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The promising potential of biotechnology remains largely unused, especially in such crucial areas as healthcare and production of environmentally friendly fuels, scientists said.

The experts gathered here at an annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science predicted that biotechnology was likely to experience a boom in coming years.

“What you have seen over the last 35 years of biotech are tremendous applications, immediate applications of biotech starting with recombinant therapeutics all the way through,” said Drew Endy, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University.

He said the phenomenon can be explained by the fact that no one thus far has even “scratched the surface” of the promising science.

But Endy argued that science was moving forward fast. In only six years, he said, the gene sequencing project went from reading a bacteria genome to reading a human genome.

Last year, researchers at the Venter Institute built a bacteria genome from scratch, he noted.

“I bet we will be able to construct a human chromosome, and the yeast genome,” Endy said, offering a six-year forecast. “It sounds a little bit crazy because it’s an exponential improvement in the tools.”

He said there were lots of opportunities to take those tools forward.

“We are advocating now a national initiative in synthetic biology that would include in part a route map for getting better in building genetic material, constructing DNA from scratch and assembling it into genes and genomes,” the scientist pointed out.

Jay Keasling, professor of biochemical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, said his project was using a microbe in order to produce a drug while significantly reducing its cost.

“We anticipate in one or two years that the optimization process will be completed and that production of the drug will commence and have it in the hands of people in Africa shortly thereafter,” Keasling said.

Meanwhile, Christina Smolke, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University spoke about her efforts to design molecules that go into the cell and analyse the cellular state before delivering a therapeutic effect.

“Our goal is to make more effective therapies by taking advantage of the natural capabilities of our immune system and introducing slight modifications in cases where it is not doing what we would like it to do,” she said.

Smolke said she hoped to translate her technologies into intelligent cellular therapeutics for glioma cancer patients in the next five years.

“That’s a very optimistic view …but so far things are moving quickly,” she pointed out.

A few lingering snow showers were poised to hit the mid-Atlantic coast and Great Lakes early Wednesday, while much of the West was sunny and mild.

A low pressure system will extend down the East Coast and into the Southeast, but is not expected to trigger any showers. Expect cold and dry conditions to continue.

New England will continue to see light snow, with well below an inch of total accumulation. Virginia and North Carolina also were to see show.

High pressure over the Plains will allow for winds out of the northwest over the Great Lakes, which will continue to kick up light lake-effect snow over the region. Expect total accumulation between 1 to 3 inches over northern Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

Highs near 10, with below freezing lows, are anticipated as this system pulls in cold air from Canada. The Plains will remain mostly sunny and cold on Wednesday.

In the West, high pressure will allow for plenty of sunshine and warm conditions. By Wednesday evening, a low pressure system will approach California and is expected to bring increasingly cloudy skies.

Temperatures in the Lower 48 states on Tuesday ranged from a low of minus 27 degrees at Fosston, Minn., to a high of 84 degrees at Chino, Calif.

Italian scientists, who proved that the semi-mythical G-spot does exist, are investigating whether hirsute women are more likely to have the erogenous zone.

According to the researchers, since hirsute women have higher levels of testosterone, both the clitoris and the G spot are thought to respond to the hormone.

Earlier this year, Emmanuele Jannini at the University of L’Aquila in Italy along with colleagues captured the G-spot on ultrasound for the first time.

According to New Scientist, the researchers discovered clear anatomical differences between women who claim to have vaginal orgasms - as opposed to clitoral - and those that don’t.

Women capable of orgasm during penetrative sex have a thicker tissue area in the region between the vagina and the urethra - meaning it’s now easy to medically tell the difference between the lucky “cans” and the “can-nots”.

Interestingly, the boffins also believe that women with the thicker tissue can be ‘taught’ to have vaginal orgasms, if they can’t already.

Ultrasound scans on 30 women uncovered G spots in just eight of them and when these women were asked if they had vaginal orgasms during sex, only five of them said yes. However, when the remaining three were shown their G spots on the scan and given advice on how to stimulate it, two of them subsequently “discovered” the joy of vaginal orgasms.

