Dark Swiss chocolate, not just good but good for getting the stress level down (photo: E Wallace)
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – We’ve all suspected it and now Nestlé researchers tell us it is true: a nibble of dark chocolate a day reduces our stress level. A research team that looked at the biochemical basis for what many of us like to consider comfort food found “strong evidence that a daily consumption of 40 g of dark chocolate during a period of 2 weeks is sufficient to modify the metabolism of free living and healthy human subjects, as per variation of both host and gut microbial metabolism.”
Their findings, presented at a conference in California 28 March, showed “that the chemical compounds contained in dark chocolate may improve the disposition of people who experience higher levels of stress.”
You might have to use more diplomacy now that the word is out when you offer chocolates to your stressed mother or others. Remind them that the group also found that “the level of stress-related hormones reduced in all participants, including those who were not assessed as stressed at the start.”
The test group consumed half the chocolate in the morning and the other half in the afternoon.
In more scientific terms, the group’s abstract reports this:
“A clinical trial was performed on a population of 30 human subjects, who were classified in low and high anxiety traits using validated psychological questionnaires. Biological fluids (urine and blood plasma) were collected during 3 test days at the beginning, midtime and at the end of a 2 week study. NMR and MS-based metabonomics were employed to study global changes in metabolism due to the chocolate consumption. Human subjects with higher anxiety trait showed a distinct metabolic profile indicative of a different energy homeostasis (lactate, citrate, succinate, trans-aconitate, urea, proline), hormonal metabolism (adrenaline, DOPA, 3-methoxy-tyrosine) and gut microbial activity (methylamines, p-cresol sulfate, hippurate). Dark chocolate reduced the urinary excretion of the stress hormone cortisol and catecholamines and partially normalized stress-related differences in energy metabolism (glycine, citrate, trans-aconitate, proline, β-alanine) and gut microbial activities (hippurate and p-cresol sulfate).”
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – It takes a black hole to: measure another black hole, it turns out. Researchers at the EPFL polytechnic in Lausanne have been using, for the past two years, what they call “supermassive black holes acting as gravitational lenses” to measure, for the first time, other black holes.
Scientists at the university’s laboratory of astrophysics, using ESA and Nasa’s Hubble telescope, in 2010 discovered a quasar, a galaxy with a black hole at its centre. Since then, they have identified several of these rare cases from among a total of 20,000 quasar, a find they believe will lead to a better understanding of how black holes are formed.
The EPFL in a statement says, “The case was special for two reasons: it showed both the presence of the supermassive black hole as well as another galaxy in the background, very distant and in almost perfect alignment. The light coming from this distant galaxy, strongly bent by its passage near the black hole, made it possible to measure the mass of a quasar for the first time.”
Laboratory physicist Frédéric Courbin says, “For the first time, we have a reliable method for measuring the mass of these objects, which are too luminous to be observed with traditional techniques,” Courbin explains. “We can thus better understand why some galaxies have a black hole and others don’t, what their incredible energy is made up of, how the matter is distributed and how it evolves. The gravitational lensing effect has already taught us much about the distribution of matter in galaxy clusters and galaxies themselves. Here the effect is produced by very special objects, whose mass has been impossible to measure up to this point.”
How the “cosmic magnifying glass” works
EPFL explains how it works:
“This magnification phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, is caused by massive objects in the universe such as stars, galaxies, and planets. When the light from a very distant galaxy passes near one of these objects on its voyage to Earth, it is bent by the gravitational pull of the object. The image of the galaxy therefore appears severely distorted when it reaches us. There are either multiple images of the galaxy, or, if it’s in almost perfect alignment with the massive object, the image appears in the shape of a circular arc, known as an Einstein Ring. The size of the ring allows us to determine the mass of the object situated in the middle, which is acting like a lens. In the cases discovered by the EPFL scientists, the object in the foreground is a quasar, or a galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its center. It would be impossible to “weigh” the quasar without this gravitational lensing effect.”
The results of their findings were published 21 March in the scientific journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
New information on neutrinos backs suspicions earlier measurements were somehow flawed
Gran Sasso Lab in Italy
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Physicists can relax a bit this weekend, with Cern’s latest statement on the hubbub surrounding 2011 measurements taken in Italy that appeared to show the first serious deviation from Einstein’s law of relativity.
Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, startled the world 23 September 2011 by stating that neutrinos flying in beams sent through the Earth’s crust the 730km between Cern in Geneva and the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy had been measured traveling at 20 parts per million above “the world’s cosmic speed limit”, the speed of light.
Friday 16 March Cern issued a statement:
“The Icarus experiment at the Italian Gran Sasso laboratory has today reported a new measurement of the time of flight of neutrinos from CEern to Gran Sasso. The Icarus measurement, using last year’s short pulsed beam from Cern, indicates that the neutrinos do not exceed the speed of light on their journey between the two laboratories. This is at odds with the initial measurement reported by Opera last September.
