The dark wood panels, the mossy-soft carpet underfoot, the scent of age – these were the milestones on my way to a hearing for the inquiry into the role and function of chief scientific advisers (CSAs), who sit in each government department to provide independent evidence-based counsel.

I took a seat in the cosy atmosphere before the members of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, who were arranged into a smiling horseshoe. No sooner had witnesses taken their seats than disagreement broke out. Attendees contradicted one another, forthrightly arguing over the tops of place names and microphone cables.

Access needs
“With regard to access to ministers, that was my major problem in both departments,” stated Professor Brian Collins, former CSA at both the Department of Transport and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Later, Professor Robert Watson, the incumbent CSA at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), said the level of access he enjoys is “outstanding”. Meanwhile, Department for Education CSA Carole Willis said she was “absolutely” embedded in the education reform programme, but she was “not sure” that she had met the secretary of state.

The inquiry had begun. Its aim is to consider, among other things, the ability of CSAs to provide independent scientific advice, evidence and challenge to policymakers.

The level of access to ministers for any CSA will always differ between departments. It is noteworthy that the incumbent CSAs questioned on 18 October 2011 explained that they enjoyed an appropriate level of access, while former CSAs on the same day and at other hearings argued that their level of access to ministers was never satisfactory. As Lord Willis, one of the members of the select committee, recalls, “On one occasion a departmental CSA did not even know who the secretary of state was, or appeared not to do.”

This issue is a flashpoint of the lords’ inquiry, the report of which is expected by early March. Speaking after the hearing, Collins said that access is a problem due to a lack of clarity in the system. “There isn’t a protocol by which secretaries of state and ministers and senior officials are inducted as to what CSAs do,” he told me.

“Erratic and problematic”
Collins says that two of the five secretaries of state he worked with in four years would sit down and talk with him, but others did not. “That made the whole process for me erratic and problematic,” he says. “It is not really the way I felt business should be run.”

Over at Defra, Prof Watson has met Caroline Spelman, the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, “about 63 or 64 times in the last 11 months”. Prof Watson, recently knighted for service to government, claims he is “totally and utterly embedded” with ministers and the management structure of his department.

Watson’s access is enough to turn CSAs like Willis, who admitted that she had not had a one-to-one with her minister, green with envy – and the lords red with confusion. “I find it very difficult to understand how you can have a policy challenge as the departmental CSA without having direct access to the minister responsible for the portfolio, and where possible to the secretary of state,” said Lord Willis.

Time with policymakers is important because it underpins the CSA’s task of giving scientific advice on policy. This may be the essential function of a CSA, but it is not simple, according to evidence given during the inquiry. The lords devoted a great deal of time to the question of whether policy is based on evidence, or whether evidence is collected to support policy.

Going in for the cull
This latter, less palatable, use of science is what some animal rights campaigners say has happened around the forthcoming badger cull, planned in order to staunch the flow of bovine tuberculosis (bTB). Around 25,000 cattle were slaughtered in 2010after contracting bTB, with associated costs to the taxpayer predicted to spiral to £1bn over the next decade if the disease is not contained.

Long faces: culling cows to staunch bovine TB

The previous Labour government ruled out a cull in England after the Independent Scientific Group (ISG) on Cattle TB reported that “careful evaluation of our own and others’ data indicates that badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain”. But when the new coalition government came to power, ministers said they would “introduce a carefully managed and science-led policy of badger control in areas with high and persistent levels of bTB.”

Confirming plans for a cull, Spelman said last December, “We can’t escape the fact that the evidence supports the case for the controlled reduction of the badger population in the areas affected by bTB.”

Explaining this policy change to the lords, Prof Watson noted that his department collected an additional two and a half years of data on top of the ISG’s. But that was not good enough for friends of the badger, such as Mammal Society chief executive Marina Pacheco. She has claimed that “the government has based its culling policy on flawed science, while proper research seems to have been disregarded in the lurch towards a policy fix”.

Temptation in Whitehall
In the case of the badgers, CSAs, politicians and lobbyists have been playing pingpong with evidence and policy for years. Meanwhile, Lord May, former CSA for all of government, admits that in some cases, science will be subsumed by the needs of policy. “There are instances where there are temptations towards policy-based science,” he said.

