the-BA : Science News Digest

Fantasy Mars landscape (image copyright: istockphoto.com)

In the news this week: scientists create a powerful fuel from sugar and icebergs are found to be ecological hotspots. Plus, wanted: volunteers to take 18-month ‘trip’ to Mars...

If you have trouble getting to sleep, it may be a good idea to refrain from using your mobile before going to bed: a new study reported in the Daily Telegraph has revealed that the signals emitted by mobiles can double how long it takes to nod off.

Changes in brain activity mean that, even after the phone is switched off, the brain’s sleep patterns are altered for several hours.

10 volunteers were exposed individually to three types of signals emitted by mobiles held to their ears for 30 minutes. ‘Talk mode’, ‘listening mode’ and stand-by mode were tested and the time it took the volunteers to fall asleep after each was compared to the time taken when the phone was off.

Researchers observed that talk mode gave the biggest effect and delayed sleep by 25 minutes. But even stand-by mode had an effect. The impact of any other stimuli such as talking were excluded by the removal of the microphone and earpiece, ensuring it was only the microwave signal that the participant was exposed to. Professor James Horne, who led the research at Loughborough University’s Sleep Research Centre, equated the alerting effect of the talk mode signal to that of a cup of coffee.

It seems that the placebo effect may have a physiological origin and work in a similar way to opiate drugs such as morphine or codeine. According to new research, the expectation that a treatment will work causes the release of endorphins – the body’s natural painkillers – and as a result the patient feels better, irrespective of the medicine’s efficacy.

In the latest study, 19 healthy volunteers were told that a pain-relief cream had been applied to one of their hands, and a control cream to the other. In actual fact, the same control cream was used on both hands. The participants then received laser ‘pinpricks’ to their hands whilst their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The researchers observed that the volunteers reported less pain when the pinpricks were administered to the hand supposedly treated with an active cream. And, whereas the areas of the brain associated with feeling pain showed less activity, the part of the brain associated with pain control was more active.

‘When participants thought they had been given effective pain relief, the rostral anterior cingulate cortex showed significantly more activity,’ Professor Christian Büchel, who led research, told the Times. ‘This region is known to be very rich in opiate receptors and signalling the release of opiates.’

According to Education Secretary Alan Johnson, Gordon Brown is highly likely to instigate an early shake-up in how the government backs science as part of his efforts to enhance science’s profile, reported BBC News. Changes may include structural changes to the governmental office responsible for UK science policy and funding allocation, and there have even been suggestions that a separate science ministry could be created.

‘Gordon will be looking at some machinery of government changes - and there's talk about the Office of Science and Innovation, which is in the DTI [Department of Trade and Industry] at the moment, perhaps being linked up with higher education and coming into the DfES [Department for Education and Skills],’ said Mr Johnson.

‘In terms of the emphasis on the importance of higher education and the importance of science and innovation, Gordon has already made it clear it's a top priority.’

The discovery of a fossilised skull has revealed that the Giant Panda’s earliest known ancestor was rather smaller than the modern-day animal. However, it shared many anatomical similarities and also lived on a bamboo diet.

Until the discovery of the remarkably intact fossil in China, only a few isolated teeth and jaw fragments of Ailuropoda microta, the ‘pygmy giant panda’ were known. The skull enabled scientists to deduce that the animal, which lived over 2 million years ago, was about half the size of the modern Giant Panda, as well as giving other clues about its evolution.

Anthropologist Professor Russell Ciochon, an author on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper that described the find, told BBC News: ‘Bears are generally carnivorous or omnivorous, and then you have pandas - they have gone in a completely different direction, they are committed vegetarians. Early on in the evolutionary history of pandas, they must have invaded this bamboo niche and begun to eat bamboo.

‘Given the food source they were eating was very prevalent, then they must have become more and more specialised. It probably has been exploiting this kind of environment for many millions of years.’

Scientists in America have developed a breakthrough method that can convert simple plant sugar into a liquid fuel as powerful as petrol, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Chemists have long been searching for an inexpensive, non-polluting plant matter able to replace our reliance on crude oil as the root source of chemicals for fuels. Ethanol is currently the only renewable liquid fuel made from plant matter on a large scale, but it has a much lower energy content than petrol.

‘Ethanol suffers from several limitations,’ said Professor James Dumesic, who led the latest research reported in the journal Nature. ‘It has relatively low energy density, evaporates readily, and can become contaminated by absorption of water from the atmosphere. It also requires and energy-intensive distillation process to separate the fuel from water.’