“The evidence is beginning to point towards the Opera result being an artefact of the measurement,” said Cern Research Director Sergio Bertolucci, “but it’s important to be rigorous, and the Gran Sasso experiments, Borexino, Icarus, LVD and Opera will be making new measurements with pulsed beams from Cern in May to give us the final verdict. In addition, cross-checks are underway at Gran Sasso to compare the timings of cosmic ray particles between the two experiments, Opera and LVD. Whatever the result, the Opera experiment has behaved with perfect scientific integrity in opening their measurement to broad scrutiny, and inviting independent measurements. This is how science works.”
“The Icarus experiment has independent timing from Opera and measured seven neutrinos in the beam from Cern last year. These all arrived in a time consistent with the speed of light.”
Cern had earlier announced that tests will be run in May that should provide a clearer understanding of the measurements taken in September.
Background, Cern + neutrinos, GenevaLunch
Albert Einstein in 1921, the year he won the Nobel Prize for physics
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The uproar in the physics world was almost as loud Wednesday 22 February as in September 2011: the American Association for the Advancement of Science said Wednesday that a loose wire was suspected as being responsible for what may have been incorrect readings of neutrinos announced in September in 2011 by Cern’s Opera project.
Scientists at Gran Sasso labs in Italy said in November that their colleagues working with Cern had been mistaken, adding to the confusion. The September announcement had called into question a basic tenet of physics, Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Thursday morning Cern issued an unusually short statement to clarify the situation:
“The Opera collaboration has informed its funding agencies and host laboratories that it has identified two possible effects that could have an influence on its neutrino timing measurement. These both require further tests with a short pulsed beam. If confirmed, one would increase the size of the measured effect, the other would diminish it. The first possible effect concerns an oscillator used to provide the time stamps for GPS synchronizations. It could have led to an overestimate of the neutrino’s time of flight. The second concerns the optical fibre connector that brings the external GPS signal to the Opera master clock, which may not have been functioning correctly when the measurements were taken. If this is the case, it could have led to an underestimate of the time of flight of the neutrinos. The potential extent of these two effects is being studied by the Opera collaboration. New measurements with short pulsed beams are scheduled for May.”
The neutrinos in question travelled from Cern to Italy’s Gran Sasso research centre and Bob Evans reports for Reuters that “physicists at the Cern research institute near Geneva appeared to contradict Albert Einstein’s 1905 Special Theory of Relativity last year when they reported that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos could travel fractions of a second faster than light.”
©2011 Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
CMS control room at Cern
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The birth of the child called Higgs Boson might or might not be coming soon, depending on what media you follow, but today is in any event a big day at Cern in Geneva, when the suspension ends and we’ll all learn out what scientists are seeing, thanks to the LHC (Large Hadron Collider).
Higgs Boson is not, of course, a child at all. The Cern website offers this explanation: “According to theory, the Higgs mechanism works as a medium that exists everywhere in space. Particles gain mass by interacting with this medium. Peter Higgs pointed out that the mechanism required the existence of an unseen particle, which we now call the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is the fundamental component of the Higgs medium, much as the photon is the fundamental component of light. The Higgs boson is the only particle predicted by the Standard Model that has not yet been seen by experiments.”
Cern is holding a seminar where scientists will present their findings, with an announcement at the end of the day. Rumours are flying thick and fast that they have indeed spotted evidence of the elusive Higgs Boson, despite Cern’s dry warning:
“Atlas and CMS experiments will present the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. These results will be based on the analysis of considerably more data than those presented at the summer conferences, sufficient to make significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson, but not enough to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the Higgs.”
The Cern teams are already focusing on how the LHC must be developed further to carry research to the next stage. a luminosity upgrade workshop in mid-November brought together scientists and engineers from 14 European institutions, with others from Japan and the USA.
Luminosity gives a measure of the collision rate in a particle accelerator and therefore gives an indication of its performance, says Cern, and an upgrade is scheduled for 2020.
“The LHC already delivers the highest luminosity beams of any high energy proton accelerator in the world, which is vitally important for physicists wanting to study extremely rare processes”, Cern notes in a press release. “With the LHC colliding hundreds of millions of particles each second, some of the processes we’re interested in will happen just a few times a day,” according to Cern research director Sergio Bertolucci, and “with processes so rare, extra luminosity makes a big difference to our ability to make precision measurements and discover new things.”
Background reading: Cern, CS Monitor, Guardian, S California Public Radio KPCC
Seventh annual Greenhouse Gas Report 3 main gases continuing to rise
Aletsch glacier, seen from the Jungfrau in August 2011; Swiss researchers are tracking Alpine permafrost changes (photo ©2011 Ellen Wallace)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Planet Earth’s three main greenhouse gases continue to rise significantly, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva.
It released the seventh annual World Greenhouse Bulletin Monday 21 November, showing that N2O, nitrous oxide, is now the third most important greenhouse gas, accounting for 6 percent of gases in the atmosphere. N2O plays an important role in the destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer which protects us from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun,” according to the WMO.
It is increasing far more rapidly than carbon dioxide (CO2), which accounts for roughly 80 percent and methane, roughly 18 percent.
The Bulletin “reports on atmospheric concentrations, and not emissions, of greenhouse gases. Emissions represent what goes into the atmosphere. Concentrations represent what remains in the atmosphere after the complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere and the oceans.”
