Credit: Rüdiger Wölk/ Wikimedia

PARIS: Lab-grown tuberculosis (TB) bacteria has been killed with good old Vitamin C – an “unexpected” discovery scientists hope will lead to better, cheaper drugs.

A team from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York made the accidental find while researching how TB bacteria become resistant to the TB drug isoniazid.

The researchers added isoniazid and a “reducing agent” known as cysteine to the TB in a test tube, expecting the bacteria to develop drug resistance.

Instead, the team “ended up killing off the culture”, according to the study’s senior author William Jacobs, who said the result was “totally unexpected”.

Reducing agents chemically reduce other substances.

“Almost like the dream drug”

The team then replaced the cysteine in the experiment with another reducing agent – Vitamin C.

It, too, killed the bacteria.

“I was in disbelief,” said Jacobs of the outcome published in the journal Nature Communications.

“Even more surprisingly… when we left out the TB drug isoniazid and just had Vitamin C alone, we discovered that Vitamin C kills tuberculosis.”

The team next tested the vitamin on drug resistant strains of TB, with the same outcome.

In the lab tests, the bacteria never developed resistance to Vitamin C – “almost like the dream drug”, Jacobs said in a video released by the college.

He stressed the effect had only been demonstrated in a test tube so far, and “we don’t know if it will work in humans”, or which dose might be useful.

“But in fact before this study we wouldn’t have even thought about trying this study in humans.”

In March, disease experts warned of a “very real” risk of an untreatable TB strain emerging as more and more people develop drug resistance.

TB: a global health emergency

In 2011, there were believed to be some 12 million TB cases in total – 630,000 of them of the multi-drug resistant (MDR) variety which does not respond to the most potent drugs – isoniazid and rifampin.

Extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB, does not respond to an even wider range of drugs.

TB was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO) 20 years ago, but remains a leading cause of death by an infectious disease despite a 41 % drop in the death rate from 1990 to 2011.

In 2011, 8.7 million people fell ill with TB and 1.4 million died, said the WHO.

Over 95 % of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, and it is a leading killer of people with HIV.

An airborne disease of the lungs, tuberculosis is usually treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics.

Resistance to TB drugs develops when treatment fails to kill the bacteria that causes it – either because the patient fails to follow their prescribed dosages or the drug doesn’t work.

It can also be contracted through rare forms of the disease that are directly transmissible from person to person.

MDR TB in the United States can cost as much as $250,000 (200,000 euros) per patient to treat.

XDR TB requires about two years of treatment with even more expensive drugs that cause side-effects and offer no guarantee of a cure.

The authors of the new study urged further research into the potential uses of Vitamin C in TB treatment, stressing it was “inexpensive, widely available and very safe to use.”

“This would be a great study to consider because we have strains of tuberculosis that we don’t have drugs for, and I know in the laboratory that we can kill those strains with Vitamin C,” said Jacobs.

The post Vitamin C kills tuberculosis in accidental discovery appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

RR: Why do you write science fiction?

CJC: Science fiction is what I read. As a child, I liked adventures, exploration, ‘what-ifs’ and fairy tales. I liked sea stories and memorised all the parts of a clipper ship before I was eight. And this was in landlocked Oklahoma. Before I was nine, I wanted to see mountains taller than the Wichitas and I wanted to see an ocean. I wanted to see a narwhal. I wanted to ride camels and explore the desert. I halfway believed in lost worlds.

Around that year, some fireworks blew up at a county fair display, so the show was cancelled. My father and I walked toward the parking lot, and I was dejected about the loss of the fireworks. And then my dad said urgently: “Look up!” He pointed to a shooting star. There was immediately another. And another. “Celestial fireworks,” he said, and we sat out there and watched the most magnificent meteorite fall I’ve ever seen. That was when I became aware of the heavens.

And when I was 10, at a summer camp, and needed a packet from home, my dad bought me a paperback book and included it with Mum’s gifts of cookies and the practicalities of clean underwear. It was Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan and the City of Gold. I was hooked. I read everything Burroughs wrote… and it was a short hop to John Carter of Mars, Flash Gordon, and to the wide universe. I became hooked on Flash Gordon – the Buster Crabbe version – and when the series ended, I was so bereft, I started writing my own stories with my own characters – because I had heard about plagiarism. I never stopped after that. I wrote obsessively, every day. And still do.

You’ve been praised for building intricate, believable worlds. How do you incorporate science into this process?

My academic background is in linguistics and the ancient world. I’ve studied geology, climatology, planetary weather, archaeology, history, anthropology and animal behaviour. When I build a world, it’s from the core outward, and evolution upward.

Your characters are often outsiders – the last of their kind, or separated from their species. Is this deliberate?

I like writing about other cultures… but you don’t [necessarily] get to know them if you place them in conflict, or have only one individual from that culture under a microscope. First contact is an interesting scenario, but in the real world of science, if it’s going to go well, it will take time. The Foreigner books, for instance, have the initial contact scenario – but the action starts two centuries later. And travelling about the world, often with only one companion, I’ve found myself in the outsider’s position, having to use my skills at interpretation and having to solve problems, while knowing very little about the language.

