the-BA : Science News Digest

Could the care of the elderly one day be left to robots? (Image copyright: istockphoto.com)

In the science news this week: the drug that could treat 2,000 hereditary disorders, DVD discord and a real-life Kryptonite. Plus, could extraterrestrial life exist on the newly discovered ‘super-Earth’?

Ahead of an event at the Dana Centre about the future use of robots in society, the participating scientists criticised a government report about “robot rights”. They believe it distracts from more immediate concerns regarding the use of autonomous decision-making robots by the military, and their potential use by the police and as carers for the elderly.

The report in question – Robo-rights: Utopian dream or rise of the machines? was published by the Office of Science and Innovation’s Horizon Scanning Centre in December and was one of 246 horizon-scanning papers commissioned by the UK government, reported BBC News. It claimed future machines with artificial intelligence might one day demand citizen’s rights, including the opportunity to vote, housing and even “robo-healthcare”.

At the time, the government’s chief scientific advisor said the papers were ‘aimed at stimulating debate and critical discussion to enhance government’s short and long-term policy and strategy.’ However, Essex University computer scientist Owen Holland, who is an expert on machine consciousness, this week told the Guardian: ‘It’s really premature I think to discuss robot rights. [This report] is certainly not based on science and it is not realistic.’

Instead, Professor Noel Sharkey, a roboticist at the University of Sheffield who regularly contributes to the BBC’s Robot Wars, believes we need proper, informed, public debate about where we are going with robotics at the moment. ‘In the same way as we have an informed nuclear debate, we need to tell the public about what is going on in robotics and ask them what they want,’ he said.

‘The more pressing and serious problem is the extent to which society is prepared to trust autonomous robots and entrust others into the care of autonomous robots,’ said Professor Alan Windfield of the University of West England.

The Independent outlined some of the developments in progress. These include a sentry robot unveiled by the South Korean military which can be programmed to shoot-to-kill targets up to 500 metres away, and a Japanese robot which will follow an elderly person around, reminding them when to take their medicine and able to take simple measurements such as blood-pressure.

BBC News reported that the first 3D images of the Sun, constructed from data obtained by the twin Stereo orbiters, were released by NASA. The spacecraft were launched last October (Science News Digest – 27 October 2006) to monitor Coronal Mass Ejections. It is hoped that the images they provide will provide valuable information about these high energy flares of charged particle matter that erupt from the sun, even helping scientists to model and predict these events that are hazardous to astronauts and can disrupt power grids and satellites.

In other space-related news, a planet with the potential to host life has been discovered just 20.5 light years away. It is the most Earth-like planet discovered to date. Although it is 14 times closer to the star it orbits, Gliese 581, than the Earth is to the Sun, its mean surface temperature is anticipated to be between 0 and 40 degrees Celcius. This is because Gliese 581 is a red dwarf – much smaller and cooler than the Sun. The planet lies in what scientists refer to as the “Goldilocks Zone”, where temperatures “are just right” for life to have the opportunity to exist.

The favourable temperature conditions mean that any water present could exist in liquid form, something critical to life as we know it.

‘Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth’s radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky – like our Earth – or covered with oceans,’ Stephane Udry, lead author of the paper describing the discovery, told BBC News.

Most of the 200-plus planets so far discovered outside our solar system are more like the gas giants Jupiter and Neptune that experience blazing temperatures. The new ‘super-Earth’ planet is now likely to be a focus of efforts to search for the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Professor Glenn White of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory said: ‘Obviously this newly discovered planet and its companions in the Gliese 581 system will become prominent targets for missions like [the European Space Agency’s] Darwin and NASA’s Terrestrial planet Finder when they fly in about a decade.’

Meanwhile, Professor Stephen Hawking has been enjoying weightlessness on a trip aboard the ‘Vomit Comet’, BBC News reported. The experience was simulated by a modified Boeing 727 jet undergoing a parabolic flight pattern. As the plane took a series of plunges, the famous British theoretical physicist experienced 25-second spurts of zero-gravity.

