Infrared camera is used to detect surface temperatures

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE A Threat So Big, Academics Try Collaboration;

It is a basic tenet of university research: Economists conduct joint studies, chemists join forces in the laboratory, political scientists share ideas about other cultures — but rarely do the researchers cross disciplinary lines.

The political landscape of academia, combined with the fight for grant money, has always fostered competition far more than collaboration.
But the threat of global warming may just change all that.
Take what’s happening at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In September the school established the Golisano Institute for Sustainability, aimed at getting students and professors from different disciplines to collaborate in studying the environmental ramifications of production and consumption.
“The academic tradition is to let one discipline dominate new programs,” said Nabil Nasr, the institute’s director. “But the problem of sustainability cuts across economics, social elements, engineering, everything. It simply cannot be solved by one discipline, or even by coupling two disciplines.”
Neil Hawkins, Dow Chemical’s vice president for sustainability, sees it that way, too. Thus, Dow is giving $10 million, spread over five years, to the University of California, Berkeley, to set up a sustainability center.
“Berkeley has one of the strongest chemical engineering schools in the world, but it will be the M.B.A.’s who understand areas like microfinance solutions to drinking water problems,” Mr. Hawkins said.
That realization is spreading throughout academia. So more universities are setting up stand-alone centers that offer neutral ground on which engineering students can work on alternative fuels while business students calculate the economics of those fuels and political science majors figure how to make the fuels palatable to governments in both developing nations and America’s states.
“We give professors a chance to step beyond their usual areas of expertise, and we give students exposure to the worlds of science and business,” said Daniel C. Esty, director of the year-old Yale Center for Business and the Environment, a joint effort between the School of Management and the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Similar setups are getting easier to find. Last year, the University of Tennessee consolidated all of its environmental research programs under a new Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment. Arizona State University did the same in 2004, when it inaugurated its Global Institute of Sustainability.
The Arizona institute reports directly to the university president and is run by Jonathan Fink, who is also the university’s sustainability officer.
“We want all the departments to contribute without thinking they own the initiative themselves,” Mr. Fink said. Already, experts in biogeochemistry — the study of the scientific underpinnings of earth’s origins and existing biosystems — are working with social scientists to study the impact of rapid urbanization on plants and animals.
It is impossible to quantify the growth of stand-alone centers. There is no naming convention — some are sustainability centers, some are environmental institutes and some are global warming initiatives. And many do not stand alone at all, but are neatly tucked inside an existing school.
For example, in 2003 the University of Pittsburgh School of Engineering dedicated the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative, which studies green construction and sustainable water use.
Nor do the environmentally themed names necessarily convey an enviro-centric agenda. Many sustainability centers — the Kenan-Flagler Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the University of North Carolina is a good example — address global cultures, business ethics and corporate social responsibility along with environmental issues.
The Aspen Institute’s Center for Business Education compiled a list of more than 600 academic centers that, at first blush, sound as if they would be stand-alone environmental facilities. Rich Leimsider, its director, figures only a handful really are.
“We are seeing more centers framed as sustainability, but they may not be qualitatively different from the ethics, innovation or globalization centers of 15 years ago,” he said. “Universities realize that you can discuss sustainability with a C.E.O. and not get laughed out of the room.”
But Mr. Leimsider said he does see more stand-alone centers that are devoted primarily to analyzing environmental problems, influencing environmental policy and preparing students to think collaboratively when they try to solve those problems outside the academic world.
Many of the centers have one foot set squarely outside the ivory tower. Mr. Esty said the Yale center was developing an “eco-services clinic” that would help companies address various environmental issues. Duke’s Corporate Sustainability Initiative, which is a joint venture of its earth sciences, business and environmental policy schools, is also a founding member of the Chicago Sustainable Business Alliance. Its faculty and students have already developed a small wind turbine for private use, and have helped local businesses reduce their carbon footprints.
Nor does the money for the centers necessarily come from university coffers. Often, it comes from individuals who are passionate about the environment.
More than 10 years ago, Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb gave $5 million to the University of Michigan to found the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise. They have given an additional $15 million since.

