News Bytes of the Week—Star Trek Star Gets Own Asteroid

News Bytes of the Week—Star Trek Star Gets Own Asteroid

Smart milk, Real crocodile tears, Bush says "no" to kids, Toy blocks build language skills, and more…

A star becomes an asteroid
Nothing like getting your own asteroid. Just ask former Star Trek star George Takei. The International Astronomical Union's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature this week approved renaming a celestial rock between Mars and Jupiter 7307 Takei in honor of the actor best known for his role as Captain Kirk'ssteadfast helmsman Hiakru Sulu in the original Star Trek TV series and movies. The asteroid, formerly dubbed 1994 GT9, was discovered by two Japanese astronomers 13 years ago. Takei joins Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (4659 Roddenberry) and Nichelle Nichols (68410 Nichols), who played Lt. Uhura in the original series, in having a space rock named after him. "I am now a heavenly body," Takei, 71, told the Associated Press with a chuckle, noting that when he heard the news he was "blown away. It came out of the clear, blue sky, just like an asteroid." (AP)

Bush nixes health insurance for kids
President Bush this week infuriated child advocates and many members of his own political base by vetoing legislation designed to provide health insurance coverage for millions of U.S. children. Bush told a Pennsylvania business group that he rejected the initiative, because the Democratic-controlled Congress was trying to "federalize health care." Some nine million of the nation's children currently do not have health insurance. The bill was aimed at bumping up enrollment from 6.6 million to around 10 million in a popular federal health care program for children of families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid yet cannot afford hefty private insurance fees. The measure would have pumped about $7 billion more annually over five years into the program, which currently receives about $5 billion annually. This was Bush's fourth veto, three of which have concerned health; two were of measures that would have expanded federal embryonic stem cell research. (New York Times) 

Is mom's milk the smart choice?
You bet, say researchers who found that preemies who drank breast milk while still in intensive care units thrived better than their formula-fed brethren—and were less likely to be rehospitalized after being discharged. Scientists report in the journal Pediatrics that they followed 800 extremely low weight babies and found that after 30 months those fed mom's milk scored an average of 90 on the mental development index, a test that measures overall intelligence, compared with an average 76 for the other infants. As for steering clear of the hospital, researchers speculate that breast milk boosts the immune system, making it easier for junior to ward off infections. (Pediatrics)

The (toy) building blocks of language
Eager to give your tiny tot a leg up on language skills? Might consider investing in some toy blocks. Researchers from Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute report in Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine that tykes who played with building blocks during a study scored 15 percent higher on a language assessment test than their non-block-playing compeers. So much for being a blockhead! (APAM)

Promising new stroke therapy
New research shows that patients treated with the antibiotic minocycline within 24 hours of suffering a stroke were less likely to suffer debilitating damage. Researchers at Tel Aviv University report in Neurology that they gave 150 stroke victims either minocycline or a placebo; three months later, those who received the antibiotic scored four times better on the National Institutes of Health stroke scale measuring vision, movement and speaking ability. Physicians are encouraged because minocycline can work up to a day after symptoms appear, whereas most current treatments only help if administered within the first few hours of an attack, which may take time to recognize. (Neurology) 

Oh my aching back!
Suffer from back pain? Not surprising considering it's one of the top adult health complaints (as many as one in four Americans report experiencing lower back pain at least once a day). Wonder what to do about it? So do many doctors, which is why the American College of Physicians and the American Pain Society this week released guidelines on how to diagnose and treat it. Numero uno rule, they say: physicians should rely less on tests such as CAT scans, MRIs or x-rays for patients grumping about nonspecific back pain and more on various medications (but to carefully weigh the risks and benefits of each one) and employ nondrug therapies such as acupuncture and massage. The groups recommend limiting imaging tests to patients with back pain that is severe and accompanied by neurological or spinal symptoms or if an underlying culprit such as cancer is suspected. (summary for patients)

