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Where is America's smog coming from?
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60 SECONDS
Rocket boosted
price after recalculating how much it would cost to prepare a shuttle for public display and to transport it from its base at the Kennedy space centre in Florida to a US airport. One of the shuttles, Discovery, is already promised to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. But Atlantis and Endeavour are still up for grabs. If an entire shuttle is beyond your budget, consider a main engine instead. NASA had hoped to charge up to $800,000 apiece for these but lack of interest has forced it to offer them for free: be warned, they’re heavy on fuel.
but the report’s authors say none has been shown to pass muster, safety-wise. “Switching from a demonstrated, well-designed, safety-optimised system to one based on nothing more than unsubstantiated claims would
IT HAS been a whipping boy for its critics, but NASA’s Ares 1 rocket received a rare boost this week. Despite budget and technical concerns, NASA’s Aerospace “Ares 1 is the best bet Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) because it has been believes Ares 1 is the best bet designed with astronauts’ for flying astronauts to the safety in mind” International Space Station after the space shuttle retires, because seem a poor choice,” they write. it has been designed with the One commercial rocket-maker, safety of its crew in mind. Space X, told New Scientist that it Other potential heirs to the shuttle include commercial cargo believes its spacecraft would spacecraft refitted to carry people, stand up to scrutiny if evaluated.
US ‘imports’ foreign pollution
HIV to fight back
MIKE CARILLO/PACIFIC COAST NEWS
ALL viruses do it some day – soon ASIA may be exporting more than colleagues decided to investigate. just goods to the US. The world’s They used data collected between it will be HIV’s turn. Studies of gay emerging industrial hubs in the 1995 to 2008 by balloons and San Franciscan men suggest drugregion seem to be sending harmful aircraft fitted with ozone-measuring resistant strains of the virus will ozone towards North America. instruments. The team also used surge in the next five years. Emissions of gases such as computer models and meteorological People with HIV are given a nitrogen oxides are the primary data to retrospectively work out the cocktail of drugs, making it less source of ozone in the troposphere. movement history of pockets of air likely that resistance will emerge. These gases are both health hazards that had passed over Asia during Still, about 15 per cent of new and greenhouse gases. Satellite those years. infections in San Francisco are studies between 1996 and 2005 The team found that the air pockets from resistant strains. suggest that there was a decrease in that had the greatest probability of When Sally Blower of the emissions of such ozone precursors having passed near the land surface University of California, Los from North America and Europe but in east and south Asia were the Angeles, and colleagues fed an increase from China and other ones found 15 days later in regions data about the San Franciscans parts of Asia. of the US that showed the greatest into a computer model of As ozone levels remain higher than increase in ozone concentrations. This viral transmission, it correctly estimated in North America, Owen suggests that the emissions of ozone predicted how drug-resistant HIV Cooper of the Earth System Research precursors came from Asia (Nature, has already evolved and spread Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, and DOI: 10.1038/nature08708). among gay men over the past 20 years. When the team asked the model to predict the future, it foresaw a rapid surge in resistant strains, with 60 per cent of those currently circulating capable of “self-sustaining epidemics”, in which each infected person spreads the strain to more than one new recipient (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1180556). As Europe and the rest of the US also have resistant strains, Blower expects similar surges there. Meanwhile, poor countries are set to vastly increase the use of antiretroviral drugs, which could –The smog over LA might be un-American– boost resistance.
Corpses can wait Bodies piling up in Haiti pose a minimal disease risk and don’t need to be instantly buried or disinfected, the World Health Organization says. Instead, resources should be focused on the living. In a natural disaster, where most people were healthy up to their death, the WHO considers survivors more likely to spread disease than corpses.
IPCC checks its facts The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is reviewing its claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. The claim, published in its 2007 report, was traced back to a statement in a New Scientist article. The panel has been severely criticised for citing a non-peer-reviewed source.
Magnetic mirror A mysterious “ribbon” of particles at the edge of the solar system has been explained. The ribbon, spotted by NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer spacecraft last year, is the reflection of the solar wind in a giant magnetic field in the interstellar space next to the solar system (The Astrophysical Journal Letters, DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/708/2/L126).
Treat MS with a pill A pill taken for just eight to 20 days of the year has reduced relapse rates and slowed disease progression in people with multiple sclerosis (The New England Journal of Medicine, DOI: 10.1056/NEJM0a0902533). Current treatments for MS require regular injections or transfusions.
U-turn on baby bottles A suspect ingredient in some plastic food containers and baby bottles may come under stricter regulation. In a reversal of its position, the US Food and Drug Administration now concedes that small doses of bisphenol A could be linked to cancer and heart disease. The FDA is recommending limiting exposure to it and reassessing potential harm.
