May 2006 – Page 4 – David Bradley

Youths and Adults First for Flu?

In today’s Science magazine policy forum, Ezekiel Emanuel and Alan Wertheimer of The Clinical Center, at NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, argue that should a [bird] flu pandemic emerge, any time soon, then, they say, priority should go to people between early adolescence and middle age.

Their argument is based on the idea that every one of us should have the opportunity to live through all life stages. They suggest that this offers the best balance of the amount the person has invested in his or her life with their time left to live should this virtual disease prove closely to 100% fatal without vaccination.

Their suggestion contrasts starkly with current recommendations for vaccinating people in the event of a flu pandemic which involves prioritizing vaccination of health workers and the elderly ill at the very top and healthy people aged two through 64 at the very bottom. The pair recommend incorporating another ethical principle that focuses on ensuring safety and the provision of food and fuel. What’s most intriguing about their argument, however, is that their ethical framework is intended to be applied only to the USA and not the whole world. The Science press release pertaining to this suggestion, simply says that this “would then involve more complex issues of global rationing.”

So, what do sciencebase readers think? Who’d care to draw up the list?

Taxol to a T

Taxol is a natural product isolated from the Pacific Yew, Taxus brevifolia. The compound was isolated from the bark of that tree by Monroe Wall of the Research Triangle Institute in the 1960s. He and his colleagues were guided in their work by the discovery of in vitro activity against L1210 cancer cells.

As is customary, the individual who discovers a new natural product gets to name that compound. Wall thus naturally called this new anticancer agent taxol (tax from taxus, ol as in alcohol, small T). He used the name in his 1971 publication announcing the chemical structure.

After that, chemists working with the compound used this name, partly because its very complex structure virtually precluded using the systematic chemical name.

Probably because it was so hard to obtain it in quantity, the compound lay fallow on a shelf at NCI until the late 1980s. Interest was revived when Susan Howrwitz discovered that the drug acted by a previously unknown mechanism: in essence it freezes cell division mid-stream by stabilizing the microtubules that should wither after pulling appart the pieces of the cells-to-be. The late Matt Suffness at NCI then made a concerted effort to pursue the compound. As part of this, NCI apparently requested bids from the private sector to join in developing taxol as an antitumour drug. This was to be one of the first such joint efforts known by the acronym CRADA (Cooperative Research And Development Agreement). The proposal tendered by Bristol Myers was deemed to be superior to the others leading to the company being awarded the agreement. The rest as they say, is history.

Somewhere along the line, however, someone either forgot to register the name taxol with the USAN as the non-proprietary name for that substance or may simply have been unaware of this requiremnent. This left the door open for Bristol Meyers to acquire Taxol as a trade name allegedly via the purchase of the TradeMark of an old laxative product and to have the non-proprietary name paclitaxel accepted as the generic term of Taxol. This meant that chemists would no longer be allowed to talk of taxol generically but would have to refer to paclitaxel, unless they were talking about BM’s drug in which case that would be Taxol, with a capital T.

So what of this laxative? It was apparently produced by Continental Laboratories Ltd of London in tablet form for the physiological treatment of constipation.

Pastel Chef and Chemist

In this week’s Alchemist I vaingloriously pronounced that oncologists might soon be able to image tumours as quickly and easily as radiologists view broken bones with X-rays.

Sciencebase contributor Dan Lednicer, a retired organic chemist turned pastel chef emailed me to point out that the statement regarding the power of X-rays required qualification:

“One day this last February, I happened to fall on my side in a parking lot. The persistent pain led me to get an X-ray the next day. This showed nothing out of the ordinary. When getting dressed one morning a week later, I found that any weight on my left leg led to excruciating pain. An X-ray in the emergency room at the hospital still showed nothing. It took an MRI (I almost wrote NMR!) to show a clean brake high up on the femur.

I now sport an impressive metal rod with a couple of appurtenances down the middle of that femur. This sails through metal detectors like a breeze, as it is made of titanium.”

So, it seems. X-rays are not the gods of imaging that my flippant remark would suggest. As to why titanium does not show up on airport metal detectors would make an interesting assignment for science class. Feel free to post your thoughts…

Scientific Tools

The Sciencebase site provides access to a selection of (hopefully) useful scientific tools, including the Cheminfo acronym lookup (just checked out SEM-EDS and ICP for an upcoming spectroscopyNOW article), a DOI paper finder to help you find full research papers from those snooty and obscure numbers that crop up everywhere in the literature. There is also an access point for the IUPAC Gold Book, and a search form for sci-tech-daily review, together with various links to other external resources.

Sex and Vomeronasal Attraction

The vexing question of whether sex pheromones play a role in human sexual attraction raises its ugly head once again, this time in a posting on The Register. Most scientists would say that there is little evidence that humans rely very much on pheromones for sexual attraction directly. However, others scientists suggest that a tiny organ in the nasal cavity, the so-called vomeronasal organ (VNO), or Jacobson’s organ, can detect chemical attractants that pass between people and are not apparent to us at the thinking level. Moreover, anecdotal evidence would point to smell having a very strong effect in sex whether or not we believe it’s pheromonal or not.

The VNO definitely plays a role in the lives of other animals from cats to snakes and from elephants to mice. In humans the organ seemingly all but disappears even before birth, leaving just a few people with a tiny pit in the septum that might have some vestige of pheromonal responsiveness.

Until, we find specific chemicals that trigger sexual attraction when sniffed, in double-blind controlled tests, it is likely that for the foreseeable future there will be no genuine, working product.

