Did Columbus Bring Syphilis to Europe?

Did Columbus Bring Syphilis to Europe?

New research touts evidence as the strongest to date that he did

 
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS New research shows that the explorer and his men may well have brought syphilis back to Europe with them.

Apparently, the New World isn't all that intrepid explorer Christopher Columbus discovered; seems we may also have him to thank for spreading the pathogen that causes syphilis—along with news of the Americas—to Europe.

A new study provides what scientists say is the most convincing evidence to date that the Italian adventurer and some of his crew contracted the disease during their voyage to the New World—and unwittingly introduced it to the old one circa 1493.

The research culminates centuries of debate over whether the disease stemmed from bacteria that originated in the Old or New worlds.

Researchers from Emory University in Atlanta report in the online journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases that they used phylogenetics—the study of the evolutionary link between organisms—to study 26 geographically scattered strains of a family of bacteria known as Treponemes, which are behind the sexually transmitted disease syphilis as well as related nonvenereal infections such as yaws. They found that the venereal syphilis-causing strains arose relatively recently in humans and are closely related to an ancient infection isolated in South America that gives rise to yaws.

"That supports the hypothesis that syphilis—or some progenitor—came from the New World," said lead study author Kristin Harper, an Emory molecular genetics researcher.

According to the researchers, the origin of syphilis has been hotly debated since the first recorded epidemic of the disease in Europe in 1495. Most of the scientific evidence in recent years had been gleaned from the bones of members of past civilizations in both the Old and New worlds; bones were considered credible markers since chronic syphilis causes skeletal lesions. But skeletal analysis was hobbled by an inability to accurately determine bone age and a lack of supporting epidemiological evidence.

Another potential hitch is that Treponema bacteria cause disorders that share similar symptoms but are transmitted differently. Syphilis is sexually transmitted, for instance, whereas yaws and endemic syphilis are tropical conditions that are spread by skin-to-skin or oral contact. One hypothesis is that Treponema subspecies from the tropical Americas morphed into the more virulent venereal, syphilis-causing strains to survive in the cooler European climes.

Scientists say the study is significant because of the large number of strains analyzed, including two species of yaws found in isolated inhabitants of Guyana in South America.

"Syphilis was a major killer in Europe during the Renaissance," said co-author George Armelagos, a skeletal biologist at Emory who has been studying syphilis for three decades. "Understanding its evolution is important not just for biology, but for understanding social and political history. It could be argued that syphilis is one of the most important early examples of globalization and disease, and globalization remains an important factor in emerging diseases."

Toyota Will Offer a Plug-In Hybrid by 2010

Toyota Will Offer a Plug-In Hybrid by 2010

 
The experimental plug-in version of Toyota’s Prius hybrid. G.M. has also announced a plug-in car, the Chevrolet Volt.

The Toyota Motor Corporation, which leads the world’s automakers in sales of hybrid-electric vehicles, announced Sunday night that it would build its first plug-in hybrid by 2010.

The move puts Toyota in direct competition with General Motors, which has announced plans to sell its own plug-in hybrid vehicle, the Chevrolet Volt, sometime around 2010.

Katsuaki Watanabe, the president of Toyota, announced the company’s plans at the Detroit auto show as part of a series of environmental steps.

Mr. Watanabe said Toyota, best known for its Prius hybrid car, would develop a fleet of plug-in hybrids that run on lithium-ion batteries, instead of the nickel-metal hydride batteries that power the Prius and other Toyota models.

Plug-in hybrids differ from the current hybrid vehicles in that they can be recharged externally, from an ordinary power outlet. In a conventional hybrid the battery is recharged from power generated by its wheels.

Mr. Watanabe said the lithium-ion fleet would be made available first to Toyota’s commercial customers around the world, like government agencies and corporations, including some in the United States. He did not say when they would be available to consumers.

The Volt also is set to run on lithium-ion batteries, which are more expensive than the batteries currently used by Toyota, but which can potentially power the vehicle for a longer time.

Additionally, Toyota said it planned to develop a new hybrid-electric car specifically for its Lexus division as well as another new hybrid for the Toyota brand. It said it would unveil both at the 2009 Detroit show.