Thomas P. Lyon, the institute’s director, said much of the money goes to defray third-year costs for graduate students who pursue a dual degree in business and natural sciences. But the institute is now talking to venture capitalists about teaching students to invest in green technologies, and is setting up projects for students in China and elsewhere. It also gives small research grants to professors who affiliate with the institute; most recently, it awarded money for a study of botanical gardens.
“We provide a community where students and professors can discuss research with different disciplines,” Mr. Lyon said.
Similarly, Julie A. Wrigley, who has a home in Arizona, provided $15 million for Arizona State’s institute, and this year gave an additional $10 million to create a degree-granting School of Sustainability within the institute.
The vast majority of the money for the Golisano Institute in Rochester came from B. Thomas Golisano, the founder of Paychex and one of the underwriters of the Clinton Global Initiative.
Mr. Golisano, who donated $10 million, said he expected the institute to “produce the first generation of professionals with the vision and know-how to deliver on the promise of sustainability.” Indeed, Mr. Nasr said the institute already offers courses on sustainability to all freshman and is asking students to submit ideas for projects.
Sometimes, government chips in. Mr. Fink notes that Phoenix is “the poster child” for the so-called urban heat island effect — the phenomenon in which big cities absorb heat during the day and release it at night, causing temperatures to rise. So his institute has amassed funds from the Environmental Protection Agency, the State of Arizona and some local businesses for a project to see if certain construction materials can alleviate the problem.
Companies are getting into the financing act as well. Unlike traditional partnerships between business and academia, in which companies that provide funds have the right to commercialize any breakthroughs, most of these funds come with no strings attached.
Several years ago Enterprise Rent-a-Car donated $10 million to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis for research on growing crops for food. This year it gave $25 million to create the Enterprise Institute in conjunction with Danforth, to do research into biobased fuels.
“Danforth understands cellulosic research, so they are best positioned to figure out how to make fuel from soy and corn,” said Patrick T. Farrell, vice president for corporate responsibility at Enterprise.
Four companies — ExxonMobil, General Electric, Schlumberger and Toyota — have anted up for the Stanford University Global Climate and Energy Project, which explores new energy technologies. The Shell Oil Foundation has been financing Rice University’s Shell Center for Sustainability since 2002. Wal-Mart has promised money for an Applied Sustainability Center at the University of Arkansas.
Berkeley, meanwhile, is using Dow’s gift to set up a Sustainable Products and Solutions Program within its existing Center for Responsible Business. That is in the Haas Business School, but Kellie A. McElhaney, the center’s director, insists the program will draw on Berkeley’s chemists, biologists, financial analysts, policy specialists, even lawyers.
The program is now taking applications for grants from Berkeley students and professors who want to conduct collaborative research into topics like providing clean drinking water or more efficient fuels. And Ms. McElhaney said other companies have expressed willingness to kick in funds.
“Commercialization takes forever if the chemical engineers and the business types do not coordinate,” she said. “So think how much easier it will be for chemistry graduates to work inside a company if they already know how to interact with the business side.”