“This demonstrated, although in a small sample, the use of [vaginal ultrasound] in teaching the vaginal orgasm,” Jannini says.

Sadly, none of the have-nots had vaginal orgasms either before or after the scans, so they’ll just have to make do with the old-fashioned clitoral kind.

The results were presented at the Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine in Rome in November.

A British animal welfare charity said Saturday that it would donate a cow to a Hindu temple north of London, in a bid to repair relations that were damaged last year when a sacred cow was put down.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) said it was apologising for the offence caused when the 13-year-old Belgian Blue-Jersey cross, Gangotri, was killed last December because it was in pain, but added that it was not apologising for putting the animal down.

Hundreds of Hindus protested outside the RSPCA’s offices last year, accusing the charity of secretly and unnecessarily killing the animal.

On Saturday, the Bhaktivedanta Manor in Hertfordshire, a Hindu temple where the cow was housed and which was set up by former Beatle George Harrison, said the RSPCA would donate a Meuse-Rhine Issel cow.

“It’s a gesture of reconciliation,” RSPCA spokesman Henry Macaulay told AFP.

“We’re not apologising for what we did, because we feel we can’t do that, but we are apologising for the hurt caused.”

When the RSPCA put Gangotri down last year, it said that three vets had advised it to do so, but the temple strongly objected to the move, saying that its own vets had not recommended that the cow be killed.

The RSPCA monitors alleged animal cruelty offences in Britain and often brings private prosecutions against offenders.

A detailed analysis of black carbon, in computer climate models, has suggested that those models may be overestimating global warming predictions.

Savanna fires occur almost every year in northern Australia, leaving behind black carbon, which is the residue of burned organic matter that remains in soil for thousands of years.

A new study, by researchers at Cornell University, quantified the amount of black carbon in Australian soils and found that there was far more than expected, according to Johannes Lehmann, a Cornell professor of biogeochemistry.

As a result of global warming, soils are expected to release more carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, which, in turn, creates more warming. Elimate models try to incorporate these increases of carbon dioxide from soils as the planet warms, but results vary greatly when realistic estimates of black carbon in soils are included in the predictions, the study found.

Soils include many forms of carbon, including organic carbon from leaf litter and vegetation and black carbon from the burning of organic matter.

It takes a few years for organic carbon to decompose, as microbes eat it and convert it to carbon dioxide.

But, black carbon can take 1,000-2,000 years, on average, to convert to carbon dioxide.

By entering realistic estimates of stocks of black carbon in soil from two Australian savannas into a computer model that calculates carbon dioxide release from soil, the researchers found that carbon dioxide emissions from soils were reduced by about 20 percent over 100 years, as compared with simulations that did not take black carbon’s long shelf life into account.

The findings are significant because soils are by far the world’s largest source of carbon dioxide, producing 10 times more carbon dioxide each year than all the carbon dioxide emissions from human activities combined.

Small changes in how carbon emissions from soils are estimated, therefore, can have a large impact.

The study quantified the amount of black carbon in 452 Australian soils across two savannas. Black carbon content varied widely, between zero and more than 80 percent, in soils across Australia.

“We know from measurements that climate change today is worse than people have predicted,” said Lehmann. “But this particular aspect, black carbon’s stability in soil, if incorporated in climate models, would actually decrease climate predictions,” he added.

Three astronauts of Endeavour mission will attempt to repair damaged International Space Station joint.

NASA discovered problems more than a year ago with one of the two joints that rotate the station’s American solar wings.

Equipped with terrycloth mitts and grease guns, Endeavour’s team will attempt a short-term fix, cleaning metal debris from the joint and lubricating it with a dark-gray grease the consistency of toothpaste.

According to a report, the joint on the station’s starboard side needed more power to spin, and spacewalks later confirmed damage. The mission is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center at 7:55 p.m. Friday.

