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Fatigue checklist
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Upfront
Myths make measles soar MEASLES is exploding because parents are afraid to have their children vaccinated. That’s the message emerging from the US and Germany this week. Anti-vaccination scaremongering is believed to be driving the outbreaks. By Monday, 486 cases had been reported so far this year to the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, which monitors the spread of infectious disease in Germany – up from 446 cases for the whole of 2014. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, had reported 121 cases in the same time frame. In both countries, health professionals are blaming parents who reject the triple MMR vaccine for their children, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella.
According to Mobeen Rathore, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases, the upsurge is a sign that myths about vaccines need to be dispelled globally, including any link with autism. “We need to increase rates by educating people and having stronger laws that require childhood immunisations, and removing loopholes allowing parents to seek exemptions,” says Rathore. In Germany, 344 of the cases have been in Berlin. “The main causes are low immunisation rates in toddlers, adolescents and younger adults, which results in missing ‘herd immunity’ for children too young to be vaccinated,” says Dorothea Matysiak-Klose of the Robert Koch Institute.
Fatigue checklist
the condition can be difficult. “Our goal was to facilitate diagnosis,” says Ellen Wright Clayton of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and chair of the panel that drafted the report. “We hope these evidence-based diagnostic criteria provide a new foundation for future research regarding cause and treatment.” Simon Wessely at King’s College London welcomes the criteria, but is less convinced by the namechange. “I’m concerned it may add to, not reduce, confusion around this condition,” he says.
–Don’t be scared to vaccinate–
Shields up
Space Agency was due to launch its Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV), a small spaceplane designed to test re-entry technology that could eventually help deep space missions. Most re-entry vehicles are heatresistant capsules that can’t control their descent, like those used in NASA’s Apollo missions. The space shuttle, which landed like a plane, was an exception. ESA’s IXV is a hybrid, shaped like the nose of the shuttle but with rear flaps instead of wings. If all goes to plan, the uncrewed craft will have safely splashed down.
IT’S a busy week for audacious spacecraft. As we went to press, two missions were scheduled to launch into space and return using innovative re-entry techniques.
On Tuesday, SpaceX was expected to launch the DSCOVR satellite, which will monitor the effect space weather has on Earth. It is the firm’s first launch to deep space, rather than just Earth orbit, and its second attempt to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a barge. Last month, SpaceX’s earlier try at landing ended in a spectacular crash and this time is likely to be even more difficult, said CEO Elon Musk before the launch. “Rocket re-entry will be much tougher this time around due to deep space mission. Almost 2 times the force and 4 times the heat,” he tweeted. The next day, the European 6 | NewScientist | 14 February 2015
Carol Armstrong/ALSJ)
“Rocket re-entry will be much tougher this time around due to it being a deep space mission”
WHAT’S in a name? Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a condition that debilitates as many as 2.5 million people in the US with exhaustion, should be renamed Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease, according to the US Institute of Medicine (IOM). As well as the name-change, the IOM has this week proposed a five-point checklist for diagnosis. Because the cause of the condition, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME, remains unknown, identifying
Moon mementos WE’VE all got sentimental knickknacks from our holidays bundled away in forgotten cupboards, but this is something else. Last week the US National Air and Space Museum revealed it had been given a bag of souvenirs brought back from the moon by astronaut Neil Armstrong. It has now placed some of the items on display. The lunar keepsakes, which include the 16mm film camera –Fly me to the moon and back– used to document Armstrong’s
Upfront
Myths make measles soar MEASLES is exploding because parents are afraid to have their children vaccinated. That’s the message emerging from the US and Germany this week. Anti-vaccination scaremongering is believed to be driving the outbreaks. By Monday, 486 cases had been reported so far this year to the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, which monitors the spread of infectious disease in Germany – up from 446 cases for the whole of 2014. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, had reported 121 cases in the same time frame. In both countries, health professionals are blaming parents who reject the triple MMR vaccine for their children, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella.
According to Mobeen Rathore, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases, the upsurge is a sign that myths about vaccines need to be dispelled globally, including any link with autism. “We need to increase rates by educating people and having stronger laws that require childhood immunisations, and removing loopholes allowing parents to seek exemptions,” says Rathore. In Germany, 344 of the cases have been in Berlin. “The main causes are low immunisation rates in toddlers, adolescents and younger adults, which results in missing ‘herd immunity’ for children too young to be vaccinated,” says Dorothea Matysiak-Klose of the Robert Koch Institute.
Fatigue checklist
the condition can be difficult. “Our goal was to facilitate diagnosis,” says Ellen Wright Clayton of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and chair of the panel that drafted the report. “We hope these evidence-based diagnostic criteria provide a new foundation for future research regarding cause and treatment.” Simon Wessely at King’s College London welcomes the criteria, but is less convinced by the namechange. “I’m concerned it may add to, not reduce, confusion around this condition,” he says.
–Don’t be scared to vaccinate–
Shields up
Space Agency was due to launch its Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV), a small spaceplane designed to test re-entry technology that could eventually help deep space missions. Most re-entry vehicles are heatresistant capsules that can’t control their descent, like those used in NASA’s Apollo missions. The space shuttle, which landed like a plane, was an exception. ESA’s IXV is a hybrid, shaped like the nose of the shuttle but with rear flaps instead of wings. If all goes to plan, the uncrewed craft will have safely splashed down.
IT’S a busy week for audacious spacecraft. As we went to press, two missions were scheduled to launch into space and return using innovative re-entry techniques.
On Tuesday, SpaceX was expected to launch the DSCOVR satellite, which will monitor the effect space weather has on Earth. It is the firm’s first launch to deep space, rather than just Earth orbit, and its second attempt to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a barge. Last month, SpaceX’s earlier try at landing ended in a spectacular crash and this time is likely to be even more difficult, said CEO Elon Musk before the launch. “Rocket re-entry will be much tougher this time around due to deep space mission. Almost 2 times the force and 4 times the heat,” he tweeted. The next day, the European 6 | NewScientist | 14 February 2015
Carol Armstrong/ALSJ)
“Rocket re-entry will be much tougher this time around due to it being a deep space mission”
WHAT’S in a name? Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a condition that debilitates as many as 2.5 million people in the US with exhaustion, should be renamed Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease, according to the US Institute of Medicine (IOM). As well as the name-change, the IOM has this week proposed a five-point checklist for diagnosis. Because the cause of the condition, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME, remains unknown, identifying
Moon mementos WE’VE all got sentimental knickknacks from our holidays bundled away in forgotten cupboards, but this is something else. Last week the US National Air and Space Museum revealed it had been given a bag of souvenirs brought back from the moon by astronaut Neil Armstrong. It has now placed some of the items on display. The lunar keepsakes, which include the 16mm film camera –Fly me to the moon and back– used to document Armstrong’s