Measurements are made by a network of stations in more than 50 countries which make up the WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch Programme. The measurement data are quality controlled, archived and distributed by WMO’s World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases, hosted by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).
World’s growing use of fertilizers, including manure behind N2O rise
Nitrous oxide “is emitted into the atmosphere from natural and man-made sources, including the oceans, biomass burning, fertilizer use and various industrial processes,” the report states.
“The atmospheric burden of nitrous oxide in 2010 was 323.2 parts per billion – 20% higher than in the pre-industrial era. It has grown at an average of about 0.75 parts per billion over the past 10 years, mainly as a result of the use of nitrogen containing fertilizers, including manure, which has profoundly affected the global nitrogen cycle. Its impact on climate, over a 100 year period, is 298 times greater than equal emissions of carbon dioxide.”
Northern permafrost loss a concern as methane levels rise again
Scientists are also concerned about the rise again of methane, after a period of temporary relative stabilization from 1999 to 2006, according to the report. “Since 1750, it has increased 158%, mostly because of activities such as cattle-rearing, rice planting, fossil fuel exploitation and landfills. Human activities now account for 60% of methane emissions, with the remaining 40% being from natural sources such as wetlands.” Researchers are looking into the reasons for the new increase, “including the potential role of the thawing of the methane-rich Northern permafrost and increased emissions from tropical wetlands.”
Carbon dioxide remains largest contributor to “climate forcing”
(CO2) is the single most important man-made greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Monday’s report shows that it”
“contributes about 64% to total increase in climate forcing by greenhouse gases. Since the start of
the industrial era in 1750, its atmospheric abundance has increased by 39% to 389 parts per million
(number of molecules of the gas per million molecules of dry air). This is primarily because of
emissions from combustion of fossil fuels, deforestation and changes in land-use.
Between 2009 and 2010, its atmospheric abundance increased by 2.3 parts per million – higher than
the average for both the 1990s (1.5 parts per million) and the past decade (2.0 parts per million).
For about 10,000 years before the start of the industrial era in the mid-18th century, atmospheric
carbon dioxide remained almost constant at around 280 parts per million.”
Some improvement offset by other increases: CFCs
There is one bright spot in the report: some halocarbons are slowing decreasing, notably chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), widely used only a few years ago as refrigerants, propellants in spray cans and solvents but now widely banned. “However, concentrations of other gases such as HCFCs and HFCs, which are used to substitute CFCs because they are less damaging to the ozone layer, are increasing rapidly. These two classes of compounds are very potent greenhouse gases and last much longer in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.”
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A group of scientists with Italy’s Gran Sasso research centre say their measurements of neutrinos sent by the Cern labs in Geneva indicate colleagues are mistaken in thinking these have travelled faster than the speed of light. They published their findings Saturday 19 November.
Another group of Gran Sasso researchers, working south of Rome with the Opera programme at Cern in Geneva, claimed in September 2011 that they measured neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light. Their finding provoked a flurry of scientific debate, given the implications for physics of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Robert Evans of Reuters in Geneva reports that the second Gran Sasso group, working far below the ground, published a paper on the Cornell University Library site Saturday that refutes this: “Icarus, another experiment at Gran Sasso—which is deep under mountains and run by Italy’s National Institute of National Physics—now argues that their measurements of the neutrinos energy on arrival contradict that reading.”
The new paper comes just days after other reports came in that appeared to confirm the Opera group’s initial findings. The Cern team that announced its findings in September were careful to say they were not announcing a discovery, but rather the results of their tests, inviting speculation and debate over the implications of these.
To celebrate the European Researchers’ Night, CERN is opening its doors to the public and inviting everyone, especially the youngsters (13-18), to look at science in a simple and entertaining manner.
Location: Meyrin, Geneva
Link out: http://nuitdeschercheurs.web.cern.ch/en/home
Date: 23 Sep 2011
Atlas detector, Cern
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The elusive Higgs-Boson particle is proving to be ghost-like, says Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva. Results from Cern’s Atlas and CMS projects were presented at the biannual Lepton-Photon conference in Mumbai, India 22 August.
Results of these collaborative projects using the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) “show that the elusive Higgs particle, if it exists, is running out of places to hide. Proving or disproving the existence the Higgs-Boson, which was postulated in the 1960s as part of a mechanism that would confer mass on fundamental particles, is among the main goals of the LHC scientific programme,” the group says in a press release.
Heading home: Solar Impulse could be back in its hangar in Payerne by Friday night, after its big European flights trip, weather permitting
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Solar Impulse appears to have a window of opportunity Friday 1 July to fly home from the Le Bourget airshow in Paris, where it has been a centre of attention after making its first international flights using only solar power. The weather promises to be fine and sunny for the Paris-Payerne run but the flight director could decide at the last minute to make a change to the departure date or the flight plan.
The plane will take off in the morning from Paris-le Bourget and climb to a cruising altitude of 3,500 meters. The plane’s team has released the following details:
“The plane will fly east towards Troyes, will continue to Pontarlier and land at Payerne airfield at the end of the day.
