By George Johnson, George Johnson is the author of "Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics." His latest book, "The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments," will be published in 2008.
April
IN late 19th century Munich, the multivolume "Popular Books on Natural Science" was required bookcase furniture in middle-class German homes, and its ebullient author, Aaron Bernstein, was the Carl Sagan of his day. "Praised be this science!" he cried. "
Praised be the men who do it! And praised be the human mind, which sees more sharply than does the human eye." It seemed the perfect gift for a 10-year-old boy who (contrary to later legend) was doing quite well in school.
In the very first pages of the series, given to him by a family friend, young Albert Einstein would have read about a thought experiment in which a bullet is fired at a passing train. For the gunner standing at the side of the tracks, the bullet appears to fly straight through. But from the perspective of a passenger inside a moving railroad car, the projectile cuts across at an angle. Motion, after all, is relative.
The same is true, Bernstein went on to explain, for starlight striking Earth as it moves through its orbit — an astronomer must lead with his telescope as a duck hunter does with his gun — but with a crucial difference. Whether Earth is approaching the star or receding from it, the velocity of the light beam is the same. "Since each kind of light proves to be of exactly the same speed," Bernstein wrote, "the law of the speed of light can well be called the most general of all of nature's laws."
And so a meme was planted in Einstein's brain.Years later, he acknowledged Bernstein's books as an inspiration, but it is jarring to learn, in new biographies by Walter Isaacson and Jürgen Neffe, how specific the influence may have been. Elsewhere in the series, Bernstein asked his readers to imagine being conveyed through space by an electromagnetic wave — the seed, perhaps, of Einstein's famous fantasy of riding bareback on a light beam.
The contradictions this notion posed — what can a light wave be when you're waving along with it? — inspired his special theory of relativity.Later on, as Einstein assembled the pieces, he may have recalled another early favorite: Felix Eberty's "The Stars and the Earth," in which extraterrestrial observers viewing this planet at various distances in space see different stages of our history. Since light travels at a finite speed, looking out through a telescope is like looking back in time. As Neffe puts it, "The young Einstein had his lifelong topics handed to him on a platter." Even ideas as startling as special relativity come with a pedigree. Einstein's was the brain where certain thought beams happened to collide. Genius, if there is such a thing, lies in knowing what to do with the debris.
A great strength of both these biographies is to show, as Neffe puts it, "why Einstein had to discover the theory of relativity."
Einstein's story of his boyhood reaction to a compass ("Something deeply hidden had to be behind things") has been told many times. Just as influential may have been the dynamos and other equipment that his father and uncle were installing to bring electricity to towns in Germany.
A moving magnet generates electricity, and moving electricity generates a magnetic field — another relativistic knot whose untying led to special relativity.
Einstein's early exposure to electromagnetic gadgets made him a natural for a job in the Swiss patent office — just as industrial Europe was seeking ways to synchronize clocks for coordinating military maneuvers and making the trains run on time.
As the Harvard historian Peter Galison has written, Einstein had a front-row seat at a parade of new technologies involving space and time. Happenstance by happenstance, he was being edged into position to make his great discoveries.
There are many good biographies of this man, ranging from Ronald Clark's accessible, encyclopedic "Einstein: The Life and Times" to Abraham Pais' idiosyncratic and demanding "Subtle Is the Lord," with several stops along the way (Jeremy Bernstein, Philipp Frank, Banesh Hoffmann).
Their somewhat sanitized nature, glossing over Einstein's messy divorce and womanizing, was remedied by Dennis Overbye in "Einstein in Love." It's a welcome surprise to find there is still room for not one but two more life stories.
The take by Isaacson, known for his lives of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger, is likely to get the most attention. Occasioned by the release of more Einstein papers, his book re-creates events with a richness not possible before.
Isaacson, who cut his teeth as a political correspondent for Time magazine, does a fine job of explaining some difficult science. Neffe's book, covering almost exactly the same ground, was published first in Germany in 2005.
You would never know you were reading a translation. Converted into evocative, idiomatic English by Shelley Frisch, the book abandons the traditional chronological framework to make oblique swipes across Einstein's timeline — like those bullets flying through a train.
One chapter is on his psychological makeup, another on the scientists who influenced him, another on "The Physicist and the Women." Occasionally leaping to the present, Neffe tells the story behind the story, the literary forensics by which modern-day Einstein sleuths piece together what he knew when.
Sometimes this jumping around can be disorienting. Isaacson's traditional approach is probably better for Einstein beginners. But if you already know the story, Neffe's book might tell you something new.
As Einstein's life unfolded, special relativity led to general relativity, linking gravity and the tug of acceleration as neatly as the earlier theory had linked space and time. Because of the politicking of the Nazi physicist Philipp Lenard, Einstein was denied a Nobel Prize for this "Jewish physics."
As a compromise, he got one for explaining the photoelectric effect, his contribution to a quantum mechanics whose vision of a dice-rolling deity he came to hate and reject.In the late 1920s we find him, pushing 50, trying to overthrow quantum physics by subsuming it into an all-encompassing theory.
"The highest and ultimate aim of our science," he had read in the Bernstein books, "will always be to adopt the most straightforward possible approach for all things, to trace back all facts to one explanation." But this time his instincts led him astray."Einstein Reduces All Physics to 1 Law," proclaimed the New York Times on Jan. 25, 1929. "Hypothesis Opens Visions of Persons Being Able to Float in Air…. " But that theory crashed and burned, as did each version thereafter.
Einstein died a quarter-century later, in Princeton, N.J.; his ashes were scattered on the Delaware River, but not before a pathologist had swiped his brain. Neurological studies were inconclusive, suggesting that there was nothing organically special in there. "The relevant question," Isaacson writes, "was how his mind worked, not his brain." He was curious, tenacious, rebellious, with a passion to know — the right man, in the right place, at the right time.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Many promises of stem cell research
By Sade Oguntola
Stem cells have been dogged by political and ethical controversies because some are derived from discarded human embryos, and because of fear and confusion about links with human reproductive cloning.
The future of stem cell therapies was thrown deeper into doubt in late 2005, when a leader of the field - Woo Suk Hwang, South Korea’s stem cell king” - was found to have forged key discoveries and flouted ethical protocols. So has the stem cell miracle been postponed? No.
There exists a widespread controversy over stem cell research that emanates from the techniques used in the creation and usage of stem cells. Embryonic stem cell research is particularly controversial because, with the present state of technology, starting a stem cell line requires the destruction of a human embryo and/or therapeutic cloning.
Opponents of the research argue that this practice is a slippery slope to reproductive cloning and tantamount to the instrumentalisation of a human being. Contrarily, some medical researchers in the field argue that it is necessary to pursue embryonic stem cell research because the resultant technologies are expected to have significant medical potential, and that the embryos used for research are only those meant for destruction anyway (as a product of invitro fertilisation).
This, in turn, conflicts with opponents in the pro-life movement, who argue that an embryo is a human being and therefore entitled to dignity even if legally slated for destruction. The ensuing debate has prompted authorities around the world to seek regulatory frameworks and highlighted the fact that stem cell research represents a social and ethical challenge. However, there still exists a great deal of social and scientific uncertainty surrounding stem cell research, which could possibly be overcome through public debate and future research.
Medical researchers however believe that stem cell therapy has the potential to radically change the treatment of human diseases. A number of adult stem cell therapies already exist, particularly bone marrow transplants that are used to treat leukemia. In the future, medical researchers anticipate being able to use technologies derived from stem cell research to treat a wider variety of diseases including cancer, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries, and muscle damage, amongst a number of other impairments and conditions.
Many achievements of stem cell research no doubt will help overcome the uncertainty around these researches , including the replacement teeth that was grown from scratch and implanted into the mouths of adult mice. A similar technique to this might one day help to replace missing teeth in humans. Takashi Tsuji at the Tokyo University of Science in Japan and his colleagues extracted single tooth mesenchymal and epithelial cells - the two cell types that develop into a tooth - from mouse embryos. They persuaded these cells to multiply and injected them into a drop of collagen gel. Within days, the cells formed tooth buds, the early stage of normal tooth formation.
The team extracted teeth from adult mice and transplanted the tooth buds into the cavities, where they developed into teeth with a normal structure and composition. The engineered teeth also developed a healthy blood supply and nerve connections. Other researchers have previously grown intact teeth from engineered tooth buds implanted in the kidneys of mice.
They stopped short of showing that engineered buds could develop into teeth in the jaw. Adult stem cells can be made to turn into blood or any of the body’s tissues, too. Doubts have grown, but now a prominent skeptic has shown that the claim seems to be true. They formed all the cell types found in blood.
