Day: 12 March 2012

The candidates who may be running in the upcoming US presidential elections:

The American Presidential election this year will decide whether Democrat and current president, Barack Obama, stays in office, or a Republican candidate becomes the new head of state of the USA. The Republican candidates are currently voting on who shall be their nominee for the Presidential race. The candidates are Mitt Romney, who is currently in the lead, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Newt Gringrich.

The main differences between the two parties are that the Republicans favour a free market approach with deregulation, whereas Democrats favour more government control on key issues. With environmental issues and stem cell research becoming more publicised the candidates’ scientific policies could hold more sway in who gets elected than in previous elections.

Energy consumption and the environment are important issues in any politician’s campaign. This is especially true in America which houses around 5 percent of the world’s population, yet contributes approximately 20 percent of the world’s pollution.

Barack Obama emphasises implementing and researching alternative energy sources to decrease the dependence on fossil fuels and the levels of carbon pollution the United States has. Obama introduced the first off shore wind farm in America, consisting of 130 wind turbines. He also has tightened regulation on offshore oil drilling sites. Such as the one owned by BP, in the Gulf of Mexico in 2011, that caused a large amount of oil to pollute the surrounding waters.

Mitt Romney says he will make every effort to safeguard the environment but not if it causes a loss of jobs for American workers. For example he disagrees with the Kyoto Protocol as he believes it will cause job losses in America. Romney pledges to deregulate much of what Obama has done these last 4 years. Among these regulation changes he would exclude carbon dioxide pollution from the Clean Air Act. Romney wants to increase the energy production of the US by increasing the amount of nuclear power plants. He also approves the construction of a new oil pipeline, Keystone XL, from Canada which Obama refused.

Romney has been accused of flip flopping on the issue of the environment and climate change and subjecting his will to big companies. Once saying that he thought global warming was caused by humans then later that he believed we do not know what causes climate change and investing trillions of dollars into reduce CO2 emissions would be a waste.

Ron Paul believes that climate change is not happening, with Paul saying that “the greatest hoax… has been this hoax on the environment and global warming”. Gringrich and Santorum question the science behind climate change and dispute that it is man-made. They believe the way to independence is a free market with little or no government intervention. They also have similar views on how to achieve energy independence.

Stem cell research is a controversial issue in America, similar to that of abortion. Obama revised previous executive orders to allow federal funds to be used for embryonic stem cell research, as well as the restriction of research limits to the number of stem cell cultures at one time. This was challenged by pro-life groups but Obama successfully defended his case.

The Republican candidates, usually pro-life supporters, are fairly united on the topic of stem cell research. Romney and Paul support stem cells but disagree with any federal involvement in the matter including the use of government funds for research. Instead, they support a free market approach to all research similar to that of environmental and energy research. Gringrich and Santorum are against the use of embryonic stem cell research; however agree that adult stem cell research can be useful. They also support a free market approach to the financing of research.

The hardship of famine wrought by climate change may have a neglected saviour in the Cassava crop, which flourishes where other plants wilt. Drought, heat and overall desperate growing conditions in Africa are set to worsen with climate change, exasperating food shortages and famine. However a recent report has proposed an unlikely rescuer in the form of the Cassava crop which boasts remarkable traits of resilience.

The Cassava plant is consumed by 500 million people daily; a critical staple food and second only to maize as the most important source of carbohydrate on the continent. A recent report analysing the performance of the crop has outlined an expected increase in reliance as the effects of climate change become more domineering.  The root crop outperformed potatoes, maize, beans, bananas, millet and sorghum in tests, an auspicious comparison which “will leave Cassava in a class of its own”, the study said.

Africa’s dependence on the crop is set to surge as the plant’s ability to flourish in difficult growing conditions makes it a vital  “fallback when other crops are failing” according to Andy Javis, the report’s lead author.

The Cassava grows in poor soil and only requires little water; pitted against these six other staple crops in sub-Saharan Africa, the Cassava surpassed all competitors and didn’t suffer from the effects of heat or other usually problematic conditions attributed to climate change. The report found the plant to “shut down” during drought and be even more productive in higher temperatures.