The Daily Telegraph announced that a drug which could help a significant fraction of people suffering from the genetic disorders Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and cystic fibrosis has shown great promise in both animal models of the diseases and human trials. The drug also has the potential to help patients with around 2,000 other types of hereditary disease.

The drug PTC124 works by overcoming nonsense mutation defects in genes. Nonsense mutations are genetic “spelling mistakes” that result in a premature stop signal to the cellular machinery working to convert genetic code into a particular protein. As a result of this premature stop code, non-functioning fragments of protein are made rather than the functioning full-length version.

About 13 per cent of cases of DMD are caused by nonsense mutation defects in the gene for the muscle protein dystrophin. A similar percentage of cystic fibrosis sufferers lack a working version of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein as a result of a nonsense mutation.

PTC124 acts on ribosomes – the cellular “factories” that build proteins – allowing them to ignore the premature full stops in the genetic code. An oral form of the drug has been tested in Phase 2 clinical trials involving DMD and cystic fibrosis patients. The restored production of a mended, functional protein was observed.

In other news, the Times reported that scientists have identified another three genes which are linked to type 2 diabetes. Each gene has two common forms, one of which increases an individual’s risk of developing the disease. The discovery brings the number of contributing genes known to nine.

The Times also announced that the first application for a licence to conduct embryo screening for the breast cancer gene BRCA1 has been submitted. It is the first such application since last year’s ruling by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority that they would grant screening licences for conditions that carry a lower risk. Women who carry the BRCA1 gene have a 60-80 per cent chance of developing breast cancer.

In the 16 February 2007 edition of the Science News Digest, we mentioned a small-scale trial of an electronic retinal implant that could help those who have lost their vision through degenerative eye disease. This week, the Daily Telegraph reported an alternative option that has now undergone preliminary tests in monkeys: the implantation of electrodes in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the brain. This part of the brain functions as a relay station – passing information from the eyes to the visual cortex.

The monkey’s eye movements were tested in response to either light on a computer or electrical stimulation of the LGN. The eye movements observed in each case suggest the visual system interprets electrical stimuli in the same way as information actually received via the eyes.

The Daily Telegraph also reported a new advance in the way in which single cells can be weighed accurately. Conventional methods can measure down to a zeptogram (one thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a gram). However, they can only weigh non-living things because the sample must be placed in a vacuum. The new technique, published in the journal Nature, allows cells to remain in fluid while measurements are taken. It has enabled scientists to determine the mass of single living cells with an unprecedented degree of accuracy.

Collaborating archaeologists and geologists have uncovered a lost landscape underneath the North Sea. It was submerged between 18000 and 6000BC, when a warming climate caused glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise. Archaeologists believe the landscape would have been ideal for hunter-gatherers to settle towards the end of the last ice age.

Seismic records from oil-prospecting vessels were used to piece together a 3D landscape which stretched from the coast of East Anglia to northern Europe. Ancient river beds, huge lakes, salt marshes and valleys were revealed.

‘People think this was a land bridge across which people roamed to get to Britain, but the truth is very different,’ said Professor Vince Gaffney in the Guardian. ‘The places you wanted to live were the big plains next to the water and the coastline was way beyond where it is now. This was probably a heartland of population at the time.’

Another team of scientists from the UK and US have uncovered the largest fossil rainforest yet known. Discovered in a US coalmine in Illinois, the forest covers 1,000 hectares (10 sq km) and contains a rich diversity of ecology – including 4m-high tree ferns and club mosses which were more than 40m tall in some cases.

One of the site’s discoverers, Dr Howard Falcon-Lang of the University of Bristol, told BBC News: ‘As there is nothing like it around today, before our work we knew very little about the ecological preferences and community structure of these ancient plants.’

Meanwhile, BBC News announced that the Millennium Seed Bank has just collected its billionth seed. The bank, which is part of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, aims to have amassed material from 10 per cent of the world’s plants by 2010. They already store seeds from 18,000 of these 30,000 species. The aim is to replenish populations of extinct or endangered plants.

The billionth seed, collected from an African bamboo species, was presented to Chancellor Gordon Brown in an effort to encourage the government to continue funding the Millennium Seed Bank after 2010. The world’s governments have pledged to halt and start reversing biodiversity decline by this date.

