Five worthless species in need of saving

s a species worth saving if it offers no benefit to humans? The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has drawn up a list of 100 threatened animals, plants and fungi that it says have unique values which make them worth saving. Take a look and decide for yourself. Hannah Krakauer

Tonkin snub-nosed monkey

There are only an estimated 250 Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus avunculus) left hiding out in their native north-eastern Vietnam.

They spend most of their time in tropical evergreen forests, where they eat soft leaves, fruits and seeds.

Despite their sceptical facial expressions, they are not shy – and that increases their chances of being shot by human hunters.

(Image: Le Khac Quyet/University of Colorado, Boulder)

 

Bullock's false toad

This Chilean frog (Telmatobufo bullocki) is so rare that a 10-year search turned up only one adult in its final year.

The tadpoles eat algae off rocks in rivers, and the adults tend to stick to the same fast-flowing streams. Clear-cutting and other environmental damage fill the water with silt, making it difficult for the tadpoles to feed.

(Image: Andres Charrier)

 

Underground orchid

Only a dedicated digger will have a chance to see this beautiful orchid (Rhizanthella gardneri), which spends its entire life underground. That includes the bloom, which consists of around 150 tiny flowers.

Land clearing for agriculture in Western Australia, combined with climate change, has knocked the number of individuals down to below 100.

(Image: Kingsley Dixon)

 

Kaiser's spotted newt

This vibrant newt has even more names than it does colours, though it is most commonly called Kaiser's spotted newt (Neurergus kaiseri). The adults are tiny, reaching only 10 to 14 centimetres in length.

Extensive firewood collection and damming have put their habitat at risk, but their biggest threat is actually the pet trade. Many adults are legally exported out of their native Iran, and others have been found on sale in markets in the capital, Tehran.

(Image: R. D. Bartlett)

 

Araripe manakin

The Araripe manakin (Antilophia bokermanni) was described only in 1988. Since then it has been found in three tiny regions on the north-eastern slope of the Chapada do Araripe in Brazil.

It prefers humid spots in the forest, sticking close to rivers and streams. Fewer than 800 individuals exist, and they are often found in mated pairs.

Forest clearing for farming of maize, bananas, beans and tomatoes, along with cattle raising and home construction, are the biggest threats to the species.

(Image: Ciro Albano)

 

Cannabis anti-convulsant shakes up epilepsy treatment

The versatile cannabis plant may have a new use: it could be used to control epileptic seizures with fewer side effects than currently prescribed anti-convulsants.

Ben Whalley at the University of Reading, UK, and colleagues worked with GW Pharmaceuticals in Wiltshire, UK, to investigate the anti-convulsant properties of cannabidivarin (CBDV), a little-studied chemical found in cannabis and some other plants.

There is "big, historical, anecdotal evidence" that cannabinoids can be used to control human seizures, says Whalley, but the "side-effect baggage" means there have been relatively few studies of its pharmaceutical effect on this condition.

The team investigated the effectiveness of CBDV – one of around 100 non-psychoactive cannabinoids found in cannabis – as an anti-convulsant. They induced seizures in live rats and mice that had been given the drug. These animals experienced less severe seizures and lower mortality compared with animals given a placebo. The drug also had fewer side effects and was better tolerated than three of the most widely prescribed anticonvulsants.

Epileptic seizures affect about one per cent of the population. Left uncontrolled, they can lead to depression, cognitive decline and death. If you control the seizures, says Whalley, "the chances of death drop away completely". The decision about whether to test the drug in humans will be made next year.

"This is a very positive result," says Ley Sander, an epilepsy specialist at University College London, UK, who was not involved in the study. "We need new drugs," he says. "For 20-30 per cent of people with epilepsy, nothing seems to work."

But he urges caution. "The animals in the study are made epileptic," he says, which is not how epilepsy is acquired in humans. He adds that what you see in animal models doesn't always translate directly into humans.

"Most compounds showing promise in preclinical studies never reach market," warns Mark Richardson of the Epilepsy Research Group at King's College London. "But I agree that these results justify progressing further down the drug development pipeline."