“Cassava is a survivor; it’s like the Rambo of the food crops,” commented climate scientist Andy Jarvis. “It deals with almost anything the climate throws at it. It thrives in high temperatures, and if drought hits it simply shuts down until the rains come again. There’s no other staple out there with this level of toughness.”

Although the Cassava flourishes where most plants only find hardship, its Achilles heel is a vulnerability to pests and disease. Last November, UN scientists warned of a virus reaching an epidemic scale, which has wiped out Cassava crop in certain regions, leading to famine. So the need for more research to make the Cassava crop more resistant to disease has been stressed.

“We have very few good stories where we see crops doing equal or better under climate change and finally we’ve found one with cassava” commented Andy Jarvis. With the ill effects of climate change worsening, preventing famine in places of vulnerability will certainly be high up on the world’s agenda.

Men and women alike can breathe a sigh of relief as the rumours that males could become extinct within five million years may have been grossly exaggerated.

Previous research had suggested that within five million years, the Y chromosome, which only men carry, would be extinct according to the current rate at which genes are disappearing from the chromosome.

In mammals’ early history the X and Y chromosomes were thought to be identical. Yet the Y chromosome only has 78 genes, compared to the 800 for the X. Furthermore the male chromosome only boasts 3% of the genes it had 200-300 million years ago when it was thought to have first split and evolved separately from the X chromosome.

To find the truth behind the rumours, US researchers have sought to characterise the rate of decline by comparing the human Y chromosome with that of our primate cousins. These comparative studies involved sequencing the Y chromosome of the chimpanzee, which diverged in ancestry from humans 6 million years ago, and the rhesus monkey which is further back in human’s evolutionary branch, separating 25 million years ago.

Human cells contain 23 pairs of chromosomes, with two of these being sex chromosomes: XX for women and XY for men. The Y chromosome triggers male hormones to be released in the embryo and the reason for the alarm over its apparent decline was the process by which chromosomes divide and recombine.

Genetic deterioration, mutations and deletions of genes contained, is far more prevalent in the male chromosome because very little genetic content is swapped between chromosomes. Whilst the female XX pair exchange genetic information, decay is compounded as mistakes are preserved from one male generation to the next.

The exchange of genetic information in the process of recombination allows genetic mistakes to be repaired and information to be mixed. However, the Y chromosome does not have a matched pair to recombine with as it is paired with the X chromosome. Hence when other cells are dividing, the Y chromosome is part of no recombining pair as there are never two in a cell.

Dr Jennifer Hughes, from the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts who conducted the study with colleagues explained: “The X is fine because in females it gets to recombine with the other X but the Y never gets to recombine over almost its entire length, and shutting down that recombination has left the Y vulnerable to all these degenerative forces, which is why we’re left with the Y we have today.”

However grim the prospects seemed for the world of men, the study found the demise to be greatly exaggerated as the male chromosome had lost no genes in the past 6 million years and only one in the last 25 million years.

Nature’s ‘survival of the fittest’ mechanism has been suggested to explain the reassuring exponential decay of the Y chromosome, as the rate of decline has dramatically slowed to an encouraging ceasefire for the male species. The stability of the gene loss in the chromosome can be attributed to the crucial importance of the genes which remain; any further loss might prevent survival of the organism, something not counter to natural selection. The omnipresent natural selection favours the strongest to pass on their genes, and so overly degraded Y chromosomes are simply confined to rejection and redundancy.

Dr Hughes commented: “It’s a very nice piece of work, showing that gene loss in the male-specific region of the Y chromosome proceeds rapidly at first – exponentially in fact – but then reaches a point at which purifying selection brings this process to a halt.”

So whilst climate change, energy scarcities and the threat of nuclear war all foreshadow the world’s apocalypse, we can be reassured that both women and men will be there together to see it end.

