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Bill Gates presents “road map for saving 4 million lives”
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UPFRONT
Cattle plague eliminated FOR only the second time, humans have eradicated a disease: the cattle plague rinderpest. The first victory was over smallpox, making this the first-ever animal disease to go. The last major rinderpest outbreak was in Kenya in 2001, but making sure the virus wasn’t lingering undetected in war-torn Sudan and Somalia has proven difficult. Such pockets of infection allowed the virus to roar back from near-eradication in the 1980s. A repeat was avoided this time thanks in part to simple diagnostic tests that local farmers could operate. These meant that surviving pockets of infection could be detected and wiped out, no matter how remote. As a result, Bernard Vallat, head of the World Organisation for Animal
Health, declared that he was “confident” rinderpest was gone at a scientific meeting on the disease in Rome, Italy, last week. The organisation is expected to formally announce rinderpest’s eradication at a meeting in Paris, France, next May. The virus only infects bovines, but to people who depend on cattle, it means starvation. It plagued Europe from the late Roman Empire till the 1920s, and when it arrived in Africa in 1887, 80 per cent of the livestock died – as did much of the human population. An effective vaccine was developed in the 1960s, and mass cattle vaccination campaigns eliminated the virus from large areas of Asia and Africa by 2000, though it persisted in remote herds until now.
Heavy heights
they will create a fireball of the quarks and gluons that make up protons and neutrons. The collision energies should far outstrip those achieved by the current record holder, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Contrary to early expectations, the RHIC collisions showed that particles in the soup of quarks and gluons behave as if they are in a liquid. It will be interesting to see whether this behaviour holds at the LHC’s higher temperatures, says Peter Steinberg of Brookhaven.
–Rinderpest-free at last–
Brain therapy
“Injecting a virus containing the missing gene into a mouse’s brain reversed its depression” such as showing decreased effort when having to swim to an island. Next they injected viruses containing p11 directly into the nucleus accumbens of the mice 6 | NewScientist | 23 October 2010
one.org
A NOVEL treatment for depression may soon get the go ahead: injecting genes directly into the brain. It would be the first attempt to treat a psychiatric illness with gene therapy. A gene called p11 is vital for enabling neurons to respond to the neurotransmitter serotonin. A lack of p11 has been shown to lead to depression in humans. To test whether gene therapy could help, Michael Kaplitt of the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and colleagues first demonstrated that mice lacking p11 showed symptoms of depression, failing to respond with the same vitality as healthy mice when exposed to challenges,
lacking p11. This part of the brain is where a lack of p11 manifests itself as depression in humans. The team found this reversed the depression in the mice (Science Translational Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3001079). Although the proposal to do the same in humans sounds drastic, Kaplitt points out that a similar procedure has already been used to deliver genes to the brain’s of people with Parkinson’s disease. “We’re already doing a primate study to support a potential human trial, so this is moving ahead very rapidly,” says Kaplitt.
THE world’s most powerful particle smasher is moving on to heavy ions in its bid to explore the universe’s first microseconds. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva, has already met its 2010 target for the number of proton collisions. It is set to start colliding lead ions in November. “It’s one of the largest steps that any collider has made over its predecessor, possibly the largest in history,” says John Jowett, head of heavy ion operations at the LHC. As the ions smash into each other
Gates’s picture pick PHILANTHROPIST and Microsoft founder Bill Gates this week revealed his favourite image, as he launched the “Living Proof” campaign to bolster support for development aid to poor nations. After rejecting paintings by van Gogh and Leonardo da Vinci – and even the Microsoft logo – he revealed that he had plumped for a graph showing that between 1960 and 2008, the number of –Let’s hear it for foreign aid– children dying each year fell
For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news
Tritium tribulation
from 20 million to 9.3 million. Making the case for aid, Gates listed numerous successes through vaccination, education and agricultural programmes over the past decade. He said his aim for the next 15 years is to see child deaths cut to 5 million per year. This will be achieved by dispensing more bed nets and anti-malarial drugs, deploying more trained birth attendants, and supplying new vaccines to combat lung disease, and diarrhoea caused by rotaviruses. “It’s a road map for saving more than 4 million lives a year by 2025,” he said.