Hospitals Look to Nuclear Tool to Fight Cancer

For long time Cancer is the vital research fact for researcher,There is a new nuclear arms race under way — in hospitals .
Medical centers are rushing to turn nuclear particle accelerators, formerly used only for exotic physics research, into the latest weapons against cancer.
Some experts say the push reflects the best and worst of the nation’s market-based health care system, which tends to pursue the latest, most expensive treatments — without much evidence of improved health — even as soaring costs add to the nation’s economic burden.
The machines accelerate protons to nearly the speed of light and shoot them into tumors. Scientists say proton beams are more precise than the X-rays now typically used for radiation therapy, meaning fewer side effects from stray radiation and, possibly, a higher cure rate.
But a 222-ton accelerator — and a building the size of a football field with walls up to 18-feet thick in which to house it — can cost more than $100 million. That makes a proton center, in the words of one equipment vendor, “the world’s most expensive and complex medical device.”
Until 2000, the United States had only one hospital-based proton therapy center. Now there are five, with more than a dozen others announced. Still more are under consideration.
Some experts say there is a vast need for more proton centers. But others contend that an arms race mentality has taken hold, as medical centers try to be first to take advantage of the prestige — and the profits — a proton site could provide.
“I’m fascinated and horrified by the way it’s developing,” said Dr. Anthony L. Zietman, a radiation oncologist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, which operates a proton center. “This is the dark side of American medicine.”
Once hospitals have made such a huge investment, experts like Dr. Zietman say, doctors will be under pressure to guide patients toward proton therapy when a less costly alternative might suffice.
Similar cost concerns were expressed in the past about other new technology like M.R.I. scanners. While those have become accepted staples of medical practice, there is still concern about their overuse and the impact on medical spending.
Dr. Zietman said that while protons were vital in treating certain rare tumors, they were little better than the latest X-ray technology in dealing with prostate cancer, the common disease that many proton centers are counting on for business.
“You can scarcely tell the difference between them except in price,” he said. Medicare pays about $50,000 to treat prostate cancer with protons, almost twice as much as with X-rays.
Proponents, however, are adamant that proton centers provide better treatment.
“It all comes down to the physics,” said Dr. Jerry D. Slater, the head of radiation medicine at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Southern California. “Every X-ray beam I use puts most of the dose where I don’t want it.” By contrast, he said, proton beams put most of the dose in the tumor.
Loma Linda built the nation’s first hospital-based proton center in 1990 and has treated about 13,000 patients. Its success has inspired others.
Companies have sprung up to help finance, build and operate the proton centers. In some cases, local and state governments, seeking to attract medical tourists, have chipped in. Such financing is allowing proton centers to be built by community hospitals or groups of physicians.
One of the biggest and most costly projects, with a bill exceeding $140 million, is being undertaken by Hampton University in Virginia, a historically black college that does not have a medical school.
“Here at Hampton we dream no small dreams,” said William R. Harvey, the president. He said a proton center would help African-Americans, who have higher rates of some cancers than whites. And he said a medical school was not needed — that doctors would be hired to run the outpatient center.
Some of the planned centers will be very close together, raising the odds of overcapacity. Two proton centers are planned for Oklahoma City, for example, and two more in the western suburbs of Chicago.
The institutions building the centers say there is a need for many more of them. The existing centers, which collectively can treat only several thousand patients a year, are turning people away. And patients who are accepted often have to spend weeks in a city far from their homes.
Proponents say that more than 800,000 Americans — representing nearly two-thirds of new cancer cases — undergo radiation therapy each year. If only 250,000 of them could benefit from protons, they would fill more than 100 centers.
“If they built one across the street I wouldn’t worry about it,” said James D. Cox, chief of radiation oncology at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which opened a $125 million proton center last year.
X-rays, which are high-energy electromagnetic waves, pass through the body, depositing their energy all along the way, not just in the tumor. By contrast, protons — subatomic particles with a positive electrical charge — can be made to stop on the tumor and dump most of their payload there.
Tumors in or near the eye, for instance, can be eradicated by protons without destroying vision or irradiating the brain. Protons are also valuable for treating tumors in brains, necks and spines, and tumors in children, who are especially sensitive to the side effects of radiation.

When 10-year-old Brooke Bemont was about to undergo X-ray treatment for a brain tumor last summer, a doctor warned her mother, “Do not plan on your daughter ever going to Harvard.” The radiation would damage Brooke’s mental capacity, she said.
So the family, from St. Charles, Ill., spent five weeks in Boston as Brooke was treated with protons at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. “If there was a potential to save even a little of her brain tissue, there was no question that we would do it,” said Christal Bemont, Brooke’s mother. She added that Brooke was now apparently cancer-free and doing fairly well.
Head, spine and childhood cancers are rare, though. Most people undergoing proton treatment are men with localized prostate cancer.
Proton therapy can help avoid the worst side effects, like impotence, by exposing the bladder and rectum of a prostate patient to less radiation than X-rays. The stray radiation, though, from the newest form of X-rays, called intensity-modulated radiation therapy, is already low, diminishing any advantages from proton therapy.
“There are no solid clinical data that protons are better” said Dr. Theodore S. Lawrence, the chairman of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan. “If you are going to spend a lot more money, you want to make sure the patient can detect an improvement, not just a theoretical improvement.”
An economic analysis by researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia found that proton treatment would be cost-effective for only a small subset of prostate cancer patients.
Lack of data aside, men are flocking to proton treatment.
“I’m 67 years old, and the last thing I want to do is wear a diaper for the rest of my life,” said Pete Freeman of Spokane, Wash., who was undergoing treatment at Loma Linda.
Some men hear about proton therapy from the Brotherhood of the Balloon, a group of 3,000 men who have had the treatment. (A balloon is inserted into the rectum and filled with water to immobilize the prostate during treatment.)
The organization, which now gets some financial support from Loma Linda, was founded by Robert J. Marckini, a former Loma Linda patient who calls himself Proton Bob.
At Loma Linda, prostate cancer treatment requires about two months of daily sessions. The actual irradiation, which the patient does not feel, takes only about a minute. Most men with early prostate cancer have no symptoms from their disease and many say the treatment has few immediate side effects, other than fatigue and an urgency to urinate.
“We go have our treatments, and we go out and play golf,” said Harold J. Phillips, an accountant from Tacoma who was being treated recently at Loma Linda.
Doctors are also learning how to use protons to treat lung and breast cancer. And over time, doctors say, costs should come down as the technology improves and it becomes more routine to build and operate proton centers. One company is trying to develop a $20 million proton system and has received orders from several hospitals.
On the horizon is therapy using beams of carbon ions, which are said to be even more powerful in killing tumors. Touro University says it will build a combined proton and carbon therapy center outside San Francisco, to open as early as 2011. The Mayo Clinic is also seriously considering one. Such centers will cost even more — as much as $300 million.