Swiss scenery would be improved without power lines, argues HTST, which is considering a popular initiative
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Several groups have fought power lines in Switzerland over the years, arguing against them for esthetic reasons, particularly in tourist areas. Now, as a group in canton Valais is about to present a feasibility study showing that the lines can be effectively buried underground, a popular initiative to require their removal is underway, reports RSR.
A new organization, HTST, is discussing the option of a popular initiative with various partners, according to RSR, which could get underway by the end of 2011 and 2012, to put the issue to a national vote. The group argues that power lines waste energy, are a danger to the population’s health, and ruin the countryside.
Rock-a-bye zzzzzzzz (hammock, the perfect place to nap)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Every culture does it and has done it for centuries, but why rocking puts us to sleep has remained something of a mystery.
Now a research team based at the University of Geneva has provided the explanation, arguing that a swinging motion “exerts a synchronizing action in the brain that reinforces endogenous sleep rhythms.”
Twelve healthy male volunteers, ages 22–38, were asked to nap on a bed that could either remain stationary or rock gently.
All participants were “good sleepers, non-habitual nappers with no excessive daytime sleepiness and had low anxiety levels. Sleep quality and quantity were assessed by questionnaires and actimetry recordings.” The men took two 45-minute afternoon naps (14:30-15:45),
“one with the bed stationary, and one with the bed put in motion (condition order randomized). The motion parameters were set to stimulate vestibular and proprioceptive sensory systems, without causing nausea or any entrainment of cardiac rhythm. In both conditions the naps were spent in complete darkness in a controlled room temperature (21 ± 1°C) and the level of auditory stimulation was around 37 dB. During both sessions, polysomnography data were recorded continuously. Sleep stages and sleep spindles were visually identified by two experienced scorers, blind to the experimental conditions.”
The authors write in their summary in the journal Current Biology that “We show that lying on a slowly rocking bed (0.25 Hz) facilitates the transition from waking to sleep, and increases the duration of stage N2 sleep (ed. note: the deepest point of sleep during a nap). Rocking also induces a sustained boosting of slow oscillations and spindle activity. It is proposed that sensory stimulation associated with a swinging motion exerts a synchronizing action in the brain that reinforces endogenous sleep rhythms. These results thus provide scientific support to the traditional belief that rocking can soothe our sleep.”
The team was led by Laurence Bayer, Irina Constantinescu, Michel Muehlethaler and Sophie Schwarz, from the neuroscience department at the Hug university hospitals in Geneva and the Swiss Center for Afffective Sciences, joined by Stephen Perrig and Julie Vienne from the Swiss Laboratory at Hug and the CIG in Lausanne, with Pierre-Paul Vidal from the Unviersity Paris Descartes.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Lake Geneva: more going on under the surface than we know
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Elemo, short for Exploration des eaux lémaniques (exploring Lake Geneva’s waters) got underway Tuesday, with Russian Mir submersibles heading 200 metres down into the canyons and cliffs of Lake Geneva. The project is based at the EPFL, the federal polytechnic in Lausanne.
One of Elemo’s first tests will help researchers to understand how the cliffs, which are essentially unstable heaps of sediment as high as 50 metres at a depth of as much as 200 metres, were formed by the Rhone, through sampling and then dating the sediment. A second will measure the amount of methane released from the deep canyons as organic matter decomposes.
Methane is a greenhouse gas.
Stephanie Girardclos, from the University of Geneva, heads the project with these two studies, for which four researchers going on the dives will be gathering data this week.
Elemo includes 15 other projects, mostly environmental, with researchers looking at micropollutants, biology, geology and the physics of currents. A succession of teams will work throughout the summer on various dive sites, says the EPFL.
Flavio Anselmetti, a researcher for the Swiss aquatic research institute Eawag, who is part of the Elemo team, says new data could help us better understand the lake, including historical events. “A collapse of the canyon could be what caused the tsunami that swept across the lake and destroyed the bridges in Geneva in 563,” he says. “These are extremely rare events, but it’s important to assess the risk.”
The canyons are formed as the Rhone pours into it: the river is colder and sediment-rich from glacier-fed streams and rivers in canton Valais and eastern Vaud. It continues to flow through the lake. “It really is a river at the bottom of the lake, carving out valleys as it meanders along,” says Anselmetti.
The lake remains a mystery in many ways, surprising considering that half of the drinking water for the population of 1.5 million in the region comes from the lake.
Eawag is responsible for four of the projects.
International scientists have access to the submersibles for research purposes thanks to support from Ferring Pharmaceuticals in Saint Prex, canton Vaud, the Russian Federation’s Honorary Consulate in Lausanne and the EPFL. Ferring is financing most of the project and the company’s chairman, Frederik Paulsen, was at the site of the first dives Tuesday. He was joined by Don Walsh, an American oceanographer who was with Jacques Piccard during their famous descent into the Mariana Trench 23 January 1960, the deepest point of the world’s ocean, in the bathyscaphe Trieste. It went down to a record maximum of 10,911 metres.
