Category: science policy

Superbug Gene Found

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superbuggene_lgA gene that causes bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics has been found in drinking water in New Delhi, India. NDM-1 is commonly found in Escherichia coli but can spread to other bacteria thanks to their ability to swap DNA. The gene confers resistance to antibiotics, including potent, last-resort drugs called carbapenems.

India’s warm temperatures, over-crowding, and poor sanitation are likely to blame for the gene’s spread into the main water system from bacteria in people’s guts, write Timothy Walsh of Cardiff University in the United Kingdom and colleagues in a paper published online last week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The team, who found the gene in two out of 50 tap water samples and 51 of 171 samples taken from puddles and streams in the capital, say the gene could spread farther afield when tourists drink local water supplies and then return home.

NDM-1 has already been found in U.K. hospitals in bacteria infecting people who had medical treatment in India and those admitted with “traveler’s tummy.” The new finding raises concerns that resistant genes, so far found mainly in gut flora, are becoming widespread in natural environments, where they are highly mobile.

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Can States Sue on Greenhouse Gas as a ‘Nuisance’? High Court Asks

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As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is busy girding itself for a fight over new greenhouse gas emissions rules, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments today in a case on whether lawsuits over climate ought to be permitted.

At stake is whether greenhouse gas pollution may be considered a “nuisance” under U.S. law. The case stems from two 2004 federal lawsuits brought by seven states and several land-trust groups alleging that emissions from five major power companies could cause harm by contributing to global warming. Rising sea levels, loss of water in the Great Lakes, and reduced hydropower were among the injuries alleged by the plaintiffs; the lawsuits have since been combined, and two states have dropped out since the original suit was filed. The district court subsequently said in its decision that the case brought up a “political” question that the other branches of government, not the judicial branch, should consider, but an appeals court reversed that ruling. When the power companies appealed, the Supreme Court took the case.

In other pollution cases, the Supreme Court has supported suits claiming that pollution caused harm as a “nuisance” under common law, most often interpreted to prohibit noise and light pollution. The 80 minutes of occasionally spirited argument at the high court this morning focused on the two main issues in the greenhouse gas litigation: For the case to go forward, the plaintiffs must prove that the case has legal standing (they must show that the court is the right venue for resolving this dispute), and that the common law definition of nuisance can support suits over greenhouse gases. On the issue of standing, the court could rule that Congress or EPA is a more appropriate body to deal with pollution control.

The Obama Administration opposed the suing states in this case largely on grounds that they lack standing, marking a rare instance in which the Administration finds itself at odds with environmentalists on a major legal issue. (Environmentalists urged the states to try this legal strategy.) U.S. attorney Neal Katyal told the justices that the complexity of the issue suggests that the executive branch, namely EPA, is a better venue for controlling such an expansive type of pollution rather than the courts. “In the 222 years that this court has been sitting, it has never heard a case with so many potential perpetrators and so many potential victims,” he said in his opening remarks. “There are billions of emitters of greenhouse gasses on the planet and billions of potential victims as well.”

The attorneys for the power companies and the Obama Administration argued that the greenhouse gases case is fundamentally different from previous nuisance cases in which pollutants have played a central role. A landmark ruling by the Supreme Court in 1907, for example, found that a judge could stop a Tennessee copper company from polluting the Georgia environment under the nuisance doctrine. Such cases, Katyal said, “are essentially: A pollutes a river or something and hurts B.” But in the case of global warming pollution, he said, “A here is the world and B is the world, and that is such a difference in scale and scope to pose enormously difficult questions” about whether such suits should go forward.

If this case is allowed to proceed, asked the justices, should subsequent cases be limited to big polluters like the five targeted in this suit? “Your briefs talk a lot about how these are the five largest [U.S.] emissions producers, but I saw nothing in your theory to limit it to those five,” Justice Elena Kagan asked New York state attorney Barbara Underwood, who spoke on behalf of the six states in the suit. “Is there something that you think limits it to large emissions producers rather than anybody in the world?”

The states have argued that the larger the greenhouse gas emitter the stronger the connection linking pollution and potential harm. “These defendants,” Underwood said, speaking of the five polluters, “produce 650 million tons a year or 10% of U.S. emissions, and individually they produce amounts ranging from 1 to 3.5% of U.S. emissions.”

