Scientists cook world's first lab-grown beef burger

Scientists cook world's first lab-grown beef burger



LONDON: Scientists unveiled the world's first lab-grown beef burger in London on Monday, frying it in a little oil and butter and serving it to volunteers in what they hope is the start of a food revolution.

The tasters pronounced the 140-gram (five-ounce) patty, developed at a cost of more than 250,000 euros ($330,000) with backing from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, as "close to meat" in flavour and texture but not as juicy.

The so-called "cultured beef" -- dubbed the "Frankenburger" -- was made using strands of meat grown from muscle cells taken from a living cow, mixed with salt, egg powder and breadcrumbs and coloured with beetroot juice and saffron.

Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who led the research, claimed it could eventually replace ordinary beef in the diets of millions of people and in so doing reduce the huge environmental pressure caused by raising livestock.

Post insisted the artificial beef is safe, promising to give the leftovers from Monday's tasting to his children.

"I ate it myself a couple of times with no hesitation whatsoever... I would feel perfectly comfortable letting them taste it," he told journalists at the tasting.

Post acknowledged that the technology was at a very early stage but predicted the meat could be on supermarket shelves in 10 to 20 years. "This is just to show that we can do it," he said.

The first public tasting took place at a west London theatre, where a professional chef cooked the round, pink patty over low heat at a kitchen counter similar to those used in TV cookery shows.

One of the volunteers, Austrian food researcher Hanni Ruetzler, cut into it carefully, before declaring: "It's close to meat. It's not that juicy, but the consistency is perfect."

US-based author Josh Schonwald, the other volunteer, added: "The absence is the fat. There's a leanness to it. But the bite feels like a conventional hamburger."

He remarked that the whole experience was rather unnatural, jokingly complaining that he should have been allowed to try the beef with a little tomato ketchup.

The scientists took stem cells from organic cows and placed them in a nutrient solution to create muscle tissue, which then grew into small strands of meat.

The burger required 20,000 such strands, grown over three months.

Proponents of test-tube meat cite a variety of reasons for supporting it, from animal welfare to the environment and even public health -- lab-created meat theoretically carries no risk of disease and is not treated with antibiotics.

According to a report from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, global meat production will more than double between 2000 and 2050, to 465 million tonnes.

Campaigners say such demand is putting unsustainable pressure on the planet, both through the feed required for the animals and the methane gas they produce, which contributes to global warming.

Animal rights group Peta has offered a prize of $1 million (750,000 euros) for the first lab to produce and bring to market in-vitro chicken meat, and is funding research in the United States.

Google entrepreneur Brin stepped in to support the Maastricht project after funding from the Dutch government ran out.

"There are basically three things that can happen going forward. One is that we all become vegetarian. I don't think that's really likely," he said in a video message.

"The second is we ignore the issues and that leads to continued environmental harm, and the third option is we do something new."

Britain's Vegetarian Society questioned the need for such technology when people could just stop eating meat.

Post said: "We are catering for beef eaters eating beef in an environmentally friendly and ethical way. Let the vegetarians remain vegetarians."

Dr Neil Stephens, a sociologist based at Cardiff University who has studied test-tube meat, said it remained to be seen whether the public would accept it.

"It is so unusual, so ambiguous, that I think questions will be raised about whether this is meat at all," he said.

He added that it could be many years before the meat is ready to be sold to the public.

"Challenges include up-scaling production so that significant quantities can be made at a competitive price," he said.

"What will be interesting is, in the coming weeks, watching the response to see how many people are convinced by the technology." (AFP)

Chinese herb remedy extract linked to cancer: study

Chinese herb remedy extract linked to cancer: study



WASHINGTON: A plant extract used in Chinese herbal remedies for arthritis, gout and inflammation has been directly linked to cancer and causes a surprising number of genetic mutations, scientists said Wednesday.

The gene signature of aristolochic acid -- derived from a vine known as birthwort -- was found in tumors from 19 upper urinary tract cancer patients from Taiwan.

Scientists have long known that the acid was a carcinogen, but the new study shows for the first time that it causes far more genetic mutations than smoking-related lung cancer or ultraviolet radiation-associated with skin cancer.