5 Ways Technology Helps Us to Consume Less

Technology has improved our lives in many ways and not just through making thing faster and more convenient. We are better connected and better informed. Technology lets us travel the globe and get close to wildlife without leaving our desk, our cell phones can help us to make better shopping decisions and software helps us to be more energy efficient. It also has served to dematerialize our lives. Here are five of the major ways that technology helps us to consume less and lighten our environmental footprints.

1. Digitization

Probably the biggest technological advance that has helped us to consume less is the digitization of so much of our lives. Think of all the things that we now overwhelmingly use digital versions of instead of physical items: music, books, movies, phone books, photos, letters, maps, encyclopedias and on and on. While the physical versions of these things still exist, overwhelmingly we now favor the instant digital version.
When we replace these things with digital versions, we consume less actual stuff. That translates to fewer resources used to make things and less energy used to manufacture and transport them. When we use our computer or smartphone to consume music, we prevent the use of resources to make physical CDs, their jewel cases and liner notes; when we read an e-book, we prevent the need for pulp for the paper and the energy used to print and ship them.
When your entire music library is contained within an iPod or smartphone, or an unlimited amount of knowledge is just a Google search away, your footprint is so much lower than if you had consumed the same amount of music in physical form or bought the equivalent amount of books.

2. Consolidation

Another major way that technology is helping us to consume less is through the consolidation of things within one gadget. This has been especially noteworthy in the past few years with the rise of smartphones and tablets. These technologies let us carry just one device that serves several purposes, as opposed to many. Smartphones serve as phones, music players, personal planners, GPS devices, cameras, watches and alarm clocks and more. Tablets do all that plus they have the ability serve as e-readers, dvd players, gaming consoles and pretty much any type of media device.
For some, tablets are even replacing home computers.
These devices can act as several gadgets in one, and replace the need for many individual things. In fact, the more you can use the features of your smartphone or tablet for instead of buying additional gadgets, the lower your environmental footprint is. We've talked before about how smartphones can help us to be better consumers, but the phones themselves help us to consume less in the first place by filling so many needs at once.

3. Resell/Reuse

Buying second-hand and reselling your things when you're done with them is one of the best ways to reduce your environmental footprint. The practice helps to curb the consumption of resources and energy for making new things when used items continue to be marketed and used.
It's always been possible to walk into your local thrift or second-hand shop and find used items, but technology has opened up a global marketplace for selling and buying used goods. Ebay and Craigslist connect buyers and sellers in a way that had never been possible before. Whatever you're in the market for, there is an easy way to go online and find a used version, from sofas to clothes to iPads.

Electronics-recycling sites help to extend the life of our gadgets by buying, refurbishing and reselling them. Sites like NextWorth, Gazelle and TechForward all give us easy ways to conserve resources and energy by keeping working devices out of the landfill and reducing demand for new gadgets off the assembly line, usually with just a click of a few buttons.

4. Community Sharing

Something else that technology has really allowed to expand to a much greater scale is community sharing. It's one thing to get to know your neighbors and occasionally share items with them and its another to share things on a city-wide, national or even global scale.
Services like ZipCar, where people can set up online appointments to borrow cars in their city by the hour or by the day, lets many users share a small number of cars, instead of each person owning one. Netflix lets people consume DVDs that way and Borrow Lenses lets photographers and filmmakers rent camera, video and audio equipment for their projects instead having to buy it.
Ride sharing service RideJoy has an app that instantly connects drivers and those who need a ride based on city or route they're traveling. City-wide bike sharing programs use let anyone access community bikes from kiosks located around the city. All you need is a credit card.
These types of community sharing services are able to have a far reach thanks to technology and, especially in urban environments, they open up the possibility of only sharing major things like cars and bikes instead of owning, cutting down on not just individual consumption, but community consumption as well.

