The personal genetic-testing industry is under fire, but happier days lie ahead

“BY ALL accounts, I’m a medical miracle,” says Ozzy Osbourne, an ageing rock star who once bit the head off a live bat. For four decades Mr Osbourne (pictured above in his prime) drank too much and took prodigious quantities of drugs. Yet he survived. Now a reformed man, he is getting his entire genome sequenced by Knome, an American genetic-testing firm, for clues to how his body coped with such prolonged abuse.

He is not alone in wondering what mysteries genetic testing might unlock. 23andMe, a genetics start-up in Silicon Valley financed partly by Google, has held “spit parties” for the rich and famous. It compared the genes of Warren Buffett and Jimmy Buffet to see if the billionaire and the musician are related (they are not). The personal genetics business is hardly four years old, but it has already made a splash. Many customers hope that, by analysing their genes, they will learn more about their risk of contracting a disease, getting fat or suffering from some other ailment. ...

A history of twists and turns

Drawing the Map of Life: Inside the Human Genome Project. By Victor McElheny. Basic Books; 381 pages; $28 and GBP16.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

IN THE late 1980s it occurred to a bunch of biologists, many of them Americans, that it might be possible to analyse all of the 3 billion pairs of DNA “letters” that contain man’s genes, and thus make a map of the human genome. The tools they had were crude, but the application of enough time and money to the problem, they thought, would yield the blueprint of humanity. That would be the starting point for a new sort of biology, one in which the scope of the problem was defined in the way that the scope of chemistry is defined by the periodic table. ...

Behind the scenes, industrial biotechnology is getting going at last

IS GREEN chemistry ready for take-off? Delegates at a big conference on “industrial biotechnology” held near Washington, DC, this week by Bio, the industry’s umbrella organisation, seemed to think so. Industrial biotech uses agricultural feedstocks, rather than petroleum-based ones, to produce chemicals, plastics and fuels. McKinsey, a consultancy, says global industry revenues will grow from €116 billion ($170 billion) in 2008 to as much as €450 billion by 2020. The World Economic Forum reckons the coming boom in “biorefineries” will create new markets worth almost $300 billion by 2020.

Industrial biotech seems to have been relatively unscathed by the financial crisis. Codexis, an American start-up backed by Royal Dutch Shell, an Anglo-Dutch oil giant, pulled off a stockmarket flotation in April. Amyris, another American start-up, secured an investment of around $130m from Total, a French oil firm, this week and is likely to go public soon too. ...

Everyday genomics is coming, ready or not

IT IS 2020. You are watching the latest episode of CSI Miami. Horatio and the team have a murder to solve. The murderer has conveniently left a DNA sample behind. In fact, since a single strand of the molecule can now be detected and analysed, he could hardly avoid having done so. Not so conveniently, he is not on the database—wishy-washy civil libertarians having prohibited the collection of DNA records about the unconvicted.

Never mind. Horatio pops the sample in a state-of-the-art sequencing machine and out comes a picture of what the suspect looks like—or, rather, a series of pictures of his likely appearance at five-year intervals from age 15 to age 50. Cross-reference these with Florida’s driving-licence database, and the team has its man. ...

Genomics is raising a mirror to humanity, producing some surprising reflections

THE decade since the genome announcement has seen many remarkable results. Vying with Dr Venter’s synthetic life for the title of the most extraordinary was the announcement on February 12th 2009 (by no mere coincidence Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday) that a second species of human had had its genome sequenced. Svante Paabo, the inspiration for Michael Crichton’s novel and film, “Jurassic Park”, told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that his team at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig had a version of Neanderthal man’s DNA to compare with that of modern humans.

The actual comparison was not published until six weeks ago, on May 6th. It was, however, worth waiting for. It showed similarities between the species (in, for example, the FOXP2 gene that helps govern the ability to speak) as well as differences (in several genes connected with cognitive ability). These differences are obvious places to start looking for the essence of modern humanity—the things that distinguish Homo sapiens from other animals, including other types of human, and thus accounts for the extraordinary flourishing of a species that is now estimated to make use of 40% of the net primary productivity (the energy captured by photosynthesis and converted into plant matter) of the planet’s land surface. ...