Best Rx for the teenage blues
A new study says that a combo of drugs and counseling is the most effective treatment for teen depression. Over 400 depressed kids were treated for 12 weeks with either the antidepressant Prozac, cognitive behavior therapy or a mix of both. Some 73 percent of those receiving combination therapy responded favorably, compared with only 62 percent of those on Prozac and 48 percent undergoing counseling. Caution: teens treated only with Prozac were found to be twice as likely to experience suicidal thoughts or behaviors as those who received cognitive behavior therapy, researchers report in Archives of General Psychology. (AGP) 

Flu shot reduces death, hospitalization of seniors
There has recently been a flurry of debate over whether flu vaccines really protect seniors. Researchers at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center are the latest to weigh in, reporting in The New England Journal of Medicine that a survey of results from the past several flu seasons shows that seniors who received the vaccine had a 48 percent reduced risk of death and a 27 percent reduced risk of being hospitalized from the flu or pneumonia. (NEJM)

Virtual versus traditional colonoscopy
A major new study shows that virtual colonoscopy works just as well as traditional scope exams in scouting for potentially cancerous growths. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin Medical School compared the results of 3,120 patients scanned virtually and 3,163 screened the traditional way and report inThe New England Journal of Medicine that the tests detected nearly the same number of suspicious polyps—123 in the virtual crowd and 121 in the conventional group. Virtual colonography uses a CT scanner to take a series of x-rays of the colon and a computer to create a 3-D view. A small tube is inserted in the rectum to inflate the colon so that it can be viewed more easily. Conventional colonoscopy, the gold standard for colorectal cancer screening, offers both diagnostic and therapeutic options, because a polyp can be removed immediately if discovered during the procedure. If a lesion is found during a virtual exam, the patient must then undergo a traditional colonoscopy to extract it. Virtual colonoscopy is about a third the cost of the conventional variety, but many insurance companies consider it to be experimental and won't cover a portion of the tab. That could change, though, if a large federally funded study now underway confirms these results. Guidelines from the American Gastroenterological Association call for everyone 50 years of age and older (younger in high-risk groups) to have a colonoscopy. According to the National Cancer Institute, an estimated 112,340 new cases of colon cancer and some 41,420 cases of rectal cancer will be diagnosed, and more than 52,000 Americans will die this year from the disease, which is the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths even though it can be successfully treated if caught early. (NEJM)

Stent safety: Just say yes to drugs
Canadian physicians report in The New England Journal of Medicine that patients who had drug-coated stents surgically implanted to pry open clogged arteries were less likely than those who received bare metal ones to have the pathways choke off again and require another procedure to reopen them. The death rate over three years in patients with drug-coated stents was 5.5 percent compared with 7.8 percent for patients who received noncoated devices; the risk of heart attack after two years was about the same in both groups. The study was conducted on 3,750 pairs of patients. (NEJM)

Grape expectations: Heart bennies for teetotalers
Many studies have shown that drinking red wine in moderation may be heart-healthy. But what about those imbibers of nonalcoholic beverages among us? Good news, oh teetotalers. New research presented at the recent Wine Health 2007 confab in Pessac-Léognan, Bordeaux, shows that Concord grape juice offers the same benefits as red wine—and then some. Researcher Valerie Schini-Kerth and colleagues at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, reported that grape juice like red wine triggers production of nitric oxide (in endothelial cells), which maintains healthy, flexible blood vessels and helps keep a lid on blood pressure. They say the juice sets off the same chemical reactions in arteries as does red wine—only the effects last up to six hours, far longer than reported in wine drinkers. Schini-Kerth said the study demonstrates what's long been suspected: it's the grapes—and not the alcohol—behind the healthy vibes. (press release) 