How would you describe your writing process, and do you have any writing tips?

My most basic hint is – study everything. Nothing on or off a planet, inside or outside of a star system, is irrelevant to your study. Even bubblegum pop is a phenomenon worth understanding. Think cosmically, and make it understandable for John and Jane Smith, householders, with a mortgage, and a life grown perhaps more sedentary than they ever wished. Give them adventures. Make them think. Carry them to places they need to go and make their lives happier. Writing? I can do that lying on a hillside watching the clouds go by.

You’ve made a strong push to provide e-books without digital rights management to your fans. What challenges have you faced?

It’s a continually moving target: formats change, formats die, new devices arrive, rights are in question, pirates try to claim your work as theirs, and getting your readers to know where to find your work is a challenge. But my readers are clever folk, and very good people. I maintain an online presence where I can talk and listen directly to readers, and they are beyond supportive and good-hearted. I always feel happy when I’ve been exchanging ideas with them.

Apart from Foreigner, what’s on your horizon?

I’ll be doing another in the Cyteen universe – and I’ll be looking, too, at some of my ‘orphaned’ series, series that one publisher brought out, and then that publisher evaporated, changed focus, or otherwise dissipated on me: and of course none of the other publishers want to take up an abandoned series in today’s market – and that has left a whole set of stories untold. So I’ll be putting out some new things in e-format only, under my own imprint. I’ll be thinking up new things. And I’ll be working steadily… three house moves in seven years kind of slowed me down, but I’m settled now in a very nice place – we’ve even built a koi pond – and life is good.

Image credit: Sharon Reynolds/Wikimedia

The post In conversation with C.J. Cherryh appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

Credit: Britney Schmidt/Dead Pixel VFX/Univ. of Texas at Austin

DOWN HERE IN the black ocean of Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, Europa, time is marked by the turning of tides and the subtle shifts in water temperature. Night and day are the same, and our isolation complete. Then the pod arrives and we’re no longer alone, no longer in the dark.

The pod arrives in the evening, when the taste of alien snorkel fish are in my gills. It arrives on a day just like any other – except that I’m having a rare night out.

The Margarita Sushi Bar is awash with seaweed beer. It always is on Tuesdays as it’s barrel refill day; I’m meeting my pals here for a drink and a hand of poker or two but they’re late and meanwhile guilt hangs heavy on me like a choking algae while Marie languishes at home, sick and in pain. My beautiful wife, slender like an ocean willow, I should be there with her.

But she signs for me to go, she says, Vlad, you’re not helping, moping. And I suppose she’s right. So here I am.

The Margarita Sushi Bar is expensive. It even has real lighting fixtures, not that you don’t still need visual augmentation. I hook my prosthetic fins over the mooring bar as I wait and order beer; the green stuff is delivered in a sachet.

The bar is busy tonight and I find myself sandwiched between acquaintances. One is an old drinking buddy with leg stumps and sixteen fingers that dance like a cockle picker’s; the other’s a former colleague, Mitzi I think her name is, blind and bi-gendered with major neurological damage who shakes incessantly like a demented jellyfish. We all have something, here on Europa, what with the radiation from the crash of our astronaut ancestors and maybe a little inbreeding but I’m lucky really, my physical impairments could be worse. Just a bit of deformity in my bone structure which makes me smaller than most, and more rotund, but generally I’m pretty functional.

We exchange a few words, the three of us, by sign and by text – nobody speaks, our gills make that impossible. Mitzi never could have spoken I’m sure, even without the gill implant surgery at birth. But down here little things like that don’t matter; we all swim in the same waters as the saying goes.

Mitzi snorts as she sucks up her beer through a straw. She swallows and splutters a bit. And then the pod comes crashing through the ice ceiling.

I paddle frantically in the maelstrom, jostling bergs of ice, beer sachets, packets of fish snackers and chair anchors. Something smacks Mitzi in the face and gives her a two-inch gash along one scaly cheek. She oozes blood into the current.

I turn my Visual Acuity Goggles up to max and see the carnage of what was once Europa’s premier watering hole. And there bobbing amongst the debris is the pod, torpedo-shaped and metal mirror-sleek, wholly alien to our familiar habitat of ice and salt and plastic. I wish I could swim away straight back to Marie but I would never be forgiven – I’m on Europa’s governing council and security committee. So I start to paddle, closer.

The pod steadies itself in the churning waters. It’s like a giant tubeworm, writhing about a steaming black smoker. Its business end points down into the deep. It has a great corkscrew device at its base and it’s giving off a tremendous amount of heat.

“Thermal drill,” texts Mitzi. I hadn’t noticed she was following me. Her prosthetic propeller attachment bats the ice and her useless limbs trail behind.

“Yes, like the Aquarius II, but smaller,” I reply, history suddenly weighing heavy in the salt sea.

“It must have been exciting all those years ago, being marooned here on an alien world.”

“That’s one word for it. Maybe you should go back, it might be dangerous, a bomb or something.”