Those who challenged the states also suggested that courts would be ill-equipped to make the complex judgments that big regulatory agencies staffed with scientists and other experts make on a routine basis. Judges lack “the resources, the expertise” to be a “kind of super-EPA,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

But Underwood said courts could make such judgments—which could include determining how “substantial” an emitter must be to be found culpable—by relying on standards set by the agencies. She pointed to a cutoff set by EPA that limits regulated greenhouse gas polluters to those that emit 100,000 tons or more per year. “According to EPA’s own technical data, there would be at most a few thousand potential defendants.”

Because Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused herself—she sat on the panel that reviewed the issue in the appeals court—only eight justices heard the arguments. A 4-4 tie would mean litigation against the polluters could go forward, because that would leave in effect the earlier decision by the appeals court. While the tone of the questioning was largely skeptical toward the idea that such suits ought to go forward, divining a final ruling from the rough-and-tumble of oral argument can be difficult, especially because justices often ask tough questions of those they’re inclined to agree with—just to test their counterarguments. Eyes were squarely focused today on Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the swing judge when decisions are split 5-4 in favor of conservative decisions. Kennedy raised a concern that federal law, and EPA’s efforts to use that law, would necessarily “preempt” the common law. The court’s three liberal members, Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Kagan, seemed skeptical on this issue, too.

At least one knowledgeable observer said a 4-4 tie was unlikely. “In short, this particular lawsuit seemed doomed, with the court’s biggest task figuring out how to say so without shutting the courthouse door entirely to such claims,” said longtime Supreme Court reporter Lyle Denniston.

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Workplace climate a major factor in why women leave engineering, report finds

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For women in engineering, workplace climate issues are pervasive and continue to be a key reason they leave the field, reports a new survey of more than 3700 women engineering graduates from 30 U.S. institutions. One in three women who have left the field report working in uncivil, disrespectful environments, where colleagues and supervisors frequently undermine their work, the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded study found.

The survey — aimed at trying to understand why 20% of engineering school graduates but only 11% of practicing engineers are women — asked women in engineering jobs and those who had left the field about their job experience, training and development opportunities, and work climate.

Of those who left (1086 women):

  • Nearly half said they left because of working conditions; they report experiencing too much travel, low salaries, and a lack of personal advancement.
  • One-third report leaving because of the work culture; including treatment by boss or supervisors, and more generally a lack of female-friendly culture in the workplace.
  • Independently of those categories, 25% of the respondents reported leaving their jobs to spend more time with their family.

Of those who stayed (2099 women):

  • Most say that they have supportive supervisors and co-workers.
  • Women who report that they are undermined by their co-workers and work in cultures characterized by condescending, patronizing treatment are the least committed to staying.
  • Women who report that they are overworked both at home and work, and who were treated in a condescending manner, report experiencing considerable work-life conflict.

The report, published by the Project on Women Engineers’ Retention (POWER), was careful to underscore that there was no difference between groups in their interests, confidence in their abilities, nor in their expectations of positive outcomes from performing a task.

The report’s authors, Nadya A. Fouad and Romila Singh, of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, suggest that organizations and companies must find ways to better recognize positive contributions from women in engineering, root out undermining behaviors in the workplace, and foster an environment where colleagues and supervisors support women. Fouad and Singh suggest that changing the workplace environment could be done through formal mentoring programs and by providing forums for informal mentoring.

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In Times of Crisis, U.K. Government Should Listen to Its Scientists, Says Report

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LONDON—The British Government is too hesitant to ask the advice of its own scientific advisers and other scientists while preparing to deal with national emergencies. And the British public may end up paying for that reluctance, says a report published today by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.

As it stands, in an emergency, Britain’s government relies on the advice of the Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA), a post currently held by population biologist John Beddington, and on the guidelines laid out in the National Risk Assessment (NRA)—a Cabinet-drafted strategy for the most significant emergencies that the United Kingdom could face over the next 5 years. In extreme disasters, an additional authority is set up: the Scientific Advisory Groups for Emergencies whose members change depending on the nature of the crisis.

In reviewing two recent emergencies—the 2010 volcanic ash cloud, and the 2009-10 H1N1 influenza —the committee found that advice and instruction from both the government’s own advisers and from the wider scientific community was taken too late.

What’s more, they found that the government’s attitude to scientific advice is that it is “something to reach for once an emergency happens,” the committee says. Scientific advice is not considered from the start of the planning process, the committee says.