Recent research has found that mobile networks may be losing £8.8bn to social networking applications. Popular messaging apps such as Whatsapp and Blackberry Messenger could be proving very costly to networks.

Ovum, the organisation which conducted the research, monitored how smartphone users used their messaging apps, which also included Facebook Chat. As well as common apps used in the UK, they also studied popular messaging apps from other countries, like MXit, used in South Africa.

Ovum suggested networks work together to counter the threat from internet-based communications. Experts also believe the way networks charge their customers can protect them from potential losses.

Social networking apps use internet connections rather than the more traditional text messaging system which is more expensive. The apps, however, are not free to use. They use mobile data which can cost users money, and therefore provides additional income for networks.

The research suggested networks work with app developers by providing them with information about app users. Mobile networks which sell the handsets can control which apps are loaded onto the handsets before sale.

Another research group, Enders, believe this isn’t the full picture. They claim people use these apps to avoid texting people on international networks, rather than sending an email. Users wouldn’t have spent money on communication regardless of their method of choice.

Some research suggests only 4% of users send messages using Whatsapp in a given month whilst a YouGov poll found that 81% of mobile users still believed text messages were the main method to use for messaging contacts.

James Barford, an analyst for Enders, believes the correct tariffs will keep mobile users and counter the threat from internet-based communications. He added that “People are still using the mobile networks to communicate – and they’re willing to pay for that.”

2012 is fated to feature a spectacle encapsulating the 21st Century as an age of relentless consumer hunger for technology. Mobile devices are predicted to outnumber their human masters by the year’s close. Not an apocalyptic shift of power reminiscent of too many science-fiction scripts, but this startling statistic nevertheless does expose the astounding pace of a consumer appetite which has spread globally.

Between 2012 and 2016 mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual rate of 78 percent, with the Middle East and Africa boasting a 104 percent growth rate. 10 billion mobile devices are estimated to be connected in 2016. This number is frighteningly greater than the UN projected 7.3 billion total global population.

Cisco, a network firm whose core business is in devices for managing internet traffic, published the forecast. They predict that by 2016, networks will transmit a total of 130 exabytes of data each year, equivalent to 33 billion DVDs. Also the average smartphone user’s monthly data use is expected to be 17 times larger in 2016 at 2.6Gbytes, compared to the current 150Mbytes used.

Suraj Shetty, vice-president of products and solutions at Cisco, commented: “By 2016, 60 percent of mobile users – three billion people worldwide – will belong to the Gigabyte Club, each generating more than one gigabyte of mobile data traffic per month”.

One citied reason for such an explosion in data usage is the immense consumer appetite for tablets, now at 34 million devices, which typically generate three times more traffic than their smartphone cousins. Another factor is faster 4G networks, 10 times faster than 3G mobile data network speeds, which have been found to generate 28 percent more traffic than a non-4G connection.

A change in our communication habits is also a major feature of the report; far from the days of transmitting SOS through telegram pulses, Cisco expects that two-thirds of data traffic in 2016 will be from video content, a 25-fold increase from current levels. Hence the wireless industry has repeatedly said it needs additional spectrum to transmit user data to keep up with incessantly mounting demand.

So it is apparent that with mobile technology ever advancing into new areas of communication and geography, the outmoded art of close-proximity communication is soon to become a relic of the past.

The leviathan of UK industry, one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers, BAE Systems, has set upon creating the world’s fastest electric car through using unique technology. This has potential applications from military hardware to motor racing.

The boldly simple and inspired concept of a ‘structural battery’, in which the power source of a device or vehicle is also employed as its body, is being tested in electric cars and unmanned aerial vehicles. The battery material uses carbon fibre and reduces weight through combining the functions of the device body and power source.

According to Stewart Penney of BAE Systems, this technology is more than what immediate comparisons with simply a battery moulded into an unfamiliar shape suggest: “There are number of people that will build a battery shaped like a beam, for example, but fundamentally that is just an odd-shaped battery, it isn’t a structural battery.”