Every genome on the planet is now up for grabs, including those that do not yet exist

IF THE history books do come to recognise the idea of biology 2.0, then the date it began may well be recorded as May 20th 2010. That was the day when Craig Venter announced JCVI-syn1.0, the world’s first living organism with a completely synthetic genome.

The Frankencell project, as it was known jokingly at the beginning, had been going for 15 years—ever since Dr Venter started to wonder what was the minimal genome necessary to support a living organism. To find out, he took a bacterium called Micoplasma genitalium, which has a particularly short genome anyway, and knocked its genes out one at a time to see which the bug could live without (at least in the cushy circumstances of a laboratory Petri dish). The answer was around 100 of its original complement of 485. ...

The next advances in genomics may happen in China

IN AN old printing works on an obscure industrial estate in Hong Kong’s New Territories a little bit of history is being made. Most of the five-storey building is dusty and derelict. One floor, however, is state-of-the-art. The paintwork shines. The metal gleams. And in the largest room the electrical sockets in the floor sit in serried ranks awaiting contact.

That contact will shortly be made with the delivery of 120 spanking new top-of-the-range Illumina sequencing machines. When they have all been installed the building will, so it is claimed, have more DNA-sequencing capacity than the whole of the United States. And that is just the start. According to Alex Wong, who runs the facility, the other four floors will also soon be refurbished and the whole building will become a powerhouse ready to generate information for biology 2.0. ...

Individualised genomics has yet to take off

ONE way of trying to make money out of the new genomic knowledge has been to offer what has come to be known as “personal genomics”. The results, to put it charitably, have been mixed, and for good reason. The price point is wrong, observes Douglas Fambrough of Oxford Bioscience Partners, a venture-capital firm based in Boston. What you learn from looking at your genome is not yet worth the price you have to pay. Either the price must come down or the value of the product must rise. Both may happen when the latest generation of DNA sequencers are more widely deployed, but at the moment most personal-sequencing companies use gene chips to give a SNP profile, rather than offering a complete sequence.

Two of the earliest entrants to the field were deCODE and 23andMe. DeCODE, an Icelandic firm whose aspirations to become a full-fledged pharmaceutical company were dealt a blow when it went through a bankruptcy restructuring earlier this year, charges $2,000 to search a sample for 1m SNPs predictive of 50 genetic traits, not all of them diseases. Theragen makes a similar offer from South Korea. 23andMe, based in Mountain View, California, charges $499 to search more than half a million SNPs for signs of 154 traits. Navigenics, down the road in Foster City, restricts its analysis ($999) to 28 health conditions and 12 drug responses “that you and your doctor can act on”. Complete Genomics, another Californian firm (Mountain View again), plans to leapfrog the chip-based crowd by offering customers full DNA sequences using a complicated proprietary technology that will not, initially, be for sale to other users. And Knome, a firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers a bespoke whole-genome service for the discerning client at $68,500 a pop. ...

The big beasts of genomics

SCIENCE reporting usually concentrates on the science, not the scientists. Though the minds and hands behind the research are acknowledged, the real story is the discovery itself and its place in the jigsaw of human understanding. That, and the fact that modern scientific investigation tends to be a team effort, has diminished the cult of the celebrity scientist. The human-genome project was an exception to this rule. It created some scientific celebrities and also some celebrated rivalries. Ten years on the reader might wonder what has happened to them.

