'Six-way' kidney transplant first

The transplants are carried out at once to stop donors backing out US doctors have carried out what is believed to be the world's first simultaneous six-way kidney transplant. Six recipients received organs from six donors in operations at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland. The procedure was made possible after an altruistic donor - neither a friend nor relative of any of the six patients - was found to match one of them. Five patients had a willing donor whose kidney was incompatible with theirs, but it did match another in the group. We want to spread the word about this sort of group surgery and living organ donation Jeanne Heise Recipient This meant that suddenly, there were six people who could receive an organ. The operations were carried out simultaneously to make sure no-one backed out after their loved one had received a kidney. "All 12 are doing great, the six kidneys are working well," said Dr Robert Montgomery, director of the transplant centre at the Johns Hopkins hospital. Team effort The hospital has been one of the pioneers of this system which matches up several groups of people at one time. It aims to circumvent the problem of altruistic donors ending up in arbitrary allocation systems where only a single patient's needs are served. The hospital has been carrying out these simultaneous transplants for three years: in 2005, the first triple procedure was performed, a year later, the first five-way. Nearly 100 medical professionals were needed to make the complex series of transplants possible, from immunogeneticists to hinder rejection to psychologists. If all goes to plan, each patient can expect their new kidney to last for as long as 20 years. Recipient Jeanne Heise, whose husband donated to another patient, said more people should know about the system. "The waiting list for a kidney is very long and too many people die while waiting," she said. "With this group procedure, more and more people can beat kidney disease and live long productive lives." The UK has so far carried out only two-way transplants, with the most recent - the third - just this week. The prospect of three-way transplants is currently being examined. A spokesman for UK transplant welcomed the news that the US had achieved a six-way procedure, but said the organisation and logistics required for such a process meant it was still a "very long way off" for the UK.

Life Not as We Know It

The search for extraterrestrials must look beyond life as we know it, scientists have advised NASA. The space agency mostly hunts for life that, like on Earth, is based on water, carbon and DNA, a National Research Council committee found. The dozen committee members—specialists in genetics, chemistry, biology and other fields instead recommend NASA consider what they call “bizarre life.” For instance, synthetic biology experiments have devised molecules that encode genetic databut that have more nucleotidesthan DNA or RNAdo. Instead of water, aliens might employammonia or sulfuricacid as the basisfor their life-sustaining biochemical reactions. Novelorganisms might use minerals as catalysts,rather than enzymes.In their July 6 report,the council scientists singled out Saturn’s moon Titan(photograph) as especially deserving of a follow-up mission because of evidence of mixtures of liquid ammonia and water in its interior.

The energy [r]evolution starts here

Developing countries like China can develop and grow using renewable energy to avoid the mistakes of old climate-changing energy economies of developed countries.

Tackling dangerous climate change is the biggest challenge facing us all. Fortunately there is an answer to this challenge. Our report: ‘energy [r]evolution’, details how to halve global CO2 emissions by 2050, using existing technology and still providing affordable energy and economic growth. In short - a revolution in energy policy and an evolution in how we use energy.

The debate about climate change is over. Solutions are needed now. The energy [r]evolution is the road map for how to provide power for everyone without fuelling climate change.

We don't need to freeze in the dark. We don't need to build nuclear power plants. We don't need to cripple economic growth. We can make a safe and sustainable world energy scenario a reality.

We can have reliable renewable energy, and use energy more smartly to achieve the cuts in carbon emissions required to prevent dangerous climate change. Crucially this can be done while phasing out damaging and dangerous coal and nuclear energy.

Sven Teske, our energy expert, took a leading role in producing the report: “The Energy Revolution scenario comes as the world is crying out for a road map for tackling the dilemma of how to provide the power we all need, without fuelling climate change. “Renewable energies are competitive, if government's phase-out subsidies for fossil and nuclear fuels and introduce the `polluter-pays principle`. We urge politicians to ban those subsidies by 2010.”

Chinese woman works below 21st century renewable energy technology.

