This week in European sciences -- week 41
 

Overview
Süddeutsche Zeitung cares of declining eel population in European freshwater. Die Zeit gives some reflections on forthcoming EU regulations of GMO crops, and an interview with Wolf-Michael Catenhusen. FAZ on an epigenome project dedicated to uncover gene activation, and advances with e-paper. Dagens Nyheter on DNA fingerprinting in the wake of the Anna Lindh murder investigation. Svenska Dagbladet on applications of the moth's sense of smell. The Guardian on this year's Ig Nobel awards. In addition: NY Times on protecting research results against terrorist use. The Wall Street Journal sees more debate on hormone-therapy. NY Times questions execution drugs may hide suffering. Also a report how a pregnant mother's diet may alter gene function in children. Time Magazin on how to deal best with hypochondriacs. NY Times reports on the drawbacks of oil exploitation in Siberia for nature. Also NY Times writes about a U.S. states plan to force EPA in regulating greenhouse gases.
 

Freshwater Eels Are Slip-Sliding Away

Eels are famous for their ability to travel enormous distances. From their birthplace in the Atlantic ocean to mating waters in European rivers several thousand kilometers have to be covered. But climate change, water pollution and fishing bring the eels to a decline reports Richard Stone in Süddeutsche Zeitung (October 10, 2003, the article is a translation from this week's Science issue). Recent studies show that very young eels have declined by 99 percent in Europe, in Asia by about 90 percent. Besides the damage to the eel population also some 25000 European fishermen are affected. That is one more reason the EU is due to announce an emergency proposal for the beginning of 2004 to protect the eel population.
 

How much GMO is Non-GMO?

In the German weekly Die Zeit (October 9, 2003) Christiane Grefe discusses the question "How much GMO is non-GMO?" The background of the story is the problem of coexistence of a field with manipulated and a field with non-manipulated crops. Although since 1998 there is a EU-wide moratorium not to allow GMO crops on the fields until further research has been done the industry is pushing now. The first decision this summer declares a product as non-GMO if it contains less then 0,9% GMO. The next question now is: What about the seeds? Nobody knows what will happen with the regular food if the seeds contain the proposed limit of 0,5 % of GMO. "We need a careful discussion", says Wolf-Michael Catenhusen, secretary of the German government, in an interview. The new EU-guideline won't give the member states a lot of space for interpretation. Of interest is: Who will pay for the bill, if something goes wrong?
 

Science Panel Urges Review of Research Terrorists Could Use

A panel of researchers of the National Academy of Sciences recommended this week that experiments which "could help terrorists or hostile nations make biological weapons," should undergo prior review at university and federal levels, Nicholas Wade reports in The New York Times (October 9, 2003). "Its proposed solution is to reinvigorate a review system put in place after a 1975 conference at which biologists called for a moratorium on certain genetic engineering experiments then becoming possible." Wade writes that the initiative came from the Academy of Science and signified an attempt to place an internal review system on scientific research to avoid outside agencies to put any restrictions on them. However, Dr. John H. Marburger, science adviser to President Bush, does not think the recommendations are strict enough. He said further discussions were needed about the issue. The Bush administration has not decided yet whether to accept the proposal or not.
 

Joachim Müller-Jung describes in FAZ (October 8, 2003) the next human genome project called human epigenome project. The genome consists basically out of four letters: adenine (a), thymine (t), cytosine (c) and guanine (g). They code for proteines, but there is some superior coding: Roughly five percent of cytosine is modified by a methylation. And they seemed to decide whether a gene is activated or not. Futhermore, scientists hope for some clues how environment, food or stress may influence gene activity and, hence, malfunctions and diseases.
Manfred Lindinger shows recent advances with electronic paper. The well-known approach by E-Ink company using white or black capsules now gives a 100 dpi resolution at a speed of 250 milliseconds to flip from white to black. This limits video sequences. Researchers with Philips use a different principle: oil droplets change according to an applied voltage the greyscale of a pixel at a speed of ten milliseconds. Next step is supposed to be extending the principle to CMYK color displays.
 

Hormone-Therapy Debate Grows

"The debate over hormone-replacement therapy is heating up again," report Anna Mathews and Scott Hensley in The Wall Street Journal (October 8, 2003). In 2002, millions of American women stopped using drugs treating the effects of menopause after a study had warned of an increased risk of coronary hearth disease, strokes and breast cancer. However, researchers coordinated by the Kronos Longevity Research Institute, a non-profit organization of Phoenix, Arizona, announced the start of a new study that will determine whether hormone-replacement therapy actually can prevent heart attacks in middle-aged women. In addition to the new study, Food and Drug Administration decided not to change current labeling of available treatments. The FDA has recently heard both sides of the argument, but decided to leave things the way they are.
 