Collins does not deny that such temptations exist, but says ministers should know how to deal with them. “At the end of the day they can choose to disregard the scientific recommendations and make a decision on political grounds,” he said, “but they need to be aware that that’s a conscious decision.”

The former CSA is optimistic that his successors will have a better ride than he did. He expects CSAs to be more formally embedded across government, especially as a result of the evidence collected at the inquiry hearings, which shows that the role of a CSA remains valuable but problematic.

Before the report’s publication, the committee’s chairman was not available for comment. I suspect that he is busy calculating how to transform the grievances aired in the cosy committee room into practical recommendations that will help CSAs in every department. After all, I left the hearing thinking: compared to the comfort of the lords’ committee meeting room, Whitehall is a bear pit.

Photo courtesy of Ken Yonekura.

Parkinson’s attacks brain cells and has been linked to those secreting a chemical called dopamine. Without dopamine, the body system that controls movement develops characteristic disorders associated with the illness: slowness, muscle tremor and muscle stiffness; which one patient described as “feeling like [he] was paralysed”. As more cells die, these problems get progressively worse.

More than 120,000 people in the UK are living with Parkinson’s, the majority aged 60 or over. These numbers are expected to increase as the average age of the population rises.

Parkinson’s can also affect people younger than 40, in a form known as juvenile Parkinson’s. Award-winning actor and producer Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with this form in 1991.

To date, research has not suggested a definitive cause of Parkinson’s, but most scientists consider it to be a result of an interaction between genetics and environmental factors.

This week, as well as celebrity sufferers being in the news, Parkinson’s research groups have released some promising findings, leading us one step closer to finding suitable treatments and the cause of the illness.

Jump to the latest findings on:

Electricity as a treatment                   Stopping Parkinson’s in its tracks                   Unearthing the cause

Electric brain probe most effective treatment

An external electric pulse generator emits the signal into the implant buried deep inside the brain

A brain implant which emits electrical current has been effective in controlling some symptoms of Parkinson’s and improving patients’ experiences with the illness.

The new device implanted into patients’ brains uses a type of electrical current known as constant-current, different to the type previous devices used. Fifteen medical centres tested the device and published their findings in the journal Lancet Neurology.

Patients who had Parkinson’s for at least five years were randomly assigned to a group, and had the electrodes implanted. One group had their electrodes activated immediately, and a control group had their treatment delayed for three months after the surgery.

The 136 patients’ diaries revealed increases in symptom control and improved quality of life. Those who were receiving electrical stimulation had an average increase of 4.7 hours without involuntary movements whereas the control group reported an increase of 1.77 hours.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a relatively new treatment for Parkinson’s, a promising alternative to drugs.The implanted electrodes are connected to a device precisely programmed to emit an electric current to modulate problematic brain signals that cause movement problems.

“DBS has been the single biggest symptomatic breakthrough for Parkinson’s patients who have experienced the fluctuations associated with levodopa [drug] therapy,” said Dr Michael Okun, author of the study.

Research into the usefulness of DBS has increased in recent years, although some have questioned the ethics of this invasive procedure, most notably the patient selection process. Patients who suffer from dementia, a common symptom of Parkinson’s, are currently denied DBS despite showing similar movement problems.

In the UK, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence has already approved DBS as a treatment for Parkinson’s, and this device hopes to provide more sophisticated electrical therapy.
Future studies will now compare the use of this new constant-current technology with other electrical implants.

This device was developed by medical product manufacturers St Jude Medical Inc.The company also funded the research.

“DBS has set the bar high for the development of new therapies for advanced Parkinson’s disease patients. DBS will be the standard-of-care gene therapy and other cell-based therapies that are now being conceived will be measured against, and this will hopefully translate into significant improvements in what we can offer patients,” said Dr Okun.

Researchers are now studying DBS to investigate whether it slows the progression of the disease.

Parkinson's makes movement difficult for sufferers

New treatment target exposed

A new target for Parkinson’s intervention has been proposed, which could help stop the disease at its onset.

According to a paper published in PNaS, a particular type of protein, known as alpha-synuclein, effectively triggers the start of Parkinson’s. It causes an “aggregation” process in neural cells, considered a hallmark of the disease.

