UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

Ammonia-treated U.S. beef questioned

DAKOTA DUNES, S.D., Dec. 31 (UPI) -- E.coli and salmonella pathogens were found dozens of times in school hamburgers processed by a company exempt from routine testing, a U.S. safety agency says.

The Beef Products Inc. meat, injected with ammonia in a novel method to destroy toxic bacteria, was caught before reaching lunchroom trays, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

The department, responsible for assuring food safety, has now revoked Beef Products' exemption from routine testing and is reviewing the company's operations, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The agency is also reviewing the company's research supporting its ammonia-injection claims.

Since 2005, E.coli was found three times and salmonella 48 times in meat headed for the federal school lunch program, including incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound contaminated batches were found, government and industry records obtained by the Times show.

Besides the lunch program, the meat is used by McDonald's, Burger King and other fast-food giants as well as grocery chains.

Beef Products of Dakota Dunes, S.D. -- which persuaded federal officials to classify ammonia as a "processing agent" and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels -- said in a statement it was committed to hamburger safety, but "like any responsible member of the meat industry, we are not perfect."

Observatory finds thousands of galaxies

BOULDER, Colo., Dec. 31 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency's $2.2 billion Herschel Space Observatory has found thousands of galaxies in early stages of formation, scientists said.

Some of the galaxies found by the the spacecraft are from more than 12 billion years ago -- just a billion years after the Big Bang, University of Colorado at Boulder Associate Professor Jason Glenn said.

And the images of the early galaxies are "amazingly clear and deep," he said.

Glenn, who developed Herschel's spectral and photometric imaging receiver with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said the SPIRE instrument found these previously unknown galaxies because it can see "submillimeter" light, which has wavelengths longer than those found in the visible spectrum and shorter than radio waves.

"The submillimeter sky is absolutely paved with galaxies," Glenn said.

A single image in the constellation Ursa Major, which includes the Big Dipper, revealed 10 times as many galaxies as seen before by all the worlds' telescopes observing the skies in submillimeter wavelengths, Glenn said.

"Herschel is providing a whole new window on the universe," he said.

The spacecraft -- named after William Herschel, the late-18th century discoverer of the infrared spectrum and planet Uranus, and his sister and observing partner, Caroline -- was launched from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana May 14.

Currently orbiting nearly a million miles from Earth, it sifts through the coldest and dustiest objects in space to trace the path by which potentially life-forming molecules, such as water, form.

Swine flu still strong in E. Europe, Asia

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Swine flu remains intense in Central and Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, despite ebbing in North America and Western Europe, the head of a U.N. agency says.

"It is premature to say the pandemic has peaked worldwide," World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan said.

"The situation needs to be watched and monitored at least another six to 12 months," she told The Wall Street Journal.

The virus could still mutate to become more severe, she warned.

And while global health officials' responses to pandemic show big improvements in flu-fighting capabilities, limited vaccine supplies, crowded emergency rooms and other challenges suggest officials are not fully equipped to combat a deadlier scourge, Chan told the newspaper.

Confirmed cases of the H1N1 swine-flu strain were reported in more than 208 countries and territories, and at least 12,220 people worldwide have died, WHO said.

Of that mortality figure, more than 1,300 were under age 18, indicating H1N1 has killed five times as many children and young adults as seasonal flu, the agency said.

A new wave is possible in the Southern Hemisphere in a few months, when its flu season returns, Chan said.

In the United States, the flu was widespread in only seven states as of Dec. 19, the most recent data available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated.

Tobacco seen as future auto fuel

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Cars of the future could be fueled by tobacco, genetic-engineering university researchers in Philadelphia suggest.

"Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren't used in food production," said Vyacheslav Andrianov, assistant professor of cancer biology at Thomas Jefferson University's Jefferson Medical College.

While tobacco can generate biofuel more efficiently than other agricultural crops, most of its oil is typically found in its seeds, the researchers say in a study published in Plant Biotechnology Journal.

Tobacco plants don't generally produce enough seeds to be useful -- slightly more than 1,300 pounds an acre.

But Andrianov and his colleagues found ways of genetically engineering the plants so that their leaves express the oil -- in some instances, 20 times more oil than occurs in nature, Andrianov said.

"Based on these data, tobacco represents an attractive and promising 'energy plant' platform and could also serve as a model for the utilization of other high-biomass plants for biofuel production," he said.

Biofuels -- liquid fuels derived from plant materials -- are entering the market due to factors such as oil price spikes.