The plan also details how large developing countries like India, China and Brazil can develop and grow using renewable energy to avoid the mistakes of old climate-changing energy economies of developed countries.

The Energy Revolution is not just our vision for the future. It was written with the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) and in conjunction with specialists from the German Space Agency and more than 30 scientists and engineers from universities, institutes and the renewable energy industry around the world.

Revolution in energy policy

"The stone age did not end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil."

Sheikh Zaki Yamani, former Saudi oil minister.

It is clear that current 'business as usual' approach to energy supply cannot continue. However the longer we delay making significant change, the tougher those changes will need to be. In the next three years, major energy investment will be made in countries around the world. We have the opportunity to say farewell to old, polluting energy sources and to welcome in a new, more efficient and conflict-free energy future.

Politicians need to grasp this chance with both hands or be the ones whose negligence helped ensure dangerous climate change to be inevitable. You can help ensure a change by voting for politicians who support the Energy [R]evolution.

Evolution in energy use

Governments and industry need to drive a massive change in the way energy is produced. But we as individuals also have to drive a massive change in the way we use energy.

Using energy smartly can double energy efficiency by 2050. With a few simple steps, every one of us can do our bit.

Revolution and evolution are unforgiving forces. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of either one. But it's time to choose: all of us are either part of the [r]evolution, or we're part of the problem. And unless all of us are part of the solution, all of us have a problem.

Illegal Carve-up of Congo Rainforests

Illegal Carve-up of Congo Rainforests

More than 21 million hectares of rainforest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are now illegally logged, an area nearly seven times the size of Belgium.

Enlarge Image

The second largest rainforest in the world -- after the Amazon -- sits in the Congo basin of Africa. Around 21 million hectares (over 51 million acres) of this pristine forest are being illegally logged. We've released new evidence of the extent of this forest crime.

The Congo Government introduced a moratorium in 2002 forbidding the allocation, extension and renewal of logging titles. But despite the original moratorium being reaffirmed by Presidential decree, it has been widely ignored. We are demanding that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the World Bank, and other stakeholders take urgent action to stop the expansion of the logging industry in Congo's rainforests, and to fund alternatives to deforestation.

The Congo Rainforest is a critical habitat for the endangered bonobo (a relative of the chimpanzee) and other threatened species such as the forest elephant and the hippopotamus. It is considered to be a priority region for conservation, and is also home to numerous communities of the Twa and Bantu ethnic groups.

A bonobo swings on a tree in a bonobo sanctuary. Bonobos were the last of the great apes to be discovered. They live exclusively in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are considered to be man's closest relative and organise themselves in sophisticated social groups. They are highly endangered from hunting and loss of habitat.

Greenpeace is highlighting one company which has breached the 2002 moratorium. ITB (Industrie de Transformation de Bois) is actively logging in the region of Lac Tumba, with two logging permits covering 294,000 hectares (726,489 acres) of forests. Both permits were issued after the moratorium was enacted. ITB logs with no forest management plan as it extracts high value species such as Wenge for export to the European market.

Delegates from the Congolese Government, donor community and civil society will meet next week in Brussels to discuss the sustainable management of the forests of the DRC. Greenpeace is demanding that all forest titles allocated by the government -- in breach of its own moratorium -- are cancelled. This would include ITB's. We want an ongoing legal review of all logging titles and an extension of the moratorium until comprehensive land-use planning and sufficient governance capacity is in place in the DRC forest sector.

"Logging companies promise us wonders: work, schools, hospitals, but actually, they seem to be only interested in their own short term profits. What will happen when our forests have been emptied? They will leave and we'll be the ones left with damaged roads, schools with no roofs and hospitals without medicine," said Pasteur Matthieu Yela Bonketo, coordinator of CEDEN, a Congolese NGO active in Equateur province who will be in Brussels for next week's conference. "Industrial logging doesn't bring benefits. The Twa and Bantu people who totally depend on our forests and the local communities who live in them are suffering because of the presence of the industry," he concluded.