Mr. Watanabe also said Toyota planned to offer diesel engines for its Tundra pickup truck and the Sequoia sport utility vehicle “in the near future,” but was not more specific.

Some environmental groups have pushed for plug-in hybrids, called PHEVs, or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, as a way to save on gasoline, thus curbing emissions.

But some experts say plug-ins may not be the ultimate answer to cutting pollution, if the electricity used to charge them comes from coal-fired power plants.

That is also a concern to Toyota, which has asked researchers to determine not only whether consumers would be willing to pay for a plug-in, but also the effect it would have on the environment, James Lentz, the president of Toyota Motor Sales, said in an interview Sunday.

Nonetheless, G.M., Toyota and Ford Motor, the world’s three biggest car companies, all are developing plug-in hybrid vehicles. Along with the Volt, G.M. has said it plans to produce a plug-in version of its Saturn Vue hybrid. Ford has not yet given details of its plug-in hybrid, which it first discussed in 2006.

Indeed, Toyota executives initially questioned the practicality of plug-in hybrids, saying consumers preferred the convenience of hybrids that did not have to be recharged. Toyota has sold more than one million hybrids worldwide, including more than 800,000 Prius cars.

But the automaker announced last July that it was testing plug-in hybrids on public roads in Japan. It also is testing them in France, Toyota officials said Sunday, and it has given prototype versions of plug-in hybrid vehicles to university researchers in California.

Even before those test results are in, however, Toyota has offered plug-in hybrid test drives to journalists in Japan, California and Detroit, where a small fleet bearing the words “Toyota Plug-In Hybrid” traveled city streets on Sunday.

This plug-in hybrid — a version of the Prius, and not the vehicle Toyota announced it would build — differs from the Prius in four ways. It has two nickel-metal hydride batteries under the floor of its trunk, instead the conventional Prius’s single battery.

Unlike the Prius, which has a single fuel-filler door on the left side of the car, the plug-in model has another door on the right hand side that opens to reveal an outlet for the electrical charger. One end of the charger looks like a small fuel nozzle; the other end is a conventional three-pronged plug.

Each charge, which takes about four hours, uses the equivalent of 2.7 kilowatt hours of electricity, said Jaycie Chitwood, a senior strategic planner in Toyota’s advanced technologies group.

Inside the car, there is a button with the letters “EV” inside an outline of a car. If the driver pushes the button, the car reverts to electric vehicle mode, meaning the Prius is powered completely by its two batteries.

In electric mode, the Prius gets 99.9 miles a gallon, according to a gauge on a screen in the middle of the dashboard.

But it cannot go very far: the plug-in hybrid’s two batteries hold enough power for only seven miles, said Saúl Ibarra, a product specialist with Toyota who worked on developing the Prius.

By contrast, G.M. claims that the Volt will be able to hold a charge equal to 40 miles, after a six-hour charge.

Still, the electric mode of the Toyota plug-in is enough to start the car and run it until the engine reaches the point where it needs to tap the gasoline engine. The plug-in Prius can stay in electric mode until 62 miles per hour, versus around 30 miles per hour for the conventional Prius, Mr. Iba- rra said.

Despite its decision to step up its plug-in hybrid development, Toyota is not sure how much more consumers will want to pay for it, Mr. Lentz said. The Prius starts at $21,100. Some after-market companies are charging nearly that much to convert Prius models into plug-ins, he said.

Given that, it is more likely that Toyota would offer plug-in technology as an option on the Prius, at least in the short term, rather than switch all of its hybrids to plug-in models.

Ultimately, Toyota must determine “do people want to plug in their car?” Ms. Chitwood said.

Biotech companies race for drought-tolerant crops

Biotech companies race for drought-tolerant crops

Shuping Jiao, Pioneer senior research associate, examines a corn plant in a test tube in a molecular biology laboratory that focuses on drought tolerance research in this undated handout photograph.

 
Mat Johnson, a Pioneer research associate, loads plants onto an automated digital imaging system in this undated handout photograph. Outside the headquarters of Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc, the pavement is iced over and workers arriving for the day are bundled up against the cold. But inside a laboratory, a warm, man-made drought is in force, curling the leaves of rows of fledgling corn plants as million-dollar machines and scientists in white coats monitor their distress.