Catherine Verfaillie of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis demonstrated the existence of Multipotent Adult Progenitor Cells (MAPCs) in 2002, isolated from bone marrow, a class of stem cells that normally form muscle and bone. Insulin-secreting cells created from human embryonic stem cells for the first time is also raising hopes of a limitless supply of cells that could be transplanted into people with type 1 diabetes. Emmanuel Baetge and his colleagues at Novocell in San Diego, California, used a cocktail of chemicals to coax the stem cells to form pancreatic. The cells produce as much insulin as normal pancreatic islet cells, but unlike adult islet cells, these do not appear to be regulated by sugar levels. Baetge is confident they can overcome this problem.
If they succeed, the company has also developed a way to coat the cells in a polymer called polyethylene glycol, which would prevent them from being rejected by the recipient’s immune system, thus allowing sugar, insulin and other signaling molecules to filter in and out. A leading cause of blindness could one day be treatable using stem cell therapy. Rats with a degenerative eye disease similar to macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in older people, have had their vision rescued by implants derived from human embryonic stem cells.
A team led by Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts, was able to persuade human embryonic stem cells to grow into cells resembling retinal pigment epithelial cells. These are the cells which support the photoreceptors in the retina, and without them the photoreceptors do not survive. When injected into rats with failing vision, the cells boosted the thickness of their degraded retinas. The visual acuity of the treated rats seemed to be around 70 per cent of normal - about twice as good as if they had not been treated.
The promise by stem cell to combat childhood brain disease, the first clinical safety trial of a purified human fetal stem cell product, was tried out. The trial could pave the way for neural stem cell transplants to treat a range of brain and spinal cord disorders. A team from the Oregon Health and Science University Doernbecher Children’s Hospital actually treated six children suffering from the inherited neurodegenerative condition, Batten’s disease – also known as neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL)with this neural stem cell transplant technology. The children had injections of neural stem cells that have been purified – isolated from other cell types – and grown from donated human fetal tissue. The stem cell product and isolation technique was developed by Stem Cells Inc, of Palo Alto, California, which is sponsoring the trial.
Could stem cells help heal damaged livers? This was the result that a pioneering treatment that used bone marrow cells from bodies of nine Japanese patients with cirrhosis is saying is really possible. The procedure could potentially ease the symptoms of cirrhosis and make a liver transplant unnecessary. “None of the patients was cured, but evidence from blood samples and liver scans suggested that their organs were functioning better six months after treatment,” said Isao Sakaida, head of the team at Yamaguchi University in western Japan that developed the treatment. “Another six patients show similar results, but haven’t been followed up yet for six months, and so weren’t included in our report,” he says.
Spinal cord damage promises to benefit from stem cells, a study carried out in injured rats with spinal cord damage suggested.
The team, led by Michael Fehlings at the Toronto Western Research Institute, Canada, used stem cells taken from mice brains. They injected a finely tuned cocktail of growth hormones, anti-inflammatory drugs and the cells into rats with crushed spines.
Although those rats not given the stem cell treatment naturally regained some of their hind limb function two weeks after the injury, they were however extremely uncoordinated. The stem cell treatment improved limb function, although it did not completely restore it.
Fehlings and his teammate found that while 30 per cent of the transplanted cells survived if the procedure took place two to three weeks after the rats suffered spinal cord damage, this number plummeted to five per cent transplantation that occurred between six and eight weeks after the injury.
No doubt stem cell is of immense importance to man’s existence, but the ethical issues must be resolved just as the several disreputes associated with the research need to be attended to properly.Will medical care be tranformed by this technology, time will tell.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Scientists discover new genus of frogmouth bird in Solomon Islands
A new genus of frogmouth bird is seen in the top right of this photograph taken April 18, 2007. It was found in the Solomon Islands by Florida Museum of Natural History ornithologists Andrew Kratter and David Steadman. New bird genera are rare discoveries --- only one per year is typically announced globally. Steadman believes the newly named Solomon Islands Frogmouth bird (Rigidipenna inexpectata) may be closely related to a genus of frogmouth bird found in the Philippines, (Batrachostomus), shown in the lower left. Credit: Florida Museum of Natural History
New genera of living birds are rare discoveries — fewer than one per year is announced globally. David Steadman and Andrew Kratter, ornithologists at the Florida Museum of Natural History, turned up the surprising new discovery on a collecting expedition in the Solomon Islands. Theirs is the first frogmouth from these islands to be caught by scientists in more than 100 years. They immediately recognized it was something different.
Kratter and Steadman are co-authors to a study analyzing the frogmouth’s morphology, or physical form, and DNA in comparison to two other living genera of frogmouths. The findings are published in the April print edition of Ibis: The International Journal of Avian Science, in a paper that describes the bird as a new genus and species, now named Rigidipenna inexpectata.
“This discovery underscores that birds on remote Pacific islands are still poorly known, scientifically speaking,” Steadman said. “Without the help of local hunters, we probably would have overlooked the frogmouth.” Originally, the bird was misclassified as a subspecies of the Australian Marbled Frogmouth, Podargus ocellatus.
The blunder went undetected for decades, until a collecting trip led by Kratter in 1998 turned up a specimen on Isabel, a 1,500-square-mile island in the Solomons. Today, the only museum specimen of this bird in the world, with an associated skin and skeleton, is housed at the Florida Museum. Frogmouths are predatory birds named for their strikingly wide, strong beak that resembles a frog’s mouth; but their beak also sports a small, sharp hook more like an owl’s. Steadman said their beaks are like no other bird’s in the world.
They eat insects, rodents, small birds — and yes, even frogs. For perspective on the scale of evolutionary difference between genera, consider that modern humans and Neanderthals are different species within the same genus (Homo), while chimpanzees are our living relatives from a closely related genus (Pan), but that we share the same taxonomic family (Hominidae) with our chimp cousins.
The Solomon Islands Frogmouth differs from other frogmouths in a number of significant ways. First, it is probably not as accomplished of a flier because its eight tail-feathers, instead of the typical 10 to 12 on other frogmouths, curtail its lift potential, and its much coarser feathers reduce maneuverability.
These are island adaptations that work to keep the bird on the island,” Steadman said. Second, it has distinct barring on the primary wing feathers and tail feathers, where other frogmouths are more uniform. Its speckles are larger, and the white spots on its breast and underbelly are more pronounced than on other frogmouths. Two other genera of frogmouths exist: one in southeast Asia and the other in Australia and New Guinea.
The Solomon Islands Frogmouth is known to inhabit three islands: Isabel, Bougainville and Guadalcanal. Van Remsen, curator of birds at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science, said that this new frogmouth genus serves as a poignant reminder that birds of the tropics, particularly from southeast Asia to Melanesia, have been paid scant attention by science.
“They’ve barely been studied, much of what we know comes from antiquated or casual observations,” Remsen said. “The biology of birds in these regions is, to a great extent, obscured by stale, hand-me-down classifications from an earlier era.
A combination of detailed morphological and genetic analyses reveal that this frogmouth — formerly dismissed as just a race of an existing species — actually cannot be placed confidently in any existing genus, and so the data demand naming a new one.” Storrs Olson, a senior zoologist with the Smithsonian Institution, said that frogmouths are an enigmatic group of birds to begin with.
“That this should prove to be such a distinctive new genus, which it unquestionably is, has profound biogeographical implications and represents a real breakthrough in elucidating the evolutionary history of the family,” Olson said. Nigel Cleere of the The Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom is the lead author for the paper and additional co-authors include: Michael Braun and Christopher Huddleston of the Smithsonian Institution, Christopher Filardi of the University of Washington’s Burke Museum and Guy Dutson.
Source: University of Florida
New genera of living birds are rare discoveries — fewer than one per year is announced globally. David Steadman and Andrew Kratter, ornithologists at the Florida Museum of Natural History, turned up the surprising new discovery on a collecting expedition in the Solomon Islands. Theirs is the first frogmouth from these islands to be caught by scientists in more than 100 years. They immediately recognized it was something different.
Kratter and Steadman are co-authors to a study analyzing the frogmouth’s morphology, or physical form, and DNA in comparison to two other living genera of frogmouths. The findings are published in the April print edition of Ibis: The International Journal of Avian Science, in a paper that describes the bird as a new genus and species, now named Rigidipenna inexpectata.
“This discovery underscores that birds on remote Pacific islands are still poorly known, scientifically speaking,” Steadman said. “Without the help of local hunters, we probably would have overlooked the frogmouth.” Originally, the bird was misclassified as a subspecies of the Australian Marbled Frogmouth, Podargus ocellatus.