After studying more than 100 possible causes of the damage, engineers believe gold-plated bearings that roll across the ring’s surface as it turns failed to provide adequate lubrication.

A beating heart may produce enough energy to power pacemakers and defibrillators implanted in cardiac patients, according to a new study.

Dr. Paul Roberts, a Consultant Electrophysiologist at Southampton University Hospital in the UK, revealed that a microgenerator powered by heartbeats was found to produce almost 17 per cent of the electricity needed to run an artificial pacemaker during an experiment.

“This was a proof-of-concept study, and we proved the concept. Harvesting surplus energy might be a major transition in implantable pacemakers and defibrillators because engineers will have more energy to work with,” said the first author of the study, presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2008.

He said that the device yielded an average harvested energy of 4.3 microjoules per cardiac cycle at a heart rate of 80 beats per minute (bpm).

According to him, increasing changes in the heart rate produced corresponding increases in energy, with the harvested energy level rising 140 percent at 104 to 128 bpm.

Roberts said that decreases occurred when the researchers slowed the heartbeat or lowered blood pressure.

Implantation and surplus energy harvesting caused no significant injury to the lining of the heart’s chambers, he added.

“What this might mean is that in the next era of pacemakers, you’d get devices that lasted significantly longer and we could add more functions to help monitor the heart. It’s possible they could be efficient enough to allow complete and indefinite powering of pacemakers,” he said.

Roberts said that the innovative generator, called the self-energizing implantable medical microsystem (SIMM), could help the heart produce more than enough energy with each beat to pump blood.

He revealed that the SIMM involved two compressible bladders and a microgenerator mounted on the lead of a pacemaker or defibrillator, the wire linking the device to the heart.

During his experiments, he attached the lead to the end of the right ventricle, and the bladders relayed the energy from the pressure of each heartbeat to the microgenerator, which transformed it into electricity for use by the battery.

A consortium of companies, which developed and tested the SIMM microgenerator with United Kingdom government funds, is currently working to improve the materials used in the SIMM microgenerator.

“With different materials, we’re seeing even greater energy harvesting. While at the moment we see about 20 percent harvesting, we’re anticipating that will be significantly more in the next iteration of the device,” Roberts said.

India’s first unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 descended further into the lunar orbit Tuesday following the third orbit-reduction manoeuvre, a top space official said here.

“The manoeuvre was carried out at 18.30 (IST) for 31 seconds to push the spacecraft into a lower orbit at 102-km periselene (nearest point to moon) and 255-km aposilene (farthest point from moon),” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish told IANS.

In the current lower elliptical orbit, the spacecraft will revolve around the moon once in two hours and nine minutes.

Over the next two days, further orbit-reduction exercise will be carried out to move the spacecraft gradually into the designated circular orbit of 100 km from the moon’s surface by Thursday.

“In the fourth orbital operation Wednesday, Chandrayaan will be positioned at 101-km periselene and 103-km aposelene and geared up for its final slot in the lunar orbit, which will be about 100-km from the lunar surface,” Satish pointed out.

All sub-systems onboard are working normally.

The spacecraft is guided and monitored remotely from the space agency’s telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) here.

ISRO’s deep space network (DSN) at Byalalu, about 40 km from India’s tech hub of Bangalore, transmits commands and receives signals from the spacecraft.

ISRO plans to eject the moon impact probe Nov 14-15 from the spacecraft and crash it onto the lunar surface at a designated area, where the Indian tricolour will be “hoisted”.

Chandrayaan carries 11 scientific instruments, including six foreign payloads - two from the US, three from the European Space Agency (ESA) and one from Bulgaria. The remaining five are indigenously designed and developed by various centres of the state-run ISRO.

The spacecraft blasted off Oct 22 onboard the 316-tonne polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) C11 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at the Sriharikota spaceport, about 80 km north of Chennai.

