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A climate researcher has accused the mass media in failing to cover the sensitive issue of global warming in the right manner.

“Business managers of media organizations, you are screwing up your responsibility by firing science and environment reporters who are frankly the only ones competent to do this,” said climate researcher and policy analyst Stephen Schneider, in assessing the current state of media coverage of global warming and related issues.

Schneider is calling for the news media to employ trained reporters in covering global warming.

“Science is not politics. You can’t just get two opposing viewpoints and think you’ve done due diligence. You’ve got to cover the multiple views and the relative credibility of each view,” said Schneider, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.

“But that is not usually the problem of the well-trained reporters, who understand what is credible,” he added.

Researchers have to do their part, too, he said, by clearly explaining issues to reporters in succinct terms.

According to Schneider, “I have arguments with some of my scientific colleagues, who think it is irresponsible to go out and talk when you can only get 5 seconds on the evening news, a couple of quotes in the New York Times, or five minutes in front of Congress.”

“Well, you know what guys, that’s just how it is. And if you think that you have a higher calling and you’re not going to play the game because they don’t give you the time to tell the whole story, then all it means is that you’ve passed the buck to others who know the topic less well,” he added.

“You have to have your elevator statement or people won’t listen to you,” he said.

“What I always suggest is that scientists find metaphors that convey both urgency and uncertainty, so that you can get people’s attention while at the same time not overstating the case,” said Schneider.

“Then, you have websites and backup articles and books where you can give the full story, but you have to have your sound bite and your op ed piece,” he added.

India plans to develop a space vehicle that can carry up to three astronauts in the seven-day manned mission to space, Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G Madhavan Nair said on Monday.

“Concept is getting evolved”, Nair, also Secretary in the Department of Space, said while addressing an international seminar here.

ISRO is looking at developing a capsule (spacecraft) with service module which can accommodate three astronauts and take it to lower earth orbit using the indigenous GSLV (Geo-Synchronous Launch Vehicle) in the year 2015, he said.

Mission duration is seven days. There would also be emergency mission abort and crew rescue provisions in case of necessity. Crew module would be designed for re-entry and service module for mission management, Nair said.

He said the GSLV-Mk III, which can launch four tonne class satellites, would bring down the launch cost by half. The maiden flight of GSLV-Mk III is slated for next year.

On the recent Chandrayaan-1 moon mission, Nair said instruments on board have thrown up voluminous data which would take a few years for scientists to analyse and come out with concrete results.

Entire mapping of the lunar surface is expected to be carried out in a year’s time, he said, adding, there is no trace of water on moon so far.

The capital’s civic authorities started CNG-run pyres in three crematoriums last year, but they have been shut for many months. The reason? The head technician has undergone a heart surgery!

‘The contract for the three pilot projects was given jointly to a Delhi-based company and Gujarat-based Alpha Equipments. The technician handling the project on behalf of Alpha Equipments recently underwent a heart surgery, so in his absence work is stalled,’ explained M.K. Paul, a senior official at Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) health department.

Adding to technical barriers, a third party can’t be roped in to maintain the three crematoriums because such a move would be a ‘breach of trust’ of the current 10-year contract with the two firms.

The MCD, which manages over 90 percent of the capital’s land area, runs over 100 crematoriums. Most have wooden pyres, while a few have electric crematoriums.

In a move to reduce pollution and provide an environment friendly option, the civic agency started three pilot projects in 2008 - the Bela Road crematorium near Rajghat, the Sarai Kale Khan crematorium near Nizammudin and the Nigambodh Ghat crematorium near Civil Lines.

The Bela Road crematorium, which has provision for four CNG pyres, has been closed for six months now, while the one at Sarai Kale Khan has been shut for over two months. The one at Nigambodh Ghat just opened last week after being closed for months.

‘We are facing technical problems and repairs were needed - so the crematoriums were shut,’ Paul told IANS.

MCD has sent a notice to Alpha equipments and sought an explanation, the official said.

‘We reckon that the they will do something in a week and from then on the crematoriums will be operational,’ said N.K. Yadav, director of MCD’s health department.

Yadav also said that these projects were MCD’s way of promoting environment-friendly alternatives.

Paul added: ‘Based on the functioning of these crematoriums we were looking to introducing CNG pyres at other sites as well - so this technical difficulty has stalled that also.’

Another snag in the success of the CNG pyres was the recent strike of Indian oil companies when petrol pumps across the country had run dry.

‘The oil workers strike had also caused a fuel crunch for the pyres so at that time they were closed,’ Paul said.