“Aggregation” of proteins like alpha-synuclein occurs when mistakes happen during the building process of proteins inside cells. Proteins are made of lots of small units which bond together and eventually fold into a 3D structure. During this folding, errors may occur where the proteins clump together, or aggregate, forming plaques which cause cells to degenerate.

Study author Professor Lisa Lapidus, from Michigan State University, said: “There are many, many steps that take place in aggregation, but we’ve identified the first step.

“Finding a method to fight the disease at its first stage, rather than somewhere further down the road, can hopefully increase the success rate in which the disease is treated.”

Research suggests that alpha-synuclein is prone to aggregation, but the underlying reason is unknown. Using lasers to investigate the protein, researchers looked at the relationship between the speed the protein’s units rearrange themselves with the tendency to aggregate.

They found that when the units which make up alpha-synuclein move slowly, the protein is more likely to develop sticky patches and aggregate.

The identification of this critical first step already has the researchers pursuing new ways to attack the disease. Professor Lapidus, for example, is currently testing a number of naturally occurring compounds, such as curcumin, that can alter the protein when it first begins to misfold.

Faulty genes cause juvenile Parkinson’s

The Brain progressively loses dopamine neurons (Red indicates high/blue low levels of dopamine)

Juvenile Parkinson’s could be caused by faulty genes affecting cells’ abilities to power themselves, say scientists based at the University of York.

Most of the genes implicated with Parkinson’s link back to a common denominator: failure of the mitochondria, the power houses within each cell that produce energy for all cellular processes.

Using baby fruit flies, which are commonly used as a models for disease in research of genetics and developmental biology, the team removed a gene  that has been linked extensively to Parkinson’s. Removing the gene, known as parkin, from young fruit flies, researchers suggest this is a model for juvenile Parkinson’s.

Removing parkin resulted in the baby flies mirroring the immobility and metabolic defects of Parkinson’s. These so-called ‘parkin mutants’ also showed a deficit at the brain level as there was reduced electrical activity in the nerve cells.

Dr Chris Elliott, who led the study, said:  “Our experimental evidence confirmed that this was due to a defect in the nervous system. This was important because previous work had suggested a big impact on the muscles, but Parkinson’s is associated with neuronal failure.”

Further analysis of the muscles showed reduced oxygen consumption and increased lactate, which are usually signs of inefficient energy production. Parkin mutants moved around less than the normal flies too, supporting the findings of reduced energy production in the flies’ cells.

This study, published in  Human Molecular Genetics, is the first to relate the effects of faulty genes specifically to juvenile Parkinson’s.

Dr Kieran Breen, director of research at Parkinson’s UK, said: “We already knew that mitochondria were important in Parkinson’s but this research suggests that mitochondrial problems may be the root cause of the problems that lead to nerve cell death. Finding ways to protect and enhance the mitochondria may be the key to treatments that can slow or even stop Parkinson’s in its tracks.”

The study suggests energy production may help identify young adults who may be susceptible to the disease using “biomarkers”, such as high lactate. Abnormally high lactate levels, which we all experience as an effect of high intensity exercise, could be an indicator of juvenile Parkinson’s, as cells struggle to sustain their energy production.

Photos courtesy of Britannica, TopNews, Arizona BioChem and Knowabouthealth

Recent statistical studies carried out by researchers from King’s College London have shown a strong relationship between parents’ depression and anxiety and adolescents’ emotional problems.

The connection was first discovered because of adolescent misbehaviour, explains Professor Andrew Pickles, professor at King’s College Institute of Psychiatry. “Between 1974 and 1999 the rates of emotional problems in girls were getting considerably worse and the rates of…antisocial behaviour were getting worse both in boys and in girls. And that had a significant impact in rising concerns about adults’ mental health,” he said.

A recent study led by Prof Pickles, and published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, analysed data from two different national surveys of UK families. The surveys included British parents affected by depression or anxiety disorders, and their children at the age of 16-17. These studies were carried out in 1986 and 2006 using the same criteria. Moreover, another study was conducted on the grown adolescents from the 1986 survey.

What emerged from the analysis was an increase in mothers’ emotional problems during the period from 1986 to 2006, associated with an increase of adolescents’ behavioural problems.