“The beauty of what we’ve got is that, when it’s fully developed, a company will be able to go out and buy what is a standard carbon-composite material, lay out the shape, put it through the curing process and have a structural battery,” he said.

To achieve such an innovative concept, BAE Systems have “merged battery chemistries into composite materials”.

Their initial incentive for such weight reduction was based in their military endeavours, aiming to reduce the burden of electronic equipment carried by soldiers but they have cited wider futuristic applications from tents with their own power supply to more efficient military drones.

As always the critical problem with battery technology is low power density. Per kilogram battery technology provides far less energy than petrol for example, but BAE Systems have issued their intent to create lithium batteries that can store far more power. With such early promising steps into this ubiquitous power source, successful endeavours to address the key issue with all battery technology – weight – will certainly have widespread applications and preeminent benefits.

University of Manchester mathematicians seem to have taken some inspiration from Harry Potter as they published news of an “invisibility cloak” that could protect buildings from earthquakes.

Dr. William Parnell and his team have been researching the possibility of cloaking in order to prevent damage caused by severe vibrations. Dr. Parnell’s research has shown that pressurised rubber could cause a powerful wave to simply wrap around the structure so they simply would not “see” the building.  This may prevent millions of pounds worth of destruction.

Areas of the world where earthquakes are not common could also benefit from this technology; structures such as government buildings, pylons and nuclear power stations could be protected from natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

The damage caused by earthquakes and similar disasters does not just affect a local area. In 2011 the earthquake in Japan, which was a whopping 8.9 magnitude-tremor, did not just devastate the area of North Eastern Tokyo with dozens of business affected and factories destroyed. This had a knock-on effect with businesses that trade with Japan and millions of dollars were lost worldwide.

University of Manchester students studying for a year in a Japanese lab that suffered earthquake damage, lost six months of work with no chance of replacing it.

This cloaking technology is building on a previous six years of research into the theory and possible methods.

Speaking of the success of the research Dr. Parnell said, “Five or six years ago scientists started with light waves, and in the last few years we have started to consider other wave-types, most importantly perhaps sound and elastic waves…We showed theoretically that pre-stressing a naturally available material – rubber – leads to a cloaking effect from a specific type of elastic wave.”

It seems we might not be so far behind science fiction as we though, when it comes to cloaking at least.

New research has shown that stem cells can repair scar tissue caused by a heart attack. Stem cells taken from healthy tissue in the heart were reintroduced into damaged areas and halved the amount of scar tissue present.

The aim of this new study was to determine the safety and feasibility of such a procedure. The dramatic reduction of scar tissue and “unprecedented” growth of healthy heart tissue, have been described by The British Heart Foundation as “potentially great news for heart attack patients”.

Heart attacks are caused by a blockage in the blood vessels feeding the heart, causing the heart muscle itself to be starved of oxygen. The tissue in the effected area then dies and is replaced by scar tissue. This new scar tissue lacks the strength and elasticity of healthy heart tissue and leads to a weakened pumping of the blood around the body, which can sometimes result in total heart failure.

The team of researchers, from Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in California, removed a small amount of healthy heart tissue from the patient. Stem cells were then isolated from this tissue and grown in a laboratory before being reintroduced into the blood vessels surrounding the scar tissue. A year after the treatment the amount of scar tissue present had halved with healthy heart tissue growing in its place.

Most previous research in this area has focused on minimizing the amount of scar tissue forming through preventative techniques, and over a decade of research into regenerative therapy has produced few breakthroughs.

So whilst it is still ‘early days’ for this sort of therapy, the study shows that like in so many other areas of modern medical research, stem cells could be the answer.

Manchester’s ever astounding wonder material graphene has had its future adorned with yet more predictions about it’s revolutionary impact. Touted as the next silicon, graphene has the potential to become the new basis of our modern electronic world. With a Nobel prize-worthy list of unique optical, mechanical, chemical and electronic properties, graphene has been prophesised to supersede the semiconductor silicon, which is currently the basic material for computer chips. This microelectronic application of graphene has attracted the coveted attention of major chip manufacturers including IBM, Samsung and Intel.