In other news, 37 climate change experts together called for the DVD of the Channel 4 programme The Great Global Warming Swindle to be either heavily edited or removed from sale. The programme, first aired on March 8, asserted that global warming isn’t being caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. It has received criticism from scientists who claim it is misleading, containing distorted evidence and a number of elementary mistakes.

Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at MIT was one of the scientists featured in the film. He has complained to Ofcom that his views were misrepresented. Ofcom said it is investigating 246 complaints about the programme.

The climate scientists sent an open letter to Martin Durkin, head of the independent production company that made the programme. In addition to Professor Wunsch, the signatories include Sir John Houghton, former head of the Met Office, and Bob May, former president of the Royal Society.

The letter reads: ‘We believe that the misrepresentation of facts and views, both of which occur in your programme, are so serious that repeat broadcasts of the programme, without amendment, are not in the public interest… In fact, so serious and fundamental are the misrepresentations that the distribution of the DVD of the programme without their removal amounts to nothing more than an exercise in misleading the public.’

‘This contemptible attempt at gagging won’t work,’ responded Mr Durkin in the Guardian. ‘The reason they want to suppress The Great Global Warming Swindle is because the science has stung them. By comparison look at the mountains for absurd nonsense pedalled in the name of ‘manmade climate change’. Too many scientists have staked their reputations and built their careers on global warming. There’s a lot riding on this ridiculous theory. The DVD will be on sale shortly at a shop near you.’

The scientists have no objection to the DVD being distributed if the errors are corrected, said Bob Ward, who coordinated the letter.

In related news, global warming which caused ocean temperatures to rise by about 5 to 6 degrees Celsius 55 million years ago has been linked to increased volcanic eruptions. Research indicates that magma destroyed sedimentary stocks of organic material, causing the release of an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere over a period of about 10,000 years. However, humans currently cause eight gigatonnes of carbon emissions every year, meaning that it will take mankind only 600 years to match this figure, the Times reported.

Lead researcher Dr Michael Storey, said: ‘PETM [the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, as this period of global warming is known] is a remarkable geological event in which a large amount of greenhouse gases were released. In geological terms it happened in the blink of an eye. We are set to achieve in a few hundred years what took nature 10,000 years.’

There is growing evidence to suggest that birds are modifying their behaviour to manage modern life. The latest study has revealed that birds in busy urban areas are singing at night in an effort to be heard. Between April and June 2005 and 2006, researchers monitored 121 sites across Sheffield and beyond for sound levels, and noted when robins sang. They found that in the 18 areas where robins were heard singing at night, the daytime noise levels were 10 decibels higher than at the 67 sites where they sang during the day, reported the Guardian.

Scientists have developed a method to enable them to trace the origin of foods. This means they can now detect when fraudsters are lying about where a food has come from in order to cash in on the inflated prices of foods of provenance.

The “food mapping” technique has been successfully tested on mineral water. Based on a database of geological and climatic factors, the method uses mathematical models to predict the levels of natural constituents such as isotopes and trace elements that could be expected in a food from a particular region. The food in question can then be tested to see if the levels found match those predicted.

‘The technique we used can now be used for all kinds of foods such as meat, fish, cheese and wine, to ensure that products sold as coming from a particular place actually originate from there,’ Paul Brereton, head of food authenticity at the Central Science Laboratory told the Times.

And finally…

According to BBC News, scientists have identified a real-life Kryptonite – the mineral that is purported to sap the powers of the fictional superhero Superman. Although it doesn’t glow green, and is instead harmless and white, its chemical composition matches the description of Kryptonite given in the film Superman Returns: sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide. The only difference is the absence of fluorine.

The mineral was discovered in a mine in Serbia. When the researchers from the mining company were unable to match it to anything known to science, they enlisted the help of a mineralogist from the Natural History Museum, Dr Chris Stanley. He uncovered the similarity to the fictional mineral when searching the web for the chemical formula that he had determined.

Scientists are now looking to solve the atomic structure of the mineral so that its physical properties can be calculated. Analysis of both the chemical and physical properties of the mineral will help establish whether it is indeed unique.

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