5. Customization

Most recently technology has really helped us to customize the things that we make and buy, leading to consumption that is less wasteful. Here at TreeHugger, we're huge fans of 3D printing, an innovation that defines customization. 3D printing allows you to design and make exactly what type of object you need or at the exact time you need it, using only the exact amount of materials required and without the need to ship it anywhere.
The possibilities are also endless. 3D printing can be used to make replacement parts for repairing things instead of buying all new items. Also, making things one at a time in the spot where they will be consumed means no wasteful packaging or excess products made on an assembly line that may never be bought. Right now, 3D printers are still more of a specialist product, but I can't imagine that it won't be too long before they are accessible to everyone.
Another service that I would also include here is Kickstarter. The crowd-funding site that lets people support the launch of products and innovations of their choosing has been allowing us to customize what ideas we want brought to the marketplace. The site allows us to put our money behind things that are truly needed in this world and are sure to be used, unlike the random, endless rows of plastic things found at big box stores that may never really have any usefulness or any buyers and represent heaps of wasted resources and energy.

Technology Has Helped to Dematerialize Our Lives, but It's Still Up to Us

Technology has in many ways allowed us to consume less from physical stuff to energy and resources, but all of those advances won't matter if our behavior is still one of over consumption. Smartphones and tablets may consolidate our devices and gadgets, but if we update our phones and tablets each year or every time a new model is released, we're voiding a lot of that benefit.
Community sharing services are out there, but to make an impact we have to use them more instead of more often choosing individual ownership.
All in all, it's still up to us to use these technologies to their potential and be thoughtful about what we buy, what we use and to do our best to get by with less.

Science And Technology: How Nigeria Remains At Odds

Science and technology has made the world look more like something out of a fairy tale, but how many of those who now toy with all kinds of technological devices really do realize the wizardry of science and technology? As a young man growing up, I used to hear stories of witches and wizards, their magical  powers and how they flew at night and used diabolical means to inflict harm on whoever they choose.  Indeed some Nigerian communities still routinely torture and even kill those accused of being witches or wizards.
But the ignorant beliefs and tales of witchcraft in primitive societies such as Nigeria pales in comparison to the real practical wizardry of science and technology. Many of us regularly employ the services of aeroplanes to fly to different destinations without ever pausing to ponder the wizardry of having such a large and heavy device flying effortlessly at unbelievable speeds for hours on end, with hundreds of passengers. Try throwing up your mobile phone or shoe as light as they are and see how fast it will fall and hit the ground.
If a mobile phone or shoe can  hit the ground that fast, imagine the miracle in having an object as large and as heavy as an aeroplane laden with so many passengers, luggage’s and cargo hurtling  through the sky like a giant  bird and you will begin to better appreciate the wizardry of science and technology. Jump into the sea and you will sink before you can blink your eyes, but a large ship, loaded with container cargoes weighing hundreds of tons will sail the sea without sinking for weeks and months.
Science and technology has gone as far as probing other planets in search of human life. Imagine the space vessel or rocket that travels through space, breaking through the earth’s crust on its way to other planets. Imagine the breathless speed at which the rocket travels and the unending wizardry of science and technology becomes ever more evident. The revolution in the wizardry of science and technology has continued at a dizzying pace that it is becomingly increasingly difficult to catch up for many. Among the recent technologies is the GSM mobile phone technology that has made mobile phones practically available to all and sundry.
Another recent entry is the “email,” an electronic mail system that is delivered immediately to your electronic mailbox. This invention has kept friends and family in constant communication and almost eliminated the use of good old conventional letters. For academics and general research, the “Google” search engine, an electronic library has virtually put all possible information at the fingertips of every individual.  From history to medicine, bomb making to love making, there is practically no information you cannot find on the Google library. Other electronic search engines such as Yahoo, MSN have since joined the bandwagon, further enriching the cyber world.
For drivers, life has been made much easier by “Satellite navigators,” an electronic device that locates addresses. With a Satellite navigation system, it is possible to trace routes and addresses that would ordinarily have been frustrating and time consuming to locate. For long lost friends and potential new friends, “Facebook” has become the new craze where old friends hook-up and new friends are made.  Together with similar sites such as Twitter and Netlog, these highly interactive sites where photo albums, events and other activities are shared have virtually created a whole new world on the web.
Movie and music lovers, news and sports enthusiasts alike have come to cherish “YouTube,” an online video machine that amasses a limitless array of videos on practically every issue under the sun, keeping individuals glued to their screens for hours on end.  The wizardry in these technologies goes far beyond the tales of the mythical exploits of witches and wizards I was told as a child.  At the speed with which new technologies continue to be churned out, it numbs the mind to imagine what new innovation we are going to be toying with by this time next year.
Yet, even as we await new technologies and as nations across the world continue to make technological progress in leaps and bounds that has brought the many solutions  and pleasures we now enjoy and even take for granted,  Nigeria remains at odds with modernity. Still at the crossroads of civilization, it beggars belief that in spite of the solutions technology has provided, Nigeria has ironically edged Nigeria further into darkness, incapable of generating electricity. There are no roads, no pipe borne water, no functional hospitals to name but a few.
Any surprises?  The criminal leaders that hibernate in Aso rock are more interested in robbing and wrecking the nation to be bothered about any investments in science and technology. As a consequence, Nigeria has remained stuck in the 19^th century while other nations are racing across the 21^st and into the 22^nd century. 