The blunder went undetected for decades, until a collecting trip led by Kratter in 1998 turned up a specimen on Isabel, a 1,500-square-mile island in the Solomons. Today, the only museum specimen of this bird in the world, with an associated skin and skeleton, is housed at the Florida Museum. Frogmouths are predatory birds named for their strikingly wide, strong beak that resembles a frog’s mouth; but their beak also sports a small, sharp hook more like an owl’s. Steadman said their beaks are like no other bird’s in the world.
They eat insects, rodents, small birds — and yes, even frogs. For perspective on the scale of evolutionary difference between genera, consider that modern humans and Neanderthals are different species within the same genus (Homo), while chimpanzees are our living relatives from a closely related genus (Pan), but that we share the same taxonomic family (Hominidae) with our chimp cousins.
The Solomon Islands Frogmouth differs from other frogmouths in a number of significant ways. First, it is probably not as accomplished of a flier because its eight tail-feathers, instead of the typical 10 to 12 on other frogmouths, curtail its lift potential, and its much coarser feathers reduce maneuverability.
These are island adaptations that work to keep the bird on the island,” Steadman said. Second, it has distinct barring on the primary wing feathers and tail feathers, where other frogmouths are more uniform. Its speckles are larger, and the white spots on its breast and underbelly are more pronounced than on other frogmouths. Two other genera of frogmouths exist: one in southeast Asia and the other in Australia and New Guinea.
The Solomon Islands Frogmouth is known to inhabit three islands: Isabel, Bougainville and Guadalcanal. Van Remsen, curator of birds at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science, said that this new frogmouth genus serves as a poignant reminder that birds of the tropics, particularly from southeast Asia to Melanesia, have been paid scant attention by science.
“They’ve barely been studied, much of what we know comes from antiquated or casual observations,” Remsen said. “The biology of birds in these regions is, to a great extent, obscured by stale, hand-me-down classifications from an earlier era.
A combination of detailed morphological and genetic analyses reveal that this frogmouth — formerly dismissed as just a race of an existing species — actually cannot be placed confidently in any existing genus, and so the data demand naming a new one.” Storrs Olson, a senior zoologist with the Smithsonian Institution, said that frogmouths are an enigmatic group of birds to begin with.
“That this should prove to be such a distinctive new genus, which it unquestionably is, has profound biogeographical implications and represents a real breakthrough in elucidating the evolutionary history of the family,” Olson said. Nigel Cleere of the The Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom is the lead author for the paper and additional co-authors include: Michael Braun and Christopher Huddleston of the Smithsonian Institution, Christopher Filardi of the University of Washington’s Burke Museum and Guy Dutson.
Source: University of Florida
Friday, April 20, 2007
Embryonic stem cell pioneer chose to publish, not patent
By Terri Somers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Ariff Bongso has spent years studying days-old human embryos created through test-tube fertilization.
In the early 1990s, Bongso, a National University of Singapore scientist, figured out how to help these embryos grow for days outside the womb. That discovery almost doubled the success rate of the procedure.
Then one day, as he inspected some embryos – which look like globes of gel with an outer cluster of 100 to 200 stem cells and a dark, inner mass of about 40 to 50 cells – an idea came to him “like a flash.”
If all 210 cell types of the human body come from that inner cell mass, could he extract those cells and grow them in a petri dish? Could he control how they grew and evolved, and direct them to become a specific cell type? Similar work had been done on mice; why not humans?
That inspiration in 1994 led Bongso, now 60, to become the first scientist to derive human stem cells from an embryo. In the process, he laid the foundation for a field that many people hope will lead to new therapies for diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's and cancer – and that others oppose because it destroys embryos.
“Bongso made the connection between his area of expertise, human embryology, and stem cells, and just went for it,” said Jeanne Loring, a stem cell researcher at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla. “That's how great scientific discoveries are made, for the sake of curiosity.”
But Bongso never patented his work.
For almost a decade, the fame and financial benefit of being the first to derive human embryonic stem cells has been heaped upon James Thomson and the University of Wisconsin.
In 1998, the university received its first U.S. patents for Thomson's work growing monkey and human embryonic stem cells. The university's three patents give it control of all human embryonic stem cells used in the United States. Anyone in the nation who wants to conduct research using the cells must receive a license from the university, which is reported to charge as much as $250,000.
On April 2, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a ruling that may invalidate the Wisconsin patents. Bongso's work was identified as proof that what Thomson did was not new and unique.
Loring and two nonprofit groups, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa Monica and the New York-based Public Patent Foundation, had filed a challenge of the Thomson patent in July.
The university, which can appeal the ruling at the patent office and also could take its appeal to federal court, has said it is confident the patents will be upheld and that the challenge is fueled by scientists who want to use groundbreaking science without paying a fee.
Bongso had not been following the debate very closely. During a rare interview in his office in Singapore last year, Bongso said he did not want to get involved.
“All I would hope for is that someone find a beneficial use for these mysterious cells in the form of a treatment for some of the incurable diseases that plague mankind,” he said.
Recently, he seemed pleased to hear of the patent office decision.
“My group and I feel elated that our work has been recognized because we were toiling in obscurity in a tiny lab in Singapore for many years, trying to make a difference to mankind,” Bongso said.
Stem cell research is a hot topic right now. But in the early 1990s, the hot field was in vitro, or test-tube, fertilization. Bongso was in the thick of it.
When Bongso figured out how to pull stem cells out of donated human embryos, he thought it was “hot stuff.”
He wrote a scientific paper describing his methods and results. Then he sent the article to the journal Human Reproduction.
“It is the journal in the IVF world, and I thought only people in IVF would be interested in my discovery,” Bongso said.
He never considered broader-circulation scientific publications such as Nature or Science.
He also never considered patenting his discovery.
“The climate in Asia at that time was publish, not patent,” Bongso said. “Publish for scientific glory.”
In October 1994, his article was published – but it failed to generate much interest.
Bongso forged ahead, concentrating on growing the stem cells on fallopian tube cells, which had proved to be the trick with embryos. His method never allowed the stem cells to grow past two generations.
“Through 1995, 1996 and 1997, no one seemed interested in my work,” Bongso said. “A scientist gauges his work based on the interest that other scientists show in carrying forward his work. When there was no interest, I lost interest. I moved on.”
He redirected his focus to human fertilization.
The lack of interest in human embryonic stem cells was a result of several things, primarily the fact that scientists were immersed in mouse embryonic stem cells, said Loring, from the Burnham Institute.
“There were so many things you could do with mouse stem cells at the time; no one was really thinking about humans,” she said. “And there was also an issue of access to human embryos.”
Long before Bongso made his stem cell discovery, Thomson visited his department at the National University of Singapore to see what Bongso's team was doing in in vitro fertilization.
Both scientists had a background in veterinary science.
Thomson worked with primates. Bongso had done notable work at the behest of the United Nations, figuring out what was causing infertility among water buffalo, a crucial work animal in South Asia.
As a result, Bongso said he considers Thomson a friend.
In the late 1990s, Thomson began applying for a U.S. patent on his technique for deriving stem cells from a primate (monkey) embryo. After several initial denials and revisions, Thomson received his first patent in 1998. In that patent, he said that a few months after pulling stem cells out of a nonhuman primate embryo, he did it with a human embryo.
Thomson's work went further. He figured out how to grow several generations of stem cells, creating stem cell lines.
“The steps he used are mine,” Bongso said.
“But there was no patent on the process, and the culture of science in the U.S. is patent or perish: Create wealth from your research. Only recently has the life science drive in Singapore changed our culture.”
Thomson declined to be interviewed for this story.
Bongso was quick to credit Thomson for growing several generations of stem cell colonies in 1998. And he reflected on what his lab did wrong.
“We were (separating) our embryonic stem cells into single cells (in separate dishes) for further propagation not realizing that these cells had the unique behavior of being 'social,' ” Bongso said. “This means they preferred neighboring cells of their same type in close contact with them for further successful propagation.”
In retrospect, Bongso had the crucial material – embryos – but did not have the technique that Thomson mastered working with primates and stem cells, Loring said.
“But Thomson's work was an advance, not an invention,” said Loring, summing up the core argument of the patent challenge.
“Thomson made a very important contribution to science,” said John Simpson of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. “It just wasn't something that was patentable.”
Thomson grew his embryonic stem cells on feeder cells that included mouse cells. The exposure to animal cells has meant the stem cells could never be used in therapies to treat humans.
When Bongso returned to stem cell research, he started trying to develop a method of growing embryonic stem cells on all-human feeder cells, which would erase the contamination concern.
