- Email: [email protected]
Biofuel's dirty little secret
60 SECONDS merely containing the virus, but this week a US-based team of public health modellers show in The Lancet (DOI: 10.1016/S01406736(07)60532-7) that this would be even more costly. Vaccinating enough people to keep the virus to its current low levels over the next 20 years would cost so much, they calculate, that it would be worth stopping polio circulating now even if the cost is as high as $8 billion – and even if some vaccination has to continue afterwards. Any slackening in current vaccination rates while the virus is still circulating would mean a rapid return to hundreds of thousands of paralysed children per year, they say.
“WE TOOK our eye off the ball, and as a result we’re not dealing with HIV transmission from mothers to children,” says Charlie Gilks of the World Health Organization. According to a WHO report released on Tuesday, around 2.3 million children are thought to have HIV. Some 90 per cent of them acquired the virus from their mother, a mode of infection that Gilks says the WHO has mostly ignored. There has, despite this, been an overall improvement in global HIV treatment. The report says that 1.3 million people in
Fatal patch
BIOFUEL’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET
THE fate of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor was sealed in June 2006 As a cure for our addiction to oil, ethanol by a software patch uploaded turns out to have some nasty side effects. to the spacecraft, according to a Pollution from gasoline engines report released by a NASA accounts for 10,000 deaths in the US each investigation board. year, along with thousands of cases of MGS had been in space for respiratory disease and even cancer. nearly 10 years when NASA lost The widely touted ethanol-based fuel contact with it on 2 November. E85 (15 per cent gasoline, 85 per cent It was never heard from again. ethanol) could make matters worse. The main culprit appears to Mark Jacobson of Stanford University be commands sent to the wrong in California modelled emissions for cars memory address on the onboard expected to be on the road in 2020. The computer. The commands were model assumed that carbon emissions meant to fix problems related to would be 60 per cent less than 2002 MGS’s high-gain antenna. “This levels, so overall deaths would be halved. had dire consequences for the However, an E85-fuelled fleet would spacecraft,” the report states. cause 185 more pollution-related deaths As a result of the error, a solar per year than a petrol one across the US, array on the spacecraft tried to most of them in Los Angeles. move further than was physically The findings, to be published in possible when ground controllers commanded it to swivel away from the sun on 2 November. Because the solar array was “driven against its hard stop”, the spacecraft entered an automatic emergency mode, reorienting itself in space and so exposing one of its two batteries to the sun. The battery overheated, so the spacecraft stopped charging it. Unfortunately, the other battery did not have enough power to keep the spacecraft going. Both batteries ran down within an estimated 12 hours, and MGS fell silent. –Sustainability comes at price– www.newscientist.com
070421_N_p6_p7.indd 7
sub-Saharan Africa are now being treated – a tenfold increase from three years ago. Intravenous drug users in eastern Europe are also being overlooked, says Gilks. The WHO estimates that around 3 million
Stem cell vote fails The US Congress has again failed to muster enough votes to expand federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. On 11 April, the Senate backed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act by 63 votes to 34 – short of the two-thirds majority needed to override an expected veto from President George W. Bush. The House of Representatives similarly failed to achieve a veto-proof majority when it voted in January.
“Mother-to-child transmission is a mode of infection the WHO has mostly ignored” drug users in the region have HIV, fewer than 10 per cent of whom are being treated. “The problem is persuading governments to treat these people as health priorities rather than just as criminals,” he says.
Home for orphans A $37 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will buy space for 21 “orphan” crops – such as cassava, yam and sweet potato – in a repository of the world’s seeds being built by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Orphan crops are relied on by the world’s poorest farmers but are largely ignored by modern crop breeders.
Environmental Science & Technology, run counter to the idea that ethanol is a cleaner-burning fuel. While ethanolburning cars will emit fewer carcinogens such as benzene and butadiene, they will spew out 20 times as much acetaldehyde as those using conventional fuel. Acetaldehyde can react with sunlight to form ozone, one of the main constituents of smog, and so increase the risks to people’s health. Without the predicted 60 per cent emissions cut it will be worse. “If we went on today’s emissions, there could be two-and-a-half times more damage,” Jacobson says. “There are so many people barking pretty loud about biofuels. They’ve been pushing these things before the science is done. Now the question is: will people listen?”
Parkinson’s progress Gene therapy that involved injecting a virus into the brains of 12 patients with Parkinson’s disease reduced symptoms by an average of 36 per cent, according to results presented on 16 April at a conference in Washington DC. The virus contained the gene for neurturin, a protein that protects cells damaged by the disease. It will now be evaluated in a further 51 patients.
Ruined river
SALEM KRIEGER/ZUMA/CORBIS
Work to do on HIV
Some 600 kilometres of the Yangtze, Asia’s longest river, are irreversibly polluted, and nearly 30 per cent of major tributaries are seriously polluted, according to a report from the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology in China. Aquatic life has suffered significantly.