Outside the headquarters of Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc, the pavement is iced over and workers arriving for the day are bundled up against the cold.

But inside a laboratory, a warm, man-made drought is in force, curling the leaves of rows of fledgling corn plants as million-dollar machines and scientists in white coats monitor their distress.

This work is part of a global race pitting Pioneer, Monsanto Co and other biotech companies against each other in a race to develop new strains of corn and other crops that can thrive when water is in short supply.

"Equipping plants to be able to maintain productivity in the driest years is of critical importance," said Bill Niebur, global vice president for research and development at Pioneer, a division of DuPont. "Drought is a global problem and we recognize the threat that comes with climate change. We've got our top talent in our organization working on this."

This line of research has been underway for years, but it has taken on added urgency as scientists predict a trend of worsening drought and hotter temperatures around the globe.

Water shortages are already costing billions of dollars a year in crop shortfalls around the world, and are likely to grow more costly, according to academic and government forecasters.

Two years ago, drought ate into corn production in France and Spain so severely that analysts pegged it as the worst in fifty years.

U.S. corn production was down 5 percent because of drought in 2006.

In Australia, where drought has persistent since 2002, some wheat farmers last year reported failing to harvest a crop for the first time in 40 years.

And in Argentina, which grows about 22 million tonnes of corn a year, drought has delayed planting of the current crop.

Last December, Jacques Diouf, the head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, warned that people were already starting to go hungry in poor countries because hotter weather was shrinking the food supply and pushing up prices.

MARKET OPPORTUNITY

Biotechnology companies are using both conventional breeding and genetic engineering to mold climate change into a market opportunity.

Monsanto, the world leader in genetically engineered crops, is doing field trials in dry parts of Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota. Switzerland's Syngenta AG has a variety of research sites across the United States.

Corn is the first focus for all the companies because not only is it a key raw material for a multitude of processed foods, but also it is a major animal feed and it is in growing demand to make ethanol for use in alternative fuels.

The world grows nearly 800 million tonnes of corn a year, with about 40 percent of the world's suppy grown in the United States and 19 percent in China.

St. Louis-based Monsanto, which spends about 10 percent of its annual sales on research and development, or about $2 million a day, sees drought-tolerance as a key area, spokeswoman Sara Duncan said.

"Water is one of the biggest limiting factors in agriculture," Duncan said. "In the future, climate change does mean there are going to be more droughts."

OVERCOMING OPPOSITION

The biotech companies acknowledge that opposition to genetically modified crops remains strong in some countries, especially in Europe, where opponents have long dubbed such crops "Frankenfoods."

But the success of genetic modification that has turned out corn that resists pests and is immune to weedkiller, along with similar modifications in soybeans and other crops, has helped wear down opposition in recent years.

Last year more than 73 percent of U.S. corn acres were planted with biotech varieties, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2006, biotech crop acreage globally reached 252 million acres in 22 countries, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications(ISAAA).

And given global climate concerns and the needs of a hungry populace, biotech companies believe a drought-tolerant corn could further help win over opponents.

"This is a more consumer-friendly trait than some of the others that have come out," said DuPont spokesman Pat Arthur.

Still, opponents of biotech crops predict a range of environmental hazards, potential human health problems and further concentration of the food system in the hands of large corporations that repeatedly hike the price of patent-protected seeds and gobble up competition from smaller seed companies.

Joe Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food Safety in Washington, said non-biotech varieties that naturally adapt to their localities will be the ones that best tolerate changes in regional climate. Tinkering with nature is "folly," he said.

"GMO products will only be 'consumer-friendly' based upon public relations spin and not in reality," said Mendelson.

Some farmers, who have seen both the costs and the benefits of biotech crops since they first hit the market in the mid-1990s, have mixed feelings about a drought-tolerant corn.

Nebraska corn and soybean farmer Mike Alberts said he would welcome a more drought-hardy corn, but he fears the seeds will come at a high cost and loaded with extra genetic traits that he doesn't want to pay for, as biotech companies increasingly stack a mix of genetic traits in their seeds.

"Water usage is getting so expensive. That is a major issue," said Alberts. "But a bag of seed is so expensive now I wonder what they will charge us for that technology."

