News in perspective

Upfront–

stages of the eradication scheme

were handed over to local health

authorities and – in the absence

of dedicated teams – the disease

rebounded, with half a million

new cases diagnosed in south-east

Asia and west Africa since then.

Now the WHO wants it gone

from Asia by 2012, and is

considering a revival of its 1950s-

style worldwide eradication plan.

Coincidentally, the WHO’s polio

programme is also facing scrutiny,

as it too approaches eradication

of the disease. Later this month,

experts will decide whether

to maintain the polio-specific

eradication drive, or switch to a

more generalised approach.

COLDPLAY, already renowned for

backing good causes, have joined

the fight against climate change.

Along with fellow band Scissor

Sisters and actor Orlando Bloom,

the musicians are supporting the

Global Cool Foundation, a charity

aiming to boost the value of

carbon credits and thus combat

global warming.

Launched on 30 January

in London and Los Angeles,

the foundation aims to buy up

carbon credits and hold onto

THE Golden State is finding

new ways to shine. Last week,

California regulators banned the

three largest utility companies

from buying “dirty” power,

potentially boosting Governor

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plans

for curbing the state’s impact on

global warming.

Under the new rule, privately

owned utilities cannot renew

or enter into long-term

contracts with highly polluting

coal-burning power plants.

While California has very few of

these dirty plants, about 20 per

cent of the state’s power comes

from coal-burning sources in

other areas of the western US.

“It’s the leakage effect,” says

Terry Tamminen, a policy advisor

to Governor Schwarzenegger and

former secretary of the California

Environmental Protection

Agency. “We can set strict

emissions caps in California, but

if we are the reason greenhouse

gases are emitted elsewhere, then

we haven’t achieved savings.”

The regulations come in

the wake of two bills signed by

the governor last September,

calling for drastic reductions in

the state’s overall emissions.

But while power generation

is a significant source of CO2,

it pales in comparison with the

transportation sector, which

produces half the state’s output

of greenhouse gases. California

hopes to tackle that by forcing car

manufacturers to cut emissions

in all new models from 2009.

“The answer to solving climate

change is going to be many little

actions which collectively make

a difference,” says Tamminen.

YOU’VE probably never heard of

it, but yaws – a crippling disease

that largely disappeared with the

arrival of antibiotics – is making

a comeback. Spread by casual

contact, the chronic skin condition

is caused by a bacterium similar

to that behind syphilis. It begins as

pustules and progresses to gross

bone deformities. It can be cured

with a long-acting penicillin shot.

Between 1950 and 1970,

a World Health Organization-led

programme treated 50 million

people in 46 countries, cutting

yaws cases by 95 per cent.

However, in the 1970s, the final

Lighter skin leads to heavier pay packets,

according to a survey of US immigrants.

Joni Hersch, who researches law and

economics at Vanderbilt University in

Nashville, Tennessee, analysed a 2003

US government survey of just over 2000

recent immigrants whose skin tones

were rated on an 11-point scale during

face-to-face interviews.

After taking into account differences

in English-language fluency, education

and occupation, she found that

immigrants with the lightest skin earned

an average of 8 to 15 per cent more than

those with much darker skin. Each extra

point of lightness on the scale was

roughly equivalent to one extra year of

education in terms of salary increase.

“There are well-known differences

in salary based on race and country of

THE MONEY OF COLOURorigin, but I was surprised that, even

after accounting for these, skin colour

still had an independent effect,” says

Hersch. The findings could support the

growing number of lawsuits brought

on the grounds of colour, rather than

racial, discrimination, she says.

At present such cases rarely succeed.

Hersch also checked for correlations

between salary and height. “There’s

a common saying that all US presidents

are tall, and immigrants tend to be

shorter on average than Americans,”

she explains. She found that taller

immigrants indeed earn more, with

1 per cent more income for every extra

inch of height. Hersch will present her

research at the American Association for

the Advancement of Science conference

in San Francisco on 19 February.

–”I’d like to buy some cool, please”–

LUCY

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“At the moment 20 per cent of the state’s power comes from coal-burning elsewhere”

–Sorry, they’re looking for a tall white guy–

California clean-up Yaws – the return

Give carbon credit

6 | NewScientist | 3 February 2007 www.newscientist.com

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Unleash the wolves

Never mind letting the dogs out, let the

wolves out. That’s the conclusion of

British and Norwegian scientists who

have modelled the reintroduction of

grey wolves to the Scottish Highlands.

The predators would benefit local

conservation, the economy and, if the

reintroduction boosted reforestation

efforts, increase bird biodiversity.

Boys beware of moisturiser

Natural lavender and tea tree oils in

moisturiser caused breast tissue to grow

in three pre-pubertal boys, a study has

found. Lab tests on breast cells show

the oils activate the “female” oestrogen

receptor and suppress male hormones.

The researchers warn consumers to be

vigilant (The New England Journal of

Medicine, vol 356, p 479).

