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This week in European sciences -- week 15|2004 |
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Overview
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Solving Britain's Looming Energy Shortage Ian Sample
profiles in the Guardian (April
8, 2004) Jim Skea, who has just been appointed the head of the government's
new energy research center in London. As the British natural reserves
of oil and gas fall short in the future Britain will increasily depend
from imported fossil fuels, for instance, out of Russia or North Africa.
"This raises questions of how secure is your supply", says Skea.
But security may be a minor issue compared to the fact that the UK will
meet a quite ambitious goal of a 60 percent reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions by the year 2050. In 2010 about 10 percent of Britain's electricity
shall come from renewables, mostly wind turbines (at precent: 2 percent).
The government's plan is to place windfarms across the country and around
it's shores. But obstacles hide in details. For instance, the Ministry
of Defence brought plans to a halt because it fears that the turbines
interfere with their radars. Another option is marine power, but they
"are still looking expensive", says Skea. |
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The
Guardian |
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Science is Inevitably Political The Economist
stresses in it's liberal attitude that "science is inevitable political",
whatever it's practitioners claim otherwise (April
7, 2004). Especially, when you talk about public funding politics
come into play: "which science gets done, and how it's results are
applied, are thus legitimate concerns of governments and their policy
makers." The Economist writes about the rebuttal of John Marburger,
George Bush's science adviser, of an open letter by prominent scientists
released in February. To some extent the paper follows Marburger, but
in most cases of it's analysis "Dr Marburger's response has failed
to convince most of his critics." |
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The
Economist |
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The Meltdown of Glaciers in the Alps The hot summer
in 2003 forced the glaciers in the Alps to loose about 5 to 10 percent
of its mass, reports the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (April
7, 2004). Calculated as an average thickness of the ice sheet about
3 meter got lost (in Switzerland 4, in Austria 2 and in France 2 to 3
meter). According to glaciologists the decline is about as five times
as much as the annual average in the years 1980 - 2000. |
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Neue
Zürcher Zeitung |
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In Math, Computers Don't Lie. Or Do They? In 1998 Dr Thomas Hales proved one of the longest-standing problems in mathematics, the Kepler Conjecture, which describes that the most efficient way to pack oranges (or in his time some 400 years ago: cannonbals) is to stack as a pyramid like grocers are used to do intuitively. Hales' proof received most attention from mathematicians because he used quite much computer power for proving. Kenneth Chang reports on the issue in the New York Times (April 6, 2004) because now, after six years of checking Hales' claim, his paper is going to be published in the prestigious Annals of Mathematics. (Anyway, the computer sections are published in a different journal.) The comprimise is the result of a controvery inside an unsure scientific community: How to acknowledge computer assisted proofs? One side stick to the aesthetics of rigor proofs. The other finds that computers may widen the horizon of mathematics. The Technologically Altered Human Is Already Here Many people
have already made a leap into the posthuman future, writes James Gorman
in an essay for the NY Times (April
6, 2004). Don't think of RoboCops or Borgs but on a biochemical enhancement
by drugs "that have become permanent additives to many human bloodstreams".
People in the U.S. - the health-conscious, well-insured, educated fraction
- take medication for granted, and more are shifting to a pill-taking
life. According to Gorman the new pharma-age "is a social change
on the same order as the advent of computers, but one that is taking place
inside the human body." People are taking so many drugs, that some
experts are worried about the effects on the environment - what happens
with discarded or excreted drugs in rivers, lakes or the sea? Many aspects
of life become medicalized or a part of the doctor's business. In contrast:
While people in the U.S. are worried about too much medicine, in many
countries of the world, people "don't have nearly enough of it",
writes Gorman. The best-sellers for the rich will be drugs to improve
male sexual performance, anti-Alzheimer's drugs, drugs against incontinence
and osteoporosis. "If new psychostimulants and anti-obesity drugs
appear in the future, they will quickly take off. Also compounds that
increase intelligence or improve memory." |
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New
York Times |
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Veronica
Hackenbroch reports in der Spiegel (April
5, 2004) on some confusion on medical measurement results in Germany
which is caused by using different units, for instance, for blood parameters
like glucose. While East Germany uses 'millimol per liter' which is recommended
by the World Health Organization, the Western part still sticks to 'milligramme
per deciliter'. If practitioners don't realize the difference in the units
used for measurement, he or she might apply the wrong treatment. The case
of the double-used units is also common in the U.S. Therefore U.S. medical
journals publish research results in both units, whereas German journals
mostly use the old-fashioned Western unit and thus provoke misunderstandings
and miscalculations. |
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Der
Spiegel |
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On average
people in the industrialised countries get older and older. And aging
is often accompanied with disease and suffering. But some people surpass
the hundred and are healthy, anyway. Some reasons may lie in their genes,
others in environmental, behavioural or, for instance, nutritional issues.
In FAZ on Sunday (April
4, 2004), Richard Friebe reports on the European project Genetic of
Healthy Aging, or GEHA for short, which is about to study over the next
five years the condition and genetics of 2800 pairs of brothers and sisters
which are more then 90 years old. One vision of the project is to develop
in far future drugs that help people to get older and stay healthy. In
addition, the organiser of the GEHA project, Claudio Franceschi of the
University of Bologna, Italy, gives
an interview. He says that it's ridiculous that aging studies with
fruit flies or worms received that high media impact in the past, whereas
the relation of aging of humans and the genetic causes stay in the dark.
For instance, Franceschi is optimistic that the project will disclose
the genetic reason for the difference in life expectancy between women
and men. |
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Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung |
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Donald Kennedy
writes in an editorial of Science magazine (April
2, 2004*) on the challenge for science and legislation that "people
have been making use of approved drugs labeled for other indications to
assist mental concentration and executive functions or to improve memory
retention." Furthermore, many dietary supplements promise memory
enhancement, but Kennedy demands that the regulatory body in the U.S.,
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), should be empowered to protect
consumers properly. In particular, Kennedy addresses safetey issues, "the
human nervous system is so sensitive and so labile compared with other
parts of our physiology that interventions in brain function should demand
an extra dose of caution." |
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Science
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