“I wonder what it was like, on the surface.”

“Deadly. The radiation would fry you. Even in a heated tank you would be reduced to fish soup. Now go, please.” I wave my little arms, there’s no point in us both dying if it comes to that.

She glares at me momentarily then grins, showing rows of sharp little shark teeth.

“Okay,” she says, and starts to move away. And as she does so the pod switches on its lights.

The beams are dazzling. Here in the ocean beneath the ice it’s always as black as oil and blind and sighted alike are the same. So eyeless Mitzi gasps and bubbles and scrambles to shut down her visual augmentation hardware with as much desperation as I.

As Mitzi floats away my eyes adjust, and I look out at my world fully illuminated for the first time in a hundred years. It’s at once the same and yet different. My vision is no better than it was a moment ago but as my nictitating membranes blink everything feels more real, more immediate.

I re-examine the pod and it’s then that I notice the tiny video screen, no bigger than the palm of my hand. It’s fixed to one side of the device and it shows a face, pale and symmetrical, a face like practically every pre-crash movie star I’ve ever seen, an eerily human face and for a moment I just watch and inhale ocean.

Then a sound bursts from the pod, an explosive crackle followed by:

“Callisto Base calling Europa moon. Is there anyone alive down there?” It’s a movie-star voice, straight from Hollywood.

My jaw hangs open.

I need to reply but it’s no good texting, with neither goggles nor optic implants they wouldn’t receive my words. There’s only one thing I can do: sign. So I raise my hands in front of the screen.

Yes. Here I, here we.

“What is that? British Sign Language? I think we need a translation team down here.”

They can see me, but they don’t understand. For the first time in my life my lack of speech is actually a handicap. There must be a way. Of course, a bar menu. Programmable, textable, visible, I just have to find one. I paddle around and at last spot one nestling in a pocket of ice. Seizing it I swim back to the pod. I hold it in front of the screen and begin to type.

“Callisto. We thought you had forgotten about us.”

“Europa moon. Amazing. Incredible. No, never forgotten. We thought you were dead. Europa moon. We’re going to come and get you.”

Success. They can see me. I continue to type:

“You would be welcome here.” Although even as I text I wonder.

The pod falls silent; the screen pixellates.

“We took a hit on the way down, Europa. We’re going to lose communications soon. But give us three months and we’ll be with you for real. That will be a great day.”

And before I can reply the signal dies.

#

“WHAT DO YOU think they meant by ‘coming to get us’?” Councillor Epstein doesn’t look happy, and she’s not alone, the council meeting isn’t going well.

“I’m sure the Callistans mean well,” I say. “They just meant they want to rescue us I think.”

Councillor Rubin snorts his contempt but Epstein silences him with a raised tentacle. “We’ll have to show them we don’t need rescuing. There’s no charity cases on Europa. Nor will we become a mere Callistan colony. Our idea of justice, resting as it does on the principle of physical access and opportunity for all regardless of bodily limitation is unique and—”

Rubin slams his tail fin on the ice wall. “Dammit, we weren’t elected to spout philosophy. So let’s stop talking like we’ve got fish for brains. The risk of losing our independence is the least of our concerns? How about losing our lives? How does that grab you?”

Epstein froths with irritation. She’s literally foaming at the mouth, she sends a stream of bubbles up to the bottom of the ice crust. “I was coming to that. Personally I would think it unlikely but—“

“As unlikely as my scaly backside you mean.” Rubin is now circling the council chamber, eyeballing each councillor in turn. “These people are nothing like us. We’ve been mutating, radically, for 150 years, they might not even think we’re human. And we’ve all read the history books, we know what can happen.”

“I’ve read those history books too,” I say, determined to salvage a bit of credibility. “It’s true people like us haven’t always been treated well but we’ve not very often been systematically slaughtered or—”

Everyone is talking at once now and my words are lost in the babble. Epstein has abandoned any attempt to chair and several councillors are paddling away in disgust. Soon the meeting breaks down completely and is rescheduled for the following afternoon.

Later, at home, I tell Marie about it. And ask her, what if the council was right?

“You only have to look at the native fish here in the ocean,” I say as I bite into my alien marblefish stew. “The big fish eat the little fish, the weak and impaired fish fall victim to them all, and we call it natural behaviour. Is our situation really that different? Isn’t it just natural and inevitable that sooner or later we’ll get gobbled up?”

Marie is floating in her filtration tank in the middle of our icy living room, breathing the purified water she hopes might ease her headaches. She puts aside her drink of organic kelp juice to sign to me. Born deaf, sign is her first language, even more than it is for me and the rest of us on Europa. For her, text is a daily challenge to comprehend. But when signing, her words flow like the ocean.

Nature. Sometimes broken. Compassionate ones this know. Callistans this know? Hope we.

Somehow she always knows what to say to ease my fears, and she always knows what to do. She picks up the clay sculpture she is working on – she says it helps her think. Her delicate ice, salt and clay artworks can be found all over town.

“But what if they don’t know? What if they come here and find us…” I abandon text; it’s not nearly expressive enough for what I want to say. I want to say, what if they find us…

alien? Callistans. Invite them I. Blame mine.

