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science & technology
Tokyo Electric to build solar plant in California
Feb 24th
Tokyo Electric Power Co. will build a solar power plant in the US state of California through its subsidiary Eurus Energy Holdings Corp., according to a report.
It plans to begin operations at the 1000 kilowatt plant by 2010 on a site yet to be selected, the Nikkei business daily reported.
Eurus, already engaged in wind power generation in the United States, wants to take advantage of incentives expected to be provided by the new US government to boost solar power generation nationwide, Nikkei said.
Tokyo Electric is one of four Japanese corporate giants moving into the US renewable energy market with solar and wind power technologies, the daily said.
Petroleum wholesaler Showa Shell Sekiyu KK will start selling solar cells in the United States in June at the earliest after establishing a sales network there, the report said.
The unit of Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell will ship cells from a plant now under construction in Miyazaki prefecture, southern Japan.
Sanyo Electric Co. is set to expand the solar cell production capacity of its Mexican plant, which assembles products for the North American market, by 150 percent to 50,000 kilowatts, the daily said.
In anticipation of growing US demand, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. will raise its domestic production capacity for wind turbines by about 30 percent to 1.6 million kilowatts possibly by March 2010, Nikkei said.
The 787-billion-dollar US economic stimulus package, which was passed on Tuesday, earmarks 38 billion dollars for investments in the environmental and energy sectors.
It also provides 20 billion dollars in tax incentives to spur private-sector investment in this area.
Scientists close in on ‘universal’ vaccine for flu: study
Feb 23rd
Scientists on Sunday unveiled lab-made human antibodies that can disable several types of influenza, including highly-lethal H5N1 bird flu and the “Spanish Flu” strain that killed tens of millions in 1918.
Tested in mice, the antibodies work by binding to a previously obscure structure in the flu virus which, when blocked, sabotages the pathogen’s ability to enter the cell it is trying to infect, according to the study.
Because this structure – described by one scientist as a “viral Achilles’ heel” – is genetically stable and has resisted mutation over time, the antibodies are effective against many different strains.
The breakthrough “holds considerable promise for further development into a medical tool to treat and prevent seasonal as well as pandemic influenza,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped fund the study.
Clinical trials on humans could begin within a couple of years, the researchers said. Seasonal flu kills more than 250,000 people every year, and pandemic flu, which occurs with the emergence of deadly viral y, remains an ever-present threat.
Vaccines have long been the first line of defence against flu, but even seasonal viruses evolve so rapidly that the vaccines need to be updated every year. Even then, they are not always effective.
A team led by Wayne Marasco, a professor at Harvard Medical School, began the study by scanning tens of billions of so-called monoclonal antibodies in the laboratory.
Wheat gene found to overcome fungal disease
Feb 21st
An international research team has discovered a gene to make wheat resistance to a fungal disease responsible for millions of (acres) hectares of lost crops worldwide, according to a study published Thursday.
“This is the first step to achieving more durable resistance to a devastating disease in wheat,” said Cristobal Uauy, co-author of the report, which was lead by researchers in Great Britain, United States and Israel.
Researchers had previously engineered wheat strains to be resistant against “stripe rust” disease, but it has enjoyed limited durability in practice because the fungus Puccinia striiformis had always “mutated to overcome them,” according to the study authors.
But the new gene found in wild wheat overcomes this problem, said researchers, whose work is published in the US journal Science.
“This gene makes wheat more resistant to all stripe rust fungus races tested so far,” said Uauy, who works at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England.
Common wheat provides some 20 percent of the calories eaten by all of humanity, said the study authors.
Mobile phones aim to be a ‘doctor in your pocket’
Feb 19th
Not content with offering calls, texts and Internet access, the mobile phone industry is convinced it can help save lives and offer health services to millions worldwide.
The idea of a phone serving as a “doctor in your pocket” has gained traction at the industry’s biggest trade show, the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona.
Among a slew of possible applications in poor countries, insiders stressed the potential for the mobile phone to remind people to get vaccinations, take medicine, or undergo HIV tests.