60 Seconds
destructive power of nuclear weapons. But with a half-life of around 12 years, it constantly needs replacing. A report by the US Government Accountability Office has revealed that the sole US production facility
A SHORTAGE of tritium, a key ingredient of nuclear weapons, could spur the US administration to open more plants, despite President Barack Obama’s declared goal of eliminating nukes. “If we really want to think This would send the wrong signal to the rest of the world, says about eliminating nuclear weapons we should stop Robert Alvarez at the Institute for making tritium” Policy Studies in Washington DC. “If we really want to think about leaks large amounts of tritium into elimination, this would be one of cooling water. Since tritium is a the big milestones – stop making suspected carcinogen, production tritium,” he says. at the plant has been limited to Tritium is a radioactive form keep emissions within safe levels. of hydrogen which increases the
Climate change will hit Asia worst
Gene guidelines
FARJANA K. GODHULY/AFP/Getty Images
TO MAKE it harder for bioterrorists SEEKING to escape the worst effects of climate change? A comprehensive to build dangerous viruses from vulnerability index suggests you scratch, guidelines for firms who move to Scandinavia, Ireland or supply “custom DNA” are being Iceland. And although Africa is often introduced in the US. regarded as the most vulnerable The US and other countries continent, it finds that the teeming restrict who can work with certain plains of Asia are at greater risk in germs, but it might be possible the next 30 years. Ten of the 16 most to build some viruses from their vulnerable countries are in Asia. genes. A number of firms supply The Climate Change Vulnerability DNA sequences to order. A 2005 Index was produced by Maplecroft, investigation by New Scientist a British risk analysis firm. It has raised alarms when it found that crunched data from more than 40 only five out of 12 of these firms in studies, and looked at a range of risk North America and Europe always factors including a nation’s exposure screened orders for sequences that might be used in bioweapons. to climate-related disasters; its population density, poverty and The US now wants firms to dependence on agriculture; and its verify a customer’s identity and government’s and infrastructure’s make sure they are not on a list of banned buyers. It also wants them to screen orders for sequences that are unique to Select Agents, a list of microbes the US deems dangerous. However, scientists commenting on the draft rules earlier this year fear that sequences from microbes other than Select Agents might also be dangerous. The US Department of Health says not enough is known about them to say which ones should arouse a firm’s suspicions. Other potential weaknesses include the fact that the rules are voluntary, and that much custom DNA is made –Worse to come– outside the US.
ability to adapt to climate change. Bangladesh comes top of the “extremely vulnerable” category because of its large population, extreme rural poverty and high risk of flooding. India is second because of its billion-plus inhabitants. Other Asian nations at risk include Nepal, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia and Pakistan, which is still recovering from floods that engulfed a tenth of the country. African nations judged at extreme risk are Madagascar, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Malawi. The findings will raise the stakes in the run up to the climate summit in Cancún, Mexico, in December, when nations hope to complete the talks on a new climate treaty.
Universal flu clue A protein found in every kind of flu virus might make a vaccine that will protect against flu once and for all. An immune response to the protein, which was discovered last year, protected mice, at least partly, against every family of flu known to attack humans (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1013387107).
China biodiversity plan Nearly one-quarter of Chinese territory is set to be designated a protected area, according to China’s first national plan to safeguard its biodiversity. The plan, which was announced this week, is based in part on research by The Nature Conservancy. It identifies 32 priority areas covering 23 per cent of the country.
Double robo-op In a world first, a man in Montreal, Canada, has had his prostate removed entirely by robots. One wielded the knife, guided remotely by surgeons, while the other, named McSleepy, provided anaesthesia. Each has worked separately before, but this was their first team effort.
Möbius double helix Clever chemistry has made a Möbius strip from chunks of doublestranded DNA. A team at Arizona State University in Tempe made a “one-sided” ribbon of DNA that is 11 double-helix strands wide. They say it could be used for more complex nanostructures (Nature Nanotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/ nnano.2010.193).
Earth vision Two German satellites have flown within 350 metres of each other to create a high-resolution 3D image of mount Etna, Italy. The image is part of a German Aerospace Centre project to create a highprecision 3D model of the entire surface of the Earth.