“The evidence does suggest that having a parent under stress in relation to mental health symptoms prospectively results in a rise in the child’s symptoms,” said Prof Pickles.

The analysis found that a rise occurred across all socio-demographic groups between 1986 and 2006, indicating that antisocial behaviours in these children cannot be explained simply by social class or ethnic group.

“This work related to the period essentially from 1974 and 2000. There was some increase in immigration in this period but it doesn’t seem to be the major factor or likely explanation,” said Prof Pickles.

The team also investigated whether these findings could be influenced by a decrease in parental monitoring of children in recent years. It turned out that it was the opposite – parents monitored their children more closely than parents in the past.

These findings could be used to address and even prevent adolescents’ emotional problems due to parental mental disorders.

“Identifying that parental mental health potentially poses a risk to child mental health suggests that mental health clinicians should be alerted to potential problems in children when dealing with a family where you have a depressed parent… [The] benefits of better treating parental mental health we may see later on in terms of reduced stress of the child,” Prof Pickles said.

Moreover, emotional problems in youth can have lasting effects. In a 2009 study of potential predictors of suicidal behaviour later in life, it was found that family adversities in childhood had as much contribution as psychiatric disease in producing a suicidal tendency in adulthood.

Excessive worries and irritability in the young could lead to more serious problems in adulthood. This awareness can contribute to preventing such situations.

“Now we are beginning to understand that very early experiences can modify the settings in relation to emotional regulation and potentially in relation to irritability,” Prof Pickles explained. “And then if you are able to modify that very early in life that could give you the possibility of a long term advantage throughout your life.”

(image: Ernst Vikne)

Cancer remains the third commonest cause of death after strokes and heart attacks. There are tests available for many cancers, and screening is applying these tests to the population as a whole, rather than just people who arrive in doctors’ surgeries. The aim is to spot people who have early cancer, or may be at an increased risk of developing cancer in the future.

There are a number of cancer screening tests available, but across Europe most health systems only offer screening programmes for three types of cancer, namely breast, cervical and colorectal cancer.

The UK National Screening Committee oversees screening for the NHS.  All screening tests and programmes whether for cancer or not, are expected to meet certain criteria.

The Screening Principles

There are a number of important criteria that need to be met before a screening programme can be set up. The condition that is being screened for needs to be an important health problem. The incidence of the disease and its risk factors should be known. How the condition develops should be well understood, and there should be a means of intervening in the disease process at an early stage that reduces or stops the risk of disease progression. There also needs to be evidence that intervening early leads to better outcomes.

The test should provide value for money; be relatively easy to perform on lots of people, and be acceptable to the population.  In any screening programme some people will be diagnosed with the condition when they don’t have it (false positives), and there will also be some people with the disease who are missed (false negatives). No test is perfect, so false negatives and false positives are an inevitable part of any screening programme. However, it’s crucial that these rates should be known and are not too high.

There’s also no point screening for a disease if nothing can be done about it. So there needs to be a treatment or treatments available that have been shown to work.

Bowel Cancer has a good screening test

Bowel cancer is an example of a condition that has a good screening test and programme. It is the third commonest cancer in the UK. Men have a one in fourteen chance of developing it sometime in life, and for women the risk is one in nineteen. In 2008 there were 38,000 bowel cancer cases in England and each year about 16,000 people in England die from the disease. Part of the problem is that the disease often has no symptoms in its early stages. If caught early, surgery can often cure the disease. But if it is not picked up until later, then there is no cure, just palliative treatments that control symptoms and only prolong life expectancy.

The screening programme is for men and women aged between 60 and 70 who are invited to take a simple, relatively cheap, test. This involves providing a stool sample, which is analysed for the signs of early cancer. If signs are spotted then there are good, well understood treatments available.

Initial results from studies show that bowel cancer screening programmes save 3000 lives a year,

Prostate cancer does not have a good screening test

Screening for prostate cancer, on the other hand, does not satisfy enough of the NHS criteria for it to be an acceptable screening programme.

Like bowel cancer, prostate cancer is an important health problem. Each year in the UK, approximately 35,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and there are about 10,000 deaths from the disease.  There is a screening test available – a blood test – that is cheap, easily available and acceptable to patients.

