Shields up! Force fields could protect Mars missions

Shields up! Force fields could protect Mars missions



NASA is nervous about sending astronauts to Mars - and understandably so. Six months' exposure to the wind of high-energy particles streaming from the sun could indeed prove deadly. But a team of researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) near Oxford, UK, has hit upon a phenomenon that might just solve the problem.

They have shown that a magnet no wider than your thumb can deflect a stream of charged particles like those in the solar wind. It gives new life to an old idea about shielding spacecraft, and might just usher in a new era of space travel. "Space radiation has been called the only showstopper for the crewed exploration of space," says Ruth Bamford of RAL. "Our experiment demonstrates there may be a way the show can go on."

The inspiration behind the idea is as old as the Earth. Life thrives on our planet because its core is a churning cauldron of molten iron. The result is our magnetosphere, the magnetic field that wraps itself around the Earth and deflects the solar wind.

Without this shield some of the particles spat out by the sun would charge through our bodies, shattering the machinery of our cells. In the absence of our protective magnetic field, complex life on Earth would probably be unsustainable.

Water woes could undermine Yemen's drive against Al-Qaeda

Water woes could undermine Yemen's drive against Al-Qaeda

Impoverished Yemen is reeling under the threat of Al-Qaeda, northern Shiite rebels and southern secessionists, but a lack of water is putting its ancient capital at even greater risk, experts say.

Within a decade -- or even less -- Sanaa could become the first waterless capital in the world, they warn, adding the outlook is also bleak for the rest of this parched country where wells in some regions are already dry.

A conference in London
on Wednesday will discuss Yemen's anti-terrorism drive, but it is unclear whether the water woes that experts say are likely to fuel more insecurity are on the agenda.

Water disputes and riots in this largely tribal nation could squeeze Yemen's struggling government, undermining its ability to remain focused on an increasingly alarming security situation.

The United States and major European powers, concerned about the possible fallout from a resurgent Al-Qaeda, have been pressuring Sanaa to uproot the Islamic militants. Yemen says it needs arms, training and funds to do that.

"The situation in Yemen is rapidly deteriorating in the face of several challenges, all of which have the potential to develop into a serious crisis within the next five years," the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in a report last year.

Drug that could reverse Alzheimer’s to be tested on patients

A new drug with the potential to halt or even reverse Alzheimer’s disease is expected to be tested in patients later this year, researchers have revealed.

The drug, which tackles a key factor in the development of the disease, is expected to enter the crucial Phase 3 trial – the last stage before seeking regulatory approval – in the latter half of 2010, according to its inventor, Aberdeen University’s Professor Claude Wischik.

Earlier clinical trials of the drug – called remberTM – showed that it could slow progression of Alzheimer’s disease by 84 per cent over 12 months. Furthermore, the effect was sustained over two years. When the results were reported at a conference in Chicago in 2008, they caused worldwide excitement and optimism that, at last, an effective treatment for dementia could be in the pipeline.

But before the drug could move to Phase 3 trials – which will compare it against placebo in larger numbers of patients – millions of dollars in funding have to be raised and regulatory obstacles overcome.

Prof Wischik is optimistic that that ongoing fundraising will permit the Phase 3 trial to begin this year. “This will be a large-scale, international study using around 50 centres,” he said. “We’re moving on substantially from the Phase 2 trial – we’ve beefed up our management team and have really moved on to another level.

“We’re breaking new ground here – the Phase 2 trial provided the first evidence that a drug of this type could arrest progression of the disease, but we believe it can go further than that and perhaps reverse the disease, at least at its early stages.”

The drug acts on the “tangles” which are found in the brains of people with the disease, and which were first described by Alois Alzheimer in 1907. Around two decades ago, Prof Wischik discovered that these tangles were made up of a build up of tau protein, which destroys the brain cells responsible for memory, before going on to kill neurons elsewhere in the brain.

A university spin-out company, TauRx Therapeutics, based in Singapore, developed a novel treatment from a chemical already used in other conditions, which appears to ‘dissolve’ the tangles and halt cognitive decline – the Holy Grail in dementia treatment.

The Phase 2 trial – intended to reveal side-effects as well as efficacy – revealed that the tested form of the chemical worked well at the low and moderate doses, backing the theory that it could arrest the progression of the disease.

It did not work at the highest dose tested due to a problem with the formulation which affected the release of the drug in its active form and this had an impact both on the efficacy and side-effects and limiting the benefit that can be achieved with the older form of the chemical.

Read the full article here at Caledonian Mercury .....