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SCIENCE UPDATE: Scientists say new Sars tracing method developed
Scientists in Singapore have claimed that they had developed a faster method of detecting strains of the deadly Sars virus. A new chip containing a “genetic fingerprint” reduces the length of molecular testing of the flu-like disease to three days from about one week, the Genome Institute of Singapore said.
The faster a strain of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) is pin-pointed, the quicker health workers can identify the origin of an outbreak and who else may be infected — critical steps in bringing outbreaks under control.
Sars infected about 8,000 people worldwide in 2003, killing nearly 800 including 33 in Singapore. It briefly re-emerged in China in April, killing one person.
Molecular tests are one of several tests to identify strains of the lethal flu-like virus.
“It can help to tell where and when an infected individual may have contracted the disease,” said Dr Edison Liu, executive director of the institute, referring to the new chip.
Sars is caused by a virus from a family known as coronaviruses. They cause diseases in livestock and some cases of the common cold in people.
At the heart of detection process, genetic material known as viral RNA is extracted from a patient and processed in a chip the size of a fingertip. This lights up, revealing a pattern indicating the virus’s genetic code.
The institute said the chip can process up to 50 samples at the same time, allowing large numbers of Sars patients to be screened at once, and can be adapted to detect other illnesses.
Venus transit of Sun
Venus passed between Earth and the Sun, unleashing a frenzy among astronomers eager to glimpse a celestial alignment unseen by anyone alive today.
Ending a frustrating ballet in which the second and third planets of the Solar System chased each other across the skies for nearly 122 years, a tiny dot crawled across the face of the Sun as Venus interposed between the Earth and its star.
The "transit" was to last more than six hours and, weather permitting, around five billion of the world's six billion people were in a position to witness some or all of it.
"They were just elated, they were literally jumping off the floor with excitement," Professor Gordon Bromage of Britain's University of Central Lancashire said, of the nearly 100 skygazers who gathered under bright sunshine near the northern English city of Preston.
More than 2,000 schools, astronomy clubs and individuals signed up to the European Southern Observatory's website (http://www.vt-2004.org) to place their observations on the record for future generations to read.
TV news channels in Europe broke into their coverage to announce the start of the transit, and the event was carried live on several websites. The European Space Agency (Esa) and Nasa tasked two satellites for a close scrutiny of the long-awaited phenomenon.
Only six transits have ever been recorded: in 1631, 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874 and 1882. The next will be in 2012, but the one after that will be in 2117.
The reason for the strange recurrences is because Venus has an orbital plane that is slightly tilted to Earth, the third planet.
After the 1769 transit, Britain's James Cook became the first European to discover Australia's Great Barrier Reef and make the first detailed map of New Zealand.
Puzzling filaments in Milky Way
New observations of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy have revealed the origin of radio-emitting filaments that puzzled astronomers for two decades.
The filaments range from 10 to 100 light-years in length and 1 to 3 light-years across. They occur only in a very narrow area, within about 900 light-years of the galactic center, a region crowded with old and new stars.
A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). The Milky Way in its entirety spans more than 100,000 light-years.
The filaments emerge from pockets of intense star formation, the new study found.
“We can finally see a link between areas of starburst activity and these long-linear filaments,” said Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, a Northwestern University astronomer who presented the results last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The center of the Milky Way is dominated by a supermassive black hole, which is surrounded by an intense magnetic field and pockets of rampant star formation. Scientists had theorized that the filaments were related to the magnetic field, because the first filaments spotted were aligned with it.
“The problem with this hypothesis is that more recent images have revealed a population of weaker filaments oriented randomly,” Yusef-Zadeh said. “This makes it difficult to explain the origin of the filaments by an organized galactic magnetic field.”
The center of the galaxy is shrouded by dense clouds of dust and gas, making optical observations impossible. So Yusef-Zadeh’s team probed the area with radio observatories, the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array and Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope.
The researchers found that some filaments seemed to connect to concentrated areas of thermal emission, which in turn identify pockets of star formation. The star-forming regions associated with the filaments may contain 100 massive stars each. However, the exact mechanism that creates the filaments remains to be discovered.
Multiple Sclerosis breakthrough
An Australian university researcher announced a breakthrough Monday in efforts to develop a vaccine that can help repair damage done to the nervous system by Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
Tana Karnezis, a fellow at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, found that inhibiting or removing a protein which prevents spinal nerve regeneration can significantly delay the onset of an MS-like condition in mice.
The research also suggests that the protein, known as Nogo A, may have a hand in initiating MS, Karnezis said in a paper published online in Nature Neuroscience.
Claude Bernard, director of Latrobe’s Neuroimmunology Laboratory who oversaw the project, said the work opened a range of new possibilities for treating MS.
“We have been working on a vaccine which could help stop the deterioration of the disease and may help restore some of the brain function,” he said.
Bernard said clinical trials could begin with within the next two years. The breakthrough was a result of applying knowledge gained from research into spinal cord injuries to MS, a degenerative disease of the nerves of the spinal cord and brain. — Sci-tech World Report
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