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Menlo Park, Calif.–The first published scientific results from the world’s most powerful hard X-ray laser, located at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, show its unique ability to control the behaviors of individual electrons within simple atoms and molecules by stripping them away, one by one — in some cases creating hollow atoms.

These early results — one published today, the other last week — describe in great detail how the Linac Coherent Light Source’s intense pulses of X-ray light change the very atoms and molecules they are designed to image. Controlling those changes will be critical to achieving the atomic-scale images of biological molecules and movies of chemical processes that the LCLS is designed to produce.

In a report published in the July 1 issue of Nature, a team led by Argonne National Laboratory physicist Linda Young describes how they were able to tune LCLS pulses to selectively strip electrons, one by one, from atoms of neon gas. By varying the photon energies of the pulses, they could do it from the outside in or — a more difficult task — from the inside out, creating so-called “hollow atoms.”

“Until very recently, few believed that a free-electron X-ray laser was even possible in principle, let alone capable of being used with this precision,” said William Brinkman, director of DOE’s Office of Science. “That’s what makes these results so exciting.”

Young, who led the first experiments in October with collaborators from SLAC and five other institutions, said, “No one has ever had access to X-rays of this intensity, so the way in which ultra-intense X-rays interact with matter was completely unknown. It was important to establish these basic interaction mechanisms.”

SLAC’s Joachim Stöhr, director of the LCLS, said, “When we thought of the first experiments with LCLS ten years ago, we envisioned that the LCLS beam may actually be powerful enough to create hollow atoms, but at that time it was only a dream. The dream has now become reality.”

In another report, published June 22 in Physical Review Letters, a team led by physicist Nora Berrah of Western Michigan University — the third group to conduct experiments at the LCLS — describes the first experiments on molecules. Her group also created hollow atoms, in this case within molecules of nitrogen gas, and found surprising differences in the way short and long laser pulses of exactly the same energies stripped and damaged the nitrogen molecules.

“We just introduced molecules into the chamber and looked at what was coming out there, and we found surprising new science,” said Matthias Hoener, a postdoctoral researcher in Berrah’s group at WMU and visiting scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who was first author of the paper. “Now we know that by reducing the pulse length, the interaction with the molecule becomes less violent.”

While the first experiments were designed to see what the LCLS can do and how its ultra-fast, ultra-bright pulses interact with atoms and molecules, they also pave the way for more complex experiments to come. Its unique capabilities make the LCLS a powerful tool for research in a wide range of fields, including physics, chemistry, biology, materials, and energy sciences.

The LCLS forms images by scattering X-ray light off an atom, molecule or larger sample of material. Yet when the LCLS X-rays are tightly focused by mirrors, each powerful laser pulse destroys any sample it hits. Since certain types of damage, like the melting of a solid, are not instantaneous and only develop with time, the trick is to minimize the damage during the pulse itself and record the X-ray snapshot with a camera before the sample disintegrates.

Both teams found that the shorter the laser pulse, the fewer electrons are stripped away from the atom or molecule and the less damage is done. And both delved into the detailed mechanisms behind that damage.

Atoms are a little like miniature solar systems, with their electrons orbiting at various distances from the nucleus in a sort of quantum fuzz. To make things simpler, scientists describe the electrons as orbiting in “shells” at specific distances from the nucleus. The innermost shell contains up to two electrons, the next one up to eight, the third one up to 18, and so on.

Since they’re closest to the positively charged nucleus, the two innermost electrons are generally the hardest to wrest away. But they also most readily absorb photons of X-ray light, and so are the most vulnerable to getting stripped away by intense X-rays.

Although previous experiments with intense optical lasers had stripped neon atoms of most of their electrons, Young’s was the first to discover how ultra-intense X-ray lasers do this. At low photon energies, the outer electrons are removed, leaving the inner electrons untouched. However, at higher photon energies, the inner electrons are the first to be ejected; then the outer electrons cascade into the empty inner core, only to be kicked out by later parts of the same X-ray pulse. Even within the span of a single pulse there may be times when both inner electrons are missing, creating a hollow atom that is transparent to X-rays, Young said.

“This transparency associated with hollow atoms could be a useful property for future imaging experiments, because it decreases the fraction of photons doing damage and allows a higher percentage of photons to scatter off the atom and create the image,” Young said. She said application of this phenomenon will also allow researchers to control how deeply an intense X-ray pulse penetrates into a sample.

Berrah’s team bombarded puffs of nitrogen gas with laser pulses that ranged in duration from about four femtoseconds, or quadrillionths of a second, to 280 femtoseconds. No matter how short or long it was, though, each pulse contained the same amount of energy in the form of X-ray light; so you might expect that they would have roughly the same effects on the nitrogen molecules.

But to the team’s surprise, that was not the case, Hoener said. The long pulses stripped every single electron from the nitrogen molecules, starting with the ones closest to the nucleus; the short ones stripped off only some of them.

Their report attributes this to the “frustrated absorption effect”: Since the molecule’s electrons are preferentially stripped from the innermost shells, there is simply not enough time during a short pulse for the molecule’s outermost electrons to refill the innermost shells and get kicked out in turn.

With all this activity going on inside the atom, scientists have a new way to explore atomic structure and dynamics. Further experiments have investigated nanoclusters of atoms, protein nanocrystals and even individual viruses, with results expected to be published in coming months.

Young’s research was primarily supported by the DOE Office of Science, with additional support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Berrah’s research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

The LCLS is a DOE Office of Science-funded project led by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory provided initial project management support. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Cornell University contributed key subsystems. University of California, Los Angeles provided theoretical physics support throughout the project; Brookhaven and Los Alamos national laboratories were active in the early stages of LCLS research and development.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. SLAC is located in Menlo Park, California, and is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Western Michigan University is a dynamic, student-centered research university with an enrollment of 25,000. WMU is focused on delivering high-quality undergraduate instruction, advancing its growing graduate division and fostering significant research activities.

Dartmouth Linguistics Professor Lewis Glinert and Jon Schommer, the associate head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Care and Health Systems at the University of Minnesota, have examined the corporate websites dedicated to the 100 best-selling prescription drugs. They found a startling lack of consistency in an industry where advertising standards are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“Communicating via a website is common practice today,” says Glinert, “and consumers are very savvy about doing their own research on the Internet. The FDA has rules about direct-to-consumer print and television drug advertising, so we think it makes sense to also regulate websites and other marketing tools when it comes to prescription medicine. Consumers need consistent and balanced information.”

Glinert presented their study, “Manufacturers’ prescription drug web sites: A gray area of discourse and ethics,” at the Communication, Medicine and Ethics (COMET) 2010 Conference at Boston University School of Public Health on June 28. Glinert and Schommer have previously published on the topic of direct-to-consumer drug advertising and Glinert has also presented their research at an FDA hearing.

