| Greenpeace wants Facebook center off coal fuel By ARTHUR MAX 2010-09-01T20:43:10ZAMSTERDAM (AP) -- Greenpeace said about 500,000 Facebook users have urged the world's largest online social network to abandon plans to buy electricity from a coal-based energy company for its new data center in the U.S.... hosted.ap.org |
Religion Has Scant Effect on Environmental Views, Poll Suggests While some conservative Christians have been among the most vocal skeptics of climate change, Pew found strong support for regulations to protect the environment across almost every segment of society. feeds.nytimes.com |
Alien planets: otherwordly joys The planet now known as Gliese 581 g is a reminder of the extraordinary rewards of astronomyThe rocky planet freshly identified in orbit around the star Gliese 581 could indeed be a potential home for life, but nobody should contemplate relocation just yet. At speeds possible with rocket technology, a voyage to Gliese 581, in the constellation Libra, would take about 200,000 years. As a home away from a home, it won't work. But the planet now known as Gliese 581 g is a reminder of the extraordinary rewards of astronomy.Cosmological science begins with the Copernican principle that there is nothing special about the solar system. Four centuries after Copernicus, this principle permitted a chain of observation, experiment and deduction that within half a human lifetime confirmed that the universe began with a big bang 13.7bn years ago. Robotic missions to Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn showed that if life could begin on Earth, then it could surely happen on any planet of a similar fabric and mass, orbiting a similar star in a zone not too hot and not too cold for liquid water. Giant telescopes counted the stars: 100bn or more in this galaxy, one of 100bn galaxies. But the solar system appeared to be alone of its kind. The first extra-solar planet – or exoplanet – was identified in 1995: a kind of hot Jupiter, circling close to the star 51 Pegasi 50 light years away. Since then, astronomers have found 490 exoplanets but "seen" none of them.A planet is a ball of gas and dust dancing in a star's gravitational embrace. Gravity is a two-way thing and 51 Pegasi b was spotted from flickers of movement in the star that could only be explained by an invisible mass in orbit around it. Since then, researchers have confirmed the existence of exoplanets from rhythmic changes in starlight as an orbiting object moves across the face of the star, but that, too, is hardly a direct sighting. It took 11 years of observation and analysis to demonstrate that at least six planets orbit Gliese 581, and that one of them is a terrestrial-type planet in the so-called Goldilocks zone. Last year a purpose-built planet-spotter began the search for Earth-like planets as they transit across the faces of their parent stars. If there are other habitable planets, could they be inhabited? And if they are not inhabited, then could there be something very special indeed about Earth, and its citizens?The Gliese 581 team say: "If the local stellar neighbourhood is a representative sample of the galaxy as a whole, our Milky Way could be teeming with potentially habitable planets." The next step is to devise instruments that can take a closer look, perhaps for distant planetary atmospheres that contain oxygen and methane, the telltale signature of life as we know it. Our Earth-like neighbour 20 light years away is not the climax of a search. It is just a beginning.AstronomySpaceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Antidepressant reboxetine no better than a placebo, study finds Scientists accuse Pfizer of holding back studies which reveal drug sold as Edronax to be ineffective and potentially harmfulAn antidepressant prescribed in the UK over the last 13 years is ineffective and potentially harmful, according to a damning study published today.The drug, reboxetine, which is known in the UK under the trade name Edronax, works no better than a placebo, or dummy pill, say scientists in the British Medical Journal, who accuse the manufacturer, Pfizer, of failing to disclose the results of trials which show its inadequacies.The licensing authorities and Nice, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, will now be forced to look again at the drug. Nice said in guidance on treating adults with depression that reboxetine works as well as other modern antidepressants. The BMJ authors say it does not.The revelations come from the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care. Its independent scientists decided to scrutinise the data on reboxetine because of doubts that have been raised about its effectiveness and the fact that the US licensing authority, the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) refused it a licence in 2001.Individual trials that have been published and reviews of the data in the public domain have all shown the drug to be effective. But the German institute's scientists found that eight out of 13 significant trials had not seen the light of day.The manufacturer, Pfizer, gave them data relating only to 1,600 patients – although sources suggested the drug had been trialled on 4,600. Pfizer stated publicly it had given the institute "those data that from our point of view are suited for a benefit assessment of Edronax", but eventually handed over most of the rest.The institute accuses the manufacturers of publishing only positive results for the drug. "Data on 74% of the patients included in our analysis was unpublished, indicating that the published evidence on reboxetine so far has been severely affected by publication bias," the authors write."Our comparison of published and unpublished trials confirmed this assumption: the positive benefit-risk ratio of reboxetine in the published literature was changed to a negative ratio if unpublished trials were added to the analysis."Beate Wieseler, deputy head of the institute's department of drug assessment, and colleagues call for changes in European law to make it mandatory for all clinical trial results to be published. They argue that all trial data should be disclosed – even when the trials fail and the drug is not approved. The results should also be disclosed for all older drugs which have a licence and may not be covered by new rules.In a commentary, Robert Steinbrook from Dartmouth and Yale and Jerome Kassirer from Tufts University schools of medicine in the US point to recent controversies involving the non-disclosure of data from drug trials. Avandia for diabetes and the painkiller Vioxx were both found to have safety problems that published studies had not shown up."Companies have financial interests in the outcome of the studies they sponsor; they own the data, and set the rules for access to the data. Unfortunately, they cannot be relied on to consistently provide dispassionate evaluations of their own drugs and medical devices," they say. Scientists and doctors may also have financial links to the companies.Dr Fiona Godlee, editor of the BMJ, and colleague Dr Elizabeth Loder say that "the medical evidence base is distorted by missing clinical trial data" and call for urgent action to restore trust in existing evidence."Full information about previously conducted clinical trials involving drugs, devices and other treatments is vital to clinical decision-making," they say. "It is time to demonstrate a shared commitment to set the record straight."PfizerPharmaceuticals industryDepressionHealthDrugsMental healthSarah Boseleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Spectacular salmon Does the biggest run in a century mean plenty more fish in the sea? bbc.co.uk |