David Bradley – Page 255

Open Access in Africa

development-heatmap-africa There is much talk about Open Access. There are those in academia who argue the pros extensively in all fields, biology, chemistry, computing. Protagonists are making massive efforts to convert users to this essentially non-commercial form of information and knowledge.

Conversely, there are those in the commercial world who ask, who will pay for OA endeavours and how can growth (current recession and credit crunch aside) continue in a capitalist, democratic society, without the opportunity to profit from one’s intellectual property.

Those for and against weigh up both sides of the argument repeatedly. However, they often neglect one aspect of the concept of Open Access: how they might extend it to the developing nations, to what ends, and with what benefits.

Writing in a forthcoming paper in the International Journal of Technology Management, Williams Nwagwu of the Africa Regional Center for Information Science (ARCIS) at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and Allam Ahmed of the Science and Technology Policy Research (SPRU) at the University of Sussex, UK, suggest that developing countries, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), are suffering from a scientific information famine. They say that beginning at the local level and networking nationally could help us realise the potential for two-way information traffic.

The expectation that the internet would facilitate scientific information flow does not seem to be realisable, owing to the restrictive subscription fees of the high quality sources and the beleaguering inequity in the access and use of the internet and other Information and Communication Technology (ICT) resources.

Nwagwu and Ahmed have assessed the possible impact the Open Access movement may have on addressing this inequity in SSA by removing the restrictions on accessing scientific knowledge. They highlight the opportunities and challenges but also demonstrate that there are often mismatches between what the “donor” countries and organisations might reasonably offer and what the SSA countries can actually implement. Moreover, they explain the slow uptake of Open Access in SSA as being related to the perception of the African scientists towards the movement and a lack of concern by policymakers.

The researchers suggest that the creation of a digital democracy could prevent the widening information gap between the developed and the developing world. Without the free flow of information between nations, particularly in and out of Africa and other developing regions, there may be no true global economy.

“Whatever might emerge as a global economy will be skewed in favour of the information-haves, leaving behind the rich resources of Africa and other regions, which are often regarded as information have-nots,” the researchers say. It is this notion that means that it is not only SSA that will lose out on the lack of information channels between the SSA and the developed world, but also those in the developed world.

“The current pattern of the globalisation process is leaving something very crucial behind, namely the multifaceted intellectual ‘wealth’ and ‘natural resources’ of Africa,” they add. “The beauty of a truly globalised world would lie in the diversity of the content contributed by all countries.

From this perspective, they say, the free flow of scientific articles must be pursued by developing countries, particularly SSA, with vigour. “African countries should as a matter of priority adopt collaborative strategies with agencies and institutions in the developed countries where research infrastructures are better developed, and where the quest for access to scientific publication is on the increase.”

They suggest that efforts could begin locally having found that even within single institutions in most African countries, access to scientific articles is very scant. “Local institutions should initiate local literature control services with the sole aim of making the content available to scientists,” they suggest.

Proper networking of institutions across a country could then ease access to scientific publications. One such initiative in Nigeria has started under the National University Commission’s NUNet Project but wider support from governments is necessary to build the infrastructure. Research oriented institutions could use their funds to grant free access to their readers, especially given that many already pay subscription fees for their readers in large amounts.

Meanwhile, can music bring open relief to Africa?

Williams E. Nwagwu, Allam Ahmed (2009). Building open access in Africa International Journal of Technology Management, 45 (1/2), 82-101 I put in a request with the publishers for this paper to be made freely available, it is now so. You can download the PDF here.

Explosive News

In my SpectroscopyNOW.com column this week: US researchers have used NMR to help them develop a new high explosive material that can be melt cast into a charge with any shape (and presumably whose explosions could be monitored by the blast-proof thermometer).

Nanotubes and geckos caught the eye of The Alchemist this week as US chemists describe a way to out-gecko the gecko by developing a new material that simulates the animal’s hairy feet but is ten times as sticky. Adhering with the theme of sticking, European researchers have found a way to tether prions to a model cell membrane that could open up new research into diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob, BSE and scrapie.

explosive-news In environmental news, recent insights into dust from the Sahara could improve our understanding of climate change. Finally, dust of another kind is being used in an entirely different way, by British researchers to protect a new type of thermometer used to measure the 3000 Kelvin temperatures of an explosion.