Background story, GenevaLunch, 1 March 2011
BERN, SWITZERLAND – AP news agency reports Tuesday 7 June that Albert Einstein and Confucius won’t be part of a joint museum exhibit in Shanghai after talks ended between the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum and Bern’s Historical Museum. The Bern museum’s exhibit on Einstein, a son of the city, is currently on tour in Hong Kong, and Shanghai was interested in hosting it next, but wanted to add to it a large exhibit on Confucius, which the Bern museum says would not be possible, given the difficulties of putting up a travelling show and the short timeframe.
The exhibit, which has appeared in Beijing and Guangdong, is the same as the one that drew 350,000 visitors in Switzerland. It was put together, according to Swissworld, to mark the 100th anniversary of the theory of relativity.
Albert Einstein was living in Bern in 1905 when he developed the famous formula E=mc2 “and thus turned our previous concept of space and time on its head” notes Swissworld.
Cern's LHC team - excitement over latest beam collisions record
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – It’s been a busy and record-breaking week at Cern, the European Nuclear Research Centre on the French-Swiss border, with LHC (Large Hadron Collider) researchers achieving a significant milestone and elusive antimatter held for 1,000 seconds for the first time.
Trapping antimatter for longer opens new research vistas
“The Alpha experiment at Cern reports that it has succeeded in trapping antimatter atoms for over 16 minutes: long enough to begin to study their properties in detail. Alpha is part of a broad programme at Cern’s antiproton decelerator investigating the mysteries of one of nature’s most elusive substances,” the organization reports, following publication Sunday 5 June of the news in the scientific journal Nature (article free online).
Nature in November 2010 reported on Alpha’s capture of antimatter then, saying it was the first significant milestone in the field since 2002, but this week’s report takes the research work to a new level. “For physicists, a bit of antimatter is a precious gift indeed,” said the November Nature report. “By comparing matter to its counterpart, they can test fundamental symmetries that lie at the heart of the standard model of particle physics, and look for hints of new physics beyond. Yet few gifts are as tricky to wrap. Bring a particle of antimatter into contact with its matter counterpart and the two annihilate in a flash of energy.”
The new achievement raises the question of how long anitmatter can be held, say Cern scientists, and it opens new research possibilities.
One rider's bike, from the 15% who cycle to EPFL
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – EPFL, the federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne, is pushing bicycles and will continue to do so until the end of June, in every sense, with its Bike to Work 2011 programme, which kicks off 23 May.
The school wants “to reduce by 10 percent by 2014 the 30 tons of CO₂ emitted daily by commuting vehicles on normal working days” and its previous Bike to Work programmes have made a good start: 15 percent of commutes are currently done on bikes, compared to 11 percent five years ago.
EFPL is registering Bike to Work riding teams until 31 May and will be giving out an electric bike to a winning team. The goal of this year’s programme is to get people used to riding bicycles for work. “To take part, you have to form teams of four people who are prepared to make 50 percent of their journeys to EPFL or to return home by bicycle, during the month of June”, the call for teams says.
The project is part of the larger Swiss Bike to Work programme, where companies register teams by 31 May, and the teams then ride at least part of the way to and from work 1-30 June, preferably combining this with public transport for the non-cycling part of the trip. The national programme has several prizes that include a weekend for two in Hamburg, to bicycles and bike accessories. Details
The Lancet article carries a series of short medical videos showing the impact on Summers of epidural stimulation
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Researchers at the University of California have helped a 25-year-old former university baseball player who has been paralyzed since 2006 from a car accident to regain the ability to stand, use a treadmill and move several joints voluntarily.
The experimental treatment developed at UCLA and the University of Louisville has been used with Rob Summers for two years.
The treatment uses electrical stimulation to the spinal cord, a process more generally used to treat chronic pain. It is described in the UK medical journal Lancet, published 20 May.
Two Zurich researchers, Grégoire Courtine and Rubia van den Brand, in editorial published with the research, caution that “activity-based rehabilitation” continues to provide the most help for some recovery for patients with spinal cord injuries, but that the time has come for spinal cord-injured (SCI) patients to move: “Although some of these treatments might be translatable to patients with moderate SCI, and are entering phase 1 or 2 clinical trials, evidence for the efficacy of any intervention designed to repair the injured human spinal cord is still lacking.”
The Los Angeles Times, in a lengthy feature story, quotes a doctor who suggests that the treatment may be able to help 10 to 15 percent of people who are paralyzed.
Summers was injured when he went out to his car to pick up a gym bag and another car jumped the curb and hit him, in a hit-and-run accident. He was 20 years old at the time, in his third year of university studies in Oregon in the US.
The authors, led by Susan Harkema, offer an explanation for the treatment’s success and hope for extending the treatment to other patients: “Task-specific training with epidural stimulation might reactivate previously silent spared neural circuits or promote plasticity. These interventions could be a viable clinical approach for functional recovery after severe paralysis.”
Links to other sites: Los Angeles Times, Science Now
Henry Markram, Human Brain project
Adrian Ionescu, EPFL, Guardian Angels project
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL-led projects are two of the six accepted in the finals of a major research initiative by the European Commission, its FET (future technologies) flagship projects. At least two of the finalists will be funded by the EC to the tune of up to CHF1 billion over 10 years, with the decision about the winners to be announced in 2012.