Real crocodile tears
Could it be? Do crocodiles really shed a tear when chowing down? Yes they do, according to University of Florida zoologist Kent Vliet Vliet reports in the journal BioScience that he observed and videotaped four captive caimans and three alligators, close crocodile relatives, tearing up as they gobbled their dinner at Florida's St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park. He said that he and study co-author D. Malcolm Shaner, a neurology consultant at Kaiser Permanente, West Los Angeles, decided to "take a closer look'' after Shaner's curiosity was aroused while exploring the cause of a relatively rare syndrome associated with human facial palsy that causes sufferers to cry while eating. There are many literary references to crocs feeding and crying—and myth has it that they shed fake tears while feasting on human victims. Needless to say, the researchers observed the animals chomping on dog-biscuit–like fare—not humans—at the zoo. Their findings: the animals did indeed tear up as they ate up. The source of the tears remains a mystery, but Vliet speculated that air forced through their sinuses may mix with tears in the crocodiles lachrymal (tear) glands and empty into their eyes. One thing's for certain though, he said: "Faux grief is not a factor. In my experience, when crocodiles take something into their mouth, they mean it." (press release)

Would Americans pay to stop global warming?
A new survey shows that nearly three quarters of Americans polled would be willing to fork over more in taxes and other costs to support local government initiatives to stem global warming. According to the survey conducted by GfK Public Affairs and Media along with the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 74 percent of Americans would back local regs requiring all newly constructed homes to be more energy efficient, even if they upped the initial price tag of the houses by $7,500. Among other findings: 72 percent of respondents said they'd support rules to encourage homeowners to install electricity-generating solar panels on existing homes because of potential energy and utility bill savings, even if it meant coughing up an extra $5 per month in increased property taxes; 71 percent said they'd be willing to pony up $5 a month more in property taxes to encourage homeowners to replace old furnaces, water heaters, air conditioners, light bulbs and insulation; 69 percent said they'd be willing to plunk down $8.50 more a month for local regulations requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20 percent of their electricity from wind, solar and other renewable energy sources; and, 53 percent would back proposals to add city or local fees to electricity bills to encourage people to use less juice. But they were only willing to go so far: Some 64 percent said "no" to a 10-cent fee per gallon of gas designed to encourage people to use less fuel. (Yale)

The Secret Lives of Tool-Wielding Crows

The Secret Lives of Tool-Wielding Crows

Oxford University zoologists affix mini-cameras to New Caledonian crows to learn more about one of the few animals other than ourselves who use tools   

	Image: Courtesy of Jolyon Troscianko
	CANDID CAMERA:  Researchers from the Behavioral Ecology Research Group in Oxford's Department of Zoology tagged wild New Caledonian crows with video cameras, which protruded through the central tail feathers.

What's the best way to find out what crows living in the South Pacific really do when people aren't watching? Equip them with mini-cameras and have them make their own home-, er, nest-movies, of course.

University of Oxford zoologists are hoping that this hands-off approach to studying New Caledonian crows—aka Corvus moneduloides—will lead to a wealth of information about these infamous aviators, known to be one of the few nonhuman species to use tools to accomplish daily tasks.

These birds are particularly difficult to observe in their natural habitat, because they are sensitive to human disturbance and live in forested, mountainous areas of New Caledonia—a Pacific island east of Australia, roughly the size of New Jersey—where visibility is limited. But researchers report in the online edition of Science that they captured on video the birds using sticks, grass and stems to forage for food.

"The use of tools is one of the defining criteria for humans," says Christian Rutz, a postdoc candidate at Oxford's Behavioral Ecology Research Group, who conducted the study. "When it was revealed that here was a bird species that does something that's supposedly exclusive to humans, and to some extent chimpanzees, that was pretty important."

Rutz and fellow Oxford researchers Lucas Bluff, Alex Weir and Alex Kacelnik taped tiny camera units (which included a 2.4-GHz video transmitter, voltage regulator, timer chip and VHF radio-tag, along with batteries) to the two inner tail feathers of 18 crows to learn more about how they use tools. Each unit weighed about 14 grams (0.5 ounce), which was key given that the crows themselves each weigh only about 320 grams (11 ounces). "It was low-tech, but we wanted to have a fairly weak attachment so the crows could remove the camera if they wanted to," Rutz says. The camera lens protruded through the feathers and shot images from between each crow's legs, a position that researchers say did not interfere with the birds' movements and allowed them to shed the equipment via the normal molting process.