Science and technology - key to Nigeria’s transformation

Science and technology (S&T) has a very unique side to it – it is intrinsically linked to most, if not all, sectors of an economy. So naturally, economic development should be the result of advancing S&T. Perhaps nothing sums up the importance of science and technology better than this quote by British Physicist, Stephen Hawking: “The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological – technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science…”

Recent analysis shows that economic growth over the period 1950 to 2010 is indebted to the innovations, incentives, and productivity gains arising from technological advancements. It is estimated that about 35 percent of the world’s GDP growth from 2000 to 2008 can be explained by productivity derived from technological capability and its enhancement through information technology, human capital development, and so on.

Advances in S&T can help to diversify the economy, by improving productivity in sectors like agriculture, while defining new ones. Productivity in Nigeria’s agriculture sector – which contributes about 40 percent of our GDP, and employs more than half our workforce – remains low. Yield per hectare is 20 to 50 percent of what is obtained in similar developing countries. In fact, Nigeria is food insecure, given that we spend more than $10 billion annually on food imports. The Nomura Food Vulnerability Index ranks Nigeria as the 4th most vulnerable country to global food price shocks, out of 80 countries. We lack the right plant varieties and storage systems to be efficient. Yet global experience shows that with the right investment in S&T for agricultural processes, output can rise quickly. Malaysia, for example, laid emphasis on R&D to develop higher yielding oil palm varieties. Today, they control 40 percent of world oil palm products trade valued at $18 billion. Thailand leveraged agriculture to backward-integrate into value-adding manufacturing processes, and achieved one of the world’s lowest unemployment rates at 1.2 percent in 2010. With aggressive investment in agriculture, Vietnam and China took 40 percent of their population out of poverty in 10 years. These achievements can be replicated here in Nigeria.

Look also at the relatively recent development of the hybrid engines that harness solar power and batteries (for cars, and more recently, for ocean liners and ships) – one of S&T’s responses to the challenges of carbon emission and exclusive reliance on fossil fuels like diesel and petrol. Imagine the impact of adopting such technology on our country Nigeria? Our fuel subsidy bill, which cost N2.19 trillion (or about 5 percent of GDP) last year, would be substantially lower given lower PMS consumption, creating the fiscal space to invest in other sectors and diversify our economy. We could also see a drop in air pollution levels in this country (which is becoming an issue) since the transport sector, together with the power sector, account for about 10 percent of total carbon emissions in Nigeria. The World Bank estimates that with the right technology, Nigeria can generate up to 10,000 MW over the medium to long term, through Concentrated Solar Power. We currently generate about 4,000 MW from all sources.

Take the impact of technological advances in the ICT sector. A recent World Bank study shows that the invention and usage of mobile phones and broadband internet is strongly associated with economic growth: a 10 percent increase in mobile phone coverage and high-speed internet connections will increase GDP by 0.8 percent and 1.3 percent on average, respectively. In Nigeria, for instance, our telecommunications sector has been growing at over 30 percent annually (32.83 percent in Q1 2012)  – outperforming growth in any other sector by far, on the back of rising mobile phone and internet subscriptions. Today’s electronics sector, which is driven by an incessant wave of branching innovations that are generating a constantly proliferating range of products, can also aid economic growth and diversification. Look at the development of various Apple products like the iPad, the iPhone, and the iPod – products which have promoted new sectors like digital entertainment, e-libraries, and so on.