On another front, the crematorium staff are not too upbeat about the CNG pyres. This is because while the electric pyres cost Rs.3,000, the eco-friendly alternatives are cheaper at just Rs.500.

‘The staff is resentful as there is little incentive and no scope for profits,’ an MCD official said on condition of anonymity.

Insulin, which is used to keep diabetes under control, may help treat or prevent Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study.

Researchers at Northwestern University say that insulin, by shielding memory-forming synapses from harm, may slow or prevent the damage and memory loss caused by toxic proteins in Alzheimer’s.

The findings provide additional new evidence that Alzheimer’s could be due to a novel third form of diabetes.

In a study of neurons taken from the hippocampus, one of the brain’s crucial memory centers, the researchers treated cells with insulin and the insulin-sensitizing drug rosiglitazone, which has been used to treat type 2 diabetes.

Isolated hippocampal cells are used by scientists to study memory chemistry; the cells are susceptible to damage caused by ADDLs, toxic proteins that build up in persons with Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers discovered that damage to neurons exposed to ADDLs was blocked by insulin, which kept ADDLs from attaching to the cells. They also found that protection by low levels of insulin was enhanced by rosiglitazone.

ADDLs are known to attack memory-forming synapses. After ADDL binding, synapses lose their capacity to respond to incoming information, resulting in memory loss.

The protective mechanism of insulin works through a series of steps by ultimately reducing the actual number of ADDL binding sites, which in turn results in a marked reduction of ADDL attachment to synapses.

“Therapeutics designed to increase insulin sensitivity in the brain could provide new avenues for treating Alzheimer’s disease,” said senior author William L. Klein, a professor of neurobiology and physiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a researcher in Northwestern’s Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center.

“Sensitivity to insulin can decline with aging, which presents a novel risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Our results demonstrate that bolstering insulin signaling can protect neurons from harm,” Klein added.

The study has been published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

EU regulators will discuss again in a few months whether to allow meat and milk products from cloned animals into the food chain, despite local consumer opposition and inconclusive data, officials said on Friday.

Animal cloning has been around for years. Dolly the cloned sheep was born in 1996, for example. Now, scientists estimate the EU has 100 cattle clones and fewer pig clones alive. Race horses have also been cloned.

Many consumer and religious groups strongly oppose the technology, which takes cells from an adult and fuses them with others before implanting them in a surrogate mother. They say scientists don’t know its effects on nutrition and biology.

But advocates of livestock cloning say the technology will help produce more milk and lean, tender meat by creating more disease-resistant animals. They insist it is safe.

Europe has yet to take a position on the technology as far as cloning of animals for food is concerned, which the European Commission says has not yet occurred in the European Union. Denmark is the only EU country to have adopted any cloning law.

After holding a closed-door debate recently on food deriving from cloned animals that ended in stalemate, the Commission delayed discussing the subject further, asking the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for more in-depth scientific advice.

A ban, if not properly justified, could lead to problems for the EU at the World Trade Organization, officials said.

LACK OF DATA

The trouble is that available scientific data and samples are too few. EFSA has given two opinions and admits its own uncertainty; although in July, the agency said cloned animal products might not be safe and needed further study.

It was clear there were significant animal health and welfare issues for surrogate mothers and clones that could be more frequent and severe than for conventionally bred animals, it said. But the evidence was still too little, it added. “The college (the 27 EU commissioners) decided that the status quo has to be preserved until we have further scientific studies on certain issues on which EFSA and other agencies could not express an opinion because of a lack of information and data,” a Commission official told reporters.

“We want to be sure we do not create problems so that is why we are having discussions with our trading partners,” she said.

EU experts were in close contact with authorities in Canada, Japan and the United States, the three main countries so far involved in cloning, or examining the technology.

Based on the views to be given by EFSA, when ready, the EU commissioners planned to hold another debate on cloning that would probably take place within three months, she said.

In October, a survey conducted at the Commission’s request showed that most EU citizens had reservations about cloning animals for food, while 67 percent saw cloning as justified if used to preserve rare animal species.

Developments in the U.S. food market have especially worried EU experts, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled in January 2008 that meat and milk from cloned cattle, pigs and goats was as safe as products from traditional animals.

Not every state in the nation has a state dinosaur, but Texas does. Now, however, the extinct creature could get a new official name.

It makes sense that the state of everything giant would celebrate a behemoth paleo-beast. In 1997, the legislature named Pleurocoelus the Texas state dinosaur. The sauropod (member of a group of plant eaters with long necks and tails) apparently plodded on saucer-like hind feet and weighed 40,000 to 90,000 pounds (18,000 to 40,000 kg), with a body length of up to 60 feet (18 meters).