The new liquid fuel, 2,5-dimethyfuran (DMF), avoids these problems and contains 40 per cent more energy than ethanol. The fructose needed as the starting product can be made from glucose, or obtained directly from fruits and plants. However, more work still needs to be done to assess the environmental impact of this new fuel and some challenges remain for commercial applications.

In related news, reported in the Guardian, the National Non-Food Crops Centre in York issued a report on next-generation biofuels. Scientists at the centre believe Britain could meet much of its future energy demand by converting waste products such as wood, plastic bags and even human sewage into transport fuels.

Dr Jeremy Tomkinson, CEO of the centre, added that since these second-generation biofuels would not compete with crops or require extra land, they avoid the concerns attached to existing biofuels over food production and tropical deforestation. Farmed energy crops such as willow and agricultural waste such as straw also offer new opportunities.

You can hear much more about the current and future opportunities offered by non-food crops at the BA Festival of Science in York this September, in a session organised by the National Non-Food Crops Centre.

Meanwhile, the Times reported the launch of an online personalised carbon calculator designed to help individuals work out how much carbon dioxide they are producing and what they can do to reduce their contribution to climate change.

David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, said: ‘This carbon calculator will help people decide what they can do – and be sure it will make a difference. Using it, people can work out the impact of their actions and, with the tailored recommendations provided by the calculator, identify the best way to reduce their [carbon] footprint.’

In another story in the Times, researchers have discovered that free-floating icebergs released into Antarctic waters by global warming are unexpectedly rich habitats.

The ice melting from these icebergs releases nutrients into the water which promote the growth of phytoplankton. This attracts krill, which in turn draw the attention of bigger animals. The scientists observed that normally barren sea areas up to two miles from the icebergs became rich in animal life, including fish, penguins, whales and seals. Birds were also attracted to the area.

Overall, scientists calculated that the 1,000 icebergs they monitored within 4,300 sq miles of the Weddell Sea increased the ‘biological productivity’ in nearly 40 per cent of the sea.

The UK’s newest national museum, the Wellcome Collection, opened in London this week. Visitors can view more than 1,300 exhibits that explore the relationship between people and biomedicine, including work by the artist Andy Warhol and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, as well as historical objects such as Charles Darwin’s walking stick and Aztec sacrificial knives.
(The Guardian)

At the launch, Professor James Watson – one of the researchers who determined the structure of DNA – predicted that within a decade genetic profiles will be used to diagnose illnesses and it will be routine to sequence patient’s genomes before prescribing drug treatment.
(The Times)

The Independent reported that the first gene-therapy trial for treating Parkinson’s disease has shown clear benefits in the 12 patients tested, without side-effects.

The trial was only the first in a three-stage process and was designed to test the safety of the technique. However, significant improvements in muscle control were noticed in the patients up to a year after treatment. Brain scans revealed improved nerve activity within the central nervous system.

Meanwhile, British scientists are due to test a new method of repairing heart damage caused by heart attacks, reported the Guardian. Patients’ hearts will be injected with stem cells from their own bone marrow to see whether this will lead to tissue regeneration and repair the damage. 60 people who have recently suffered large heart attacks will take part in the trial.

The Government announced that, from next year, girls aged 12 and 13 could receive a vaccination against the human papillomavirus responsible for the majority of cases of cervical cancer. An independent cost-benefit analysis will first be undertaken.

’We are still working on the details and logistics, and will work closely with the NHS to ensure the vaccination can be delivered effectively’ said Caroline Flint, the Public Health Minister. 'However, we are hoping that girls will start being vaccinated from as early as 2008.’
(The Times)

And finally...

Did you, like many of the rest of us, dream of being an astronaut when you grew up? Well, now comes the next best thing – the opportunity to take a ‘virtual’ trip to Mars.

The European Space Agency is looking for six volunteers to go on a simulated journey to Mars to help them gain an insight into how people would cope in the extreme conditions of long-haul space travel.

Participants can expect to experience the same conditions that astronauts would, with the exception of weightlessness and radiation, including cramped conditions, a high workload, lack of privacy and limited supplies. Radio contact with ‘Earth’ will have a realistic delay of 40 minutes.

According to the agency: ’The selection procedure is similar to that of astronauts, although there will be more emphasis on psychological factors than on physical fitness.’

So if your job doesn’t hold the challenge for you that it used to, and you’ve not got anything else planned for the next 520 days, this new fixed-term position could be just the ticket.
(The Guardian)