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17 November 2012 | NewScientist | 5 BEN GURR/THE TIMES CLAIMS that the anti-flu drug Tamiflu doesn’t work have been revived. This time campaigners want European governments to sue Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant that makes Tamiflu, to force it to release detailed data on the drug. The only problem is the claims don’t add up. In 2009, researchers working for the Cochrane Collaboration, an organisation that evaluates medical research, cited studies which they said showed Tamiflu was ineffective during a pandemic, and used these to claim that governments wasted taxpayers’ money by stockpiling the drug. An investigation by New Scientist (see bit.ly/4IUj96) found that the cited studies mainly tested Tamiflu’s effectiveness against seasonal flu, which is not its main use in pandemics. Now the same campaigners have renewed their attack (BMJ, doi.org/jqz), but without adding any new information to support it. “Roche said in 2009 it would make the full study reports available, but it has released only partial reports,” says Peter Doshi, one of the Cochrane team. Flu drug demands RARE events can be cause for celebration. Not so in the case of the transformation of a Bs meson into two muons. Confirmation that this particle decay is as infrequent as predicted is a blow to the hunt for exotic physics. The prediction in question comes from the standard model of particle physics. The theory explains most of the known particles and forces but must be incomplete, as it says nothing about dark matter and gravity. A possible extension is the theory of supersymmetry (SUSY), which encompasses dark matter and predicts that all elementary particles have a heavy, “super” partner. As many SUSY models predict that the Bs (pronounced B-sub-s) meson decays to a pair of muons more frequently than the standard model, measuring the rate of these transformations is one way to test for SUSY. But hopes were dashed on 12 November when Johannes Albrecht of the LHCb experiment, based at CERN in Switzerland, told the Hadron Collider Physics symposium in Kyoto, Japan, that his experiment has amassed enough data to set the muon decay rate at that predicted by the standard model – one in every 300 million times. This doesn’t rule out all versions of SUSY, but it reduces the options for new physics. “It is going to make theorists very hot under the collar,” says Val Gibson, also of LHCb. “Quote to go in here over four lines range left like this Quote to go in her like this xxxxx” LHCB/CERN Fatigue fighter Performing light aerobic exercise during and after treatment for cancer reduces related fatigue. A review of 56 studies involving 4000 people with cancer shows that walking and cycling successfully decreased fatigue while resistance training had no effect (Cochrane Reviews, DOI: 10.1002/14651858. cd006145.pub3). Malaria shot tested Rates of malaria were a third lower in babies aged 6 to 12 weeks vaccinated with RTSS, the world’s most advanced malaria vaccine, than in unvaccinated babies. But results failed to match the halving of cases seen last year in infants aged 5 to 12 months given the vaccine. Breast milk may interfere with the vaccine’s effectiveness, say the researchers (NEJM, doi.org/jqv). From legs to silk The leggiest animal in the world also makes silk in an unusual way. The Californian millipede Illacme plenipes, rediscovered in 2005 after being thought extinct, has up to 750 legs despite being just 3 centimetres long. It spins silk from hairs on its back (ZooKeys, DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.241.3831). Coffee under threat Even your morning coffee isn’t safe from climate change. Wild Arabica coffee could lose 65 per cent of its habitat by 2080 thanks to global warming (PLoS One, doi.org/jqx). Coffee is a major contributor to several African economies, including Ethiopia. Amateur eye on the sky The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is recruiting amateur astronomers to help track potentially dangerous space junk under its new initiative, SpaceView. The agency plans to buy time on existing telescopes or provide new equipment to amateurs in exchange for them keeping an eye on the sky. –Tracks of SUSY’s tears– Blow for SUSY Science cliff looms “Roche said it would make the full study available, but it has released only partial reports” “The rarity of this particle transformation is going to make theorists very hot under the collar” AS THE dust settles on the US presidential election (see pages 6 and 10), a train wreck looms for science and the wider economy. Savage cuts in federal budgets, known as the “fiscal cliff”, will kick in automatically if Congress can’t reach a deal by the end of the year to reduce the deficit. With social security and government health programmes shielded, science budgets would be among those bearing the brunt. “It’s imperative to avoid the fiscal cliff, which would be devastating,” says Mary Woolley of Research!America. If the cliff is avoided, there are small signs that science may get a better hearing from US politicians in future. Several people known for their unscientific views did poorly at the polls, including four Republicans who deny the existence of climate change, who were ousted from the House of Representatives. 60 SECONDS –Under threat– For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