In this paper, Glinert and Schommer found that the websites:

• have no obvious linear narrative or ‘next page’ or conclusion; users move in a maze of text and navigation choices, some leading far away
• lack a popular genre name (like infomercial), meaning that users come to them without a clear idea of how to perceive them
• have an unpredictable mix of information and promotion, content, verbal style, visuals, and layout
• often present safety and risk information in small font, in cumbersome un-bulleted blocks of text, detached from promotional text and videos, and below a page’s scrolling ‘fold’

Glinert notes that the Internet search engine Google has also been working to help consumers with their research on prescription drugs. A Google search of a prescription or generic drug name, for example Lipitor, will now display a summary and description at the top of the search results. The new feature, developed in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, links to NIH content and risk data. (Background information at: http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/22/google-health-search-adds-drug-info-upping-pharma-ad-spend/ and http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-new-health-search-feature-for-medications-44757 )

“Our research provides justification for Google’s move,” says Glinert. “Only time will tell if this is a major change for the better.”

Adding nutrients to the sea could decrease viral infection rates among phytoplankton and enhance the efficiency of the biological pump, a means by which carbon is transferred from the atmosphere to the deep ocean, according to a new mathematical modelling study. The findings, published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, have implications for ocean geo-engineering schemes proposed for tackling global warming.

Tiny free-floating algae called phytoplankton dominate biological production in the world’s oceans and sit at the base of the marine food web. Their population dynamics are controlled by sunlight, nutrient availability, grazing by tiny planktonic animals (zooplankton) and mortality caused by viral infection.

“Viruses are the most abundant organism in the world’s oceans, and it is thought that all phytoplankton species are susceptible to infection. Our aim was to model the interaction between viruses, phytoplankton, zooplankton grazing and nutrient levels,” said Dr Adrian Martin of the National oceanography Centre (NOC), who collaborated in the project with Dr Christopher Rhodes, a bio-mathematician at Imperial College London.

The researchers took an ‘eco-epidemic’ modelling approach, taking into account the mutual interaction between the effects of ecology and disease epidemiology. This approach has been used previously to model the effects of infection by pathogens on the population dynamics of mammals and invertebrate animals.

They considered only the case of lytic viruses, which are the commonest type of virus infecting marine phytoplankton. Lytic viruses inject their DNA into host cells and use the host’s replication machinery to produce new viral particles. The host cell eventually ruptures, releasing the new viruses along with their cell contents, which are incorporated back into the ambient nutrient pool.

The interaction between viruses, phytoplankton, zooplankton grazing and nutrient levels produces subtle feedbacks and complex dynamics, which present a challenge to modellers. Rhodes and Martin therefore used three models of sequentially increasing complexity, so as to understand the key factors driving the dynamics and to increase confidence in the robustness of the model predictions.

The models predict that decreased nutrient levels correspond to high viral infection rates among phytoplankton.

On the other hand, increased nutrient levels are predicted to decrease viral infection rates. This means that more of the carbon contained in phytoplankton would be available to zooplankton and other creatures higher up the food chain.

When these organisms die, a proportion of the associated carbon would sink down to the deep ocean, where it could be locked away for centuries, rather than being released back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. This mechanism for exporting carbon to the deep ocean is called the biological carbon pump.

Artificial enhancement of the biological carbon pump by fertilizing the oceans with nutrients has been proposed as a possible geo-engineering ‘fix’ for global warming caused by the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide from anthropogenic sources.

“The decrease in viral infection rates caused by artificially adding nutrients to the sea could in the future benefit humans by increasing the efficiency of the biological carbon pump, making these proposed ocean geo-engineering schemes more viable,” said Dr Rhodes.

The research was supported by the Research Councils of the United Kingdom (RCUK) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

The researchers are Christopher Rhodes (Imperial College London) and Adrian Martin (NOC).

Rhodes, C. J. & Martin, A. P. The influence of viral infection on a plankton ecosystem undergoing nutrient enrichment. Journal of Theoretical Biology 265, 225-237 (2010).

AUGUSTA, GA. — More electrodes and a thinner, more flexible wire inserted further into the inner ear could improve conventional cochlear implants, a team of Medical College of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology researchers say.

Candidates for cochlear implants — an estimated million in the United States alone — include children and adults with profound deafness in both ears. An implant does not restore normal hearing but simulates sounds in the environment, including speech. More electrodes pick up more external sound and the flexible wire allows those sounds to be transmitted over more of the auditory nerves.

Researchers will present their findings about the new device at the 11th International Conference on Cochlear Implants and Other Auditory Implantable Technology in Stockholm, Sweden June 30 — July 3.

The snail-shaped cochlea is difficult to access, particularly considering the multiple components involved in a cochlear implant, said Dr. Brian McKinnon, assistant professor of neurotology/otology in the Department of Otolaryngology in the MCG School of Medicine. Those components include of an external microphone, speech processor and transmitter and an internal group of electrodes arranged on a thin wire that stimulate the auditory nerve.

“The wire in traditional implants is fragile and thin and may buckle,” he said. “We try to get it as far into the center of the cochlea, where the nerves are bundled, as possible — the idea being that the more electrodes on the nerves, the better the sound.”

Because they buckle, physicians typically can’t optimally insert the wire, and electrodes can, in some cases, injure the cochlea, he said.

The new device, called the thin film array, pairs 12 electrodes on a thinner, more flexible wire. The wire’s thinness has, so far, allowed surgeons to place more electrodes into the cochlea than they could with a conventional electrode. With more electrodes than standard models, the implant improves the quality of sound.

The array was developed in the Biosystems Interface Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology by Assistant Professor Pamela Bhatti, a biomedical engineer, and Georgia Tech student Jessica Falcone. McKinnon and Dr. Kenneth Iverson, a third-year otolaryngology resident, tested it on cadaver models

“This device could mean could mean a several-fold improvement of the sound’s resolution,” Iverson said. “For the patient, it would be like the difference between hearing a Bach concerto played by a music box versus a quartet.”

McKinnon compared the improvement to adding more fingers and more notes to a piano performance.

There are other benefits too.

“Because the thinner wire means less trauma to the ear, it could also mean more preservation of residual hearing for patients,” Iverson said.

BOSTON — Doctors in the Department of Pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have issued “A Call to Action” for the medical profession to catch up with the technology and business communities in the application of genomics to personalized health care.

