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Atkins works – a bit
60 SECONDS in areas frequented by boarders and skiers, while levels in stressed birds may soar by 60 per cent, according to Raphaël Arlettaz and colleagues at the University of Bern in Switzerland. They fear the birds are being startled out of the snow burrows where they shelter from predators and the cold, losing heat and energy in the process (Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2006.0434). Numbers of animals have declined by up to a half in some areas close to ski resorts, adding to a growing body of evidence that tourism has a detrimental impact on wildlife around the world (New Scientist, 6 March 2004, p 6).
Noah, it’s not
Fertility boost
ATKINS WORKS – A BIT
“This is the first study in women showing that kisspeptin works”
Compared head-to-head against three other diet plans, the Atkins diet has come out on top. In one of the largest studies to date, overweight women lost most weight on the popular lowcarbohydrate diet. The effect was small, however, and it is not clear that the diet works in the way its inventor claimed. The Atkins diet replaces carbohydrates with fat and protein. Christopher Gardner and his colleagues at Stanford University in California asked 311 overweight women aged between 20 and 50 to follow either Atkins or one of three other popular diets: Zone, which cuts carbs less severely than Atkins; LEARN, a low-fat, high-carb diet based on US government
works,” says Waljit Dhillo, head of a team at Hammersmith Hospital in London, which presented its findings this week in Birmingham at a meeting organised by the UK Society for Endocrinology. The next step is to test the treatment in infertile women. Dhillo hopes that kisspeptin treatment will mean infertile women will avoid the side effects of taking LH directly. These include hyperstimulation of the ovaries to release too many eggs at once, which increases the frequency of multiple births. –Don’t expect miracles– www.newscientist.com
070310_N_UpFronts.indd 7
Nobel goes missing The 1939 Nobel prize in physics, awarded to Ernest Lawrence for inventing the cyclotron, has been stolen. The 23-carat gold medallion had been on display at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Museum officials reported the theft on 1 March and have announced a $2500 reward for information leading to its recovery.
“There must be massive amounts of water muffling seismic waves below Beijing” They think that the water was dragged down by the movement of tectonic plates below the Pacific Ocean, in a process that took 200 million years. “That’s far too long to be attributed to Noah’s flood,” quips Lawrence.
Cattle drug row The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve a cattle antibiotic, even though it belongs to a class that is needed as a last line of defence against human infections. An FDA advisory committee has already voted against approving cefquinome, concerned that it could promote the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria. However, the FDA’s own guidelines on approving animal drugs – which public health advocates claim are too industryfriendly – would make it difficult for the agency to deny approval.
guidelines; and Ornish, a more extreme low-fat plan. After 12 months, the Atkins women had lost just 4.7 kilograms on average: significantly more than the Zone group, but only marginally more than the rest (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 297, p 969). According to the late Robert Atkins (pictured), who invented the diet, its low-carb formula changes a person’s fat-storage metabolism. Gardner, however, says that the mechanism is unclear: “Was the slight benefit on Atkins due to the low carbs, or the high protein, or the eight glasses of water a day that may have replaced sweetened beverages? We don’t know.”
One-off bird is back The world’s most elusive bird has been spotted, twice. A single specimen of the large-billed reed warbler (Acrocephalus orinus) was collected in India in 1867. Now a live bird has been caught in Thailand, while a preserved specimen has turned up in a drawer at a branch of the UK Natural History Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire. MARIO RUIZ/TIME LIFE/GETTY
TEENAGE pregnancies may be a bane of society, but the hormone that triggers teen fertility may soon help older infertile women to have babies. Called kisspeptin, the hormone can boost flagging concentrations of luteinising hormone (LH), which triggers ovulation. In trials of kisspeptin in six fertile women, the hormone boosted LH production 20-fold at precisely the time it is needed – in the pre-ovulation phase of the menstrual cycle. “This is the first study in women showing that it
“PEOPLE keep asking if we’ve found the water that dripped underground from Noah’s flood,” says Jesse Lawrence. No wonder: he has found a reservoir holding as much water as the Arctic Ocean deep below Earth’s surface. Lawrence, from the University of California, San Diego, and Michael Wysession of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, analysed more than 600,000 seismic signals generated by earthquakes travelling through the Earth. They were surprised to find that the waves weakened below eastern Asia at depths between 600 and
1200 kilometres, corresponding to Earth’s lower mantle. The researchers realised that there must be massive amounts of water in porous mantle rock muffling the seismic waves, mainly below Beijing, China.
Ocean fish stocks low Half of all sharks classed as “highly migratory” and two-thirds of fish that regularly swim across national maritime boundaries are either overexploited or already depleted, says a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization published on 5 March.