Doctors and nurses working at distance from hospitals or clinics can also use mobile connections to relay information on local patients or report disease outbreaks.
“When you consider that there are 2.2 billion mobile phones in the developing world, 305 million computers but only 11 million hospital beds you can instantly see how mobiles can creat effective solutions to address healthcare challenges,” said Terry Kramer, strategy director at British operator Vodafone.
The Rockefeller Foundation, the UN Foundation and The Vodafone Foundation announced the Mobile Health (mHealth) Alliance this week, a partnership to advance the use of mobile technology in healthcare.
The UN and Vodafone also released a study, “mHealth for Development: The Opportunity of Mobile Technology for Healthcare in the Developing World,” detailing 51 programmes in 26 countries.
The biggest adopters are India with 11 projects and South Africa and Uganda with six each.
“Innovative technology could reduce the pressure on public healthcare systems,” Daniel Carucci, vice-president of health at the UN Foundation, told delagates here.
In Uganda, for example, a multiple choice quiz about HIV/AIDS was sent to 15,000 subscribers on the Celtel network in a rural region, inviting them to answer questions and seek tests.
Users who completed the quiz were given free airtime and each time they answered a question wrong they received a message informing them of the correct response.
At the end of the quiz, a final SMS was sent to motivate participants to go for voluntary testing and counseling at a local health centre.
Slightly less than one in five responded and the number of people who went for testing at the centre increased from 1,000 to 1,400 during a six-week period, the report said.
In another example given in the report, health workers in the Amazonas state of Brazil began filling in surveys last October on their mobile phones on incidences of the mosquito-borne dengue fever.
“The devices are providing us with precision (and) the information we need to develop (effective responses) in the areas where the infection levels are high,” Luzia de Melo Mustafa, an Amazonas health agent is quoted as saying.
In Mexico, a medical hotline called MedicallHome was launched in 1998 to provide for people without access to a doctor. They can ring or send an SMS to ask for advice.
“Sixty percent of the time, you can replace the doctor,” Pedro Yrigoyen, co-founder of MedicallHome told delegates here, highlighting the fact that mobile phones outnumber fixed lines in Mexico by five-to-one.
“Public healthcare is overwhelmed… people wait for hours just to see the doctor.”
Elizabeth Boehm, an analyst at research group Forrester, sees the potential
for mobile phones to help in public health information campaigns, but also points out limitations.
“One of the main challenges, in mobile health, is that people who are most in need of healthcare are usually more aged, so they don’t use the mobile or they’re not comfortable with it,” she told AFP.
In the developed world, researchers are also looking for ways to harness mobile technology.
In several countries, diabetes sufferers can measure their blood sugar level with a device connected to a mobile phone which sends the data to doctors to verify.
Other applications are seen for monitoring people with heart problems or Alzheimer’s disease.
In the United States, a service called “Foodphone” enables a user to take a photo of his or her food before a meal and send it to an expert who replies with information about the nutritional value.
Scientists link mutations to cancer survival times
Feb 19th
Scientists have identified two genetic mutations they believe are linked with the most common types of brain cancer and longer survival times, according to researched published on Wednesday.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins and Duke universities discovered variations in the IDH1 and IDH2 genes that are associated with three quarters of the most common types of cancer tumors, known as gliomas.
It is hoped the findings could open the way to more successful treatment of the disease.
Patients with these types of mutations can survive at least two times longer than those with other genetic variations, according to the work, which was published in the February 19 addition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Pathologists may find it useful to determine IDH1/IDH2 status to help identify and classify these cancers,” said Williams Parsons, a visiting professor in pediatric oncology at Johns Hopkins.
“The IDH mutation could serve as a biomarker that would help single out individuals who are likely to have better outcomes and receive different treatment,” said Darell Bigner of Duke University and a coauthor of the report.
Gum disease feared to trigger full-blown AIDS: Japan study
Feb 12th
An acid produced in the mouth due to gum disease invigorates the virus that can lead to full-blown AIDS, a Japanese researcher said Thursday, billing the finding as a world first.
A group of bacteria causes periodontal disease — a chronic inflammation that erodes bony structure in the gum — posing a threat to the teeth and the entire body, the researcher said.
