The Higgs particle just got 8% lighter

The Higgs particle just got a bit lighter, and the race to find it a little tighter, thanks to the most precise measurement yet of the mass of the W boson.

Physicists at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) near Chicago announced on Monday that the W boson - one of the particles that mediate the weak nuclear force - has a mass of 80.413 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).

reposted from: New Scientist 13 January 2007
my highlights / emphasis / edits

The standard model of particle physics links the masses of W boson, the "top" quark and the Higgs boson. Using the newly measured mass of the W and the already well-known mass of the top quark, the team recalculated the predicted mass of the elusive Higgs, which is thought to give all other particles their mass. The upper limit for the mass of the Higgs is now 153 GeV, down from the previous limit of 166 GeV.

Physicists already know that the Higgs is heavier than 114 GeV, because searches up to that energy have found nothing.

Until now, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, due to start working later this year, was the firm favourite to find the Higgs. But the lighter Higgs is well within the range of the Tevatron collider running at Fermilab. "For us at the Tevatron and CDF, it is very good news," says Mark Lancaster, CDF team member at University College London.

If the colliders do not find the Higgs at these energies, physicists will be forced to look beyond the standard model.

From issue 2586 of New Scientist magazine, 13 January 2007, page 5

H5N1 bird flu outbreak confirmed on English farm

• 13:25 03 February 2007
• NewScientist.com news service
• New Scientist, Reuters and AFP

An outbreak of bird flu on a farm run by Europe's biggest turkey manufacturer Bernard Matthews is the highly pathogenic H5N1 version of the virus which can kill humans, the European Commission said on Saturday.

Government veterinary experts were called to the farm near Lowestoft in eastern England late on Thursday after the death of 2500 birds. The UK government is enforcing EU-agreed controls to contain the outbreak, which involves setting up a protection zone with a radius of 3 kilometres (2 miles) and a surveillance zone of 10 km around the infected farm.

reposted from: New Scientist
my highlights / emphasis / edits

It is the second confirmed case of H5N1 in the 27-country European Union in 2007, following one in Hungary.

The farm has 160,000 turkeys, but only one of the 22 sheds that house the birds has so far been affected by the outbreak. Strict movement controls are in place, poultry must be kept indoors, bird shows and pigeon racing are prohibited, and on-farm biosecurity measures will be strengthened.

The H5N1 virus is known to have infected 270 people and killed at least 164 worldwide since 2003, most of them in Asia, and over 200 million birds have died from it or have been killed to prevent its spread. (Find out more in our Bird Flu special report.)

Surprising timing

Avian flu expert Colin Butter, at the UK's Institute of Animal Health, said: "This news is a bit surprising because it's not the time of year when we have a lot of bird migration. If it was going to happen we would expect it to happen in spring, not the middle of winter."

He said it is now crucial to find out if this is the only outbreak, or whether it has spread from another, as-yet-undiscovered outbreak. "If this is a secondary case it is much more serious. If this is the first case, and we can stamp it out, the outbreak will be controlled."

John Oxford, a virologist at London's Queen Mary's School of Medicine, told the BBC he was confident that the outbreak could be contained: "I don't think it has made any difference to the threat to the human population."

Wild swan

The highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu was found before in the UK, when a wild swan was discovered dead in Scotland in March 2006 (see UK's first case of H5N1 bird flu confirmed). It was thought to have caught the disease elsewhere, died at sea and been washed ashore.

In May 2006, 50,000 chickens at three farms in Norfolk, also in eastern England and home to some of Europe's biggest poultry farms, were culled after the H7N3 strain was detected. Farming leaders said those two scares cost the UK poultry industry 58 million pounds ($115 million) in 2006.

Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers' Union, urged consumers not to stop buying poultry because of the outbreak: "We're encouraging all farmers to be incredibly vigilant, and look at their flocks carefully. We do need to reassure consumers, however, that this is not an issue about safety of poultry."

Bernard Matthews said in a statement: "There has been a case of H5N1 avian influenza at the Holton site, but it is important to stress that none of the affected birds have entered the food chain."

Bird Flu - Learn more about the flu pandemic that could kill millions in our continually updated special report.

Tests show bird flu is H5N1 virus in Norfolk

Last Updated: Saturday, 3 February 2007, 16:11 GMT

Tests show bird flu is H5N1 virus

People at the farm in Suffolk are having to wear protective clothing

The avian flu which killed 2,600 turkeys at a Suffolk farm has been confirmed as the H5N1 virus.

That strain can be fatal if it is passed on to humans but experts said the outbreak was being contained and posed little danger to people.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the European Commission carried out virus tests at laboratories in Weybridge, Surrey.

The 159,000 other turkeys on the farm will now have to be slaughtered.

A three-kilometre protection zone and a 10km surveillance zone will be set up around Holton, which is approximately 27km south-west of Lowestoft.

In pics: containment operation Measures when bird flu hits Q&A: Bird flu

A Defra statement said further tests to characterise the virus were under way in order to ascertain whether or not it is the Asian strain.

It is the first case on a UK commercial farm of infection with the H5N1 strain, which has killed 164 people worldwide - mainly in south-east Asia - since 2003.

