Scientist: Anti-doping tests don’t pass statistical muster

Posted on August 7, 2008
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PARIS (AFP) — Anti-doping tests used at the Olympics and other major sporting events are too often based on faulty science and statistical methods that can yield erroneous results, a researcher charged Wednesday in a leading scientific journal.

Donald Berry, an expert in biostatistics at the University of Texas, used the case of American cyclist Floyd Landis to point up flaws in anti-doping procedures, but cautioned that the problems he uncovered apply across the board to lab tests designed to ferret out athletes who cheat by using performance enhancing substances.

Landis was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France cycling race victory after a drug test showed he had taken synthetic testosterone to boost his endurance.

The cyclist has maintained his innocence, but an arbitration court in June dismissed his last-chance appeal to overturn the test results.

Writing in the British science journal Nature, Berry argues that the tests performed by the French national anti-doping laboratory (LNDD) that condemned Landis to ignominy and barred him from competition for two years were “non-informative” and potentially subject to error.

While Berry does not have an opinion as to the cyclist’s guilt or innocence, he is highly critical of what he called the “inherent flaws” in current testing practices.

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Scientist intrigues kids with mysteries of survival

Posted on August 7, 2008
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Hugh Montgomery, a genetics researcher and senior lecturer at University College London, employed various tactics Wednesday to fascinate a Christmas Lecture audiences mainly comprising children, with the mysteries of how the human body can survive in extreme conditions.

Shortly after the start of the lecture, titled “Back from the Brink–the Science of Survival,” a large bang reverberated around Bunkyo Civic Hall’s lecture room in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo. Oxygen masks plunged down from the ceiling of a mock airplane cabin on the stage for four volunteers pretending to be passengers in an airplane emergency scenario.

“You are in that jet at 8,848 meters [as high as the summit of Mt. Everest]. One of the windows has blown out!” Montgomery shouted excitedly. “Quick! Put these oxygen masks on!”

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AIDS May Be Curable, Preventable by 2031 : Top Scientist Says

Posted on August 7, 2008
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By Shannon Pettypiece

Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) — Patients infected with HIV might be able to live symptom free without medicines as aggressive treatment with newer drugs better control the disease, the head of U.S. infectious disease research said today.

While research on a vaccine continues, early treatment with the current AIDS drugs also could prevent some people from getting infected, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in Bethesda, Maryland, said at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. Scientists should conduct more studies to assess that theory, he said.

Current drugs reduce the amount of the virus in the body to undetectable levels, making HIV a treatable disease similar to diabetes or arthritis, Fauci said. Still, only one person is getting the drugs for every three people infected, he said. There were 2.7 million new infections in 2007, according to a July report by UNAIDS, and an estimated 33 people worldwide have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

“ A cure will likely require early diagnosis and treatment,” Fauci said. “Studies need to be done in next few years to determine if very aggressive therapy early on will allow us to get a functional cure.”

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Dead US scientist seen as lone culprit in anthrax attacks

Posted on August 7, 2008
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Free Image HostingWASHINGTON (AFP) — US authorities have expressed confidence that a US bioweapons expert who committed suicide was the lone culprit behind the 2001 anthrax attacks that terrorized the United States.

Bruce Ivins, 62, killed himself with a prescription drug overdose last week as prosecutors were preparing to charge him in the attacks that left five people dead and sickened 17 others, in a case that brought fears of bio-terrorism on the heels of the September 11 attacks.

After a seven-year-long investigation during which authorities wrongly named another scientist as a “person of interest” in the case, officials said they were wrapping up the probe and would declare the case closed.

“Based upon the totality of the evidence we had gathered against him, we are confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks,” US attorney Jeffrey Taylor told a news conference.

“We are now beginning the process of concluding this investigation,” he said. “We will formally close the case.”

Officials said they began focusing on Ivins as a suspect last year after new forensic science allowed them to trace the anthrax back to the scientist.