The final project will make FET one of the largest research initiatives in the world, notes EPFL.
The two Lausanne-led international projects, both of which have already received EC funding to permit them to develop their proposals to date, are the Human Brain project and Guardian Angels.
Each will receive about €1.5 million to refine their proposals in the coming year.
The finalists were announced Wednesday 4 May in Budapest, Hungary, at a FET conference.
The other four finalists, listed by eGov Monitor, are:
- FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator and Crisis-Relief System: ICT can analyse vast amounts of data and complex situations so as to better predict natural disasters, or manage and respond to man-made disasters that cross national borders or continents.
- Graphene Science and technology for ICT and beyond: Graphene is a new substance developed by atomic and molecular scale manipulation that could replace silicon as the wonder material of the 21st century.
- IT Future of Medicine: digital technology has the power to deliver individualised medicine, based on molecular, physiological and anatomical data collected from individual patients and processed on the basis of globally integrated medical knowledge.
- Robot Companions for Citizens: soft skinned and intelligent robots have highly developed perceptive, cognitive and emotional skills, and can help people, radically changing the way humans interact with machines.
The first is the outgrowth of an earlier EPFL project led by Henry Markram, the Blue Brain project, now being developed by an international consortium. Human Brain integrates “everything we know about the brain into computer models and [uses] these models to simulate the actual working of the brain.
Ultimately, it will attempt to simulate the complete human brain,” according to the project’s web site.
Christofer Hierold, ETHZ, Guardian Angels project
GuardianAngels, under the direction of EPFL’s Adrian Ionescu and Christofer Hierold from ETHZ in Zurich is a zero-power project that “takes advantage of these recent developments in low-power electronics, energy harvesting and micro and nano-sensors to propose a new vision of the future: next-generation technology contributing to our wellbeing and our safety with simple, discrete and affordable high-tech accessories that seamlessly integrate into our daily life,” its web site notes.
Background, Human Brain project, GenevaLunch
Basel’s stinky flower, Geneva’s sexiest fingers study, Cern’s rumoured Higgs particles, US women skate to gold in Zurich
Cern's Alice experiment, particle collisions
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A giant stinky flower in Basel, ring fingers that mean true love, thrilling women’s ice hockey world finals – the international population in the Lake Geneva region disappears during the spring holidays, heading off on travels near and far, but the news doesn’t stop.
Here’s a brief roundup of what you might have missed:
Phew! but beautiful to behold, Basel’s corpse flower
Switzerland was on the world news map, with hundreds of articles about the amophophallus titanium, aka the “corpse flower” that pulled in an estimated 25,000 visitors to Basel. Key facts: it is one of the world’s largest flowers (technically: “largest unbranched inflorescence in the world” according to wikipedia), it smells of rotting flesh, and it grows in the wild only in Sumatra, Indonesia. The first cultivated flowering was at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London in 1889 and since then there have been few sightings of the rarely-blooming flower. Basel’s Botanical Gardens‘ two-metre high plant bloomed this weekend, for the first time in its 17 years, and the first such plant to flower in Switzerland in 75 years.
Check out his length, dear
A man’s ring finger length gives clues to his masculinity, researcher Camille Ferdenzi at the University of Geneva in Switzerland shows in her research on 2D:4D, the name for the ratio comparing second and fourth digits. Her work was published 19 April in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biology Letters. For an easier explanation, LiveScience unravels the mysteries of sex and the ring finger.
God or no god particles, Cern is intense
A year and a half after the world’s first ovarian transplant between twins, Victoria was born. She is healthy and not affected by Turner Syndrome (TS), the condition her mother and aunt have, doctors reported Saturday 16 April.
Victoria’s mother, Karine Thiriot, 39, has TS, a chromosome disorder where the second sex chromosome is either partially or completely missing.
“TS occurs in approximately 1 of every 2,000 female births and in as many as 10% of all miscarriages,” reports the Turner Syndrome Society of the United States. “Most (90%) TS individuals will experience early ovarian failure.”
Fifteen years of failed in vitro fertilization ended when Thiriot accepted an ovarian transplant from her twin sister, who, although affected by the same syndrome, was fertile.
The transplant surgery was performed by Belgian Jacques Donnez in August 2009. It was the first ovarian transplant in Europe, and the first one globally between twins.
Links to other sites: AFP, Turner Syndrome Society of the US
Are you a lark or an owl? Hormones may play a key role
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The University of Zurich’s Pharmacology and Toxicology laboratory is actively seeking “individuals suitable” for the next stage of its Chronobiology and Sleep Research project, already underway, using a method the laboratory has developed to text sleep patterns in real time.
Previous studies have been limited by the difficulty of observing normal sleep patterns under laboratory conditions.
“One major obstacle in studying the human circadian oscillator is the difficulty of measuring properties such as period length. So far, this task has been achieved in only a few heroic studies employing extensive subject observation under controlled conditions”, researchers note on their web page.
Journal report shows hormonal basis for changing sleep patterns
The work continues with research reported 11 April in the journal PNAS, a new study from researchers at universities in Basel and Zurich who have found a hormonal basis for the changing sleep patterns that people undergo during old age.
