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Healthy food feud
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60 SECONDS
astronauts to set the spacecraft down on solid ground. The current version of Dragon deploys a parachute as it descends and splashes down in the ocean. Dragon V2 instead comes with SuperDraco engines, each capable of producing more than 70,000 newtons of thrust. “You’ll be able to land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter,” said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at an unveiling event at the firm’s headquarters last week. The engines can be refuelled after each flight, reflecting SpaceX’s goal of developing spacecraft and rockets that are fully reusable.
Healthy food feud
of US children are now clinically obese, according to an analysis of a World Health Organization study (The Lancet, doi.org/szv). This could reduce the nation’s average life expectancy. Forcing children to have
IT’S a nationwide food fight. First lady Michelle Obama, the outspoken champion of healthy eating in the US, is taking on the Republicans in Congress who want to roll back standards for school “Republicans argue that meals. Republicans argue that healthy meals are too healthy meals are too costly, and costly, and fruit and veg the fruit and veg that children ends up being scrapped” refuse ends up being scrapped. The new-look lunches were introduced in 2012 as part of a healthy food in their meals can national campaign, but media increase how much is thrown reports last week suggested that away, but this could be curbed by kids are rejecting them. It is a giving vegetable dishes more serious issue: around 13 per cent attractive names, researchers say.
Guinea worm turns
Drug may poison Europe’s eagles
ANGELO GANDOLFI/NATUREPL.COM
SO NEAR – and yet so far. Health IT’S not exactly a gold standard treatment. A painkiller that virtually workers in South Sudan are close wiped out many of India’s vultures is to making the parasitic guinea now threatening birds of prey in worm only the second human Europe and Africa. Golden eagles disease ever to be eradicated. Just 11 cases have been seen this year in may be among the species at risk. India’s Gyps vultures have declined the country, the worm’s last major in numbers since the 1990s because stronghold, compared to 55 this of the use of a drug called diclofenac time last year. But this might not last. Violence in cattle. When the birds fed on animals that had been given the between the Dinka and Nuer painkiller, the drug damaged their ethnic groups is disrupting vital kidneys, killing them. agriculture, and the wet season It now seems that diclofenac also has begun, spreading cholera and harms eagles. Anil Sharma and his malaria. The UN has warned that by December, half of the country’s team at the Indian Veterinary people “will be displaced, starving Research Institute in Izatnagar studied dead steppe eagles (Aquila or dead”. Poverty and scarce water nipalensis) from north India. They have led to raiding between cattle saw signs of kidney failure, and traces herders in the past, and such disruptions have helped the guinea worm hang on, say health experts with the Guinea Worm Eradication Program, run by the non-profit Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The current violence is more intense – foreign project staff had to flee the country when it first flared in December, but were back by January, says project leader Ernesto Ruiz-Tiben. Worm cases peak mid-year, and health workers isolate people for treatment and to stop larvae spreading. If workers are forced to flee again and the infection spreads it could –Must have been something I ate– put eradication back years.
of diclofenac (Bird Conservation International, doi.org/s2n). Steppe eagles may not be the only ones at risk. At least five of the eight Gyps species are susceptible to diclofenac, so the other 13 Aquila species may be vulnerable if the steppe eagle is. That includes several in south Asia and Africa, and Europe’s golden and Spanish imperial eagles. All scavenge cattle and are now exposed. Diclofenac was registered for use in Italy and Spain in 2013 and has been sold in Africa since 2007. The Vulture Conservation Foundation wants diclofenac banned in Europe. But the group says that so far officials are only offering to warn about toxicity on the label. That will not stop it reaching birds.
Xe-rated Ignoble gases? Xenon and argon can apparently help athletes cheat, so are being added to the list of substances banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. WADA says that inhaling the gases can stimulate the production of red blood cells, potentially boosting performance.
Doomed planets Astronomers have stamped two exoplanets with an expiry date after discovering they will soon be consumed by their star. As the star ages and expands to become a red giant, planets Kepler-56b and 56c will be destroyed – in just 130 million and 155 million years, respectively.
Cancer buster Advanced melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, may be on the run. Of 17 patients receiving a mixture of the drugs nivolumab and ipilimumab, 16 were alive after one year and 15 were still alive after two. In addition, 69 per cent of 411 patients receiving a drug called MK-3475 were alive after one year, according to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Only half of patients receiving standard chemotherapy survive one year.
Tree-huggers are cool Koalas spend most of their time asleep, curled around the branches of eucalyptus trees. Far from being lazy, this tree-hugging turns out to be an efficient way to keep cool, so koalas only lose half as much water as sweat as they otherwise would (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/ rsbl.2014.0235).
Zebra crossing Herds of several thousand zebras take a round trip of 500 kilometres each year between Botswana and Namibia, the longest migration ever recorded for a mammal in Africa. Researchers discovered the trek after attaching GPS tracking collars to eight females (Oryx, DOI: 10.1017/50030605314000222).
7 June 2014 | NewScientist | 7
60 SECONDS
astronauts to set the spacecraft down on solid ground. The current version of Dragon deploys a parachute as it descends and splashes down in the ocean. Dragon V2 instead comes with SuperDraco engines, each capable of producing more than 70,000 newtons of thrust. “You’ll be able to land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter,” said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at an unveiling event at the firm’s headquarters last week. The engines can be refuelled after each flight, reflecting SpaceX’s goal of developing spacecraft and rockets that are fully reusable.
Healthy food feud
of US children are now clinically obese, according to an analysis of a World Health Organization study (The Lancet, doi.org/szv). This could reduce the nation’s average life expectancy. Forcing children to have
IT’S a nationwide food fight. First lady Michelle Obama, the outspoken champion of healthy eating in the US, is taking on the Republicans in Congress who want to roll back standards for school “Republicans argue that meals. Republicans argue that healthy meals are too healthy meals are too costly, and costly, and fruit and veg the fruit and veg that children ends up being scrapped” refuse ends up being scrapped. The new-look lunches were introduced in 2012 as part of a healthy food in their meals can national campaign, but media increase how much is thrown reports last week suggested that away, but this could be curbed by kids are rejecting them. It is a giving vegetable dishes more serious issue: around 13 per cent attractive names, researchers say.
Guinea worm turns
Drug may poison Europe’s eagles
ANGELO GANDOLFI/NATUREPL.COM
SO NEAR – and yet so far. Health IT’S not exactly a gold standard treatment. A painkiller that virtually workers in South Sudan are close wiped out many of India’s vultures is to making the parasitic guinea now threatening birds of prey in worm only the second human Europe and Africa. Golden eagles disease ever to be eradicated. Just 11 cases have been seen this year in may be among the species at risk. India’s Gyps vultures have declined the country, the worm’s last major in numbers since the 1990s because stronghold, compared to 55 this of the use of a drug called diclofenac time last year. But this might not last. Violence in cattle. When the birds fed on animals that had been given the between the Dinka and Nuer painkiller, the drug damaged their ethnic groups is disrupting vital kidneys, killing them. agriculture, and the wet season It now seems that diclofenac also has begun, spreading cholera and harms eagles. Anil Sharma and his malaria. The UN has warned that by December, half of the country’s team at the Indian Veterinary people “will be displaced, starving Research Institute in Izatnagar studied dead steppe eagles (Aquila or dead”. Poverty and scarce water nipalensis) from north India. They have led to raiding between cattle saw signs of kidney failure, and traces herders in the past, and such disruptions have helped the guinea worm hang on, say health experts with the Guinea Worm Eradication Program, run by the non-profit Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The current violence is more intense – foreign project staff had to flee the country when it first flared in December, but were back by January, says project leader Ernesto Ruiz-Tiben. Worm cases peak mid-year, and health workers isolate people for treatment and to stop larvae spreading. If workers are forced to flee again and the infection spreads it could –Must have been something I ate– put eradication back years.
of diclofenac (Bird Conservation International, doi.org/s2n). Steppe eagles may not be the only ones at risk. At least five of the eight Gyps species are susceptible to diclofenac, so the other 13 Aquila species may be vulnerable if the steppe eagle is. That includes several in south Asia and Africa, and Europe’s golden and Spanish imperial eagles. All scavenge cattle and are now exposed. Diclofenac was registered for use in Italy and Spain in 2013 and has been sold in Africa since 2007. The Vulture Conservation Foundation wants diclofenac banned in Europe. But the group says that so far officials are only offering to warn about toxicity on the label. That will not stop it reaching birds.
Xe-rated Ignoble gases? Xenon and argon can apparently help athletes cheat, so are being added to the list of substances banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. WADA says that inhaling the gases can stimulate the production of red blood cells, potentially boosting performance.
Doomed planets Astronomers have stamped two exoplanets with an expiry date after discovering they will soon be consumed by their star. As the star ages and expands to become a red giant, planets Kepler-56b and 56c will be destroyed – in just 130 million and 155 million years, respectively.
Cancer buster Advanced melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, may be on the run. Of 17 patients receiving a mixture of the drugs nivolumab and ipilimumab, 16 were alive after one year and 15 were still alive after two. In addition, 69 per cent of 411 patients receiving a drug called MK-3475 were alive after one year, according to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Only half of patients receiving standard chemotherapy survive one year.
Tree-huggers are cool Koalas spend most of their time asleep, curled around the branches of eucalyptus trees. Far from being lazy, this tree-hugging turns out to be an efficient way to keep cool, so koalas only lose half as much water as sweat as they otherwise would (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/ rsbl.2014.0235).
Zebra crossing Herds of several thousand zebras take a round trip of 500 kilometres each year between Botswana and Namibia, the longest migration ever recorded for a mammal in Africa. Researchers discovered the trek after attaching GPS tracking collars to eight females (Oryx, DOI: 10.1017/50030605314000222).
7 June 2014 | NewScientist | 7