The crystal structure of a cancer-killing virus has been revealed. The 3D structure of the recently discovered Seneca Valley Virus-001 shows that it is unlike any other known member of the Picornaviridae viral family (which includes the common cold viruses), and confirms its recent designation as a separate genus “Senecavirus”.

Morbid tales for Waco CSI reveals how cheminformatics forensic scientists might use spectroscopy on skeletal remains to determine post-mortem interval, how long the corpse has been dead, in other words.

Under the Spotlight, over on Intute:

Oily fungus helps reduce acid rain – Researchers in Iran have discovered a fungus that can metabolise and absorb sulfur from crude oil and so reduce one of the major sources of air pollution when petroleum products are burned…

Radio samples – More than 20 years after Chernobyl, US researchers have travelled to Sweden and Poland to gain insight into how radioactive elements spewed out by the reactor fire have undergone “downward migration” into the soil…

The dark energy illusion – What if Copernicus were wrong and the earth actually has a special place in the universe? Not some metaphysical, philosophical, supernatural special place, but just special in that the local environment is not the same as other local environments across the reaches of space?

Alzheimer and Arachidonic Acid

Researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease at the University of California San Francisco have found that removing a brain enzyme that regulates the concentration of arachidonic acid, a fatty acid, reduces cognitive deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The discovery, reported in Nature Neuroscience, may one day lead to a novel therapeutic strategy for the disease.

Alzheimer’s causes a progressive loss brain cognitive functions and is a terminal disease. There are treatments that can alleviate symptoms, but there is no cure.

“Several different proteins have been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease,” explains GIND’s Lennart Mucke, “but we wanted to know more about the potential involvement of lipids and fatty acids.”

Fatty acids are rapidly taken up by the brain and incorporated into phospholipids, a class of fats that form the membrane or barrier that shields the content of cells from the external environment. The scientists used a large scale profiling approach (“lipidomics”) to compare many different fatty acids in the brains of normal mice with those in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease that develops memory deficits and many pathological alterations seen in the human condition.

The most striking change discovered was an increase in arachidonic acid and related metabolites in the hippocampus, a memory center that is affected early and severely by Alzheimer’s disease. Arachidonic acid is thought to wreak havoc in the brains of the mice by causing too much excitation, damaging neurons. By lowering arachidonic acid levels, the researchers found they could allow neurons to function normally.

In general, fatty acid levels can be regulated by diet or drugs, which could have important therapeutic implications. A lot more work is needed before this strategy can be tested in humans.

Rene O Sanchez-Mejia, John W Newman, Sandy Toh, Gui-Qiu Yu, Yungui Zhou, Brian Halabisky, Moustapha CissÃ©, Kimberly Scearce-Levie, Irene H Cheng, Li Gan, Jorge J Palop, Joseph V Bonventre, Lennart Mucke (2008). Phospholipase A2 reduction ameliorates cognitive deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease Nature Neuroscience DOI: 10.1038/nn.2213

Melamine Apology

wen-jiabao The day after yet more melamine in food warnings, this time in Bangladesh where eight imported powdered milk products have been banned and in Italy, it is reported that the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, has apologised for the Chinese government’s complacency in the melamine in milk scandal. Tainted baby formula milk has killed at least four babies in China and led to the hospitalisation of tens of thousands; it has also caused undue worry for parents the world over.

“We feel that though the incident occurred in enterprises, the government is also responsible,” Wen said in a rare interview with Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science magazine. The rare one on one interview took place on September 30 and was published in the US journal yesterday. Wen, apparently expressed sorrow and promised new food regulations after the melamine-tainted milk debacle.

Previously, the head of China’s food quality watchdog, Li Changjiang, resigned “with state approval” back in September, at the height of the scandal, according to the Xinhua news agency. And, yesterday, New Zealand’s Stuff suggested that organised criminal gangs may have been behind the tainted milk that brought down the Chinese operations of the country’s food giant Fonterra.

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Science Books

technology-writing Once again, I have a stack of great books sitting on the Sciencebase desk ready for review.