The ESA Planck Surveyor Mission

The ESA Planck Surveyor Mission

Since the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) by Penzias and Wilson in 1965, the phenomenon has been studied intensively. By measuring intensity fluctuations in the CMBR, we can obtain unique information on the physical conditions in the early Universe. Just after Big Bang these physical conditions were very extreme, but the expansion of the Universe caused the temperature and density to decrease rapidly. The matter was completely ionised, and, due to the Thomson scattering by the free electrons, the Universe was completely opaque to electromagnetic radiation. Approx. 300.000 years after Big Bang, the temperature has decreased to about 3.000 K. The nuclei (mostly protons) and the free electrons re-combined to form neutral atoms and the Universe were suddenly completely transparent to photons. All these photons have travelled undisturbed through the Universe ever since and are now seen as the cosmic microwave background radiation.

The study of the early evolution of the Universe is a high-priority scientific area in Denmark. In order to combine both the theoretical and the observational efforts, a co-operation between DSRI, Theoretical Astrophysics Center (TAC) and the Niels Bohr Institute for Astronomy, Physics and Geophysics (NBIfAFG) was formed in 1995. As the first observational project, DSRI engaged itself in the US balloon experiment TopHat, described in section 2.5.1 below.

In April 1996, the Planck Surveyor mission was selected as the next ESA medium size mission. The main scientific objective is to study the CMBR with unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution. DSRI has participated in the preparation of the Planck Surveyor mission since the early phases of the project. As a part of the preparation an appropriation from the Danish Ministry of Research was given to produce a carbon fibre test mirror, in order to demonstrate the Danish capability to produce the optical elements of the required quality. The test mirror was produced by Terma Industries, Grenaa.

The test mirror has been carefully tested. It has been demonstrated that the mirror fulfils the requirements concerning deviations from the optimal surface (rms. <>

Figure 9: The Planck Surveyor Test Mirror

Planck Surveyor is defined as a "principal investigator" mission, implying that only the parties responsible for the delivery of scientific instrumentation will have access to the scientific data during the long period from the time the data are collected and analysed, till the final maps are delivered to the general astronomical community. In this case, the mirror system is considered a scientific instrument. An agreement on the delivery of the mirror system has been signed between DSRI and ESA. The final approval by the ESA Council was given at the June 2000 meeting. ESA has decided to combine the Planck Surveyor mission and the FIRST missions on the same ARIANE 5 launch, planned for the first quarter of 2007.

A Danish Planck consortium with 3 member institutes as those taking part in the TopHat project has been established. The consortium is led by a steering committee with 2 representatives from each institute. Support has been obtained from the Danish Natural Science Research Council and the Danish Committee for ESA-related research.

UW scientists unlock major number theory puzzle

Mathematicians have finally laid to rest the legendary mystery surrounding an elusive group of numerical expressions known as the "mock theta functions."

Number theorists have struggled to understand the functions ever since the great Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan first alluded to them in a letter written on his deathbed, in 1920.

Now, using mathematical techniques that emerged well after Ramanujan's death, two number theorists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have pieced together an explanatory framework that for the first time illustrates what mock theta functions are, and exactly how to derive them.

Their new theory is proving invaluable in the resolution of long-standing open questions in number theory. In addition, the UW-Madison advance will for the first time enable researchers to apply mock theta functions to problems in a variety of fields, including physics, chemistry and several branches of mathematics. The findings appear in a series of three papers, the third appearing today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It's extremely gratifying to be able to say we solved the 'final problem' of Ramanujan," says co-author Ken Ono, UW-Madison Manasse Professor of Letters and Science, who is widely noted for contributions to number theory. "We simply got really lucky."

Ono worked in collaboration with German mathematician Kathrin Bringmann, a postdoctoral researcher at UW-Madison.

"This is something I really didn't expect anybody to do," says George Andrews, a leading number theorist at Pennsylvania State University who in 2000 called mock theta functions one of the most difficult math puzzles of the new millennium. "It is an outstanding piece of work, a breathtakingly wonderful achievement."