It would be all my fault. I should have told them to stay away.

I know Marie better than to expect the usual platitudes; instead she pops another painkiller into her mouth. She takes too many, she says they don’t help much but takes them anyway. Our best medics don’t really know how to help her and it tears my heart to watch her in pain. Sometimes she suffers so much she cries all night long and I can do nothing, only hold her close and tell her I love her.

At last she replies to my question:

If kill us intend they. Do anyway they. Fault no you.

And she’s right, of course.

#

IT’S THREE MONTHS later, and our seismograph machine is reporting a gentle but constant icequake 200 yards east of town.

“They are coming,” says Rubin, and his words settle in my stomach like a bad mollusc.

As the tremors increase eight of us paddle out to meet the visitors. The arguments were long over who was to lead the delegation, but eventually I’m chosen, my prior contact finally settling the matter.

Chunks of ice dislodge above our heads, new bergs that float away to be absorbed into the current. And then the vessel breaks through into the ocean in a boiling mass of metal and foam.

Again it’s torpedo shaped, except this time much bigger. I paddle closer as it cools while the rest of the welcoming party linger behind, sheltering in the swell of a particularly large berg. The vessel starts to open. I remove my goggles as alien light floods out and blink as my eyes adjust. I watch the Callistans emerge, five of them, all dressed in the same skin-tight apparel and burdened with their air breathing equipment. They are amazing; they all look the same. Same size, same shape; two arms, two legs, they could be clones of each other. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but for some reason it is.

“Welcome to Europa,” I say. I communicate by text once more but wave a fin in the customary greeting.

“Honoured,” replies Commander Narodny. He smiles behind his plastic mask and I try to assess whether it’s genuine. His features are so strange and uniform I hardly trust my own judgement.

The others swim forward; there are formal introductions. Then all of us – five Callistans, eight Europans – circumnavigate the town.

First we visit the aquarium, both the alien and Terran section. The Callistans are truly fascinated by the tube worms and snorkel fish. Then we visit the pottery, the seaweed garden and the fish farm, the brewery and the plastics factory and of course the reconstructed Margarita Sushi Bar for refreshments. Finally we visit the Medical Bay and Prosthetics Studio. And there, to my horror, lies Marie, floating unconscious in a tank.

“Dear God, what’s wrong with her?” I simultaneously sign and text, then seize Chief Medic Bergstrom by the flipper. He backs away and tries to calm me while Epstein ushers the visitors away. I demand to know why I wasn’t informed.

“You were busy, I’m sorry,” says Bergstrom. “I was told not to bother you. It’s okay, she’s stable.“

“What about the baby?” I take deep breaths of water, trying to stay still.

“The baby is alive, for now,” says the Medic. “Though after four stillbirths you can’t expect too much.”

I wasn’t, but Marie won’t give up, she keeps reminding me how stillbirth rates are falling.

“So what happened to her?” I ask, again. His reluctance to speak makes me fear the worst but he has to tell me, however bad it is.

“She took too many pills,” says Bergstrom.

“No.” I stare into the container where Marie lies, attached to tubes and monitors. It can’t be that, it’s just not like her. “It was an accident, it must have been.”

“I don’t know, you tell me?”

But all I can do is float there in the water, too afraid to even consider the possibility that I might have missed the signs.

#

I’M IN THE seaweed garden, and Sandy Birdhouse, one of the Callistans, is here also collecting samples. I watch her as she snips pieces of green and yellow weed with a pair of metal clippers and packs them into a box.

“How is your wife?” she asks as she works. “I heard what happened.”

I grimace. Nothing stays quiet for long around here. “She’s okay. She’s home, resting,” I say.

“It sounds like it was just an accident.”

“Yes, that’s what Marie says, and I believe her. She was only trying to stop the pain.”

Sandy nods. “Your medicine seems pretty advanced in some ways, certainly when it comes to prosthetics, but in other ways you’re way behind us.” She reattaches her clippers to her belt and opens a small bag she has there. She offers me a plastic bottle. “Headache pills,” she says. “The everyday kind, but maybe they will help.”

I look at the bottle, doubtfully. The Callistans have been here for two weeks now and have shown no sign of hostility, but still, they are strange folk.

“Take it,” she says. “At least, think about it.”

I take the bottle and thank her.

#

IT’S TWO DAYS before I tell Marie about the pills, but when I do she insists I hand them over.

Callistans good. Paranoid you. She signs and laughs.

Maybe sensible I.

No. Silly you. Headache pills, bad way kill. Silly.

I’m sure she’s right. Really I’m just worried she’ll have some kind of bad reaction to the strange drugs, after the overdose I hesitate to give her even a placebo. But I can’t argue with her. I surrender the pills.

She swallows one and we wait.

We decide to watch an old movie, but can’t agree on the title. I want to watch Terminator while she wants to watch Casablanca. In the end we choose one of the Star Trek films, the one with the whale, and are both happy.

Star Trek aliens, look same all, says Marie.

Yes, know I. I take her slender hand in my stubby one.

