STUDYING SMALLPOX WITHOUT SMALLPOX?
University of Pennsylvania researchers have found a way to study smallpox without actually working with the real virus. Variola, the smallpox virus, was eradicated more than 25 years ago but experts suspect secret stockpiles still exist. The virus attacks only humans and is fatal in 30 percent to 40 percent of cases. The only defense is containment, supportive measures and vaccination. Because there is no virus for researchers to access, it has been difficult to work on new potential vaccines. So Penn researchers reverse-engineered a variola-like protein from vaccinia, a related virus used to vaccinate against smallpox. The protein does not cause smallpox itself and cannot spread the disease. It is only one of several hundred proteins that contribute to the virus's deadly nature. "We have devised a way to study variola without the risks associated with using the entire virus," researchers said. "We need to study variola proteins if we are to make smallpox less virulent and make the smallpox vaccine safer. Achieving these goals would be the most effective way to disarm bioterrorists."
NEW PROCESS ELIMINATES SOLVENTS
When chemists want to combine two or more organic materials, they normally use a solvent to create a reaction that results in the desired compound. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory in Iowa have found a way to combine organic materials in solid state without using solvents. The method uses high-energy ball-milling, a well-known process for producing and modifying metal alloys. Materials to be processed are placed in a hardened steel vial along with steel balls. The vial is vigorously shaken and mechanical energy transferred into the system alters the crystallinity of the solids and provides mass transfer, eventually combining the materials into new compounds. Researchers said the new solvent-free process means environmentally harmful solvents, such as benzene, dichloromethane and others, can be removed from many of the chemical processes used to produce millions of consumer and industrial products.
A NEW LOOK AT NATURAL SELECTION
An international research team reports its study of birds on Pacific islands "shows conclusively" that species evolution is a gradual and not a sudden process. The researchers dispute the "founder effect" theory, a controversial idea among biologists, that suggests new species appear after a sudden influx into an ecosystem of a small number of "colonists" founding new populations. In the process they create many new gene combinations and lose many others. But the team's new evidence from fieldwork and computer modeling shows the founder effect does not apply to island birds. Instead, populations change their genetic diversity through periodic changes in the ecosystem, plus something the researchers call long-term genetic drift. "The result is ... the first time the (founder effect) theory has been tested using natural populations," the researchers said. "Previous tests have used artificially introduced ones, which don't tell you much about how real biodiversity evolves. It's obvious that genetic changes can occur if a single pair of individuals founds a population, but the question is whether that really happens. Our results suggest that it doesn't." The scientists studied an unusual island bird species, the Silvereye, which has colonized a series of islands in the southwest Pacific from the Australian mainland during the past 200 years.
USING 3D TO PICTURE 4D
Theoretical scientists may have grown comfortable with the mathematics of extra-dimensional objects, but they still have a hard time helping ordinary people visualize such extremely exotic shapes. For example, it is difficult, scientists say, to get 3-D virtual reality systems to display and rotate 4-D hypercubes without straining the viewer's understanding of the image. Researchers from Harwick University in England have developed a new computer model that allows simple movements of a virtual reality wand to rotate 4D hypercubes with ease. The system works so well, researchers say, it took only an hour to train children to rotate 4D hypercubes in precise ways. Researchers said this ability will help anyone trying to explain, teach or research the difficult field of 4D objects such as the Klein bottle -- a one-sided closed surface that cannot be constructed in normal space. It is most commonly pictured as a cylinder looped back through itself.
(Editors: For more information on SMALLPOX, contact Greg Lester at 215-349-5658 or [email protected]. For SOLVENTS, Vitalij Pecharsky at 515-294-8220 or [email protected]. For NATURAL SELECTION, Tom Miller in England at +44-20-7594-6704 or [email protected]. For HYPERCUBE, Peter Dunn in England at +44-24-7652-3708 or [email protected])
