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Nanoparticles In Environment Estimated By Novel Approach
Without knowing how much of an industrial chemical is being produced, it is almost impossible for scientists to determine if it poses any threat to the environment or human health.

Reform Debate Circles Back To Costs, And How To Pay For Them
In the White House"s pitches for health care reform, controlling costs has replaced universal coverage as the leading imperative to overhaul the system. A top White House economist, Christina Romer, said in a public appearance Monday, "Good health care reform is good economic policy," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. "Fixing what"s wrong with our health care system is no longer a luxury we hope to achieve - it"s a necessity we cannot postpone any longer" (Abate, 6/9).
News of the day
AFP Examines Debate Over H1N1 Spending, Re Allocation
The Agence-France Press examines the debate over how much developed countries are spending to fight the H1N1 virus. There is concern that as developed countries store away antivirals, face masks and vaccines to protect against the H1N1 (swine) flu virus, poor countries are being left empty handed. "Some critics say the spending is so imbalanced that it amounts to health apartheid, protecting rich countries against H1N1 but leaving poor nations to fend for themselves," the news service writes, adding, "Others argue gargantuan sums are being spent on a disease that is no more lethal than seasonal flu, which is grotesquely disproportionate when thousands die each day of less media-friendly diseases."
Sexual Health

Call To Tackle The Causes Of Ageing Rather Than Treating The Effects

Tackling the very causes of ageing, rather than treating the symptoms in a piecemeal way offers the best prospects for dealing with the diseases and effects of ageing according to a public lecture being given at the Royal Society tonight. New research that offers up hope to improve health during ageing in humans, and to tackle a broad range of ageing-related diseases, will be presented tonight by Director of the UCL Institute of Healthy Ageing Professor Linda Partridge. She believes these scientific advances are inspiring a new wave in ageing research. Professor Partridge says: "Research on the diseases associated with ageing is generally done by separate communities of research workers who read different journals, attend different conferences and generally do not communicate with each other. But by tacking the causes of ageing itself we could treat, or at least delay, a broad spectrum of conditions simultaneously" Two discoveries are proving especially exciting in the field. Mutations in single genes have been found to extend the lifespan of animals in the lab - such as worms, fruit flies and mice - and appear to play the same role in humans. And these mutations can also produce a broad-spectrum improvement in health during ageing. So far, signalling pathways that sense nutrients have proved to have the most robust effect on healthy lifespan. For instance, in mammals insulin regulates blood sugar levels and metabolism in response to food intake, while the related insulin-like growth factor 1(Igf1) regulates growth. Mutations in genes that encode the protein components of the insulin and Igf1 signalling pathways have proved to extend lifespan in a nematode worm, the fruit fly and mice, and genetic variants for these genes in humans have proved to associate with lifespan. Dietary restriction, which is a simple environmental intervention, can also extend life in a range of animals. Drugs which inhibit the nutrient pathways in humans could replicate the effects of dietary restriction and act not only to increase healthy lifespan but to target a broad range of ageing related diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes and Alzheimer"s. This research means a new approach to the treatment of age-related conditions. Partridge adds: "The major burden of ill health is in the older section of the population. The new discoveries about ageing have raised the prospect of increasing the number of years that people enjoy in good health, with broad-spectrum preventative medicines for the diseases of ageing" Professor Partridge will be speaking as the latest winner of The Croonian Prize. The Croonian Lecture is the Royal Society"s premier lecture in the biological sciences. The Royal Society


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