23 October 2010 | NewScientist | 7
UPFRONT
Cattle plague eliminated FOR only the second time, humans have eradicated a disease: the cattle plague rinderpest. The first victory was over smallpox, making this the first-ever animal disease to go. The last major rinderpest outbreak was in Kenya in 2001, but making sure the virus wasn’t lingering undetected in war-torn Sudan and Somalia has proven difficult. Such pockets of infection allowed the virus to roar back from near-eradication in the 1980s. A repeat was avoided this time thanks in part to simple diagnostic tests that local farmers could operate. These meant that surviving pockets of infection could be detected and wiped out, no matter how remote. As a result, Bernard Vallat, head of the World Organisation for Animal
Health, declared that he was “confident” rinderpest was gone at a scientific meeting on the disease in Rome, Italy, last week. The organisation is expected to formally announce rinderpest’s eradication at a meeting in Paris, France, next May. The virus only infects bovines, but to people who depend on cattle, it means starvation. It plagued Europe from the late Roman Empire till the 1920s, and when it arrived in Africa in 1887, 80 per cent of the livestock died – as did much of the human population. An effective vaccine was developed in the 1960s, and mass cattle vaccination campaigns eliminated the virus from large areas of Asia and Africa by 2000, though it persisted in remote herds until now.
Heavy heights
they will create a fireball of the quarks and gluons that make up protons and neutrons. The collision energies should far outstrip those achieved by the current record holder, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Contrary to early expectations, the RHIC collisions showed that particles in the soup of quarks and gluons behave as if they are in a liquid. It will be interesting to see whether this behaviour holds at the LHC’s higher temperatures, says Peter Steinberg of Brookhaven.
–Rinderpest-free at last–
Brain therapy
“Injecting a virus containing the missing gene into a mouse’s brain reversed its depression” such as showing decreased effort when having to swim to an island. Next they injected viruses containing p11 directly into the nucleus accumbens of the mice 6 | NewScientist | 23 October 2010
one.org
A NOVEL treatment for depression may soon get the go ahead: injecting genes directly into the brain. It would be the first attempt to treat a psychiatric illness with gene therapy. A gene called p11 is vital for enabling neurons to respond to the neurotransmitter serotonin. A lack of p11 has been shown to lead to depression in humans. To test whether gene therapy could help, Michael Kaplitt of the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and colleagues first demonstrated that mice lacking p11 showed symptoms of depression, failing to respond with the same vitality as healthy mice when exposed to challenges,
lacking p11. This part of the brain is where a lack of p11 manifests itself as depression in humans. The team found this reversed the depression in the mice (Science Translational Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3001079). Although the proposal to do the same in humans sounds drastic, Kaplitt points out that a similar procedure has already been used to deliver genes to the brain’s of people with Parkinson’s disease. “We’re already doing a primate study to support a potential human trial, so this is moving ahead very rapidly,” says Kaplitt.
THE world’s most powerful particle smasher is moving on to heavy ions in its bid to explore the universe’s first microseconds. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva, has already met its 2010 target for the number of proton collisions. It is set to start colliding lead ions in November. “It’s one of the largest steps that any collider has made over its predecessor, possibly the largest in history,” says John Jowett, head of heavy ion operations at the LHC. As the ions smash into each other
Gates’s picture pick PHILANTHROPIST and Microsoft founder Bill Gates this week revealed his favourite image, as he launched the “Living Proof” campaign to bolster support for development aid to poor nations. After rejecting paintings by van Gogh and Leonardo da Vinci – and even the Microsoft logo – he revealed that he had plumped for a graph showing that between 1960 and 2008, the number of –Let’s hear it for foreign aid– children dying each year fell
For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news
Tritium tribulation
from 20 million to 9.3 million. Making the case for aid, Gates listed numerous successes through vaccination, education and agricultural programmes over the past decade. He said his aim for the next 15 years is to see child deaths cut to 5 million per year. This will be achieved by dispensing more bed nets and anti-malarial drugs, deploying more trained birth attendants, and supplying new vaccines to combat lung disease, and diarrhoea caused by rotaviruses. “It’s a road map for saving more than 4 million lives a year by 2025,” he said.
