35.735 years in science communication
The idea of robots in the military brings about thoughts of a sci-fi nightmare, probably starring Arnie and most definitely not R2. The military does, nevertheless, already use robotics to help members of the armed forces protect themselves against a wide range of dangers. But, the idea of a robot fighter shooting at the enemy is not that far from reality.
Read about this and the latest robotics news on our scenta robots news page.
Isn’t web spam wonderful? The Sciencebase blog received a dozen new “comments” to posts overnight, all from a single source in China and all listing chemical compounds a company over there is trying to sell.
Here are just a few, 2,2-Bis(hydroxymethyl) propionic acid, Morpholine, Pelargonic Acid, 2,2-Dimethylbutyric acid (without the links to the spammer’s site, of course). The first person to give me a run-down of what these materials are used for can award themselves a gold star!
British medical journal, The Lancet, has called for an open and independent investigation of what went wrong with the small phase I clinical trial of TGN-1412 that had six men in intensive care within hours of the trial beginning.
“Commercial confidentiality should not obstruct independent scrutiny of the drug trial that led to six men becoming seriously ill in Northwick Park Hospital in London, UK,” states an Editorial in the Journal, “Both TeGenero and The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) – who authorised the trial – denied The Lancet’s request to see the protocol stating that it is ‘commercially sensitive’.”
News has been terse to say the least since the initial media frenzy regarding the trial. Quite bizarrely, Northwick Park Hospital in north west London, is where eccentric UK medical comedy Green Wing is recorded.
P30%_gha! or p0%3ghA!?
If you’ve ever resorted to scribbling your assigned computer password on a Post-It and sticking it to the side of your monitor because it was too cryptic to remember, then research at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in Germany, could be just what you’ve been waiting for.
The scientists there have developed a new program — PasswordSitter. “Using it, you only need to remember a single password. The program provides all the other passwords on any device, whenever you need them”, explains team leader Markus Schneider, “A special procedure based on state-of-the-art encryption technology provides the necessary security.”
Despite new security mechanisms, requesting a password is the most common method of checking a user’s identity. Most of us have so many passwords for websites, databases, email etc, that remembering which one goes with what is a major headache. The problem is doubled by company IT managers who often force users (quite sensibly) not only to choose non-obvious passwords with mixed alphanumerics and even punctuation marks but also to change it on a regular basis.
According to the annual Safenet survey, half of all professional computer users write down their passwords, and around a third even divulge their passwords to colleagues. It almost defeats the object of having a password in the first place. A lot of people go for weak passwords, such as the name of a spouse, or don’t think twice about using the same password for everything. “These kinds of practices harbour potential security risks”, says Schneider, “On the other hand, it’s virtually impossible for you to follow the security advice from the experts without any help.”
PasswordSitter bolsters security because it generates strong passwords, while the level of security can be set to allow different password guidelines to be followed and passwords can be changed quickly and easily.
But, you may be wondering why not opt for one of those neat USB fingerprint reader? gadgets? Well, they’re fine if you’re at your own PC, but what happens if you’re working at someone else’s workstation or in a cybercafe?
PasswordSitter provides users with access to their passwords from any device at any time they need them.
So, how does it work? Well, it seems that Fraunhofer aren’t so keen to reveal details, although Schneider told Sciencebase that, “PasswordSitter is available as signed Java applet. If you are in a cybercafe in Peru, then you can download PasswordSitter, type in your Master Password and PasswordSitter generates your ebay password for you every time you need it. Note that your ebay password is not stored in the PasswordSitter system.”
There are other password-minding systems out there – including PassPack and LastPass and if you’re stuck for ideas for how to come up with a password try my passwords for scientists idea.
UK chemists have devised a new approach hydrogen gas storage that could power fuel-cell cars and vehicles without the need to carry hazardous cylinders of compressed gas. The approach is base on a highly porous polymer that can trap huge numbers of gas molecules allowing hydrogen gas to be stored in a compact container in a safe form.
You can read the full story in the March issue of Spotlight, the physical sciences magazine from PSIgate and David Bradley
A new type of microscopic particle that has a hard shell and a soft core that changes structure depending on the temperature has been developed by Walter Richtering and graduate student Ingo Berndt of the University of Aachen, Germany, and Jan Skov Pedersen of the University of Ã…rhus, Denmark, and their colleagues. The particles might have industrial and biomedical applications. For instance, they could be used for the controlled release of substances held within the shell.
Read the full story in the March issue of chemistry newsletter Reactive Reports
A press release just in from the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry announces that HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) intends to throw £5million ($9m) into two major initiatives from the RSC and the Institute of Physics. The announcement follows an agreement last year that HEFCE would work with a group of organisations to support strategically important and vulnerable subjects.
At a time when UK chemistry and physics departments seem to be getting earmarked for closure on an almost yearly basis, this additional funding might be quite timely. Steve Egan, Acting Chief Executive of HEFCE, explains the rationale behind it, ‘We believe that the long-term health of these subjects can best be secured by ensuring that there is an increasing demand from people wishing to study them who are well informed about future career prospects. We are pleased to work with partners – including the learned societies, universities, schools, colleges and employers – to stimulate interest and excitement in these subjects and to bring them to the attention of pupils from a wide range of backgrounds.’
Exeter University, Queen Mary’s, Kings College London, Swansea, to name but a few have all closed their chemistry lab doors for the last time and at the time of writing the future of Sussex University’s chemistry department (5-rated and the source of two Nobel laureates remains in the balance. Sussex’s senate intends to hold a debate with “stakeholders” (students, staff and advisers in other words) in the near future before making the final decision to shut it down.