Tumors in people exposed to the herb had about 150 mutations per megabase, compared to eight in smoking-related lung cancers and 111 in UV-related melanomas, said the study in the US journal Science Translational Medicine.

Knowing more about the acid's signature will help researchers screen for the herb's involvement in cancers of other organs, experts said.

"Genome-wide sequencing has allowed us to tie aristolochic acid exposure directly to an individual getting cancer," said Kenneth Kinzler, professor of oncology in the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center's Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics and Therapeutics.

"The technology gives us the recognizable mutational signature to say with certainty that a specific toxin is responsible for causing a specific cancer."

The herb's cancer links led to a ban on aristolochic acid-containing products in Europe and North America in 2001 and in Asia in 2003, the researchers said.

US declares 'unusual mortality event' as dolphin deaths rise

US declares 'unusual mortality event' as dolphin deaths rise



NEW YORK: Federal scientists investigating an unusually high number of dead bottlenose dolphins washing up on the East Coast said on Thursday the carcasses are showing up at a rate that is seven times higher than usual.

More than 120 dead animals have been discovered since June from New Jersey to Virginia, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service said.

Federal scientists have declared it an "unusual mortality event" and are investigating the cause, said Maggie Mooney-Seus of NOAA Fisheries.

A number of things can cause dolphins to strand, including harmful algal blooms, infectious viruses, injuries due to ship strikes, pollutants and human-made runoff, NOAA said.

Although the cause has not been determined, early tissue analysis showed that one suspect could be morbillivirus, an infectious pathogen, said Teri Rowles, national marine mammal stranding coordinator for NOAA Fisheries.

Marine stranding response centers are collecting information on the deaths and necropsies are being performed, but it could take several weeks to determine what led to the deaths, the NOAA said.

In this month alone, 28 dolphins were found dead along the shores of the East Coast.

It has been 25 years since the last large die-off of dolphins along the U.S. coast. In 1987, more than 740 animals died of morbillivirus on the coast from New Jersey to Florida.

Scientists warned the public not to approach the animals if they see one stranded because they could harbor an infectious disease. (Reuters)

Big animals crucial for soil fertility: study

Big animals crucial for soil fertility: study




PARIS: The mass extinction of large animals in the Pleistocene era caused today's dearth of soil nutrients, scientists said Sunday, and warned of further damage if modern giants like the elephant disappear.

The Pleistocene epoch, which dated from about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, saw large animals dubbed megafauna take over domination of the planet from extinct dinosaurs, only to die out en masse themselves.

During their peak, much of the world resembled a modern-day African savannah.

South America, for example, was teeming with five-tonne ground sloths, armadillo-like glyptodonts the size of a small car, and herds of elephant-like cuvieronius and stegomastodonts.

These megafauna, animals weighing more than 44 kilograms (97 pounds), played a key role in fertilising soil far away from the areas near rivers where they fed -- ploughing the nutrients they consumed back into circulation through their dung or their decomposing bodies when they died.

Large animals ate much more and travelled further than small ones, and were mainly responsible for long-distance fertilisation, said a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"Big animals are like the nutrient arteries of the planet and if they go extinct it is like severing these arteries," co-author Chris Doughty of the University of Oxford's Environment Change Institute told AFP.

"Because most of these animals went extinct the world has many more nutrient poor regions than it would have had."

Using mathematical models, researchers estimated the megafauna extinction reduced the dispersal of key plant nutrient phosphorus in the Amazon basin by 98 percent, "with similar, though less extreme, decreases in all continents outside of Africa", the only continent where modern humans co-evolved with megafauna.

Instead, the nutrients became concentrated near floodplains and other fertile areas.

The model used in the study will allow scientists to predict the effect of further extinctions, a fate the team said was "fast approaching many of the large animals that remain" today, mainly in Africa and Asia.

Dolphins can solve problems like humans: study

Dolphins can solve problems like humans: study


GRASSY KEY: A dog may be man's best friend, but dolphins can imitate human actions, and even how they solve problems.

When a dolphin has one of its senses blocked, it can use other senses to mimic a human's movements, according to a recent study.