60 Seconds
destructive power of nuclear weapons. But with a half-life of around 12 years, it constantly needs replacing. A report by the US Government Accountability Office has revealed that the sole US production facility
A SHORTAGE of tritium, a key ingredient of nuclear weapons, could spur the US administration to open more plants, despite President Barack Obama’s declared goal of eliminating nukes. “If we really want to think This would send the wrong signal to the rest of the world, says about eliminating nuclear weapons we should stop Robert Alvarez at the Institute for making tritium” Policy Studies in Washington DC. “If we really want to think about leaks large amounts of tritium into elimination, this would be one of cooling water. Since tritium is a the big milestones – stop making suspected carcinogen, production tritium,” he says. at the plant has been limited to Tritium is a radioactive form keep emissions within safe levels. of hydrogen which increases the
Climate change will hit Asia worst
Gene guidelines
FARJANA K. GODHULY/AFP/Getty Images
TO MAKE it harder for bioterrorists SEEKING to escape the worst effects of climate change? A comprehensive to build dangerous viruses from vulnerability index suggests you scratch, guidelines for firms who move to Scandinavia, Ireland or supply “custom DNA” are being Iceland. And although Africa is often introduced in the US. regarded as the most vulnerable The US and other countries continent, it finds that the teeming restrict who can work with certain plains of Asia are at greater risk in germs, but it might be possible the next 30 years. Ten of the 16 most to build some viruses from their vulnerable countries are in Asia. genes. A number of firms supply The Climate Change Vulnerability DNA sequences to order. A 2005 Index was produced by Maplecroft, investigation by New Scientist a British risk analysis firm. It has raised alarms when it found that crunched data from more than 40 only five out of 12 of these firms in studies, and looked at a range of risk North America and Europe always factors including a nation’s exposure screened orders for sequences that might be used in bioweapons. to climate-related disasters; its population density, poverty and The US now wants firms to dependence on agriculture; and its verify a customer’s identity and government’s and infrastructure’s make sure they are not on a list of banned buyers. It also wants them to screen orders for sequences that are unique to Select Agents, a list of microbes the US deems dangerous. However, scientists commenting on the draft rules earlier this year fear that sequences from microbes other than Select Agents might also be dangerous. The US Department of Health says not enough is known about them to say which ones should arouse a firm’s suspicions. Other potential weaknesses include the fact that the rules are voluntary, and that much custom DNA is made –Worse to come– outside the US.
ability to adapt to climate change. Bangladesh comes top of the “extremely vulnerable” category because of its large population, extreme rural poverty and high risk of flooding. India is second because of its billion-plus inhabitants. Other Asian nations at risk include Nepal, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia and Pakistan, which is still recovering from floods that engulfed a tenth of the country. African nations judged at extreme risk are Madagascar, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Malawi. The findings will raise the stakes in the run up to the climate summit in Cancún, Mexico, in December, when nations hope to complete the talks on a new climate treaty.
Universal flu clue A protein found in every kind of flu virus might make a vaccine that will protect against flu once and for all. An immune response to the protein, which was discovered last year, protected mice, at least partly, against every family of flu known to attack humans (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1013387107).
China biodiversity plan Nearly one-quarter of Chinese territory is set to be designated a protected area, according to China’s first national plan to safeguard its biodiversity. The plan, which was announced this week, is based in part on research by The Nature Conservancy. It identifies 32 priority areas covering 23 per cent of the country.
Double robo-op In a world first, a man in Montreal, Canada, has had his prostate removed entirely by robots. One wielded the knife, guided remotely by surgeons, while the other, named McSleepy, provided anaesthesia. Each has worked separately before, but this was their first team effort.
Möbius double helix Clever chemistry has made a Möbius strip from chunks of doublestranded DNA. A team at Arizona State University in Tempe made a “one-sided” ribbon of DNA that is 11 double-helix strands wide. They say it could be used for more complex nanostructures (Nature Nanotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/ nnano.2010.193).
Earth vision Two German satellites have flown within 350 metres of each other to create a high-resolution 3D image of mount Etna, Italy. The image is part of a German Aerospace Centre project to create a highprecision 3D model of the entire surface of the Earth.
23 October 2010 | NewScientist | 7