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This week in European sciences -- week 20|2004 |
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De Standaard about researchers protesting against overwhelming EU burocracy. FAZ on demoscopics: the new EU member states won't rejuvenate the EU population. De Standaard interviews genome champion Craig Venter. The Guardian on the science in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow". Science in an editorial about perceived threats and real killer diseases. The Economist on the WHO's anti-AIDS programme, and unravelling Permian mass extinction. FAZ on the future EU research budget. Die Zeit wonders whether the U.S. suffers of a drawback in science. Wall Street Journal Europe reports on scientists who make money out of their patent, and about plastic debris that litters the oceans. Der Spiegel reports about the 18-year-old inventor of Internet's recent threat, the Sasser worm. FAZ about brain injuries of children. |
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Researchers Protest Against European Burocracy During the
conference 'The Europe of Knowledge 2020' in Liège earlier this month,
high representatives of universities, research institutes, governments
throughout Europe, and European Commissioner for Research Philippe Busquin
discussed what is necessary to stop the brain drain and to make Europe
the leading knowledge and innovation driven economy in the world. It was
stated that researchers need to be more ambitious, competitive, internationally
mobile, multidisciplinary, communicative, commercial (and such more things)
-- in short, they must strive to be the best (De Standaard, May
7, 2004). Meanwhile, researchers protest with an
online petition against the unreasonable amounts of paperwork they
have to go through in order to receive European research funding from
the so called Framework Programmes. In a few month's time and without
much publicity, more than 4500 researchers from all over Europe have signed
the petition and vented their frustration on the valuable research time
and money they are wasting in bureaucratic procedures for European research
applications. Bart De Strooper, the Flemish Alzheimer researcher who started
the petition, explains in De Standaard (May
14, 2004) how the ever increasing administration is killing the science,
and how the growing European preference for the formation of very large
networks between research groups does not benefit the research. |
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De
Standaard |
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Christian
Schwägerl who likes much the formerly almost unkown "Berlin
institute for global population and change" reports in FAZ on a recent
meeting (May
14, 2004) disclosing that the new EU member states actually won't
rejuvenate the demoscopic average age of the enlarged EU. In contrast,
there are living less young people - on average - in the accession countries.
Also the average birth rate of 1,2 children for a woman is acutally smaller
than in Germany. Only the prospective accession of Turkey (average birth
rate around 2,5) may lift the old-getting face of Europe. Schwägerl
calls for a EU interior affair's policy that tributes to demoscopic and
migration data as for as these will influence at large future EU labour
and social politics. |
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Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung |
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In the company
of Nobel price winners and almost-Nobel-price winners, Craig Venter talked
about his vision on genetic research at a conference in Brussels, called
‘Life,
a Nobel Story’. Afterwards, he explained to De Standaard (May
14, 2004) in more depth why he feels people shouldn’t be afraid of
genome research, how his love for sailing helped him to discover in the
oceans new species and new genes in numbers that continue to increase
exponentially, why solving environmental problems is more urgent than
medical ones and how his artificial organisms are going to deal with that,
how the techniques he is developing for this purpose might one day bring
extinct animal species back, and why one needs to believe in oneself to
achieve something really new. |
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De
Standaard |
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At Least We are Now Talking About it Can good
film making and good science go together. Watching "The Day After
Tomorrow" the latest disaster film from Hollywood the answer is straight
forward: No - argues George Monbiot in his column in The Guardian (May
14, 2004). The story - the return of an ice age due to political decisions
that ignore scientific advice - extracts some fragments of science, simplifies
and exaggerates them. But it's one of the best disaster movies ever released,
ensures Monbiot. Even though it's unclear whether the plot will have a
positive or none impact on the public regarding climate change, "at
least we are now talking about it." |
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The
Guardian |
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The Perceived and the Real Threads for Public Health There is
a real difference between the perceived thread next door and a killer
disease in the other continent: "for the rare but much feared diseases
the investigators greatly outnumber the fatal cases, and for the major
everyday infectious diseases that are real killers the death toll outnumbers
the investigators", writes Roger Glass, scientist at the CDC, U.S.,
in an editorial for Science magazine (May
14, 2004*). In the first class fall the "fascinating new and
emerging diseases" like anthrax, smallpox, West Nile virus, Ebola
virus, SARS and the Creutzfeld-Jakob disease - he states from his scientist's
point of view. The latter, far away from developed countries but nonetheless
killer plaques, are influenza, hepatitis, rotavirus, malaria, HIV, tuberculosis
and diarrhea. Glass concludes: Just "sustain research on the killer
diseases while keeping in perspective those diseases that remain largely
as threats." |
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Science |
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When the WHO released its annual report on the state of human health, the Economist comments on the "3 by 5" anti-AIDS strategy which is employed to provide anti-AIDS drugs to 3 million people by the end of 2005 (May 14, 2004). "That's a leap forward," because at present, only 400,000 people in poor countries receive the treatment. The paper stressed that the deadline is a tough-to-reach mark but actually "does not mark the end of the problem. AIDS drugs are a treatment, not a cure, so a patient needs to carry on taking them." It's the beginning of a long, expensive way, although drug prices have fallen over the last 8 years from 10,000 dollars per patient and year to about 140 dollars. Mysteries in Permian Mass Extinction "All
very significant. But not complete proof," reasons the Economist
investigating on recent research on the extinction of 90 percent of the
Earth's species that marked the end of the Permian (May
14, 2004). New findings during the last three years suggested that
beside the extinction of dinosaurs (65 million years ago) also the end
of the Permian era, some 250 years ago, was caused by an asteroid impact.