In a Special Article in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Clinical Pathology, senior author Jeffrey Saffitz, MD, PhD, and colleagues call for Genomics and Personalized Medicine to become a core competency for all Pathology trainees by 2012, writing, “Genomics and ‘medical sequencing’ will revolutionize clinical laboratory diagnostics as the foundation for the new era of personalized medicine…..Pathologists must take the lead in the application of genomics technologies, including whole genome sequencing, laboratory technologies and personalized medicine.”

As a critical first step in leading this charge, the BIDMC Department of Pathology, in collaboration with BIDMC’s genetic counseling service, last year launched the Genomic Medicine Initiative, a first-of-its-kind compulsory program to prepare doctors-in-training to apply genomics and personalized medicine in their day-to-day practices.

“This is emerging as one of the most significant shifts in medical education in decades,” says Saffitz, Chief of Pathology at BIDMC and Mallinckrodt Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. “Diagnostic Pathology is the medical specialty where the results of multiple diagnostic tests and other patient data are analyzed and interpreted. Why should a patient’s genotyping results be any different? We feel that it is our responsibility as the diagnostic enablers of clinical medicine to understand genomics information and to serve as primary consultants for physicians and patients who need to know how to interpret and act on this data.”

The new BIDMC pathology curriculum addresses these key issues, with the new medical specialty built on three pillars: laboratory medicine, genetic counseling and health information technology. As Richard Schwartzstein, MD, Vice President for Education at BIDMC and a Faculty Dean for Medical Education at Harvard Medical School, explains, “The integration of genetic information will be the core of ‘patient-centered’ care.”

The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 may have ushered in the new era of personalized medicine, but when it comes to genomic testing and applications of this new data, the medical profession has lagged far behind the technology and business communities.

“At the present time, no single discipline in medicine has developed a comprehensive approach to train a cadre of physicians who will be prepared to meet the coming challenge of personalized medicine,” adds Mark Boguski, MD, PhD, an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology BIDMC and the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. “As a result, control of personal genomics has shifted directly into the hands of consumers, with confusing results. We would like to ensure that, going forward, pathologists are the interpreters and integrators of genomic information.”

In addition to Saffitz and Boguski, coauthors of the paper include Richard Haspel, MD, PhD, Ramy Arnaout, MD, DPhil, Lauren Briere, MS, Sibel Kantarci, PhD, Karen Marchand, MS, Peter Tonellato, PhD, and James Connolly, MD, all of BIDMC’s Genomic Medicine Initiative.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and consistently ranks in the top four in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is a clinical partner of the Joslin Diabetes Center and a research partner of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit www.bidmc.org.

PITTSBURGH, June 30 — Newborns of non-smoking moms exposed to secondhand smoke during pregnancy have genetic mutations that may affect long-term health, according to a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health study published online in the Open Pediatric Medicine Journal. The abnormalities, which were indistinguishable from those found in newborns of mothers who were active smokers, may affect survival, birth weight and lifelong susceptibility to diseases like cancer.

The study confirms previous research in which study author Stephen G. Grant, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental and occupational health at Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, discovered evidence of abnormalities in the HPRT gene located on the X chromosome in cord blood from newborns of non-smokers exposed to environmental tobacco smoke.

In the current study, Dr. Grant confirmed smoke-induced mutation in another gene called glycophorin A, or GPA, that is representative of oncogenes — genes that transform normal cells into cancer cells and cause solid tumors. The GPA mutation was the same level and type in newborns of mothers who were active smokers and of non-smoking mothers exposed to tobacco smoke. Likewise, the mutations were discernable in newborns of women who had stopped smoking during their pregnancies, but who did not actively avoid secondhand smoke.

“These findings back up our previous conclusion that passive, or secondary, smoke causes permanent genetic damage in newborns that is very similar to the damage caused by active smoking,” said Dr. Grant. “By using a different assay, we were able to pick up a completely distinct yet equally important type of genetic mutation that is likely to persist throughout a child’s lifetime. Pregnant women should not only stop smoking, but be aware of their exposure to tobacco smoke from other family members, work and social situations.”

The research was funded by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the University of Pittsburgh Competitive Medical Research Fund.

The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), founded in 1948 and now one of the top-ranked schools of public health in the United States, conducts research on public health and medical care that improves the lives of millions of people around the world. GSPH is a leader in devising new methods to prevent and treat cardiovascular diseases, HIV/AIDS, cancer and other important public health problems.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Fast-food restaurants can supersize French fries and drinks, but Mother Nature has found a way to supersize a type of apple.

Peter Hirst, a Purdue University associate professor of horticulture, found that an anomaly in some Gala apple trees causes some apples to grow much larger than others because cells aren’t splitting. The findings, reported in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany, showed that the new variety, called Grand Gala, is about 38 percent heavier and has a diameter 15 percent larger than regular Galas.

“It’s never been found in apples before,” Hirst said. “This is an oddball phenomenon in the apple world.”

Hirst is trying to understand what causes the difference in the size of apples – for instance, why Gala apples are so much larger than crabapples.

“There is real incentive for fruit growers to increase the size of their apples,” Hirst said. “At 125 apples per bushel, a grower gets 8 cents per apple. But if they have larger apples – 88 per bushel – the price more than doubles.”

Since different apple varieties don’t always have the same genes controlling the same functions, comparing Galas to crabapples isn’t an easy way to understand the mechanisms that control their destined sizes. But the Grand Gala seemed like it might provide an opportunity to unravel the mystery.

“The way the Grand Gala was found was that someone in an orchard full of Gala trees noticed that one branch had different-sized apples than the rest of the tree. They grafted new trees from this branch to started a new tree,” Hirst said. “These are just chance events.”

Larger apples tend to have more cells than their smaller counterparts, so Hirst theorized that there was a gene or genes that kept cell division turned on in Grand Gala. Instead, he found that Grand Gala had about the same number of cells as a regular Gala, but those cells were larger.

Normally, cells make a copy of their DNA, grow and then split. Each of those cells continues the process. Through a phenomenon called endoreduplication, the cells in Grand Gala make copies of their DNA, but don’t divide. Instead, the cells grow, add more copies of the DNA and continue that growth.

The Grand Gala fruit has the same core size, so the added size and weight is in the meat, or cortex, of the fruit. Hirst said they’re also crunchier and tend to taste better.

Hirst’s study found that one or more of a handful of genes is likely responsible for the endoreduplication. And while it may be possible to isolate those genes and find ways to increase the size of other apples, Hirst said it’s unlikely.

“You won’t see Grand Galas in the grocery store,” Hirst said. “Consumers like shiny, perfect-looking apples. Grand Galas are slightly lopsided. They’re good eating apples, but the end product isn’t something that consumers are used to seeing at the store.”

He said the apples are likely to gain more of a following at apple orchards where they’re grown.