The loosest cannon of the lot was probably James Watson. Dr Watson, co-discoverer with Francis Crick of the double-helical structure of DNA, was responsible for suggesting the human-genome project in the first place. At the time he was head of America’s National Centre for Human Genome Research, part of the country’s National Institutes of Health (NIH). He fell out with the NIH, however, over the issue of patenting DNA sequences called expressed sequence tags. He opposed this, arguing that “you shouldn’t patent something a monkey could do.” That did not endear him to Craig Venter, who had created the DNA in question. Dr Watson was replaced by Francis Collins, a man regarded by some biologists as ideologically unsound because he is a born-again Christian. Dr Watson continued as head of the Cold Spring Harbour genetics laboratory until 2007, when he made some injudicious remarks about genetics and black people and found himself suddenly retired. ...

Genomics has not yet delivered the drugs, but it will

“WHERE’S the beef?” is always a reasonable question to ask. For the human genome it can be rephrased slightly as “where are the drugs?” It is a question that does not exactly make genomicists squirm, but it puts them on the defensive.

By now, if you had believed the more bullish pronouncements made at the time the human-genome project was coming to fruition, the pipelines of pharmaceutical companies would have been bursting with aspiring treatments for everything from Alzheimer’s disease to Zollinger-Ellison syndrome, as the genes involved in these illnesses were identified and drug molecules that could correct malfunctions of those genes were discovered. In fact, the pipelines are empty; company analysts often seem to regard research as a drain on the balance-sheet, rather than an asset; and drug companies seem to be reinventing themselves as marketing firms for established products. The explanation is a toxic mix of science and economics, but the result is an industry ripe for disruption. ...

Del 17 al 19 de febrero de 2011 se celebra en Kuala Lumpur la feria Malaysia Technology Expo (MTE) 2011. Es la feria del sector de la innovación y tecnología. Se incluye en la misma feria la GreenInnovation 2011.

Argelia es un mercado de poco más de 35 millones de habitantes con una renta per cápita que en 2009 superó los 4.000 dólares.

En el sector agrícola y agroalimentario está casi todo por hacer; los productos agrícolas apenas se exportan; existen industrias pero la mayoría son obsoletas; se dice que sus necesidades alimenticias están cubiertas solamente en un 50% por la producción nacional. Los recursos pesqueros están subexplotados y actualmente más del 90% de los barcos se adquieren en el exterior. La explotación minera está experimentando un fuerte desarrollo y está llevando a cabo mediante concesiones a empresas extranjeras. La industria textil y del cuero ha perdido importancia, y la industria siderúrgica debería convertirse en un sector próspero. El farmacéutico dista mucho de ser autosuficiente,

importándose anualmente poco más de 1.300 millones de dólares. El 98% de la exportación está compuesto de hidrocarburos, restando sólo un poco más de un millardo de

dólares para el resto de los bienes.

En la mayoría de los sectores existe un gran potencial de crecimiento y de oportunidades de negocio para los exportadores españoles. Entre los más destacados: energía, productos farmacéuticos, materiales y equipos para la construcción, bienes de equipo, automoción y componentes, equipos y material para el sector pesquero, equipamientos y material agrícola, equipos para fluidos y tratamiento de aguas, maquinaria e instalaciones industriales. Incluso, todos los productos alimenticios. Además existen planes de modernización y mejora en todos los sectores: red de mataderos del país, de la red frigorífica nacional, red ferroviaria. África Subsahariana es objeto de interés económico y político creciente, tanto en el contexto europeo como en el caso español, habiéndose aumentado la presencia de empresas españolas en la zona.

El objetivo es promover proyectos conjuntos de interés mutuo de empresas españolas y japonesas en los sectores de tratamiento y suministro de agua, energía solar fotovoltaica, termosolar y eólica en terceros países y proporcionar por ambas partes financiación con condiciones preferentes.

El ministro de Industria, Turismo y Comercio, Miguel Sebastián, y el presidente y consejero delegado del Banco de Cooperación Internacional de Japón, Hiroshi Watanabe, han firmado un Memorando de Entendimiento (MOU) para la cooperación en el desarrollo de infraestructuras medioambientales.

