Other avenues include loading immune cells with genes to sabotage a white-blood-cell’s surface protein, CCR5, which HIV uses to enter cells. A treatment aimed at biochemically chipping the virus out of infected people’s –”Foreign” rebels beware– DNA is also in development.
Syria is thought to possess between 500 and 1000 tonnes of mainly mustard gas and the nerve gas sarin. A stolen shell set off in a city “could wreak havoc”, Spector warned. He added that a collapse of the regime could make it difficult to establish who controls the CWs. Foreign powers should now “negotiate international monitoring and security arrangements” for the CW sites, starting by assuring the guards that they will be rewarded for staying at their posts if the regime falls. Any new government must renounce CWs, Spector said, though he admitted the current government acquired them as a deterrent against nuclear-armed Israel, a situation that has not changed.
In-flight bugs Which airports spread the most disease? Of the 40 largest in the US, JFK in New York came top. Honolulu International gets just 30 per cent of JFK’s traffic but came third because it receives many flights from well-connected hubs. The data could guide the distribution of vaccines during epidemics (PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal. pone.0040961).
Illegal traders The WWF has named and shamed the world’s worst countries for trafficking, consuming and sourcing endangered animal parts. All are failing to comply with CITES, an international treaty on endangered species. Vietnam was ranked worst consumer, while Mozambique and Laos do least to monitor elephant, rhino and tiger parts moving through their borders.
Up and down From launch to splashdown in 20 minutes isn’t too shabby. On 23 July, IRVE-3, complete with inflatable heat shield, launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and then landed off the coast of North Carolina. IRVE-3 carried more than twice the load of its predecessors IRVE and IRVE-2.
Dark matter WIMPs out The stuff making up 80 per cent of the universe’s matter stubbornly refuses to come out of the shadows. The latest results from the underground Xenon100 detector in L’Aquila, Italy, show no sign of WIMPs, the particles thought to make up the invisible stuff.
Passion for safety Sally Ride, who became the US’s first female astronaut aboard a space shuttle flight in June 1983, has died age 61. Ride, a passionate supporter of NASA’s space programme, strived to change its safety culture, serving on both the Challenger and Columbia shuttle accident enquiry boards.
28 July 2012 | NewScientist | 5
UPFRONT
Polio workers targeted THE push to eradicate polio from the world took more than one bullet last week. On 20 July, Muhammad Ishaq, a local worker with Pakistan’s polio eradication programme, was shot dead in Gadap, a district of Karachi in southern Pakistan. Three days earlier polio drives in the area were suspended when a Ghanaian doctor and his driver were shot and wounded as they drove through Gadap. The shootings follow a ban on polio vaccination in northern Pakistan, declared in June by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a Taliban commander. Bahadur is using the ban in an attempt to force a halt to US drone attacks. Hostility to polio vaccination also rose after US agents used vaccination campaigns to gain access to families during the search for Osama bin Laden.
A Pakistani physician alleged to have helped the CIA was sentenced to 33 years in prison in May. Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan are the only countries where wild polio virus persists, with Pakistan considered the toughest hold-out. Gadap is one of three strongholds for the virus in Pakistan, and as an urban area with many migrant families it is a source of outbreaks elsewhere in the country. Hopes had risen that the programme was working, as no cases of polio have been reported in Karachi so far this year, after nine last year. Also, an independent assessment of the polio eradication drive reported in June that water samples from Gadap were virus-free. The assessors attributed the progress to local workers – like Ishaq.
Gene therapy first
the enzyme, fat clogs up blood vessels in the gut and pancreas of those with LPLD. So they have to avoid all fat in food. The new therapy, called Glybera, is produced by uniQure BV in the Netherlands. It involves injecting a virus containing a healthy copy of the gene into muscle cells in a patient’s leg. On 20 July, the European Medicines Agency recommended that Glybera be approved. The European Commission will make the final decision within three months – however, it usually follows the EMA’s advice.
–Banned in northern Pakistan–
No hacking charges
“We do not have a realistic prospect of identifying the offenders within the time imposed by law” years of the offence. “The complex nature of this investigation means that we do not have a realistic prospect of identifying the offender or offenders and 4 | NewScientist | 28 July 2012
Tokyo Electric Power Company
IT CREATED a media feeding frenzy and dragged climate scientists’ reputations through the mud, but nobody will be prosecuted for the “climategate” email hack. Thousands of emails were stolen from the servers of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in November 2009 and posted on a Russian email server. Climate sceptics seized on them to claim that scientists had conspired to withhold or alter data, unfairly manipulated the peer-review process and smeared their critics. The police investigation has run out of time, as in the UK people have to be charged with a computer crime within three
launching criminal proceedings within the time constraints imposed by law,” Norfolk Constabulary’s Detective Chief Superintendant Julian Gregory said in a statement. There is no evidence that the emails were leaked by a disaffected employee at the university, Gregory added. Since the hack, a series of inquiries have cleared scientists at the CRU and elsewhere of misconduct. However, they were criticised for not consulting statisticians and for their closed and unhelpful culture.