In 2002, Bongso discovered a way to grow stem cells on human feeders. This time, he patented his discovery.
He also wanted to make stem cell lines, or families of stem cells.
Thomson was concurrently doing the same work, said Martin Pera, who runs the stem cell program at University of Southern California.
“Ariff is a delightful person, very pleasant and open, good to work with,” Pera said. “The fact that he published his initial attempts is important. He didn't establish permanent cell lines, but he was a real pioneer in the field.”
Whether that makes Thomson's work an invention rather than an advance is a question better posed to intellectual property experts, Pera said.
Bongso doesn't begrudge Thomson his acclaim.
“My objective is not commercialization,” he said. “I very sincerely hope that some day this science will lead to treatments for diabetes or heart disease. That would be my greatest joy.”
Terri Somers: (619) 293-2028; terri.somers@uniontrib.com
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Ariff Bongso has spent years studying days-old human embryos created through test-tube fertilization.
In the early 1990s, Bongso, a National University of Singapore scientist, figured out how to help these embryos grow for days outside the womb. That discovery almost doubled the success rate of the procedure.
Then one day, as he inspected some embryos – which look like globes of gel with an outer cluster of 100 to 200 stem cells and a dark, inner mass of about 40 to 50 cells – an idea came to him “like a flash.”
If all 210 cell types of the human body come from that inner cell mass, could he extract those cells and grow them in a petri dish? Could he control how they grew and evolved, and direct them to become a specific cell type? Similar work had been done on mice; why not humans?
That inspiration in 1994 led Bongso, now 60, to become the first scientist to derive human stem cells from an embryo. In the process, he laid the foundation for a field that many people hope will lead to new therapies for diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's and cancer – and that others oppose because it destroys embryos.
“Bongso made the connection between his area of expertise, human embryology, and stem cells, and just went for it,” said Jeanne Loring, a stem cell researcher at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla. “That's how great scientific discoveries are made, for the sake of curiosity.”
But Bongso never patented his work.
For almost a decade, the fame and financial benefit of being the first to derive human embryonic stem cells has been heaped upon James Thomson and the University of Wisconsin.
In 1998, the university received its first U.S. patents for Thomson's work growing monkey and human embryonic stem cells. The university's three patents give it control of all human embryonic stem cells used in the United States. Anyone in the nation who wants to conduct research using the cells must receive a license from the university, which is reported to charge as much as $250,000.
On April 2, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a ruling that may invalidate the Wisconsin patents. Bongso's work was identified as proof that what Thomson did was not new and unique.
Loring and two nonprofit groups, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa Monica and the New York-based Public Patent Foundation, had filed a challenge of the Thomson patent in July.
The university, which can appeal the ruling at the patent office and also could take its appeal to federal court, has said it is confident the patents will be upheld and that the challenge is fueled by scientists who want to use groundbreaking science without paying a fee.
Bongso had not been following the debate very closely. During a rare interview in his office in Singapore last year, Bongso said he did not want to get involved.
“All I would hope for is that someone find a beneficial use for these mysterious cells in the form of a treatment for some of the incurable diseases that plague mankind,” he said.
Recently, he seemed pleased to hear of the patent office decision.
“My group and I feel elated that our work has been recognized because we were toiling in obscurity in a tiny lab in Singapore for many years, trying to make a difference to mankind,” Bongso said.
Stem cell research is a hot topic right now. But in the early 1990s, the hot field was in vitro, or test-tube, fertilization. Bongso was in the thick of it.
When Bongso figured out how to pull stem cells out of donated human embryos, he thought it was “hot stuff.”
He wrote a scientific paper describing his methods and results. Then he sent the article to the journal Human Reproduction.
“It is the journal in the IVF world, and I thought only people in IVF would be interested in my discovery,” Bongso said.
He never considered broader-circulation scientific publications such as Nature or Science.
He also never considered patenting his discovery.
“The climate in Asia at that time was publish, not patent,” Bongso said. “Publish for scientific glory.”
In October 1994, his article was published – but it failed to generate much interest.
Bongso forged ahead, concentrating on growing the stem cells on fallopian tube cells, which had proved to be the trick with embryos. His method never allowed the stem cells to grow past two generations.
“Through 1995, 1996 and 1997, no one seemed interested in my work,” Bongso said. “A scientist gauges his work based on the interest that other scientists show in carrying forward his work. When there was no interest, I lost interest. I moved on.”
He redirected his focus to human fertilization.
The lack of interest in human embryonic stem cells was a result of several things, primarily the fact that scientists were immersed in mouse embryonic stem cells, said Loring, from the Burnham Institute.
“There were so many things you could do with mouse stem cells at the time; no one was really thinking about humans,” she said. “And there was also an issue of access to human embryos.”
Long before Bongso made his stem cell discovery, Thomson visited his department at the National University of Singapore to see what Bongso's team was doing in in vitro fertilization.
Both scientists had a background in veterinary science.
Thomson worked with primates. Bongso had done notable work at the behest of the United Nations, figuring out what was causing infertility among water buffalo, a crucial work animal in South Asia.
As a result, Bongso said he considers Thomson a friend.
In the late 1990s, Thomson began applying for a U.S. patent on his technique for deriving stem cells from a primate (monkey) embryo. After several initial denials and revisions, Thomson received his first patent in 1998. In that patent, he said that a few months after pulling stem cells out of a nonhuman primate embryo, he did it with a human embryo.
Thomson's work went further. He figured out how to grow several generations of stem cells, creating stem cell lines.
“The steps he used are mine,” Bongso said.
“But there was no patent on the process, and the culture of science in the U.S. is patent or perish: Create wealth from your research. Only recently has the life science drive in Singapore changed our culture.”
Thomson declined to be interviewed for this story.
Bongso was quick to credit Thomson for growing several generations of stem cell colonies in 1998. And he reflected on what his lab did wrong.
“We were (separating) our embryonic stem cells into single cells (in separate dishes) for further propagation not realizing that these cells had the unique behavior of being 'social,' ” Bongso said. “This means they preferred neighboring cells of their same type in close contact with them for further successful propagation.”
In retrospect, Bongso had the crucial material – embryos – but did not have the technique that Thomson mastered working with primates and stem cells, Loring said.
“But Thomson's work was an advance, not an invention,” said Loring, summing up the core argument of the patent challenge.
“Thomson made a very important contribution to science,” said John Simpson of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. “It just wasn't something that was patentable.”
Thomson grew his embryonic stem cells on feeder cells that included mouse cells. The exposure to animal cells has meant the stem cells could never be used in therapies to treat humans.
When Bongso returned to stem cell research, he started trying to develop a method of growing embryonic stem cells on all-human feeder cells, which would erase the contamination concern.
In 2002, Bongso discovered a way to grow stem cells on human feeders. This time, he patented his discovery.
He also wanted to make stem cell lines, or families of stem cells.
Thomson was concurrently doing the same work, said Martin Pera, who runs the stem cell program at University of Southern California.
“Ariff is a delightful person, very pleasant and open, good to work with,” Pera said. “The fact that he published his initial attempts is important. He didn't establish permanent cell lines, but he was a real pioneer in the field.”
Whether that makes Thomson's work an invention rather than an advance is a question better posed to intellectual property experts, Pera said.
Bongso doesn't begrudge Thomson his acclaim.
“My objective is not commercialization,” he said. “I very sincerely hope that some day this science will lead to treatments for diabetes or heart disease. That would be my greatest joy.”
Terri Somers: (619) 293-2028; terri.somers@uniontrib.com
Monday, April 16, 2007
Staunching the brain drain
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
When Israel's academic and research institutions find themselves in crisis, they needn't try to reinvent the wheel. Many other nations have experience in dealing with similar contingencies, and there is much to be learned from them.
Since educational systems can also learn from each other, a recent symposium on reforming the higher educational system in Israel - held at the Israel Academy of Science and featuring several outstanding people from abroad - was very useful.
Prof. Benno Schmidt, chairman of the board of trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY), nodded at former finance minister Avraham Shochat at the end of his speech and said: "Good luck to you, sir. You have an important assignment. It's time to think boldly in Israel."
Shochat, who since October has been chairing a committee on the reform of higher education, smiled knowingly at Schmidt - former president of Yale and an expert on constitutional law. Shochat's as-yet-unannounced reforms have already provoked a strike by students who fear he will raise tuition.
Schmidt told the audience of several dozen university and college presidents and other academics that he recommended a "fundamental reassessment" of the direction of higher education here, given the current ageing of university faculties, the brain drain of young scholars and scientists, and the decaying research infrastructure due to cutbacks in state financing.