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Scientists Make First Human Embryo Clones

Posted on January 18, 2008
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Scientists at a California company reported yesterday they had created the first mature cloned human embryos from single skin cells taken from adults, a significant advance toward the goal of growing personalized stem cells for patients suffering from various diseases.

Creation of the embryos — grown from cells taken from the company’s chief executive and one of its investors — also offered sobering evidence that few, if any, technical barriers may remain to the creation of cloned babies. That reality could prompt renewed controversy on Capitol Hill, where the debate over human cloning has died down of late.

Five of the new embryos grew in laboratory dishes to the stage that fertility doctors consider ready for transfer to a woman’s womb — a degree of development that clones of adult humans have never achieved before.

No one knows if those embryos were healthy enough to grow into babies. But the study leader, who is also the medical director of a fertility clinic, said they looked robust, even as he emphasized that he has no interest in cloning people.

“It’s unethical and it’s illegal and we hope no one else does it either,” said Samuel H. Wood, chief executive of Stemagen in La Jolla, whose skin cells were cloned and who led the study with Andrew J. French, the firm’s scientific officer.

The closely held company hopes to make embryos that are clones, or genetic twins, of patients, then harvest stem cells from those embryos and grow them into replacement tissues. When transplanted into patients, the tissues would not be rejected because the immune system would see them as “self.”

“All our efforts are being directed toward personalized medicine and diseases,” said Wood, adding that the scientists did not try to extract stem cells from the first embryos they made because they were focused on proving they could make the clones.

Other stem cell scientists expressed optimism but said they wanted to see the work repeated and more details presented.

“I’d really like to believe it, but I’m not sold yet,” said Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass. He said the report did not show the results of molecular tests that scientists typically do to prove that the cloning process was complete. And he and George Daley, a stem cell scientist at Children’s Hospital in Boston, said the embryos look only marginally healthy in photos.

The work is the latest evidence, however, that the field is recovering from the scientific and public relations debacle of 2005, when similar claims by Korean scientists proved to have been fabricated. But opponents of research on human embryos lashed out at the approach.

“This study seems to confirm that human cloning . . . is technically possible,” said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “It does not show that a viable or normal embryonic stem cell line can be derived this way, or that any such cell has ‘therapeutic’ value. It does not answer the ethical or social questions about the mass-production of developing human lives in order to destroy them . . . It only tells us that these questions are more urgent than ever.”

Other critics noted that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin recently discovered a way to “reprogram” stem cells directly from skin cells, without having to make embryos as a middle step.

“In light of the recent cell reprogramming developments, cloning-based stem cell research is less justified than ever,” said Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland.

Wood and others countered that for now, at least, those approaches require the use of gene-altered viruses, which can trigger tumor growth.

“It’s hard to believe the FDA would approve the use of those cells,” Wood said.

Criticism also arose on Capitol Hill, where enthusiasm has grown for the newer stem cell methods that do not involve embryos.

“Human cloning is now less about the science and more about the novelty, which makes it all the more nefarious,” said Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.), who has sought to ban all kinds of human cloning.

He said he hoped to revive the legislation this year. Previous bills have failed because Congress, though willing to ban the creation of cloned babies, is divided on the issue of banning human embryo cloning for research.

No law bans cloned baby-making, but the Food and Drug Administration has said such experiments would require its approval.

Cloning involves fusing an ordinary body cell with a female’s egg cell whose DNA has been removed. Chemical factors inside the egg reprogram the body cell’s DNA so that the newly created cell develops into an embryo that is a genetic twin of the person or animal that donated the body cell.

The technology has developed rapidly in animals, and scientists have been trying to apply it to human cells. In 2001, scientists at ACT said they had made cloned human embryos, but they grew for only a day or two.

In 2005, scientists in England grew human embryo clones to the fully mature “blastocyst” stage that the California team described yesterday. But the body cells they used were taken from other human embryos, not from adults.

That approach offers no help to patients who are already born.

In the new work, the team took skin cells — some from Wood’s arm and some from an anonymous Stemagen investor — and fused them to eggs donated by women undergoing fertility treatments.