First up is Go Green – How to Build an Earth-Friendly Community, which you will be pleased to learn has been published on apparently sustainable paper. The author, Nancy Taylor, is an environmental columnist and teaches a course on the art of green living. Her book does what it says on the tin (also recyclable, other metals are available), offering advice for those who want to change the way they live to be more in line with a sustainable future. Homeowners, students, professionals could do well to take a look and learn how to live greener lives. Politicians should also take a look, as at the bottom line, Taylor could show them how to save money.

And, speaking of green, fuel cells are apparently the future. Gavin Harper, in Fuel Cell Projects for the Evil Genius explains how they work and how you could make and test a simple fuel cell.

Next up is Ad Lagendijk’s Survival Guide for Scientists. In a scientific world, steadily growing virtual, it’s reassuring to know that some of the old principles of good writing, preparing a research paper, putting up a poster presentation, corresponding with fellow scientists, and giving a talk, are still valid. It’s not all flickering comments on Twitter and Feedfriend after all. The Guide is aimed primarily at undergraduates, grad students, and postdocs in the natural sciences and offers a practical howto on the foundations of writing, presenting and researching science.

A Short Guide to the Human Genome from Stewart Scherer attempts to answer some of the basic questions about genetics. How many genes are there in the human genome? Which genes are commonly associated with disease? What are the biggest genes? How close is the human genome to the mouse, yeast, bacteria?

Stem Cells, Human Embryos and Ethics edited by Lars Ostnor attempts to define whether it is acceptable from an ethical, as opposed to scientific standpoint, to use stem cells harvested from human embryos for biomedical research or as treatments for sick patients. This advanced book provides a brief introduction to the emerging technologies and a basis for wider debate.

From inner space to nearby outer space, Ralph Lorenz and Jacqueline Mitton take us on a tour of Saturn’s mysterious moon in Titan Unveiled. This is the first authoritative book to look at the data from the Cassini-Huygens probe sent to observe one of the largest moon’s in the solar system, Titan.

Staying with astronomy, but taking a much broader cosmological view, Leonard Susskind tells us of his battle with Stephen Hawking to make the world safe for quantum mechanics in The Black Hole War. With nothing less than an understanding of the entire universe at stake it was essential that the argument over the true nature of black holes between Susskind, Hawking, and Gerard ‘t Hooft be won, one way or the other, so that we can know what happens ultimately to someone sucked into a black hole.

Finally, just arrived is this year’s Best of Technology Writing, edited by Clive Thompson. If this is anything like the previous two editions then it is a feast of great technology writing from my peers across the pond. It carries a fascinating mix of topics from a molecular recipe for the perfect gin & tonic to an ancient Greek artifact that may have been the world’s first laptop computer.

For those interested in the technical and scientific writing, here is a list of online learning resources courtesy of Matchacollege.com, thanks to Kelly Sonora for emailing the link.

Introduction to Technical Communication: Perspectives on Medicine and Public Health: Study the writings of physicians to learn about technical style and issues.
Intro to Tech Communication: Technical researchers learn the basics of technical writing here.
Introduction to Technical Communication: Ethics in Science and Technology: Writers who work in science and medical fields can learn about unique ethical standards here.
The Science Essay: Scientific writers can learn techniques about appealing to an audience and revising their work in this course.
Technical Writing: Here you’ll find a great resource for technical writing.

Blog Action Day on Poverty

We are, the media tells us, either on the verge or diving head first into a global recession the likes of which we have never seen. Countless financial headlines have screamed Credit Crunch, which sadly isn’t a wholegrain breakfast cereal for day-traders, for a year now. Banks are borrowing billions from taxpayers to allow them to lend even more money to each other.

There has almost been not a thought for the millions of people out of work and out of a home the ruins of whose lives the apparent collapse of capitalism is built. Anyone who thought Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae were porn star names, or the Lehmann Brothers were a support act for Marx (as in Groucho and gang) surely now knows better. Stocks and share prices yo-yo between lower highs and increasingly depressing lows.

