A 'Flower' That Delivers Disease-Killing Treatments to Mosquitoes

A 'Flower' That Delivers Disease-Killing Treatments to Mosquitoes

In development: an artificial flower that kills pathogens in disease-carrying mosquitoes but spares the bugs 

DON'T KILL THE MESSENGER: The PROVECTOR is designed to use visual, olfactory and chemical signals to entice mosquitoes to ingest antimalarial and antiviral treatments that inhibit the development of pathogens.

The most common way of fighting diseases like malaria, dengue fever, and West Nile today is to try to wipe out the mosquitoes carrying them and treat those who have been infected. Now there's an alternative on the horizon that promises to be safer and cheaper by zapping the germs while sparing the mosquitoes. The technology is hidden in an artificial flower designed to attract mosquitoes and treat them with pathogen-killing drugs that allow the insects to live and continue to perform important functions such as pollinating flowers and serving as food for animals and other insects.

MIT Holding, Inc., a Savannah, Ga., pharmaceuticals distributor, says its PROVECTOR "flower" reduced the number of viruses that cause dengue and parasites that cause malaria in mosquitoes in lab settings.

Although company is still considering what type of flower the PROVECTOR will resemble, the product is designed to use visual, olfactory and chemical signals to entice mosquitoes to ingest antimalarial and antiviral treatments that inhibit the development of the pathogens. This is a vastly different approach to current methods of fighting insect-borne diseases that involve treating populations with expensive preventive medications (which can have serious side effects and may not work), the wholesale killing of the insects using toxic pesticides and / or treating the infected bite victims.

A major problem with current treatments for malaria—a long-lasting, potentially fatal blood disease that kills more than 2.7 million people a year, according to the World Health Organization—is that the parasites may become drug-resistant; in such cases, they are spread along with the disease. A group of researchers led by Pennsylvania State University biology professor Andrew Read recently published findings on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA Web site that indicate "the more drugs you use, the worse you make the situation in terms of the evolution of drug resistance."

Lest you worry about the faux flower's impact on humans and other living things: the flower portion of the PROVECTOR is covered by a membrane that protects people, bees and other animals that touch it but is thin enough to be penetrated by a mosquito's long, pointy proboscis. Tests have shown that the chemicals inside the PROVECTOR not only kill pathogens but also suppress the development of Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria if a mosquito encounters them after being treated. "There appears to be a strong prophylactic action in the mosquito," says Dr. Thomas Kollars, MIT Holding's chief scientific advisor and director of the Biodefense and Infectious Disease Laboratory at Georgia Southern University's Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health in Statesboro.

Kollars says PROVECTOR'S drug—which is still being developed—will function similar to doxycycline, an antibiotic that slows or kills parasites in the blood that cause malaria and is taken to prevent the disease before traveling to (and while in) areas where malaria has been reported.

The impetus for Kollars's work began about a decade ago when he was working as a disease outbreak investigator in Thailand. "We were testing antimalarial drugs for the army and their effects on mosquitoes," he says. There are antimalarial drugs available to prevent people from contracting the disease and treatments for those who actually get it, but few people in the most vulnerable regions—such as parts of Africa and Asia—can afford the tab. "We needed to find a treatment that was in the $5-to-$10 range," he says, adding that the goal is to offer the PROVECTOR for less than $5 a flower.

The PROVECTOR will be designed to last about a year before its artificial petals need to be replaced. The product's lifespan will depend upon the mosquito population in a particular area and the amount of chemicals that they ingest.

Another dangerous mosquito-borne disease that Kollars hopes to stop is dengue fever, a disease in tropical areas that can cause headache, rash, achy joints and, in some cases—mostly in very young children—can be fatal if the victim goes into shock. "Our goal is also to develop the technology," Kollars says, "and then transfer that knowledge to help developing countries so they can produce them."

MIT Holding says it will cost about $3.7 million to conduct the next round of product development and testing, which will include trying out PROVECTOR on mosquitoes in rural Georgia come spring and in the Florida Everglades next summer. "We hope to have received some funding by next fall for overseas trials," Kollars adds. He says his team is testing four different prototypes of PROVECTOR to come up with the most effective mix of color and chemicals—not to mention, disposable petals that are biodegradable.

"PROVECTOR alone isn't the answer," Kollars acknowledges, "but it will interdict at a different stage than other treatments for malaria and other diseases. I've seen kids dying of malaria; it behooves those of us who can do something to do something."

Study: CT scans raise cancer risk

Study: CT scans raise cancer risk

Millions of Americans, especially children, are needlessly getting dangerous radiation from "super X-rays" that raise the risk of cancer and are increasingly used to diagnose medical problems, a new report warns.

