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Global update: Indian N-programme takes giant step
INDIA HAS taken a big step forward in its nuclear power programme by achieving for the first time reprocessing of nuclear fuel with high plutonium content having a high burn-up mark.
At the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Dr Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, told journalists that for the first time plutonium- and uranium-rich carbide fuel with a high burn-up mark of 147.8 giga watts day per tonne had been achieved.
“The fast-breed test reactor here is unique because it is using carbide fuel. It was a bold step and as a part of our cautious approach the target for burn-up was fixed at 25,000 mega watts day per tonne. But what has been achieved is six times of the target,” he said.
The director of IGCAR, Dr Baldev Raj, said: “The department is committed to efficiently closing the fast reactor fuel cycle by safely reprocessing future discharges of spent fuels with increasing burn-ups and in achieving the energy security for the country.”
He said while the fast-breed reactors had been using oxide and carbide fuel, the facility had decided to “leapfrog into using metallic fuel in specially designed reactors”. Scientists at the IGCAR had been working on reprocessing of nuclear fuel and had been successful, he added. — APP
Oil giant influenced Bush?
PRESIDENT George Bush’s decision not to sign the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world’s most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by The Guardian.
The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month’s G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy.
In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company’s “active involvement” in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.
Other papers suggest that Ms Dobriansky should sound out Exxon executives and other anti-Kyoto business groups on potential alternatives to Kyoto. Until now Exxon has publicly maintained that it had no involvement in the US government’s rejection of Kyoto.
But the documents, obtained by Greenpeace under US freedom of information legislation, suggest this is not the case. “Potus (president of the United States) rejected Kyoto in part based on input from you (the Global Climate Coalition),” says one briefing note before Ms Dobriansky’s meeting with the GCC, the main anti-Kyoto US industry group, which was dominated by Exxon.
The papers further state that the White House considered Exxon “among the companies most actively and prominently opposed to binding approaches (like Kyoto) to cut greenhouse gas emissions”.
Drug linked to heart attacks
Millions of people with arthritis were left in a dilemma as ibuprofen, a painkiller which has long been considered one of the safest drugs on the market, was linked with heart attacks. The news will specially dismay those who depend on drugs to reduce the stiffening in joints.
The question mark over ibuprofen, of which Nurofen is one of the best known brands, and the other less well-known non-steroidal anti-inflammatories follows on the heels of the crisis over a newer class of medicines used for the same purpose. The drug company Merck took its best-selling Vioxx off the market after trials showed it, too, was linked with heart attacks. A whole class of drugs, known as the Cox2 inhibitors, is now under investigation.
The biggest support group for people with arthritis made a heartfelt plea last week for doctors to advise them on what they should do now. — Dawn/The Guardian News Service
Lapses in ethics
One in three biomedical researchers has engaged in at least one practice of questionable scientific integrity, according to a survey published last week in the journal Nature.
Only a small fraction of respondents — fewer than 2 per cent — acknowledged serious lapses: plagiarism, or falsification or fabrication of data.
Lesser transgressions, however, were relatively common in the survey, which posed questions on 34 ethical issues. Of about 3,200 scientists surveyed, 1.7 per cent said they had used confidential information without authorization, 6 per cent had withheld data that contradicted their findings, 12.5 per cent had overlooked the use of flawed data or analysis by others, and 15.5 per cent had changed the design, methodology or results of a study under pressure from a funding source.
Many respondents also said they had inappropriately designated the authorship of papers or had flawed record keeping. “Integrity in the practice of science is more than just the absence of fraud,” said Brian C. Martinson, a researcher at HealthPartners Research Foundation in Minneapolis and lead author of the study.
Ovary donation works
An infertile Alabama woman has given birth to a healthy baby after receiving a transplanted ovary from her twin sister, the first case in which such a transplant has unequivocally resulted in a birth.
The achievement is considered a significant step towards restoring fertility in women who have undergone cancer therapy. Stephanie Yarber, 25, of Muscle Shoals gave birth to a 7-pound, 15-ounce girl a little over a year after undergoing the transplant at a St Louis hospital, researchers said in a report published online by the New England Journal of Medicine last week.
Belgian researchers last year reported a successful birth by a woman whose ovarian tissues had been removed and frozen during chemotherapy, then reimplanted. But critics argued that it was equally likely that the woman was able to give birth when her ovaries spontaneously recovered after the treatment.
“There is much less doubt in this case,” said Dr Kutluk H. Oktay of Cornell-Weill Medical School, who was not involved in the transplant. “I think this is 99 per cent convincing.” — Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times
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