While researchers reported more evidence about the asteroid impact that
produced a crater in Australia (the crater is now 3 kilometers under the
surface and invisible), a researcher at University of Kiel, Jason Phipps
Morgan, thinks that crater and accordingly mass extinction is due to volcanic
activity. |
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The
Economist |
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European Commission to Triple Research Budget Helmut Bünder
reports in FAZ that the European Commission voted to triple its research
budget (May
13, 2004). There'll be a lot to do for us. |
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Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung |
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The supremacy
of the U.S. in science is crumbling, comments Ulrich Schnabel in the German
weekly Die Zeit (May
13, 2004). Schnabel cites the result of the recent report "Science
and engineering indicators 2004" that has been published in the U.S. According
to the report, first signs of an American brain drain are already visible:
The American share in scientific publications decreased from 40 to 30
percent in the last 10 years, the number of industrial U.S. patents submitted
by Americans decreased as well - from 56 percent down to 52 since 1995.
Alarming for U.S. researchers might be another fact, states the author.
The number of foreign researchers and postdocs in the U.S. is dying away
since the terrorist attac of 9/11. Other countries like Germany welcomes
that trend. Recently, the DFG, Germanys biggest science founding agency,
has announced a surprisingly high number of scientific homecomers. But
it's an unused experience for U.S. scientists: "Scientific excellence
is no longer only the domain of the U.S. ", cites Ulrich Schnalbel John
E. Jankowski from the U.S. National Science Foundation. |
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Die
Zeit |
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More and
more scientists secure discoveries by patenting them. Sometimes with useless
outcome, sometimes with sparking royalties. Peter Landers reports in the
Wall Street Journal Europe (May
10, 2004 - Frontpage) on the German diabetes researcher Hans-Ulrich
Demuth whose methods for treating the disease are that promising that
"three of the world's biggest drug companies are planning to test
it in thousands of patients." Now Demuth claimed for royalties. And
Merck&Co. agreed to pay for the use of the patent. |
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Wall
Street Journal Europe |
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Plastic Debris Litters Oceans What's happening
with our waste? Researchers from the University of Plymouth found that
plastics that are broken down to microscopic parts might be found everywhere,
from beaches to ocean sediment, writes Juliet Eilperin in the Wall Street
Journal Europe (May 10, 2004).
"It apprears quite ubiquitous. It's likely to be a global problem",
the scientist in charge, Richard Thompson, is quoted. He found plastic
in plankton samples back to the 1960s. Spokespeople from the Ocean Conservancy,
the American Plastics Council, and Dow Chemical were cited. |
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Wall
Street Journal Europe |
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Tech Innovation out of Germany: The Internet Worm Sasser The recent
threat to Internet users, the Sasser worm, infected around 1.5 million
computers in Europe, Asia and the U.S., report Martin Dommer and Andreas
Ulrich in Der Spiegel (May
10, 2004). But what surprise, the inventor of its code wasn't located
in Russia, as intelligence supposed, but in a small town in nothern Germany.
He just finished school and was about to continue college work. The Sasser
worm uses a leak in Windows 2000/XP and infects computers simply by an
internet connection - no e-mail exchange is necessary. Malicious tongues
in Germany now say there're obviously enough hidden potential in IT resources;
everybody talks about fostering innovation but its already there. |
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Der
Spiegel |
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According
to new studies children which fall on their head or have other accidents
to their heads might hurt their brain more seriously than previously thought.
Richard Friebe reports in FAZ on Sunday on the new findings (May
9, 2004). Also accidents that have been seen as mild might have effects
to brain and brain development in the long run, for instance, on the capabilities
to learn in school or to concentrate. Researchers at the University of
Warwick, UK, reported that 43 percent of kids that had 'mild' brain injuries
showed behavioural disorder. One problem is that there's no supervision
of the children after leaving the hospital. Also neuro-psychological tests
are often not applied. "Well, you cannot prevent brain injuries after
an accident, but you might prevent secondary effects to the brain",
Edmund Neugebauer of University Hospital Cologne, Germany, is quoted. |
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Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung |
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