This week in European sciences -- week 38
 

Overview
Die Zeit gives attention to the head of the now closed German center for risks analysis, also two researchers of human brain in response to a recent controversal article. The Guardian describes how British government tries to achieve a public agreement on nuclear waste storage. FAZ wonders how much computer power is needed for climate research. Also a closer look on science careers of women - a model: Sweden; tail ender: Germany. Der Spiegel makes fun of poor men with poor chromosome Y. In addition: NY Times about a finding of a 1500 pound rodent. Also NY Times on fairness by monkeys, and bacteria that produce electricity out of sugar. NY Times on a study comparing suicide rates between two anti-depressant drugs. Also a report on eating under stress. Wall Street Journal on a new controversial study on global warming. NY Times writes on robotics helping in hair implantation.

Distinctly Big, if Extinct: The 1500-Pound Rodent

Aren't you glad you didn't live eight million years ago in Venezuela and ran across "Patterson's fearful mouse" also known by its Latin name Phoberomys pattersoni? Why should you be afraid of a mouse, you may wonder. But wait until you know that this distant relative of the guinea pig weighed approximately 1500 pounds, as James Gorman reports in The New York Times (September 19, 2003). Paleontologists have discovered a nearly complete skeleton of the creature, which was previously only known through remains of its teeth. The heavy-weight proves that the order of Rodentia (to which the common mouse counts) has "a greater size range ­ from less than a half an ounce to 1500 pounds ­ than any order of placental mammals," Gorman writes. The finding brings scientist one step further in the study of the evolution of rodents.

Low-Calorie-Diet Study Takes Scientists Aback

Very strict low-calorie diets can prolong life. That's no secret. However, as soon as the diet stops, the benefits stop as well. That's what scientists found in a new study about fruit flies. "We were very surprised, completely taken aback," Dr. Linda Partridge of the University College London, UK, said. "The protective effect of dieting snaps into place within 48 hours, whether the diet starts early in life or late. Flies that dieted for the first time in middle age were the same as flies that had been dieting their whole lives," Gina Kolata reports in the New York Times (September 19, 2003). Effects die off as quickly. Within two days of switching back to a calorie-rich diet, flies had lost all the benefits and were at par with their peers that had never dieted. "We've known for a long time that dietary restriction increases survival," Dr. James W. Vanupel, a demographer at the Max Planck Institute in Rostock, Germany, said. Vanupel added that according to study results it was never too late to benefit from dietary restrictions.
 

Last Appraisal of a Model

Hans Schuh gives in the German weekly, Die Zeit (September 18, 2003), a portrait of Ortwin Renn, the director of the "Akademie für Technikfolgenabschätzung" in Stuttgart, Germany. The center of research in risks analysis in Germany has been regarded as a model for other similar institutions all over the world - until the government gave red light last year.
In a "magic stem cell show" Harro Albrecht writes about the new debate in the field of stem cell research and gives a good overview of what happened since in July 2002 the German government decided a new law for the import of embryonic stem cells. The gap between the supporters of embryonic and adult stem cells is increasing. Adult stem cells are already used for therapy of heart attacks - "too early" says the embryonic lobby. The scientists worry about the fundings of their research if any patient would die due to unknown risks.
In addition, the polemic article of Jochen Paulus last week (September 11, 2003) about brain research has caused a furore: Manfred Spitzer, director of the institute of brain research in Ulm and Henning Scheich, director of the institute of neurobiology in Magdeburg contradict.
 

Deadly Nuclear Legacy

Some 100,000 tonnes of nuclear waste are waiting for long-term storage in UK. What are the options? Blast it into space? Bury it underground? Keeping packed on the surface? Most scientists say deep geological burial is the best option, reports David Adam in the Guardian (September 18, 2003). Experts also think this might be the outcome of a public debate due to be installed by the British government next year. The government wants to know what the British public thinks it should do with the nuclear rubbish. The debate is "the most sophisticated exercise of its type ever attempted" says Jacqui Burgess, a social scientist at UCL, London, designing the debate's schedule.
 

Genetic Basis to Fairness, Study Hints

Monkeys have a sense of fairness. Two researchers at Emory University came to that conclusion when they studied monkeys, which were treated differently. The monkey that felt it was not treated fairly, was less willing to fulfill its task than the monkey which received the better treatment. "The finding bears on the question of whether the sense of fairness found in all human societies is learned from school and family or is instead an innate behavior fostered by the genes," Nicholas Wade writes in The New York Times (September 18, 2003). The monkeys researched were female capuchin monkeys. Their display of a sense of fairness may be an aspect of "innate primate repertory of social behaviors." The study is part of long-term research by evolutionary biologists who are trying to understand the genetic connection of social behaviors.

A Sugar Cube, Please: I Need to Charge My Cellphone

While people often transfer the energy of sugar into fat, two scientists at the University of Massachusetts have found a micro-organism, which is able to convert the calories from sugar into a small, steady stream of electricity. "It's a sort of bacterial battery," Derek R. Lovley, an environmental microbiologist, said. The organism is called Rhodoferax ferrireducens and "may one day serve as a stable source of low power," Anne Eisenberg reports in The New York Times (September 18, 2003). The micro-organism worked not only on simple sugars such as fructose and glucose, but also with xylose, which is a part of wood and straw. "It can transfer more than 80 percent of the electrons available in the sugar," Lovley said. "Contrary to most previous microbial fuel cells that use sugar and deliver in the range of 10 percent."
 