#

TWENTY MINUTES LATER Marie announces: Headache. Gone.

I put the film on pause, stare at her and text, “And you feel okay otherwise?”

Fine I. She grins and stretches. She paddles around our little icy home as though checking she still has full use of all her faculties. Better than years I. Go celebrate we.

I suggest maybe that’s a bit premature, but she’s adamant. She drags me out into the current and off we paddle in the direction of the Margarita Sushi Bar.

The bar is packed, the five Callistans are by now proving something of a tourist attraction. Each one of them is surrounded by a small gang of Europans. But Sandy spots me as we float in and waves us over, and Marie is full of praise for Callistan medicine. I translate Marie’s signs to text, and Sandy’s words to sign.

“Maybe you and Vlad could travel back to Callisto with us. Then you could get a proper medical examination,” says Sandy. “The capsule could cope with a couple of extra passengers, and I’m sure I could twist Commander Narodny’s arm.”

Marie looks wide-eyed, but says nothing, so I help her out. “It’s a very kind offer but I don’t see how we could leave Europa. We can’t breathe air anymore.”

Travel in tank. Maybe, says Marie.

“I don’t know. It’s a long way.” Perhaps I’m a coward to fear the surface, to dread air and space and vacuum in place of the cool, comforting waters of the deep, but it seems obvious to me that us Europans can’t live up there.

Adventure think I! says Marie, grinning. Permanent stay, no, no?

“If you wanted to return no doubt that could be arranged,” says Sandy. “There are already plans for future space missions.”

And so we’ve been discussing it. Maybe if the headache pills had really proved to be the wonder drugs they first appeared and had cured all of Marie’s pain we wouldn’t have decided to go. Maybe if we hadn’t been offered a trump card – the possibility of saving our unborn child – we would have agreed it was too risky. But as it was, we figured we couldn’t refuse.

The Council is behind us all the way. Marie they wish well, as for me I’ve been made ambassador, Europa’s first, so this will be an exercise in interlunar relations.

In many ways it’s exciting. The Callistans say they want to set up diplomatic ties and trade agreements. The signs are good that they intend to respect our differences and unique environment. And if Marie and I want to stay on Callisto permanently they’ll do everything possible to accommodate our needs.

I still have my doubts but five weeks after its arrival, Marie and I find ourselves crammed together in a tank side by side as the strange capsule fills with deadly air.

The vibration is awful and the heat as the craft works its way slowly to the surface. I stick my fins in my ears against the roar of the engines and screaming metal; I press my nose to the plastic side of the tank. Marie is lucky, she can’t hear any of this but there’s nothing wrong with her eyes. We’ve been placed alongside the tiny porthole window so we can see out. Though right now all I can see is bubbling ice marked by an occasional grimy patch of reddened salts and clay.

It takes many hours to carve a path to the surface, and I feel like I’m in purgatory throughout. The capsule is uncomfortably warm and acts as a decompression chamber as it rises.

I try to doze, but the noise and the crushing fear stops me. At least I’m not alone, Marie is here, I can take comfort in that. Together we try to stay positive, but it’s not easy and in the end I wonder if we’ve made the wrong choice – what if we were never meant to leave the ocean?

Then Sandy says, “We’re nearly there.” She takes our night vision goggles away; she says we won’t need them anymore as a final lurch brings us crashing through the surface ice. The capsule falls silent. It lifts away into space, the residual water on the window pane evaporates. And we look out: at the Universe. At the ragged, pale and frosty Europan plain below, at ancient starlight, and above all at Jupiter. It looms overhead, vast and lethal, beautiful with its vivid tangerine clouds that swirl and evolve. The moment seems to last forever.

Marie clutches my hand. Love you I, she says. I smile. Okay be we. And as always I know she’s right.

Elinor Caiman Sands lives in the UK by a small swampish river. It’s rumoured a slightly mischievous but very happy snappy alligator lives there too although sightings of the infamous reptile are rare.

The post Europa Spring appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket, carrying a Bion-M capsule is seen on the launch pad at Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome, 18 April 2013. Credit: AFP

MOSCOW:  A number of mice and eight gerbils sent into space in a Russian capsule destined to find out how well organisms can withstand extended flights perished during their journey, scientists said as the month-long mission touched back down on Earth.

Most of the 45 mice sent into orbit – along with the gerbils and 15 newts – died on the mission, which nevertheless returned with data that scientists hope will pave the way for a manned flight to Mars.

The animals on board the Bion-M craft died because of equipment failure or due to the stresses of space, scientists said.

The craft itself landed softly early on Sunday with the help of a special parachute system in the Orenburg region about 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) southeast of Moscow. It was also carrying snails, some plants and microflora.

“This is the first time that animals have been put in space on their own for so long,” Vladimir Sychov of the Russian Academy of Sciences announced upon the peculiar crew’s return to Earth.

But at the end of the experiment, “less than half of the mice made it – but that was to be expected,” Sychov told Russian news agencies. “Unfortunately, because of equipment failure, we lost all the gerbils.”