Critics Say Execution Drug May Hide Suffering

Legal and medical experts are starting to warn about the use of pancuronium bromide, also known as Pavulon, a chemical used in lethal injections as a tranquilizer. In a study last year, experts found that pancuronium bromide "paralyzes the skeletal muscles but does not affect the brain or nerves," Adam Liptak reports in The New York Times (October 7, 2003). Tennessee death row inmate Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman filed a lawsuit this spring because the drug has been outlawed by the state to use in the euthanasia of animals. But the presiding judge, Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle ruled that "the use of the drug did not violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, because it was widely used and because there is less than a remote chance that the prisoner will be subjected to unnecessary physical pain or psychological suffering," Liptak writes.
About 30 states in the United States use pancuronium bromide in combination with two other chemicals. "The other chemicals can either ease or exacerbate the suffering the pancuronium bromide causes, depending on the dosages and the expertise of the prison personnel who administer them," Liptak reports. Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland, a medical teacher at Yale University, said complete muscle paralysis did not mean loss of pain sensation. Nuland continued that a humane death could be achieve in other ways. The American Veterinary Medical Association condemns the use of pancuronium bormide when it is used alone or together with sodium pentobarbital, an animal euthanasia drug. An Association report in 2000 said, "The animal may perceive pain and distress after it is immobilized." The Tennessee case is currently in appeal. Lethal injection is used in 37 of the 38 states that have the death penalty. Only Nebraska uses electrocution. In 10 states, prisoners have a choice between lethal injection and a second method, depending on the state the second choice can include hanging, firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas. Pancuronium bromide is usually the second drug in a three-chemical sequence in most lethal injection procedures. The first is sodium thiopental, which in surgeries induces anesthesia, but usually does not maintain it. The third drug induced is potassium chloride, "which stops the heart and causes excruciating pain if the prisoner is conscious." In Abdur'Rahman's hearing this spring, Carol Weihrer testified that she underwent eye surgery in 1998. Doctors anesthetized her before the surgery and used pancuronium bromide to immobilize the eye. When the anesthesia was not effective, Weihrer said, she had not way of letting her doctors know and had to experience excruciating pain throughout the surgery.
 

A Pregnant Mother's Diet May Turn the Genes Around

Scientists have discovered how the diet of a pregnant woman "can permanently alter the functioning of genes in her child," Sandra Blakeslee reports in The New York Times (October 7, 2003). The researchers used an unusual strain of fat yellow mice and found that when pregnant animals were fed extra vitamins and supplements, the supplements affected certain triggers which that mouse species contains. These triggers can shut down genes that can determine the mouse's predisposition to obesity. Consequently, "obese yellow mothers gave birth to standard brown baby mice that grew up lean and healthy," Blakeslee reports. While it was known for quite some time that the nutrition of pregnant mothers significantly influence the health of their babies, it was not understood how and why that is. But the new study sheds some light on "how environmental factors like diet, stress and maternal nutrition can change gene function without altering the DNA sequence in any way."
 

How to Heal a Hypochondriac

At one time or another all of us have faked an illness to avoid an appointment or simply to get some well-deserved rest. However, hypochondriacs suffer from their imagined diseases and researchers say the key to treatment is to disrupt a self-reinforcing spiral. That spiral forms when a hypochondriac notices that something is wrong and starts searching for more symptoms. "You build a case in your own mind that something's wrong," says Dr. Arthur Barsky, psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. To treat hypochondriacs, the self-imposed cycle needs to be disrupted, Michael D. Lemonick writes in Time Magazine (October 6, 2003). However, doctors often don't want to offend their patients, and researchers decided to call hypochondria "heightened illness concern," which makes it easier to find study subjects. Barsky says he doesn't use any label at all. "The first thing I do is acknowledge the patient's symptoms and say we have no good explanation for them," he says. Barsky and his colleague argue that physicians too often ignore hypochondria instead of learning how to treat patients inflicted with self-imagined illnesses. "We teach doctors that their job is to find disease and weed out those who are physically well," Barsky says. "They have no time for hypochondriacs." However, if a hypochondriac is properly treated ­ usually through psychological exercises ­ a doctor won't have to constantly deal with the imagined ailments of that patient.
 

