Samuel Aranda/The New York Times/redux/eyevine
Upfront
Ebola spread hits Nigeria THE spread continues. The ongoing Ebola epidemic in West Africa has so far killed more than 670 people in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, making it the worst outbreak in the disease’s history. Now it has reached Lagos in Nigeria. Patrick Sawyer seemed alright when he boarded a flight from Liberia on 20 July, but was showing symptoms of the disease by the time he arrived in Lagos. He died on 25 July. Around 21 million people live in Lagos, Africa’s largest city, so an outbreak there could be disastrous. Nigerian officials are now screening passengers arriving on international flights, while Liberia has announced it has closed all but its major border crossings. It is also quarantining all affected villages.
Daniel Bausch at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana, who has recently returned from Sierra Leone, says the priority should be to trace all contacts of the infected man – although it will be difficult. “It seems simplistic, but the logistics of tracing contacts of those infected is complex,” Bausch says. A shortage of health workers and the fact many are falling ill is adding to the problems. In Sierra Leone, some landlords are telling nurses not to return to their homes in case they are infected, says Bausch. The outbreak is likely to last a few more months, he adds. “You can’t model all of the factors involved in the spread, so you just have to hope you have it under control.”
Google genetics
diet, drug use and family history. “Baseline will measure more biological and physiological measures simultaneously than could have been imagined until very recently,” says collaborator Robert Califf at Duke University. “The sheer amount of data is astounding.” The team plans to expand the database to thousands of people in the next few years. Baseline marks Google’s third foray into biology after Calico, its anti-ageing research arm, and a smart contact lens with sensors that measure glucose levels in people with diabetes.
–Fighting the virus in Guinea–
Fracked beauty
are under these beauty spots in northern and south-east England. Earthquakes and contamination of drinking water are the most feared potential consequences of fracking. But “at worst, the quakes would be like a lorry driving past” and fracking happens too deep to contaminate water, says Andrew Aplin of Durham University in the UK. In practice, Aplin says, the worst impacts would be pollution from heavy lorries carrying materials and waste water to and from fracking sites. Poorly sealed wells can also leak gas.
THERE’LL be no dash for gas in the UK’s beauty spots, unless there is. The British government has almost ruled out fracking in national parks – except “in exceptional circumstances”.
The government is keen to use the UK’s reserves of shale gas and oil. It has just invited energy firms to seek licences for fracking: pumping water into rocks to release oil and gas that normal drilling cannot reach. At the same time, the government said licences should normally be refused in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, World Heritage sites and a wetland area called the Broads. But even these can be drilled or fracked if it is “in the public interest”. A spokesperson said decisions would “depend on local circumstances”. Many prime sites for fracking 6 | NewScientist | 2 August 2014
Kevin Schafer/Minden Pictures
“The worst impacts of fracking would be from heavy lorries carrying materials and water”
THOUGHT Google already knew a lot about you? The company’s latest project aims to delve into biology to uncover what it means to be a healthy person. The company’s experimental research arm Google X, in collaboration with Duke University in North Carolina and Stanford University in California, has launched the Baseline study to sequence the genomes of 175 volunteers. Researchers will also collect bodily fluids and information on each person’s
Boto bait banned NO MORE boto butchery. Brazil has banned a catfish fishery that relied on killing river dolphins for bait. The country will use genetic tests to enforce the ban. For eight years Brazilian fishers have been catching catfish called piracatinga. To lure these “vulture catfish”, they illegally kill and cut up pink river dolphins or “boto”, a second species of river dolphin called tucuxi and crocodile-like –No longer feeding catfish– caimans. All three have suffered