However the test is controversial. It has a high rate of false negatives and positives, meaning it can either falsely reassure, or it can raise concerns for individuals who may go on to have unpleasant diagnostic tests but do not have prostate cancer. Treatment for the early stages of the disease may be associated with unpleasant side effects, which include incontinence and impotence. As a screening test there is no evidence that it decreases mortality or morbidity at a population level.

Ethical considerations

Even where there is evidence that a screening programme can improve morbidity or mortality, there remain ethical issues and considerations.

As an example, the UK’s national screening programme for cervical cancer was started in 1988 and is estimated to prevent 5000 deaths per year. However the individual benefit to a woman is very low. A research study in Bristol in 2003 published in the BMJ, showed that 1,000 women need to be screened for 35 years to prevent one death. A practice nurse performing 200 tests a year would prevent one cervical cancer death every 38 years.

Forty percent of young women face the prospect of having an abnormal smear result during the lifetime of screening (between 25-64 years); which creates huge anxiety and leads to further intervention, and these tests are intrusive and unpleasant.  If women were made aware of these facts and figures they may be less willing to participate in screening.  Yet this screening programme saves lives and relies on the goodwill of the individual women taking part.

GPs are also paid to achieve screening targets for cervical cancer. Given all women aged between 25 and 64 years are invited for cervical screening every three years, the question should be asked: will practices invest a lot of time discussing the potential harms of cervical screening with individual woman when the practice will be financially penalised if it does not meet its screening targets?

So if you are invited to take part in a screening programme, you may wish to discuss with your doctor not only the potential benefits but also the potential harms of screening.

Photo courtesy of Hockadilly  http://www.flickr.com/photos/hockadilly/

In an unprecedented commitment to meet WHO eradication targets, 13 pharmaceutical giants including GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Sanofi joined forces to continue investing millions of pounds in NTD research and drug donation. They agreed to share expertise and resources in order to speed up the drug discovery process, which normally takes decades.

US, UAE and UK governments are also part of this new partnership. The UK development secretary Stephen O’Brien said he hopes others will be inspired to “rise to the challenge” as he announced the UK government budget for NTDs will increased fivefold to £250m by 2015.

All of the partners, brought together by Bill Gates, vowed to support this unique public-private partnership, known as the “London declaration on NTDs”, at the Royal College of Physicians in London on Monday.

NTDs are a collection of infectious diseases which disproportionately affect the poorest of the poor around the world. They are generally spread by parasitic vectors such as mosquitos, flies or worms, and can cause physical disfigurements, stigma and reduced educational and employment opportunities. WHO estimates 1.4bn people affected by NTDs worldwide, one in seven people  in 149 countries.

Pharmaceutical companies have donated billions of drugs for NTDs over the past 20 years. Novartis and Merck, for example, offer drugs for leprosy and river blindness free of charge to sufferers in endemic countries. As part of this new global effort to eradicate NTDs, 14 billion drug treatments will be distributed altogether. Bill Gates said the new plans were “unique” because commercial rivals were “on the same page”, and these combined efforts would be more efficient and effective.

The new partnerships and funding plans come after WHO published “a roadmap” which sets out targets for each NTD, and allows all participating organisations to track each other’s progress using a scorecard, ensuring accountability. The targets set out by WHO are ambitious, and include the complete eradication of Guinea worm by 2015.

Dr Margeret Chan, Director-General of WHO said: “Let us not be naive. The targets are achievable…but we must hold each other to account, so the scorecard…is extremely important”.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has pledged $345m (£218m) towards NTD research and drug delivery, of which $23.3m (£14.7m) will go toward eradicating Guinea worm in the few remaining affected countries. Other diseases under attack include schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminths and trachoma, which the WHO hopes to eliminate by 2020 under the new plan.

Some experts believe the targets are too ambitious. Issues of sanitation, clean water and education are key in these countries, and drug distribution will not solve the whole problem. Dr Caroline Anstey from the World Bank commented: “We’re not talking about neglected diseases, we’re talking about diseases of neglected people…and it is about how and if and whether we value them.”

Dr Chan said it was an amazing move to get all of the drugs companies on one side, but the challenge of coordination remains, as “it requires people to give up a bit of their own sovereignty.”

