This week in European sciences -- week 35
 

Overview
FAZ with a contribution of Science's editor-in-chief on structures and challenges of European research policy. The Guardian writes on a forgotten environmental issue: acid rain. Die Zeit on manipulation of decision making. FAZ examines the high level of X-ray treatment of German patients. Der Spiegel reflects on time: measurements of time get out of step because earth rotation slows down - slightly. FAZ on the search for a computer's immune system defending virus attacks. In addition: Time writes on Viagra and competitors. NY Times about an upcoming US agreement to allow poor countries to buy generic medicines. Wall Street Journal on a new drug against heart-transplant complications. NY Times on a medical study of antidepressants for children. Also NY Times writes on a new US military research program on biotechnology. Also NY Times explains how the recent US power blackout happened.
 

More Over, Viagra

With the introduction of Viagra, it became acceptable to talk about "erectile disfunction." As a matter of fact, Viagra has become such a success that GlaxoSmith Kline and Bayer introduced Levitra as a treatment for impotence. Levitra has received the "heads up" from the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, according to a report in Time (September 1-issue, 2003). "Both pills begin working within 30 minutes (although some say Levitra works sooner), both last four to five hours, and both are effective nearly 70 percent of the time," Dr. Sanjay Gupta writes in the Time article. Side effects include headaches, nasal stuffiness and an upset stomach.
 

Europe's up to move

Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science magazine, tells in his editorial contribution in FAZ (August 29, 2003) the problems of European research from his American point of view: First, research policy should act like sciences itself on a transnational level. Up to now decisions in research policy are done by the national governments. The shortcomings are obvious. Second, international cooperation is mandatory to prevent the brain drain from Europe to the US. Kenndey goes that far to ask US institutions to reduce search for human resources abroad. On the other hand, more US scientists should gather experience outside the US. And third, an important point in structuring the European research area is the development of new priorities. Governmental science funding has to value basic research more than applied research.
 

In Reversal, U.S. Nears Deal On Drugs for Poor Countries

The U.S. government has changed its mind and intends to support an agreement that would exempt poor nations from trade rules and allow them to buy generic medicines. The change of heart could mean access to "expensive-patented" medication for millions of people who suffer from diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, Elizabeth Becker reports in the New York Times (August 28, 2003, front page). The United States had rejected an agreement to allow the trade rule exemptions last December. "After weeks of intensive negotiations, the United States won assurances that countries would not take advantage of the arrangement to increase exports of generic drugs to nationas that are not poor and do not have a medical emergency," Becker writes. Peter Allgeier, United States deputy trade representative, is working on negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, and hopes an agreement can be reached before the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico, which begins Sept. 10.
 

Heart-Transplant Complications Cut By New Drug

A study of 634 heart-transplant recipients indicates that everolimus, a drug developed by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis helps reduce complications in heart-transplant surgeries and helps prevent rejection of the donor-heart. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved the use of everolimus yet. Currently U.S. surgeons use the generic drug azathioprine to prevent rejection and long-term thickening of the heart's coronary arteries. According to the study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, everolimus is more effective than azathioprine. However, not all of the findings were favorable to everolimus, Daniel Golden reports in The Wall Street Journal (August 28, 2003, front page). Both drugs registered the same death rates after 450 days after surgery.
 

Acid Britain

Decades of acid rain have endangered and destroyed much of the wildlife in rivers and lakes in Wales. Some 120,000 kilometers of streams and rivers in the Welsh hills are polluted by acid rain, reports Malcolm Smith in The Guardian (August 28, 2003). Indeed, air got much more cleaner the last decades, but as Smith points out full recovery of acidified rivers will take, at best, many years. Expert groups now try to speed recovery up: By dosing lime into polluted water or on the soil beside.
Ian Sample writes about the options of NASA for manned space transport and the future of the space shuttle. If the ISS has to be completed, NASA has to come up with a shuttle's successor.
 

Ralf Grötker explains elusive tricks to manipulate decision making by humans or animals. Especially the so-called decoys get attention: irrelevant alternatives for instance as appraised products in a shop alter the outcome of a buy decision completely.
 

Popular Antidepressant Effective in Children, Researchers Say

Researchers find the antidepressant Zoloft to be "an effective and well-tolerated short-term treatment" for moderate to severe depression in children and adolescents. "The research, the largest published study of children to test any of the antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or S.S.R.I.'s, found that 69 percent of the subjects who took the drug improved significantly, compared with 59 percent of those who took a dummy pill, a difference that some experts termed modest," Erica Goode reports in The New York Times (August 27, 2003, front page). Fifty-three medical centers in the United States, Canada, India, Costa Rica, and Mexico participated in the 18-month study, whose results were published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Graham Emslie, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who did not participate in this study but has extensively researched effects of Paxil and Prozac, said the number of children who improved while taking "dummy pills" indicates the significance of environmental effects on children.
 

The roentgenized population

Radiodiagnosis saves lifes. X-ray techniques developed rapidly followed by more and more treatments. But radiation may also be harmfull if the amout of treatments and dosages are too high, as Reinhard Wandtner points out in FAZ (August 27, 2003). Hence, the lesser the dosage the lesser the risk to damage cells. To image bones, organs or teeth about 1665 X-ray examinations per 1000 people are done in Germany. In UK only 704. Only Japan tests more (2316). What strucks more is the comparison on used dosages: The average per person in Germany is two Millisievert, in France and Switzerland about half that much and in UK only one sixth. As we think that radiodiagnosis in Germany is not six times as powerful as in UK, the treatments should be compared in more detail.
Manfred Lindinger reports once more (we read so much on it in Die Zeit, Süddeutsche and elsewhere) on the japanese robot Asimo and his colleagues.
Julia Voss and Christian Schwägerl examine the state of museums of natural history in Germany. There are 169 of them, and most of them are struggling for survival. In contrast the authors put an interview with Sir Neil Chalmers, head of Natural History Museum, London, an expert in fund raising. Chalmers shows new ideas how to communicate the relevance of the museums for education, research and a sustainable policy.
 

Computer viruses enter every week the media's headlines. Researchers try now to take the analogy of these bugs to biological entities on step further, as Manuela Lenzen and Martin Klaus report in FAZ on Sunday (August 24, 2003). Firewalls and anti-virus programs may act comparable to the skin of humans. Researches now seek for something acting like an immune system. They try to adopt the concept of antigenes to computers to distinguish between its own processes and programs and strange ones.

link
smallworld.columbia.edu

Blackout due to inadequate communications

James Glanz and Andrew Revkin explain how the blackout of most of northeast US happened: "the system for communication among the people and organizations that operate that part of the nation's electrical grid was inadequate." NY Times, August 23, 2003
 

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