But, away from the cold-sweating of traders, the pinging of stripy braces, and the red screens of death, on the market floors of the so-called developed world, the old-school third world, the allegedly developing world continues in its grinding abject poverty. However, providing the developed world does not collapse into utter chaos, Jenifer Piesse of the Department of Management, at King’s College London and the University of Stellenbosch, RSA working with Colin Thirtle of the Centre for Environmental Policy, at Imperial College London, and the University of Pretoria, RSA, suggest in a recent issue of the IJBT that at least one product of modern capitalism, genetically modified (GM), herbicide tolerant (HT) white maize, developed in the USA to save labour might help ease poverty in the developing world too.

They report how HT white maize is now being grown by smallholders in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and elsewhere and use panel data for Africa, Asia and Latin America to investigate the effects of factor endowments and biased technological change on productivity growth, labour incomes and poverty reduction. Can GM produce a Green Revolution (GR) in Africa and would it be poverty
reducing, as it has been in Asia, they ask.

Their preliminary findings demonstrate that a simple absence of population pressure on the land slows yield growth, which itself largely explains labour productivity growth in agriculture. Labour productivity growth is the key determinant of wages, growth in GDP per capita and poverty reduction.

“Africa seems to have fared poorly in poverty reduction because many countries have abundant poor quality land,” the researchers explain, “There has been yield growth, but it has not led to growth in labour productivity, as it did during the Asian green revolution.” This finding suggests that GM technology that raises labour productivity could be enormously beneficial, so long as employment is maintained.

Their analysis reports that yield growth in Asia was about 2.6% per year, but that Africa was not far behind at 2.0%. However, labour productivity in Asia grew at 1.5% per annum, whereas Africa managed only 0.4%. Yields in Asia grew at 1.1% faster than labour productivity and there was substantial progress in poverty alleviation. In contrast, in Africa, yields grew 1.6% faster than labour productivity, but the impact on poverty has been less.

They explain that yield growth is in fact a main cause of labour productivity growth in both continents, but in Africa the impact is far weaker. The most obvious cause is that both yields and labour productivity grow less where land to labour ratios are low, which is particularly true in the countries of sub-saharan Africa, the researchers say.

Jenifer Piesse, Colin Thirtle (2008). Genetically modified crops, factor endowments, biased technological change, wages and poverty reduction International Journal of Biotechnology, 10 (2/3) DOI: 10.1504/IJBT.2008.018354

This post was published as part of the Sciencebase contribution to Blog Action Day.

Melamine in the Global Food Supply

While melamine in the mainstream media seems to have quietened down in the last few days, there are still a few of us in the blogosphere attempting to unravel the tangle.

I first reported in my melamine in milk article (September 17) how the news broke that babies in China were somehow being poisoned by a contaminant in their formula milk powder. The contaminant was identified as melamine, an organic compound high in nitrogen and specifically amine groups that can dupe protein test equipment into thinking a product is rich in protein when it is not. Of course, the addition of non-nutritional organic compounds may fool the machine, but it does not fool the body of anyone eating the substance in their food and they will either be poisoned if the compound is itself toxic or suffer malnutrition. Infants, one might expect, would be particularly susceptible as they usually rely on a single food stuff – formula milk – for all their dietary requirements if they are not being breast-fed.

Nephrologist Robert Weiss, whom I interviewed for a follow-up item on the melamine toxicity article, told me that it is common to test for proteins using a simple test that detects amino groups (proteins are composed of amino acids). “Many non-protein compounds contain amino groups also (melamine is just one of those compounds). Some tests for proteins also are positive with ammonia, nitrates, and urea,” she says. “Unfortunately, none of these compounds can be used nutritionally speaking by animals or humans which ingest these compounds to build proteins. Therefore, these compounds have no nutritional value, are actually toxic and have no business being added to feed.”

One might suspect that manufacturers of these compounds as well as manufacturers of feed have learned how to outwit the somewhat simplistic tests for proteins that regulators use. “In learning how to outwit the tests in the interest of making a buck they have endangered the global food supply,” adds Weiss. It would be very interesting to know which companies are engaged in these practices or which are buying feed ingredients from companies engaged in such activities and so giving rise to the likes of the melamine contaminated food list. Perhaps this is simply an insidious symptom of the impending global recession, which is, as all recessions seem to be, founded on greed.

Weiss, who has ten years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry and is well aware of the chain of documentation required for drug production is “really amazed that we have less knowledge and control over ingredients and processing events in many of our foods.” Either way, the issue must be investigated and brought aggressively to the attention of legislators as well as consumers.