Hirst will continue studying what causes different apples to be different sizes, but he won’t pursue endoreduplication as an answer, he said. Purdue University funded his research.

Writer: Brian Wallheimer, 765-496-2050, bwallhei@purdue.edu

Source: Peter Hirst, 765-494-1323, hirst@purdue.edu

PHOTO CAPTION:

Grand Gala apples, at right, undergo endoreduplication, which causes cells to grow larger than in the regular Gala apples, at left. (Purdue University photo/Peter Hirst)

A publication-quality photo is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2010/hirst-gala.jpg

Abstract on the research in this release is available at: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2010/100630HirstGala.html

The creation of synthetic proteins plays an important role for economy and science. By the integration of artificial amino acids in proteins (genetic code engineering), their already existing qualities can be systematically improved, allowing new biological features to arise. Now, scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) in Martinsried near Munich, Germany, have succeeded in taking another important step in this research area: For the first time, they were able to integrate three different synthetic amino acids into one protein in a single experiment. (Angewandte Chemie, June 24, 2010).

Proteins are the main actors in our body: They transport substances, convey messages or carry out vital processes in their role as molecular machines. The “helmsmen of the cell” are composed of amino acids, whose sequence is already defined by the heritable information in every living being. The translation of this information during the production of proteins (protein synthesis) is determined by the genetic code. 20 amino acids form the standard set of which proteins are built. In natural conditions, however, several hundred amino acids can be found and, of course, new amino acids can also be produced in the laboratory. With regard to their properties, they differ from the 20 standard amino acids, because of which, by their integration in proteins, specific structural and biological characteristics of proteins can be systematically changed. So far, only one type of synthetic amino acid could be inserted into a protein during a single experiment in a residue-specific manner; thus, only one property of a protein could be modified at once.

Nediljko Budisa, head of the research group Molecular Biotechnology at the MPIB, has now made important methodical progress in the area of genetic code engineering. The scientists were able to substitute three different natural amino acids by synthetic ones at the same time in a single experiment. The biochemist is pleased: “The research area of genetic code engineering and code extension has with this result reached a new development phase.”

Budisa’s method could be of great importance, particularly for the industry and economy, because the production of artificial proteins by genetic code engineering in his view demonstrates a solid basis for the development of new technologies. “During integration, synthetic amino acids confer their characteristics to proteins. Thus, the development will allow the synthesis of totally new classes of products, whose chemical synthesis has not been possible so far by conventional protein engineering using only the 20 standard amino acids”, explains Budisa regarding to future prospects. “Thanks to our method, in the future it will be possible to tailor industrial relevant proteins with novel properties: for example proteins containing medical components.”

Original work:

S. Lepthien, L. Merkel, N. Budisa

In vivo double and triple labeling of proteins using synthetic amino acids.

Angewandte Chemie, June 24, 2010 DOI 10.1002/anie.201000439

Rome, Italy: A review of studies of babies born after in vitro maturation (IVM) fertility treatment has suggested that they are more likely to be born larger than normal and to have more difficult births requiring more obstetric interventions such as caesareans.

Authors of the literature review to be presented to the 26th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Rome today (Wednesday) believe that this may be a problem associated with the IVM process in which immature eggs are retrieved from a woman’s ovaries and matured in the lab before being fertilised and any resulting embryos transferred to the woman’s uterus. They have urged caution in the use of IVM until further studies can clarify their findings.

Dr Peter Sjöblom, unit manager of Nurture, the Nottingham University IVF clinic at Queen’s Medical Centre (Nottingham, UK), said: “We looked at four different data sets from four different countries and, although the numbers were small and differences modest, we saw a consistent pattern that cannot be ignored. We strongly believe that these findings must be explored further.”

Dr Sjöblom and his colleagues analysed data from studies of babies born after IVM, in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) in Denmark, Finland, Canada and Korea. They found that the birth weight of the 165 babies born after IVM was between 0.3% and 6% higher than the national average for singleton births and 6%-9% higher than babies conceived after IVF and/or ICSI. Caesarean rates were consistently higher after IVM as well: for singleton IVM births they were 30-60% versus 27-44% for IVF/ICSI births. IVM pregnancies had high miscarriage rates (25-37%) and the average period of gestation was 3-11 days longer than for IVF/ICSI. Although there were no firm data on other obstetric interventions, the authors thought it was probable that there was also a higher number of procedures such as inductions, vacuum extractions and forceps deliveries compared to IVF/ICSI births and births after natural conception.

“These findings suggest a significant impact of the IVM procedure on early development,” said Dr Sjöblom. “The pattern of increased birth weight, more obstetric interventions and possibly a longer gestation period are consistent with Large Offspring Syndrome. It cannot be explained by there being a higher proportion of women with polycystic ovarian syndrome in the IVM group*, since the birth weight of their offspring was not significantly different from babies born after natural conception.

“We urge IVM practitioners and clinics to pool their data on obstetric and neonatal outcomes after fertility treatments because, at present, only limited data on small numbers of births are available. This should enable us to look more closely at the health and physiology of babies born after fertility treatment so that we can make a more detailed assessment of infant health. If the observed pattern still holds as the number of observations increases, then in-depth studies of mechanisms must be initiated. Caution is called for before proceeding with IVM on a large scale.”

He said the possible mechanisms involved were unclear. “It has been described in the literature that gene expression is altered in IVM eggs compared to those matured naturally in the body; it may be the case that the final stages of egg development before ovulation involves events that are crucial to development and that this is not happening when they are matured in the lab. Another explanation could be that the preparation of the lining of the womb (the endometrium) is different and this may influence development, as has been shown in animal studies.”

The long-term consequences to the health of babies born after IVM are also unknown. “For the sake of the health and safety of the babies and their mothers, we need to be following IVM babies from the moment the eggs are matured in the laboratory through to their birth and into adulthood. We also need to look in detail into possible physiological effects, like alterations in blood pressure. However, we must make it clear to the public that, at the moment, no major health problems have been observed in children born after IVM. Nevertheless, all fertility clinics should share their detailed data, so that we can, hopefully, conclude that there is no reason for concern,” concluded Dr Sjöblom.

Rome, Italy: Embryos derived from oocytes (eggs) cryopreserved by the vitrification method are just as likely to produce an on-going pregnancy as those involving fresh oocytes, the 26th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology heard today. Dr. Ana Cobo, Cryobiology Unit director at Institut Universitari — IVI Valencia, Valencia, Spain, told delegates that the results of her team’s research would make egg donation both easier and safer in the future.