Working from Ramanujan's letter, number theorists believed that mock theta functions are related to a well-understood class of mathematical expressions-the 'theta' functions-that have been in use for centuries. Theta functions constitute a certain sequence of numbers that has proved useful in various problems of mathematical analysis.

Mock theta functions similarly constitute an infinite series of numbers. But what has been completely baffling is what it is about mock theta series that make them so rich and powerful. Over the decades-much to the amazement of mathematicians everywhere-mock theta functions have cropped up amidst calculations in a number of fields, including mathematics, physics, chemistry, and even cancer research.

What made mock theta functions all the more inscrutable was the fact that the first few pages of Ramanujan's letter were lost. Those pages may have contained more clues, but in their absence, the letter merely presented 17 examples of the functions. What's missing is any definition of what the functions are, any hints on how to derive them, and any indication of why they are even important. All those secrets died with Ramanujan just two months after he wrote the letter, when he succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 32.

"Imagine stringing together a thousand random words and then saying you've come up with the most beautiful poetry," says Ono. "That's essentially what Ramanujan did to us."

Bringmann and Ono made sense of it all by finding a way to represent the power of mock theta functions through another relatively new family of mathematical expressions known as the Harmonic Maass Forms.

A Dutch mathematician named Sander Zwegers had already made that important connection in 2002, but he had focused only on Ramanujan's examples.

It was during a flight to New Hampshire that Ono realized the full depth and meaning of Zwegers' work. Skimming a journal to pass the time, Ono happened upon an old article by George Andrews on mock theta functions. Suddenly, he noticed that some of the mathematics in the paper seemed to resonate with parts of the Harmonic Maass theory, which he and Bringmann just happened to be developing at the time, for other reasons.

The mathematicians found the connection held up beautifully. "We knew we were onto something right away," says Ono. "It was an uncanny set of coincidences that lead us to this solution. It was as if it all just fell into our lap and now we are serendipitously applying our theory to longstanding open problems."

'Doomsday' vault design unveiled

'Doomsday' vault design unveiled

By Mark Kinver Science and nature reporter, BBC News Artist's impression of the entrance to the vault Enlarge Image The final design for a "doomsday" vault that will house seeds from all known varieties of food crops has been unveiled by the Norwegian government. The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole. The vault aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change. Construction begins in March, and the seed bank is scheduled to open in 2008. The Norwegian government is paying the $5m (£2.5m) construction costs of the vault, which will have enough space to house three million seed samples. See inside the Svalbard International Seed Vault The collection and maintenance of the collection is being organised by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which has responsibility of ensuring the "conservation of crop diversity in perpetuity". "We want a safety net because we do not want to take too many chances with crop biodiversity," said Cary Fowler, the Trust's executive director. "Can you imagine an effective, efficient, sustainable response to climate change, water shortages, food security issues without what is going to go in the vault - it is the raw material of agriculture." Future proof The seed vault will be built 120m (364ft) inside a mountain on Spitsbergen, one of four islands that make up Svalbard. Dr Fowler said Svalbard, 1,000km (621 miles) north of mainland Norway, was chosen as the location for the vault because it was very remote and it also offered the level of stability required for the long-term project. "We looked very far into the future. We looked at radiation levels inside the mountain, and we looked at the area's geological structure," he told BBC News. "We also modelled climate change in a drastic form 200 years into future, which included the melting of ice sheets at the North and South Poles, and Greenland, to make sure that this site was above the resulting water level." By building the vault deep inside the mountain, the surrounding permafrost would continue to provide natural refrigeration if the mechanical system failed, explained Dr Fowler. 'Living Fort Knox' The Arctic vault will act as a back-up store for a global network of seed banks financially supported by the trust. Dr Fowler said that a proportion of the seeds housed at these banks would be deposited at Svalbard, which will act as a "living Fort Knox". Although the vault was designed to protect the specimens from catastrophic events, he added that it could also be used to replenish national seed banks. "One example happened in September when a typhoon ripped through the Philippines and destroyed its seed bank," Dr Fowler recalled. "The storm brought two feet of water and mud into the bank, and that is the last thing you want in a seed bank." Low maintenance Once inside the vault, the samples will be stored at -18C (0F). The length of time that seeds kept in a frozen state maintain their ability to germinate depends on the species. The Arctic conditions will help keep the seeds in a frozen state Some crops, such as peas, may only survive for 20-30 years. Others, such as sunflowers and grain crops, are understood to last for many decades or even hundreds of years. Once the collection has been established at Svalbard, Dr Fowler said the facility would operate with very little human intervention. "Somebody will go up there once every year to physically check inside to see that everything is OK, but there will be no full-time staff," he explained. "If you design a facility to be used in worst-case scenarios, then you cannot actually have too much dependency on human beings."

