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Cassini makes deepest dive yet into Saturn moon's jets
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60 SECONDS
Climate imperative
farming nations (Norway, the UK, Chile and Canada) of everything from making feed to transporting young fish (Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/ es9010114). Feed – mainly soy, fish and animal protein – had by far the most impact. Norway, which has farmed salmon the longest, scored best on nearly all fronts, largely because it wastes very little fish food. If everyone matched Norway, says Pelletier, the industry’s greenhouse emissions would be 10 per cent lower, though they are already half that of either pork or beef production.
“ambitious and equitable” international agreement at the Copenhagen climate talks in December (see page 12). “Environmental security and climate change in particular are now issues which threaten
IF THE world fails to act soon on climate change, “preserving security and stability even at current levels will become increasingly difficult”. That’s the blunt message of a statement “Preserving stability released in Washington DC last will become increasingly week by 10 high-ranking military officials from Africa, Asia, Europe, difficult if the world fails to act on climate change” Latin America and the US. The group, which makes up world security and peace,” says the military advisory council of Brigadier General Wendell King the Institute for Environmental of the US Army Command and Security in The Hague, the General Staff College in Fort Netherlands, is calling on Leavenworth, Kansas. governments to produce an
Cassini takes a dive
Southern comfort for world’s poor
SVEN TORFINN/PANOS
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft got up IF YOU want to do something well, do it yourself. Newly industrialised close and personal with Saturn’s countries of the “south” are moon Enceladus on 2 November, developing cheap treatments for when it made its deepest ever neglected tropical diseases, filling plunge into the icy plumes the the void left by western drug firms, moon emits. The manoeuvre which focus on diseases of the rich. might reveal complex organic The world’s poorest people suffer molecules that hint at life. from tropical diseases such as rabies, Plumes of ice particles and hookworm and river blindness. Yet water vapour shoot out from few treatments have been developed long fissures, nicknamed “tiger by big pharma: of 1556 drugs stripes”, at Enceladus’s south approved between 1975 and 2004, pole. The plumes may originate only 21 were for such diseases. from underground liquid water, Now the first inventory of drugs a potential habitat for life. developed by small southern Cassini has previously flown at companies to tackle diseases of the least 260 kilometres from the poor reveals a further 62 treatments surface, cautiously keeping its for tropical diseases, with 28 already distance from the densest part of on sale, including a cholera vaccine. the plumes. Mission controllers decided to make it dive right in after they determined that the ice grains would not pose a threat if the spacecraft made a slow approach. They used the gravity of Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan, to steer Cassini onto a trajectory that took it into the plumes just 100 kilometres above Enceladus’s south pole. Analysis of the data could reveal “something completely unexpected”, says John Spencer of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “We’re going somewhere we have never –In need of treatment– been before.”
Many are only sold locally, and so could be exported, says Peter Singer of the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health in Toronto, Canada, and co-author of the inventory in Health Affairs (DOI: 10.1377/ hlthaff.28.6.1760). “It’s a new vein of gold that hasn’t been fully mined.” Singer admits that donated drugs from western companies may have helped tackle some neglected diseases, but only on an ad hoc basis. In contrast, southern companies are developing tailored and affordable products. To illustrate potential savings, Singer cites a hepatitis B vaccine developed in India, which though not strictly for a tropical disease, costs just 28 cents per shot compared with $25 in the west.
Lunar landing prize The $1 million winner of the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is Masten Space Systems of Mojave, California. Entrants had to fly an uncrewed rocket for 180 seconds and land on a surface similar to the moon’s. Masten’s landing was the most accurate, but rival teams cried foul after it was given an extra day to fly following technical hitches.
US lifts HIV travel ban The US will lift the ban on admitting visitors with HIV early next year, two decades after it was first imposed. UNAIDS has welcomed the move, and is urging the six countries that still ban HIV-positive visitors, including China, South Korea and Ukraine, to follow suit.
Lab-grown corneas Corneas grown from human stem cells could be used to screen cosmetics, sparing rabbits from eye-damaging tests. So says the International Stem Cell Corporation of Oceanside, California. The firm uses donated human eggs to create stem cells, which are then grown into spheres of corneal tissue.
Climate fallout African nations suspended several meetings at the final round of pre-Copenhagen climate talks in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday. They were protesting against the targets industrial nations have set to limit global warming, which the nations say are insufficient.
Separate sharks Great white sharks in Australia and California may look the same, but they are only distant cousins. Salvador Jorgensen of Stanford University in California and his team tracked great whites in the eastern Pacific and analysed their genes to show they are a genetically discrete population. They suggest the sharks arrived in American waters over 12,000 years ago and have been evolving separately since.