Anti Cocaine, Heroin Test, and Excited Brains

heroin-user The latest issue of my SpectroscopyNOW column is now online. In this issue, having sampled a little cannabis chemistry last month, I turned to cocaine, and enzymes to beat addiction, and new techniques for testing the purity, or otherwise of street heroin.

Anti cocaine – A mutant enzyme that breaks down cocaine in the bloodstream 2000 times faster than the body’s natural enzymes could lead to a rapid-response treatment for acute overdose or lead to a new therapeutic approach to treating drug addiction.

Testing times for street heroin – Impure forms of illicit drugs are almost as big a problem as the drugs themselves. Now, researchers in Spain have used diffuse reflectance near-infrared spectroscopy (DR-NIR) to quickly determine the purity of heroin.

Sooty balloons – Nothing more sophisticated than a lump of graphite, a roll of sticky tape, and a wafer thin sliver of silica are needed to inflate ideas about nanochemistry. Raman spectroscopy and other techniques have been used to reveal the details of the DIY construction of a balloon-like membrane of graphene.

Stellar chemistry – Astroscientists are using various spectroscopic techniques to root out relatively complex molecules lurking in the interstellar medium. The complexity of naphthalene, discovered in space, and corannulene, could provide new evidence of a cosmic origin for the precursor molecules of life on Earth

Analytical compromise reveals protein folding secrets – A new X-ray technique, time-resolved wide-angle X-ray scattering (TR-WAXS) could defeat even high-field NMR spectroscopy in allowing researchers to monitor very fast, nanosecond-scale movements in the context of the overall three-dimensional protein structure.

Finally, this week, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has revealed a reason why the excitement of unwrapping presents dwindles as our brains get older and more jaded. According to a new study, a biochemical pathway is responsible for mellowing our expectations. I cannot say I’ve noticed to be honest, I still get just as excited as the kids at Christmas unwrapping presents…although I’ve moved on from playing with the packaging now, most times.

To effectively reverse any harmful heroin addiction, a patient must undergo detoxification and treatment.

Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2008

The Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2008 was awarded to Osamu Shimomura (b. 1928) of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), at Woods Hole, Massachusetts and Boston University Medical School, Martin Chalfie (b. 1947) of Columbia University, New York, and Roger Tsien (b. 1952) of the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, “for the discovery (1962 by Shimomura) and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP”. Important, of course, and congratulations to all three…but I just knew it would be bio again!

The Nobel org press release for the Chemistry Prize can be found here.

The remarkable brightly glowing green fluorescent protein, GFP, was first observed in the beautiful jellyfish, Aequorea victoria in 1962. Since then, this protein has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience. With the aid of GFP, researchers have developed ways to watch processes that were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the brain or how cancer cells spread. Of course, the things that the public know about GFP are the green-glowing mice and pigs that have hit the tabloid headlines over the years.

I’ve written about green fluorescent proteins (although not green fluorescent proteins) on several occasions over the years. Briefly in an item on artificial cells in December 2004. In Reactive Reports in September 2005. In New Scientist (“Genetic Weeding and Feeding for Tobacco Plants”, Jan. 4, 1992, p. 11). In SpectroscopyNOW in January 2008. And, more substantially, in American Scientist (January 1996) on the use of a green-glowing jellyfish protein to create a night-time warning signal for crop farmers. Plants under stress would activate their GFP genes and start glowing, revealing which areas of which fields were affected by disease or pests and so tell the farmer where to spray. Of course, the idea of green-glowing cereals would have any tabloid headline writer spluttering into their cornflakes of a morning.

As I said earlier in the week, on the post for the Nobel Prize for Medicine 2008 and on the Nobel Prize for Physics announcement yesterday, the Nobel press team has employed various social media gizmos to disseminate the news faster than ever before, including SMS, RSS, widgets (see left), and twitter.

You can check back here later in the week and next week for the Literature, Economics, and Peace Prizes, the widget at the top left of this post will provide the details as soon as they are released. It’s almost as exciting as sniping your bids on eBay.

Melamine and Kidney Failure

Sciencebase readers following the melamine story and concerned about melamine contaminated foods, will hopefully be interested in the latest expert opinion on the scandal.