Potential Pitfals in Swedish DNA-fingerprinting

In the wake of the Anna Lindh murder investigation, DNA evidence has come under some scrutiny in Sweden. Per Snaprud gives in Dagens Nyheter (October 5, 2003) a comprehensive description of DNA-fingerprinting and its role in forensic science. He mentions some potential pitfalls of DNA-evidence, such as planted traces, but fails to point out some of the topics which were, motivated by some lawyers, debated in Sweden in the previous week. The Swedish State Forensics Laboratory uses, for instance, only ten loci, whereas in the US, in order to minimize the probability of false positives, apparently 15-20 loci are common. Furthermore, the reference population against which a suspect is compared in order to calculate the match probability only consists of ethnic Swedes, thus giving suspects from the sizeable immigrant population a potential disadvantage.
Christian Palme continues the theme and reports from Bosnia, where DNA-traces help to identify victims from the Yugoslav civil war.
On a lighter note, Katrin Bojs places her bets concerning this weeks Nobel Prize announcements and dashes her dear Japanese friends' hopes for a prize. Cosmic background radiation, inflation theories, DNA-sequencing, knock-out mice and the neglected molecule RNA seem in Bojs' view to be promising contenders - and not a single Japanese in sight. As things go with bets, Karin Bojs was wide of the mark at least concerning the Nobel Prize for medicine, which was awarded for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
 

Martin Eborn reports in Svenska Dagbladet (October 5, 2003) from the laboratory of Bill Hanson at the Swedish Agricultural University in Alnarp. Hanson's research group investigates the chemical sense of night-active moths. These animals can discriminate fewer smells than humans, but are able to detect amazingly low concentrations. Hanson's group has, for example, developed a technique to determine the sensitivity of the receptors on the antenna by measuring the heartbeat frequency of male moths as a response to female pheromones. In cooperation with researchers in Great Britain and Switzerland an artificial nose is currently being developed, which can be used as a component in "sniffing machines" that may be able to detect mines or toxic substances.
 

Oil Rush in Siberia Puts Other Treasures at Risk

Scientists warn that vast oil exploitations of Siberia's wetland could greatly impact global ecology. The West Siberian region contains the largest wetland on earth and produces oxygen "at a rate rivaled only by the Amazon," Sabrina Tavernise reports in The New York Times (October 5, 2003). Much damage was already done during the Soviet era under the Communist government, and now private investors are interested in the huge oil reservoirs of the area. However, Tavernise quotes one Western oil executive as saying that wells in Samotlor one of the largest fields in West Siberia are "leaking all over the place and big oil spills in marshes." Private investors are deciding whether to fix the spills or leave them for nature to take care of. Environmental controls from the government are pretty much non-existent. Some local people and environmentalists are concerned about the leaks in the Tyumen region near Tomsk. Other locals welcome the increase of jobs. Russian President Vladimir Putin closed the State Committee for Environment as soon as he took office. "Federal monitoring in far-flung regions has been reduced by two-thirds," Tavernise writes. And since last year companies do not have to pay the government any more fines based on how much they pollute an area. However, Putin addressed Russia's environmental problems on national television in June, remarking that 15 percent of the entire country could be classified as environmental disaster zone because industries were not held responsible. While environmentalists hope the Russian government is waking up and starting to see the problems, they also call for real reform, which will require an education campaign to change people's mind-sets. "It's a matter of mentality," Martijn Lodewijkx, a Dutch contractor who studied oil pollution in West Siberia for Greenpeace in 2001, said. "I've seen many places with the best equipment and everything could be done to have zero drilling discharges, but the workers put them into the lake." Siberian oil problems go beyond the country's borders. The Finnish government complains that Russian tankers are unsafe because they are not equipped to withstand the Baltic Sea's winter ice.
 

States Plan Suit to Prod U.S. on Global Warming

States such as California, New York, Massachusetts and Oregon are fighting the Bush administration to gain authority over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, Danny Hakim reports in The New York Times (October 4, 2003). California wants to file a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because EPA did not allow the south western state "to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes and other sources." A total of 10 states could be joined by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resource Defense Council in suing EPA. State governments want more political power when it comes to environmental policy. "This issue is vital to the future of our state," Governor Gray Davis stated. "It affects important resources like our rich agricultural lands; Sierra Snowpack; the safety of our forests and our seaside communities." The case could decide whether greenhouse gases will be classified as air pollutants. EPA announced this August, carbon dioxide emissions did not fall under its authority. However, states insist that greenhouse gases fall under EPA's authority. "If the United States is ever going to regulate greenhouse gases, it will start with a victory in this lawsuit," David Bookbinder, Washington legal director for the Sierra Club, said. States that could be named among the plaintiffs are California, New York, Washington, Oregon, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine, Illinois, Vermont, and Connecticut. An official statement of the 10 states and the environmental groups can be expected in the next few weeks.
 

"Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans"

Ian Sample gives a short account on this year's Ig Noble prize winners in The Guardian (October 3, 2003). The prize is given ahead of the Nobel prizes for scientific achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced". Our favourite this year: The Swedish report on "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans".
 

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