A bottlenose dolphin named Tanner was blindfolded and instructed to mimic the actions of a trainer in the water with him. When Tanner wasn't able to use sight to figure out the movement, he switched to another technique: emit sounds, listen to the echo and interpret the resulting sound waves. This ability — known as echolocation — allowed Tanner to replicate movements by the trainer, such as spinning in the water.

The study, conducted at the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys, expands on previous studies looking at how dolphins are able to imitate other dolphins while blindfolded. To see if a change in sound would affect their imitation, researchers used humans instead of dolphins to make the movements in the water.

Dr. Kelly Jaakkola, research director of the nonprofit marine mammal center, said researchers were surprised by Tanner's use of echolocation.

"He outsmarted us," Jaakola said.

She explained that dolphins must decide when to use echolocation, "and that's problem-solving."

Janet Mann, a professor of biology and psychology at Georgetown University who was not involved in the study, said the results were not surprising in that they were consistent with how dolphins act in the ocean.

"Of course they would use their echolocation to get more information. Dolphins have to solve problems all the time in the wild," she said, adding that dolphins use echolocation more at night as well.

During a recent demonstration in an enclosed lagoon in Grassy Key, a Florida island where the Dolphin Research Center is located, trainer Emily Guarino got Tanner's attention by asking, "Are you ready to play? Let's play the research game."

Guarino indicated to Tanner that he was supposed to imitate, and placed latex eyecups over each eye. Another trainer in the water was then shown a clipboard with a written behavior to perform. Wordlessly, that trainer began to spin in the water with his arms wrapped across his shoulders. Tanner then did a similar spin.

For the study, published online in the scientific journal Animal Cognition, researchers tested a dozen behaviors that Tanner already knew, including bobbing up and down, blowing bubbles underwater, swimming like a shark with the tail — or feet — moving side to side and floating on top of the water. Each behavior was tested twice at random, with and without the blindfold, as researchers recorded echolocation sounds underwater.

Tanner was just as accurate at imitating a human — blindfolded or not — as he was at imitating another dolphin, researchers determined. The study included six sessions spread over a nine-day period.

That kind of flexibility with imitation is more commonly associated with humans. But humans and dolphins are separated by about 90 million years of evolution, and their imitation skills likely evolved separately. So exploring imitation in those species "has the potential to give us clues into why imitation ever evolved at all," Jaakala said.

Further testing is needed to see if other dolphins can imitate as well as Tanner.

"But we have no reason to believe that this dolphin was just an Einstein dolphin that did this," she said. (AP)

Disabled Greeks get swim thanks to solar chair

Disabled Greeks get swim thanks to solar chair


ALEPOCHORI: Paralyzed from the waist down, Lefteris Theofilou has spent nearly half his life bound to a wheelchair and recalls as if it were a dream the first time a solar-powered chair enabled him to swim on his own in the Greek sea.

"It was unreal," Theofilou, 52, a burly mechanic with graying hair, said as he lifted himself off his wheelchair one warm summer evening, sat on the chair and with the push of a button rode, unassisted, 20 m (yards) to the shore and into the water.

In a country with one of the world's longest coastlines and thousands of islands, it has come as a welcome relief for many Greeks, boosting demand each year. Currently, 11 devices operate in Greece and there are plans to expand the network.

But despite Seatrac's growing appeal - it has already been exported to Cyprus and the team are in talks with architects in Croatia, France, the United Arab Emirates and Israel - it faces hurdles in Greece, where facilities for the disabled are poor.

In the capital Athens, bumpy pavements and potholed roads make moving around difficult. Wheelchair ramps had to be installed during a July visit by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair.

Seatrac's founders have taken advantage of Greece's climate - the country is drenched in sun almost year-round - meaning that the devices can be set up easily on beaches without an electric line to hand and taken down at the end of the season, all without damaging the environment.

The team hope the device could boost tourism, the Mediterranean country's biggest industry, but lament a lack of support by the local authorities which bought the device for 30,000 euros ($40,000) each and are responsible for maintenance after the first year.

Engineer Ignatios Fotiou, one of the inventors, likened the lack of support to "building a penthouse apartment without a building underneath it".

At a busy beach in the coastal town of Alepochori near Athens, vandalism and theft of the solar panel are common. If something breaks, locals say it could take days for the municipality to fix it, sometimes delayed by striking workers.