“They produce a large amount of butyric acid, which smells like socks you wore for a long time,” said Kuniyasu Ochiai, professor who chairs the Microbiology Department at Tokyo-based Nihon University.
The acid, which can also exist in rancid butter, hinders a kind of enzyme called HDAC that blocks HIV from proliferating, Ochiai told AFP.
In-vitro experiments have shown that the virus in two kinds of cells related to the immune system rapidly proliferates after given culture fluid containing the gum disease-causing bacteria and butyric acid they produced, he said.
“Serious periodontal disease could lead to the development (of AIDS) among HIV-positive people… although the probability largely depends on individual physical strength,” Ochiai said.
“There are fears that even those whose were unaware that they had contracted HIV could develop the epidemic once they have periodontal disease,” he said, underscoring the importance of oral health care.
Previous research has shown that gum disease is linked to diabetes and heart disease but it is the world’s first finding that it activates HIV, Ochiai said.
The study will be published in the March issue of the US monthly Journal of Immunology, he said.
The research team also plans to confirm the finding in tests on animals, he said.
The study has been led by Ochiai as well as Takashi Okamoto, molecular biology professor at Nagoya City University in central Japan and research assistant Kenichi Imai there.
Japan scientists identify cancer-suppressing enzyme
Feb 10th
Scientists in Japan have identified an enzyme which appears to suppress breast cancer and they hope the finding will spur new therapies to control the second most common cancer in the world.
At issue is the enzyme CHIP, which experts say can stunt cancer growth by degrading a number of cancer-causing proteins. The enzyme occurs naturally in human breast tissue.
In an article published in Nature Cell Biology, the scientists said they injected two kinds of human breast cancer cells into mice. One set carried the CHIP enzyme and the other was without the chemical.
Tumors in the first group of mice with the CHIP enzyme were far smaller than the one without the enzyme, Junn Yanagisawa at the University of Tsukuba’s Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences in Japan told Reuters.
The same results were seen in a parallel experiment using a more aggressive line of human breast cancer cells, he added.
“Our conclusion is that we have found that CHIP protein prevents breast tumor growth and metastasis,” Yanagisawa said.
Metastasis occurs when cancer spreads from its site of origin, which challenges therapy and may even result in death.
“In breast tumor treatments, measurement of the CHIP protein levels in the tumors may be valuable information for the treatment. Furthermore, designing a new therapy that increases CHIP protein levels or its activity could be useful for breast tumor treatment,” Yanagisawa said.
Breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer, after lung cancer. In 2005, it killed 502,000 people worldwide, or almost 1 percent of all deaths.
Animal eggs not a good source for embryonic stem cells: study
Feb 4th
A study published on Monday has found that eggs from cows, rabbits and other animals are not a good source for creating embryonic stem cells, the master material that could one day repair tissue damage, replace organs, and reverse degenerative diseases.
But, in the same study, US researchers made a significant advance in the cloning of human embryos, which could be a path to producing a host of patient-specific treatments.
“This study shows for the very first time that cloning really works and that DNA is reprogrammed,” said co-author Robert Lanza, the chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology.
Lanza and his team were able to replace the nucleus of a number of embryos and bring the clones to the morula stage, where they had divided into eight to 16 cells.
In the human embryos, they were able to prove that the DNA was reprogrammed because the same genes were activated as in a normal embryo.
But something went wrong when the nuclei of rabbit, mice and cow embryos were replaced with a human nucleus.
“We would get these beautiful little embryos but it wouldn’t work: instead of turning on the right genes the animal eggs would turn them off,” Lanza told AFP. Researchers had hoped that cloned animal eggs could be used to create human embryonic stem cells, which are highly versatile, primitive cells capable of developing into any tissue of the body.
The dream is to coax these cells into becoming lab-dish replacements for heart, liver, skin, eye, brain, nerve and other cells destroyed by disease, accidents, war or normal wear-and-tear.
Scientists have found two potential ways to avoid the dangers of organ or tissue rejection.