Graphene is a flat sheet of carbon, just one atom thick. The breakthrough in isolating the layer from the material graphite earned two University of Manchester researchers, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, the prestigious Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010.

Individual transistors, the fundamental component of electronic devices, have been demonstrated functioning at high frequencies up to 300GHz using graphene designs. However, the current impasse to the alluring prospect of graphene world-dominance is that the material is too conductive and thus these graphene transistors cannot be densely packed since they leak too much current. Even in the most insulating state of graphene, such a leaking current would cause the chip to melt within fractions of a second.

Ever since University of Manchester researchers reported their isolation of graphene, a worldwide effort has been underway to solve this problem of high conductivity, but the global community has yielded no solutions.  So Manchester researchers have proposed a potential solution. The scientists have identified that using the material in a vertical direction, not laterally in a plane, offers a new avenue of exploration.

Dr Leonid Ponomarenko, who spearheaded the experimental effort, said:  “We have proved a conceptually new approach to graphene electronics. Our transistors already work pretty well. I believe they can be improved much further, scaled down to nanometre sizes and work at sub-THz frequencies.”

The scientists implemented a tunnelling diode where the electrons, which make up the current, travelled through graphene and tunnelled through an insulator into another metal. This arrangement yielded a new device, a vertical field-effect tunnelling transistor in which graphene is fundamental to its design.

These transistors were assembled in layers of graphene, nitrogen based planes and sulphur based planes to form a layer-cake superstructure on the atomic scale, which is not found elsewhere in nature.

Professor Geim noted that “the demonstrated transistor is important but the concept of atomic layer assembly is probably even more important” and so the seemingly inexhaustible potential of graphene continues to advance into tantalising provinces of scientific application.

A recent study has shown that those of us who have a large number of friends, have a larger orbital prefrontal cortex than those of us who lack friends. The research was carried out as part of the ‘Lucy to Language’ project, which was funded by the British Academy and led by Professor Robin Dunbar of the University of Oxford.

The study suggests that to maintain a number of friends we must employ a set of cognitive skills. These skills are described by social scientists as ‘mentalising’ or ‘mind reading’. This ‘mentalising’ skill is seen as the capacity to understand what another person is thinking and it is incredibly crucial to our ability to handle our complex social world, including the ability to hold down conversations with one another.

Anatomical MRI images were taken of the brains of 40 volunteers to measure the size of their prefrontal cortex (the region of high-level thinking). They were asked to write a list of everyone that they had been in social contact with over the previous seven days. They then took a test to determine their competency in mentalising. It was found that the individuals who had more friends, did better on the mentalising tasks and had more neural volume in their orbital prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the forebrain found just above the eyes.

This research is particularly important because it provides the strongest support to date for the social brain hypothesis. This hypothesis is the idea that human brains evolved to accommodate the social demands of living in a big group. Professor Dunbar commented that “understanding the link between an individual’s brain size and the number of friends that they have has helped then to understand the mechanisms that have led to humans developing bigger brains than any other primate species”.

Demonstrations taking place across Europe are protesting against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta). Thousands of people protested in Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and several cities in the UK.

It has been signed by 22 of the 27 EU member states, including the UK, but is yet to be ratified by the European Parliament.

The Open Rights Group, a group opposing Acta, claimed that the treaty was negotiated in secret and the fact that three states are now hesitating in signing Acta shows they are rethinking the hasty, secret negotiations. It also believes implementing Acta will result in censorship of the Internet. A statement released by the German government said it was to discuss the treaty in more detail. The demonstrations occurred over the belief that the treaty would limit freedom of speech over the web.

Other organisations are also against the treaty. The Economist, Amnesty International, Médicins Sans Frontières and Anonymous, a hacker group, are all openly against Acta. Anonymous has been responsible for bringing down several websites, including that of the CIA.

The UK government maintains that signing the treaty was the responsibility of the country to “set an international standard” in fighting copyright infringements. A statement released by the Parliamentary under secretary for Business, Innovation and Skills said the government pushed for transparency to help the general public understand Acta.