7 November 2009 | NewScientist | 7
60 SECONDS
Climate imperative
farming nations (Norway, the UK, Chile and Canada) of everything from making feed to transporting young fish (Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/ es9010114). Feed – mainly soy, fish and animal protein – had by far the most impact. Norway, which has farmed salmon the longest, scored best on nearly all fronts, largely because it wastes very little fish food. If everyone matched Norway, says Pelletier, the industry’s greenhouse emissions would be 10 per cent lower, though they are already half that of either pork or beef production.
“ambitious and equitable” international agreement at the Copenhagen climate talks in December (see page 12). “Environmental security and climate change in particular are now issues which threaten
IF THE world fails to act soon on climate change, “preserving security and stability even at current levels will become increasingly difficult”. That’s the blunt message of a statement “Preserving stability released in Washington DC last will become increasingly week by 10 high-ranking military officials from Africa, Asia, Europe, difficult if the world fails to act on climate change” Latin America and the US. The group, which makes up world security and peace,” says the military advisory council of Brigadier General Wendell King the Institute for Environmental of the US Army Command and Security in The Hague, the General Staff College in Fort Netherlands, is calling on Leavenworth, Kansas. governments to produce an
Cassini takes a dive
Southern comfort for world’s poor
SVEN TORFINN/PANOS
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft got up IF YOU want to do something well, do it yourself. Newly industrialised close and personal with Saturn’s countries of the “south” are moon Enceladus on 2 November, developing cheap treatments for when it made its deepest ever neglected tropical diseases, filling plunge into the icy plumes the the void left by western drug firms, moon emits. The manoeuvre which focus on diseases of the rich. might reveal complex organic The world’s poorest people suffer molecules that hint at life. from tropical diseases such as rabies, Plumes of ice particles and hookworm and river blindness. Yet water vapour shoot out from few treatments have been developed long fissures, nicknamed “tiger by big pharma: of 1556 drugs stripes”, at Enceladus’s south approved between 1975 and 2004, pole. The plumes may originate only 21 were for such diseases. from underground liquid water, Now the first inventory of drugs a potential habitat for life. developed by small southern Cassini has previously flown at companies to tackle diseases of the least 260 kilometres from the poor reveals a further 62 treatments surface, cautiously keeping its for tropical diseases, with 28 already distance from the densest part of on sale, including a cholera vaccine. the plumes. Mission controllers decided to make it dive right in after they determined that the ice grains would not pose a threat if the spacecraft made a slow approach. They used the gravity of Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan, to steer Cassini onto a trajectory that took it into the plumes just 100 kilometres above Enceladus’s south pole. Analysis of the data could reveal “something completely unexpected”, says John Spencer of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “We’re going somewhere we have never –In need of treatment– been before.”
Many are only sold locally, and so could be exported, says Peter Singer of the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health in Toronto, Canada, and co-author of the inventory in Health Affairs (DOI: 10.1377/ hlthaff.28.6.1760). “It’s a new vein of gold that hasn’t been fully mined.” Singer admits that donated drugs from western companies may have helped tackle some neglected diseases, but only on an ad hoc basis. In contrast, southern companies are developing tailored and affordable products. To illustrate potential savings, Singer cites a hepatitis B vaccine developed in India, which though not strictly for a tropical disease, costs just 28 cents per shot compared with $25 in the west.
Lunar landing prize The $1 million winner of the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is Masten Space Systems of Mojave, California. Entrants had to fly an uncrewed rocket for 180 seconds and land on a surface similar to the moon’s. Masten’s landing was the most accurate, but rival teams cried foul after it was given an extra day to fly following technical hitches.
US lifts HIV travel ban The US will lift the ban on admitting visitors with HIV early next year, two decades after it was first imposed. UNAIDS has welcomed the move, and is urging the six countries that still ban HIV-positive visitors, including China, South Korea and Ukraine, to follow suit.
Lab-grown corneas Corneas grown from human stem cells could be used to screen cosmetics, sparing rabbits from eye-damaging tests. So says the International Stem Cell Corporation of Oceanside, California. The firm uses donated human eggs to create stem cells, which are then grown into spheres of corneal tissue.
Climate fallout African nations suspended several meetings at the final round of pre-Copenhagen climate talks in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday. They were protesting against the targets industrial nations have set to limit global warming, which the nations say are insufficient.
Separate sharks Great white sharks in Australia and California may look the same, but they are only distant cousins. Salvador Jorgensen of Stanford University in California and his team tracked great whites in the eastern Pacific and analysed their genes to show they are a genetically discrete population. They suggest the sharks arrived in American waters over 12,000 years ago and have been evolving separately since.
7 November 2009 | NewScientist | 7