Currently, U.S. farmers expect to pay about $245 for a bag of Monsanto's "triple-stacked" biotech corn seed, which protects against pests and is immune to weedkiller. A bag of conventional corn seed goes for around $100.

PRICEY RESEARCH

The research is costly. This month, DuPont is introducing a $1.5 million robotic system that will automatically water, weigh, measure and document plant progress under varying greenhouse conditions in Johnston, Iowa. The money is part of the $600 million the company spends annually on agriculture and nutrition, which includes drought work as a top priority.

The company hopes to have its first transgenic drought-tolerant corn seed on the market as early as 2012.

Monsanto, which is also testing in the semi-arid area around Davis, California, plans to have its first drought-tolerant corn hit the market sometime after 2010.

Syngenta, which has its U.S. base in Greensboro, North Carolina, is pursuing what it calls "water optimized" corn technology that would allow corn to be planted on soils that currently won't support corn fields at all. The company aims to have something commercialized by 2011, said spokeswoman Anne Burt.

All the companies say they are using multi-pronged approaches that involve both conventional as well as biotech breeding, including transferring genes from microbes or from other plants, such as Arabidopsis, a small plant related to cabbage and mustard.

The idea is to grow plants with stronger, longer roots that can extract more water from the soil, develop plants that more effectively conserve water in the above-ground stalk and leaves, and also to change the way the plant develops so that water can be directed more toward grain development than leaf development, for instance.

The companies are also aligning with rivals to accelerate the pace of research. Earlier this year Monsanto announced a $1.5 billion deal with chemical concern BASF to develop high-yielding crops that are more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions such as drought.

And in October, DuPont announced a deal with Israel-based Evogene Ltd. giving DuPont's Pioneer unit exclusive rights to several genes seen improving drought-tolerance in corn and soybeans.

The company is seeking additional partnerships on drought-tolerance and expects a "constant flow of these coming out in the future," according to Pioneer's Niebur.

"This is where we compete," he said. "This is our future."

Hotspots Unplugged

Hotspots Unplugged

Long considered fixed founts of molten material from deep within the planet, hotspots now join the list of moving parts

 
LAVA erupting from an active volcano in Hawaii comes from a hotspot akin to a flame burning through the earth's crust

• Volcanic hotspots, such as the one creating the Hawaiian Islands today, have long been considered fixed points in the scheme of slowly moving tectonic plates that form the earth’s outer surface.
• New evidence that hotspots can instead be mobile comes from study of Hawaii’s chain of islands and submerged defunct volcanoes. The chain’s elbowlike geometry has traditionally been attributed only to a change in the motion of the Pacific plate. Now it is in part credited to hotspot migration, itself an expression of movement in the earth’s mantle deep below the surface.
• Implications include textbook rewrites, as well as new views on paleo­climate records and the stability of the entire earth on its spin axis.

There was the cone? We had just pulled up our drill pipe, replaced its worn drill bit, and lowered it back down to the seafloor, a mile under our ship. Crowding into the control room, we watched images from a camera attached to the end of the pipe, looking for a cone we had left as a marker to guide the pipe back to the hole we were drilling. The team had gone through this exercise many times before. Usually we would see a fish swim by or a squid momentarily grab the pipe, and then the cone would appear. This time we saw only fish and squid. What had gone wrong?

We had come to the northwestern Pacific Ocean to extract core samples from the submerged extinct volcanoes, known as the Emperor seamounts, that form the northernmost leg of the Hawaiian-Emperor volcanic chain. The neat pattern formed by the chain is apparent on any world map and, along with the jigsaw-puzzle shape of South America and Africa, has long stood as a testament to plate tectonics—the principle that our planet’s surface is an ever shifting mosaic of rocky puzzle pieces. Not only do the islands and seamounts form an uncannily straight line for 3,500 kilometers across the Pacific, their rocks get steadily older as you move northwest up the chain: from the Big Island (which is still growing) through Maui, Oahu, Kauai and on up to the Midway atoll, whose long-extinct volcano has subsided so much that it barely sticks up above the sea surface. Past Midway, the line makes a sharp bend, continuing northward along the Emperor seamounts and stretching nearly as far as the tip of the Aleutian Islands.