An article “Serum factors in older individuals change cellular clock properties“, paves the way for a possible drug-based remedy to counteract these changes in sleep schedules.
Each person’s daily circadian rhythm, the 24-hour cycle of sleep and consciousness, functions via a system of cell-autonomous clocks that can be found in nearly every cell of the body, all of which are controlled by the brain.
As the cells’ molecular make-up does not alter during the aging process, Lucia Pagani from Basel, Steven A Brown from Zurich and their group looked into a possible hormonal influence on the changes.
Japan’s latest worries in the post-quake period concern the safety of drinking water and possible food contamination, with authorities in Tokyo recommending Wednesday 23 March that parents not give their children tap water to drink. Measurements taken showed the level to be above that considered safe for infants and children.
Scientists have taken up the debate over food and drink safety, comparing measured levels and health regulations on radiation. Science Now points to several factors that have an impact on the extent of the danger, such as the quantity ingested and the period of time during which a food product is consumed. Spinach has particularly high levels, it says, because the broad leaves pick up more radiation.
The Japanese government’s recommendations are a wise move, say several scientists, but there is little reason to panic. The Guardian quotes environmental physicist Jim Smith as saying that “Following the finding of up to 210 becquerels of radioactive iodine in tap water in Tokyo, the recommendation that infants are not given tap water is a sensible precaution. But it should be emphasised that the limit is set at a low level to ensure that consumption at that level is safe over a fairly long period of time.”
Mossy fiber–Purkinje cell contacts in the developing mouse cerebellum (source: PLoS Biology journal)
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Scientists have known for some time that the developing brain “learns” from its mistakes, but a research team at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel have now used advanced microscopy techniques to document the process.
Their findings were published 8 February in PLoS Biology and could have important implications for autism, epilepsy, cerebral palsy and other disorders that often involve motor problems.
Their work shed light more generally on the way neuronal networks, which lie behind brain functions, develop.
Peter Scheiffele’s research team in Basel, working with researchers in New York and Japan, used the techniques to study the cerebellum, a part of the brain that handles fine motor movements and emotional processing.
“Brain functions rely on highly selective neuronal networks which are assembled during development,” writes Scheiffele. “Network assembly involves targeted neuronal growth followed by recognition of the appropriate target cells and selective synapse formation.”
Through a process of elimination of inappropriate targets the brain improves its strategy during pre-natal and post-natal growth.
“How neuronal processes select their appropriate target cells from an array of interaction partners is poorly understood,” the author notes, and their study has focused on tracking this process.
He writes that in the young brain “we find that developing mossy fibers [neurons send out these fibers, called axons, to different parts of the brain] establish synaptic contacts rather promiscuously,” as they reach out to make good connections, but that “the specificity of the synaptic connections in the ponto-cerebellar circuit emerges through extensive elimination of transient synapses.”
The study is significant, according to Science Daily, in part because “Dr Scheiffele’s group has discovered that a protein traditionally associated with bone development is responsible for correcting errors while neurons connect to their correct partners in the cerebellum.” The protein, Bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4), was not previously known to have a functional in stabilizing the neuronal network but the group has shown it to eliminate unwanted connections within a week, when develop is normal.
Ed. note: Science Daily’s report on the newly published research provides an accessible layman’s explanation of the work.
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Higg’s boson, success of particle accelerator give LHC an extra year
Excitement at Cern as LHC ramps up (photo 2010, Cern)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will remain in operation until the end of 2012, rather than the end of 2011 as earlier announced, the European Organization for Nuclear Research says, citing the strong success of the LHC in its first year of operation.
“With the LHC running so well in 2010, and further improvements in performance expected, there’s a real chance that exciting new physics may be within our sights by the end of the year,” Cern’s research director, Sergio Bertolucci, said in a statement issued Monday 31 January.
“For example, if nature is kind to us and the lightest supersymmetric particle, or the Higgs boson, is within reach of the LHC’s current energy, the data we expect to collect by the end of 2012 will put them within our grasp.”
Cern earlier caused a stir in the science community when it announced that it would run the LHC for 18-24 months, then shut down, for at least a year, the massive system that runs experiments using a 27km circular tunnel that runs 100m under Geneva and neighbouring France.
The shutdown will be necessary to prepare the LHC to run at its full design energy of 7 TeV.
The mix in Swiss forests will likely look different thanks to climate extremes
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Mathematicians at EPFL, the Lausanne-based Polytechnic Institute, are giving forest guardians a helping hand in better understanding what is happening to the tree population.
Half of the Scots pines in the Viège/Visp forest in canton Valais, for example, have died in the past 20 years, and mathematical models have made it clear that the culprit is not so much higher temperatures, as climate extremes. “It’s now acknowledged that it’s extreme climate situations that actually modify vegetation,” EPFL notes in a press release.
The university’s chair of statistics at EPFL, Jacques Ferrez, who is also with the Swiss Federal Research Institute, will soon publish a study of 14 forests, with 10 years of data.