The scientists carried out a randomised clinical trial involving 600 recipients of either freshly-harvested oocytes or those preserved by the vitrification method, where oocytes are flash-frozen after the extraction of water, hence avoiding ice formation. Analysis of the results found that the on-going pregnancy rate in women who had received vitrified oocytes was 43.7% as opposed to 41.7% in the fresh oocyte group. The proportion of top-quality embryos was similar between the two groups, and there was also no difference in age or other demographic characteristics and the incidence of male factor infertility.

“Because we were able to show that there were no differences between the two groups before embryo implantation,” said Dr. Cobo, “we can be certain that the on-going pregnancy rates in both groups were not influenced by any factor other than the method of oocyte preservation. Although there has been considerable circumstantial evidence that cryopreservation by the vitrification method produces results as good as those with freshly-harvested oocytes, until this trial there was still a lack of large randomly-controlled studies in the field.”

The researchers say that their results will have a significant effect on the practice of egg-banking in the future. “Many patients will be able to benefit,” said Dr. Cobo. “For example, there are cancer patients who will be able to preserve their fertility before undergoing treatment that can make them sterile, patients who would be at risk of ovarian hyperstimulation, and those where a semen sample is not immediately available.”

Once an egg donor is recruited and screened she undergoes ovarian stimulation to produce a number of oocytes, which are then retrieved. The oocytes then need to be fertilised by the sperm of the male partner of the recipient and the best embryos thus produced are placed in the uterus of the recipient, whose uterine lining has been previously prepared to be ready to receive the embryo.

When using fresh oocytes, the need for synchronisation of all these procedures is paramount, but not always possible. Egg banking precludes the need to synchronise these timings, which can also be the cause of long delays.

“As well as being able to shorten or even eliminate the current long waiting lists, egg banking also offers a safer donation process because it allows oocytes to be quarantined while the absence of any contagious disease in the donor is confirmed,” said Dr. Cobo. “Until now we have been unable to do this with any certainty.”

The scientists now intend to continue their research by following up the progress of babies born after oocyte vitrification. “We need to ascertain that there are no adverse effects on children conceived from cryopreserved oocytes,” said Dr. Cobo, “so we will compare obstetric and neonatal data from babies born after oocyte vitrification with those resulting from the replacement of embryos originating from fresh oocytes. Having made sure that the pregnancies are safe, it is important to ensure that pregnancy outcomes are also free from harm.”

Rome, Italy: A new, effective, non-surgical treatment for uterine fibroids can help women with this condition maintain their fertility, an American scientist told the 26th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Rome today (Wednesday). Dr. Alicia Armstrong, Chief, Gynecologic Services, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Programme in Reproductive and Adult Endocrinology, Bethesda, Maryland, said that the outcome of two Phase II clinical trials of ulipristal acetate (UPA) had significant implications for both infertility and general gynaecology patients.

UPA belongs to a relatively new class of drug, the selective progesterone receptor modulators or SPRMs. It is currently used for emergency contraception, and acts by blocking the progesterone receptor and hence ovulation (release of the egg). Recent research has shown that progesterone also plays a role in the development of uterine fibroids, which affect 24 million women in Europe and can lead to a range of symptoms such as abdominal pain and discomfort and heavy and irregular menstrual bleeding. Fibroids are the major indication for hysterectomy in Europe and the US, and they also contribute to infertility by interfering with the ability of the embryo to implant in the womb and causing miscarriage.

“Both the fibroids and the surgical interventions commonly used to treat them can cause significant fertility problems,” said Dr. Armstrong, “and we wanted to see whether fibroids could shrink and surgery could be avoided by using an SPRM.”

Results from two Phase II randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blinded studies performed at NIH were pooled and analysed. In the trials, women aged from 25-50 years with symptomatic uterine fibroids were randomised to receive UPA or placebo once a day for three menstrual cycles. The researchers found that, out of the 57 patients who it was possible to evaluate for efficacy, 18 received placebo, 20 10mg of UPA per day and 19 20mg per day. Those taking UPA had reduced total fibroid volume, with those taking the higher dose doing better — 14 (70%) in the 10mg group and 16 (84%) in the 20 mg group. The patients on placebo did significantly less well with only six (33%) showing reduction in fibroid volume.

UPA also reduced bleeding compared with placebo and during the third month of treatment 16 (80%) of patients taking 10mg daily and 18 (95%) on a daily dose of 20mg experienced no menstrual bleeding. At the end of the treatment, patients on the active treatment scored higher in assessment of their quality of life, the severity of their symptoms, their energy levels and mood and their overall concern about the effects of fibroids.

Estradiol levels remained adequate for bone health during treatment in 77%, 100% and 95% of patients in the UPA 10mg and 20mg and placebo groups, respectively, indicating that the action of the ovaries was not impaired, and neither were there any serious side effects. Some women taking UPA had transient increases in liver function tests and a few had the changes in the endometrium that have previously been seen with this class of compounds.

“The results of these trials are convincing and lead us to conclude that UPA is an effective non-invasive treatment for fibroids that can help maintain fertility in women whose only option up to now was to have surgery,” said Dr. Lynnette Nieman, Principal Investigator on the NIH trials. “We hope that the results from these trials, along with those from the Phase III trials currently being conducted by the Swiss company PregLem SA, will allow us to offer this treatment to women who do not want surgery or are unable to have it for medical reasons.”

Researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development are currently carrying out further studies of the molecular action of UPA, Dr Nieman said. “These studies will not only help us understand how the treatment works in women with uterine fibroids, but may give us pointers about which patients might benefit most.”

Rome, Italy: Europe leads the world in Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART) with most cycles initiated in the region, the 26th Annual Meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology heard today (Wednesday 30 June).

According to data presented by the European IVF Monitoring Group (EIM), 479,288 treatment cycles were reported in 32 European countries in 2007 . This compares globally with 142,435 cycles from the US and 56,817 cycles from Australia and New Zealand. “The number of cycles performed in many developed countries has grown by 5-10% per annum over the last 5 years,” said Dr. Jacques de Mouzon, chairman of ESHRE’s EIM. “The 4.5% increase we observed in Europe from 2006 to 2007 however is partly due to more clinics reporting to our database,” he added.

In 28 countries where clinics reported deliveries, more than 90,000 babies were born in 2007. There were 118,667 regular IVF treatments, 246,687 intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles, 74,855 frozen embryo transfer cycles (FER), 15,028 egg donor cycles (ED), 6,822 preimplantation genetic diagnosis/screening cycles (PGD/PGS) and 660 in vitro maturation cycles (IVM). “The reverse trend from IVF to ICSI continues with now 67.5% of fresh cycles using the latter technology, although the efficacy of ICSI in terms of pregnancy rates is the same as standard IVF,” he added.