Image: Courtesy of Lucas Bluff
A HANDFUL:  Researchers taped small camera units, which included a 2.4-GHz video transmitter, voltage regulator, timer chip, VHF radio-tag and batteries to the two inner tail feathers of 18 crows to learn more about how they use tools.

Sure enough, the video cameras captured images of the crows using 10- to 15-centimeter (four- to six-inch) sticks to probe holes where they would find grubs. Rutz and his team used the footage to determine that the birds forage around eight small food items per hour. This indicates, Rutz says, that the birds may have begun using implements to overcome challenging foraging conditions. The researchers also discovered that the birds' tool-use and choice of tool materials—including sticks and dry grasslike stems—were more diverse than previously believed, and that birds will save, rather than discard, tools that they find particularly useful.

"One of our main goals with this was to observe natural, undisturbed behavior," Rutz says. "If you want to understand why these crows developed this unusual behavior, namely tool use, you have to understand what role these tools play in their daily lives."

Rutz and his team crafted the camera units themselves, because they could not find any technology that could be affixed to the birds without inhibiting their movement. "We pieced together the smallest equipment we could find," Rutz says. The VHF radio-tag let the researchers track the movement and behavior of individual crows, whereas the video footage was broadcast as a microwave signal.

The timer chip was crucial because it prevented the camera from switching on too soon and running out of battery power before capturing meaningful behavior. "When you first release a bird, the first thing it will do is sort out its feathers," Rutz says. "We didn't want to film this because we only had about 70 minutes worth of battery life." In fact, the average length of the footage recorded by each of the cameras was 38 minutes.

The researchers rounded up 18 crows in about a week using a baited five- by three-meter (roughly 16- by nine-foot) net placed on the ground. They ended up getting footage from 12 of those birds.

The researchers relied on the VHF radio-tags to find the cameras after the birds shed them but wound up recovering fewer than half because each tag's signal lasted only about three weeks. Rutz says he and his colleagues did not have to retrieve the cameras to recover their data (although each unit was worth several thousand dollars), because the video feeds were broadcast to a receiver that fed the footage into a camcorder.

The crows filmed themselves using tools to search for grubs in the rotted wood of fallen trees and to fish for ants in the ground. Researchers were surprised to discover that they used dry grass stems in addition to sticks and leaf stems. "We now know we were getting only a fraction of the whole picture," Rutz says. "This cautions us to broaden our view."

Rutz and his team are considering strapping cameras onto dozens of other crows in an effort to create a comprehensive video catalogue that will help them understand, among other things, whether females or males use tools more. "Does each crow have its own tool kit or are there crows that serve as tool specialists for the group?" Rutz asks. "These are important questions."

Rutz plans to rejoin colleague Lucas Bluff in New Caledonia within the next week to continue their studies. They have already begun to work on improving the camera units and are hoping that their "crowcam" technology can be used to study other types of birds and animals in the wild. "I'd like to see video tracking become routine for field ornithologists, or biologists in general," he says.

Plant-eating dinosaur a "Cretaceous weed whacker"

Plant-eating dinosaur a "Cretaceous weed whacker"

Scientists have found in southern Utah a nicely preserved skull with jaws containing 800 teeth, scaly skin impressions and other fossil remains of a new species of duck-billed dinosaur from 75 million years ago.

The bipedal herbivorous dinosaur, named Gryposaurus monumentensis, was about 30 feet long and pigged out on plenty of plants.

"What you're looking at with Gryposaurus monumentensis is basically the Cretaceous version of a weed whacker," Terry Gates, a Utah Museum of Natural History and University of Utah paleontologist, told reporters.