El objetivo del acuerdo es promover proyectos conjuntos de interés mutuo por empresas españolas y japonesas en el sector de las infraestructuras ambientales en terceros países y proporcionar a las empresas instrumentos financieros adecuados a las características de cada operación y con condiciones preferentes.

Asimismo, ambas partes intercambiarán datos relativos a proyectos en los sectores, entre otros, de tratamiento y suministro de agua, energía solar fotovoltaica, termosolar y eólica y podrán establecer canales de información que faciliten la ejecución conjunta de los mismos por parte de empresas de ambos países.

El MOU se ha firmado en el marco del viaje oficial que está realizando el presidente del Gobierno, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a China y Japón.

El crecimiento económico, el aumento de la población mundial y la sensibilidad medioambiental han puesto de manifiesto la relevancia de las infraestructuras relacionadas con el medioambiente, como el tratamiento y suministro de agua, las energías alternativas, el transporte sostenible y el desarrollo armónico de las ciudades, para lograr un desarrollo económico equilibrado.

Esta realidad exige de un posicionamiento empresarial temprano en los mercados emergentes para aprovechar su elevado potencial de crecimiento, así como de importantes volúmenes de inversión, fundamentalmente privadas.

No obstante, instituciones como el Banco de Cooperación Internacional de Japón y el Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio pueden jugar un papel catalizador de estos procesos de inversión y modernización en sectores estratégicos mencionados.

Del 6 al 9 de septiembre, la feria de moda CPM – Collection Premiere Moscow, principal plataforma comercial para el mercado ruso y del Este de Europa, organiza su 15 edición en el recinto ferial de Krasnaya Presnaya Expocentr.

En este salón, que reúne a 1.200 marcas y atrae a más de 17.000 visitantes de los sectores de moda masculina, femenina, infantil, artículos en piel, novias y moda íntima y baño procedentes de 34 países, se presentarán las colecciones para la temporada primavera-verano 2011.

En un contexto de tímida y gradual recuperación económica de la eurozona, el número de expositores españoles experimenta un ligero descenso respecto a la edición de febrero de 2010, cuando concurrieron 29 empresas en representación de 52 marcas.

En esta edición, la presencia española asciende a 21 marcas entre las que destacan Escorpión, Jota+Ge, Nice Things, TMX, Sita Murt o Alba Conde, en moda femenina; Custo Growing, Mayoral, Bóboli y Barcarola, en moda infantil; y J&C y Udy, en moda íntima y baño.

Las exportaciones españolas de confección textil a Rusia durante 2009 ascendieron a más de 100,9 millones de euros. En el primer cuatrimestre del año en curso, éstas han alcanzado los 42,3 millones de euros, lo que supone un incremento del 8% respecto al mismo periodo de 2009.

Al cierre del mes de mayo, las importaciones italianas de aceite de oliva español han registrado un aumento del 41,5% en volumen y un 50% en valor para los cinco primeros meses del presente ejercicio.

De las 240.000 toneladas de aceite de oliva que han entrado en el país transalpino en el intervalo de referencia, más de dos tercios (160.000 toneladas, aproximadamente) tienen origen español.

Según datos del Instituto Nacional de Estadística italiano (ISTAT), las importaciones italianas de aceite de oliva son cada vez mayores: Un total de 474 millones de euros en el intervalo comprendido entre enero y mayo de 2010, cifra que supone un repunte del 16% en volumen y del 19% en valor respecto al mismo periodo del ejercicio precedente.

La edición de 'The New York Times' del pasado 16 de agosto se hace eco en sus páginas de la fama y trayectoria de las alpargatas de Castañer. En un extenso artículo firmado por Dale Puchs, el prestigioso diario estadounidense elogia este calzado tan 'peculiar' de la firma española, que ha sabido sobreponerse a tejidos y diseños más vanguardistas para continuar siendo uno de los preferidos entre hombres y mujeres de todo el mundo. A modo de ejemplo, grandes marcas de la moda como Lanvin, Hermès o Louboutin, han trabajado con Castañer, que también diseña sus propias colecciones, disponibles en numerosas boutiques de EEUU.