Pictures courtesy of UnitingtocombatNTDs

In this video, Jim tells Elements about his latest area of interest: quantum physics and disease. Physicists and biologists are now working together to use quantum theory to explain the mechanics of medical conditions such as cancer.

The mutations that cause cancer could be put down to “quantum weirdness”, as Jim explains. We also took the chance to ask Jim how he thinks the field of science communication is changing.

Music courtesy of Royalty Free Music. Shrodinger image courtesy of misterdiskord.

Visit Elements next Monday for another Q&A video!

The year was 1985 and the world needed to act fast. Demonstrating the power of swift acting policy, a complete worldwide ban of the manufacture of chloroflurocarbons (CFCs) was implemented just five years later. The action is working – observations 30 years on predict that the hole will return to the same level as in the 70s by 2080.

CFCs were developed in the 1930s as a harmless alternative to the ammonia and sulphur dioxides used at the time in refrigerants and were employed extensively in coolants and spray-propellants. Initially advertised as safe and non toxic, one of the compound’s chemicals, chlorine, quickly built up in the ozone layer atmosphere where it is not naturally present. The quantity of chlorine in the ozone layer cannot be attributed to any natural sources.

Vital to all life on our planet, the ozone layer is located 12-19 miles above Earth and absorbs 97-99% of ultraviolet (UV) radiation from our Sun. UV rays have been directly linked to skin cancer in humans and genetic damage in other organisms. CFCs are broken down in the presence of UV radiation at ozone layer altitudes and chlorine is released as a free radical. One chlorine radical can break down some 100,000 ozone molecules in its 20-100 year stay in the atmosphere. A major loss of UV absorbers.

Over the Antarctic this depletion is severe enough to create a hole. The extreme cold of the polar regions aggravates the reaction resulting in ozone declines of up to 70%. In 1985 a group of British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists published the seminal paper in Nature describing this hole. The Montreal Protocol banning CFCs was drawn up just five years later.

Professor John Shanklin was one of the BAS team who penned this first paper. I contacted him from London whilst he was on board the RRS Ernest Shackleton en route to the Halley Research Station in the Antarctic.

NASA, NOAA data show significant antarctic ozone hole remains

This is your 19th trip to the Antarctic, are you working on the same projects each time you return? How have the bases changed since your first visit?
Each visit has been different, though all broadly cover my work in long term monitoring of the weather, particularly climate and ozone measurements.  I first visited Halley in 1982, when the base was in steel tubes underground, with the bunk room temperature below freezing.  Since then the stations have steadily become more comfortable, so that some have shared en-suite bunk rooms.  I’m here to supervise the move of our climate and ozone monitoring equipment to the new Halley 6 station.  This should be more comfortable than the present station, though not to the extent of having en-suite rooms!

You’d just graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in natural sciences when you first visited Halley, what data were you working on when you determined the hole in the ozone?
The first visit was really to see what the station was like, and to install a new Dobson ozone spectrophotometer.  I did a comparison against the existing instrument and showed that they gave the same results.  This gave us confidence that it wasn’t an instrumental problem that gave the low ozone readings, and I then followed this up by showing that the readings were dropping systematically each spring.

What advantages does Halley have as an observational base over others in the Antarctic and how did this contribute to BAS publishing its results before NASA?
Halley is one of the longest running Antarctic stations, and moreover has a continuous record of ozone since 1956.  We have used the same type of ozone measuring instrument throughout this period, although the actual instrument has changed every decade or so.  The one from 1982 has been refurbished and is temporarily back at Halley to allow us to set up the ozone monitoring room at the new station.  Other advantages that Halley has are that it is usually well within the circumpolar vortex that forms around Antarctica in the ozone layer during the winter.  It is this region that sees the worst ozone depletion making it easier to spot changes.  Halley is further north than the South Pole, so the sun rises earlier here, meaning that we can start ozone observations well before South Pole, who can’t start until the ozone hole is past its deepest.

Joesph Farman, Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin of the British Antarctic Survey

The publication of your original ozone paper in Nature looks unassuming. Did you have any idea at the time of the global impact your discovery would have?
We never really expected an international treaty to be signed by every one of the UN member states!  It was more an interesting scientific curiosity that confirmed predictions of ozone depletion due to CFCs, but in a completely unexpected part of the atmosphere.

