blog

This week’s news includes a report that two American university campuses in Tokyo remain closed today after last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, a study that suggests a role for gut bacteria in the health of starving children, two new peer-reviewed journals, a ruling from the European Court of Justice that procedures involving human embryonic stem cell lines are not patentable, and the possible discovery of the lost city of Atlantis.

American college campuses in Tokyo closed

Tokyo campuses of two US universities remain closed today after an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami rocked the island nation last week, killing thousands. The Tokyo campuses of Temple University and Wisconsin’s Lakeland College both cancelled classes today, citing disruptions to transportation systems and government recommendations to stay home. Though no injuries or serious damages have been reported from either campus, the powerful quake was felt at both even though its epicenter was more than 200 miles away. The temblor “sent teachers and students scurrying under desks, while boxes, books, and other debris fell around them,” wrote the Lakeland campus’s interim associate dean, Alan Brender, in an email to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Gut bugs worsen malnutrition?

While most the news on gut bacteria these days is good—regulating immunity, for example, and even behavior—new evidence from Africa suggests that these commensal microbes may play a role in the negative consequences of malnutrition. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis studied malnourished children in the African nation of Malawi and found that identical twins with similar diets seldom suffer equally from kwashiorkor—the condition that swells the bellies of malnourished children and makes them more susceptible to disease and death. In fact, in only 7% of more than 300 pairs of twins did both children have the condition, the researchers reported last week at the International Human Microbiome Congress in Vancouver, Canada.

Transplanting gut bacterial communities from twins with and without kwashiorkor into mouse models, the scientists found that mice colonized by bacteria from children with the condition lost more weight on the typical Malawian diet of maize flour and vegetables than mice implanted with bacteria from the healthier twin. Though parasites could also play into kwashiorkor and otherwise worsening the health of some malnourished children, the study yields tantalizing clues that could lead to a regimen of healthy bacteria to supplement nutrient-enriched foods dispersed to the world’s hungry. “Maybe we can do earlier interventions — before they suffer,” Michelle Smith, the Washington University postdoc who presented the preliminary results, told Nature News.

Introducing two new journals

The scientific community welcomes two new scientific journals to the peer-reviewed landscape—Nature Publishing Group’s Nature Climate Change and Stem Cells Translational Medicine, an open-access title launched by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Nature Climate Change will make its official debut next month, but has been publishing free content (about 12 papers or commentaries per month) since January on its website. Stem Cells Translational Medicine is the first foray into the publishing world for California’s state-funded stem cell agency, and the first print installment is slated for publication next January, with some online articles going up in December. You can check out an iPad preview of the journal here.

European court says no patents for stem cell therapy

In a move that shocked the European stem cell research community, a high court ruled that procedures involving human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines could not be patented. Judge Yves Bot, advocate general of the European Court of Justice, issued the preliminary opinion on Thursday (March 10), in response to a case involving a German researcher, Oliver Brustle, who patented a method for generating nerve cells from hESCs in 1991. “It’s the worst possible outcome,” Brüstle, director of the Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology at the University of Bonn, told Nature News. Thirteen judges that make up the court’s Grand Chamber will now consider the preliminary opinion and will lodge their final decision in a couple of months.

US Navy to take climate change seriously

The United States Navy should prepare to undertake more humanitarian aid missions, strengthen its presence in the Arctic, and consider the security of its seaside bases and installations in the face of the increasing effects of climate change, according to a report by the National Research Council. As Arctic Sea ice melts, sea lanes open up and commercial activities—shipping, oil and gas exploration, etc.—increase. Climate change also raises the likelihood of environmental disasters such as floods, drought, and strong storms. And naval installations, which hug coastlines around the world, are vulnerable to the sea level rise predicted in most models of future climate change. For all of these reasons, the Navy-sponsored report found, the US Navy must act now to protect itself and America’s national security from the ravages of an uncertain future. “Even the most moderate predicted trends in climate change will present new national security challenges for the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard,” said Frank L. Bowman, co-chair of the committee that wrote the report and a retired U.S. navy admiral, in a statement.  “Naval forces need to monitor more closely and start preparing now for projected challenges climate change will present in the future.”

Lost city of Atlantis found?

Scientists claim to have found the sunken metropolis that gave rise to the legend of the lost city of Atlantis. Using deep-ground radar, digital mapping, and satellite imagery, researchers say that the lost city lies buried in the mudflats of a Spanish national park north of Cadiz. Richard Freund, a University of Hartford, Connecticut archaeologist, led an international team that studied the site for several years and told Reuters that the ancient city was likely engulfed by a huge tsunami that swamped the Spanish coast hundreds of years ago.

Related stories: