Stem cell trial for MS treatment

29 July 2011 Last updated at 05:00 GMT By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News Bone marrow stem cells may be able to protect and repair A major clinical trial will investigate whether stem cells can be safely used to treat multiple sclerosis (MS).

It is hoped eventually to slow, stop or even reverse the damage MS causes to the brain and spinal cord.

The trial, involving up to 150 patients across Europe, is due to start later this year.

Dr Paolo Muraro from Imperial College London said: "There is very strong pre-clinical evidence that stem cells might be an effective treatment."

Researchers will collect stem cells from the bone marrow of patients, grow them in the laboratory and then re-inject them into their blood.

The stem cells will make their way to the brain where it is hoped that they will repair the damage caused by MS.

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These experiments have confirmed that these stem cells hold that potential - but these need to be confirmed in large scale clinical trials”

End Quote Dr Doug Brown MS Society The research has been part-funded by the UK's MS Society, which is concerned about the availability of unproven stem cell treatments.

In recent years many people living with MS have been attracted to overseas stem cell clinics which claim to cure long-term conditions in exchange for large amounts of money.

But there is no proven stem cell therapy available for MS anywhere in the world.

The MS Society hopes these new trials will eventually lead to a proven treatment - and a reduction in the draw of overseas treatments.

Common condition

MS is the most common neurological condition to affect young people in the UK.

Three million people are thought to be affected worldwide and up to 100,000 in the UK.

The condition is caused by the body's own immune system attacking and damaging a substance called myelin in the brain and nerve cells.

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I am delighted that we have at last progressed stem cell research to this stage, which will bring much-needed hope to so many people affected by this devastating condition”

End Quote Sir Richard Sykes Chair, UK Stem Cell Foundation The myelin damage disrupts messages from the brain to the body which leads to a number of symptoms such as sight loss, bladder and bowel problems, muscle stiffness and eventually physical disability.

Drugs are available to alleviate the symptoms - but they do not prevent the progression of the condition.

Experiments in test tubes and laboratory animals suggest stem cells extracted from bone marrow may be able to offer a more effective treatment.

Their role in the bone marrow is to protect the cells that make blood. But they also seem to protect myelin from attack by the immune system.

There is also some evidence that these cells might also be able to repair damaged tissue.

Hold potential

Dr Doug Brown, of the MS Society, said: "These experiments have confirmed that these stem cells hold that potential - but these need to be confirmed in large scale clinical trials."

There is some way to go, however, before laboratory promise can be translated into a treatment that can be offered to patients.

The international team will begin so-called phase two clinical trials in six months' time designed to determine whether the treatment is safe and effective.

It will take five years to carry out and assess the results of the trials after which large phase three trials may be required.

But Dr Muraro believes that the stem cell approach has real potential.

He said: "The great hope is the fact that we are exploiting a biological system that has evolved over millions of years and harnessing it for treatment that takes advantage of the stem cells' flexibility."

Sir Richard Sykes, chair of the UK Stem Cell Foundation, said Dr Muraro's research was the first of its kind to take place in the UK.

"Given the high incidence of MS in the UK in comparison to other countries, I am delighted that we have at last progressed stem cell research to this stage, which will bring much-needed hope to so many people affected by this devastating condition."

Correction 29 July 2011: This story has been amended after the MS Society corrected a statement it had made suggesting stem cells from the brains of aborted foetuses had been used in research it was funding. The society said that adult neural cells were in fact being used.

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Nature's primes

27 July 2011 Last updated at 09:25 GMT Prime numbers are found hidden in nature, but humans have made spectacular use of them, writes mathematician Marcus du Sautoy.

Ever since humans evolved on this planet we have been trying to make sense of the world around us.

We have attempted to explain why the world looks and behaves the way it does, to predict what the future holds. And in our search for answers we have uncovered a code that makes sense of the huge complexity that confronts us - mathematics.

By translating nature into the code of numbers we have revealed hidden structures and patterns that control our environment.

But not only that. By tapping into nature's code we have been able to change our surroundings, have built extraordinary cities, and developed amazing technology that has resulted in the modern world.

