the-BA : Science News Digest

In the news this week: the global extinction crisis, Bush faces a backlash over stem cells and virtual worlds test telepathy. Plus, parting the Red Sea, plants that warn of volcanic eruptions and fighting asteroids with asteroids.

Last week it was frogs, before that it was birds and this week the Independent reports that thousands of other species, from land mammals to marine life, are threatened with imminent extinction as a result of human activity. According to 19 renowned specialists in global biodiversity, species extinction rates are 100 to 1,000 times greater than normal ‘background’ rates and the planet is losing its biodiversity faster than at any time since an asteroid impact wiped out thousands of animals and plants, including the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.

In a joint declaration, published in the journal Nature on Thursday, the group of scientists, which includes Georgina Mace of the UK Institute of Zoology, called on governments to establish a global political initiative to curtail the loss. Another member of the group, Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank, stated that the science community would need to work together to “advise governments on steps to halt the potentially catastrophic loss of species already occurring.”

BBC News Online has also been covering threats to wildlife, reporting on shrinking tiger habitats and a decline in British bee and flower diversity, which may harm the production of food crops.

On Wednesday, US President George W Bush used his power of veto for the first time since taking office to block a Bill that would have permitted federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, reports the Times. The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which would have scrapped funding limits imposed by Mr Bush in 2001, passed by 63 votes to 37 in the US Senate on Tuesday, falling short of the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto.

Leading scientists and supporters of the controversial research, which has the potential to help sufferers of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, have reacted angrily to the decision. Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, said that Mr Bush’s veto was “slowing down the global effort to develop therapies for a range of diseases and illnesses . . . that could eventually help millions of patients in the US and the rest of the world.”

President Bush announced his decision at a White House press conference, during which he was surrounded by 18 families whose children were born using surplus embryos ‘adopted’ from fertility clinics, which otherwise would have been discarded.

“This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others,” said the President. “It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it.”

The Guardian reports that maverick fertility expert Dr Panos Zavos, a reproductive scientist who was widely criticised in 2004 after announcing that he had cloned a human embryo, has published the world’s first scientific account of an attempt to create a cloned child.

The research, which appears as an article in an obscure and highly specialist scientific journal, details how Dr Zavos, who is based at the University of Kentucky but runs a private fertility clinic in Cyprus, followed the techniques used by British scientists to create Dolly the sheep and grew human embryos using eggs taken from a woman’s ovaries and DNA taken from a man’s skin cells.

Even though the embryos, which were implanted in a female patient’s uterus, did not result in a pregnancy, the article states that “this is the first evidence of the creation and transfer of a cloned human embryo for reproductive purposes,” and that human reproduction by such methods “may be possible and applicable in the future.” It is unknown where the research, which is currently illegal under UK embryology law, was carried out, but Dr Zavos stated that since submitting the article for publication a year ago, he has already transferred cloned human embryos to another five women.

A computer-generated virtual reality world being used as part of a study to test human telepathy, has been demonstrated by scientists at the University of Manchester, reports the BBC. The system, which allows participants to enter an immersive virtual environment by wearing a head-mounted display and an electronic glove, has been created in an attempt to provide an experimental method for testing telepathic ability “which stands up to scientific scrutiny,” said researcher David Wilde.

Volunteer participants, located in separate rooms, will enter the virtual world and be shown a series of randomly generated virtual objects such as a telephone, a football or an umbrella. One participant will be asked to concentrate on a particular object, while the other is asked to identify the object that is being thought about telepathically.

The system’s designers claim that it overcomes problems associated with real-world telepathy studies, while critics say that the tests are easily manipulated to create an effect that looks like extra-sensory perception but is not.

Although it may not be taking place as rapidly as Moses was supposedly able to do it, the Red Sea is definitely parting, according to recent observations of tectonic plate movements by geologists. New research on the Afar fault in Ethiopia, where the African and Arabian tectonic plates meet, has provided strong indications that they are drifting apart in a way that could create a new ocean and redraw the map of Africa and Arabia, reports the Times.

Although the research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Nature, does not predict the exact course of the plates, the movement of the fault suggests that it will eventually widen the Red Sea between Africa and the Arabian peninsula and extend it southwards. The research team, which includes geologists from the universities of Oxford, London and Royal Holloway, suggest that the plate movements could cut a marine inlet inland and maroon Eritrea and northeast Ethiopia as a new island.

In other environment news, Mother Nature may triumph over computerised early-warning systems when it comes to predicting volcanic eruptions, according to research reported in the Telegraph. A new study has revealed that trees and plants growing on the sides of volcanoes develop more quickly prior to eruptions, information that has the potential to improve disaster prediction and save thousands of lives.

Scientists studied satellite images of Mount Etna, in Sicily, and Mount Nyiragongo, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to reveal that trees and bushes grow taller and greener around fractures in the rock through which volcanic magma will later be expelled during eruptions. The spurt in growth is likely to be the result of increased temperatures and gases produced by the rising molten rock, which encourage faster photosynthesis among the surrounding vegetation.

In other news…

New Scientist reports that a massive blast wave from an exploding binary star system has been observed in unique detail by astronomers.

BBC News Online reports that child leukaemia rates are higher in richer areas of Britain, whereas New Scientist reports that the cells of people from lower socio-economic groups who work more menial jobs, tend to age prematurely.

Nature News reports that an analysis of the genetic make-up of the current UK population indicates that almost all English people are descended from Anglo-Saxon invaders who outbred native Britons.

Nature News also reveals that scientists have used a single mercury atom to build the world's most precise clock, which loses only a second every 400 million years.

And finally…

After this month’s near miss, reported previously in Science News Digest, scientists at CNES, the French space agency, have been working out how to capture a small asteroid and use it to destroy much larger asteroids, whose impact could pose a threat to life on Earth.

The Guardian reports that, should scientists discover a giant ‘Goliath’ asteroid on a collision-course with the planet, a 20 to 40 metre-wide ‘David’ asteroid could be diverted using a rocket module and kept in a holding position within Earth orbit. ‘David’ could then be flung into the path of ‘Goliath’ to crush both with the force of 40 Hiroshima bombs.

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