S&T also plays a key role in improving the quality of life. For instance, research in healthcare has proven vital to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of various killer diseases. The American Heart Association recently announced that deaths due to coronary heart disease fell by nearly 40 percent in the USA over the last decade due largely to new treatment inventions. The same applies to HIV/AIDS – one of the top three killers of African youth. In 1996, a 20-year old person in the US with AIDS expected to live for about 3 to 5 years, but now expects to live to be 69 years. Only about a few weeks ago was it announced that Truvada, an HIV fighting pill, can also be used to prevent the disease, after a three-year study. In Nigeria, preventable or treatable infectious diseases such as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, measles and HIV/AIDS still account for more than 70 percent of the estimated one million under-five deaths in Nigeria. Several of these deaths occur as a result of misdiagnosis, due to the poor state of technology in many hospitals. This is why many Nigerians are going abroad, to countries like Egypt and India, for medical services (including diagnosis), spending between $600 million and $1 billion annually, according to our health ministry’s estimates.

In the education sector, particularly higher education, there is an emerging paradigm shift in the world today. The recent onset of powerful technologies, including cloud computing and precise online assessment regimes, enabled the launch of a number of top-tier university entrants into what is being called the Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) marketplace. World class universities ranging from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, are now providing free, high-quality, rigorously assessed and highly accessible online university level education to the masses. While this may not result in the award of a university degree, it can provide a level of certification that can develop industry-standard skills, for example in the ICT industry, and actually provide a way out for 80 percent of the 1 million Nigerian youths who do not get into universities each year due to limited supply of college/university places.

In a nutshell, developing countries cannot hope to prosper in an increasingly competitive global economy and open trading system if they do not build the appropriate science and technology capacity to produce more value-added goods and services. In fact, I can confidently say that S&T is the dividing line between developed nations and those less developed.

The state of science and technology in Nigeria

Nigeria is making some contributions to the development of S&T, but we are underperforming, relative to our abundant human capital. According to NEPAD’s African Innovation Outlook (2010), South Africa produced over 86,000 scientific papers – about 37 percent of the total research output of 19 African countries surveyed between 1990 and 2009; Egypt produced nearly 60,000 – about 27 percent of output. Nigeria produced 27,743 papers (or 12 percent of the total output) – about one-third of South Africa’s output. But a worrying finding is that the productivity growth of Nigeria’s scientific research is the second-lowest of the 19 countries. Even though our scientists doubled their productivity in the period 2005 to 2009 relative to output between 1990 and 1994, other African countries like Algeria and Uganda saw their productivity increase by a factor of 6.3 and 5.4, respectively. To put things in perspective, countries like Brazil and Malaysia saw productivity rise by a factor of above 100.

Similarly, South Africa was able to secure more than 1,000 patents in 2010 alone, according to data obtained from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO); whereas Nigeria secured only 18 patents in the last 8 years. This is unbelievably low. Egypt and Kenya got 604 and 49 patents, respectively, over the same period. I know that Nigerian scientists are making progress, sending our own satellite into orbit. I am also aware of developments in medical science, such as drugs used in combating sickle cell and other diseases; but a majority of these remain at the formative stages and do not become mainstream.

There are a number of reasons for the poor state of our S&T sector. Firstly, we need a better and more coherent national strategy, as the sector remains highly fragmented, lacking effective coordination. Even the existence of our Science and Technology Ministry was intermittent, until the end of the 1990s. The Steven Oronsaye Committee for the Restructuring and Rationalization of Federal Government Parastatals and Agencies reports that there are about 106 core research and quasi-research institutes spread across the ministries, with each one conducting its research without synergy and harmonization. Some of these institutions have been in existence for more than 30 years, yet there is little to show for their work as Nigeria still relies on research done internationally. If public sector research institutes in other countries can develop major technological advances like the internet and the human genome project, what is wrong with our own?