What would’ve happened if provisions such as the Montreal Protocol were not implemented?
The Earth would be a lot hotter!  The ozone destroying substances are powerful greenhouse gases and in fact the Montreal Protocol has done more than the Kyoto Protocol to combat the threat of global warming.  In addition we would have much lower ozone levels on a global basis, and this would have significant impact on human health through increased UV leading to cancers, cataracts etc.

In your opinion, was public pressure or (inter)national policy more effective in changing the laws concerning CFCs?
It was a combination of things.  First holes are bad and have to be filled in!  The link between ozone and skin cancer was a powerful driver of public opinion.  It was also relatively easy to find substitutes, so it did not require any change in lifestyle, and manufacturers were quite happy to create alternative products.

As I understand it, the hole will “heal” in 2080 or so. How can we avoid a repeat occurrence and will there be a “scar” or irreversible impact of the hole?
The amount of ozone depleting substances (ODS) in the atmosphere is slowly declining, and as they decrease so too will the size and depth of the ozone hole, though in any one year the actual size and depth will depend on meteorological conditions in the ozone layer.  Although we are clearly past the peak of ODS, because of the meteorological variability it is still too soon to say that we have had the worst ever ozone hole.  This year’s was in fact one of the worst and set records for size for some dates.  By 2080 the level of ODS will be down to those of the mid 1970s, so in theory the last ozone hole will have been seen.  The Montreal Protocol provides the best hope to prevent a recurrence, but some natural events could lead to widespread ozone depletion – perhaps a super-volcano going off or a giant meteorite exploding in our atmosphere such as happened over Tunguska in 1908.  For many places the future world will see a thicker ozone layer, as although the surface of the earth will warm, the ozone layer will become colder with increasing levels of greenhouse gases.  This will change the rate of chemical reactions involving ozone and give a slightly thicker ozone layer.

All the Antarctic research stations are conducting a variety of long term observations. Is it harder to get funding for these projects? Has the ozone hole discovery helped convince funders and the public of the importance of long term studies?
Long term monitoring was certainly threatened before we made the discovery, and it went a long way to securing better funding for such studies over the last 25 years.  I sense that this is now coming to an end and that future funding is being squeezed.  Without a good baseline however it will be much harder to confirm the damage that we are doing to the planet.

You mentioned in your Reflections on the ozone hole article of May 2010 that you swapped the axes and scale of the graph showing ozone loss against CFC concentration. Whose idea was this and do you think it increased the impact of your work?
I can’t honestly remember who did it that way, or even if it was particularly deliberate.  It certainly made the result very convincing.  Indeed the theory that Joe Farman proposed (involving gas phase chemistry) in the paper turned out not to be correct.  Yes it was CFCs, but the process involved surface chemistry on the surface of stratospheric clouds, which usually are only widespread during the Antarctic winter.  This March some did form over the Arctic, resulting in the lowest every Arctic ozone values.

Is this a common occurrence in science research?
I think sub-consciously everyone tries to make their graphs portray the results of measurements in an easy to understand way.  Sometimes this is done by fitting curves to the data, and others it involves choosing the scales.

Professor John Shanklin’s current visit to the Antarctic in 2012 can be viewed here.

The Halley Research Station in its sixth reconstruction and is expected to be completed in all its mobile glory this month.

Photo credits: Podknox on Flickr, NASA and the British Antarctic Survey

In this video interview, Marcus describes how he would build a telescope that can image a second Earth. Last year saw the discovery of planets within the habitable zones of their solar systems. Could this decade be the one in which we can build a telescope sensitive enough to take a peek at them?

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster, currently the cosmology consultant for New Scientist magazine.

Music courtesy of Royalty Free Music. Sun photo by Michael Gil.

By using simple chemical reactions, researchers hope to create a low-cost alternative to solar panels by mixing nanoparticles within a paint. The research, described in the journal ACS Nano, and led by Professor Prashant Kamat could lead to an inexpensive way to produce electricity in the future.

Unbelievable

The paint contains nanoparticles of titanium dioxide, used to whiten toothpaste and block UV rays in sunscreen. The team coated the particles, a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, in cadmium sulphide or cadmium selenide. Both cadmium compounds are sensitive to visible light and increase the flow of electricity through the paint.