Roberta Weiss, a nephrologist (kidney doctor) emailed to provide Sciencebase readers with some more background on melamine contamination and toxicity. Weiss suggests that, “Probably acute renal failure resulting from cyanuric acid crystal formation in the kidneys of babies that ingested the melamine contaminated formula was responsible for the infant deaths, not kidney stone formation.”

Weiss is a kidney doctor for adults, but emphasises that she has never seen a case of melamine related kidney or bladder stones. However, there have been animal studies carried out since the 1980s that do demonstrate that the ingestion of melamine by mice can cause bladder stones, known technically as urolitiasis. These are apparently associated with ulcerations in the bladder. Weiss adds that the animal food tainted with melamine that killed so many pets in the US contained products in the feed from China.

As I’ve mentioned here before, melamine is an organic compound used in the manufacture of plastics and fertilizers. It releases cyanide when burned and has been associated with cyanide poisoning in industrial accidents. Melamine monomer, as opposed to the plastic used to make kitchen utensils and table coverings, itself also has irritant properties. It has been added to various food products to illicitly and fraudulently boost the measured protein content without the expense of actually improving the food’s nutritional value.

According to The Register, Chinese company, Xuzhou Anying, was advertising “dust of melamine” as something it called “ESB protein powder” on the global market trading website, Alibaba. “The latest product, ESB protein powder, which is researched and developed by Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co., Ltd… Contains protein 160 – 300 percent, which solves the problem for shortage of protein resource,” it boasted. A horrifying thought, makes you wonder what is actually in those nasty protein powder drinks bodybuilders use.

“Melamine ingestion results in the production of cyanuric acid in the kidneys,” adds Weiss, “which results in intratubular crystal formation and acute renal failure.” This, she explains occurred in cats who were fed melamine in combination with cyanuric acid experimentally after the pet food issues to demonstrate what may have been happening during that incident.

According to Economics And Finance (Cai Jing) magazine, as reported in the Epoch Times, it is common practice to add melamine to livestock feed along with sodium nitrite, urea, ammonia, silica, potassium nitrate, sodium nitrite, glacial acetic acid, activated carbon materials, urea, ammonia, potassium nitrate, to improve its nutritional profile and other properties of the feed. The use of melamine in this context contravenes international regulations where they exist.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) points out that, “Regulation regarding its use in animal feed do not always exist as it is only recent events which indicated the need to regulate for this substance. However, some countries have established regulations and do not permit the use of melamine in animal feed.” Indeed, the FAO specifically states: “Melamine is not permitted in food or feed stuffs.”

Nevertheless, the FAO says, melamine is often used in agricultural fertilisers. But, has also warned that the commonly used pesticide cyromazine can break down to form melamine (PDF document). This might also explain why melamine has been found in lettuce, water cress, tomatoes, mushrooms, potatoes and other agricultural products in China. Contamination levels are very low at 17 milligrams of melamine per kilogram of mushrooms, for instance. They are notably low compared to the levels of melamine found in contaminated infant formula milk, which were as high as 2560 milligrams per kilogram of ready-to-eat product. The levels of cyanuric acid in these products is unknown.

Sciencebase regular “Offy” pointed me to the North Korean publication The Daily NK, which asks whether there were melamine deaths in 2005. “According to merchants trading between China and North Korea, the Chinese Melamine-tainted milk affair started in Pyongyang in the summer of 2005. At the time, infants who ate imported Chinese powdered milk fell unconscious and, in more serious cases, died.” At the time, the North Korean authorities tested imported Chinese milk and banned it on the basis of their findings.

Because of the pet food problem, pet owners like Offy, have been following this stayed on this for well over a year. “Politics has trumped health in favour of industry for a very long time in the US…it’s not just a problem in China,” she says. Cai Jing blames a lack of supervision for the melamine crisis and suggests an approach that will allow China’s fledgling market economy to continue to grow but at the same time minimising the chances of a similar scandal occurring again. It says that the melamine milk crisis has taught China that government oversight to spot corruption is essential, but it also suggests that the government not be allowed to simply meddle with the market. This would, Cai Jing says, be the only way to ensure a safe food industry.

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