Secondly, our scientists complain about lack of funding. I agree that fast growing economies must invest in S&T. China has been growing its R&D expenditure by 20 percent annually, since 1999. China now accounts for 12 percent of global R&D expenditure, spending nearly 5 percent of its budget (or 1.76 percent of GDP) in 2010 on the sector. Let’s compare this to Nigeria. Over the past decade, government’s S&T expenditure has been less than 2 percent of the yearly budget (less than 0.3 percent of GDP per year) – a grossly inadequate figure. But the question I have is: For what we have put in so far, what do we have to show? Let me ask our scientists this: Why should the government increase your funding, in view of the limited contributions to S&T in Nigeria? South Africa spends 8.5 times more on R&D than Nigeria but produces over 70 percent of the drugs manufactured in Africa. What do we produce? Clearly, there is inefficient resource allocation in our S&T sector. For example, about N97.1 billion was allocated to all our research institutes in the 2011 fiscal year. Of this, only N10.4 billion or a mere 11 percent was meant for core research activities, according to the Steve Oronsaye Committee Report. Personnel and overhead costs accounted for about N52.7 billion or 53 percent of the total. Surely, there is need for greater efficiency and reallocation here.

A Celestial Witch’s Broom? A New View of the Pencil Nebula

The Pencil Nebula is pictured in a new image from ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. This peculiar cloud of glowing gas is part of a huge ring of wreckage left over after a supernova explosion that took place about 11 000 years ago. This detailed view was produced by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope.

Despite the tranquil and apparently unchanging beauty of a starry night, the Universe is far from being a quiet place. Stars are being born and dying in an endless cycle, and sometimes the death of a star can create a vista of unequalled beauty as material is blasted out into space to form strange structures in the sky.
This new image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the Pencil Nebula [1] against a rich starry background. This oddly shaped cloud, which is also known as NGC 2736, is a small part of a supernova remnant [2] in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails). These glowing filaments were created by the violent death of a star that took place about 11 000 years ago. The brightest part resembles a pencil; hence the name, but the whole structure looks rather more like a traditional witch's broom.
The Vela supernova remnant is an expanding shell of gas that originated from the supernova explosion. Initially the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometres per hour, but as it expanded through space it ploughed through the gas between the stars, which has slowed it considerably and created strangely shaped folds of nebulosity. The Pencil Nebula is the brightest part of this huge shell.
This new image shows large, wispy filamentary structures, smaller bright knots of gas and patches of diffuse gas. The nebula's luminous appearance comes from dense gas regions that have been struck by the supernova shock wave. As the shock wave travels through space, it rams into the interstellar material. At first, the gas was heated to millions of degrees, but it then subsequently cooled down and is still giving off the faint glow that was captured in the new image.
By looking at the different colours of the nebula, astronomers have been able to map the temperature of the gas. Some regions are still so hot that the emission is dominated by ionised oxygen atoms, which glow blue in the picture. Other cooler regions are seen glowing red, due to emission from hydrogen.
The Pencil Nebula measures about 0.75 light-years across and is moving through the interstellar medium at about 650 000 kilometres per hour. Remarkably, even at its distance of approximately 800 light-years from Earth, this means that it will noticeably change its position relative to the background stars within a human lifetime. Even after 11 000 years the supernova explosion is still changing the face of the night sky.
Notes
[1] The Pencil Nebula, also known as NGC 2736 and sometimes nicknamed Herschel's Ray, was discovered by British astronomer John Herschel back in 1835 while he was in South Africa. He described it as "an extraordinary long narrow ray of excessively feeble light."
[2] A supernova is a violent stellar explosion, resulting from the death of either a high-mass star or a white dwarf in a close double star system. The structure resulting from the explosion is called the supernova remnant. This consists of ejected material expanding at supersonic velocities into the surrounding interstellar medium. Supernovae are the main source of the heavier chemical elements in the interstellar medium, which in turn leads to the chemical enrichment of a new generation of stars and planets.

HIV Vaccine Trial Identifies Target That Could Improve Effectiveness

A new vaccine trial has revealed a weak spot in HIV, which could lead to an effective vaccine against AIDS. The vaccine turns the immune system against the virus, and offers more protection from infections.
The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature. The results were also presented at the AIDS Vaccine 2012 Conference in Boston, Massachusetts earlier this week. Three years ago, the RV144 trial was somewhat successful in dealing with AIDS. It scored a success and saw a reduction in HIV infections. However, scientists were puzzled by the vaccine’s low response rate of 31%.