Touch Wood – Short History of Viagra

Just a reminder that the Sciencebase archive of science articles is stuffed full of interesting tid-bits (to use the PC term). Among the most popular pages (attracting the most readers in other words) is the repro of a feature article I wrote some time ago for Tomorrow’s World magazine on the subject of Viagra.

Said item was illustrated with a large banana and two strategically placed apples. I was going to dig out the original paper cutting and scan it for this item, but didn’t fancy getting a search engine rude-filter slapped on the page.

The Viagra article is here.

Zoo Poo

This is one of those lovely science stories that is sure to catch even the tabloid media’s attention as well as give people the opportunity once again to complain about “what scientists do”.

According to CSIRO Livestock Industries scientist Andre-Denis Wright, droppings from rhinos and elephants at Perth Zoo are being put under the microscope to help scientists determine whether or not various strains of protozoa, which help break food down in the guts of “exotic” animals can be introduced into the guts of sheep and cattle to help them thrive in the harsh conditions of the Australian outback.

As part of the Zoo-Poo project scientists have so far sequenced the DNA of protozoa found in a range of faecal samples from rhinos, elephants, orangutans, and red pandas. The study will reveal the origins of various protozoa and identify common protozoal species found in animals from different parts of the world.

Wright is collaborating with rumen microbiologist Burk Dehority of Ohio State University. Dehority has previously found some of the same protozoa in different grazing animals from South America, Africa and Alaska. However, the protozoa from the guts of marsupials in Australia appear to be quite distinct. He has now received poo samples from the zoo animals including a “grab sample of faeces” from a rhino, collected by a zoo handler before it hit the ground. [Nice]

“Very large mammals like the rhino and the elephant eat voluminous amounts of roughage and they are able to take the soluble nutrients out and ferment them in the cecum and then they just pass the roughage out,” explains Dehority, “hey exist on the fact that they just eat volumes.”

He said little was known about how the guts of large animals worked and the research would assist in developing better nutrition for zoo animals as well as livestock.

Controversial Conjectures

Having a web presence attracts all kinds of unusual requests and suggestions. Many of them get shredded immediately, but some are so outlandish that they’re worth sharing.

What to make of an email addressed to the sciencebase feedback address and cc’ed to Science, Popular Science, World Science, and Scientific American, that begins:

“You probably heard of the impossible Perpetual Motion Machines. Some of you may even be working on some variations. We have found that scientists and textbooks have ignored the contribution of non-obvious energies such as air or gravity for centuries. Inventions that can directly extract energy from still air, water (floatation), gravity, magnetic fields and electromagnetic waves are possible. If you want to understand the theory and participate, read on.”

If emails could be written in green ink, you just know that this one would come on smudgy graph paper. The email goes on to explain how much work the correspondent and his colleague have carried out:

“We have done a great deal of research into the field of Cosmic Energies and we are convinced that their use will solve the Energy Crisis of the World and bring lasting World Peace. Cosmic Energies include still air, water (floatation), gravity, magnetic, electric fields and others. Such energy sources are non-polluting, abundant and inexpensive.”

It’s not so much the claim to have found a previously unrecognised and “perpetual” energy source, but that the invention will not only solve the energy crisis but also bring lasting world peace [Sorry, those words should have been in bold green with capitals, I think]. Oh, and cause global cooling and so solve the greenhouse effect.

Feel free to check out their website at www.energyfromair.com. It doesn’t work properly with Firefox unfortunately and even in their preferred browser (Internet Explorer) their “equations” don’t display properly. For some reason they illustrate their web slideshow with an old pair of glasses, some medals and a Chinese checker board, really don’t know why.

Regardless, anyone with just a smattering of physics education will be able to shred the underlying concept. Although the scientific paper they provide is, they say, “much too difficult for the non-scientist”. Thankfully, they have provided a “simple, easy-to-understand song for the layman in Chinese”. So, that’s alright, then, we can just read that instead. Apparently, responses to the song have been positive, “but we shall need the melodies”.

Phylum Arthropoda

A common search carried out by sciencebase visitors is “Phylum Arthropoda”. Innocent enough, of course, there are bound to be lots of followers of the site interested in insects, arachnids, and crustaceans.

Anyway, the best starting point to get plenty more info on the arthropods is, as usual, Wikipedia. But, if you’re after science lessons on arthropods then check out the K5 science lesson plans page and follow the link to the Columbia Education Center in Portland, Oregon, to get to the specific listings. If you’ve got a particular creature in which you’re interested, please use the sciencebase search box top right, we can’t guarantee that you’ll find what you’re looking for among the sciencebase pages themselves but there are usually other links on the site you can follow to find out more.

Spot the Difference

red spot junior jupiter Like an adolescent unfortunate, Jupiter has got spots and it’s all down to climate change. The latest images from the Hubble space telescope reveal details of the second red spot that formed in the atmosphere of the gas giant.

This dramatic change to the Jovian weather, nicknamed most unimaginitavely, Red Spot Jr., will provide planetary scientists with an unprecedented chance to study the storms and climate of our solar system’s largest planet. RSJ was formed as a white oval between 1998 and 2000 when three white storms merged, but Hubble’s latest snaps reveal that the planet’s climate is changing. When viewed at near-infrared wavelengths (specifically 892 nm – a methane gas absorption band) RSJ is almost as prominent in Jupiter’s cloudy atmosphere as the Great Red Spot. This may mean that the storm rises miles above the top of the main cloud deck on Jupiter just as its larger cousin is thought to do. Some astronomers think the red hue could be produced as the spots dredge up material from deeper in Jupiter’s atmosphere, which is then chemically altered by the Sun’s ultraviolet light.