A DECADE ago, then-New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani asked Schmidt to head a task force to reform CUNY, the network of public colleges in New York City.
As a visitor from abroad, Schmidt told the symposium that he could "only marvel at productivity and excellence of universities here, especially in scientific and technological research. I'm stunned that your universities have accomplished so much on the budgets they have. But when I hear about the decline in public funding, the superannuation of your faculty [average age 53] and the brain drain, it made me think of times at Yale and CUNY [when reform was needed]."
The US lawyer and academic leader said that during the past quarter century in the US, there has been a "fundamental shift in thinking about the role of universities." As established businesses lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, innovative new businesses coupled with top research have thrived.
"Young people educated at research universities are the driving force behind US economic growth, and such higher education is seen as the only real source of future prosperity. Thus the federal government has made a massive investment in research universities, with $30 billion a year spent by the US National Institutes of Health alone."
Aware that raising tuition is a politically sensitive subject, Schmidt said: "We had riots at CUNY when we announced tuition hikes, but the students came around because there is substantial student support through loans and scholarships. I don't know why the beneficiaries of education should not contribute to its cost."
Schmidt said all New York universities have set up technology transfer companies to make deals with industry for implementing research and sharing profits with researchers.
"At Columbia University alone, the discoveries of just one investigator have brought in over $1 billion in royalties in 12 years."
He also recommended the establishment of teams bringing together scientists in various fields, and endorsed the idea of Hebrew University president Prof. Menachem Magidor to concentrate efforts in a small number of campuses.
Magidor stressed the importance of the universities in carrying out research, as opposed to regional colleges, whose focus is on degrees and vocations.
"What is a research university? It is for promoting new knowledge. It must not only train future leaders of a profession, but also teach students to think out of the box and ask difficult questions. Not all institutions of higher education can do it, so the role of research universities is essential to the future existence of the country."
Admitting that as HU president he was "somewhat biased," Magidor said he advocated the "concentration of research effort in the universities. If not, research will be spread too thinly." He noted that in the US, only 109 academic institutions, out of thousands, can be considered - by Israeli criteria - research universities.
PROF. RICHARD ATKINSON, a psychologist and memory expert at Stanford who is now president of the entire University of California higher education system, described the setup in California, in which 50% of the state's high-school graduates now go to university, college or community college, compared to only 12% a few decades ago.
Those whose school and state-wide test grades are in the highest 12.5% are accepted into university; in the top third by the state university system, and the bottom two-thirds by community colleges. Research programs get little money from the state, but much from the federal government's many agencies and some from private foundations.
Atkinson recommended California's peer-review system, in which grants are given to individuals and groups and not to whole universities, so that the best people are recruited and tenure isn't given to the unproductive.
"If you look at our state's biotech industry, all our top companies are within 25 miles of our great research universities," said Atkinson, who used to be chancellor of the University of California at San Diego, and after whom a mountain in Antarctica has been named. Another important milestone, he noted, was the Bayh-Dole Act, which gave intellectual property rights to the universities in which research was conducted, and not to the government that funded the research - with royalties going to the scientists.
Israel Academy president Prof. Menachem Ya'ari said for decades there were only seven academic universities (plus the Open University) and very few academic colleges. "Budget allocations used to be very haphazard. When a university president wanted a budget increase, the finance minister offered to take him for a ride to the office."
Then the Council of Higher Education's powerful planning and budgets committee was founded, which made the decisions more systematic.
Until the 1990s, Ya'ari continued, Israeli universities enjoyed expansion and relative prosperity. But then there was a change in the political arena, and a demand for more access to higher education. Fifty academic colleges have been established around the country, where little research is conducted. Meanwhile, an "anti-intellectual atmosphere" reduced academia's prestige, and the Treasury took advantage of this by deep budget cuts. "We are at the tail end of that crisis, but still grappling on how to get out of it," Ya'ari said. It was the crisis that led to the appointment of the Shochat Committee.
UNIVERSITY TUITION levels had been examined by a committee every five or six years, but then the Winograd Committee, under pressure from student demonstrations, cut it by 28%. "It was a very significant reduction," said Shochat, "and the government compensated somewhat but not enough."
His committee, he said, has many more issues to discuss than tuition, including how to promote research, the division of labor between teaching and research, and the relationship between academic institutions in the center and in the periphery. Ya'ari heads a sub-committee focusing on how to promote research in academic institutions.
Shochat, a former finance minister and mayor of Arad, said that if nothing major is done, the quality of Israeli universities and research will decline. There is almost no money to hire promising young lecturers, he said. "We must encourage excellence in research and promote the addition of young teaching staff." By the end of April, the subcommittees will bring recommendations, which will be integrated into a single report by June.
While not revealing what his committee will recommend, he said he would not have taken the temporary job unless he felt there was a real intention to increase higher education funds.
Prof. Shlomo Grossman, chairman of the planning and budgeting committee, said that in 2006, its budget was only $1.6 billion. The bright side is that there are many more academic college students in north and south (but unfortunately, a decline in the Jerusalem region). "There are more going to higher education in the Arab and haredi sectors than we ever expected."
But he noted that 48% of university faculty are over 55. Grossman also revealed that half of Israelis doing doctorates or post-doctoral work in the US have no firm plans to return to Israel. "This is a very worrisome warning sign. Israel must bring back and attract the best minds."
When Israel's academic and research institutions find themselves in crisis, they needn't try to reinvent the wheel. Many other nations have experience in dealing with similar contingencies, and there is much to be learned from them.
Since educational systems can also learn from each other, a recent symposium on reforming the higher educational system in Israel - held at the Israel Academy of Science and featuring several outstanding people from abroad - was very useful.
Prof. Benno Schmidt, chairman of the board of trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY), nodded at former finance minister Avraham Shochat at the end of his speech and said: "Good luck to you, sir. You have an important assignment. It's time to think boldly in Israel."
Shochat, who since October has been chairing a committee on the reform of higher education, smiled knowingly at Schmidt - former president of Yale and an expert on constitutional law. Shochat's as-yet-unannounced reforms have already provoked a strike by students who fear he will raise tuition.
Schmidt told the audience of several dozen university and college presidents and other academics that he recommended a "fundamental reassessment" of the direction of higher education here, given the current ageing of university faculties, the brain drain of young scholars and scientists, and the decaying research infrastructure due to cutbacks in state financing.
A DECADE ago, then-New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani asked Schmidt to head a task force to reform CUNY, the network of public colleges in New York City.
As a visitor from abroad, Schmidt told the symposium that he could "only marvel at productivity and excellence of universities here, especially in scientific and technological research. I'm stunned that your universities have accomplished so much on the budgets they have. But when I hear about the decline in public funding, the superannuation of your faculty [average age 53] and the brain drain, it made me think of times at Yale and CUNY [when reform was needed]."
The US lawyer and academic leader said that during the past quarter century in the US, there has been a "fundamental shift in thinking about the role of universities." As established businesses lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, innovative new businesses coupled with top research have thrived.
"Young people educated at research universities are the driving force behind US economic growth, and such higher education is seen as the only real source of future prosperity. Thus the federal government has made a massive investment in research universities, with $30 billion a year spent by the US National Institutes of Health alone."
Aware that raising tuition is a politically sensitive subject, Schmidt said: "We had riots at CUNY when we announced tuition hikes, but the students came around because there is substantial student support through loans and scholarships. I don't know why the beneficiaries of education should not contribute to its cost."
Schmidt said all New York universities have set up technology transfer companies to make deals with industry for implementing research and sharing profits with researchers.
"At Columbia University alone, the discoveries of just one investigator have brought in over $1 billion in royalties in 12 years."
He also recommended the establishment of teams bringing together scientists in various fields, and endorsed the idea of Hebrew University president Prof. Menachem Magidor to concentrate efforts in a small number of campuses.
Magidor stressed the importance of the universities in carrying out research, as opposed to regional colleges, whose focus is on degrees and vocations.
"What is a research university? It is for promoting new knowledge. It must not only train future leaders of a profession, but also teach students to think out of the box and ask difficult questions. Not all institutions of higher education can do it, so the role of research universities is essential to the future existence of the country."
Admitting that as HU president he was "somewhat biased," Magidor said he advocated the "concentration of research effort in the universities. If not, research will be spread too thinly." He noted that in the US, only 109 academic institutions, out of thousands, can be considered - by Israeli criteria - research universities.
PROF. RICHARD ATKINSON, a psychologist and memory expert at Stanford who is now president of the entire University of California higher education system, described the setup in California, in which 50% of the state's high-school graduates now go to university, college or community college, compared to only 12% a few decades ago.