This is the fourth recognized species of Gryposaurus. The first was found almost a century ago. Gates said this discovery sheds light on what was going on in this part of North America about 10 million years before the dinosaurs went extinct.

Gryposaurus (pronounced grip-oh-SAWR-us) means "hook-nosed lizard," so named because of the sizable hump on the nose on the beast's large, somewhat square head.

Gryposaurus was a hadrosaur, commonly known as a duck-billed dinosaur because the wide, flattened front part of its mouth looked a bit like a duck's bill. This species was one of the larger hadrosaurs, but far from the largest. It was, however, the biggest dinosaur known from its ecosystem.

"EXQUISITE SPECIMEN"

Duck-billed dinosaurs were important plant-eaters of that time, and this one lived alongside relatives of the fearsome meat-eater Tyrannosaurus rex, herbivorous horned dinosaurs related to Triceratops and a variety of other creatures.

The scientists raved about the quality of the remains of this new species of Gryposaurus.

"As far as hadrosaur skulls in North America, this is certainly one of the most exquisite specimens we know of," said Alan Titus, a paleontologist at the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument where the fossils were found.

This animal was on a river bed when it died, Gates said. Its mouth had about 800 teeth, helping it grind up a big buffet of plants. "You have yourself a really big eater. This guy could eat most any plant it wanted to," Gates said.

In addition to this skull, they found a second Gryposaurus with a partial skull and partial skeleton, but with the tail completely intact. Skin impressions -- only rarely fossilized -- showed the dinosaur was covered with gravelly looking scales, with some larger scales shaped a bit like a butterfly.

The environment in southern Utah was drastically different 75 million years ago than the arid place it is today. During the late Cretaceous, the last of the three periods in the age of dinosaurs, it was wet and lush, with lots of ponds, rivers and creeks. At the time, North America was split down the middle by a shallow sea.

The findings were published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

An artist's rendering of the duck-billed dinosaur Gryposaurus monumentensis. Scientists have found in southern Utah...

Chili Pepper Cocktail Blunts Pain

Chili Pepper Cocktail Blunts Pain

Spicy compound clears the way for an anesthetic to silence pain
ssensation

	Image: © ISTOCKPHOTO/VLADIMIR MELNIK
	CHILI PEPPER BEFORE WE START?:  Scientists have determined that a series of compounds involving the active ingredient in chili peppers, capsaicin, may be able to serve as a more selective local anesthetic.

A key ingredient in chili peppers, chased with a local anesthetic, could be just the ticket for ending pain in the dentist's chair and on the operating table without the potentially dangerous side effects and all-numbing aftermath of traditional anesthesia, says a new Harvard Medical School study.

Researchers report in Nature that a combination of capsaicin (the ingredient that gives chili peppers their bite) and QX-314, a derivative of lidocaine (a local anesthetic used by dentists and to relieve inflamed, itchy skin), effectively silences pain-sensing nerve cells without disturbing other neurons that control motor function and other sensations. 

QX-314 is known to reduce the activity of pain-sensing neurons in the nervous system and theoretically heighten pain thresholds. But there's a catch: Researchers found that "it wouldn't work from outside a nerve cell but it would work if you could get it inside," says Bruce Bean, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the new study.

David Julius, a physiology professor at the University of California, San Francisco, recently discovered that capsaicin selectively binds to a protein known as TRPV1 that resides on the membranes of pain-sensing neurons. When capsaicin binds to TRPV1, it causes the protein to open a gate leading to a small channel in the nerve cell's membrane. (Neurons that do not contain TRPV1 are unaffected.)

"The novelty of the idea here was that it might be possible that the QX-314 molecule might be small enough that you might be able to put it in through that small channel," Bean says.