The reign of Pleurocoelus in the Lone Star State may be a short one, though.

On Jan. 7, State Rep. Charles Geren of Fort Worth filed a resolution to change the state dinosaur from Pleurocoelus to Paluxysaurus jonesi to correctly name the massive sauropod whose tracks and bones litter the Jones Ranch, which is in central Texas near Glen Rose. Geren filed his resolution on behalf of constituents at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.

“I think it’s going to be good for Texas paleontology and dinosaur research in general,” said Aaron Pan, the museum’s curator of science. “This dinosaur is unique to Texas, and it is the most abundant dinosaur fossil found in the Glen Rose area.”

Many of the world’s most interesting dinosaur discoveries have come from North America. In addition to Texas, just a handful of states have officially designated a state dinosaur, including:

• Colorado: Stegosaurus
• District of Columbia: Capitalsaurus
• Maryland: Astrodon johnstoni
• Missouri: Hypsibema missouriensis
• New Jersey: Hadrosaurus foulkii
• Wyoming: Triceratops

The call for a name change is the result of 2007 research in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica in which Peter Rose, then at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, disputed the Texas dinosaur’s identity.

Rose analyzed sauropod bones at the Jones Ranch (in and around Paluxy River near Glen Rose). His analyses showed the bones didn’t match up with Pleurocoelus bones first found in Maryland in the late 1800s. The Texas dino had been given the same name as what was thought to be its counterpart in Maryland.

In fact, the dinosaur remains in Texas belong to a completely new genus and species, Rose said. Paluxysaurus jonesi lived some 112 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period (144 million to 65 million years ago).

Rather than a complete mistaken identity, Rose points out scientists had never thoroughly examined the dinosaur fossils littering the state.

“At the time sauropod tracks and bones were first discovered in Texas, only Pleurocoelus was known from North America for this particular time period (Early Cretaceous),” Rose told LiveScience. “In 1974, Wann Langston Jr. described some sauropod fossils from central Texas that he determined to be similar enough to those from Maryland that he referred them to the genus Pleurocoelus.”

He added, “I think from that point on, all subsequent sauropod discoveries in Texas were assumed to be that genus as well.”

Women who transition more quickly through menopause are at increased risk for a higher rate of progression of “preclinical atherosclerosis” - narrowing of arteries caused by the thickening of their walls, concludes a new study.

Cardiologist C. Noel Bairey Merz, M.D, led the multifaceted Los Angeles Atherosclerosis Study (LAAS), in which 203 women between ages 45 and 60 were evaluated.

While fifty-two women were premenopausal, 20 were perimenopausal and 131 were postmenopausal, none of them had been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.

They were evaluated when they entered the study and at two 18-month intervals, providing a snapshot over a three-year period of time.

Evaluations included carotid intimal-media thickness (cIMT) measurements and objective measures of menopausal status based on hormone levels and physiologic changes, not subjective factors, such as hot flashes and estimates of menstrual cycling.

It was found that women who transitioned from being premenopausal to being fully postmenopausal within three years had more build-up of fatty plaque in their carotid arteries.

Thus the researchers suggested that women who transition through menopause rapidly are at greater risk of early development of heart disease.

“We know that more fatty plaque accumulation predicts future heart attacks and strokes, but this is our first venture into this particular line of inquiry. This is an observational study, which doesn’t provide specific recommendations for patient evaluation and treatment, but it does raise questions,” said Bairey Merz.

She added: “The findings suggest that we study this more definitively to possibly determine if women undergoing a more rapid menopause might benefit from early hormone replacement therapy.

“In the meantime, physicians could consider using carotid intimal-media thickness measurement or other cardiovascular screenings for women who are rapidly transitioning or who have certain risk factors, such as cigarette smoking or chemotherapy, which are known to accelerate transition through the menopause.”

However, she cautioned that patients should not use the study to self-diagnose or presume they may be at higher risk because of symptoms.

Energy officials in Kiev Tuesday said Russian natural gas was slowly moving into Ukraine’s pipeline system, rejecting allegations from Moscow that Ukraine was blocking the flow.

‘Gas has started to come in (to Ukraine’s pipeline system from Russia),’ an official from the Ukrainian natural gas monopoly Naftogaz Ukrainy said. ‘Pressure in the system is rising.’

The Naftogaz declaration contradicted claims by officials from the Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom that Ukraine was preventing Russian gas from moving towards Europe.

Russia Tuesday morning ended an embargo on natural gas shipments into Ukraine’s pipeline system by opening the tap into one of Ukraine’s five trans-country transportation mains.