Buzzing quietly beneath the planet we inhabit is an unseen world of numbers, patterns and geometry. Mathematics is the code that makes sense of our universe.

In the forests of Tennessee this summer, part of this code literally bursts from the ground. Nashville is usually home to the sound of blue grass and honky tonk.

But every 13 years, the banjos and basses get drowned out for six weeks by the chorus of an insect that has fascinated me ever since I became a mathematician. Only found in the eastern areas of North America, this cicadas survival depends on exploiting the strange properties of some of the most fundamental numbers in mathematics - the primes, numbers that are only divisible by themselves and one.

The cicadas appear periodically but only emerge after a prime number of years. In the case of the brood appearing around Nashville this year, 13 years. The forests have been quiet for 12 years since the last invasion of these mathematical bugs in 1998 and the locals won't be disturbed by them again until 2024.

This choice of a 13-year cycle doesn't seem too arbitrary. There are another two broods across north America that also have this 13-year life cycle, appearing in different regions and different years. In addition there are another 12 broods that appear every 17 years.

You could just dismiss these numbers as random. But it's very curious that there are no cicadas with 12, 14, 15, 16 or 18-year life cycles. However look at these cicadas through the mathematician's eyes and a pattern begins to emerge.

Because 13 and 17 are both indivisible this gives the cicadas an evolutionary advantage as primes are helpful in avoiding other animals with periodic behaviour. Suppose for example that a predator appears every six years in the forest. Then a cicada with an eight or nine-year life cycle will coincide with the predator much more often than a cicada with a seven-year prime life cycle.

These insects are tapping into the code of mathematics for their survival. The cicadas unwittingly discovered the primes using evolutionary tactics but humans have understood that these numbers not just the key to survival but are the very building blocks of the code of mathematics.

Every number is built by multiplying primes together and from numbers you get mathematics and from mathematics you get the whole of science.

But humans haven't been content simply with observing the importance of these numbers to nature. By understanding the fundamental character of these numbers and exploring their properties humans have literally put them at the heart of the codes that currently protect the world's cyber-secrets.

Continue reading the main story A treasure hunt is running alongside the showThere are three visual clues in each episode as well as other cluesThe prize is a specially commissioned mathematical sculptureThe cryptography that keeps our credit cards secure when we shop online exploits the same numbers that protect the cicadas in North America - the primes.

Every time you send your credit card number to a website your are depending on primes to keep your details secret. To encode your credit card number your computer receives a public number N from the website, which it uses to perform a calculation with your credit card number.

This scrambles your details so that the encoded message can be sent across the internet. But to decode the message the website uses the primes which divide N to undo the calculation. Although N is public, the primes which divide N are the secret keys which unlock the secret.

The reason this is so secure is that although it is easy to multiply two prime numbers together it is almost impossible to pull them apart. For example no one has been able to find the two primes which divide the following 617-digit number:

25,195,908,475,657,893,494,027,183,240,048,398,571,429,282,126,204,

032,027,777,137,836,043,662,020,707,595,556,264,018,525,880,784,406,

918,290,641,249,515,082,189,298,559,149,176,184,502,808,489,120,072,

844,992,687,392,807,287,776,735,971,418,347,270,261,896,375,014,971,

824,691,165,077,613,379,859,095,700,097,330,459,748,808,428,401,797,

429,100,642,458,691,817,195,118,746,121,515,172,654,632,282,216,869,

987,549,182,422,433,637,259,085,141,865,462,043,576,798,423,387,184,

774,447,920,739,934,236,584,823,824,281,198,163,815,010,674,810,451,

660,377,306,056,201,619,676,256,133,844,143,603,833,904,414,952,634,

432,190,114,657,544,454,178,424,020,924,616,515,723,350,778,707,749,

817,125,772,467,962,926,386,356,373,289,912,154,831,438,167,899,885,

040,445,364,023,527,381,951,378,636,564,391,212,010,397,122,822,120,

720,357

The primes are the atoms of the arithmetic. The hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers.

But despite their fundamental character they also represent one of the greatest enigmas in mathematics. Because as you count through the universe of numbers it is almost impossible to spot a pattern that will help you to predict where the next prime will be found.

We know primes go on for ever but finding a pattern in the primes is one of the biggest mysteries in mathematics. A million-dollar prize has been offered to anyone who can reveal the secret of these numbers.

Despite having cracked so much of nature's code the primes are as much an enigma today as when the cicadas in the forests of Tennessee first tapped into them for their evolutionary survival.

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Climate unit releases more data

27 July 2011 Last updated at 19:28 GMT By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News Some of CRU's critics do not endorse global warming - others want scientific practice to change The University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, target of "ClimateGate", has released nearly all its remaining data on temperature measurements following a freedom of information bid.

The unit works with the UK Met Office to compile one of the world's most used records of global temperature change.

Most temperature data was already available, but critics of climate science want everything public.

Data from Trinidad and Tobago is being released against the country's wishes.

Following the latest release, raw data from virtually all of the world's 5,000-plus weather stations is freely available.

The only exceptions concern 19 weather stations in Poland, for which the Polish national weather service has declined to release data, for reasons it has not elaborated.

The requests were made two years ago by Jonathan Jones, a quantum computing specialist at Oxford University, and Don Keiller, a biologist at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.

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This ruling might have unintended and potentially damaging consequences for international collaboration”

End Quote Trevor Davies UEA They demanded that the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) release data that had been sent to other researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, concerning weather stations from 30 degrees north to 40 degrees south of the equator - a belt around the world.

"It was very much a matter of principle," Dr Jones told BBC News

"This dataset wasn't particularly interesting, but we thought the data in general should be available, and we thought people shouldn't have to make FoI requests for it.

"So when earlier requests were turned down by the University of East Anglia (UEA) on what I thought were foolish grounds, I decided to push this to the limit."

Public order

The limit was reached last month when the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) ruled that UEA had to release the data.

The Met Office, as the UK's national weather service, had approached the owners of data from more than 1,500 weather stations around the world - both inside and outside the zone covered by the FoI requests.

Many had given data to the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) on the understanding that it would not be made public - the main reason being that they charge for the information.

CRU data has been crucial in designing and validating computer models of the climate system

About 60% either failed to respond, or responded equivocally. Some were willing to have it go public, while Trinidad and Tobago asked categorically for it to be kept private.

UEA argued that breaking pledges of privacy could damage international relations, and relations between UK research institutions and partners overseas.

But the Information Commissioner ruled that public interest in disclosure outweighed those considerations.

Trevor Davies, UEA's pro-vice chancellor for research, said the potential for damaging relations was still a concern.

"This particular ruling might have unintended and potentially damaging consequences for international collaboration," he said.

"We regret having to release data from Trinidad and Tobago against that state's express wish; but we want to place beyond all doubt our determination to be open with our data and to comply with the ICO's instruction."

Data from 3,780 weather stations had been released earlier this year via the UK Met Office, while US portals such as the Global Historical Climatological Network also put raw readings into the public domain.

Concluding remarks?

The release marks the latest chapter in a story that has run for several years, with critics of climate science trying to force institutions to release raw weather station data rather than figures that have been processed and analysed.

The issue peaked just before the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, when a batch of e-mails and other documents was stolen from a CRU server and made public - the affair dubbed "ClimateGate".

Even though virtually all raw station data is now out there, this may not be the final chapter.

"I think people are far more interested in CRU's corrections, in homogenisation of data, and far more interested in their paleo-climatic data," said Dr Jones.

"And this process will carry on until the climate science community starts behaving like proper scientists."

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Images from inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone

29 July 2011 Last updated at 08:23

The first Scottish Nature Photography award winners.

Readers' pictures on the theme of flight

Your pictures on the theme of floating

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Biophilia

28 July 2011 Last updated at 08:18 GMT By Liam Allen Arts reporter, BBC News Biophilia will be Bjork's seventh studio album Biophilia, Bjork's fusion of nature and machines, marks the singer's latest foray into electronic music.

The ambitious project, from Iceland's most famous export, includes a forthcoming album with 10 songs - inspired by the natural world - with corresponding iPad and iPhone applications.

It also features, among other things, educational workshops and a series of live concert residencies in major world cities, which began at the Manchester International Festival at the end of last month.

Fittingly, it was in that rainy city - 20 years earlier - that a young Bjork fell in love with the dance and electronic music that has become so central to her success.

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I remember going to Manchester and 808 State taking me around and me just seeing things that I'd never seen that I'd hoped existed”

End Quote Bjork She was there to record a guest vocal for seminal Manchester band 808 State, who were at the forefront of the city's house music explosion in the late '80s and early '90s.

Their collaborations Ooops and Qmart appeared on the band's 1991 album ex:el.

"I remember going to Manchester, and 808 State taking me around, and me just seeing things that I'd never seen - that I'd hoped existed," says the singer, who enjoyed early success with indie band The Sugarcubes.

"So I would be up until early morning... sometimes from just the enthusiasm for the music."

The four-to-the floor rhythms were a big influence on her 1993 solo album Debut, a number three UK hit which spawned singles including Big Time Sensuality, loved by underground and radio DJs alike.

"You would go to a cellar at like 5 or 6 in the morning, some DJ would go on and he would just mix together two wrong songs that were not supposed to be," says the singer, recalling some of her favourite moments in the city.

"And he would have this synthesizer and play on top of it, and you just really felt that no one had done that before."

Bjork sees those times as "my roots" and "definitely one of the things that brought me up, and formed me".

While all her albums have followed Debut into the UK top 10, she's under no illusions that the Biophilia album - which will be released on 27 September - together with its myriad of multi-media spin-offs, is an easy sell.

"Unfortunately, when people are writing about the project, it comes across as being extremely complicated," she says.

"But actually, the intention is to simplify things through touch-screen."

Continue reading the main story ... fame: "I lived here and I guess I was an A-lister and at one point I had 20 paparazzi in my garden."... bridging divides: "I'm trying to find a new touching point between acoustic and electronic, and pretending I'm sort of a Kofi Anan."... partying: "I felt like the English nation was offering me an invitation to become their little A-list villager. I took a part of it for a year and it was fun, fun, fun."... her Biophilia project: "I thought first it would be a music museum for kids in Iceland. Then, for a year or so, I thought it would become a 3D movie."The abum was inspired by touchscreen devices which preceded the iPad, enabling musicians to play sounds by pressing the screen.

"Because I don't play the piano or guitar, and usually I've always written my music when I am just walking outside, I've finally found something that's appealing to me as an accompaniment," she says.

"I can just scrabble with my fingers - it's a breakthrough for me."

Algorithms from nature can be fed into software to create a musical pattern which is then manipulated through the touch-screen, she says.

"They can take the algorithm of gravity or a pendulum - which is pretty complex - and then put it onto a touch-screen, and you can play with it with one finger."

Each of the album tracks - which include Thunderbolt, Virus and Moon - have "a different programme based on that natural element.

"You've got 10 songs with 10 natural elements; their structure is that natural element."

Beautiful ballad

Yet, despite the seemingly complex nature of the songs', the two tracks released as singles so far are eminently listenable.

Bjork's biggest UK hit was It's Oh So Quiet, which reached number four in 1996

Crystalline - "underneath our feet, crystals grow like plants" - begins with naturalistic chiming bells before developing into a full-on drum and bass rock-out.

Cosmogony is a beautiful ballad, complete with full brass backing, which compels "heaven, heaven's bodies" to "whirl around me".

While one reviewer described the Manchester world premiere of the songs as "massively self-indulgent", many more were gushing in their praise of "moments of simple, transcendent beauty".

But with more concert residencies to be announced, other cities may struggle to match Bjork's Manchester experience.

"It was excellent to be there, especially for a whole month, being with all my old mates. We had the wrap-up party with Graham Massey from 808 State DJing and old friends came along - it was amazing."