Often, parents watch as their teenage children use the machine as a diving board.

"These guys have created an incredible thing and we stumble across problems from the state," Theofilou said. "This is Third-World sloppiness."

Minas Georgakis, whose wife Matoula Kastrioti, 46, suffers from multiple sclerosis and is in a wheelchair, said he had to take matters into his own hands because help from the local administration "simply does not exist".

With wooden planks, he built an additional ramp to allow access to the Seatrac as wheelchairs could not be driven over sand. Even so, the path leading to the device is often blocked by parked motorcycles and uncollected garbage.

"I feel bitter," Theofilou said of the lack of support to nods of agreement by Kastrioti who waited for her turn to board.

"We have thousands of beaches, the most beautiful in the world, and to still not be able to swim in them?" he asked as he emerged from the crystal blue waters.

"It makes you feel free and able to do things you could not imagine you could do on your own," he said.

Founded by a team of Greek scientists in 2008 and covered by European and U.S. patent laws, the Seatrac device operates on a fixed-track mechanism which allows up to 30 wheelchairs to be moved in and out of the water a day - all powered by solar energy. (Reuters)

NSA Chief to talk at hackers' conference in Vegas

NSA Chief to talk at hackers' conference in Vegas

Las Vegas - The head of the US National Security Agency has faced Congress and presidents in the past, and isn't expected to budge from the position that his mission is to stop terrorists and that his agency's surveillance program is critical, even amid a room full of hackers Wednesday at a conference in Las Vegas.

 

Army General Keith Alexander has been unapologetic during recent public appearances about the NSA collecting "metadata" to, in his words, "connect the dots" and "go after bad guys who ... hide amongst us to kill our people."
"Our job is to stop them without impacting your civil liberties and privacy," Alexander told a July 18 audience at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. "We don't want another 9/11."
Alexander has said his agency's ability to dip into what he characterized as a "virtual lockbox" and compare collected email and telephone data helped thwart 54 plots against targets in the United States and some 20 other countries.
He pointed to a failed plot in September 2009 against the New York City subway system that he said could have been the worst terror strike in the US since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Another example he offered was a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.
At Aspen and at a June 28 appearance before the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association in Baltimore, Alexander said his agency dipped into the metadata database fewer than 300 times in 2012.
He insists it wouldn't be physically possible and is "flat not true" that the spy agency is listening to people's phone calls and reading their emails.
But the Black Hat conferees that Alexander will face Wednesday are a skeptical and tech-savvy bunch - attuned to news about former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden leaking classified documents last month and the conviction on Tuesday of US Army Private Bradley Manning on 20 espionage, theft and other charges that could get him life in prison for giving military secrets to WikiLeaks. Manning was acquitted of the more serious charge of aiding the enemy.
"We're hoping he'll be addressing current issues head-on," said Meredith Corley, spokeswoman for the 16th annual Black Hat conference at Caesars Palace. Alexander's keynote speech was expected to draw most of the 7,000 registered attendees, Corley said.
At Aspen, Alexander unveiled measures including a "two-person rule" to thwart leaks like the disclosures by Snowden, a former computer systems administrator in Hawaii now living at a Russian airport while he seeks asylum in several countries. The rule would require two people to be present when key national security information is accessed or moved.
Alexander also talked in Colorado and Baltimore about creating a 4,000-person "Cyber Command" of offensive and defensive teams - both to protect Defense Department systems and launch cyberattacks against enemy networks under White House orders.
"We've got to have this debate with our country," the eight-year NSA chief said in Aspen. "How are we going to protect the nation in cyberspace?"
But, "there is risk in having a debate on a national security issue," he added. "The adversary will learn what we're trying to do."
NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines in Washington, DC, declined Tuesday to provide advance word about Alexander's speech in Las Vegas. Vines wouldn't say whether a conference that attracts cyberspace explorers could serve as recruiting ground for the NSA.
But the spy agency chief's comments are expected to spur lively discussion among government workers, corporate systems analysts and freelance hackers both at the Black Hat events, and at DefCon, a somewhat more counter-culture conference that opens later this week, also in Las Vegas.