Brain scan 'can read your mind'

Brain scan 'can read your mind'

An fMRI scan of the brain

The researchers used scans of the brain to predict decisions
Brain scans have been developed which it is claimed can predict what a person is about to do.

German, British and Japanese scientists were able to "read minds" using sophisticated functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) and computer programs.

Current Biology reported people were asked to think about adding or subtracting - scientists were able to read intentions in 70% of cases.

A UK expert advised caution, but said such technologies would develop.


We shouldn't go overboard about the power of these technologies at the moment
Professor Colin Blakemore, Medical Research Council

Such techniques could be used to help people who are paralysed - there are already some steps being taken towards helping people using computer-assisted prosthetic devices linked to computers.

But this research might also allow abstract thoughts and intentions to be read.

It may even be possible to carry out instructions such as "send email" simply by thinking them - with a scanner picking up the wish and translating it in a way that the computer can act on.

'Spatial pattern'

The researchers, led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, in Leipzig, asked people to hold their mathematical decision in their minds until they were shown two numbers on a computer screen.

The fMRI scans monitored brain activity for the few seconds they were thinking about their sum, and it was on this information that the scientists made their predictions.

The researchers used a method called "multivariate pattern recognition".

A computer is programmed to recognise characteristic activation patterns in the brain that typically occur in association with specific thoughts.

Once this computer has been "trained" it can be used to predict the decisions of subjects solely from their brain activity alone.

Dr John-Dylan Haynes, who led the research, said: "It has been previously assumed that freely selected plans might be stored in the middle regions of the prefrontal cortex, whereas plans following external instructions could be stored on the surface of the brain.

"We were able to confirm this theory in our experiments."

He added: "The experiments show that intentions are not encoded in single neurons but in a whole spatial pattern of brain activity."

It appears regions towards the front of the brain store the intention until it is executed, whereas regions further back take over when subjects become active and start doing the calculation.

Professor Colin Blakemore, director of the Medical Research Council, said: "We shouldn't go overboard about the power of these technologies at the moment.

"But what you can be absolutely sure of is that these will continue to roll out and we will have more and more ability to probe people's intentions, minds, background thoughts, hopes and emotions."

He added: "Some of that is extremely desirable, because it will help with diagnosis, education and so on, but we need to be thinking the ethical issues through.

"It adds a whole new gloss to personal medical data and how it can be used."

Frozen sea may harbour Mars life

Elysium's frozen sea may be one of the best places to look for life

A frozen sea found on Mars is one of the most promising places to look for life on the Red Planet, scientists say.
But planned missions designed to search for microbes below the Martian surface will not drill deep enough to find living cells, the UK team has said.

Researchers at University College London say that microbes in the first couple of metres of Martian soil would be killed off by intense radiation.

Life might survive deeper down, where conditions are more benign, they think.


It just isn't plausible that dormant life is still surviving in the near-subsurface of Mars
Lewis Dartnell, UCL
But these depths were beyond the reach of drills envisaged for missions to Mars, said Lewis Dartnell, from UCL's Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences & Experimental Biology (Complex).