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Doubts over 'ancient' books in Israel

26 July 2011 Last updated at 23:04 GMT By Kevin Connolly BBC News, Jerusalem The metal books, the Lead Codices, range in size and are covered in ancient lettering In the cool living room of a stone-built house in Northern Israel I might just have held in my hands the keys to the ancient mysteries of Christianity.

And then again, I might not have.

With the blinds shuttered against the glare of the midday sun my host, Hassan Saeda, lays out a collection of extraordinary books which he says are about 2,000 years old.

Flowing of hair and neat of beard, he bears a distracting resemblance to an illustration of Christ from an old children's Bible. It lends the scene an air of extra gravity.

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I spent so much time and so much money to prove these are real. There are a lot of professors and one of them told me that I'm living in a fantasy”

End Quote Hassan Saeda Owner of metal books The books - bindings, pages, covers and all - are made entirely of various metals.

They are inscribed - or engraved, stamped or embossed - with various simple pictures and writing in a variety of languages including Greek and Old Hebrew.

And they are astonishingly heavy. Some are no larger than a credit card but some are the size of large-format modern paperbacks. The largest that I handled probably weighed 4 or 5kg (about 10lbs).

You can see why the publishing industry was eventually won over by the flexibility and portability of paper.

Family heirloom?

But that is where the supply of undisputable concrete fact about the collection - which some people refer to as the "Lead Codices" - more or less runs out.

Mr Saeda, for example, says the books have been in his family for 120 years, after his grandfather discovered them in a cave.

Other people who have met him to discuss the books say he found or bought them in Jordan within the last five years and smuggled them into Israel.

Mr Saeda is sticking to the current version of his story in which he acknowledges that many experts who have seen the metal volumes consider them to be fakes.

The texts might tell the story of the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem - or not

His faith is undimmed.

"I spent so much time and so much money to prove these are real. There are a lot of professors and one of them told me that I'm living in a fantasy.

My answer to him was: 'I think you got old and your eyes don't see anything.' I took my book and went away. Many professors say it's a fake. Why? I don't know why. But this is a real book."

Mysticism and magic swirl in the dark air as Mr Saeda enlarges on the possibilities he sees in the codices.

They might contain the real story of the destruction of the Jewish Second Temple by the Romans, he says.

Or they could fill the gaps in our knowledge of the early Christian movement. They might even hold the key to universal happiness.

If they are real, that is.

The 'True Cross'

The Holy Land is one of the homes of archaeology. Indeed for years, one of the main purposes of the science was to search for tangible evidence that would prove the truth of the stories of the Bible.

Antiquarians warn shoppers to buy with caution because the market is flooded with fakes

And there has always been money in it too.

There are enough pieces of the "True Cross" in circulation to make a wooden aircraft carrier. And enough nails to put it together.

British taxpayers will wince at the thought that a king of England once paid 100,000 gold coins for the "real" crown of thorns from the New Testament.

There are stories of not one but several foreskins of Jesus which have been recovered, sold and venerated and of the feathers of the wings of the Archangel Michael being preserved in Pennsylvania.

For every seller, it seems there is a buyer.

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The greater, the more sensational the story, the more the chances of it being real are miniscule ”

End Quote Lenny Wolfe Israeli antiquarian So I went to see Lenny Wolfe, an antiquarian who lives and trades in Jerusalem and who painted a gripping picture of a Middle East antiques market where the unwary and the inexpert tread at their peril.

Factories in Syria knock out fake antiquities to order and every month brings new stories of caves in the remote valleys of Jordan where golden treasures are hidden that will change the way we see the world.

Mr Wolfe has seen the lead codices and decided not to invest. He is a philosopher as well as a trader, interested in the foibles which inspire people to seek out antiquities which may well be fake and to pin their hopes on them.

Or, as he put it: "The greater, the more sensational the story, the more the chances of it being real are miniscule. I'm very interested in the behavioural or anthropological aspects of the antiquities trade."

Mr Wolfe is writing a book, entitled Forgeries and Controversies in Biblical Archaeology. "There are enough controversies and forgeries to make this a lengthy tome," he says.

