As possibly the largest scientific non-profit organisation in the world and publisher of a raft of journals including the esteemed Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) annual meeting is a major event in the calendar for thousands of senior researchers.
It’s the kind of thing can really only happen once a year: a six-day long conference including research presentations in every field of science given by researchers from across the globe.
This year’s conference, which ran from 17 to 22 February, had an extra international flavour, running with an overarching theme of “Science without borders”.
The Elements health team were unable to jet to Washington D.C., where the 177th AAAS meeting took place, but stayed glued the relevant news feeds, websites and Twitter accounts (sample tweet from the AAAS meeting: “Have you seen the brain-controlled telepresence robot demo? Head towards the food court in the exhibit hall to check it out.”) and are pleased to present you with 3 stories that caught our eye.
Health impact of climate change
Climate change is one phenomenon that knows no borders. On the Saturday of the conference, a team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) presented three studies designed to assess the possible impact of climate change on three separate populations living close to water.
The first of these was the population living in the Seattle area, around the Puget Sound. Every year the region’s shellfish industry closes down as the “red tide” caused by a kind of algae, encroaches. A toxin from the red tide can accumulate in shellfish and if eaten induces a potentially lethal sickness.
Using models of climate change, the scientists predicted that the red tide season would be extended by three months (it currently lasts for four) with an attendant increased risk to health and a serious impact on the local economy.
In the other two studies, the picture was equally troubling: increasing desertification in Morocco and the absorption of atmospheric dust into coastal waters will likely help seafood-borne bacteria enter the food supply and increased rainfall around the Great Lakes of North America may cause overflows in sewage systems.
“Liquid lens” for easier skin cancer diagnosis
In more positive news, the practice for checking whether skin moles are cancerous may be set to change thanks to a microscope that can provide images from under the skin’s surface.
Currently, moles are excised and then tested in a lab to determine whether they are benign or malignant. However Professor Jannick Rolland of the University of Rochester, presented a device which may make such biopsies a thing of the past.
The tip of the foot-long probe she has developed is placed on the mole and within seconds a 3D image of what lies below the surface is displayed for the doctor to make his diagnosis.
This is thanks to a droplet of water, which replaces the glass used in conventional lenses. A change in the electrical field around that droplet leads to a change of its shape, and hence a change of focus. The device takes thousands of pictures focused at different depths below the skin’s surface and these are combined into one high resolution image.
Although initial tests of the device were successful, clinical trials need to be performed before the probe can be used by doctors.
Oral sex and cancer
The number of cases of oral cancers attributed to the human papilloma virus (HPV) has trebled in the US over the last 30 years. This troubling statistic was presented to conference attendees on Sunday by three senior clinicians in a session called “Oral sex is sex and can lead to cancer”.
HPV is most often associated with cervical cancer but there is now considerable evidence to suggest that the virus can infect the tonsils and eventually lead to cancers of the throat and mouth.
Professor Maura Gillison, who was one of the authors of the first paper to provide evidence of a link between HPV and oral cancer, said the post-war liberalisation of sexual attitudes had led to people having more sexual partners during their lives. “The higher the number of partners that you’ve had, the greater the odds that you’d have an oral infection,” she said.
Prof Gillison also argued that boys should be considered for routine vaccination against HPV.
In the US and UK girls are currently vaccinated against the virus around the age of 13 and although it might seem logical that the vaccines would also work against the strains of HPV thought to cause oral cancer, this has yet to be investigated in clinical trials.
Elsewhere on Elements, Richard Masters reports on the finding – also presented at the AAAS meeting – that lifelong bilinguals develop Alzheimer’s Disease later than speakers of only one language.
Images from Aaron Webb and Fir002/Flagstaffotos
Other Elements articles in which you might be interested:
Never thought I’d see ‘climate change, cancer and oral sex’ in the same headline, brilliant stuff!