August 4, 2008
Anthrax Case Renews Questions on Bioterror Effort
from the New York Times (Registration Required)
WASHINGTON—Until the anthrax attacks of 2001, Bruce E. Ivins was one of just a few dozen American bioterrorism researchers working with the most lethal biological pathogens, almost all at high-security military laboratories.
Today, there are hundreds of such researchers in scores of laboratories at universities and other institutions around the United States, preparing for the next bioattack.
But the revelation that F.B.I. investigators believe that the anthrax attacks were carried out by Dr. Ivins, an Army biodefense scientist who committed suicide last week after he learned that he was about to be indicted for murder, has already re-ignited a debate: Has the unprecedented boom in biodefense research made the country less secure by multiplying the places and people with access to dangerous germs?
http://snipurl.com/3aimh Instant-Messagers Really Are About Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
Turns out, it is a small world. The "small world theory," embodied in the old saw that there are just "six degrees of separation" between any two strangers on Earth, has been largely corroborated by a massive study of electronic communication.
With records of 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 million people from around the world, researchers have concluded that any two people on average are distanced by just 6.6 degrees of separation, meaning that they could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances.
The database covered all of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging network in June 2006, or roughly half the world's instant-messaging traffic at that time, researchers said.
http://snipurl.com/3aju6Sweet Peas Make a Second Skin
from the Guardian (UK)
Might sweet peas and a polymer help reduce disfiguring skin contractions after a skin graft? Sheila MacNeil, professor of tissue engineering at the University of Sheffield, thinks so. Thanks to a compound called beta-aminopropionitrile found in sweet peas, plastic surgeons may soon replace uncomfortable pressure garments with a drug-containing polymer gel.
MacNeil is also behind the development of an artificial skin scaffold. Now, she and her colleagues have turned to an ages-old problem with skin grafts that shrink, become lumpy and, for children with burns, give real problems as they grow.
She's combining polymer chemistry with tissue engineering—a technical challenge in itself—along with a desire to do something clinically useful.
http://snipurl.com/38g89Stinging Tentacles Offer Hint of Oceans’ Decline
from the New York Times (Registration Required)
BARCELONA, Spain—Blue patrol boats crisscross the swimming areas of beaches here with their huge nets skimming the water's surface. The yellow flags that urge caution and the red flags that prohibit swimming because of risky currents are sometimes topped now with blue ones warning of a new danger: swarms of jellyfish.
In a period of hours during a day a couple of weeks ago, 300 people on Barcelona's bustling beaches were treated for stings, and 11 were taken to hospitals.
From Spain to New York, to Australia, Japan and Hawaii, jellyfish are becoming more numerous and more widespread, and they are showing up in places where they have rarely been seen before, scientists say. ...
But while jellyfish invasions are a nuisance to tourists and a hardship to fishermen, for scientists they are a source of more profound alarm, a signal of the declining health of the world's oceans.
http://snipurl.com/3aimoInventors Flock to File Patents in U.S.
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
GENEVA (Associated Press)—The United States is again the favored destination to patent inventions after 43 years in which Japan and the now-defunct Soviet Union held the lead, a U.N. report said Thursday.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office received nearly a quarter of the 1.76 million patents filed worldwide in 2006—the latest years for which figures are available—according to the World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO.
The Soviet Union briefly overtook the U.S. in 1964 at a time when technology was seen as the key to winning the space race—not to mention more mundane battles back on Earth. By 1970 Japan eclipsed both the superpowers, holding onto its lead until 2005.
http://snipurl.com/38gecGenetically Modified Olympians?
from the Economist
For as long as people have vied for sporting glory, they have also sought shortcuts to the champion's rostrum. Often, those shortcuts have relied on the assistance of doctors. After all, most doping involves little more than applying existing therapies to healthy bodies.
These days, however, the competition is so intense that existing therapies are not enough. Now, athletes in search of the physiological enhancement they need to take them a stride ahead of their opponents are scanning medicine's future, as well as its present. In particular, they are interested in a field known as gene therapy.
Gene therapy works by inserting extra copies of particular genes into the body. These extra copies, known as "transgenes," may cover for a broken gene or regulate gene activity. Though gene therapy has yet to yield a reliable medical treatment, more than 1,300 clinical trials are now under way. As that number suggests, the field is reckoned to be full of promise.
http://snipurl.com/38ggcRescued Dog Blazes a Surgical Trail
from the (Raleigh, N.C.) News and Observer
Three years ago, Cassidy Posovsky was a three-legged German shepherd mix hobbling homeless around the Bronx. Thursday morning, he was a medical pioneer getting fitted with a cutting-edge prosthetic that could one day help thousands of veterans and others who lose limbs in trauma.
If all goes well, Cassidy's artificial leg will fuse into his bone, and he should be on all fours in months—paving the way for veterinary orthopedic surgeons at N.C. State University to start working with doctors for human implantation.
With more than 1.3 million veterans seeking prosthetics from the Department of Veterans Affairs each year, and more service members in Iraq and Afghanistan wounded every day, the need for improved limb-replacement technology is becoming more acute. Futuristic technologies such as computerized legs, microprocessor knees and bionic nerve systems have become top priorities of VA research.
http://snipurl.com/38x2cLight Goes Out on Pioneer Machine
from BBC News Online
The pioneering Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) based at the Daresbury Laboratory in Warrington, UK, will be switched off on Monday.
The machine, which probed the structure of materials down to the molecular and atomic level, developed the technology now used in some 60 centres worldwide. Its X-ray science has been behind new drugs and electronics, and was used in Nobel-winning research on cell energy.
UK synchrotron studies have now moved to the Diamond centre in Oxfordshire. Daresbury's future is envisioned as an innovation super-centre, where scientific ideas can better make the leap to business.
http://snipurl.com/3aira AIDS Survey Signals 'Downturn in Treatment'
from USA Today
Half of AIDS patients worldwide appear to be stopping their medication or failing to begin treatment because of side effects from therapy, researchers will report today.
The survey of nearly 3,000 patients from 18 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas represents a sweeping effort to track patient attitudes about their social concerns and treatment, with side effects ranging from disfiguring fatty deposits to drug toxicity to clogged arteries.
... A separate study, released over the weekend, shows that thousands more people are getting HIV each year than experts realized. "The epidemic is—and has been—worse than was previously known," says Kevin Fenton, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The government's tally of the year-by-year impact of the AIDS epidemic offers the first clear picture of HIV in the USA. It appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
http://snipurl.com/3aivg World's Smallest Snake Discovered, Study Says
from National Geographic News
The world's smallest snake—and perhaps the smallest possible snake—has been discovered on the Caribbean island of Barbados, a new study says.
At about ten centimeters long (less than four inches), the diminutive reptile might easily be mistaken for an earthworm, and could comfortably curl up on a U.S. quarter, researchers say.
A second new species, only slightly larger, was found on the neighboring island of St. Lucia. Genetic tests and studies of the snakes' physical features identified the animals as new species, said biologist Blair Hedges of Penn State university, who led the study team.
http://snipurl.com/3aize 