Parallels have been drawn between Acta and SOPA, the agreement that caused several websites to create a blackout for 24 hours in January. It was thought that SOPA would violate many freedoms currently enjoyed by web users and would affect websites such as Wikipedia. Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation released a statement on the popular encyclopedia site stating: “We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States, don’t advance the interests of the general public”.

As one of the most widely publicised areas of modern science, stem cells are commonly regarded as the future of medicine. However, they aren’t without their drawbacks. Embryonic stem cells are shrouded in ethical concern and the process of modifying other kinds of stem cells can run the risk of causing cancer.

More recent research has brought hope to solving such problems. Scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine in California have developed a method that converts skin cells directly into brain cells, without the need for stem cells at all, effectively cutting out the middleman.

In the laboratory skin cells were treated with a virus, which was modified to ‘infect’ them with agents that function to convert the skin cells into precursors to brain cells. These cells can specialise into the three types of brain cell: neurons, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. After laboratory research was carried out, the converted cells were injected into the brains of mice. These mice were bred to lack the protein myelin, which is important in aiding the transmission of messages in the brain. 10 weeks later, the precursor cells had specialised into oligodendrocytes, which made the myelin that the mice lacked. This showed the scientists that the cells they had made could function in animals, which is a crucial step in the development of such treatments.

The direct conversion of one cell type to another has many practical advantages over stem cells. These precursor cells can be grown in large numbers and have a longer ‘shelf life’ than stem cells, which is vital if they were to be used in therapy. Although this research has lots of potential in human cell-based therapies, more studies are being carried out to assay the safety and long-term success of such therapy.

How zebras got their stripes is normally the stuff of myths but scientists think they may have found the real reason these animals evolved their patterns.

Biologists from Hungary and Sweden believe the stripes help prevent attacks from blood sucking flies. They think the narrow striped pattern reflects the light in such a way to make the animals unattractive to the vampire-like pests.

First looking at horses with dark coloured coats, they found the light was reflected in such a way that it created planes of horizontal light, attracting the flies. Horses with white coats however, reflected light in many different planes of light, making them seem not quite as tasty to the bloodsuckers.

To test how a zebra’s striped pattern attracted flies, scientists used white boards, blackboards and striped boards covered with insect glue and tested how flies reacted when these boards were left in a field. The striped board was found to attract even fewer flies than the white board. They found the narrower the stripes; the more unattractive the boards were to flies. Narrow stripes most closely resemble the actual zebra pattern seen in nature.

The experiment was repeated with life-sized horse shaped models in the field and found the same results.

University of Manchester evolutionary biologist, Prof. Matthew Cobb, said this experiment could not exclude other explanations for zebras having stripes so perhaps it isn’t time to sacrifice the myths just yet.

The existence of an atmospheric molecule proposed over 60 years ago has finally been detected, and the potentially revolutionary effect on off-setting climate change that this short lived, rapidly reacting molecule can have, has been observed. The molecules are known as Criegee Biradicals and were studied by scientists from The University of Manchester, The University of Bristol and Sandia National Laboratories (USA). Criegee Biradicals are chemical intermediates, a chemical substance produced during the conversion of some reactant to a product, formed by a reaction in the atmosphere between ozone (O3) and alkenes (chemical compounds which are mostly released by plants).

These molecules can have a profound cooling effect by naturally cleaning up certain pollutants, through acting as powerful oxidisers of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide.

Dr Carl Percival, a researcher in Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of Manchester is one of the authors of this paper. He heralded the significance of this discovery: “Our results will have a significant impact on our understanding of the oxidising capacity of the atmosphere and have wide ranging implications for pollution and climate change.”