Pressure at the inlet had risen by midday Tuesday to a volume of 76.2 million cubic metres of Russian natural gas being pumped Westward daily, a Naftogaz official said.

Ukrainian energy engineers were according to Ukrainska Pravda magazine likely to struggle to deliver the gas in full volume to its outlet on the Ukraine-Romania border, as Ukraine’s natural gas transportation system is interconnected and raising pressure in a single southern pipeline, without gas moving elsewhere in the system, is technically difficult.

The Kremlin cut off gas shipments to Ukraine last week, citing siphoning by Kiev as grounds. Ukrainian officials have never admitted to stealing Russian gas, saying Russian gas was diverted to maintain pressure in Ukraine’s pipeline system, or taken as payment for shipment of Russian gas through Ukrainian pipelines.

Russia’s state-run monopoly Gazprom announced it will resume shipping natural gas Tuesday to Europe, where tens of thousands of homes and buildings have been left without heat in freezing weather.

Gas supplies will be restarted at 0700 GMT (2 a.m. EST) “if there are no obstacles,” Gazprom deputy chairman Alexander Medvedev said in Brussels.

The shift came after Ukraine signed off on an EU-brokered deal that sent teams of EU, Russian and Ukrainian monitors in to track the movement of Russian gas through Ukraine’s vast pipeline system. Gazprom had shut off deliveries last Wednesday, accusing Ukraine of siphoning off gas intended for Europe, a charge that Ukraine denies.

“As soon as they (the monitors) are at the control points, and we are sure that they can control the transit of our gas, Gazprom will pump gas to Ukraine’s gas transit system to be shipped to European customers,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at a Cabinet meeting Monday.

Russia supplies about one-quarter of the European Union’s natural gas, 80 percent of it shipped through Ukraine, and the disruption has come as the continent is gripped by freezing temperatures.

The gas cutoff has affected more than 15 countries, with Bosnia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia among the worst hit. Sales of electric heaters have soared and thousands of businesses in eastern Europe have been forced to cut production or even shut down.

Relief will not come immediately, however. It will take 24 to 30 hours for gas to reach European customers once Russia resumes pumping, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said.

Russia was still not sending natural gas to Ukraine for domestic consumption. The two neighbors remained deadlocked over the price Ukraine should pay for gas in 2009 and the amount Russia should pay for transporting gas through Ukraine’s pipelines. Russia stopped supplying gas to Ukraine on Jan. 1 over the price dispute.

Teams of EU monitors and officials from Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-run energy company, were already at six major gas transit stations on Ukraine’s border with European countries and at three units on the Russian-Ukrainian border, according to Naftogaz.

Gazprom would not say when its observers would be in place.

“The EU, Russia and Ukraine will each name 25 monitoring experts,” said Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin. “This will be sufficient to monitor the supply of gas at all monitoring points.”

Ukraine first signed the agreement early Sunday, but Russia declared it invalid after Ukraine attached additional conditions, including being able to use Russian gas to pump supplies across its vast territory. Gazprom says Ukraine must pay for that so-called technical gas, but Kiev insists it won’t pay until the two countries strike their own gas deal and Russia restores gas deliveries to Ukraine.

Ukrainian government officials clarified the deal Monday and said the declaration was not legally binding.

“We will continue to use (technical) gas from the Russian Federation,” Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko told reporters. “We will be able to pay for it when contracts are signed and we receive payment for transit.”

Gazprom has lost about $800 million in revenue because of the disruption of supplies, Putin told German ARD television.

The anger toward Russia for shutting off supplies was particularly acute in eastern Europe, where many residents spent money they really couldn’t afford on electric heating and temperatures plunged to -14 C (6.8 F) in places like Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

“We switched our heating from gas to electricity,” said Snjezana Kordic, a 51-year-old Sarajevo resident. “We will never again depend on the mood of the Russians.”

Unitech Wireless, the telecom arm of real estate major Unitech Ltd., Monday said it has received 4.4 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum in the 1,800 MHz GSM band in the West Bengal telecom circle.

With this, the company has been allotted initial spectrum in 21 service areas of India out of 22, a company statement said.

In October 2008, Unitech announced the selling of 60 percent stake in its telecom venture Unitech Wireless for Rs.61.20 billion ($1.23 billion) to Telenor.

‘The company signed a binding agreement with Telenor on Oct 28 and are now completing all the formalities. Both the parties have made significant progress on the transaction,’ the company said.

The Oslo-headquartered Telenor is a global provider of telecommunications, data and media communication services. Norway’s Ministry of Industry and Trade owns 54 percent of the company, which has operations in Europe and Asia.