The TsSKB-Progress space research centre’s department head, Valery Abrashkin, said on the day the mission took off in April that the study was aimed at determining how bodies adapt to weightlessness “so that our organisms survive extended flights”.

The space adventure has been widely praised by Russian state media as a unique experiment that no other country has yet pulled off. Russia last sent mice into space in 2007 for a much shorter duration of 12 days.

France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) space centre said 15 of the 45 mice came from a French research lab that is cooperating with the study.

CNES life science department head Guillemette Gauquelin-Koch said the project took “a further decisive step in human adaptation to weightlessness”.

Scientists from both countries said the animals were used as it was impossible to conduct the experiment on the humans who are currently operating the International Space Station (ISS).

They added that the mice would have posed a health risk if simply placed on board the ISS for a month.

The experiment’s designers said the tests primarily focused on how microgravity impacts the skeletal and nervous systems as well as organisms’ muscles and hearts.

The animals were stored inside five special containers that automatically opened after reaching orbit and closed once it was time to return.

Also on board were over two dozen measuring devices and other scientific objects that measured everything from heart rates and blood pressure to radiation levels.

The capsule spun 575 kilometres (357 miles) above Earth.

Officials at France’s CNES said a new mission with microorganisms may be launched by Russia next year.

Russia has long set its sights on Mars and is now targeting 2030 as the year in which it could begin creating a base on the Moon for flights to the Red Planet.

But recent problems with its once-vaunted space programme – including the embarrassing failure of a research satellite that Moscow tried sending up to one of Mars’s moons last year – have threatened Russia’s future exploration efforts.

Russia’s trials and tribulations are watched closely by other space-faring nations because the Soyuz rocket on which the animals went up represents the world’s only manned link to the constantly staffed ISS.

The post Mice, gerbils perish in Russia space flight appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

Ian Croser, one of seven Clunies Ross award recipients. Credit: Dave Hase

SYDNEY: Australian visionaries who between them contributed to the broadband network, tuberculosis eradication and military radar communication, were recognised last night at the Clunies Ross Awards.

The seven recipients join the prestigious ranks of previous Clunies Ross Award winners, including plastic surgeon Fiona Wood who invented a ‘spray-on’ skin for burns victims.

Presented by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), the awards acknowledge innovations and advancements in science and technology that have benefited Australia economically and socially.

The awards are named in honour of Sir Ian Clunies Ross. Born in 1899 in NSW, Australia, he was a leading scientific figure, best known for his pioneering work in veterinary science, including developing an immunisation for dogs against an Australian paralysis tick, and overseeing the release of myxomatosis for rabbit population control.

Meet this year’s winners:

Ian Croser: on Australia’s radar

A former Royal Australian Navy Officer, Croser developed an advanced anti-missile defence radar array for modern war ships capable of launching counterstrikes against multiple targets at a faster speed than a human operator. Croser is now the technical director and co-founder of CEA Technologies, which specialises in the design and development of radars and sensors, and communication and combat systems. As well as improving border security for the country, the innovation has drawn interest internationally as a military technology export.

Anthony Radford, James Rothel, Paul Wood and Stephen Jones: tuberculosis eradication

This group of former researchers from Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, played a fundamental role in the successful eradication of bovine tuberculosis in Australia. They also contributed to the development of technology that enabled tuberculosis to be diagnosed more rapidly (within 24 hours) and with greater accuracy than the Mantoux skin test, currently the predominate method for screening for tuberculosis worldwide. The technology has since been licensed and commercialised for diagnosis in cattle, deer, primates and humans.

Simon Poole and Steven Frisken: fibre optic pioneers

Simon Poole and Steven Frisken are entrepreneurs in optical communications and instrumentation.

Founders of Egana (now Finisar Australia), they created one of the leading manufacturers of optical communication technologies, which are fundamental to networks such as Australia’s National Broadband Network.

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Four images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory of an X3.2-class flare from late at night on May 13, 2013.
Credit: NASA/SDO

WASHINGTON: The Sun has unleashed four potent solar flares this week, marking the most intense activity yet this year and causing limited interruptions to high-frequency radio communications.

One of them was classified as an X3.2 flare, with X-class flares being the most intense type, NASA reported.

“This is the strongest X-class flare of 2013 so far, surpassing in strength the two X-class flares that occurred earlier in the 24-hour period,” the U.S. space agency said of the flare that peaked at 0111 GMT Tuesday.

A fourth X-class flare peaked at 0148 GMT on Wednesday, NASA said.

Measuring at X1.2, it caused a temporary radio blackout that has since subsided, and was categorised as “strong,” or R3 on a scale of 1 to 5 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s space weather scales.

The latest flares began on May 13 and have sent off bursts of radiation from the Sun, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The strongest traveled particularly fast, at a speed of approximately 1,400 miles (2,253 kilometres) per second, NASA said.

The CMEs have so far not been directed at the Earth, but may impact satellites.

NASA said the CMEs would produce a merged cloud of solar material that “may give a glancing blow to the STEREO-B and Epoxi spacecraft,” which are space-based observatories orbiting Earth to monitor solar storms and comets.