In a few decades, as many as 2 percent of all cancers in the United States might be due to radiation from CT scans given now, according to the authors of the report.

Some experts say that estimate is overly alarming. But they agree with the need to curb these tests particularly in children, who are more susceptible to radiation and more likely to develop cancer from it.

"There are some serious concerns about the methodology used," but the authors "have brought to attention some real serious potential public health issues," said Dr. Arl Van Moore, head of the American College of Radiology's board of chancellors.

The risk from a single CT, or computed tomography, scan to an individual is small. But "we are very concerned about the built-up public health risk over a long period of time," said Eric J. Hall, who wrote the report with fellow Columbia University medical physicist David J. Brenner.

It was published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine and paid for by federal grants.

The average American's total radiation exposure has nearly doubled since 1980, largely because of CT scans. Medical radiation now accounts for more than half of the population's total exposure; it used to be just one-sixth, and the top source was the normal background rate in the environment, from things like radon in soil and cosmic energy from the sun.

A previous study by the same scientists in 2001 led the federal Food and Drug Administration to recommend ways to limit scans and risks in children.

But CT use continued to soar. About 62 million scans were done in the U.S. last year, up from 3 million in 1980. More than 4 million were in children.

Since previous studies suggest that a third of all diagnostic tests are unnecessary, that means that 20 million adults and more than 1 million children getting CT scans are needlessly being put at risk, Brenner and Hall write.

Ultrasound and MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, scans often are safer options that do not expose people to radiation, they contend.

CT scans became popular because they offer a quick, relatively cheap and painless way to get 3D pictures so detailed they give an almost surgical view into the body. Doctors use them to evaluate trauma, belly pain, seizures, chronic headaches, kidney stones and other woes, especially in busy emergency rooms. In kids, they are used to diagnose or rule out appendicitis.

But they put out a lot of radiation. A CT scan of the chest involves 10 to 15 millisieverts (a measure of dose) versus 0.01 to 0.15 for a regular chest X-ray, 3 for a mammogram and a mere 0.005 for a dental X-ray.

The dose depends on the type of machine and the person — obese people require more radiation than slim ones — and the risk accumulates over a lifetime.

"Medical care in this country is naturally so fragmented. Any one doctor is not going to be aware of the fact that a particular patient has had three or four CT scans at some point in the past," said Dr. Michael Lauer, prevention chief at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

People with chronic problems like kidney stones are likely to get too many scans, said Dr. Fred Mettler, radiology chief in the New Mexico Veterans Administration health care system.

"I've seen people who are 30 years old who have had at least 18 scans done," he said.

That puts them at risk of developing radiation-induced cancer, Brenner and Hall said. They base this on studies of thousands of Japanese atomic bomb survivors who had excess cancer risk after exposures of 50 to 150 millisieverts — the equivalent of several big CT scans.

"That's very controversial. There's a large portion of the medical physics community that would disagree with that" comparison, said Richard Morin, a medical physicist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. However, others defended the data, which has been widely cited in other radiation studies.

"It's the best evidence we've got" on cancer risks, Lauer said.

Dr. Robert Smith, the American Cancer Society's director of screening, said the authors' estimate that 2 percent of future cancers may be due to CT scans "seems high." But since cancers take 10 to 20 years to develop, "the ability to even observe that kind of an increase is going to be very difficult," he said.

The authors stressed that they were not trying to scare people who need CT scans away from having them. In most cases, the benefits exceed the risks, especially for diagnostic scans.

However, using the scans to screen people with no symptoms of illness — like screening smokers for signs of lung cancer — has not been shown to save lives and is not currently recommended.

Many groups also condemn whole-body scans, often peddled by private practitioners in shopping centers as peace of mind to the worried well. Many of these centers are not accredited by the College of Radiology; only a third of all places that do CT scans in the U.S. are, although insurers are starting to require it for reimbursement, Moore said.

Many CT centers also are set up for adults and rarely image children, who need adjustments to limit dose and radiation risk, said Dr. Alan Brody, a radiologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center who wrote a report on the topic. He said parents should seek a center that often handles children.

Both doctors and patients need to be more aware of radiation risks and discuss them openly, Brenner and Hall said.

"We were astonished to find, when we were researching materials for this paper, how many doctors, particularly emergency room physicians, really had no idea of the magnitude of the doses or the potential risks that were involved," Hall said.

Other studies found the opposite problem: Three out of 10 parents in one study insisted on CT scans instead of observing the child's condition for awhile even after they were told of the radiation risk, Brody said.