These missions - such as Europe's ExoMars rover - could find hints that life once existed there - such as proteins, DNA fragments or fossils, explained Mr Dartnell; and that "would be a major discovery in itself".

But he added: "The Holy Grail for astrobiologists is finding a living cell that we can warm up, feed nutrients and reawaken for study.

"It just isn't plausible that dormant life is still surviving in the near-subsurface of Mars - within the first couple of metres below the surface - in the face of the ionizing radiation field.

"Finding life on Mars depends on liquid water surfacing on Mars, but the last time liquid water was widespread on Mars was billions of years ago."

Survival times

The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, maps out the likely cosmic radiation levels at various depths, taking into account different surface conditions on Mars.

Unlike Earth, Mars is not protected by a global magnetic field or thick atmosphere and for billions of years it has been laid bare to radiation from space.

Exomars rover Image: Esa
Can Europe's rover drill deep enough to find life?
Mr Dartnell's calculations suggest survival times near the surface reach only a few million years. This would mean that the chance of finding life with the planned probes is slim.

Scientists would need to dig deeper and target very specific, hard-to-reach areas such as recent craters or areas where water has recently surfaced.

The research suggested that one of the best places to look for living cells on Mars would be within the frozen sea in Mars' near-equatorial Elysium region.

This is because the ice is relatively recent - it is believed to have surfaced in the last five million years - and so has been exposed to radiation for a relatively short amount of time.

Icy secrets

Water provides an ideal shield of hydrogen to protect life on Mars from destructive cosmic radiation particles.

Ice also holds an advantage because it is far easier to drill through than rock.

But, even here, surviving cells might be out of the reach of proposed drills. Other ideal sites include recent craters, because their surfaces have been exposed to less radiation, and the gullies recently discovered in the sides of some of these craters, as they are thought to have flowed with water in the last five years.

The discovery of a vast frozen sea just below the Martian surface was announced by scientists in 2005.

Their assessment was based on pictures from Europe's Mars Express that showed plated and rutted features across an area 800km by 900km.

John Murray, from the Open University, Jan-Peter Muller, from UCL, and others said a catastrophic event probably flooded the landscape five million years ago. The floodwaters then froze out and were covered with dust or ash, they argue.

Some researchers point to the lack of "ground truth" about the radiation environment on Mars' surface to assess life's chances there.

Dog-owners 'lead healthier lives'

If you want to live a healthier life get a dog, research suggests.

The companionship offered by many pets is thought to be good for you, but the benefits of owning a dog outstrip those of cat owners, the study says.

A psychologist from Queen's University, Belfast, said dog owners tended to have lower blood pressure and cholesterol.

Writing in the British Journal of Health Psychology, she says that regular 'walkies' may partly explain the difference.

Dr Deborah Wells reviewed dozens of earlier research papers which looked at the health benefits of pet ownership.

In some cases, the social support offered by an animal is greater than the support than another human could offer Dr June McNicholas Health psychologist

She confirmed that pet owners tended in general to be healthier than the average member of the population.

However, her research suggested that dog ownership produced more positive influence than cat ownership.

As well as lower blood pressure and cholesterol, she said dog-owners suffered fewer minor ailments and serious medical problems.

There was also the suggestion that dogs could aid recovery from serious illnesses such as heart attacks, and act as 'early warning' to detect an approaching epileptic seizure.

Stress-busting

Dr Wells said the precise reason for the benefits was not totally clear.

"It is possible that dogs can directly promote our well-being by buffering us from stress, one of the major risk factors associated with ill-health.

"The ownership of a dog can also lead to increases in physical activity and facilitate the development of social contacts, which may enhance both physiological and psychological human health in a more indirect manner."

Dr June McNicholas, a health psychologist who has specialised on research into the health effects of pet ownership said that an important reason for the improved health of dog-owners was not just the exercise received while taking it for walks, but the opportunity for social contact with other dog-owners.

She said: "For older people, an animal can fulfil the 'need to be needed', perhaps after children have left home.

"In some cases, the social support offered by an animal is greater than the support than another human could offer."