WHAT a milestone. After decades of development, regulators have recommended approval for the first commercial gene therapy in Europe and the US. The therapy is for a rare genetic condition called lipoprotein lipase deficiency. People with LPLD can’t break down fat globules in the bloodstream, known as chylomicrons. They lack the necessary enzyme, lipoprotein lipase, which is normally made in muscle cells. Because of defects in the gene for
Nuclear blame CATASTROPHIC meltdowns of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had less to do with the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on 11 March last year, and more to do with the plant owners’ and government’s failure to anticipate and prepare for emergencies on such an epic scale. That’s according to a report by an independent panel commissioned by the Japanese –Removed for safe-keeping– government. Released on
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
Planet hunter glitch
Monday, the report is the latest of several to surface, and accuses the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of failing to tell the media that the plant’s fuel rods had possibly melted, even though it knew this was likely. Meanwhile, the removal of the rods from a storage pool at the facility started last week. Images aired on TV showed cranes lifting two of the 1535 fuel units from the No 4 reactor building. This was the first stage of a programme to remove unused and used fuel from the reactor to counter the risk of further radiation leakage. The process could take years.
60 Seconds
control the probe’s motion along each axis – the probe resumed its observations on 20 July. If the glitch can’t be fixed, Kepler won’t have a backup wheel, which could halt its mission if another wheel fails.
DOES Earth have a twin in the galaxy? Our chances of finding out may have just shrunk due to a glitch with NASA’s exoplanethunting spacecraft Kepler. Since its launch in 2009, Kepler “We need to operate the has revolutionised our view of mission for another four alien planets. But on 14 July, one of its four reaction wheels – which years to find Earth-size planets in habitable zones” control the probe’s orientation – stopped turning. Ground control “We need another four shut down the malfunctioning years to find Earth-size planets wheel, leading to the loss of in the habitable zone of stars planet-hunting data. exactly like the sun,” says NASA’s As Kepler really only needs William Borucki. three wheels to function – one to
Syria admits chemical weapons
HIV given notice
ap photo/sana
COULD this be the endgame for AS SYRIAN rebels gain ground in fierce fighting, the Syrian HIV? Pioneers of HIV research last government has acknowledged its week announced a united goal: to stockpiles of chemical weapons stamp out the virus forever. (CW) – by announcing that they will “Finding a cure is going to be not be used against Syrians, only one of multiple strategies to end foreign invaders. the epidemic,” says Sharon Lewin However, the regime has insisted of the Alfred Hospital in that the rebellion, which began over Melbourne, Australia, who is one a year ago, is the work of foreigners. of the 34 founders of the global Ironically, the only known plans for scientific strategy called “Towards foreign troops to engage Syria are to an HIV Cure”. The announcement secure the CWs. Leonard Spector of came ahead of the 21st the Center for Nonproliferation International AIDS Conference in Studies in Washington DC told a US Washington DC this week. Congressional committee last week HIV can be suppressed using antiretroviral drugs but not cured, that in a recent military exercise, the US and 18 other nations rehearsed because the drugs only kill cells in which the virus is multiplying. HIV ways to “prevent the transfer of chemical arms out of Syria”. can lay low by inserting dormant copies of itself into the DNA of healthy cells. Lewin and others are researching new approaches to flush out HIV. She is managing a trial exploring a promising avenue – giving people a cancer drug called vorinostat that “wakes up the virus” so it can be destroyed with antiretroviral drugs. Other avenues include loading immune cells with genes to sabotage a white-blood-cell’s surface protein, CCR5, which HIV uses to enter cells. A treatment aimed at biochemically chipping the virus out of infected people’s –”Foreign” rebels beware– DNA is also in development.
Syria is thought to possess between 500 and 1000 tonnes of mainly mustard gas and the nerve gas sarin. A stolen shell set off in a city “could wreak havoc”, Spector warned. He added that a collapse of the regime could make it difficult to establish who controls the CWs. Foreign powers should now “negotiate international monitoring and security arrangements” for the CW sites, starting by assuring the guards that they will be rewarded for staying at their posts if the regime falls. Any new government must renounce CWs, Spector said, though he admitted the current government acquired them as a deterrent against nuclear-armed Israel, a situation that has not changed.
In-flight bugs Which airports spread the most disease? Of the 40 largest in the US, JFK in New York came top. Honolulu International gets just 30 per cent of JFK’s traffic but came third because it receives many flights from well-connected hubs. The data could guide the distribution of vaccines during epidemics (PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal. pone.0040961).
Illegal traders The WWF has named and shamed the world’s worst countries for trafficking, consuming and sourcing endangered animal parts. All are failing to comply with CITES, an international treaty on endangered species. Vietnam was ranked worst consumer, while Mozambique and Laos do least to monitor elephant, rhino and tiger parts moving through their borders.
Up and down From launch to splashdown in 20 minutes isn’t too shabby. On 23 July, IRVE-3, complete with inflatable heat shield, launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and then landed off the coast of North Carolina. IRVE-3 carried more than twice the load of its predecessors IRVE and IRVE-2.
Dark matter WIMPs out The stuff making up 80 per cent of the universe’s matter stubbornly refuses to come out of the shadows. The latest results from the underground Xenon100 detector in L’Aquila, Italy, show no sign of WIMPs, the particles thought to make up the invisible stuff.
Passion for safety Sally Ride, who became the US’s first female astronaut aboard a space shuttle flight in June 1983, has died age 61. Ride, a passionate supporter of NASA’s space programme, strived to change its safety culture, serving on both the Challenger and Columbia shuttle accident enquiry boards.
28 July 2012 | NewScientist | 5