If so, researchers reasoned, injecting capsaicin followed by QX-314 should allow the chili pepper compound to open the doors of pain-sensing neurons, clearing the way for the anesthetic to enter and shut down the cells. The team initially tested its theory using petri dish cultures of nerve cells from rat spinal cords and found that electrical activity in pain-sensing nerve cells dipped after injections of capsaicin followed by QX-314. This indicates the cells would be too weak to send messages to the brain.

Researchers then conducted two experiments on rats. In one, they injected capsaicin and QX-314 into the paws of some of the animals, then placed them on surfaces that were heated until the rats felt pain. All of the injected animals were numb to the highest level of heat to which they were exposed. In the second test, the cocktail was administered into the sciatic nerves of some rats in the test group. (The sciatic is the body's longest nerve, responsible for sensation in the back and lower extremities). The animals were then poked with three nylon probes at different strengths; half of the group did not even bristle at the strongest jab.

None of the rats that had been injected with the capsaicin–QX-314 cocktail experienced temporary paralysis—a potential side effect of traditional anesthesia—indicating that the combination had successfully targeted only pain-sensing nerve cells. The heightened pain threshold appeared to last up to four hours, according to Bean.

U.C. San Francisco's Julius (who was not involved in the study) called the new approach simple and clever, but noted that some tweaks of the methodology are needed before this can become a pain blocker in humans. One major obstacle that must be overcome, he says, is the irritating nature of capsaicin, which causes burning sensations when one touches (not to mention eats) it. "If the QX compound silences the nerve fast enough after the capsaicin opens the channel," he says, "then it should work for some local anesthetic applications."

According to Bean, study co-author Alexander Binshtok, a Harvard postdoctoral researcher in neural plasticity, is already at work eliminating capsaicin's negative effects by reversing the order of the injections: leading with QX-314, quickly followed by capsaicin to shove it through the cell. 

Ideally, Bean says, researchers will find a way to erase any initial pain before the spicy new method replaces epidurals and novocaine injections. Toward that end, he says, the team is searching for a molecule similar to capsaicin "that opens the TRPV1 channels but doesn't have as much of an irritant effect." 

Fair Play in the Genes

Fair Play in the Genes

Study indicates that individuals' sense of fairness is at least partially ingrained in their DNA 

	GENES FOR FAIRNESS?  A study of identical and nonidentical twins finds that a person's sense of what is fair may be up to 40 percent determined by their genes.

If you have your parents' sense of fairness, it may not just be their influence. It may also be due to the DNA they passed on to you, according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stockholm School of Economics and Karolinska Institute (also in Stockholm) discovered this confluence of nature and nurture by having 324 pairs of identical twins, who share the same genetic makeup, and fraternal twins, who do not, participate in an exercise known as "the ultimatum game." Each game featured two players, one designated a proposer and the other a responder. The proposer was given a sum of money (in this experiment, roughly $15) to split however he or she chose with the responder, who could accept or decline the offer. If the responder nixed the deal, then neither player received a cut of the cash. Common sense dictates that the responder would accept anything over zero given the alternative, but previous research shows that responders typically reject offers they deemed insultingly low to punish their stingy counterparts.

Researchers determined that the average minimum the group as a whole would accept was around five bucks, or a third of the pot. They then plotted the threshold of each twin in pairs of identical and fraternal twins. Their findings: an identical twin's behavior could help predict that of his or her sibling, but not so with fraternal pairs. Researchers say the results indicate that at least 40 percent of the variation in perceiving fairness may stem from genetics. 

"If you're a fraternal twin, your brother or sister's behavior does not predict your behavior at all," says study co-author David Cesarini, a doctoral student in economics at M.I.T. The results "invite speculation that…economic behaviors and strategies are under considerable genetic influence."

Ernst Fehr, an economics professor at the University of Zurich, says this study is the first to show the heritability of altruistic punishment and notes that it could serve to "speed up efforts to find concrete genes and the mechanisms the genes are involved in that code for altruistic behaviors."

Cesarini says the research team is now probing possible genetic influences on cooperation and risk preferences.