Space race US astronaut Sunita Williams became the first person to run a marathon in space on Monday. “I’m done! Woo hoo!” Williams radioed NASA’s Johnson Space Center, after she finished her “Boston Marathon” on a treadmill aboard the International Space Station.
21 April 2007 | NewScientist | 7
17/4/07 5:38:10 pm
“WE TOOK our eye off the ball, and as a result we’re not dealing with HIV transmission from mothers to children,” says Charlie Gilks of the World Health Organization. According to a WHO report released on Tuesday, around 2.3 million children are thought to have HIV. Some 90 per cent of them acquired the virus from their mother, a mode of infection that Gilks says the WHO has mostly ignored. There has, despite this, been an overall improvement in global HIV treatment. The report says that 1.3 million people in
Fatal patch
BIOFUEL’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET
THE fate of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor was sealed in June 2006 As a cure for our addiction to oil, ethanol by a software patch uploaded turns out to have some nasty side effects. to the spacecraft, according to a Pollution from gasoline engines report released by a NASA accounts for 10,000 deaths in the US each investigation board. year, along with thousands of cases of MGS had been in space for respiratory disease and even cancer. nearly 10 years when NASA lost The widely touted ethanol-based fuel contact with it on 2 November. E85 (15 per cent gasoline, 85 per cent It was never heard from again. ethanol) could make matters worse. The main culprit appears to Mark Jacobson of Stanford University be commands sent to the wrong in California modelled emissions for cars memory address on the onboard expected to be on the road in 2020. The computer. The commands were model assumed that carbon emissions meant to fix problems related to would be 60 per cent less than 2002 MGS’s high-gain antenna. “This levels, so overall deaths would be halved. had dire consequences for the However, an E85-fuelled fleet would spacecraft,” the report states. cause 185 more pollution-related deaths As a result of the error, a solar per year than a petrol one across the US, array on the spacecraft tried to most of them in Los Angeles. move further than was physically The findings, to be published in possible when ground controllers commanded it to swivel away from the sun on 2 November. Because the solar array was “driven against its hard stop”, the spacecraft entered an automatic emergency mode, reorienting itself in space and so exposing one of its two batteries to the sun. The battery overheated, so the spacecraft stopped charging it. Unfortunately, the other battery did not have enough power to keep the spacecraft going. Both batteries ran down within an estimated 12 hours, and MGS fell silent. –Sustainability comes at price– www.newscientist.com
070421_N_p6_p7.indd 7
sub-Saharan Africa are now being treated – a tenfold increase from three years ago. Intravenous drug users in eastern Europe are also being overlooked, says Gilks. The WHO estimates that around 3 million
Stem cell vote fails The US Congress has again failed to muster enough votes to expand federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. On 11 April, the Senate backed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act by 63 votes to 34 – short of the two-thirds majority needed to override an expected veto from President George W. Bush. The House of Representatives similarly failed to achieve a veto-proof majority when it voted in January.
“Mother-to-child transmission is a mode of infection the WHO has mostly ignored” drug users in the region have HIV, fewer than 10 per cent of whom are being treated. “The problem is persuading governments to treat these people as health priorities rather than just as criminals,” he says.
Home for orphans A $37 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will buy space for 21 “orphan” crops – such as cassava, yam and sweet potato – in a repository of the world’s seeds being built by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Orphan crops are relied on by the world’s poorest farmers but are largely ignored by modern crop breeders.
Environmental Science & Technology, run counter to the idea that ethanol is a cleaner-burning fuel. While ethanolburning cars will emit fewer carcinogens such as benzene and butadiene, they will spew out 20 times as much acetaldehyde as those using conventional fuel. Acetaldehyde can react with sunlight to form ozone, one of the main constituents of smog, and so increase the risks to people’s health. Without the predicted 60 per cent emissions cut it will be worse. “If we went on today’s emissions, there could be two-and-a-half times more damage,” Jacobson says. “There are so many people barking pretty loud about biofuels. They’ve been pushing these things before the science is done. Now the question is: will people listen?”
Parkinson’s progress Gene therapy that involved injecting a virus into the brains of 12 patients with Parkinson’s disease reduced symptoms by an average of 36 per cent, according to results presented on 16 April at a conference in Washington DC. The virus contained the gene for neurturin, a protein that protects cells damaged by the disease. It will now be evaluated in a further 51 patients.
Ruined river
SALEM KRIEGER/ZUMA/CORBIS
Work to do on HIV
Some 600 kilometres of the Yangtze, Asia’s longest river, are irreversibly polluted, and nearly 30 per cent of major tributaries are seriously polluted, according to a report from the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology in China. Aquatic life has suffered significantly.
Space race US astronaut Sunita Williams became the first person to run a marathon in space on Monday. “I’m done! Woo hoo!” Williams radioed NASA’s Johnson Space Center, after she finished her “Boston Marathon” on a treadmill aboard the International Space Station.
21 April 2007 | NewScientist | 7
17/4/07 5:38:10 pm