El autor resalta que Castañer, fundada hace 50 años, ha conservado su estructura de empresa familiar, un modelo arraigado en las firmas de calzado español, lo que otorga al producto un sello artesanal que lo diferencia de la producción industrial propia de los países asiáticos.

La aparición de este artículo coincide con la influencia que Castañer ha ejercido entre las colecciones de calzado femenino para la próxima temporada de primavera, donde la suela de esparto, ya sea para sandalias o zapatos de cuña, será una de las tendencias más reseñables según se pudo comprobar en las últimas ferias de calzado.

EEUU es el país escenario del 'Plan Made in / by Spain', una iniciativa ejecutada por el Instituto Español de Comercio Exterior (ICEX) que busca potenciar la internacionalización de las empresas, productos, marcas y servicios españoles en el mercado norteamericano.

El Programa de Formación en Alta Gastronomía Española fue creado en 2007 por el Instituto Español de Comercio Exterior (ICEX) con un triple objetivo. En primer lugar, familiarizar a un grupo de futuros profesionales de la gastronomía con los productos y alimentos estrella de la cocina española de forma que se obtenga una mayor proyección internacional de los mismos y se potencie su exportación. En segundo lugar, crear una red internacional de profesionales con contactos en la alta cocina española que puedan servir de punto de apoyo para eventuales procesos de internacionalización de este sector –restaurantes filiales en el exterior, proyectos de asistencia técnica o consultoría, etc.– Por último, se busca transmitir una imagen moderna y actual de España a través de su cocina, aprovechando el excelente momento y la proyección internacional de un sector como el culinario, de enorme repercusión mundial en los últimos años.

¿En qué consiste?

El programa formativo tiene una duración de 8 meses. En una primera fase, los becarios reciben un curso intensivo en lengua castellana –de un mes de duración– y un periodo formativo, de tres semanas, de inmersión en la cultura, la historia gastronómica y los productos de España.

Una segunda fase –con seis meses de duración– se desarrolla en un restaurante de fama internacional y avalado por prestigiosos reconocimientos. En la convocatoria 2009-2010, que arrancó en septiembre de 2009, participan 23 establecimientos: El Bulli, Arzak, El Celler de Can Roca, Martín Berasategui, Akelarre, Mugaritz, El Poblet, Adolfo, Calima, Santo Mauro, Echaurren, Abac, O Balaguer, La Terraza del Casino, Bohío, Café de París, Las Rejas, Alkimia, Casa Gerardo, Guggenheim, La Moraga Ibérica, El Chaflán, Ramón Freixa y Casa Solla.

El programa de formación culmina con la celebración de un concurso culinario en el que los jóvenes chefs muestran los conocimientos adquiridos en materia de alimentos y cocina de España. Para ello, deberán plasmar en una receta de creación propia los sabores y técnicas asimiladas durante el periodo de prácticas en alguno de los más afamados restaurantes españoles. Como única condición, el plato debe haber sido elaborado con al menos tres ingredientes de una lista de diez de selectos productos españoles.

¿A quién va dirigido?

El Programa de Formación en Alta Gastronomía Española del ICEX está dirigido a profesionales extranjeros procedente de Alemania, Francia, Noruega, Suecia, Finlandia, Dinamarca, Islandia, Suiza, Reino Unido, Rusia, Estados Unidos, Canadá, Brasil, México, Australia, Nueva Zelanda, China-Hong-Kong, Emiratos Árabes Unidos, India, Singapur y Japón. Éstos deberán además haber cursado al menos los tres primeros cursos en escuelas de restauración de reconocido prestigio o tener formación avalada en restaurantes reputados en sus países de origen. Tendrán prioridad aquellos candidatos de menos de 30 años, con conocimientos de inglés y de español y que no hayan participado en España en programas similares en cuanto a sus contenidos y objetivos.