In other labs, only a very small percentage of such clones have lived for even a day. But about one-quarter of Stemagen’s clones, or five in all, developed into five-day-old blastocysts.

Wood said the key was that his lab is directly adjacent to a fertility clinic with which the company has an arrangement, so his team obtained the eggs within an hour or so of when they were retrieved from the women’s ovaries.

And although researchers are typically given the poorest quality “leftover” eggs from fertility patients, donors in this experiment gave away several of their best eggs because, in each case, they had produced far more than they needed.

All three donors got pregnant with the eggs they kept.

“They are the heroes in this,” Wood said. “Think about it. You’re spending $25,ooo [trying to get pregnant] and you’re giving some of those eggs away.”

Under California law, egg donors cannot be paid for their service.

DNA tests proved definitively in one case, and less clearly in two others, that the embryos were indeed clones. Results could not be obtained from two of the embryos.

R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, said the approach was attractive because the egg donors were not subjected to the medical risks of ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval just for research.

“The protocol entailed no marginal increased health risks to the egg donors, as they were already undergoing hormonal stimulation for non-research purposes,” Charo said.

Asked what it was like to look at embryos that were replicas of himself, Wood said: “I have to admit, it’s a very strange feeling. It is very difficult to look at an embryo and realize it is what you were a few decades ago. It is you, in a way.”

By Rick Weiss
www.washingtonpost.com

Ahmed ibn Yusuf - An Arab Mathematician

Posted on September 11, 2007
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Ahmed ibn Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Tammam al-siddiq Al-Baghdadi also known as Ahmed ibn Yusuf al-misri (835 - 912) was an Arab mathematician, like his father Yusuf ibn Ibrahim (Arabic يوسف بن ابراهيم الصدَيق البغدادي ).


Life

Ahmed ibn Yusuf was born in Baghdad (today in Iraq) and moved with his father to Damascus in 839. He later moved to Cairo, but the exact date is unknown: since he was also known as al-Misri, which means the Egyptian, this probably happened at an early age. Eventually, he also died in Cairo. He probably grew up in a strongly intellectual environment: his father worked on Mathematics, Astronomy and Medicine, produced astronomical tables and was a member of a group of scholars. He achieved an important role in Egypt, which was caused by Egypt’s relative independence from the Abbasid Caliph.


Work

For some of the work attributed to Ahmed, it is not exactly clear whether he Read more

Ahmed Bin Majid - The Sea’s Lion

Posted on September 11, 2007
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Ahmed Bin Majid (Arabic:أحمد بن ماجد) (c.1432 - ?), was an Arab navigator and cartographer born in 1421 in Julphar, which is now known as Ras Al Khaimah. This city makes up one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates. He was raised with a family famous for seafaring; at the age of 17 he was able to navigate ships. He was so famous that he was known as the first Arab seaman. He was born at Julfar in northern Ras al-Khaimah in present Oman, and probably died at 1500. He became famous in the West as the navigator who has been associated with helping Vasco da Gama find his way from Africa to India . He was the author of nearly 40 works of poetry and prose.


Works

His most important work was Kitab al-Fawa’id fi Usul ‘Ilm al-Bahr wa ’l-Qawa’id (Book of Useful Information on the Principles and Rules of Navigation), written in 1490. It is a navigation encyclopedia, describing the history and basic principles of navigation, lunar mansions, rhumb lines, the difference between coastal and open-sea sailing, the locations of ports from East Africa to Indonesia, star positions, accounts of the monsoon and other seasonal winds, typhoons and other topics for professional navigators. He drew from his own experience and that of his father, also a famous navigator, and the lore of generations of Indian Ocean sailors. Read more

Ahmad ibn Fadlan

Posted on September 11, 2007
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Ahmad ibn Fadlān ibn al-Abbās ibn Rašīd ibn Hammād (أحمد إبن فضلان إبن ألعباس إبن رشيد إبن حماد) was a 10th century Muslim writer and traveler who wrote an account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad to the king of the Volga Bulgars, the Kitāb ilā Malik al-Saqāliba كتاب إلى ملك الصقالبة.