Golden rule

Joe Zias, an anthropologist who served for 25 years as a senior curator at the Israel Antiquities Authority, is equally sceptical.

The golden rule in archaeology, he says, is simple - when you hear extraordinary claims, ask for extraordinary proof.

Mr Zias says the world of archaeology has changed since Hollywood gave us first Indiana Jones and then the Da Vinci code.

Israel's 2000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls were found half a century ago in caves in the West Bank

No longer is the archaeologist a nerdy toff with a shovel and a Shorter Oxford Dictionary of Latin. Suddenly he or she, is a swashbuckling figure solving the sinister mysteries of antiquity.

They are still searching for the Holy Grail of course - except that now the Holy Grail is not just the find itself but a story of danger and adventure in the process of searching that secures you a deal for a book or a documentary.

Joe Zias says the odds are always against any such finding turning out to change the way we look at ancient history as the Dead Sea Scrolls once did.

He says he has seen many people bringing artefacts to his museum during his quarter-century as a curator, but the only genuine one was a fragment of Byzantine pottery found by a tourist on Mount Sinai.

"It wasn't going back to the time of Moses, but in 25 years that's the only thing I ever saw that was authentic," he says.

Now there are those who believe - just as Mr Saeda does - that the Lead Codices are genuine and that they hold important secrets about the ancient world.

But the search for truth in the Holy Land has been littered with fakes and forgeries for hundreds of years and when great claims are made for a new discovery, the burden of proof lies with the finders. And the burden is a heavy one.

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Search under way for jubilee wood

30 July 2011 Last updated at 01:33 GMT The ambitious 500-acre woodland would take three or four years to complete The Woodland Trust is searching for a 500-acre site to plant half-a-million trees in a flagship woodland that will celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

The ideal location would be an accessible location near a large population, a spokeswoman said.

The team hoped to begin planting trees on the chosen site in the autumn.

As well as planting the jubilee wood, the trust is also looking for volunteer hosts for a further 59 60-acre "diamond woods" across the UK.

"While the jubilee wood is going to be a national, living monument to the Queen, we also want it to be used and enjoyed by people," explained Georgina Mcleod, the trust's head of jubilee woods.

She added that apart from the site being near to people, accessible and suitable for woodland creation, there were very few criteria.

"As we will be buying this site, we do not mind who we buy it from - a local authority, private landowner, whoever - as long as we can afford it," Ms Mcleod told BBC News.

The 500-acre (200ha) project is earmarked to cost in the region of ?5m, she estimated.

"This includes buying the land, planting the trees and other logistics too, such as putting in footpaths and engaging the local community.

"The total will also pay for some sort of jubilee interpretation; how do we make this site really, really special? How do we make it somewhere that people want to visit and will be a memorable legacy to the Queen."

An estimated 500,000 trees will be planted over a three-to-four year period. They will be primarily native broadleaf species, such as ash, oak, rowan, birch and hornbeam.

60-60 vision

The Woodland Trust is also looking to establish a further 59 smaller woodlands to complement the large, flagship one.

"This is where there might be local authorities or landowners who would want to host one of these. We are going to create the huge 500-acre one, and we want 59 other locations to create a 60-acre (24ha) woodland each," Ms Mcleod explained.

She said that they had about 20 sites confirmed and were still looking for more offers.

On a smaller scale still, Ms Mcleod explained that the trust would be giving away free tree planting packs to local communities that wanted to establish a wooded area to commemorate the jubilee. In total, the project was looking to plant six million trees.

The project is thought to be the first of its kind. However, a committee was established to oversee tree-planting to mark the coronation of King George VI in 1936.

A 642-page book was published in 1939 that listed the location and species of every single tree that was planted, not just in the UK but in other parts of the British Empire.

Ms Mcleod explained that the Queen Mother was the patron of the 1936 campaign, and that Princess Anne had agreed to follow in her grandmother's footsteps and be the patron of the 2012 jubilee project.

The tree-planting is expected to get under way from November, when this year's planting season would normally start.

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