“The current approach smacks of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted,” said committee chair Andrew Miller in a statement. He calls for more evidence-based preparation for worst-case scenarios.

The committee cites the example of last year’s grounding of aircraft by volcanic ash from Iceland. It draws attention to a statement from the Geological Society that says, “Some earth scientists report that they have been warning government and others of the potential for major disruption due to Icelandic eruptions for a number of years, but feel that little notice has been taken of these warnings.” Had the government acted on such counsel, the committee believes that hundreds of millions of pounds could have been saved the following year.

Another chief concern was the uncertain role that GCSA played in the assessment of risks to the United Kingdom. When questioned by the committee, Beddington admitted that he was not aware of who would make the final decisions on what recommendations should be made to the government ahead of an emergency. Beddington also confirmed that until the volcanic ash incident, he hadn’t been involved in setting up any national risk assessments.

The problem more generally, say the parliamentarians, is a lack of scientific input into risk assessment. They highlight three future scenarios in which the government has taken insufficient account of scientists’ views: pandemic flu (much like the 2009-10 H1N1 influenza), disruption to infrastructure by space weather, and cybersecurity.

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Blood Sport: Anti-Doping Strategy Comes Into Its Own

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Last week, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), considered the world authority in sporting disputes, ruled in favor of the International Cycling Union in its doping case against the Italian cyclists Franco Pellizotti and Pietro Caucchioli. The two cyclists had been barred from riding competitively for 2 years (Pellizotti from May 2010, and Caucchioli from June 2009), but had appealed. Neither cyclist was caught with an illicit substance in blood or urine samples provided to doping officials. Instead, the charges were based on evidence collected as part of a new anti-doping program—the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP)—that builds biological profiles of athletes and detects suspicious changes in their blood. “It is a significant step in the global fight against doping in sport,” says David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Below, ScienceInsider answers a few questions about how the ABP works, why scientists developed it, and where else biological passports might be used.

What is the Athlete Biological Passport?

Unlike previous anti-doping methods that looked for traces of performance-enhancing substances in athletes’ blood and urine, the ABP enables detection of changes in an athlete’s blood chemistry that could be a consequence of doping. The strategy depends on creating a blood profile, or passport, essentially a model predicting a person’s natural blood chemistry. Researchers factor in an athlete’s sex, age, ethnicity, and measurements, at different altitudes, of various properties of the individual’s blood, such as the concentration of oxygen-binding hemoglobin; reticulocytes (immature red blood cells); other red blood cells, which athletes sometimes increase by illegal blood transfusion; or presence of hormones such as Erythropoietin (EPO) and other substances. Once about five blood samples have been tested to establish a baseline, athletes who have abnormal readings in subsequent tests are flagged as doping cases.

This personalized approach is particularly important as some athletes naturally have odd blood chemistry that might suggest doping. Some for example, have high reticulocyte counts—2% of one’s red blood cells rather than the typical 1%. Reticulocyte counts are sensitive to blood doping and so are typically tested for by doping monitors. But the ABP approach looks for significant changes in reticulocyte counts, rather than at absolute numbers, and thus avoids flagging athletes with naturally elevated reticulocyte levels.

Once they have a passport, “athletes are tested three to 10 times a year,” says Neil Robinson of the Swiss Laboratory for Doping Analysis, who helped develop the ABP strategy and is involved in monitoring athletes’ profiles for irregularities. If any are spotted, the athlete’s profile is assessed by an international panel of three blood-doping specialists. If a unanimous agreement is reached by the panel that the blood chemistry can’t be natural, then the athlete can be suspended from competition.

Why was there a need for a new approach?

In the 1990s, international sports federations were struggling to combat the rising use of performance enhancing EPO, a hormone that controls the process by which red blood cells (erythrocytes) are produced. Athletes were using EPO to boost their overall red blood cell count, which increases endurance. At the time, there was no direct detection of exogenous EPO in urine. And so to combat EPO use, athletes were required to provide blood samples because many blood properties, such as levels of hemoglobin and hematocrit (the proportion of red blood cells that make up blood), are sensitive to the hormone’s stimulation. But, notes Robinson, “it was not long before athletes found new tricks [to evade detection]. … They could drink a lot, or inject isotonic saline.”