"This is what our patients want," and they expect fast answers from doctors, he said.

The pressure is greatest for ER doctors who "are in a bind ... they have all these patients stacked up" and need to make quick decisions, Mettler said.

Future generations of devices using less radiation should help alleviate the concern, but these mostly are directed at the emerging field of heart scans, Lauer said.

"When we order a CT scan it just doesn't seem like such a big deal" but it should be, he said. "The threshold for ordering these tests is low and it's getting lower and lower over time, which means that the risks become potentially all that more important." 


A doctor looks over a CT scan of a brain near the emergency room at the Childrens National Medical Center in Washington in this 2002 file photo. Millions of Americans, especially children, are needlessly getting dangerous.

Drought Exacerbates Carbon Dioxide Problem

Drought Exacerbates Carbon Dioxide Problem

Droughts do more harm than just parching the land. They can also exacerbate rising carbon dioxide levels, government scientists have found.

In North America alone, human activity—from driving cars to generating power in factories—releases about two billion tons (1.85 billion metric tons) of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide every year. Natural carbon sinks such as forests, grasslands, crops and soil absorb about one-third of those emissions, scientists estimate.

But droughts seem to hamper the ability of these sinks to suck up the greenhouse gas. A new measurement system introduced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, called CarbonTracker, has provided scientists with weekly observations of carbon dioxide exchange from 2000 to 2005.

The data, detailed in a new study in the Nov. 26 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that in 2002, when North America experienced one of the largest droughts in more than a century, the amount of carbon taken up by vegetation and soil plunged from 716 million tons to 363 million tons.

"Scientists often look at the role of greenhouse gases in producing climate extremes," said study leader Wouter Peters, affiliated with Wageninen University and Research Center in The Netherlands. "Here we show the reverse is also true. Climate extremes can have a major effect on the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere."

Drought and other variations in a region's climate can change temperatures, rainfall, soil moisture and even the length of the growing season in that region. If less rain falls and soil moisture drops, plants may wither and die and so take up less carbon dioxide.

The connection between drought and increased carbon dioxide levels isn't unique to North America; the widespread drought and heat wave that struck Europe in 2003 left more than 500 million extra tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that year, CarbonTracker showed. This problem could have consequences for efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"Disruptions to natural carbon uptake can have enormous environmental and economic effects, possibly even erasing efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions in a given year," Peters said. 

 
On this map of North America, red areas denote reduced carbon dioxide absorption in the summer of 2002 with blue areas showing enhanced absorption.

Fake Photos Alter Real Memories

Fake Photos Alter Real Memories

In 2003, Los Angeles Times photographer Brian Walski caused an uproar when it was discovered that his picture of a British soldier yelling at fleeing residents in Iraq, published prominently by many U.S. newspapers, had been altered.

Walski had combined two snapshots taken moments apart of the British soldier urging residents to take cover as Iraqi forces opened fire. This digital alteration is one of several in recent years to cast doubt on the old saying that the camera doesn't lie.

Some researchers are worried that digitally altered photos could alter our perceptions and memories of public events.

To test what effect doctored photos might have, researchers from the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Padua in Italy showed 299 people aged 19 to 84 either an actual photo or an altered photo of two historical events, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing and the 2003 anti-war protest in Rome.

The original Tiananmen Square image was altered to show a crowd watching at the sidelines as a lone man stands in front of a row of tanks. The Rome anti-war protest photograph was altered to show riot police and a menacing, masked protester among the crowd of demonstrators.

When answering questions about the events, the participants had differing recollections of what happened. Those who viewed the altered images of the Rome protest recalled the demonstration as violent and negative and recollected more physical confrontation and property damage than actually occurred.

Participants who viewed the doctored photos also said they were less inclined to take part in future protests, according to the study, detailed in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.

"It’s potentially a form of human engineering that could be applied to us against our knowledge and against our wishes, and we ought to be vigilant about it," said UC Irvine psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, who designed the study. "With the addition of a few little upsetting and arousing elements in the Rome protest photo, people remembered this peaceful protest as being more violent than it was, and as a society we have to figure how we can regulate this." 

 
Original photo of the Tianamen Square protest in Beijing (left) and the doctored photo of the event, with a crowd added (right). Credit: UCI

 
A photograph of a peaceful 2003 anti-war protest in Rome is doctored so that the added elements make viewers recall the event as more violent that it was.

Oddly, Hypocrisy Rooted in High Morals

Oddly, Hypocrisy Rooted in High Morals

Morally upstanding people are the do-gooders of society, right? Actually, a new study finds that a sense of moral superiority can lead to unethical acts, such as cheating. In fact, some of the best do-gooders can become the worst cheats.