Convocatoria abierta desde el 20 de julio hasta el 20 de Septiembre de 2010

Paul Allen has rekindled a controversy over patent trolls

DEEP-FRIED beer may sound scrumptious, but is it patentable? Mark Zable, an inventive Texan, thinks it is. To protect his novel production process, which involves encasing the alcohol in batter and dunking it in a fryer, he recently applied for a patent. He wants to profit if others exploit his beery brainwave.

Without patents to protect their creations, inventors would have little incentive to invent. But some Americans fret that patent protection has grown too strong. The system breeds so many lawsuits, they worry, that it throttles the innovation it is supposed to promote. ...

How the mobile internet will transform the BRICI countries

BUYING a mobile phone was the wisest $20 Ranvir Singh ever spent. Mr Singh, a farmer in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, used to make appointments in person, in advance, to deliver fresh buffalo milk to his 40-odd neighbours. Now his customers just call when they want some. Mr Singh’s income has risen by 25%, to 7,000 rupees ($149) a month. And he hears rumours of an even more bountiful technology. He has heard that “something on mobile phones” can tell him the current market price of his wheat. Mr Singh does not know that that “something” is the internet, because, like most Indians, he has never seen or used it. But the phone in his calloused hand hints at how hundreds of millions of people in emerging markets—perhaps even billions—will one day log on.

Only 81m Indians (7% of the population) regularly use the internet. But brutal price wars mean that 507m own mobile phones. Calls cost as little as $0.006 per minute. Indian operators such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications sign up 20m new subscribers a month. ...

Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

FIFTY years ago, in the glorious age of three-martini lunches and all-smoking offices, America’s car companies were universally admired. Everybody wanted to know the secrets of their success. How did they churn out dazzling new models every year? How did they manage so many people so successfully (General Motors was then the biggest private-sector employer in the world)? And how did they keep their customers so happy?

Today the world is equally in awe of American universities. They dominate global rankings: on the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy’s list of the world’s best universities, 17 of the top 20 are American, and 35 of the top 50. They employ 70% of living Nobel prizewinners in science and economics and produce a disproportionate share of the world’s most-cited articles in academic journals. Everyone wants to know their secret recipe. ...

Our story on shocking new accounting rules (“You gonna buy that?” August 21st) contained a shocking error. We should have said that the obligation to pay for a leased item will go in the liabilities column, not the debit column. Sorry.

...

Counterfeit drugs used to be a problem for poor countries. Now they threaten the rich world, too

DRUG smugglers can expect harsh penalties nearly everywhere—if the drugs in question are heroin or cocaine. Those who smuggle counterfeit medicines, by contrast, have often faced lax enforcement and light punishment. Some governments deem drug-counterfeiting a trivial offence, little more than a common irritant. After all, whose spam filter does not groan with ads for suspiciously cheap “Viagra”?

This could be changing, however. The pharmaceutical industry has persuaded several governments to stiffen regulations against fake drugs and to conduct more aggressive raids (see chart). Companies are also devising novel technologies to outfox the criminals. Even the Catholic church is joining the cause, issuing a stern statement in August that it is in “the best interest of all concerned that smuggling of counterfeit drugs be fought against”. ...

Or can you?

RICHARD FEYNMAN, Nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. The number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. If it were a mere 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars would not be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that synthesise carbon and oxygen atoms. One consequence would be that squishy, carbon-based life would not exist.

Why alpha takes on the precise value it does, so delicately fine-tuned for life, is a deep scientific mystery. A new piece of astrophysical research may, however, have uncovered a crucial piece of the puzzle. In a paper just submitted to Physical Review Letters, a team led by John Webb and Julian King from the University of New South Wales in Australia presents evidence that the fine-structure constant may not actually be constant after all. Rather, it seems to vary from place to place within the universe. If their results hold up to scrutiny they will have profound implications—for they suggest that the universe stretches far beyond what telescopes can observe, and that the laws of physics vary within it. Instead of the whole universe being fine-tuned for life, then, humanity finds itself in a corner of space where, Goldilocks-like, the values of the fundamental constants happen to be just right for it. ...

