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Tobacco company drove changes to European policy-making, claims report
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60 SECONDS
Law by tobacco
Director sacked
Commission to change the focus of these assessments away from health impacts and towards economics (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000202). “The EU invites all interested parties to submit their views,”
Susan Greenfield has been told she is losing her job as director of the 211-year-old Royal Institution in London, the world’s oldest independent research body. The RI says it can no longer afford a fulltime director. Greenfield, however, alleges sexual discrimination.
FORMERLY secret records suggest a tobacco company drove changes to how European policy is made, claim Katherine Smith and her colleagues at Bath University in the UK. They sifted through over “The focus of policy 700 recently released emails, assessments was changed reports and presentations from away from health and British American Tobacco (BAT). Proposed European Union policy towards economics” is subjected to so-called “impact assessments”. Smith’s team says says BAT spokeswoman Catherine the BAT documents suggest the Armstrong. “These authors seem company recruited food, oil and to suggest that only people who chemical firms and a think tank to agree with them should be successfully lobby the European allowed to voice an opinion.”
Too darn hot
Invasion routes of oceans’ aliens
DON’T bet that we’ll make it. Even with all the green power we can muster, preventing dangerous climate change by the end of the century is “barely feasible”. So says an analysis of how fast low-carbon energy sources can be introduced. For a 50:50 chance of keeping global temperature rise to within 2 °C by 2100, we must halve emissions by 2050. This is the message of climate models by Keywan Riahi of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, and colleagues. That means 70 per cent of global energy production must be zero-emissions by 2050. To see if that target was realistic, the team used factors such as the average rate of technology diffusion in the past. Our prospects are poor even if we roll out sources like wind and nuclear power as fast as we can, plus any new ones that become available before 2050 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0903797106). “We have only a slim chance,” says Mark New at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK. “It looks like we’ll have to prepare for warming greater than 2 °C or hope that geoengineering will get us out of trouble.”
ALIEN stowaways can wreak havoc on marine ecosystems, but data on the movements of the ships that transport them has been hard to come by. A new global map of cargo-ship movements should boost efforts to monitor invasive species. Bernd Blasius at Carl Von Ossietzky University in Oldenberg, Germany, and colleagues analysed the routes of 16,363 cargo ships to map the links between the ports they visited during 2007 (see map). They found that while container ships tend to follow repetitive routes between ports, oil tankers and dry bulk carriers – which move goods like grain or coal – are less predictable. “This is important because dry bulk carriers and oil tankers often sail
Cleopatra’s guard Heavy eye make-up worn by Ancient Egyptians may have helped protect against eye infections. When a leadbased substance found in Egyptian make-up containers was applied to human cells, it boosted production of the immune-stimulating molecule nitric oxide (Analytical Chemistry, DOI: 10.1021/ac902348g).
Constructive cricket
empty, and therefore exchange large quantities of ballast water,” says Blasius. Ballast water can host invasive species such as the comb jellyfish, which all but wiped out native species in the Black Sea during the 1980s. Blasius’s team drew up a top-20 list of the world’s most connected ports – those probably at the highest risk for the introduction of new species. The Panama and Suez canals top the list, followed by Shanghai, Singapore and Antwerp. Stephan Gollasch of the IUCN’s specialist group on invasive species cautions that the connection between shipping and biological invasions isn’t always direct and that factors such as aquaculture facilities near ports also need to be taken into account.
Crickets are usually known for destroying plants, but a newly discovered species has been filmed pollinating an orchid on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion. After drinking one flower’s nectar, it moved on to another with lumps of pollen stuck to its head. This solves the mystery of how Angraecum cadetii is pollinated (Annals of Botany, DOI: 10.1093/aob/mcp299).
Doomsday clock reset The “Doomsday clock”, which reflects the level of threat of nuclear war, was due to be adjusted on 14 January. In 2007, when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ clock was last changed, is was moved to 5 minutes to midnight – 2 minutes closer to doom than before.
Drink and be happy
Shipping journeys in 2007
<10
100
500
1000
5000
SOURCE: THE ROYAL SOCIETY/GASTNER
irreversible impacts on river life and human health, the scientists warn. Their calls appear to be falling on deaf ears. In March 2009, the EPA said it would be tougher in its granting of mining permits. Last week it granted Patriot Coal’s Hobet 45 mining project in Lincoln County, West Virginia, permission to expand. The firm had agreed to cut the length of stream the expansion would bury, from 6 miles to 3. Margaret Palmer at the University of Maryland, College Park, remains hopeful that the government will heed the scientists’ call.
The extreme alcohol intolerance experienced by about 40 per cent of east Asians may soon be treatable. People in this group produce a faulty version of the enzyme ALDH2: this causes toxic acetaldehyde to accumulate when they drink alcohol. Now the molecule Alda-1 has been shown to repair damaged ALDH2 (Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1737).