Manuscript tradition

For a long time, only an incomplete version of the account was known, as transmitted in the geographical dictionary of Yāqūt (under the headings Atil, Bashgird, Bulghār, Khazar, Khwārizm, Rūs), published in 1823 by Fraehn. Only in 1923 was a manuscript discovered by the Turkish scholar of Bashkir origin Zeki Validi Togan in the library of the Iranian city of Mashhad. The manuscript MS 5229 dates from the 13th century (7th cent. Hijra) and consists of 420 pages (210 folia). Besides other geographical treatises, it contains a fuller version of Ibn Fadlan’s text (pp. 390-420). Additional passages not preserved in MS 5229 are quoted in the work of the 16th century Persian geographer Amin Razi called Haft Iqlīm “Seven Climes”. Read more

Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi - The Father of Modern Surgery

Posted on September 11, 2007
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Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi (936 - 1013), (Arabic: أبو القاسم بن خلف بن العباس الزهراوي) also known in the West as Abulcasis, was an Andalusian-Arab physician, surgeon, and scientist. He is considered the father of modern surgery, and as Islam’s greatest medieval surgeon, whose comprehensive medical texts, combining Islamic medicine and Greco-Roman teachings, shaped both Islamic and European surgical procedures up until the Renaissance. His greatest contribution to history is the Kitab al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume encyclopedia of medical practices.

Biography

abu al-qasim al-zahrawiAbu al-Qasim was born in the city of El Zahra, six miles northwest of Córdoba, Spain. He was descended from the Ansar Arab tribe who settled earlier in Spain. Few details remain regarding his life, aside from his published work, due to the destruction of El-Zahra during later Spanish-Moorish conflicts. His name first appears in the writings of Abu Muhammad bin Hazm (993 - 1064), who listed him among the greatest physicians of Moorish Spain. But we have the first detailed biography of El-Zahrawi from al-Humaydi’s Jadhwat al-Muqtabis (On Andalusian Savants), completed six decades after El-Zahrawi’s death.

In El-Zahra, he lived most of his life. It is also where he studied, taught and practised medicine and surgery until shortly before his death in about 1013, two years after the sacking of El-Zahra.

Works

Abu al-Qasim was a court physician to the Andalusian caliph Al-Hakam II. He devoted his entire life and genius to the advancement of medicine as a whole and surgery in particular. His best work was the Kitab al-Tasrif. It is a medical encyclopaedia spanning 30 volumes which included sections on surgery, medicine, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology, nutrition etc.

In the 14th century, Read more

Ibn Tufail (Abubacer)

Posted on September 11, 2007
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Ibn Tufail (c. 1105, Gaudix, Spain – 1185) full name: Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi أبو بكر محمد بن عبد الملك بن محمد بن طفيل القيسي الأندلسي (Latinised form: Abubacer). Andalusian Arab Muslim philosopher, physician, and court official.

Life

Born in Guadix near Granada, he was educated by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace). He served as a secretary for the ruler of Granada, and later as vizier and physician for Abu Yaqub Yusuf, the Almohad ruler of Al-Andalus, to whom he recommended Averroës as his own successor when he retired in 1182. He died in Morocco.

Ibn Tufail was the author of Ḥayy bin Yaqẓān, حي بن يقظان (”Alive son of Awake”): a philosophical romance and allegorical tale of a man who lives alone on an island and who, without contact with other human beings, discovers ultimate truth through a systematic process of reasoned inquiry. Hayy ultimately comes into contact with civilization and religion when he meets Absal. He determines that the trappings of religion, namely imagery and dependence on material goods, are necessary for the multitude in order that they might have decent lives. However, imagery and material goods are distractions from the truth and ought to be abandoned by those whose reason recognizes that they are distractions. Read more

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