E-noses Could Make Diseases Something to Sniff at

E-noses Could Make Diseases Something to Sniff at

Diagnosing illnesses could be as easy as breathing.

 
THE NOSE KNOWS: Bill Hanson of the University of Pennsylvania uses an electronic nose to analyze exhaled breath for possible disease.

Ancient medical practitioners plied their trade by trusting their noses. They knew that diabetes could make a patient's breath smell sweet and that a wound emitting a foul odor was infected. These early doctors, lacking today's sophisticated technology, often relied on their sense of smell to diagnose illness.

Technology is now turning this ancient art into a modern science. Engineers are developing electronic versions of the human nose that will allow doctors, ever in search of less-invasive techniques, to tap into what the nose knows about the human body.

"The sense of smell has been used as a medical diagnostic tool for thousands of years," says Bill Hanson, an anesthesiologist and critical care specialist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who has studied whether odor can be used to diagnose an ailment. "Both diseases and bacteria that cause diseases have individual and unique odors. You can walk into a patient's room and know immediately in some cases that the patient has such and such bacteria just because of the odor."

The "odor signatures" of disease arise through one of several mechanisms. Bacteria, like all living organisms, give off unique mixtures of gases; bacterial infections may be diagnosed by the characteristic scents of these gases. Alternately, nonbacterial disorders, such as diabetes, may prompt biochemical changes that alter the smell of a patient's body. But many of these odors may be tough for the humans to detect and identify.

"The difference between normal breath and diseased breath may be very subtle," says David Walt, a chemist at Tufts University in Boston who designs chemical sensors and devices.

Enter the electronic nose, an emerging technology that can distinguish these subtle differences. There are a variety of electronic e-nose models, all of which consist of an array of olfactory sensors that are activated in unique patterns when exposed to different aromas; software identifies each odor and its source by analyzing the patterns. (The human brain uses this same pattern-recognition process to identify smells.)

Though the technology was originally designed for other tasks, such as sniffing out chemical leaks or detecting food spoilage, research is increasingly revealing its diagnostic potential. Physicians can effectively identify potential lung cancer patients, for instance, by "smelling" their breath.

"When you have an exhaled breath, there are all sorts of volatile organic compounds that are produced," says Serpil Erzurum, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic and co-author of a 2005 study on the use of electronic noses to help diagnose lung cancer. "Those compounds are a result of metabolism and, when you have cancer, metabolism changes and the volatile organic compounds are altered. The changes are detectable by an electronic nose."

Hanson showed that the technology is useful for diagnosing chronic sinusitis and pneumonia, and other researchers proved that the noses can distinguish asthmatic patients from healthy ones.

And the noses don't just analyze breath. Some can also sniff out infections in urine, blood and other bodily fluids. A team of British scientists, for instance, used electronic noses to pinpoint antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the nasal swabs of hospital patients.

Combine these feats with the fact that artificial noses are faster, cheaper and less invasive than many other diagnostic tests, and it is easy to understand why physicians find the technology appealing. Erzurum says it could make a dramatic difference in the success of treatments, paving the way for early detection of lung cancer and other diseases.

"Some of the newer nose technologies are very portable," Hanson says. "They're suitable to being taken to the bedside and being handheld. You can imagine a patient breathing into one of these and getting a fast, inexpensive answer to a question you might have."

Scientists who have tested the noses envision a time in the not-too-distant future when a patient with, say, the sniffles can go to the doctor, breathe into an electronic nose, and know in a matter of minutes whether he or she has a sinus infection and needs antibiotics.

But Walt says there is still a long way to go before this scenario becomes a reality. "I've yet to be convinced,'' he says, "that there's [now] a working version of an artificial nose out there that can consistently do this."

Though far from perfect, Hanson says, the current technology can be used as a screening tool to flag patients who should undergo more advanced testing.

A number of companies manufacture electronic noses that detect explosives and other dangerous compounds, but the technology is not yet widely used in medicine. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved an electronic nose that can detect urinary tract infections, but has yet to approve one for breath analysis or other medical uses.

"It's a field that's simmering," Hanson says. "It's just waiting for somebody with deep pockets to come up with the money and focused effort to develop these noses commercially."