Those whose school and state-wide test grades are in the highest 12.5% are accepted into university; in the top third by the state university system, and the bottom two-thirds by community colleges. Research programs get little money from the state, but much from the federal government's many agencies and some from private foundations.
Atkinson recommended California's peer-review system, in which grants are given to individuals and groups and not to whole universities, so that the best people are recruited and tenure isn't given to the unproductive.
"If you look at our state's biotech industry, all our top companies are within 25 miles of our great research universities," said Atkinson, who used to be chancellor of the University of California at San Diego, and after whom a mountain in Antarctica has been named. Another important milestone, he noted, was the Bayh-Dole Act, which gave intellectual property rights to the universities in which research was conducted, and not to the government that funded the research - with royalties going to the scientists.
Israel Academy president Prof. Menachem Ya'ari said for decades there were only seven academic universities (plus the Open University) and very few academic colleges. "Budget allocations used to be very haphazard. When a university president wanted a budget increase, the finance minister offered to take him for a ride to the office."
Then the Council of Higher Education's powerful planning and budgets committee was founded, which made the decisions more systematic.
Until the 1990s, Ya'ari continued, Israeli universities enjoyed expansion and relative prosperity. But then there was a change in the political arena, and a demand for more access to higher education. Fifty academic colleges have been established around the country, where little research is conducted. Meanwhile, an "anti-intellectual atmosphere" reduced academia's prestige, and the Treasury took advantage of this by deep budget cuts. "We are at the tail end of that crisis, but still grappling on how to get out of it," Ya'ari said. It was the crisis that led to the appointment of the Shochat Committee.
UNIVERSITY TUITION levels had been examined by a committee every five or six years, but then the Winograd Committee, under pressure from student demonstrations, cut it by 28%. "It was a very significant reduction," said Shochat, "and the government compensated somewhat but not enough."
His committee, he said, has many more issues to discuss than tuition, including how to promote research, the division of labor between teaching and research, and the relationship between academic institutions in the center and in the periphery. Ya'ari heads a sub-committee focusing on how to promote research in academic institutions.
Shochat, a former finance minister and mayor of Arad, said that if nothing major is done, the quality of Israeli universities and research will decline. There is almost no money to hire promising young lecturers, he said. "We must encourage excellence in research and promote the addition of young teaching staff." By the end of April, the subcommittees will bring recommendations, which will be integrated into a single report by June.
While not revealing what his committee will recommend, he said he would not have taken the temporary job unless he felt there was a real intention to increase higher education funds.
Prof. Shlomo Grossman, chairman of the planning and budgeting committee, said that in 2006, its budget was only $1.6 billion. The bright side is that there are many more academic college students in north and south (but unfortunately, a decline in the Jerusalem region). "There are more going to higher education in the Arab and haredi sectors than we ever expected."
But he noted that 48% of university faculty are over 55. Grossman also revealed that half of Israelis doing doctorates or post-doctoral work in the US have no firm plans to return to Israel. "This is a very worrisome warning sign. Israel must bring back and attract the best minds."
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Natural discoveries made in New Guinea forest
by: John Yeld
We were like kids let loose in a candy store! That is how co-leader Dr Bruce Beehler has described a November 2005 expedition by a team of natural scientists to a "Lost World" in the great tropical island of New Guinea.
The team, from the United States, Europe, Australia and Indonesia, was flown in by helicopter to the mist-shrouded Foja Mountains in the least-explored western province of Indonesian New Guinea.
They emerged after 15 days, having made a series of discoveries and re-discoveries, that rocked their respective scientific communities.
"It's a bit of an adventure story and a mystery story and a natural history story," ornithologist and tropical ecologist Beehler told a rapt audience at the Sasol Scifest 2007 science festival in Grahamstown last week.
The vice-president of the Washington-based Conservation International explained that the remote Foja Mountains were extremely difficult to get to.
The closest community, where the scientific community had their base camp and from where they flew out into the mountains, was a small coastal village occupied by about 150 people.
"They are a forest people - virtually everything they have and use is taken from the forest which is a very rich tropical rainforest. It's not an easy life but it's a rich life, and it's a nice place to be."
It took us about 18 months to get permission from the local stewards, the people who own this forest, to be able to go in."
"They had to get to trust us, think of us as partners and not as exploiters who are going to take something away. And that's not an easy explanation for these local people because most of the foreigners who come to a place like this are there looking for something - gas, oil, gold, copper or nickel!
The forest is all they have - it's their patrimony, and they take this patrimony and any trespassing very seriously."There's not a single village above about 70m in the Foja Mountain region, Beehler explained."
So basically there's no-one living in the foothills or the uplands, and in fact we could find no evidence of any trail or hunting camp where we went, there's no human impact. "It was really quite stunning. Essentially, you have a 300 000ha virgin forest with no people, no trails, no trash and no trouble. That's what really makes it remarkable to us."They established a camp on the edge of a natural clearing - a moss bog wetland - at a height of 2 000m."
We were very happy to be there because basically we were in a place that very few people had ever seen. It was a beautiful fairyland, what we call elfin forest or cloud forest or moss forest.
They're very pleasant, interesting places to be - very peaceful, not too hot."For most of the 15 days, their camp was shrouded in mist, rain and fog, but this did not prevent them making discoveries that included what was possibly a new species of forest dragon (like an iguana) and 40 species of frogs of which 20 are new to science. "We really hit the ball out of the park with the frogs!" commented Beehler.
They also found four new butterfly species; a series of previously undescribed plants that included five new palm species; a white-flowered rhododendron with the largest flower of this genus on record.
They also came across new breeding locations for both the Golden-mantled Tree Kangaroo - described as the rarest creature in the entire Pacific region. They also encountered the giant echidna, an extremely strange egg-laying mammal known as a monotreme (similar to Australia's duck-billed platypus) that also has a pouch like a marsupial and is now also one of New Guinea's rarest mammals because of hunting pressure.
They also secured the first photographs of the previously "lost" Golden-fronted Bowerbird displaying at its incredibly complex bower - a 2m high love tower that it uses to attract a mate - and found the formerly unknown breeding ground of another "lost" bird, the spectacular Six-wired Bird of Paradise.
Both birds were originally known to science only through dried specimens sent to Europe during the 19th century plume trade when the use of exotic feathers, and even whole birds, on women's hats was all the rage.
"The male and female (Bird of Paradise) came into our camp on the third day we were there and did a display right in front is us, which really was mind-boggling," said Beehler.
Probably their most remarkable scientific find was the discovery of a new species of Honeyeater, the first new bird species for New Guinea since 1942 and which Beehler is naming after his wife Carol.
Beehler, who is planning a return expedition later this year, commented in an earlier radio interview:"It's really as close as you can get to nirvana for an ornithologist or a tropical ecologist. It's really very special."
We were like kids let loose in a candy store! That is how co-leader Dr Bruce Beehler has described a November 2005 expedition by a team of natural scientists to a "Lost World" in the great tropical island of New Guinea.
The team, from the United States, Europe, Australia and Indonesia, was flown in by helicopter to the mist-shrouded Foja Mountains in the least-explored western province of Indonesian New Guinea.
They emerged after 15 days, having made a series of discoveries and re-discoveries, that rocked their respective scientific communities.
"It's a bit of an adventure story and a mystery story and a natural history story," ornithologist and tropical ecologist Beehler told a rapt audience at the Sasol Scifest 2007 science festival in Grahamstown last week.
The vice-president of the Washington-based Conservation International explained that the remote Foja Mountains were extremely difficult to get to.
The closest community, where the scientific community had their base camp and from where they flew out into the mountains, was a small coastal village occupied by about 150 people.
"They are a forest people - virtually everything they have and use is taken from the forest which is a very rich tropical rainforest. It's not an easy life but it's a rich life, and it's a nice place to be."
It took us about 18 months to get permission from the local stewards, the people who own this forest, to be able to go in."
"They had to get to trust us, think of us as partners and not as exploiters who are going to take something away. And that's not an easy explanation for these local people because most of the foreigners who come to a place like this are there looking for something - gas, oil, gold, copper or nickel!
The forest is all they have - it's their patrimony, and they take this patrimony and any trespassing very seriously."There's not a single village above about 70m in the Foja Mountain region, Beehler explained."
So basically there's no-one living in the foothills or the uplands, and in fact we could find no evidence of any trail or hunting camp where we went, there's no human impact. "It was really quite stunning. Essentially, you have a 300 000ha virgin forest with no people, no trails, no trash and no trouble. That's what really makes it remarkable to us."They established a camp on the edge of a natural clearing - a moss bog wetland - at a height of 2 000m."