However, the virus cannot pass from human to human at present.

So far, all those who have been infected worldwide have come into intimate contact with infected birds.

Vaccinations

Fred Landeg, Britain's Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer, said an investigation was under way but the most likely source of the outbreak was wild birds.

He told BBC News that vaccinations for poultry were not currently being considered.

"There are a number of problems with vaccination in that it takes about three weeks to get immunity."

DEFRA CONTINGENCY PLAN Full document [372KB] Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need to download Adobe Reader. Download the reader here

Mr Landeg said the turkeys at the farm had been too young to enter the food chain and no birds or produce had moved off the site.

Dr Maria Zambon, from the Health Protection Agency, said farm workers who had come into contact with infected birds, and those involved in the culling process, would be offered the anti-viral drug tamiflu as a precaution.

She stressed that nobody had developed symptoms of bird flu following similar outbreaks among farm birds in continental Europe.

Vets were called to the Bernard Matthews farm on Thursday night.

The company said it was confident the outbreak had been contained and there was no risk to consumers.

How bird flu became global

National Farmers Union president Peter Kendall told BBC News 24 the priority would be eradicating the outbreak.

"[We will be] making sure we get the message across about how well this will be managed and controlled.

"We're encouraging all farmers to be incredibly vigilant, look at their flocks carefully and we do need to reassure consumers that this is not an issue about the safety of poultry - it's completely safe to eat."

Defra has revoked the national general licence on bird gatherings and bird shows and pigeon racing will not be permitted.

Detergent

Professor John Oxford, a virologist at the London Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry, said he was confident the outbreak could be contained.

He said: "I don't think it has made any difference as a threat to the human population. The most likely explanation is that a small bird has come in through a ventilation shaft.

"One good thing about this virus is that it's easily destroyed. You can kill it with a bit of detergent."

Dr Oxford also said that while four strains of the H5N1 virus have been identified so far, all are deadly to birds and show potential of being harmful to humans.

He said that identifying the particular strain found in Suffolk will help scientists work out how the disease is moving around the world.

HAVE YOUR SAY The people most at risk are farmers and their families Andrew Olgado, London Send us your experiences Community in shock

In May last year, more than 50,000 chickens were culled after an outbreak of the H7 bird flu in farms in the neighbouring county of Norfolk.

One member of staff at the farm contracted the disease and was treated for an eye infection.

In March 2006, a wild swan found dead in Cellardyke, Fife, was found to have the H5N1 strain of the virus.

For more information call the Defra Helpline on 08459 33 55 77

WHEN BIRD FLU HITS THE UK 1: Scene of outbreak All poultry to be culled Visitors disinfected and restricted access 2: 3km Protection Zone Poultry kept indoors and tested 3: 10km Surveillance Zone No movement of poultry to or from area except for slaughter Rail transport restricted to non-stopping movements Bird fairs and markets banned Increased surveillance of wetland areas Domestic birds not to share water used by wild birds Footpath restrictions likely only on free-range farms People in towns not affected unless they keep poultry. Source: Defra

Cheap, safe drug (based on vinegar) kills most cancers - Dichloracetate (DCA)

IT SOUNDS almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe. It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

reposted from: New Scientist
my highlights / edits

New Scientist has received an unprecedented amount of interest in this story from readers. If you would like up-to-date information on any plans for clinical trials of DCA in patients with cancer, or would like to donate towards a fund for such trials, please visit the site set up by the University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board. We will also follow events closely and will report any progress as it happens.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar. Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis's experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died

Full Article: Cancer Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.ccr.2006.10.020 (pdf)

Michelakis suggests that the switch to glycolysis as an energy source occurs when cells in the middle of an abnormal but benign lump don't get enough oxygen for their mitochondria to work properly (see Diagram). In order to survive, they switch off their mitochondria and start producing energy through glycolysis.

Crucially, though, mitochondria do another job in cells: they activate apoptosis, the process by which abnormal cells self-destruct. When cells switch mitochondria off, they become "immortal", outliving other cells in the tumour and so becoming dominant. Once reawakened by DCA, mitochondria reactivate apoptosis and order the abnormal cells to die.

“Once reawakened by DCA, mitochondria order the abnormal cancer cells in a tumour to die”

"The results are intriguing because they point to a critical role that mitochondria play: they impart a unique trait to cancer cells that can be exploited for cancer therapy," says Dario Altieri, director of the University of Massachusetts Cancer Center in Worcester.

The phenomenon might also explain how secondary cancers form. Glycolysis generates lactic acid, which can break down the collagen matrix holding cells together. This means abnormal cells can be released and float to other parts of the body, where they seed new tumours.

DCA can cause pain, numbness and gait disturbances in some patients, but this may be a price worth paying if it turns out to be effective against all cancers. The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can't make money on unpatented medicines. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap.

Paul Clarke, a cancer cell biologist at the University of Dundee in the UK, says the findings challenge the current assumption that mutations, not metabolism, spark off cancers. "The question is: which comes first?" he says.

From issue 2587 of New Scientist magazine, 20 January 2007, page 13

More...

• Newsweek 23rd January 2007
  
• The Economist January 2007
• University of Alabama News
• Global Edmonton News video