He pointed out that the overall rate of multiple births was very similar to the previous year with European ART twin deliveries at 20.5% and triplet deliveries at 0.8%. Most countries in Europe are now recording fewer than 1% triplet deliveries, except for Italy (2.8%), Latvia (11.1%) and Serbia (3.3%). “The good news is that since 1997, we have observed a decline from 30% to 21% in overall multiple birth rates and a fourfold reduction in triplet deliveries from 3.7% to 0.8%,” he said.

Nordic countries like Denmark still have the highest availability of ART at 13,263 cycles per million of women aged 15-45. The lowest availabilities were recorded in the largest economies in Europe such as Germany (3,931), UK (3,794) and Italy (3,829). This is also mirrored in the number of infants born after ART with only 1.5% in Germany, 1.8% in the UK and 1.2% in Italy. In comparison in Denmark 4.9% of all children were born through IVF.

“In the last 11 years since the beginnings of the EIM we have seen a gradual increase of 26% to 33% of pregnancies per transfer for IVF and ICSI, from 15% to 22% for FER and from 27% to 46% for oocyte donation, and all this despite the transfer of fewer and fewer embryos,” said Dr. de Mouzon.

In order to further assess the safety of ART, the EIM has initiated a major study (MART – the Morbidity in ART study), collecting data from a large series of ART children born in Scandinavia. Funded by ESHRE and the Medical Faculty of Copenhagen University, the team will analyse data from the national ART registers in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. “We estimate that we will have about 75,000 children in our database at the end. The data from Denmark and Finland are ready, the Swedish will finalise their data soon and in Norway the application to obtain these data is currently being processed,” explains Prof. Anders Nyboe Andersen, past chairman of the EIM.

Due to the possibility of cross-linking ART data with data from other health registers, the researchers will be able to assess long-term morbidity in these children and compare it with appropriate control groups. “It is the long-term commitment of the EIM to expand this database to other European countries, but it will be at least a year before we can present the results to the public,” Prof. Nyboe Andersen concluded.

Women who are physically active at any point over the life course (teenage, age 30, age 50, late life) have lower risk of cognitive impairment in late-life compared to those who are inactive, but teenage physical activity appears to be most important. This is the key finding of a study of over nine thousand women published today in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

There is growing evidence to suggest that people who are physically active in mid- and late life have lower chance of dementia and more minor forms of cognitive impairment in old age. However, there is a poorer understanding of the importance of early life physical activity and the relative importance of physical activity at different ages. Researchers led by Laura Middleton, PhD, of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Canada, compared the physical activity at teenage, age 30, age 50, and late life against cognition of 9,344 women from Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon and Pennsylvania to investigate the effectiveness of activity at different life stages.

Of the participants, 15.5%, 29.7%, 28.1%, and 21.1% reported being physically inactive at teenage, at 30 years, at 50 years, and in late life respectively; the increase in cognitive impairment for those who were inactive was between 50% and 100% at each time point. When physical activity measures for all four ages were entered into a single model and adjusted for variables such as age, education, marital status, diabetes, hypertension, depressive symptoms, smoking, and BMI, only teenage physical activity status remained significantly associated with cognitive performance in old age.

“Our study shows that women who are regularly physically active at any age have lower risk of cognitive impairment than those who are inactive but that being physically active at teenage is most important in preventing cognitive impairment,” said Middleton.

The researchers also found that women who were physically inactive at teenage but became physically active at age 30 and age 50 had significantly reduced odds of cognitive impairment relative to those who remained physically inactive. In contrast, being physically active at age 30 and age 50 was not significantly associated with rates of cognitive impairment in those women who were already physically active at teenage.

Middleton added, “As a result, to minimize the risk of dementia, physical activity should be encouraged from early life. Not to be without hope, people who were inactive at teenage can reduce their risk of cognitive impairment by becoming active in later life.”

The researchers concluded that the mechanisms by which physical activity across the life course is related to late life cognition are likely to be multi-factorial. There is evidence to suggest that physical activity has a positive effect on brain plasticity and cognition and in addition, physical activity reduces the rates and severity of vascular risk factors, such as hypertension, obesity, and type II diabetes, which are each associated with increased risk of cognitive impairment.

“Low physical activity levels in today’s youth may mean increased dementia rates in the future. Dementia prevention programs and other health promotion programs encouraging physical activity should target people starting at very young ages, not just in mid- and late life,” said Middleton.

Athens, Ga. — The heat of summer brings trips to the lake, afternoons at the beach and vacations in the mountains. It also arrives with the threat of dangerous conditions in closed cars, where children left alone for even a few minutes can lead to tragedy.

Now, a team of researchers at the University of Georgia has developed an easy-to-use table of vehicle temperature changes that may help public officials and media remind the public about the deadly consequences of vehicle-related hyperthermia in children.

While government agencies routinely give warnings about leaving children alone in cars in hot weather, vehicle temperature data from many early studies were “often obtained with small datasets and questionable methodologies such as placing a temperature sensor directly on a car seat,” according to Andrew Grundstein of UGA’s department of geography in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and leader of the research.

“The danger of leaving young children unattended in vehicles has been well documented,” said Grundstein, “But it still happens, and it’s always the worst kind of tragedy. Most of the time, caregivers simply forget their children, but more than a quarter of deaths in this situation involve children intentionally left in cars. In some cases, parents just don’t want to disturb a sleeping child. Such behavior shows a clear lack of understanding about the dangers of leaving children unattended in vehicles.”

The research was just published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Other authors, also from UGA, are John Dowd and Vernon Meentemeyer.

Each year around 40 children die in the U.S. alone from being left in closed cars during hot weather. Many studies have shown how such things as shading, ventilation and different meteorological conditions can affect temperatures inside cars. But until now, there has been no reliable table of vehicle temperature changes.

What the researchers found was stunning.

In hot weather in an open parking lot, the inside temperature of a car can rise by 7 degrees Fahrenheit in five minutes, 13 degrees in 10 minutes, 29 degrees in 30 minutes and 47 degrees in an hour. This means interior temperatures can reach levels lethal to small children in less time than some parents might think.

One way to characterize the meaning of these temperatures in terms of a health hazard is to place them in the context of heat-health warnings provided by the National Weather Service. For example, on a 90-degree day, temperatures within the car would reach an “excessive heat advisory” in a little over 10 minutes and an “excessive heat warning” in less than 30 minutes.

To develop their table, the researchers measured air temperatures for 58 days (April 1-Aug. 31, 2007) in a metallic gray Honda with gray cloth seats parked in an open, paved parking lot with direct exposure to sunlight. To gather data, they used carefully positioned, high-temporal-resolution temperature sensors. They coupled that information with data gathered using a human thermal exchange model called the Man-Environment Heat Exchange Model (MENEX). In doing so, they were able to combine the rising temperatures inside a closed car with the way they would interact with the so-called “human thermal budget.” In the end, the team selected 14 clear days, representing the most severe possible conditions on which to base calculations for their new table.