We were very happy to be there because basically we were in a place that very few people had ever seen. It was a beautiful fairyland, what we call elfin forest or cloud forest or moss forest.
They're very pleasant, interesting places to be - very peaceful, not too hot."For most of the 15 days, their camp was shrouded in mist, rain and fog, but this did not prevent them making discoveries that included what was possibly a new species of forest dragon (like an iguana) and 40 species of frogs of which 20 are new to science. "We really hit the ball out of the park with the frogs!" commented Beehler.
They also found four new butterfly species; a series of previously undescribed plants that included five new palm species; a white-flowered rhododendron with the largest flower of this genus on record.
They also came across new breeding locations for both the Golden-mantled Tree Kangaroo - described as the rarest creature in the entire Pacific region. They also encountered the giant echidna, an extremely strange egg-laying mammal known as a monotreme (similar to Australia's duck-billed platypus) that also has a pouch like a marsupial and is now also one of New Guinea's rarest mammals because of hunting pressure.
They also secured the first photographs of the previously "lost" Golden-fronted Bowerbird displaying at its incredibly complex bower - a 2m high love tower that it uses to attract a mate - and found the formerly unknown breeding ground of another "lost" bird, the spectacular Six-wired Bird of Paradise.
Both birds were originally known to science only through dried specimens sent to Europe during the 19th century plume trade when the use of exotic feathers, and even whole birds, on women's hats was all the rage.
"The male and female (Bird of Paradise) came into our camp on the third day we were there and did a display right in front is us, which really was mind-boggling," said Beehler.
Probably their most remarkable scientific find was the discovery of a new species of Honeyeater, the first new bird species for New Guinea since 1942 and which Beehler is naming after his wife Carol.
Beehler, who is planning a return expedition later this year, commented in an earlier radio interview:"It's really as close as you can get to nirvana for an ornithologist or a tropical ecologist. It's really very special."
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Dust storms causing global warming on Mars?
By Ker Than
Shifting dust storms on Mars might be contributing to global warming there that is shrinking the planet's southern polar ice caps, scientists say.
Computer simulations similar to those used to predict weather here on Earth show that the bright, windblown dust and sand particles affects Mars’ albedo—the amount of sunlight reflected from the planet’s surface.
The research, detailed in the April 5 issue of the journal Nature, suggests these albedo variations play an important role in the climate of Mars. It could also potentially explain how global dust storms are triggered on the red planet.
A darkening world
Researchers from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey fed two albedo maps of the Martian surface into a computer model called the Mars general circulation model (MGCM).
The model calculated the surface temperature and wind intensity on Mars at the times the maps were made. Both maps show the same area on Mars, but one was made using Viking data collected in the late 1970s, while the other was created with Mars Global Surveyor data collected in recent years.
Across the past two decades, the model showed the surface temperature of Mars has increased by about 0.65 degrees Celsius (1.17 degrees Fahrenheit).
“That magnitude of change is comparable to what we’ve estimated for global warming on Earth over the last 100 years,” said study participant Paul Geissler of the USGS.
The model also found that winds have strengthened over regions with the lowest albedo.
The researchers think all these events are related and have proposed a mechanism by which lower albedo drives wind circulation, creating even lower albedo. They think it works like this: In regions where winds blow away dust, the exposed dark ground absorbs sunlight and heats up; some of this heat is transferred into the atmosphere and heats up the air. Just like on Earth, the imbalance in the atmosphere’s heat increases wind circulation above those regions.
“This could lead to a positive feedback effect in which the surface changes strengthen the winds that are producing the surface changes,” Geissler said in a telephone interview.
Winds of change
The wind speeds could ramp up until a threshold is reached, at which point conditions are ripe for a dust storm that swamps the entire planet, the researchers speculate.
“A dust storm is kind of like a big party that picks up dust and tosses it everywhere,” said study leader Lori Fenton of the NASA Ames Research Center in California. “It takes forever to clean up after a party.”
Once the dust storm subsides, particles fall out of the atmosphere and are redistributed over a large portion of the planet. “You can almost think of a big dust storm as a resetting mechanism,” Fenton told SPACE.com.
The researchers think they are on the right track because the computer model predicts a build-up of heat in the atmosphere above Mars’ southern hemisphere that is roughly equal to the amount of energy necessary to account for the diminishment of the planet’s southern polar ice caps that has been observed in recent years.
Scientists have struggled to explain the shrinkage and have blamed it on everything from fluctuations in the sun’s output to natural variations in the planet’s orbit and tilt.
“We haven’t really had a really good explanation for this in the past,” Geissler said. “We found that this mechanism could contribute or possibly explain the rapid sublimation of the south polar cap.”
Shifting dust storms on Mars might be contributing to global warming there that is shrinking the planet's southern polar ice caps, scientists say.
Computer simulations similar to those used to predict weather here on Earth show that the bright, windblown dust and sand particles affects Mars’ albedo—the amount of sunlight reflected from the planet’s surface.
The research, detailed in the April 5 issue of the journal Nature, suggests these albedo variations play an important role in the climate of Mars. It could also potentially explain how global dust storms are triggered on the red planet.
A darkening world
Researchers from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey fed two albedo maps of the Martian surface into a computer model called the Mars general circulation model (MGCM).
The model calculated the surface temperature and wind intensity on Mars at the times the maps were made. Both maps show the same area on Mars, but one was made using Viking data collected in the late 1970s, while the other was created with Mars Global Surveyor data collected in recent years.
Across the past two decades, the model showed the surface temperature of Mars has increased by about 0.65 degrees Celsius (1.17 degrees Fahrenheit).
“That magnitude of change is comparable to what we’ve estimated for global warming on Earth over the last 100 years,” said study participant Paul Geissler of the USGS.
The model also found that winds have strengthened over regions with the lowest albedo.
The researchers think all these events are related and have proposed a mechanism by which lower albedo drives wind circulation, creating even lower albedo. They think it works like this: In regions where winds blow away dust, the exposed dark ground absorbs sunlight and heats up; some of this heat is transferred into the atmosphere and heats up the air. Just like on Earth, the imbalance in the atmosphere’s heat increases wind circulation above those regions.
“This could lead to a positive feedback effect in which the surface changes strengthen the winds that are producing the surface changes,” Geissler said in a telephone interview.
Winds of change
The wind speeds could ramp up until a threshold is reached, at which point conditions are ripe for a dust storm that swamps the entire planet, the researchers speculate.
“A dust storm is kind of like a big party that picks up dust and tosses it everywhere,” said study leader Lori Fenton of the NASA Ames Research Center in California. “It takes forever to clean up after a party.”
Once the dust storm subsides, particles fall out of the atmosphere and are redistributed over a large portion of the planet. “You can almost think of a big dust storm as a resetting mechanism,” Fenton told SPACE.com.
The researchers think they are on the right track because the computer model predicts a build-up of heat in the atmosphere above Mars’ southern hemisphere that is roughly equal to the amount of energy necessary to account for the diminishment of the planet’s southern polar ice caps that has been observed in recent years.
Scientists have struggled to explain the shrinkage and have blamed it on everything from fluctuations in the sun’s output to natural variations in the planet’s orbit and tilt.
“We haven’t really had a really good explanation for this in the past,” Geissler said. “We found that this mechanism could contribute or possibly explain the rapid sublimation of the south polar cap.”
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Pluto discovery, again?
Just August last year, a meeting was held by the International Astronomical Union, around 424 astronomers voted out Pluto as a planet, thus excluded from our solar system.
This action was reached after group of astronomers and researchers did not come up with the real definition of a planet.
Now Pluto will not be included as a planet, what could be the effect on our science world? to the astronomy in particular.
This question will remain unanswered as long as these think-tank mind of astronomers do not settle their debates.
So much for our science learning during our primary years in school, surely it would go to
waste....
This action was reached after group of astronomers and researchers did not come up with the real definition of a planet.
Now Pluto will not be included as a planet, what could be the effect on our science world? to the astronomy in particular.
This question will remain unanswered as long as these think-tank mind of astronomers do not settle their debates.
So much for our science learning during our primary years in school, surely it would go to
waste....
Monday, April 2, 2007
Secret language of whales revealed
Deep below the ocean’s surface, blue whales are singing and for the first time, scientists think they know why.Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography recorded the sounds and say they offer new insight into the behavior of the passenger jet-sized animals.
Using tags suctioned to the whales’ bodies, researchers tracked the whales and found that as they feed, they send out calls to let each other know where they are, each group employing a different sound.
The noises play a similarly important role during mating season when males sing long, low-pitched songs to indicate their reproductive fitness to females. Females select mates based on size and estimate that by evaluating males’ songs: Larger males can take in more air and hold notes longer.
