Travelling faster than light, a vaccine for acne and missing planets

Tim’s blog

This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about travelling faster than light; ancient proteins; a vaccine for acne; missing planets; and more…

Humans colonised Asia in two waves—It now looks like early humans colonised Asia in two waves. The two migrations have left their mark in the genes of native people in southeast Asia, Polynesia and Australia. Information on the first Australians came from a tuft of hair collected from an Aboriginal in Western Australia 100 years ago.—Science + American Journal of Human Genetics

A New Scientist  story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20954-humans-colonised-asia-in-two-waves.html

Particles break the light barrier—An Italian experiment has unveiled evidence that the fundamental particles known as neutrinos can travel faster than light. If their finding stands up, it would overturn one of the basic rules of physics.—arxiv.org

A Nature story on this topic can be found at http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110922/full/news.2011.554.html

Resurrected ancient protein is a potent antibioticAustralian biologists have resurrected a mammalian antimicrobial compound last seen on Earth 59 million years ago. And it’s potent enough to destroy some of our most troublesome multiply resistant pathogens.—PLoS ONE

A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128314.800-resurrected-ancient-protein-is-a-potent-antibiotic.html

Want fatter cows? Bring in a zebra—Convinced that other herbivores will compete with their herd for food, Kenyan graziers, like their counterparts elsewhere, keep their cattle separate from wildlife. But a new study by Kenyan ecologists suggests their thinking might be wrong. Wildlife, in this case zebras, can help a farm thrive.—Science

A Science story on this topic can be found at http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/want-fatter-cows-bring-in-a-zebr.html?ref=hp

Fruit beats vitamin supplementsMice absorb about five times as much vitamin C from kiwi fruit than from purified supplements, New Zealand nutritionists have found. The finding calls into question the value of the huge food supplement industry, as well as the validity of some past research.—American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

A story on this topic can be found in the September, 2011 edition of Australasian Science.

Under development: a vaccine for acne—Science has another of humanity’s scourges in its sights: acne. The world’s biggest vaccine company, Sanofi-Pasteur has signed a contract with the University of California, San Diego to develop “an immunological approach to acne prevention and treatment”.—New Scientist

A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20958-in-development-a-vaccine-for-acne.html

Nitrogen pollution disrupts Asian Pacific—Nitrate levels in the waters off China, Japan and the Korean Peninsula are soaring. And Korean and US researchers warn that this could severely affect marine ecology, leading to algal blooms and dead zones with low oxygen levels.—Science

A Nature story on this topic can be found at http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110922/full/news.2011.552.html

Missing planet explains the structure of the solar systemOur planetary system once had five giant gaseous planets rather than four. That’s the conclusion from a computer simulation, which suggests the fifth planet was turfed out into interstellar space about four billion years ago, after a violent confrontation with Jupiter.—arxiv.org

A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20952-missing-planet-explains-solar-systems-structure.html

Double whammy gene therapy clears HIV from body—A person with HIV has remained free of the virus for three months without taking antiretroviral drugs, thanks to a new American gene therapy. The success raises the prospect of keeping HIV in check permanently without drugs.—New Scientist

A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20948-double-whammy-gene-therapy-clears-hiv-from-body.html

Melbourne research counters deadly childhood disease—Every year, more than a million children under the age of five die as a result of diarrhoea, about 40 per cent caused by rotavirus. Half of those deaths are in Africa, where a program has just been launched to immunise 50 million children against rotavirus infection. The original links leading to the vaccine were made in Melbourne.—Nature

A Nature story on this topic can be found at http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110927/full/477519a.html