16 January 2010 | NewScientist | 5
60 SECONDS
Law by tobacco
Director sacked
Commission to change the focus of these assessments away from health impacts and towards economics (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000202). “The EU invites all interested parties to submit their views,”
Susan Greenfield has been told she is losing her job as director of the 211-year-old Royal Institution in London, the world’s oldest independent research body. The RI says it can no longer afford a fulltime director. Greenfield, however, alleges sexual discrimination.
FORMERLY secret records suggest a tobacco company drove changes to how European policy is made, claim Katherine Smith and her colleagues at Bath University in the UK. They sifted through over “The focus of policy 700 recently released emails, assessments was changed reports and presentations from away from health and British American Tobacco (BAT). Proposed European Union policy towards economics” is subjected to so-called “impact assessments”. Smith’s team says says BAT spokeswoman Catherine the BAT documents suggest the Armstrong. “These authors seem company recruited food, oil and to suggest that only people who chemical firms and a think tank to agree with them should be successfully lobby the European allowed to voice an opinion.”
Too darn hot
Invasion routes of oceans’ aliens
DON’T bet that we’ll make it. Even with all the green power we can muster, preventing dangerous climate change by the end of the century is “barely feasible”. So says an analysis of how fast low-carbon energy sources can be introduced. For a 50:50 chance of keeping global temperature rise to within 2 °C by 2100, we must halve emissions by 2050. This is the message of climate models by Keywan Riahi of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, and colleagues. That means 70 per cent of global energy production must be zero-emissions by 2050. To see if that target was realistic, the team used factors such as the average rate of technology diffusion in the past. Our prospects are poor even if we roll out sources like wind and nuclear power as fast as we can, plus any new ones that become available before 2050 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0903797106). “We have only a slim chance,” says Mark New at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK. “It looks like we’ll have to prepare for warming greater than 2 °C or hope that geoengineering will get us out of trouble.”
ALIEN stowaways can wreak havoc on marine ecosystems, but data on the movements of the ships that transport them has been hard to come by. A new global map of cargo-ship movements should boost efforts to monitor invasive species. Bernd Blasius at Carl Von Ossietzky University in Oldenberg, Germany, and colleagues analysed the routes of 16,363 cargo ships to map the links between the ports they visited during 2007 (see map). They found that while container ships tend to follow repetitive routes between ports, oil tankers and dry bulk carriers – which move goods like grain or coal – are less predictable. “This is important because dry bulk carriers and oil tankers often sail
Cleopatra’s guard Heavy eye make-up worn by Ancient Egyptians may have helped protect against eye infections. When a leadbased substance found in Egyptian make-up containers was applied to human cells, it boosted production of the immune-stimulating molecule nitric oxide (Analytical Chemistry, DOI: 10.1021/ac902348g).
Constructive cricket
empty, and therefore exchange large quantities of ballast water,” says Blasius. Ballast water can host invasive species such as the comb jellyfish, which all but wiped out native species in the Black Sea during the 1980s. Blasius’s team drew up a top-20 list of the world’s most connected ports – those probably at the highest risk for the introduction of new species. The Panama and Suez canals top the list, followed by Shanghai, Singapore and Antwerp. Stephan Gollasch of the IUCN’s specialist group on invasive species cautions that the connection between shipping and biological invasions isn’t always direct and that factors such as aquaculture facilities near ports also need to be taken into account.
Crickets are usually known for destroying plants, but a newly discovered species has been filmed pollinating an orchid on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion. After drinking one flower’s nectar, it moved on to another with lumps of pollen stuck to its head. This solves the mystery of how Angraecum cadetii is pollinated (Annals of Botany, DOI: 10.1093/aob/mcp299).
Doomsday clock reset The “Doomsday clock”, which reflects the level of threat of nuclear war, was due to be adjusted on 14 January. In 2007, when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ clock was last changed, is was moved to 5 minutes to midnight – 2 minutes closer to doom than before.
Drink and be happy
Shipping journeys in 2007
<10
100
500
1000
5000
SOURCE: THE ROYAL SOCIETY/GASTNER
irreversible impacts on river life and human health, the scientists warn. Their calls appear to be falling on deaf ears. In March 2009, the EPA said it would be tougher in its granting of mining permits. Last week it granted Patriot Coal’s Hobet 45 mining project in Lincoln County, West Virginia, permission to expand. The firm had agreed to cut the length of stream the expansion would bury, from 6 miles to 3. Margaret Palmer at the University of Maryland, College Park, remains hopeful that the government will heed the scientists’ call.
The extreme alcohol intolerance experienced by about 40 per cent of east Asians may soon be treatable. People in this group produce a faulty version of the enzyme ALDH2: this causes toxic acetaldehyde to accumulate when they drink alcohol. Now the molecule Alda-1 has been shown to repair damaged ALDH2 (Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1737).
16 January 2010 | NewScientist | 5