“During the last 10 years, thermometers have been placed simultaneously in the forest and on the outside. We select the extreme daily temperatures, and among this data we only track unusual events.,” explains Ferrez. “You could say that we go by the maximums of maximums and the minimums of minimums.”
Swiss can say bye-bye Scots pines, hello palm trees
Reading results, especially for non-Swiss students, improve sharply since
The start of a Pisa study mathematics question for 15-year-olds
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss students age 15 are among the world’s elite when it comes to mathematics, the latest Pisa study by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) shows. The average score of 534 is well above those of European countries, and 24 percent of Swiss students achieved the top two marks, 5 and 6, compared to the OECD average of 13 percent.
At the other end of the scale, only 14 percent of Swiss students are considered weak in mathematics, having failed to achieve level 2, compared to an OECD average of 22 percent. The world’s best mathematics students: Shanghai-China (600), Singapore (562), Hong Kong-China (555), Korea (546), Chinese Taipai (543). The first non-Asian country for mathematics is Finland, followed closely by Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
Clear overall rankings are not part of the Pisa results: OECD countries are ranked, but not “partner economies” such as Shanghai-China region, which had the highest scores in all three areas. Remarkably, 14.6 percent of students in Shanghai-China and 12.3 percent of students in Singapore attained the highest levels of proficiency in all three subjects, compared to only 4.1 percent of the total group tested. The Pisa study also asssesses educational equity, the size of the gaps between best- and worst-performing students, and gender differences.
The Pisa (Programme international pour le suivi des acquis des élèves) research has been carried out every three years since 2000 by the OECD. The goal is to measure how well students are equipped for the future. Students are tested in mathematics, science and reading each time, but one of the three is selected each year for in-depth testing and research. The 2009 theme was reading. Seventy-five countries and OECD “partner economies” took part in the 2009 Pisa research of which 34 are OECD member countries. The first study in 2000 had 31 participating countries/economies.
Overall mean scores put Switzerland in top 15 OECD countries
The mean scores provide an indication of where a country sits in international comparisons. The Pisa executive summary to the 2009 report, issued 7 December, notes for the overall results in mathematics, science and reading, the three areas where students are tested:
“Korea and Finland are the highest performing OECD countries, with mean scores of 539 and 536 points, respectively. However, the partner economy Shanghai-China outperforms them by a significant margin, with a mean score of 556. top-performing countries or economies in reading literacy include Hong Kong-China (with a mean score of 533), Singapore (526), Canada (524), New Zealand (521), Japan (520) and Australia (515). The Netherlands (508), Belgium (506), Norway (503), Estonia (501), Switzerland (501), Poland (500), Iceland (500) and Liechtenstein (499) also perform above the OECD mean score of 494, while the United States, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, France, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Portugal, and partner economy Chinese Taipei have scores close to the OECD mean.
Reading results up strongly in Switzerland, better than neighbours’
Asacusa experiment, Cern, July 2009 (photo, Cern)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The mystery of what ever happened to antimatter, which has long puzzled scientists, has moved a step closer to being solved. Researchers involved in the Asacusa experiment at Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva have succeeded in producing significant numbers of antihydrogen atoms in flight.
Antimatter is the opposite of matter, which is the material that makes up our world. Cern notes in a statement that “matter and its counterpart are identical except for opposite charge, and they annihilate when they meet. At the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been produced in equal amounts. However, we know that our world is made up of matter: antimatter seems to have disappeared. To find out what has happened to it, scientists employ a range of methods to investigate whether a tiny difference in the properties of matter and antimatter could point towards an explanation.”
One of these is a Cern-developed trap called Cusp that uses a combination of magnetic fields to bring antiprotons and positrons together. They form antihydrogen atoms, referred to by Cern as “this rarest of atoms”.
Swiss farming, Aubonne, canton Vaud, October 2010
Science, technology, agriculture, private and public invited to participate in Milan fair
Update 12:00 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland was present for the official registration of Milan Expo in 2015 at a meeting in Paris Tuesday 23 November, three weeks after the closing of the six-months long Shanghai Expo, and now the race begins to see what the national exhibit in five years will look like. World Expos are held every five years, with “international – specialized” expos held in between. Switzerland is in the planning stages for the international expo at Yeosu, South Korea, in 2012.
World expositions are organized under the aegis of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions, BIE.
Shanghai Expo was a success for Switzerland
The country’s contribution to the Shanghai Expo during the summer of 2010 was among the most popular pavilions, with China News agency putting it among the top 10.
Antimatter trapped and stored - Photo Cern
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One of the universe’s open questions may be a step closer to being answered thanks to over 30 atoms of antihydrogen that have been trapped and stored by scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Cern.
This opens the path to new ways of making detailed measurements of antihydrogen, Cern notes in a written statement 18 November. It will allow scientists to compare matter and antimatter, the latter being what annihilates ordinary matter in a single explosive flash of energy.
The finding is related to the re-creation of the mini Big Bang at Cern in early November.
“At the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been produced in equal amounts. However, we know that our world is made up of matter: antimatter seems to have disappeared,” says Cern. Investigating a “tiny difference in the properties of matter and antimatter could point towards an explanation of what happened.”