Chandrayaan is on its way to the moon, regarded by many Indians as a god, but ‘devout Hindus - many of them, no doubt, rocket scientists - see no disharmony between ancient Vedic beliefs and contemporary scientific practice’, according to a New York Times opinion article.

A week before India’s moon mission was launched Oct 22, millions of Hindu women embarked on a customary daylong fast of Karva Chauth, meant to ensure a husband’s welfare, broken at night on the first sighting of the moon’s reflection in a bowl of oil, Tunku Varadarajan wrote in the NYT Wednesday.

Reverence for the moon, he said, extends to the website of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which carries this verse from the Rig Veda, a sacred Hindu text that dates back some 4,000 years: ‘O Moon! We should be able to know you through our intellect,/ You enlighten us through the right path.’

The seeming contradiction between religion and science, between reason and superstition is resolved in India by its ‘modernity of tradition’, Varadarajan writes, borrowing the phrase from the political scientists Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph.

Varadarajan is a professor of business at New York University and the opinion editor at Forbes.com.

He notes that the Hindu astrological system is predicated on lunar movements, but clarifies: ‘The genius of modern Hinduism lies in its comfort with, and imperviousness to, science.’

He relates how days after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, a model of the lunar module was placed in a courtyard of the most venerable temple in Varanasi, the holy city.

‘The Hindu faithful were hailing man-on-the-moon; there was no suggestion that the Americans had committed sacrilege,’ Varadarajan writes, adding - with a caveat against exaggeration - that science sometimes struggles to co-exist with faith in the US in ways that would disconcert many Indians.

The opinion piece writer then also concedes that India’s first lunar mission is no doubt a grand political gesture - space exploration in the service of national pride.

‘This kind of excursion may provoke yawns at NASA, but judging from round-the-clock local coverage it has received, the mission has clearly inflamed the imagination and ambition of Indians. Yes, even moon-worshipping ones.’

Scientists at Newcastle University have now unravelled the mechanism by which the fundamental building blocks of life, proteins and metals, bind together.

Lead author Professor Nigel Robinson has revealed the mechanism, which ensures that the right metal goes to the right protein.

Life, microbe, plant or human, are all made up of atoms, which include metals such as copper and manganese which act as catalysts in proteins, which in turn around the metal atoms.

In their study, the researchers had shown that copper and manganese protein wrap around the correct metal atoms in different parts of the cell, which are zones containing different metals. Thus, which protein attaches to which metal is determined by where the folding action takes place in the cell.

Earlier scientists believed that the right metals were simply those, which were most attracted to the protein, but the new study led by Professor Nigel Robinson at Newcastle University, might change this perception.

“This has taken us one step closer to understanding why metals and proteins assemble in the ways they do,” Nature quoted Robinson as saying.

He added: “One motive behind the work is pure curiosity, but as so many proteins need metals this type of work has many potential uses - for example, in synthetic biology which is striving to produce green power from bacteria by using energy from sunlight to produce hydrogen gas, a process which needs nickel and iron.

“It may also help in diseases such as Alzheimers where there are unexplained links to proteins binding metals such as copper. There’s also application in controlling infections by Staphylococcus aureus; a bacterium which our bodies defences succeed - or sometimes fail - in killing by removing manganese and zinc from abscesses.”

In the study, it was demonstrated that the way the metals attach is identical for a protein that binds manganese to one that binds copper. In both cases the metals bind inside protein barrels with the same type of metal-attractions.

The researchers carried out the work in a blue-green algae, a cyanobacterium, and showed that a protein requiring copper transports to the periplasm, the outer area of the cell, where it then folds around the available metal, which is copper.

On the other hand, manganese and not copper atoms are found in the cytosol, in the middle of the cell. They showed that a protein requiring manganese folds in the cytosol. The manganese protein is then transported to the periplasm having first trapped its manganese.

In the new study, the researchers first developed a new approach to discover metal-binding proteins, which is now being swiftly applied to lots of other types of living cells and other essential metals (zinc, nickel, cobalt, iron).

The study is published in the recent issue of Nature.