The resulting particles are known as quantum dots, individual crystals that release energy when stimulated by light. The scientists suspended the dots in an alcohol-water solution to create a dark yellow paint, dubbed Sun-Believable. When applied to a transparent conducting surface with a paintbrush and exposed to light, the dots absorbed photons and generated electricity. This energy was transformed into a DC current by the conducting sheet.

Solar paint

Current solar panels cells are usually made from thin films of silicon attached to a conducting plate. Sun-Believable contains millions of tiny particles that altogether add up to a much larger surface area than a continuous sheet of material. More surface area means more availability for light to electricity conversion and therefore a more productive material.

A solar cell’s efficiency is measured in how much energy is generated under test conditions that replicate sunlight on a clear day at noon. In this experimental situation a 100 cm² solar cell with 15% efficiency would produce 1.5 watts of power. Silicon solar cells have a maximum efficiency of 37.7%, but Kamat believes the nanoparticle paint could achieve much more.

Commercially available silicon solar cells only reach 10-15% efficiency. Engineers have created better performing solar cells but they are not economical, relying on exotic materials such as gallium arsenide or indium selenide that hike the price up. A four fold increase in efficiency could therefore cost a hundred times more, negating any benefits when mass produced.

Upping efficiency

Sun-Believable did not even reach this mark, with an experimental maximum of around 1%. “If we can improve the efficiency somewhat, we may be able to make a real difference in meeting energy needs in the future,” says Kamat. “This is only the first stage.”

So far the solar paint has only been tested in lab condition, and improvements in efficiency need to be made before it can compete with today’s solar panels on large-scale building surfaces. However, the commercial viability of the concept does have precedents – nanotechnology methods have already been used to develop solar ink and printable solar technology as well as semiconductor materials, dyes and polymers.

DOI: 10.1520/G0173-03R08

10.1063/1.1736034

10.1002/pip.880

These findings come from a recent study by Nicholas R. Eaton, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, and were published in Journal of Abnormal Psychology. This new study highlights the ways in which gender differences play a key role in how men and women relate with their emotions. Women showed higher rates of mood and anxiety disorders and men showed higher rates of antisocial personality and substance use disorder.

It suggests that women are more likely to internalise their emotions and withdraw, while men are likely to externalise their emotions and react in a more visible way.

Different types of depression

Depression can affect people of all ages, types, and from all countries. It is not a “one size fits all” problem, especially when it comes to gender. In the past, questions have been raised as to whether these differences can simply be assigned to gender differences and the way the different sexes deal with emotional situations.

Eaton and colleagues analysed more than 43,000 individuals, all of whom participated in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. The individuals were assessed on their lifetime diagnosis of mental illness and information on diagnosis made the previous year. The result shows 22.9 per cent of women had been diagnosed with depression in their lifetime compared to 13.1 per cent of men.

The study provides compelling evidence that observed gender differences in prevalence rates of many common mental disorders originate at the level of tendencies for men and women to internalise their emotions to different degrees.

Risky years

According to the National Mental Health Association, about one in every eight women can expect to develop clinical depression during their lifetime and it occurs most frequently in females between the ages of 25 and 44.

Women are more than two-and-a-half times more likely than men to suffer from depression, with most cases in the “reproductive years” says professor Hans Ulrich Wittchen, one of the authors of a study by Dresden University of Technology in Germany for the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Quoted in the Guardian, Hans Ulrich Wittchen said, “In females, you see these incredibly high rates of depressive episodes at times when they sometimes have their babies, where they raise children, where they have to cope with the double responsibility of job and family.”

Contributing factors

According to Mental Health America, many factors may contribute to the imbalance of diagnosed depression between the sexes. Amongst these are developmental, hormonal (premenstrual syndrome, infertility, child birth and menopause), genetic and biological differences. Researchers have shown that hormones affect the brain chemistry, which in turn controls our emotions and mood. This explains why some specific times in a woman’s life are of interest in terms of depression risk, such as puberty, menstrual periods, pregnancy and menopause.

Some social factors, such as stress from work, relationships and family responsibilities can also be contributing factors that may affect depression prevalence in women over men.

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