Last year, it was revealed that the patients who responded to the vaccine and fended off HIV produced antibodies against a specific part of the virus’ protein shell, which is called the V1/V2 loop. This study shows that the people who were vaccinated and still contracted HIV had been infected by viruses that had mutations in the V2 portion.
The team was led by Morganne Rolland and Jerome Kim at the US Military HIV Research Program in Silver Spring, Maryland. They examined 936 HIV sequences collected from 44 trial participants who received the RV144 trial and were infected. The trial was randomized, so any systematic differences in the viral DNA sequences between the two groups was due to the selective pressure by the vaccine in favor of the viruses that do not match the vaccine.
There were two mutations that seemed to be linked to the success of the vaccination, which were located in the V2 region of the V1/V2 loop. People who received the vaccine were 80% less likely to be infected by viruses with these mutations, compared to people who got a placebo. This implies that the vaccine created an immune response which prevented certain viruses from infecting them. Only viruses with different sequences at those two sites had a chance at infection.
Now, vaccine developers have to improve the response against V2. It is hoped that a booster will be produced and will lead to a stronger, long-lasting response against HIV and its V2 region.

Genetic Make-Up of Children Explains How They Fight Malaria Infection

Researchers from Saint-Justine University Hospital Center and University of Montreal have identified several novel genes that make some children more efficient than others in the way their immune system responds to malaria infection.
    
This world-first in integrative efforts to track down genes predisposing to specific immune responses to malaria and ultimately to identify the most suitable targets for vaccines or treatments was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by lead author Dr. Youssef Idaghdour and senior author Pr. Philip Awadalla, whose laboratory has been performing world-wide malaria research for the past 13 years.
“Malaria is a major health problem world-wide, with over 3 billion individuals at risk and hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, a majority of which are African children under the age of 5. Why are some children prone to infection, while others are resistant and efficiently fight the disease? These are the questions we sought to answer with our study”, Idaghdour says.
However, to succeed where many other studies have failed, the team used an approach different from the classic in vitro one, where the genome is analyzed using cells grown in a laboratory. Instead, they used an in vivo approach, analyzing blood samples of children from the Republic of Benin, West Africa, collected with the help of collaborators in the city of Cotonou and the nearby village of Zinvié. “This approach allowed us to identify how the “environment” engages in an arms race to define the clinical course of the disease, in this case the environment being the number of parasites detected in the child’s blood running against the genetic make-up of the infected child”, Idaghdour explains.
“We used an innovative combination of technologies that assessed both genetic variation among children and the conditions in which their genes are “expressed”. By doing so, we increased the power of our analysis by permitting us not only to detect the mutations, but also to capture their effect depending on how they affect genes being turned “on” or “off” in presence of the parasite”, Awadalla explains. “Our approach made us successful, where million-dollar studies have failed in the past. There has never been this many genes associated with malaria discovered in one study.”
This major milestone in understanding how the genetic profile affects the ability of children to cope with infection could pave the way to the development of low-cost genetic profiling tests in a not so far future. “Accurate diagnosis of the infectious agent is critical for appropriate treatment, of course. However, determining a patient’s genetic predisposition to infection would allow us to be more aggressive in our treatment of patients, whether we are speaking of vaccines or preventive drugs”, Awadalla says.

Robotic Tentacles Have a Soft Enough Touch to Pick Up Flowers

Typically, robotic hands have had trouble being dexterous enough and delicate enough to perform certain tasks, but robotics experts from Harvard University have been developing a series of soft robots, capable of accomplishing much more than previously.
The scientists published their findings in the journal Advanced Materials. George Whitesides and his colleagues created a robotic tentacle that can twist around a flower without damaging it. It’s made from a flexible plastic containing three air channels, running along the entire limb. The selective pumping of air into these channels causes the tentacle to bend, allowing it to curl around objects with a delicate grip.

The air channels can be split into multiple sections, letting the parts of the tentacle bend in different directions. This produces a full range of 3D movement. Previous efforts were limited to curling in just one direction.