“Their mission operators have been notified. If warranted, operators can put spacecraft into safe mode to protect the instruments from solar material,” the U.S. space agency said.

Experts say that a rise in solar activity is common right now because the Sun is in a phase of its 11-year activity cycle that is nearing the solar maximum, expected in 2013. According to space weather experts at NOAA, more strong solar flares may be expected in the coming days.

Although CMEs send off potent radiation, Earth is protected by its magnetic field.

Solar activity can temporarily disrupt GPS signals and communications satellites, but most people will not notice any effects in their daily lives.

The first X-class flare of this solar cycle occurred in February 2011. The largest so far of the current cycle was documented as an X6.9 in August 2011.

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“A significant step” towards regenerative medicine.
Credit: iStockphoto

WASHINGTON: U.S. researchers have reported a breakthrough in stem cell research, describing how they turned human skin cells into embyronic stem cells for the first time.

The method described by Oregon Health and Science University scientists in the journal Cell, would not likely be able to create human clones, said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, senior scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Centre.

But it is an important step in research because it does not require the use of embryos in creating the type of stem cell capable of transforming into any other type of cell in the body.

The technique involves transplanting an individual’s DNA into an egg cell that has been stripped of genetic material, a variation of a method called somatic cell nuclear transfer.

“A thorough examination of the stem cells derived through this technique demonstrated their ability to convert just like normal embryonic stem cells, into several different cell types, including nerve cells, liver cells and heart cells,” said Mitalipov.

He added that since the reprogrammed cells use genetic material from the patient, there is no concern about trransplant rejection.

“While there is much work to be done in developing safe and effective stem cell treatments, we believe this is a significant step forward in developing the cells that could be used in regenerative medicine,” Mitalipov said.

Years of research on monkey cells using the same technique have not successfully produced any monkey clones.

Since the human cells used in the study appeared even more fragile, researchers said it was unlikely that clones could be made.

“While nuclear transfer breakthroughs often lead to a public discussion about the ethics of human cloning, this is not our focus, nor do we believe our findings might be used by others to advance the possibility of human reproductive cloning,” they said.

Scientists hope that stem cell research will offer new pathways in the fight against Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries and blindness.

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A crate of geoducks for sale at a seafood market. Credit: iStockphoto

WHEN IT COMES to longevity in the animal kingdom, tortoises are usually the first to come to mind. Yet with specimens able to live to 168 years old, if there ever was a competition for who could live the longest, the geoduck (pronounced ‘gooey duck’) would give many species a run for their money. Additionally, having an average weight of 0.5-1.5 kg when mature, they can lay claim to being one of the largest species of clams.

The mollusc is native to the northwest coast of the United States and west coast of Canada. Their unusual name comes from a Native American word meaning ‘dig deep’ which is likely a reference to the practice used to harvest them.

So to what does the geoduck owe the pleasure of its long lifespan? According to Claudia Hand, research biologist at the Pacific Biological Station in Canada, being hidden from most predators is a great advantage.

“A geoduck’s long life is made possible due to low stress, or wear and tear, because they live buried in a metre of soft soil, well away from most predators,” Hand says. Geoducks can bury themselves up to one metre deep and have a siphon to match, which they use to feed on plankton through filtration. Reaching one metre in length, their siphon is on average four times longer than the shell and cannot be retracted.

Unfortunately for many, such an advantage doesn’t exist during their youth. Geoducks are ‘dioecious’, meaning they have separate sexes. Spawning typically occurs from late winter to early summer. Triggered by the ideal temperature conditions and other cues, the males release sperm, which, in turn stimulates female geoducks to release their eggs, which can number in the millions each year. With fertilisation taking place in the water column, success depends on many environmental factors, leaving the larvae very vulnerable.

“Their larvae, which are like plankton, suffer high mortalities through predation, and currents can carry them far out to sea,” explains Hand. “Depending on tidal currents and prevailing winds, usually around the two-month mark, if the surviving larvae find themselves in a suitable location of near soft shoreline sediments, they will settle. At this time, they are vulnerable to predators like crabs and sea stars until they dig deep enough. This type of hit-or-miss recruitment is sometimes referred to as sweepstakes recruitment because, when all the variables line up, there can be huge success.”

From its inception in the 1970s, the commercial harvesting industry for this clam has grown considerably. Hatchery production numbers in South Puget Sound (in the U.S. state of Washington) range between 2.5 million and 3.5 million annually, and the increasing demand from Asia (where they can be sold as much as $66 per kilogram) has helped foster a market estimated at around $80 million per year in Washington, USA and British Columbia, Canada.

However, they may yet serve more than our stomachs. Like trees, geoducks have annual growth rings, deposited on their shells every winter. Prior studies of shell growth in another mollusc called a bivalve show a strong correlation to temperature, so there is potential for the animals as climate proxies. With tree growth primarily responsive to conditions on land, and coral reefs limited to tropical regions, geoducks could prove to be very useful in helping bridge the gaps in Earth’s climate history and if their potential lifespan is anything to go by, they could have quite a story to tell.