In 2000, as part of an anti-doping campaign inspired by that year’s Summer Olympic Games in Sydney, researchers began to look around for alternative testing methods. WADA convened a meeting of international sports federations and formed a consensus that the best solution was to establish a baseline profile of an athlete’s blood and monitor for variations.

In 2009, WADA approved the use of the ABP, which had been developed in the intervening years by Robinson and his colleagues Pierre-Edouard Sottas and Martial Saugy of the Swiss Laboratory for Doping Analysis.

Pellizotti and Caucchioli, the two Italian cyclists, are the first athletes whose charges under this new testing approach have reached CAS. The court’s rejection of the cyclists’ appeals appears to give the use of ABPs a major boost. “These decisions send a strong message to athletes who take the risk to cheat that they will ultimately be caught,” says WADA’s Howman.

But not everyone is convinced that ABPs are the full solution. Anti-doping agencies have suggested that ABP should work in tandem with traditional testing, which looks for disallowed substances in blood and urine. Former professional cyclist Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title after testing positive for doping, and who has since admitted that he used performance-enhancing drugs, has argued that athletes can still get around the biological passport system because it relies on catching fluctuations in blood profiles between time points. Landis raises the concern that riders can combine small doses of EPO with transfusions of their own blood to boost performance, while remaining undetectable to the ABP.

What’s the future for biological passports?

Robinson thinks it is likely that ABP’s will be used to evaluate doping in the 2012 Olympics, although he cautions that the International Olympic Committee has yet to confirm this. He does expect that it will be adopted for future Olympics, however.

The biological passport concept may have uses outside of sports. “This approach is extremely interesting for individualized medicine,” says Robinson. We don’t all react the same way when we take a drug. he points out. The idea behind the ABP is being extended to hospitals where doctors hope to use it to predict how patients might react to a new drug based on their sex, age, and ethnicity, as well on their blood profile, according to Robinson. He notes that patients in hospitals regularly have their blood work tested, but doctors don’t tend to pull this data together into any sort of record or profile. This wasted information could be used to refine treatment, he suggests. Robinson says he hopes to soon publish work on such medical biological passports.

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E.U. Commissioner Seeks ‘Clean Break’ From Past Research Funding Strategy

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LONDON—“Get focused and get united to get ahead.” Pinching words from U.S. President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the European research, innovation and science commissioner, yesterday at the Royal Society laid out her vision for the future of European science and technology. Her words came 2 days before the European Commission presents a green paper on future European Union funding for research and innovation and much of Geoghegan-Quinn’s speech hinted at potentially radical changes ahead for the scientific community.

She reiterated her desire to simplify the E.U. bureaucracy facing researchers, but she also called for a “clean break” from the massive Framework Programmes (FP) that provide funding for multinational science collaborations. “We have now had seven Framework Programmes, but that does not mean that we should automatically move to Framework Programme number eight,” she said. Instead, Geoghegan-Quinn’s proposed a new funding device—dubbed the Common Strategic Framework, although there are plans to rename it something catchier—that would combine into one pot all FP funds and other money devoted to European Union research.

As part of this new framework, countries will receive additional funding to invest in their research infrastructure. Geoghegan-Quinn hopes that this additional funding will chiefly help the 10 newest countries to join the European Union, which have complained that despite access to European research funds, their lack of modern science facilities leaves them unable to keep domestic, or attract foreign, scientists.

The commissioner said that the new framework will also enable funding with the “scale and scope” to tackle the major challenges that European society will face in the coming years: energy, health and aging, food, and climate change and the environment. As part of this, Geoghegan-Quinn introduced plans for a new “Innovation Partnership,” that will focus on healthy aging and aim to add two active years to the lives of Europeans. It is hoped that this can be achieved through combining the efforts of researchers, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and transport industries. Other innovation partnerships will be detailed down the road.

Geoghegan-Quinn’s speech here comes just a few days after the heads of state of the European Union dedicated an afternoon of one of their regular summits to discussing innovation, the main theme of the commissioner’s tenure so far. On 4 February in Brussels, the E.U. leaders pledged to finish establishing the “European Research Area” by 2014. That includes making it easier for researchers to move from one member country to the next-while keeping their pension benefits, for example. The summit also endorsed the idea of establishing E.U.-wide intellectual property rules and agreed to explore the possibility of an E.U.-wide venture capital fund.

