the-BA : Science News Digest - 15 September 2006

Climate change features heavily in the news this week: 'drastic' shrinkages in Arctic sea ice have been observed by NASA satellites, new research indicates that increases in hurricane intensity are due to greenhouse gas emissions and a report suggests that government emissions targets aren't tough enough. Plus, a nationwide shortage of sperm donors, the last refuge of the neanderthals, and hallucinogenic drugs may offer a new solution for headache sufferers.

Dominating the front page of the Independent on Friday is the report that two separate studies by NASA have documented 'drastic' shrinkages in Arctic sea ice cover using satellite monitoring technologies. The extent of "perennial" ice - thick ice which remains all year round - declined by 14% in 12 months, losing an area the size of Pakistan or Turkey.

The startling changes, reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, may relate partly to unusual wind patterns found in 2005, though rising temperatures in the Arctic could also be a factor. The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the global average and the last few decades have seen summer ice shrink by about 0.7% per year.

In other environment news, BBC News reports that greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced far more quickly than was previously thought, according to a report by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, based at the University of Manchester.

The report suggests that the UK government target of a 60% cut in emissions by 2050 is insufficient and needs to be 70% by 2030 and requires a major programme of action within the next four years. It also calls for a climate change bill to commit ministers and business to making the target a reality.

"The government needs to set some policies in train now and I literally mean now within the next few months so that say by 2010/2012 we have reversed our current growth in emissions and we then start to see very significant reductions year on year for the next 20, 30 and 40 years,” said Kevin Andersen from the Tyndall Centre.

BBC News also reports that increases in hurricane intensity are down to humanity's greenhouse gas emissions, according to new research by US scientists. Researchers from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research used computerised climate models to examine a possible link between sea surface temperatures and human-induced global warming. It was calculated that two-thirds of the recent rise in sea temperatures, thought to fuel hurricanes, is down to anthropogenic emissions.

The Times reports that hundreds of infertile couples could miss the chance to have a baby because of a nationwide shortage of sperm donors. More than two thirds of British fertility clinics have been unable to recruit donors or have had “great difficulty” in buying supplies, since the Government lifted the donors’ right to lifelong anonymity last year. 50 of the 74 clinics and sperm banks that responded to a survey by BBC News are not recruiting new donors.

The provision that men could donate sperm knowing that any offspring would not have the right to trace them was removed in April last year, despite warnings from fertility doctors that it would lead to a collapse in supply. The Government argued that children conceived from donated sperm or eggs had a right to know the identity of their biological parents.

The Guardian reports that the final resting place of the last neanderthals may have been unearthed by fossil-hunters excavating deep inside a cave in Gibraltar. Primitive stone tools and remnants from wood fires recovered from the vast Gorham's cave on the easternmost face of the Rock of Gibraltar suggest neanderthals found refuge there, and clung to life for thousands of years after they had died out elsewhere. Carbon dating of charcoal fragments excavated alongside spear points and basic cutting tools indicates the cave was home to a group of around 15 neanderthals at least 28,000 years ago, and possibly as recently as 24,000 years ago.

Previously uncovered remains lead scientists to believe the neanderthals died out in Europe and elsewhere some 35,000 years ago.

Nature News reports that powerful hallucinogens such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and psilocybin, the active ingredient in 'magic' mushrooms, may help alleviate the effects of debilitating cluster headaches, according to research carried out in the US.

The new study, published in the journal Neurology, is the first formal look at reports of LSD's therapeutic benefits in nearly 40 years, says Andrew Sewell of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. LSD was used extensively in psychiatric research in the 1960s, but as mainstream attitudes swung against 'acid', prohibitive measures made researching the beneficial effects of hallucinogens extremely difficult.

The Guardian reports that a group of severely brain-damaged patients given little chance of recovery by medical experts are awakening after receiving a radical new course of medication - in the form of a sleeping pill.

Across three continents, patients are reporting remarkable improvements in both speech and movement, after taking Zolpidem - a generic sleeping pill that should make them fall asleep but that, instead, appears to be waking up cells in their brains that were thought to have been dead. In the next two months, trials on patients are expected to begin in South Africa aimed at finding out exactly what is going on inside their heads.

Introduced to the media on Thursday by American doctors, Claudia Mitchell, 26, is a former officer in the US Marine Corps and the world's first bionic woman. Appearing for the first time in public, the Telegraph reports that Ms Mitchell, whose new $60,000 thought-powered arm cost just one per cent of the price tag for the fictional Six Million Dollar Man, said it operates just like a normal limb and has allowed her to reclaim her life.

The 11lb computerised limb, which is controlled by six small motors and was developed at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, works by rerouting nerves from the brain that once terminated in the hand. These are redirected from the shoulder to the chest, where they grow into the muscle and are able to command movements in the bionic arm via electrodes.

A study in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 has shown that a steep drop in air travel delayed the spread of winter flu across the United States, suggesting that grounding flights might slow the spread of a future flu pandemic and buy time for vaccinations and quarantine. Nature News reports that John Brownstein and colleagues at the Children's Hospital Boston, studied statistics on influenza death in many US cites collected between 1996 and 2005, along with estimates of the numbers of passengers who travelled by plane within the US and from there to another country.

BBC News reports that two US astronauts from the space shuttle Atlantis have completed a six-and-a-half hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station. Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Joe Tanner wired up a new $372m (£293m) addition, which will provide power, data and communication services. A bolt, spring and washer floated free during the work, and NASA is examining whether it could cause problems...

And finally…

A week of new revelations on climate change is a convenient time for the UK opening of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, a climate change documentary that has been seen by more than 2 million people since its release in US cinemas.

BBC News reports that the film, based on a public lecture by former US presidential candidate Al Gore, looks at scientific evidence on the causes and likely impacts of a warming world and at climate change politics.

Mr Gore says he wants to make ordinary people aware of the “terrifying” reality of climate change, and demand action from their political leaders.

"I tried to the best of my ability [when I was vice-president] to act on climate change, and whatever failures that occurred were not for lack of effort," he said.

"There is incredible resistance and denial, which is why I decided to reach out directly to the public, making this presentation more than 1,000 times, plus the movie and the book, to a point where they'll demand that political leaders deal with it."

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