The model simulations were performed on a “theoretical” child seated inside the car as well as one outside the car for reference.

The results were sobering.

“Not only are the children exposed to intense heating from the hot interior of the car, but within a closed vehicle without ventilation, physiological mechanisms typically used for cooling are ineffective,” said Grundstein. “Furthermore, the efficiency of evaporative cooling would be reduced as evaporated perspiration accumulated in the vehicle.”

All of this is not to imply in any way that government agencies have ignored the problem. The National Weather Service, for instance, issues excessive heat warnings and heat advisories to alert people when conditions outside can be dangerous because of the heat. And health agencies have warned the public for years about the dangers of leaving children in cars during hot weather.

What the new research offers is the first table of vehicle temperature changes based on precise temperature readings, coupled with the MENEX model. The result is a chart that brings home clearly just what a serious decision it is to leave a child in a closed car in hot weather even for a few minutes.

“While the deaths of children left in cars from hyperthermia is tragic, there is, of course, no reason, ever, to leave a child in a car unattended,” said Grundstein. “Risks such as abduction or injury abound, as well as children being asphyxiated from entrapment by vehicle windows.”

The new easy-to-use table, however, could offer government officials and health agencies a way to quantify warnings and to make real yet again to parents that leaving a child in a heated car can only be a prelude to lifelong remorse.

Note to editors and writers: Copies of the paper and the chart are available from Dr. Grundstein. Please e-mail him or leave a message at the addresses or telephone numbers above, and he will get in touch with you.

The first experimental evidence showing how atmospheric nitrogen can be incorporated into organic macromolecules is being reported by a University of Arizona team.

The finding indicates what organic molecules might be found on Titan, the moon of Saturn that scientists think is a model for the chemistry of pre-life Earth.

Earth and Titan are the only known planetary-sized bodies that have thick, predominantly nitrogen atmospheres, said Hiroshi Imanaka, who conducted the research while a member of UA’s chemistry and biochemistry department.

How complex organic molecules become nitrogenated in settings like early Earth or Titan’s atmosphere is a big mystery, Imanaka said.

“Titan is so interesting because its nitrogen-dominated atmosphere and organic chemistry might give us a clue to the origin of life on our Earth,” said Imanaka, now an assistant research scientist in the UA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “Nitrogen is an essential element of life.”

However, not just any nitrogen will do. Nitrogen gas must be converted to a more chemically active form of nitrogen that can drive the reactions that form the basis of biological systems.

Imanaka and Mark Smith converted a nitrogen-methane gas mixture similar to Titan’s atmosphere into a collection of nitrogen-containing organic molecules by irradiating the gas with high-energy UV rays. The laboratory set-up was designed to mimic how solar radiation affects Titan’s atmosphere.

Most of the nitrogen moved directly into solid compounds, rather than gaseous ones, said Smith, a UA professor and head of chemistry and biochemistry. Previous models predicted the nitrogen would move from gaseous compounds to solid ones in a lengthier stepwise process.

Titan looks orange in color because a smog of organic molecules envelops the planet. The particles in the smog will eventually settle down to the surface and may be exposed to conditions that could create life, said Imanaka, who is also a principal investigator at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

However, scientists don’t know whether Titan’s smog particles contain nitrogen. If some of the particles are the same nitrogen-containing organic molecules the UA team created in the laboratory, conditions conducive to life are more likely, Smith said.

Laboratory observations such as these indicate what the next space missions should look for and what instruments should be developed to help in the search, Smith said.

Imanaka and Smith’s paper, “Formation of nitrogenated organic aerosols in the Titan upper atmosphere,” is scheduled for publication in the Early Online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of June 28. NASA provided funding for the research.

The UA researchers wanted to simulate conditions in Titan’s thin upper atmosphere because results from the Cassini Mission indicated “extreme UV” radiation hitting the atmosphere created complex organic molecules.

Therefore, Imanaka and Smith used the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s synchroton in Berkeley, Calif. to shoot high-energy UV light into a stainless steel cylinder containing nitrogen-and-methane gas held at very low pressure.

The researchers used a mass spectrometer to analyze the chemicals that resulted from the radiation.

Simple though it sounds, setting up the experimental equipment is complicated. The UV light itself must pass through a series of vacuum chambers on its way into the gas chamber.

Many researchers want to use the Advanced Light Source, so competition for time on the instrument is fierce. Imanaka and Smith were allocated one or two time slots per year, each of which was for eight hours a day for only five to 10 days.

For each time slot, Imanaka and Smith had to pack all the experimental equipment into a van, drive to Berkeley, set up the delicate equipment and launch into an intense series of experiments. They sometimes worked more than 48 hours straight to get the maximum out of their time on the Advanced Light Source. Completing all the necessary experiments took years.

It was nerve-racking, Imanaka said: “If we miss just one screw, it messes up our beam time.”

At the beginning, he only analyzed the gases from the cylinder. But he didn’t detect any nitrogen-containing organic compounds.

Imanaka and Smith thought there was something wrong in the experimental set-up, so they tweaked the system. But still no nitrogen.

“It was quite a mystery,” said Imanaka, the paper’s first author. “Where did the nitrogen go?”

Finally, the two researchers collected the bits of brown gunk that gathered on the cylinder wall and analyzed it with what Imanaka called “the most sophisticated mass spectrometer technique.”

Imanaka said, “Then I finally found the nitrogen!”

Imanaka and Smith suspect that such compounds are formed in Titan’s upper atmosphere and eventually fall to Titan’s surface. Once on the surface, they contribute to an environment that is conducive to the evolution of life.

Research contact information:

Hiroshi Imanaka

520-621-7984, 520-621-4220

himanaka@lpl.arizona.edu

Languages: Japanese, English

Mark A. Smith, 520-621-5672

msmith@u.arizona.edu

Related Web sites:

Mark A. Smith
http://www.chem.arizona.edu/faculty/profile/profile.php?fid_call=smit

UA department of chemistry and biochemistry
http://www.chem.arizona.edu/

UA lunar and planetary laboratory
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/

College Park, MD (June 29, 2010) — Integrated circuits, which enable virtually every electronics gadget you use on a daily basis, are constantly being pushed by the semiconductor industry to become smaller, faster, and cheaper. As has happened many times in the past and will continue in the future, integrated circuit scaling is perpetually in danger of hitting a wall that must be maneuvered around.

According to Maxime Darnon, a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research, in order to continue increasing the speed of integrated circuits, interconnect insulators will require an upgrade to porous, low-dielectric constant materials. Darnon and colleagues discuss the details in the Journal of Applied Physics, which is published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).