Quake shakes Indonesia Yet another powerful earthquake rocked Indonesia on Tuesday and was felt as far away as Singapore. The epicentre of the magnitude-6.3 tremor was below the town of Solok, on the western coast of the island of Sumatra.
10 March 2007 | NewScientist | 7
6/3/07 5:23:47 pm
Noah, it’s not
Fertility boost
ATKINS WORKS – A BIT
“This is the first study in women showing that kisspeptin works”
Compared head-to-head against three other diet plans, the Atkins diet has come out on top. In one of the largest studies to date, overweight women lost most weight on the popular lowcarbohydrate diet. The effect was small, however, and it is not clear that the diet works in the way its inventor claimed. The Atkins diet replaces carbohydrates with fat and protein. Christopher Gardner and his colleagues at Stanford University in California asked 311 overweight women aged between 20 and 50 to follow either Atkins or one of three other popular diets: Zone, which cuts carbs less severely than Atkins; LEARN, a low-fat, high-carb diet based on US government
works,” says Waljit Dhillo, head of a team at Hammersmith Hospital in London, which presented its findings this week in Birmingham at a meeting organised by the UK Society for Endocrinology. The next step is to test the treatment in infertile women. Dhillo hopes that kisspeptin treatment will mean infertile women will avoid the side effects of taking LH directly. These include hyperstimulation of the ovaries to release too many eggs at once, which increases the frequency of multiple births. –Don’t expect miracles– www.newscientist.com
070310_N_UpFronts.indd 7
Nobel goes missing The 1939 Nobel prize in physics, awarded to Ernest Lawrence for inventing the cyclotron, has been stolen. The 23-carat gold medallion had been on display at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Museum officials reported the theft on 1 March and have announced a $2500 reward for information leading to its recovery.
“There must be massive amounts of water muffling seismic waves below Beijing” They think that the water was dragged down by the movement of tectonic plates below the Pacific Ocean, in a process that took 200 million years. “That’s far too long to be attributed to Noah’s flood,” quips Lawrence.
Cattle drug row The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve a cattle antibiotic, even though it belongs to a class that is needed as a last line of defence against human infections. An FDA advisory committee has already voted against approving cefquinome, concerned that it could promote the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria. However, the FDA’s own guidelines on approving animal drugs – which public health advocates claim are too industryfriendly – would make it difficult for the agency to deny approval.
guidelines; and Ornish, a more extreme low-fat plan. After 12 months, the Atkins women had lost just 4.7 kilograms on average: significantly more than the Zone group, but only marginally more than the rest (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 297, p 969). According to the late Robert Atkins (pictured), who invented the diet, its low-carb formula changes a person’s fat-storage metabolism. Gardner, however, says that the mechanism is unclear: “Was the slight benefit on Atkins due to the low carbs, or the high protein, or the eight glasses of water a day that may have replaced sweetened beverages? We don’t know.”
One-off bird is back The world’s most elusive bird has been spotted, twice. A single specimen of the large-billed reed warbler (Acrocephalus orinus) was collected in India in 1867. Now a live bird has been caught in Thailand, while a preserved specimen has turned up in a drawer at a branch of the UK Natural History Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire. MARIO RUIZ/TIME LIFE/GETTY
TEENAGE pregnancies may be a bane of society, but the hormone that triggers teen fertility may soon help older infertile women to have babies. Called kisspeptin, the hormone can boost flagging concentrations of luteinising hormone (LH), which triggers ovulation. In trials of kisspeptin in six fertile women, the hormone boosted LH production 20-fold at precisely the time it is needed – in the pre-ovulation phase of the menstrual cycle. “This is the first study in women showing that it
“PEOPLE keep asking if we’ve found the water that dripped underground from Noah’s flood,” says Jesse Lawrence. No wonder: he has found a reservoir holding as much water as the Arctic Ocean deep below Earth’s surface. Lawrence, from the University of California, San Diego, and Michael Wysession of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, analysed more than 600,000 seismic signals generated by earthquakes travelling through the Earth. They were surprised to find that the waves weakened below eastern Asia at depths between 600 and
1200 kilometres, corresponding to Earth’s lower mantle. The researchers realised that there must be massive amounts of water in porous mantle rock muffling the seismic waves, mainly below Beijing, China.
Ocean fish stocks low Half of all sharks classed as “highly migratory” and two-thirds of fish that regularly swim across national maritime boundaries are either overexploited or already depleted, says a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization published on 5 March.
Quake shakes Indonesia Yet another powerful earthquake rocked Indonesia on Tuesday and was felt as far away as Singapore. The epicentre of the magnitude-6.3 tremor was below the town of Solok, on the western coast of the island of Sumatra.
10 March 2007 | NewScientist | 7
6/3/07 5:23:47 pm