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Human embryonic stem cells

Image: Wikipedia

Issue no. 10, 2011 Published: Mar 18, 2011
Europe rules against stem cell patents
Scotland approves major tidal power scheme
New study gives dark energy a boost
Laser beam could nudge space junk away
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
Agricultural research 'urgently needs more women'
How to spot a fake whisky using its signature

Europe rules against stem cell patents
Stem cell researchers in Europe are reeling after the Court of Justice of the European Communities issued an opinion last week questioning the ethics of their work and threatening to ban them from patenting procedures that involve human embryonic stem cell lines. Some scientists fear that the opinion could also prompt European countries to tighten their legislation on such research, or ban it altogether. The lengthy legal debate was sparked by Bruestle's 1991 patent of a technique to generate nerve cells from established human embryonic stem cell lines. The environmental group Greenpeace challenged the patent in 2004, arguing that the destruction of human embryos involved in deriving the cell lines was 'contrary to public order' and breached guidelines set out in the European Patent Convention. In 2006, Germany's federal patent court in Munich ruled in Greenpeace's favour, so Bruestle appealed to the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe. That court in turn referred the case to the European court. Judge Yves Bot, the case's adjudicator, concluded on 10 March that even if they do not involve the direct destruction of embryos, techniques involving human embryonic stem cell lines are not patentable because they are tantamount to making industrial use of human embryos, which 'would be contrary to ethics and public policy'. Bot's opinion will now be considered by the 13 judges in the European court's Grand Chamber. A final decision is expected in about two months. And although the final decision will not be binding on Germany's federal court, it is likely to sway the German decision.
Nature Mar 16, 2011	back to top

Scotland approves major tidal power scheme
A major tidal energy project is to be built in the Sound of Islay off the west coast of Scotland. The Scottish government has approved plans for 10 tidal turbines, which will generate enough electricity to power more than 5,000 homes. Scottish Power Renewables is behind the scheme. It put forward plans to install the turbines in the waters off Islay, which offer strong tidal flows and shelter from storms. The required grid capacity to handle the array is also available in the area. Scottish Power Renewables said the Islay project is the world's first tidal array. But it could soon be dwarfed by the much larger scheme planned for the Pentland Firth, where there are proposals for 1,600 megawatts of production in the coming years, compared to Islay's 10-megawatt array. The scheme will use Hammerfest Strom tidal turbines, which have been operating as a generating prototype in Norwegian waters for more than six years, and are being tested in Orkney ahead of work starting on the project next year. Scotland and the UK generally are seen as world leaders in tidal energy research, but the US and Canada are both investing heavily in the field. The Scottish government has a target to meet 80% of electricity demand from renewables by 2020.
BBC News Mar 17, 2011	back to top

New study gives dark energy a boost
New evidence bolsters the case that 'dark energy' is uniformly accelerating the expansion of the universe, refuting one of the alternative models. The new study, which measures the present-day expansion of the universe to unprecedented accuracy, also suggests that the cosmos may be slightly older than previously calculated. The team used the Hubble Space Telescope's new infrared camera to refine the Hubble constant - a number that indicates the current rate at which galaxies are receding from one another due to cosmic expansion. By precisely measuring the distance to various celestial objects and then gauging the speed at which they are receding from each other, the team measured a Hubble constant of 73.8 km per second per megaparsec. The value has an uncertainty of only 3.3% the researchers report. That margin of error is about 30% better than the previous value, reported in 2008. Although the Hubble constant measures only the current rate of cosmic expansion, the new value implies that the universe is about 75m years older than the previous estimate of 13.75bn years. The finding also places new restrictions on one alternative to 'dark energy' as the driving force behind accelerated cosmic expansion. In the alternative scenario, Earth would sit at the centre of a vast void a few billion light-years. That configuration would produce an optical illusion making it appear as if the universe's expansion is accelerating. But such a setup would require a significantly lower value of the Hubble constant than the researchers have now measured. In combination with data about radiation left over from the Big Bang, the new results also suggest that dark energy is what physicists call the 'cosmological constant', a constant density of energy residing in the vacuum of space, suggested by Einstein but later abandoned.
Science News / Astrophysical Journal Mar 16, 2011	back to top