A call to reform the IPCC

IF THIS week’s report into the workings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by a council of national academies of science were the sort of report children take home from school, its main themes would be expressed as “could do better” and “needs to show workings”. Stern parents might read it as calling for a Gradgrind-like clampdown; more indulgent ones as an inducement for the little darlings to try a little harder.

At a meeting in Busan, South Korea, this October, the parents in question—the representatives of the IPCC’s member governments—will decide which sort they want to be. Read in detail, the report suggests that if they want credible climate assessments, a firm hand will be required. ...

Stimulating the brain delays, but does not prevent, dementia

AS THE baby-boomer generation contemplates the prospect of the Zimmer frame there has never been more interest in delaying the process of ageing. One consequence has been a dramatic rise in the popularity of brain-training games. But how effective really is a daily dose of cryptic crossword?

Robert Wilson, a neuropsychologist at Rush University in Chicago, and his colleagues decided to find out, by following a group of people without dementia. Participants were asked to rate how frequently they engaged in cognitively stimulating activities. The researchers were looking for such things as reading newspapers, books and magazines, playing challenging games like chess, listening to the radio and watching television, and visiting museums. ...

Smallpox has gone, but monkeypox is now rearing its ugly head

ONE of the greatest public-health victories of the last century was the eradication of smallpox. After the disease was pronounced extinct, in 1980, people stopped using the smallpox vaccine. That seemed the ultimate symbol of technology’s triumph over a medieval scourge.

Alas, it turns out that the end of vaccination has unleashed new demons. Researchers have long suspected that smallpox vaccine also provides protection against diseases such as monkeypox and cowpox, and three decades ago a committee of experts weighed up whether ending vaccination for smallpox might allow one of those diseases to spread in humans. They decided this was unlikely. Now, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests they may have been wrong. A team led by Anne Rimoin of the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted surveys of people living in the centre of the Democratic Republic of Congo. They found a dramatic surge in monkeypox—a disease which, though not as bad as smallpox, kills up to 10% of those it infects. ...

Praying for your partner stops you straying

INFIDELITY is rampant in nature. Birds, mammals, amphibians and even fish all cheat if the conditions are right, forcing mates to remain perpetually vigilant. People are no different. Although cheats are publicly condemned, or in some cases impeached, infidelity is common and public disapproval does little to dissuade the sinner. The disapproval of God, however, is a different matter, and a new study suggests that prayer can indeed guide people away from adulterous behaviour.

Frank Fincham at Florida State University and his colleagues knew from looking at past studies that couples who attend religious services are more likely to be satisfied with their marriages and less likely to be unfaithful than those who do not, but they did not understand why. Speculating that the act of praying might itself cause romantic relationships to become more resilient, the team set up an experiment to explore prayer and fidelity. ...

A magic elixir is shown to promote weight loss

CONSUME more water and you will become much healthier, goes an old wives’ tale. Drink a glass of water before meals and you will eat less, goes another. Such prescriptions seem sensible, but they have little rigorous science to back them up.

Until now, that is. A team led by Brenda Davy of Virginia Tech has run the first randomised controlled trial studying the link between water consumption and weight loss. A report on the 12-week trial, published earlier this year, suggested that drinking water before meals does lead to weight loss. At a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston this week, Dr Davy unveiled the results of a year-long follow-up study that confirms and expands that finding. ...

Making lighting more efficient could increase energy use, not decrease it

SOLID-STATE lighting, the latest idea to brighten up the world while saving the planet, promises illumination for a fraction of the energy used by incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. A win all round, then: lower electricity bills and (since lighting consumes 6.5% of the world’s energy supply) less climate-changing carbon dioxide belching from power stations.