The molecule was first hypothesised by Rudolf Criegee, a German Chemist, in 1950, but scientists were not able to detect them until very recently as these molecules are very short lived and hard to study in laboratories. Unique apparatus designed by Sandia researchers allowed the Biradicals to be created in a laboratory and then reacted with atmospheric compounds as the team used facilities at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Advanced Light Source in the USA. Dr. Percival commented on the seminal experimentation: “Criegee radicals have been impossible to measure until this work carried out at the Advanced Light Source. We have been able to quantify how fast Criegee radicals react for the first time.”

As well as finally detecting the hypothesised particle, researchers found that the Biradicals react far more rapidly than initially proposed. Through accelerating the formation of compounds of sulphur and nitrogen in the atmosphere, compounds which lead to aerosols and thus cloud formation, Criegee Biradicals may be used to cool the earth. Accelerated cloud formation would shade the earth from the sun and increase the atmosphere’s reflectivity.

The impact of this discovery is far from being fully realised. Any geoengineering projects to inject these Biradicals into the complex system of the atmosphere are far too laden with potentially disastrous repercussions to be considered now. Instead Dr. Percival emphasised that “the most important message here is that we need to protect the ecosystems we have left” which produce these molecules naturally. With such promising and multi-faceted approaches to off-setting climate change such as this, future breakthroughs appear an irrefutable likelihood, so long as current damage to the global ecosystem does not destroy scientific opportunities before their fruition.

We all know that genes determine who we are, where we come from and whether we’re prone to certain diseases, but now it seems they may also be used to predict our athletic ability. Recent research suggests that genetics may significantly influence top athletes’ chances of securing an Olympic gold medal in London 2012 this summer.

Studies have shown strong links between elite athletic ability and variants of the gene ACTN3, which produces the muscle protein ‘alpha-actinin-3’. Different types of actinin are known to coordinate contraction in skeletal muscle fibres, however alpha-actinin-3 is only expressed in fast-twitch fibres, and specifically produces powerful forces at high speed. The presence of certain ACTN3 variants in elite sprinters suggests that alpha-actinin-3 has an important role to play in high speed athletic performance, and may be a major factor in determining whether individuals are better suited to speed or endurance events.

Individuals with either one or two of the R type ACTN3 gene (similar to X or Y chromosomes) produce alpha-actinin-3, showing enhanced performance in high speed and power events. On the other hand, those possessing two copies of the X allele do not produce the protein, and have better capabilities in endurance sports.

Alpha-actinin-3 deficiency (the ‘XX’ form of ACTN3) is commonly seen in a wide variety of healthy people; approximately 25% of the Asian population, and 18% of Europeans show complete absence of the protein, compared to <1% in African Bantu speaking regions. These figures show that the function of the ACTN3 gene is evolutionarily redundant, though researchers from the University of Sydney, Australia suggest that producing alpha-actinin-3 confers a specialist selective advantage in certain environments. This reflects how alpha-actinin-3 may have enabled our ancestors to flee from predators or catch prey, however the necessity for this protein has now been eradicated in an evolutionary trade-off between speed and endurance.

In December 2011, Exercise and Sport Scientist Dr. Alun Williams from Manchester Metropolitan University, and collaborators published research showing that the ACTN3 R variant was significantly more prevalent in elite sprint skaters, whereas those possessing the X variant preferred long-distance skating events. In the past 10 years, increasing evidence from other universities around the world have also linked different variants of ACTN3 to enhanced abilities in either speed or endurance events such as football, swimming, sprint and marathon.

Interestingly, parents now have the opportunity to utilise genetic screening to determine whether their children have higher potential in either speed or endurance sports. This knowledge can be applied to nurture infant’s abilities in specific physical disciplines. Since 2008, the Atlas Sports Genetics company from Boulder, Colorado have been cashing in on the knowledge that ACTN3 variants can potentially be used to determine whether speed or endurance sports would be best suited to certain individuals. For only $149, DNA taken from a saliva sample can be used to determine whether people are best suited to one or the other.