Laser beam could nudge space junk away
Satellites in orbit around the Earth are at risk of collision with space-based objects, which have either been discarded by space missions or created in satellite collisions. But now a team of researchers at NASA believes it may have found a relatively cheap solution for dealing with this 'space junk' - aim a medium-powered laser into space and nudge any objects on a collision course out of harm's way. The team propose using a laser of a few kilowatts to change the velocity of an orbiting object just enough to move it out of the path of a second, oncoming object. The change would occur simply by the momentum of the photons in the beam. The scheme would involve continually evaluating the chances of a collision between any two items of space junk with a diameter of 5 cm or more, using radar data provided by the US Space Surveillance Network. Objects on a collision course would then be tracked by an optical telescope and, with one of the objects locked on, the laser beam would be sent along the telescope's main optical path into space. Using a computer model, the researchers calculate that the risk of slightly more than half of all potential collisions in low-Earth orbit could be significantly reduced by using just one 5 kW commercially available laser mounted on a 1.5 m telescope somewhere close to the poles (since most of the objects are in roughly polar orbits). Likely to cost no more than about USD 10m, including instrumentation for adaptive optics, they say this approach could represent a much cheaper alternative to the direct removal of space debris.
PhysicsWorld / arXiv Mar 17, 2011	back to top

Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media using fake online personas designed to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with the US Central Command (Centcom) to develop what is described as an 'online persona management service' that will allow one serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities at once. The contract stipulates each persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 controllers must be able to operate false identities from their workstations 'without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries'. The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Centcom's contract requires the provision of one 'virtual private server' in the US and eight appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world. It calls for 'traffic mixing', blending the persona controllers' internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that must offer 'excellent cover and powerful deniability'. Once developed the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with a host of co-ordinated blogposts, tweets, retweets, chatroom posts and other interventions. A Centcom spokesman said none of the interventions were in English, as it would be unlawful to address US audiences with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.
The Guardian Mar 17, 2011	back to top

Agricultural research 'urgently needs more women'
There is an urgent need for more women in agricultural research, particularly at PhD level and beyond, according to a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The 2010-11 edition of The State of Food and Agriculture, launched by the FAO this month, said that female scientists are essential to efforts to increase the productivity of farms run by women in developing countries. Nienke Beintema, programme head of the Agricultural Science & Technology Indicators (ASTI) initiative, which provided data for the FAO report, said that the presence of more women in top decision-making and management roles would help address the specific problems that women farmers face, through shared understanding. Unlike a man, the report said, a typical woman farmer has a smaller area of land with fewer livestock; no access to bank credit; is unable to open a bank account on her own; and is much less likely to use the latest seed varieties and fertilisers. Beintema said that family support is key to reaching higher positions in environments where everybody expects women only to raise children.
SciDev Mar 16, 2011	back to top

How to spot a fake whisky using its signature
There's nothing like pouring yourself a glass of whisky: perhaps one of the smoky, peaty wonders from the Isle of Islay, or maybe a fruity and delicate Speyside malt. Maybe even a fiery bourbon from the US, in an emergency. But on a few occasions each year for people who pour themselves a glass of whisky, they get rather more than they bargained for: a mouthful of methanol, mixed with chemicals and diluted with cold tea that often leaves more than just a nasty hangover. Now researchers from the University of Leicester are re-purposing technology that is already being used to spot counterfeit medicines to analyse the contents of liquids in bottles. The technique relies on detecting the differences between the characteristics of light reflected from the liquid inside the bottle or its label. A white light is shone through the liquid and the spectrometer - originally designed for astronomical research - analyses whether the signature matches that of the genuine article or not. The team believe the technology could also be applied to analyse liquids in airports. But apart from the obvious issue of quality, there is rather more at a stake here. Fake spirits can contain high levels of methanol, a chemical that can cause liver damage, blindness, coma, breathing difficulties and even death. In 2009 it was revealed that radiocarbon dating can also be used to spot fake spirits by discovering how much carbon-14 they contain. And liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry has also been used to pinpoint the unique compounds present in several delicious Trappist ales.
New Scientist Mar 16, 2011	back to top