TB lockdown

A Canadian court has ruled that a

patient with extensively drug-resistant

tuberculosis (XDR-TB) should be

kept confined to hospital for a year.

The patient has a history of quitting

treatment, behaviour that encourages

antibiotic-resistant bacteria to emerge,

and it is feared the disease may

become untreatable. Doctors in South

Africa, where XDR-TB is spreading fast,

have called for similar measures

(New Scientist, 27 January, p 4).

Gaddafi reprieve

Colonel Gaddafi’s son says Libya will

not execute five Bulgarian nurses

and a Palestinian doctor convicted of

deliberately infecting hundreds of

children with HIV. Saif al-Islam told the

Bulgarian newspaper 24 Chasa that

both he and his father are against the

executions and that a solution would

soon be found to save the six.

Hobbits are humans too

The diminutive skull found in Indonesia

in 2003 is indeed that of a distinct

human species, Homo floresiensis,

according to the latest in the ding-

dong battle over its provenance. Scans

show the skull is not microcephalic, say

researchers at Florida State University.

them, making them more

scarce and boosting their value.

Members of the public

can “buy a tonne of cool” by

purchasing a carbon-tonne credit

at £20 – well above carbon’s

current market price of just over

£2 per tonne. The profits would

go to alternative energy firms,

green charities and staging

concerts to raise more money.

The idea won praise from the

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change

Research in Norwich, UK. “Credits

are hopelessly underpriced, and

there’s too much credit being

given out,” said a spokesman. “To

accelerate low-carbon technology,

you optimally need credits to cost

$100 to $150 per tonne.”

BLOGS are not normally important

enough to make the news.

But when they are by physicists

hunting for the Higgs boson,

the most sought-after particle

in physics, they get noticed.

Physicist Tomasso Dorigo

blogged first, noting a “bump” –

a seeming excess of some

unknown particle at a certain

mass – seen by the CDF

experiment at the Tevatron

collider in Batavia, Illinois. The

160-gigaelectronvolt bump was

close to where a Higgs could be,

according to a theory known as

the minimal supersymmetric

model. Dorigo waved it away as an

aberration. So did the second

blogger, physicist John Conway, in

a tantalising tale of the same bump.

And the mystery is deepening.

Did another Tevatron experiment

called Dzero see a bump at 160 GeV

six months ago, asked Dorigo. He

then hinted at something similar

in a further set of CDF data, whose

analysis is yet to be completed.

Watch this space. The Higgs

could just become the first great

scientific discovery to be made

public in the blogosphere.

SUPPRESSING science that

doesn’t toe the White House

line is standard procedure at

US federal agencies.

Last year two workers at NASA

and the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration

accused PR officers of muzzling

climate scientists (New Scientist,

25 February 2006, p 7). Now two

non-profit groups based in

Washington DC have investigated

seven government agencies to

see how pervasive the practice is.

The Union of Concerned

Scientists and the Government

Accountability Project surveyed

almost 300 scientists, carried out

40 interviews and searched

thousands of the agencies’ internal

documents. Over 40 per cent of

survey respondents reported

pressure to eliminate sensitive

words like “climate change” from

reports and edit climate-related

work to change its meaning.

Congress may now pressure

the agencies to stop suppressing

or misrepresenting science, by

forcing their heads to testify to

inquiries and drafting legislation

to protect scientists’ views.

“40 per cent of scientists reported pressure to eliminate words like ‘climate change’”

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has once

again closed its amazing eye. This time,

though, it may never open fully again.

On 27 January, an electrical

short in the electronics of Hubble’s

main camera, the Advanced Camera

for Surveys, prompted it to go into

protective “safe” mode. “Obviously,

we’re very disappointed by this latest

event because of the popularity of ACS

with astronomers,” says Preston Burch

of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The ACS was operating on backup

power after its primary power had

problems in June 2006. Now that the

backup has failed, NASA will switch

the ACS back to partial primary power,

but the camera may never regain full

use of two of its three main camera-like

channels – the wide-field channel

(WFC) and the high-resolution channel.

The electronics that powers these

channels is crippled. “We are not

optimistic at all that those will be

restored,” says Hubble’s project scientist,

David Leckrone. The WFC is best known

for its Ultra Deep Field survey of galaxies

going back to 700 million years after

the big bang, our deepest look yet

into the history of the universe.

NASA is unlikely to fix or replace the

ACS on a final space shuttle mission to

Hubble in September 2008, as the crew

is already slated to install new batteries

and gyroscopes, replace a fine guidance

sensor and repair a spectrograph.

They will also install two new

instruments – the Cosmic Origins

Spectrograph and Wide Field Camera 3.

HUBBLE’S GLORY DIMS FOR NOW

NA

SA

–Eye wide shut–

Higgs in the blogs

Censors exposed

www.newscientist.com 3 February 2007 | NewScientist | 7

“The Higgs could just become the first great discovery to be made public by blogs”