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SCIENCE UPDATE: India, Israel set up joint R&D fund
NEW DELHI and Tel Aviv have inked an accord to set up an industrial research and development fund aimed at boosting joint ventures.
The Indian Minister for Science and Technology, Kapil Sibal, and the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry, Ehud Olmert, signed the agreement under which each side will contribute $1 million to provide risk-free grants to entrepreneurs, a news report said recently.
The two ministers outlined cooperation in the areas of nanotechnology, biotechnology, water management, non-conventional energy and space and aeronautics as five priority areas of “common interest” for enhanced collaboration.
“We have collaborated with each other in defence and strategic areas but we need to move on to areas in which we can directly affect the lives of the ordinary people,” Mr Sibal remarked.
Observing that the two countries were IT ‘superpowers’, he added: “India can be the centre of joint Indo-Israel ventures to serve the rest of the world.”
Mr Olmert said he was struck by the immense possibilities of cooperation between the two countries. “There is enormous potential. I think that India is emerging as a major economy and Israel has designated India as one of the main targets of our foreign trade in the next five years,” he said. — APP
Plastics harming unborn boys
Scientists in America have found the first evidence that common chemicals used in products as diverse as cosmetics, toys and plastic bags may harm the development of unborn baby boys.
Researchers have long known that high levels of substances called phthalates have gender-bending effects on male animals, making them more feminine and leading to poor sperm quality and infertility. The new study suggests that even normal levels of phthalates, which are ubiquitous, can disrupt the development of male babies’ reproductive organs.
The discovery poses a huge problem for the chemical industry, which is already embroiled in a battle with the US government over EU proposals on chemical safety. Several types of phthalates, which are used to make plastics more pliable, and have been around for more than 50 years, have been banned, but many are still produced in vast quantities.
The study was carried out by scientists from centres across the US, including the University of Rochester and the National Centre for Environmental Health. The researchers measured the levels of nine widely used phthalates in the urine of pregnant women and compared them with standard physiological measurements of their babies.
Tests showed that women with higher levels of four different phthalates were more likely to have baby boys with a range of conditions, indicating a feminization of the boys similar to that seen in animals exposed to the chemicals. — Dawn/The Guardian News Service
Animal experiments
Alternative ways of conducting medical research should be found to spare animals being used in experiments, an influential group of scientists and ethicists says.
A two-year study on the ethics of animal experiments by the Nuffied Council on Bioethics, published last week, concluded that researchers should be more open about the experiments. The committee, made up of scientists, philosophers, members of animal protection groups and a lawyer, said it was unrealistic to assume that all animal experiments will end in the short term.
However, it added that practical advances in replacing animals would be a good way to reduce conflict between people on different sides of the debate.
Anti-vivisectionists welcomed the report as a vindication of their view that animal experiments should eventually be phased out of scientific research. The report acknowledged the enormous contribution made by animal experiments to medical science but said a “thorough analysis” of the scientific barriers to replacements must be carried out.
“A world in which the important benefits of such research could be achieved without causing pain, suffering, distress, lasting harm or death to animals involved in research must be the ultimate goal,” said the report. The report highlighted some of the challenges to replacing animals, including the difficulty in simulating the diversity of cells and tissues that make up a person. — Dawn/The Guardian News Service
Archimedes’ hidden treatises
Scientists are using the powerful X-ray light emitted by the synchrotron at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre to read hidden text on a 1,000-year-old copy of the Archimedes palimpsest, a mathematical and engineering text written by the Italian philosopher in the 3rd century BC.
The palimpsest is the only known source for two treatises written by Archimedes, who is perhaps best known for supposedly running naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting “Eureka!” after discovering the principle of water displacement in his bathtub.
In the 10th century, a scribe copied some of Archimedes’ writings onto a goatskin parchment. Two centuries later, with parchment in short supply, the ink was erased with a weak acid and scraped off with a pumice stone so that the parchment could be used for a prayer book.
The damage was compounded in the 20th century when forgers painted Byzantine religious images on four pages to increase the value of the prayer book. Much of the 174-page palimpsest can be deciphered by conventional techniques using visible or ultraviolet light, but several pages, including those under the paintings, have proved more difficult.
Physicist Uwe Bergmann of Stanford had a eureka moment in 2003 when he read an article about the palimpsest that noted the inks contained iron. “I immediately thought we should be able to read the parchment with X-rays,” Bergman said. “That’s what we do … we measure iron in proteins, extremely low concentrations of iron.”
Last week, the team used the synchrotron to scan three pages of the document. A very narrow beam of X-rays was swept repeatedly across the page, triggering fluorescence in the iron molecules.
The hidden text on two of the pages deals with floating bodies and the equilibrium of planes. On the third page is a previously unknown introduction to Archimedes’ Method of Mechanical Theorems. — Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times
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