“The integration of a replacement, porous SiCOH (pSiCOH), however, poses serious problems such as an unacceptable ‘roughening’ that occurs during plasma processing,” explains Darnon. “This is considered a ‘showstopper’ to faster integrated circuits at the moment, so a fundamental understanding of the roughening mechanisms that occur during the etch process of integrated circuit manufacturing is highly desirable to material designers and etch-process engineers.

Darnon’s research team proposes a mechanism for the roughening of pSiCOH materials etched in a fluorocarbon-based plasma. They’ve shown that the problematic roughness results from a cracking of the denser top surface under ion bombardment, and that this roughness propagates through a slower etching of the dense top surface than the modified porous material beneath it. Perhaps more importantly, the team recommends ways to minimize this phenomenon so that the “showstopper” will only be a speedbump on the road to faster integrated circuits.

The article, “Roughening of Porous SiCOH Materials in Fluorocarbon Plasmas” by Maxime Darnon et al will appear in the Journal of Applied Physics. See: http://jap.aip.org/

Journalists may request a free PDF of this article by contacting jbardi@aip.org.

ABOUT JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS

Journal of Applied Physics is the American Institute of Physics’ (AIP) archival journal for significant new results in applied physics; content is published online daily, collected into two online and printed issues per month (24 issues per year). The journal publishes articles that emphasize understanding of the physics underlying modern technology, but distinguished from technology on the one side and pure physics on the other. See: http://jap.aip.org/

ABOUT AIP

The American Institute of Physics is a federation of 10 physical science societies representing more than 135,000 scientists, engineers, and educators and is one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific information in the physical sciences. Offering partnership solutions for scientific societies and for similar organizations in science and engineering, AIP is a leader in the field of electronic publishing of scholarly journals. AIP publishes 12 journals (some of which are the most highly cited in their respective fields), two magazines, including its flagship publication Physics Today; and the AIP Conference Proceedings series. Its online publishing platform Scitation hosts nearly two million articles from more than 185 scholarly journals and other publications of 28 learned society publishers.

College Park, MD (June 29, 2010) — Wind turbines may be one of the best renewable energy solutions, but as turbines get larger they also get noisier, become more of an eyesore, and require increasingly larger expanses of land. One solution: ocean-based wind turbines. While offshore turbines already have been constructed, they’ve traditionally been situated in shallow waters, where the tower extends directly into the seabed. That restricts the turbines to near-shore waters with depths no greater than 50 meters — and precludes their use in deeper waters, where winds generally gust at higher speeds.

An alternative is placing turbines on floating platforms, says naval architect Dominique Roddier of Berkeley, California-based Marine Innovation & Technology. He and his and colleagues have published a feasibility study of one platform design — dubbed “WindFloat” — in the latest issue of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, which is published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).

By testing a 1:65 scale model in a wave tank, the researchers show that the three-legged floating platform, which is based on existing gas and oil offshore platform designs, is stable enough to support a 5-megawatt wind turbine, the largest turbine that currently exists. These mammoth turbines are 70 meters tall and have rotors the size of a football field. Just one, Roddier says, produces enough energy “to support a small town.”

The next step, says Roddier, is building a prototype to understand the life-cycle cost of such projects and to refine the economics models. The prototype, which is being built in collaboration with electricity operator Energias de Portugal, “should be in the water by the end of summer 2012,” he says.

The article, ” Windfloat: a Floating Foundation for Offshore Wind Turbines” by Dominique Roddier et al will appear in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy. See: http://jrse.aip.org/

Journalists may request a free PDF of this article by contacting jbardi@aip.org.

ABOUT JOURNAL OF RENEWABLE AND SUSTAINABLE ENERGY

Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (JRSE) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) that covers all areas of renewable and sustainable energy-related fields that apply to the physical science and engineering communities. As an electronic-only, Web-based journal with rapid publication time, JRSE is responsive to the many new developments expected in this field. The interdisciplinary approach of the publication ensures that the editors draw from researchers worldwide in a diverse range of fields. See: http://jrse.aip.org/

ABOUT AIP

The American Institute of Physics is a federation of 10 physical science societies representing more than 135,000 scientists, engineers, and educators and is one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific information in the physical sciences. Offering partnership solutions for scientific societies and for similar organizations in science and engineering, AIP is a leader in the field of electronic publishing of scholarly journals. AIP publishes 12 journals (some of which are the most highly cited in their respective fields), two magazines, including its flagship publication Physics Today; and the AIP Conference Proceedings series. Its online publishing platform Scitation hosts nearly two million articles from more than 185 scholarly journals and other publications of 28 learned society publishers.

Community-based lymphatic filariasis education in Orissa State, India, increased treatment compliance from around 50% to up to 90%, according to a study published June 29 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. In their study, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in partnership with the Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action, an India-based non-governmental organization, and IMA World Health, a US-based non-governmental organization, identified barriers to compliance with India’s MDA program for LF, and suggest that timely educational and lymphedema management programs can reverse this trend.

Nearly 1.3 billion people worldwide live at risk of infection with the parasite that causes lymphatic filariasis. Infected individuals may develop long-term complications, such as grossly swollen limbs from lymphedema. Elimination of this disease of poverty requires giving drugs at least once per year to people who are at risk; of that population, 80% or more need to continue receiving medication on an annual basis for 5 or more years to stop transmission.

The authors evaluated a community-based education campaign, noted deficiencies, and designed interventions to correct them. An evaluation of the revised education program, covering over 8,000 people in ninety villages, showed markedly improved drug compliance and, for the first time, showed that lymphedema management programs, which teach leg care to patients with swollen legs, may also increase compliance with lymphatic filariasis mass drug administration programs. The increase was greatest in areas that had implemented U.S. Agency for International Development-supported programs to teach people how to care for legs swollen from infection.

This evaluation was confined to rural areas in Orissa State, so the findings do not necessarily apply to urban areas or areas outside the state. Nonetheless, lymphatic filariasis elimination programs facing difficulties in achieving the necessary level of drug compliance should consider evaluating their education campaigns using similar methods and integrating lymphedema management with lymphatic filariasis elimination efforts, the authors say.

FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE: Funding for this work was provided by USAID (GHA-G-00-03-0005-00) to IMA World Health and by CDC (IAA GHH99-006). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manucript.

COMPETING INTERESTS: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist

PLEASE ADD THIS LINK TO THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0000728

CITATION: Cantey PT, Rout J, Rao G, Williamson J, Fox LM (2010) Increasing Compliance with Mass Drug Administration Programs for Lymphatic Filariasis in India through Education and Lymphedema Management Programs. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 4(6): e728. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0000728

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