23 January 2010 | NewScientist | 5
60 SECONDS
Rocket boosted
price after recalculating how much it would cost to prepare a shuttle for public display and to transport it from its base at the Kennedy space centre in Florida to a US airport. One of the shuttles, Discovery, is already promised to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. But Atlantis and Endeavour are still up for grabs. If an entire shuttle is beyond your budget, consider a main engine instead. NASA had hoped to charge up to $800,000 apiece for these but lack of interest has forced it to offer them for free: be warned, they’re heavy on fuel.
but the report’s authors say none has been shown to pass muster, safety-wise. “Switching from a demonstrated, well-designed, safety-optimised system to one based on nothing more than unsubstantiated claims would
IT HAS been a whipping boy for its critics, but NASA’s Ares 1 rocket received a rare boost this week. Despite budget and technical concerns, NASA’s Aerospace “Ares 1 is the best bet Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) because it has been believes Ares 1 is the best bet designed with astronauts’ for flying astronauts to the safety in mind” International Space Station after the space shuttle retires, because seem a poor choice,” they write. it has been designed with the One commercial rocket-maker, safety of its crew in mind. Space X, told New Scientist that it Other potential heirs to the shuttle include commercial cargo believes its spacecraft would spacecraft refitted to carry people, stand up to scrutiny if evaluated.
US ‘imports’ foreign pollution
HIV to fight back
MIKE CARILLO/PACIFIC COAST NEWS
ALL viruses do it some day – soon ASIA may be exporting more than colleagues decided to investigate. just goods to the US. The world’s They used data collected between it will be HIV’s turn. Studies of gay emerging industrial hubs in the 1995 to 2008 by balloons and San Franciscan men suggest drugregion seem to be sending harmful aircraft fitted with ozone-measuring resistant strains of the virus will ozone towards North America. instruments. The team also used surge in the next five years. Emissions of gases such as computer models and meteorological People with HIV are given a nitrogen oxides are the primary data to retrospectively work out the cocktail of drugs, making it less source of ozone in the troposphere. movement history of pockets of air likely that resistance will emerge. These gases are both health hazards that had passed over Asia during Still, about 15 per cent of new and greenhouse gases. Satellite those years. infections in San Francisco are studies between 1996 and 2005 The team found that the air pockets from resistant strains. suggest that there was a decrease in that had the greatest probability of When Sally Blower of the emissions of such ozone precursors having passed near the land surface University of California, Los from North America and Europe but in east and south Asia were the Angeles, and colleagues fed an increase from China and other ones found 15 days later in regions data about the San Franciscans parts of Asia. of the US that showed the greatest into a computer model of As ozone levels remain higher than increase in ozone concentrations. This viral transmission, it correctly estimated in North America, Owen suggests that the emissions of ozone predicted how drug-resistant HIV Cooper of the Earth System Research precursors came from Asia (Nature, has already evolved and spread Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, and DOI: 10.1038/nature08708). among gay men over the past 20 years. When the team asked the model to predict the future, it foresaw a rapid surge in resistant strains, with 60 per cent of those currently circulating capable of “self-sustaining epidemics”, in which each infected person spreads the strain to more than one new recipient (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1180556). As Europe and the rest of the US also have resistant strains, Blower expects similar surges there. Meanwhile, poor countries are set to vastly increase the use of antiretroviral drugs, which could –The smog over LA might be un-American– boost resistance.
Corpses can wait Bodies piling up in Haiti pose a minimal disease risk and don’t need to be instantly buried or disinfected, the World Health Organization says. Instead, resources should be focused on the living. In a natural disaster, where most people were healthy up to their death, the WHO considers survivors more likely to spread disease than corpses.
IPCC checks its facts The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is reviewing its claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. The claim, published in its 2007 report, was traced back to a statement in a New Scientist article. The panel has been severely criticised for citing a non-peer-reviewed source.
Magnetic mirror A mysterious “ribbon” of particles at the edge of the solar system has been explained. The ribbon, spotted by NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer spacecraft last year, is the reflection of the solar wind in a giant magnetic field in the interstellar space next to the solar system (The Astrophysical Journal Letters, DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/708/2/L126).
Treat MS with a pill A pill taken for just eight to 20 days of the year has reduced relapse rates and slowed disease progression in people with multiple sclerosis (The New England Journal of Medicine, DOI: 10.1056/NEJM0a0902533). Current treatments for MS require regular injections or transfusions.
U-turn on baby bottles A suspect ingredient in some plastic food containers and baby bottles may come under stricter regulation. In a reversal of its position, the US Food and Drug Administration now concedes that small doses of bisphenol A could be linked to cancer and heart disease. The FDA is recommending limiting exposure to it and reassessing potential harm.
23 January 2010 | NewScientist | 5