Stop us if this sounds familiar.

When asked to describe themselves, most people typically will rattle off a list of physical features and activities (for example, "I do yoga" or "I'm a paralegal"). But some people have what scientists call a moral identity, in which the answer to the question would include phrases like "I am honest" and "I am a caring person."

Past research has suggested that people who describe themselves with words such as honest and generous are also more likely to engage in volunteer work and other socially responsible acts.

But often in life, the line between right and wrong becomes blurry, particularly when it comes to cheating on a test or in the workplace. For example, somebody could rationalize cheating on a test as a way of achieving their dream of becoming a doctor and helping people.

In the new study, detailed in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers find that when this line between right and wrong is ambiguous among people who think of themselves as having high moral standards, the do-gooders can become the worst of cheaters.

The results recall the seeming disconnect between the words and actions of folks like televangelist and fraud convict Jim Bakker or admitted meth-buyer Ted Haggard, former president of the National Evangelical Association, an umbrella group representing some 45,000 churches.

"The principle we uncovered is that when faced with a moral decision, those with a strong moral identity choose their fate (for good or for bad) and then the moral identity drives them to pursue that fate to the extreme," said researcher Scott Reynolds of the University of Washington Business School in Seattle. "So it makes sense that this principle would help explain what makes the greatest of saints and the foulest of hypocrites."

Why cheat? Why not?

Why would a person who thinks of himself as honest cheat? The researchers suggest an "ethical person" could view cheating as an OK thing to do, justifying the act as a means to a moral end.

As Reynolds put it: "If I cheat, then I'll get into graduate school, and if I get into graduate school, then I can become a doctor and think about all the people I'm going to help when I'm a doctor."

A competitive playing field, whether at a university or business, can also motivate cheating behaviors.

"Cheating is a way to get ahead in a competitive environment where there are rewards for winning or getting ahead of others," said Daniel Kruger, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the current study. "It seems like there is an increasing desire and expectation in our society to 'be the best.'"

Even if a person doesn't justify his unethical behaviors, "cheating can save lots of time and energy and take advantage of the knowledge and reasoning of others who are more adept, but could be disastrous if one is caught," Kruger said. He added, "I am not surprised that some of the extreme examples of cheating—ripping the relevant pages out of library books so other students cannot see them—happen in intensely competitive environments, law school in this example [of ripping out book pages]."

Cheating basics

Reynolds and University of Washington colleague Tara Ceranic surveyed about 230 college students with an average age of 21 who were enrolled in an upper-level business course. The survey measured moral identity with 12 questions about the importance of certain characteristics, such as generosity, willingness to work hard, honesty and compassion, and whether things like clothing, books, activities and friends were associated with the moral characteristics.

Students were also asked whether they had engaged in each of 13 cheating behaviors, including using cheat sheets (crib notes), copying from another student and turning in work completed by someone else.

Overall, cheating was rampant.

• More than 90 percent reported having committed at least one of the 13 cheating behaviors.
• More than 55 percent reported saying nothing when they had benefited from an instructor's grading error.
• Nearly 50 percent reported having inappropriately collaborated on an individual assignment.
• Nearly 42 percent indicated copying from another student during a test.

Students who scored high on moral identity and also considered cheating to be morally wrong were the least likely to cheat. In contrast, the worst cheaters were the "moral" students who considered cheating to be an ethically justifiable behavior in certain situations.

"If they think it's wrong, they'll never do it," Reynolds told LiveScience. "If they think it's OK, they do it in spades."

The researchers found similar results when they surveyed 290 managers, asking them whether they had engaged in 17 workplace "no-no's," including using company services for personal use, padding an expense account and taking longer than necessary to do a job. The managers with moral identities were also most likely to engage in the sketchy office behavior.

"When people have a strong moral identity, they think of themselves as great moral people, their behavior tends to go to the extremes," Reynolds said.

Cheat-proof tactics

In order to encourage students and managers to forego cheating in exchange for ethical behaviors, Reynolds suggests ethics education. Classes, newsletters and other means of communication should help organizations to communicate which behaviors are morally acceptable and which are not.

The old-school method of rewards and punishments could help. "We learn through rewards and punishments so to the extent that schools crack down when they need to crack down, we'd all be better off," Reynolds said.

For managers recruiting new employees, just because a person identifies himself or herself as honest doesn't mean they won't cut corners.

"If you can recruit people with a moral identity and then train them appropriately, you'll get some of the best behavior you can imagine," Reynolds said.