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British-born Peter Pringle spent 30 years as a foreign correspondent, writing for magazines and newspapers such as The New York Times, The Observer and The Atlantic. Now based in New York City, he has authored or co-authored eight books, most recently a story of a famous scientific rip-off that followed the discovery of a cure for tuberculosis. He chats to COSMOS reviews editor Rivqa Rafael about the controversy.

RR: Why did you write Experiment Eleven?

PP: About 10 years ago I started writing books about science and politics. I got the bug for investigative journalism – about politics, war and corruption. I thought I could take on Margaret Mead’s memorable phrase about adding to the sum of accurate information in the world. A friend of mine who’s a dean of environmental sciences at Rutgers University said: “Why don’t you come and have a look in the archives in the basement – there’s a good story about discovery and about relationships between the professor and the student.” It’s not a new genre, but it was a very good story.

It must be quite a common story, where credit for research is taken unfairly.

One could go through the list. Did Pythagoras come up with his theorem or the Babylonians? Did Charles Darwin come up with the idea of evolution or was it Alfred Russell Wallace? Did Marconi invent the radio? I would say no – Alexander Popov, definitely. Yes, it’s a well-trodden field. And then there’s a law, Stigler’s law of eponymy: “no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer”. It’s named for Stephen Stigler, a professor of statistics at the University of Chicago; but the idea was sociologist Robert Merton’s.

Selman Waksman was a Russian Jew who fled tsarist Russia in 1910 and took his degree at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He went to California for his PhD and came back to the department of microbiology, which in those days was a very young science. Up the road from Rutgers was the headquarters of Merck, the pharmaceutical company, and they were engaged in producing penicillin for gram-positive [bacterial] infection. They were desperate for something to treat gram-negative infections and gave Waksman a small stipend to set up a lab and search for it. He found several, but they were all too toxic. Along came Albert Schatz, also of Russian Jewish background, and he started working with Waksman as a graduate student. In 1943, he was searching around in a petri dish for something that would produce a decent antibiotic and he found one. And there came streptomycin.

Stealing the credit may be common, but a court case is a much less frequent outcome…

Absolutely. Some say it was the first. In 1944, it became clear that streptomycin was the first effective cure of tuberculosis. Until then, Waksman and Schatz’s relationship had been like that of a father and son. But Waksman began to exclude Schatz from reporters wanting to write up the miracle cure. Waksman wanted Schatz out of the way so he could claim sole credit for the discovery of streptomycin.

But then there’s a knotty question of the patent and the royalties. Initially, Merck was going to get the patent in return for funding Waksman, but for various reasons they couldn’t. So Rutgers took the patent back and, because Schatz was indeed one of the discoverers, there was this famous meeting between professor and student where the professor says “now sign this piece of paper, we’re signing it over to the university and we agree that neither of us will profit from this and it will all go to the good of mankind”. Several years later Schatz found out that Waksman had done a deal to get 20% of the royalties. Schatz had a street-smart uncle, who was a dentist. And he said: “Sue them. Sue the university, sue your professor, get your rightful place in history.” And he did. Schatz was recognised by the court as a co-discoverer of streptomycin and was given a percentage of the royalties and a lump sum – most of which went to his lawyer. Nonetheless, he got about US$12,000 a year for the life of the patent. So he came off OK, except two years later when Waksman alone received a Nobel Prize “for the discovery for streptomycin”.

Was it anything more than oversight?

Well, basically, yes. The prize is given for published papers on the particular topic. They don’t look at back-and-forth disputes between the discoverers, they just judge who was the most important person in that discovery. It’s a bit of that old European hierarchical tradition of the professor taking the credit. Schatz was nominated the same year with Waksman by somebody else, but they didn’t look at it. They regarded Schatz as a bench worker, under the direction of the maestro. In his acceptance lecture, Waksman did not mention Schatz, except in a list of his researchers in an appendix.

Does this kind of thing still happen?

There are lots of disputed Nobels still, aren’t there? The Nobel is the ultimate accolade in science. It separates receivers of the award from all other scientists like no other prize. It creates role models. It’s a very tricky business. The Nobel Committee as set up has a difficult choice to make; in the first place by selecting the right discovery, but then in the second, because the Nobel can still only be awarded to three people. And in biology, particularly now, many more than three people might be involved in the evolution of a discovery.

Coming from a broader journalistic background, how did you come to write about science?

My original degree was a science degree; I was a geologist for a year. I went on a quasi-expedition with a friend, and we drove from London to Tehran. The idea was that there were these ammonites in Dorset in the Jurassic, and if you could find them in the Alborz Mountains, north of Tehran, then you knew that during the Jurassic period, the sea extended across that landmass. And we found them. However, this momentous discovery was not what I thought I ought to be doing with the rest of my life. I’d always wanted to be a journalist. But I retained this love of science and, having written about politics and wars for 30 years as a foreign correspondent, I was very happy to go back to it. I’ve never been to Australia and I’ve always tried to get something to work on there. It might just work out with the next book. I hope so.

Image credit: Bloomsbury

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