the-BA : Science News Digest - 1 September 2006

In the news this week: genetically engineered immune cells target cancer, Conservatives propose a British bullet train and Schwarzenegger sets an emissions cap. Plus, a top American scientist issues a warning on climate change and finding God in the brain.

Dying cancer patients who had exhausted all conventional treatments have been cured using a revolutionary new technique that uses genetically engineered versions of cells from their own immune system to fight tumours, reports New Scientist.

In a clinical trial by Dr Steven Rosenberg and colleagues at the US National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, two of 17 participants with advanced melanoma were declared clinically free of the disease one year after receiving the treatment – which is currently still experimental.

The technique genetically arms T cells (a form of white blood cell) with a receptor protein that recognises skin cancer cells. The T cells are then attached to a virus which spreads them throughout a patient’s immune system. Dr Rosenberg says his team can also program the cells to target other cancers in the breast, lung and liver.

“It's ground breaking research,” said Len Lichtenfeld of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, Georgia.

“It gives hope that with further refinement we would be able to expand this to treat other tumours.”

Conservative shadow chancellor, George Osborne has raised the prospect of building a Japanese-style 360mph “maglev” railway in the UK, and pledged that a future Tory government would increase taxes on pollution and polluters.

The Guardian reports that Mr Osborne, who is visiting Japan ahead of a trip to India with Conservative leader, David Cameron, next week, tried the magnetic levitation train for himself on Friday.

Mr Osborne said: “We're familiar with the Japanese bullet train, which has been around for decades now and is far faster than anything we've got in the UK."

"But Japan aren't stopping there. They're moving on to this magnetic-driven train."

“You have to ask yourself, if Japan is developing this technology, if China has already introduced this kind of train, if Germany is looking at this technology, why on earth are we not doing so in Britain?”

On Thursday the Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, made a clear break with the Bush administration by announcing an agreement for a state-wide cap on greenhouse gas emissions, reports the Guardian.

The new bill, approved by the Californian Senate on Wednesday night, requires the state's major industries, such as utility plants and oil and gas refineries, to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by an estimated 25% by 2020.

The agreement provides a sharp contrast to President George W Bush's inaction on climate change, particularly his refusal to sign up to binding targets in the Kyoto protocol. Mr Schwarzenegger said he hoped the legislation would become “an example for other states and nations to follow.”

In his first broadcast interview as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, top US scientist John Holdren told BBC News that the climate was changing much faster than predicted.

“We are not talking anymore about what climate models say might happen in the future,” he said.

“We are experiencing dangerous human disruption of the global climate and we're going to experience more.”

The new AAAS president blamed President Bush for refusing to cut emissions, and for failing to harness new technology to tackle climate change. Funding for climate technology would need to multiply by three or four times, in order to make any progress, he warned.

“We are not starting to address climate change with the technology we have in hand, and we are not accelerating our investment in energy technology research and development.”

Professor Holdren also suggested that if the current pace of change continued, a catastrophic sea level rise of 4m (13ft) this century (much higher than previous forecasts) was within the realm of possibility.

He also emphasised the seriousness of the melting Greenland ice cap, saying that without drastic action the world would experience more heatwaves, wild fires and floods. The melting of the Greenland ice cap alone, he said, could increase world-wide sea levels by 7m (23ft), swamping many cities.

And finally…

The Guardian reports that Psychologists at the University of Montreal have used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of nuns and reveal intricate circuits in the brain that flicker into life when they feel the presence of God.

The scans, taken as the nuns relived intense religious experiences, suggested that feelings of profound joy and union with a higher being that accompany religious experiences are the culmination of increased electrical activity in regions of the brain that govern feelings of peace, happiness and self-awareness.

The research, documented in the journal Neuroscience Letters, was not intended to confirm or deny the existence of God, but set out to examine how the brain behaves during profound religious experiences.

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