The most promising method is to reprogram skin cells so they behave like
embryonic stem cells. But these “induced pluripotent stem cells” (iPS) are currently created using harmful viruses and are not safe for clinical use.
Cloning embryos so that they have the same DNA or tissue type as the patient could be safe for clinical use.
But researchers have not yet derived an embryonic stem cell line from a cloned embryo or found an efficient way to clone human embryos.
There had been hope that the animal eggs could be used as a substitute for human embryos, which are difficult to harvest and controversial to use. “This very important paper suggests that livestock oocytes (the cells from which eggs develop) are extremely unlikely to be suitable as recipients for use in human nuclear transfer,” said Ian Wilmut, director of the Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Edinburgh and editor-in-chief of Cloning and Stem Cells, which published the paper.
“This is very disappointing because it would mean that production of patient-specific stem cells by this means would be impracticable.”
Working with human embryos is also impractical because the high failure rate means it takes hundreds of eggs to create a single stem cell line, said Alan Trounson, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
“Most people are working on IPS cells (stem cells derived from skin) rather than nuclear transfer because it’s so difficult to get human eggs,” Trounson said.
“Their work is endorsing that we could use human eggs but I don’t think it helps us, to be honest, in actually being able to do it because it doesn’t show that it could be improved dramatically.”
Trounson said human cloning can still be important in addressing some serious genetic diseases because it would allow for the manipulation of mitochondria, which run cell function and contain DNA.
But Lanza said it’s too soon to give up on embryonic stem cell research. “We need to continue research on both fronts because we don’t know if IPS cells or cloning will be better,” he said.
“It’s good to have a backup approach.”
IBM computer will have power of 2 million laptops
Feb 4th
Seven months after IBM delivered the world’s fastest supercomputer, it has announced an even speedier one with the computing power of 2 million laptops.
IBM said on Tuesday it is developing the technology for its new Sequoia computer, with delivery scheduled in 2011 to the Department of Energy for use at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Sequoia will chug along at 20 petaflops per second and is one order of magnitude quicker than its predecessor. The earlier machine, delivered in June to the Energy Department, broke the 1 petaflop barrier.
Peta is a term for quadrillion and FLOP stands for floating point operations per second.
Sequoia, and a smaller computer called Dawn, are being built in Rochester, Minnesota, for use in simulating nuclear tests. IBM says they can also be used for complex tasks like weather forecasting or oil exploration.
IBM says Sequoia will be highly energy-efficient for the job it does but even so will occupy 96 refrigerator-sized racks in an area the size of a big house — 3,422 square feet (318 square meters).
Long space stay makes bones weak
Jan 30th
Astronauts who spend months in space tend to lose bone strength, making them increasingly vulnerable to fractures in later life.
Universities of California (UC) Irvine and San Francisco evaluated 13 astronauts who spent four to six months on the International Space Station and found that, on an average, their hipbone strength decreased 14%.
Three astronauts experienced losses of 20% to 30%, rates comparable to those seen in older women with osteoporosis.
These results alarmed researchers because they revealed a greater rate of bone deterioration than previously measured using less powerful technologies.
Orthopaedic researchers looking into the effects of long-duration spaceflight usually study the hipbone or spine. The hip experiences the greatest rate of bone loss in space, and a hip fracture almost always requires hospitalisation and major surgery.
It can impair a person’s ability to walk unassisted and may cause prolonged or permanent disability or even death. Fractures of the vertebra also have serious consequences, including loss of height, severe back pain and deformity.
“If preventive measures are not taken, some of our astronauts may be at increased risk for age-related fractures decades after their missions,” said Joyce Keyak of UC Irvine, biomedical engineering professor, who led the study.
For as long as there have been astronauts, researchers have studied why the environment of space makes bones more fragile. While previous studies looked at bone mineral density, this study is the first to specifically evaluate bone strength.
Keyak and her colleagues used a novel computer programme she developed over the past 20 years to identify hipbone fracture risk in people with osteoporosis. The study team used this programme to analyse structurally the hipbone CT scans of one female and 12 male International Space Centre crewmembers, said an UCI release.