Although it seems ACTN3 has a large part to play in determining our potential athletic ability, other genes such as that encoding angiotensin-converting enzyme, are also thought to contribute to physical fitness and performance. The challenge for scientists is now to unravel the complex interactions of these various genetic systems. What remains clear is that possessing such genetic advantages only predispose an individual to athletic success. The correct environmental stimuli such as intensive training and sensible dieting are still required to reach the potential held within our genes. Some of us may be born to be athletes, but the road to success is still as long and arduous as it ever was.

Distilling alcohol using graphene seems to be the latest use for Manchester’s ‘wonder material’. Graphene seems to have hardly strayed from news headlines since its discovery won the Nobel Prize for University of Manchester physicists in 2010.

By changing the chemical properties of graphene slightly, an international collaboration of researchers have created a membrane which allows water through but prevented some gases and liquids. These thin films, made of several layers of graphene oxide, were used to seal a metal box. Sensitive detection equipment revealed no leakage of gases from the box, even helium which is difficult to contain.

When the experiment was repeated with water sealed into the box, it was found that water molecules passed through unhindered. This is because there is a small gap between the layers of graphene oxide which is just big enough for water molecules.

Other types of molecules failed to imitate water water’s unimpeded passage. Instead, they were blocked by the water molecules or the structure within the graphene changed shape, preventing them from passing through.

For a joke, the researchers sealed a bottle of vodka in the box and found it got stronger over time. None of the researchers wished to drink the vodka, however. We, at The Mancunion are not sure if the vodka is available to be sampled.

Graphene is a material made of carbon atoms in a honeycomb structure. It is a sheet, just one atom thick which has already proved to have the potential for many uses. It conducts electricity as well as copper and transfers heat more effectively than any material currently in existence.

Like any new scientific discovery, the safety of graphene in food products has not yet been ascertained. Until this is known, we’ll have to stick to the vodka distilled using more traditional methods with the more traditional health risks associated with drinking it.

To compete on the world’s biggest stage, athletes must be made of something special- unique attributes needed to break the distances and times of heroes past: nerves of steel, a determination set in stone and for Oscar Pistorius, legs of carbon-fibre. The South African athlete, known as Blade Runner, is a bilateral amputee set to potentially make history as the first amputee athlete ever to run at the able-bodied Olympic Games. After dominating the Beijing 2008 Paralympics, “the fastest man on no legs” won an appeal for eligibility to run at the London 2012 Olympics. Now Pistorius has his eyes set on a place in the South African 400m able-bodied team.

The Flex-Foot Cheetah, on which Pistorius has broken his own world record some 30 times, is a carbon composite prosthetic foot designed by the orthopaedics company Össur for primarily sporting activities, worn by almost 80% of Paralympic amputee athletes. The foot is passive, and is allowed to be worn by Paralympians because it neither bionic, as it employs no elements of artificial intelligence, nor motorised.

The shape and material have been meticulously designed to replicate the stance and swing phases of an able-bodied runner. On impact the prosthetic J-shaped blade is compressed, with the carbon fibre material absorbing energy and shock as a runner’s ankle, knee, hip and lower back would. As the J-curve returns to its original shape, 92% of the stored energy is released to propel the user forward, just fractions less than the elastic energy returned by biological tendons which have spent millions of years in the evolutionary design shed.

The story of this double-amputee competing on the track at the London 2012 Olympics is as controversial as it is inspiring; with many in the athletics community arguing the Flex-Foot Cheetahs give the athlete an unfair advantage over the other competitors on the track. In 2008 the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) claimed that Pistorius had an unfair advantage over able-bodied runners. The IAAF report claimed that his blades required him to consume 25% less metabolic energy to achieve the same speeds as able-bodied runners. But five months later, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) concluded that the evidence from the IAAF study was inconclusive, with Pistorius himself arguing that he was at a disadvantage with less blood in his body and no calf muscles.

Even with the contentious blessings of the CAS and the words of welcome from the Chair of the London 2012 Organising Committee Lord Coe, ranked at 17th in the world, a medal seems unlikely for Pistorius. However, if he does qualify for the South African team, his appearance at London 2012 will surely mark a new era in the Olympic Games, with technology at the forefront.