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Since news of swine flu in the United States first broke last week, Science reporters have been keeping tabs on the latest developments. Virus expert Jon Cohen is at the scene of some of the early cases in San Diego, California, while Paris-based Martin Enserink, an expert in pandemics, is tracking the latest on the biology of the virus. We have coverage you won't find anywhere else, including an interview with infectious disease specialist Edwin Kilbourne, who was at the center of the last swine flu scare in the United States, and an analysis questioning the official word on the virus's genetic makeup.
If you're reading this at the end of the day on Sunday, April 26th—stop! You're supposed to be outside looking at the sunset.
On Sunday evening, the crescent Moon, Mercury and the Pleiades star cluster will gather for a three-way conjunction in the western sky. It's a must-see event.
The show begins before the sky fades to black. The Moon pops out of the twilight first, an exquisitely slender 5% crescent surrounded by cobalt blue. The horns of the crescent cradle a softly-glowing image of the full Moon. That is Earthshine—dark lunar terrain illuminated by sunlight reflected from Earth. If the show ended then and there, you'd be satisfied.
NASA's twin STEREO probes are entering a mysterious region of space to look for remains of an ancient planet which once orbited the Sun not far from Earth. If they find anything, it could solve a major puzzle--the origin of the Moon.
"The name of the planet is Theia," says Mike Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's a hypothetical world. We've never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago—and that it collided with Earth to form the Moon."
Scientists report today that artificial blood vessels made using a person's own skin cells work well in patients receiving kidney dialysis. The new blood vessels mark the first vascular grafts to be derived entirely from a patient's own tissues, which lowers the odds of a harmful immune reaction. Down the road, engineered grafts may also prove useful in treating patients with circulatory problems in their legs and coronary arteries.
About 300,000 people a year in the United States receive regular kidney dialysis, which removes and filters a patient's blood before returning it. To speed the procedure, doctors typically implant a small blood vessel between a vein and an artery in the patient's arm. Blood is then removed and reinserted through an intravenous line inserted into this bypass vessel. When possible, doctors typically harvest a piece of a vein from a patient to make this bypass, called a shunt. But over time, these shunts often fail, forcing doctors to use shunts made with plastics and other synthetic materials that can trigger immune reactions or blood-flow problems downstream.
In hopes of engineering a more natural replacement, researchers led by Todd McAllister of Cytograft Tissue Engineering of Novato, California, came up with a scheme for growing replacement vessels using a patient's own cells. They start by harvesting skin cells known as fibroblasts and growing these in a sheet. They then roll up the sheet and allow the cells to produce an interpenetrating mixture of structural support proteins, known as collagen and elastin.
After 6 years of work by more than 300 researchers, and $53 million in funding, the cow genome has arrived. Yes, this is just one of many animal genomes that have been sequenced since humans took the spotlight in the year 2000, but its adherents say the cow code tells a fascinating tale of evolution and domestication. It's been seized upon by a cattle industry keen to improve on the quality of cow milk and beef.
A comparison of the cow genome, with more than 22,000 genes, with other mammalian genomes is already turning up surprises. Although humans share a more recent common ancestor with rodents than they do with cows, it turns out that our genome more closely resembles those of cows and dogs. This is probably because mice and rats evolve so quickly thanks to rapid reproduction, much quicker than other species, says one of the team leaders, Kim Worley, a genomicist from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, where the sequencing was done. The genome sequenced, belonging to a Hereford cow, also has more genes linked with immune functions than does the human genome and more duplication of such genes. One possible reason, according to the sequencers, is that cows are ruminants with multiple stomachs and are exposed to many more microorganisms. "There's a lot of questions with immunity" yet to be resolved, says Richard Gibbs, head of Baylor's sequencing center and a project leader.
Night owls seem to have a cognitive edge over early risers--at least when they're on their natural sleep schedule. That's one upshot of a new brain-imaging study that also gives surprising new insights into how the brain manages the urge to sleep and wake. The results, sleep researchers say, may improve predictions of when people are most at risk for drowsy accidents.