Well, no. Not if history is any guide. Solid-state lamps, which use souped-up versions of the light-emitting diodes that shine from the faces of digital clocks and flash irritatingly on the front panels of audio and video equipment, will indeed make lighting better. But precedent suggests that this will serve merely to increase the demand for light. The consequence may not be just more light for the same amount of energy, but an actual increase in energy consumption, rather than the decrease hoped for by those promoting new forms of lighting. ...

Allegations of scientific misconduct at Harvard have academics up in arms

RARELY does it get much more ironic. Marc Hauser, a professor of psychology at Harvard who made his name probing the evolutionary origins of morality, is suspected of having committed the closest thing academia has to a deadly sin: cheating. It is not the first time the scientific world has been rocked by scandal. But the present furore, involving as it does a prestigious university and one of its star professors, will echo through common rooms and quadrangles far and wide.

The story broke on August 10th when the Boston Globe revealed that Dr Hauser had been under investigation since 2007 for alleged misconduct at Harvard’s Cognitive Evolution Laboratory, which he heads. This investigation has resulted in the retraction of an oft-cited study published in 2002 in Cognition, the publication last month of a correction to a paper from 2007 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, and doubts about the validity of findings published in Science, also in 2007. All three studies purported to show that the cognitive abilities of some monkeys are closer to those of people than had previously been assumed. Dr Hauser was the only author common to all three papers. ...

People habitually underestimate their energy consumption

ENVIRONMENTAL asceticism has created a vogue for upgrading light-bulbs and tweaking thermostats. But according to a new piece of research, many of these actions—however virtuous—arise from faulty perceptions of energy savings.

Shahzeen Attari of Columbia University and her colleagues used Craigslist, an online marketplace, to recruit 505 volunteers from across America. Each was asked to estimate the energy consumption of nine household devices (such as stereos and air conditioners) as well as the energy savings incurred by six green activities (like swapping incandescent bulbs for fluorescent ones). The researchers then compared the volunteers’ estimates with the actual energy requirements or savings in question. ...

The second world war led to a boom in North Sea fish numbers

SOME experiments are hard to conduct. Fisheries biologists are, for example, reasonably confident that creating protected areas in the sea, in which fishing is forbidden, encourages the recovery of those species that stay put in the area. This has worked in several places in the tropics, notably the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, where fish populations in protected zones have doubled in five years. They are less confident, however, that it applies to places where the fish of interest are migratory, as is often the case in temperate-zone fisheries like those of the North Atlantic and its adjacent seas.

Closing such places to fishing in order to find out is politically difficult. But 71 years ago politics did dictate one such closure, and a group of biologists, led by Doug Beare at the European Commission’s Office of Maritime Affairs, has now taken advantage of it. The closure in question was the little matter of the second world war, and Dr Beare and his team have been looking at its effects on the population of cod, haddock and whiting in the North Sea. ...

We earn more, but were willing to take a pay cut. On Labour Day weekend, our working lives are being shaped by several trends.

Sales of existing home sales in Toronto fell by 22 per cent in August 2010 over last year.

Postmedia Network Inc. confirmed Friday that some of its daily newspapers have cut jobs in an effort to tighten their operations and refocus on serving an Internet-based readership.

You could be dinged with unauthorized charges if you give your credit card or bank account number to a fitness club chain.

Gold prices could see a modest increase in 2011, but analysts warn prices could then start to fall as investors gain faith in economic growth.

Kia Canada is recalling about 4,500 cars to fix possible faulty wiring that could start fires.

When too many investors become risk averters and stampede into safe places they are usually wrong.

The Toronto stock market closed modestly higher Friday with the TSX failing to get much traction from an American jobs report which blew past expectations.

Private employers in the United States hired more workers over the past three months than first thought, lifting hopes for the weak economy ahead of the Labour Day weekend. But the unemployment rate rose in August for the first time in four months as more people entered the market looking for work.

Edward Greenspon, a former editor-in-chief at the Globe and Mail, has been appointed vice president, business development at the Toronto Star and the Star Media Group.