The plan will cripple all the chemical sciences at the university, including biochemistry, chemical biology, and medicine, Harry Kroto said in a video appeal to Sussex (http://tinyurl.com/j2qmj) where he carried out his Nobel-winning fullerene research.
Where were these initiatives when those institutions were seeing dwindling chemistry enrolment numbers? Why didn’t someone think to check how the physics and chemistry departments were doing before allowing them to close? Of course, some of these departments have been re-born as merged and rebranded subsidiaries of biology. But, where will the fundamental physics and chemistry be taught if students are more concerned with biotech applications than understanding the underlying principles?
The RSC press release tells us that “The Chemistry For Our Future programme aims to ensure a strong and sustainable chemical science community within higher education, and to provide a sound basis for continuing the success of industries that rely on chemistry.” IOP’s, on the other hand, “Stimulating Demand for Physics programme will be funded in partnership with several universities and a wide range of other organisations.” The aim is to enhance understanding between schools and universities, smoothing the transition to higher education while informing curriculum development.
Is a few million quid going to save other chemistry departments from the bio fate? One can hope so, but the recent Oxford Uni refurb that is taking that particular department forward with considerable pace cost £60m. £5m might seem too little, too late for some departments heading the way of King’s and the rest.
Researchers have modified a popular system for protein labelling and modification to reduce the risk of unwanted cross-reactions and so make it more accurate and effective.
With incredible specificity and powerful affinity for each other, the protein streptavidin and its small-molecule target biotin are truly the ‘Dynamic Duo’ of biological research, the researchers explain, and a perennial favourite for use in the design of biochemical experimental techniques. For example, one can easily subject biotin-linked proteins to highly specific labelling with streptavidin-linked fluorophores. Nonetheless, there is an important limitation to the system-streptavidin naturally forms tetramers (assemblies of four protein molecules) that bind up to four molecules of biotin, creating the potential for unexpected cross-linking of biotinylated targets. Efforts to engineer monomeric streptavidin variants have generally resulted in diminished biotin affinity.
Now, Alice Ting and colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, have developed an alternative approach that involves engineering ‘dead’ streptavidin variants that can bind to each other but not to biotin. By combining the two types of streptavidin monomers in the proper proportions and isolating tetramers that consist of three dead subunits and one active subunit, they obtain streptavidin complexes that are functionally monomeric and bind only one molecule of biotin.
They have demonstrated that the hybrid tetramers retain normal affinity for biotin but induce far less ‘clumping’ of biotinylated targets relative to wild-type streptavidin tetramers. This approach also offers the possibility of building divalent and trivalent tetramers. According to Kai Johnsson of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, “the existing plentitude of applications of the streptavidin-biotin interaction provides an enormous playground for streptavidins with reduced but defined valencies.”
More details can be found in April’s Nature Methods.
Why doesn’t H5N1 pass from person to person as easily as it passes from bird to bird? After all, H5N1 can replicate very efficiently in someone’s lungs.
Japanese researchers now think they have an answer to this vexing question. The bird virus, they have found, preferentially binds to cells in different regions of the human airway from those favoured by human influenza viruses.
Flu viruses infecting humans and birds are known to home in on slightly different versions of the same molecule, found on the surface of cells that line the respiratory tract. Yoshihiro Kawaoka and colleagues report in today’s Nature the effect this has on patients. Whereas the version of the molecule preferentially bound by human viruses is more prevalent on cells higher up in the airway, the molecule that is preferentially targeted by avian viruses tends to be found on cells deep within the lungs, in the air sacs, or alveoli, of the lung.
This may explain why human-to-human transmission of H5N1 remains uncommon, explain the authors. The virus may preferentially enter cells deep down inside the lungs, meaning that an infected person is less likely to spread the virus by coughing or sneezing. The researchers add, however, that should the virus ever acquire the ability to infect cells higher up in the airway then it may make the leap to a human to human infectious disease.
Parallel findings are also published today in Science, by Thijs Kuiken and colleagues. They have identified alveoli type II pneumocytes, scavenging cells within the lumen of the alveoli as the cells to which H5N1 predominantly attaches. These findings are in contrast to the received wisdom that avian influenza viruses have little or no affinity for cells of the human respiratory tract.
A press release from the Journal of Investigative Dermatology describes the latest research into stretch marks. The release says stretch marks are “unsightly” and describes them as a “disorder”. Fair enough. It then goes on to discuss the finding that women with this disorder, appear to be at increased risk of pelvic prolapse. How could this be and what are the warning signs?
Like stretch marks, pelvic prolapse is a connective tissue disorder and pelvic weakness is a serious condition caused by deterioration of support structures that can result in pressure, pain, vaginal bulge and/or urinary incontinence. The scientists who report their results explain that pelvic prolapse is an extremely under-reported condition with no official data as to how many women suffer from the condition. Tracked cases in the US, however, show more than 300,000 procedures are performed annually to repair the condition, which has been previously associated with pregnancy. This new study, however, found that stretch marks were twice as common in women with prolapse as those without, hinting at a hitherto hidden connection.
Stretch marks occur when skin is stretched beyond its usual capabilities and normal production of collagen is disrupted. As a result, scars or stretch marks form. Alexa Kimball and colleagues reviewed results from a survey issued to urogynecology and dermatology patients. Participants ranged in age from 25-90 with an average weight of 152 pounds (70 kg).
Analysis of multiple variables identified stretch marks as the only significant predictor of pelvic
prolapse. Follow-up studies will further investigate the incidence and correlation of these two connective tissue disorders and how genetic factors contribute to incidence. Research will also include prospective studies to validate findings and identify predictive markers to prevent the progression of this condition.
The paper is available through www.jidonline.org