The research appeared in the January issue of the Marine Ecology Progress Series journal.A related study, also by Scripps researchers, found that there are distinct “dialects” of whale-speak in different regions of the ocean. The finding could have implications for preservation efforts.
Using tags suctioned to the whales’ bodies, researchers tracked the whales and found that as they feed, they send out calls to let each other know where they are, each group employing a different sound.
The noises play a similarly important role during mating season when males sing long, low-pitched songs to indicate their reproductive fitness to females. Females select mates based on size and estimate that by evaluating males’ songs: Larger males can take in more air and hold notes longer.
The research appeared in the January issue of the Marine Ecology Progress Series journal.A related study, also by Scripps researchers, found that there are distinct “dialects” of whale-speak in different regions of the ocean. The finding could have implications for preservation efforts.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Can We Survive on the Moon?
Overcoming the hazards of lunar life may depend on exploiting the paradoxical potential of the moon's gritty dust.
by Guy Gugliotta
When Neil Armstrong took “one giant leap for mankind” onto the surface of the moon in 1969, his booted foot sank into a layer of fine gray dust, leaving an imprint that would become the subject of one of the most famous photographs in history. Scientists called the dust lunar regolith, from the Greek rhegos for “blanket” and lithos for “stone.” Back then scientists regarded the regolith as simply part of the landscape, little more than the backdrop for the planting of the American flag.
No more. Lunar scientists have learned a lot about the moon since then. They’ve found that one of the biggest challenges to lunar settlement—as vexing as new rocketry or radiation—is how to live with regolith that covers virtually the entire lunar surface from a depth of 7 feet to perhaps 100 feet or more. It includes everything from huge boulders to particles only a few nanometers in diameter, but most of it is a puree created by uncountable high-speed micrometeorites that have been crashing into the moon unimpeded by atmosphere for more than 3 billion years. A handful of regolith consists of bits of stone, minerals, particles of glass created by the heat from the tiny impacts, and accretions of glass, minerals, and stone welded together.
Eons of melting, cooling, and agglomerating have transformed the glass particles in the regolith into a jagged-edged, abrasive powder that clings to anything it touches and packs together so densely that it becomes extremely hard to work on at any depth below four inches.
For those who would explore the moon—whether to train for exploring Mars, to mine resources, or to install high-precision observatories—regolith is a potentially crippling liability, an all-pervasive, pernicious threat to machinery and human tissue. After just three days of moonwalks, regolith threatened to grind the joints of the Apollo astronauts’ space suits to a halt, the same way rust crippled Dorothy’s Tin Man. Special sample cases built to hold the Apollo moon rocks lost their vacuum seals because of rims corrupted by dust. For a permanent lunar base, such mechanical failures could spell disaster.
A site near the south pole is favored for a lunar base because of the area’s relatively moderate temperatures and abundant sunlight.
Regolith can play havoc with hydraulics, freeze on-off switches, and turn ball bearings into Grape Nuts. When moondust is disturbed, small particles float about, land, and glue themselves to everything. Regolith does not brush off easily, and breathing it can cause pulmonary fibrosis, the lunar equivalent of black lung. There is nothing like it on Earth. “Here you have geological processes that tend to sort and separate,” says geologist Douglas Rickman of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “On the moon you have meteorite impacts that mix everything together.”
But space planners also see a brighter side to the story. Forty-two percent of regolith is oxygen by weight. Extract that and it will help make breathable air, rocket fuel, and, when mixed with hydrogen, water. Heat up regolith and it will harden into pavement, bricks, ceramic, or even solar panels to provide electricity. Cloak a living area in a thick enough blanket of it and it will enable astronauts to live radiation-free. If regolith is the curse of lunar exploration, it may also prove to be a blessing.
These issues lay dormant for three decades until January 2004, when President Bush announced his “Vision for Space Exploration” and gave NASA a new mandate: Return humans to the moon by 2020 and eventually send them on to Mars. More details of this plan emerged last December at a meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Houston.
Scientists are now thinking about what is needed to make the vision a reality. While there is debate about the political will to sustain lunar exploration (see “The Future of NASA,” DISCOVER, September 2006), the technical hurdles are beyond dispute. The next person to step on the moon again will be taking humanity where it has never gone before, because that person will be settling in to stay—and that will be extremely hard to do.
NASA’s current plans call for a series of “precursor” robotic lunar missions to test technologies and gather information. These will begin next year, long before NASA’s new Orion spaceship is ready to loft its four-astronaut crew moonward. By the time that happens, perhaps around 2018, planners hope to have resolved some key unknowns: whether there are ice deposits at one of the lunar poles, whether a space suit can be made that can survive multiple journeys across the dust-ridden landscape, and whether the human body can survive dust, lengthy stays in reduced gravity, and prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation.
by Guy Gugliotta
When Neil Armstrong took “one giant leap for mankind” onto the surface of the moon in 1969, his booted foot sank into a layer of fine gray dust, leaving an imprint that would become the subject of one of the most famous photographs in history. Scientists called the dust lunar regolith, from the Greek rhegos for “blanket” and lithos for “stone.” Back then scientists regarded the regolith as simply part of the landscape, little more than the backdrop for the planting of the American flag.
No more. Lunar scientists have learned a lot about the moon since then. They’ve found that one of the biggest challenges to lunar settlement—as vexing as new rocketry or radiation—is how to live with regolith that covers virtually the entire lunar surface from a depth of 7 feet to perhaps 100 feet or more. It includes everything from huge boulders to particles only a few nanometers in diameter, but most of it is a puree created by uncountable high-speed micrometeorites that have been crashing into the moon unimpeded by atmosphere for more than 3 billion years. A handful of regolith consists of bits of stone, minerals, particles of glass created by the heat from the tiny impacts, and accretions of glass, minerals, and stone welded together.
Eons of melting, cooling, and agglomerating have transformed the glass particles in the regolith into a jagged-edged, abrasive powder that clings to anything it touches and packs together so densely that it becomes extremely hard to work on at any depth below four inches.
For those who would explore the moon—whether to train for exploring Mars, to mine resources, or to install high-precision observatories—regolith is a potentially crippling liability, an all-pervasive, pernicious threat to machinery and human tissue. After just three days of moonwalks, regolith threatened to grind the joints of the Apollo astronauts’ space suits to a halt, the same way rust crippled Dorothy’s Tin Man. Special sample cases built to hold the Apollo moon rocks lost their vacuum seals because of rims corrupted by dust. For a permanent lunar base, such mechanical failures could spell disaster.
A site near the south pole is favored for a lunar base because of the area’s relatively moderate temperatures and abundant sunlight.
Regolith can play havoc with hydraulics, freeze on-off switches, and turn ball bearings into Grape Nuts. When moondust is disturbed, small particles float about, land, and glue themselves to everything. Regolith does not brush off easily, and breathing it can cause pulmonary fibrosis, the lunar equivalent of black lung. There is nothing like it on Earth. “Here you have geological processes that tend to sort and separate,” says geologist Douglas Rickman of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “On the moon you have meteorite impacts that mix everything together.”
But space planners also see a brighter side to the story. Forty-two percent of regolith is oxygen by weight. Extract that and it will help make breathable air, rocket fuel, and, when mixed with hydrogen, water. Heat up regolith and it will harden into pavement, bricks, ceramic, or even solar panels to provide electricity. Cloak a living area in a thick enough blanket of it and it will enable astronauts to live radiation-free. If regolith is the curse of lunar exploration, it may also prove to be a blessing.
These issues lay dormant for three decades until January 2004, when President Bush announced his “Vision for Space Exploration” and gave NASA a new mandate: Return humans to the moon by 2020 and eventually send them on to Mars. More details of this plan emerged last December at a meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Houston.
Scientists are now thinking about what is needed to make the vision a reality. While there is debate about the political will to sustain lunar exploration (see “The Future of NASA,” DISCOVER, September 2006), the technical hurdles are beyond dispute. The next person to step on the moon again will be taking humanity where it has never gone before, because that person will be settling in to stay—and that will be extremely hard to do.
NASA’s current plans call for a series of “precursor” robotic lunar missions to test technologies and gather information. These will begin next year, long before NASA’s new Orion spaceship is ready to loft its four-astronaut crew moonward. By the time that happens, perhaps around 2018, planners hope to have resolved some key unknowns: whether there are ice deposits at one of the lunar poles, whether a space suit can be made that can survive multiple journeys across the dust-ridden landscape, and whether the human body can survive dust, lengthy stays in reduced gravity, and prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation.
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