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Foreign Scientists Will Move to Front of U.K. Visa Line

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Fleshing out the details of its controversial new immigration cap, the UK Border Agency announced today that it will give priority to scientists and engineers. This represents a partial victory for campaigners, including academics, charities, and a U.K. newspaper, which had called for abolition of the cap on skilled non-European Union workers because of concerns about the damaging effect it could have on Britain’s science.

The government’s original plan, announced last October, set a new annual limit on the number of skilled and highly skilled migrant visas for non-E.U. citizens—the new cap was set at 20,700 visas, down 7300 from previous years. To deal with a bottleneck in processing visas, there would also be a monthly quota of skilled migrant visas—4200 visas will be awarded in the first month, April, and then 1500 in all subsequent months. If monthly limits are reached, the applicants would be prioritized according to points that are earned for age, language skills, education, and previous earnings or career experience.

Scientists and engineers had decried the changes, noting that foreign postdoctoral researchers typically draw small salaries and would be at a disadvantage in obtaining visas. The new revisions, which have not yet passed Parliament, propose allocating more education-based points to scientists and engineers, announced Damian Green, the U.K. immigration minister. It is hoped that this change to the reform will bump up scientists ahead of other skilled workers in line to enter the United Kingdom.

Imran Khan, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE), which has led the lobbying against the caps, said: “I’m delighted that the government and the UK Border Agency in particular have listened and responded to our concerns.” According to CaSE, the new U.K. rules will mean that an applicant for a £23,000 job requiring a Ph.D. will have a better chance of getting a visa than will someone earning £74,000 but who did not have a Ph.D.-level job offer. “While we still disagree that a cap on scientists and engineers is something the government should implement, these proposals should mean that the U.K. can still bring in the necessary individuals from around the world,” says Khan.

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U.K. Neuroscientists Complain Funding Cut Penalizes Them for Success

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LONDON—At a briefing here today, the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) warned that a planned 20% cut in funding for neuroscience by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) will drive an estimated 100 researchers in the field from the United Kingdom and weaken the nation in a scientific discipline in which it has traditionally excelled. In a letter addressed to Tom Blundell, chair of the council of the BBSRC, which more than 100 neuroscientists put their name to, BNA protested the funding cut and called for its reconsideration.

In January, BBSRC revealed its plans to prioritize particular research disciplines that it believes will help address major challenges to future society. BBSRC’s favored themes include: food security, bioenergy and industrial biotechnology and basic bioscience underpinning health and wellbeing. The Council said that meant that neuroscience, which currently accounts for 13% of grant funding (amounting to £150 million), will receive less funding. BBSRC’s head Douglas Kell recently defended the cut in a blog post.

BNA says that BBSRC’s reprioritization smacks of a desperate measure to balance the books, and that the field of neuroscience is being penalized for being successful. British neuroscientists contend that they have a great track record, helping to explain brain illnesses such as motor neuron, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s diseases, and develop many important drugs such as Fluoxetine, the widely used antidepressant known as Prozac. Eli Lilly, a U.S.-based pharmaceutical company, found that neuroscience research in the south of England was the most cited globally.

David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London says that there has been no explanation by BBSRC for their dramatic change in strategy, and no consultation on these cuts. The effects will be felt immediately, he says. It just seems like an “arbitrary exclusion.” “I don’t know what to tell my PhD students … I don’t see jobs for them,” he remarks.

Duncan Banks, the director of BNA , argued that the BBSRC’s funding cut, amounting to about £4 million in spending on neuroscience, will particularly affect opportunities for young scientists, he explains.

BBSRC cuts come at a time when the funding for basic neuroscience in the United Kingdom is already threatened with a move by the Medical Research Council to fund more clinically relevant science, explains Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford and former head of the Medical Research Council. Yet one-third of global health issues are related to neurological problems, such as depression, pain, and the diseases of the aging brain. BNA points out that what really drives new treatments is basic research. Blakemore remarks, “Neuroscience remains one of the least understood areas of biology.” “An aging population should be very worried about cuts in neuroscience,” he says.

The strength of the U.K.’s basic research was what originally attracted pharmaceutical companies to the United Kingdom, notes Blakemore. Yet that attraction may be fading, especially in the neuroscience. Recent closures of many pharma-funded institutes working in the field of neuroscience—Pfizer, GSK, Astra Zenica, and Merck have all closed institutes in the last year—may also force neuroscientists out of the United Kingdom.

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