"Garbage in, garbage out" in climate research

Elven out of the top 20 supercomputers are used for climate research. But still there is not enough computing power for the demands of researchers modelling and simulating climate change. As Joachim Müller-Jung reports in FAZ (September 17, 2003) researchers extend their view from just modelling atmosphere, oceans and their coupling to earth system modelling - hence, to take as much interaction as possible into account. Also they want to reduce the mesh width of global computing grid from about 200 kilometers down to ten. This means to go from up-to-date teraflop computers (performing billions of calculations per second) to thousandfold powerful number crunchers, as some researchers argue. But more computer power does not bring better results for sure, stresses Syukuro Manabe (Princeton, US), because too many interactions in the atmosphere or in other "spheres" are not yet fully understood. More detailed data aquisition and processing could also result in some "garbage in, garbage out" phenomenon.
Manfred Lindinger reflects the reasons behind the bad career chances of women in science. Especially in Germany it looks sad - girls have, on average, better results in school, more girls than boys receive their highschool degree ('Abitur'). Later more girls than boys study at university, but only four percent of full professors are women (in Germany, in Chemistry). The reason lies in the relation of work, family and child care. Lindinger mentions Sweden as the most advanced where parents care equally for their children, also Finland or France. In Germany high-qualified women leave scientific community because of a lack of programs and social regulations to support them.
 

Study Links Older Bipolar Drug to Fewer Suicides

A new study shows that an inexpensive drug to fight bipolar disorder is more effective than many psychiatrists think. Lithium, which many psychiatrists have discarded to give favor to Depakote, is more effective at preventing suicide in manic-depressive people. The new study looks at medical records of 20,638 patients in Washington State and California who were treated between 1994 and 2001. Results find that "patients taking Depakote were 2.7 times more likely to kill themselves than those taking lithium," Denise Grady reports in the New York Times (September 17, 2003). Earlier research supports the findings. However, the new study is the first to compare suicide rates and suicide attempts between the two drugs. The reason that drug companies promote newer drugs such as Depakote more than older and cheaper drugs like Lithium is highly economical, Grady reports.
 

Comfort Foods Switch Off Stress, Scientists Find

Using stress as an excuse for eating fat and sugar is not unfounded. A recent study confirms that eating calorie-rich food calms the nerves. Unfortunately, too much sugar and fat leads to obesity, depression and more stress, Sandra Blakeslee reports in The New York Times (September 16, 2003). "If you are overly stressed, it's probably a good idea to overeat, at least in the short run," Dr. Norman Pecoraro, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California in San Francisco, said. Pecoraro was involved in the research, which tested the theory that the tendency to overeat in the face of chronic stress is biologically driven on rats. The study distinguishes between acute stress, in which the body shuts down, and chronic stress, which can be helped by eating sweets.
 

Will Chromosome Y and Men Leave Us?

First: The same story on women and chromosome X would count as offensive. But Der Spiegel (September 15, 2003) loves men-bashing. Second: No news. But Jörg Blech and Rafaela von Bredow bring a nice overview on masculinity and the genetics behind it. Does nature need men at all? Some scientists say chromosome Y and men are doomed after some 5000 generations. Hence, let's prepare for a world without them.
Also an interesting interview with UK geneticist Steve Jones about men's power of repression, the wondrous diversity of sperm and bad sexology.
Marco Evers reports on the German computer scientist Franz Josef Och who develops language translation software. Now at the University of Southern California and funded hughly by US military he manages translation only by statistics and the number crunshing power of computers - without any linguistic analysis. Successfully.
Mattias Schulz describes the boom of curing of short-sightedness by modern laser techniques in Germany. The apparatus costs half a million Euros. Engineers claim to doctor up to ten diopters. Interesting: Some analyzing tools are deduced from astronomy.
 

New Global-Warming Study Sets Off Scientific Dispute

A new study has contributed a few degrees to the already heated debate on global warming in the lower atmosphere. The study takes an analytical look of satellite observations and finds "that temperatures in the lower atmosphere have increased about 0.5 degree Fahrenheit per decade since 1978," Anonio Regalado reports in The Wall Street Journal (September 15, 2003). The results contradict two previous analyses of satellite readings, and scientists who contributed to the earlier findings, say they question the results of the new study. "It just adds noise to the whole debate," Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems Inc., a Santa Rosa, Calif., company that has done previous analytical work for the government. Even though the data of the studies have been collected the same way via orbiting weather satellites, the instrument's readings are difficult to interpret "because of changing orbits and gradual degradation of the instruments over time," Regalado writes. The debate on global warming is a highly political one and has now reached the point where some scientists believe the journal Science, which has published the new report Monday, is biased in favor of global warming. The Bush administration has cited the global warming issue as one of its priorities.
 

Robot to Implant Hair Plugs Faster

A German company may contribute significantly to the fight of baldness. The robot company Kuka, which recently got exposure through the latest James Bond movie, is fabricating the robotic arm that Dr. Philip Gildenberg, a Houston neurosurgeon, plans to use in his prototype of a robot that can implant hair plugs faster and more exactly than humans. "It is similar to inserting an electrode into the brain to treat Parkinson's disease," Gildenberg said, in an attempt to describe the procedure his patented robot can perform. "But instead of the one or two electrodes, you are inserting 1500 to 2000 follicular implants." Gildenberg has formed a company called Restoration Robotics to develop the robot, Teresa Riordan reports in The New York Times (September 15, 2003). He has received his patent in July.
 

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