Two factors control our bedtime. The first is hardwired: A master clock in the brain regulates a so-called circadian rhythm, which synchronizes activity patterns to the 24-hour day. Some people's clocks tell them to go to bed at 9 p.m., others' at 3 a.m., (ScienceNOW, 24 June 2003). The second factor--called sleep pressure--depends not on time of day but simply on how long someone has been awake already.
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Professor Michael D. Whinston, Leverhulme Visiting Professor, University of Oxford and Robert E. and Emily H. King Professor of Business Institutions, Northwestern University, is to deliver a series of lectures on contracting and anti-trust. The lectures will take place in the main lecture theatre, Manor Road Building, Manor Road, Oxford on April 27th, May 4th and May 11th.
The official launch of the University of Cambridge’s new Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) will take place on Tuesday, May 5th. The previously separate Centre of International Studies, with its major postgraduate programme, and the Department of Politics, with its very successful undergraduate course, are merging.
The new Department brings together the closely-related subjects of politics and international relations, and complementary strengths in teaching and research. This is the first time Cambridge has had a unified Department in this important academic area, and provides the opportunity for further growth. As well as building on existing strengths in political thought, international security, political economy, European studies and comparative politics, the Department will also develop new research areas, and will expand its teaching.
Cambridge has a long and distinctive tradition in politics and international relations with particular emphasis, going back over a century, on historical, legal, economic and philosophical approaches to their study.
HivioSense, a business conceived by students from the Master’s in Bioscience Enterprise Programme, has recorded success in an international business plan competition based in the Netherlands.
HivioSense is aiming to develop and commercialise a novel HIV detection system that can detect the presence of HIV in patients three weeks after infection. Current tests on the market can take up to three months to give an accurate result."The new system will provide two main advantages: the first is that by detecting HIV at an earlier stage it will allow individuals to change their behaviour to prevent any further spread of HIV," said Dr Nafees Malik, a member of the team behind HivioSense. "The second advantage will be that having a result in three weeks rather than three months will reduce the psychological strain on individuals mainly in terms of the stress and anxiety of waiting for a result."
"Another advantage of the system is that by being able to detect the presence of HIV that much earlier, it will be much easier for individuals to trace and tell their partners to get tested for HIV."
The Vice-Chancellor was in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science last week to accept one of the more unusual gifts to be presented to the University to mark the 800th anniversary year.
Hungarian engineer Gabor Domokos, currently Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, is one of the two inventors of the perfect, self-righting solid shape, known as the Gömböc.
A unique 800th Anniversary edition of the precision-made convex shape, inscribed GÖMBÖC 1209, the year of the University's foundation, was presented to the Vice-Chancellor by Professor Domokos.
Unlike the self-righting Weeble toy, to which it has been compared, the Gömböc has an even distribution of weight, being made of a single material, but due to its shape has just one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium.
Scientists at Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics are celebrating the discovery of the smallest known exoplanet—a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun—announced Tuesday by European astronomers.
The new planet, Gliese 581 e, is 1.9 times the size of Earth and 80 times smaller than the first exoplanet, which was discovered in 1995. The solar system where the planet was found is 20.5 light years away and can be found in the constellation Libra.
Members of the CFA, which has played a major role in the search for exoplanets, heralded the discovery as momentous.
“This discovery can be compared to what happened 400 years ago with Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons,” said Dimitar Sasselov, a professor of astronomy. “It is amazing that it happened on the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s discovery.”
At the Center, many scientists are heavily involved with exoplanet research. Harvard astrophysicists have developed one of the most “exciting” techniques in the search for exoplanets, known as the transit method, which is currently being utilized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Kepler Mission, Sasselov said.
he Undergraduate Council unanimously voted to approve the Social Grants Act, a pilot program that provides funding for events in social spaces in the Houses.
The plan, which would be fully implemented, in the 2009-2010 school year, aims to improve social life on campus by funding social events in House common spaces which may include alcohol as long as the event fulfills certain criteria, including that the grant applicant be 21 years old.
The program, termed the “UC Weekend Fund” will replace DAPA grants which fund food and non-alcoholic party supplies. DAPA grants are currently administered by the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Services, which is a division of the Harvard University Health Services
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