Automobile Performance hybrid car

Automakers are starting to turn away from the notion of the "performance hybrid," the term coined to market gas-electric vehicles based on extra pep instead of fuel thriftiness.
With $3-a-gallon gasoline an apparent fact of life, American drivers are increasingly looking at hybrid cars.

Prospective buyers are searching more for hybrids on cars.com, the Web site said. Hybrids represented six of the top 10 searches in November, the Web site said. Likewise, new vehicles with the largest increases in searches in November were hybrids.

November's hybrid sales ranked fourth in the number of sales logged nationally since the beginning of 2005, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank.

Sales were higher in March, May and June, when gasoline prices hovered around record highs. In Ohio, gas topped out in 2007 at more than $3.30 a gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But unlike most years, when gas prices fall after the summer driving season ends, surging crude oil prices kept gasoline prices high. That might have prompted more car buyers to consider hybrids.

Americans bought more than 33,000 hybrids last month after four consecutive months of lower sales.

Instead of just emphasizing performance, Toyota's (TM) luxury Lexus division plans to hawk its high-end hybrid vehicles as being better for the environment because they pollute less than rival brands.
"That was always supposed to be part of the message, but it just hasn't come through," says Mark Templin, the division's new general manager. "It legitimizes what we have been doing."
Honda (HMC) has already dropped production of a six-cylinder hybrid version of its performance-oriented Accord sedan. It got poor gas mileage compared with other hybrids, such as Honda's four-cylinder Civic or Toyota's Prius.
General Motors (GM) is skipping the "performance hybrid" tactic in selling its new hybrid Chevy Tahoe and GMC Yukon SUVs. The campaign will emphasize gas stinginess even though the big vehicles offer slightly better acceleration than non-hybrid versions.
Each of three Lexus hybrids only achieves one or two miles more per gallon than their comparable non-hybrid versions. The $104,000 Lexus LS 600h L super-luxury sedan gets 21 miles a gallon in combined city/highway driving, the $41,180 RX 400h SUV achieves 25 mpg, and the $54,900 GS 450h sedan merits 23 mpg.
They are listed as being cleaner than comparable non-hybrid rivals from other luxury automakers by the Air Resources Board of California, whose regulations are tighter than federal standards and emulated in a few other states.
The Lexus models are not, however, rated as highly as Prius.
As a result, environmentalists have reservations about Lexus' ecological message when informed about it. Never fans of the performance hybrid, they say making the cleanest and most fuel-efficient vehicles possible should trump the hype about being ecological.
"It's not about marketing. It's about production," says Sam Haswell, spokesman for the Rainforest Action Network, which protested Toyota outside the Los Angeles Auto Show last month.
Adds Tim Carmichael of the Coalition for Clean Air: "It's not enough to change your marketing message."
Auto industry watchers also question the change in the marketing approach.
"They are not changing the product. They are just selling the product with a different coat of paint on it," says John O'Dell, senior editor of Edmunds' Green Car Advisor.
But Templin is hopeful. Buyers need to know Lexus hybrids are greener. "We're going to communicate that better," he vows.

In-Flight Internet Offerings

Charles Ogilvie, director of in-flight entertainment for Virgin America, demonstrates usage of a computer in the first-class seating section on a Virgin America plane. As airlines bring Internet access to the skies, they are having to grapple with questions of openness and free speech, including what to do when a passenger chatters endlessly on an Internet phone call or starts surfing porn sites.

Seat 17D is yapping endlessly on an Internet phone call. Seat 16F is flaming Seat 16D with expletive-laden chats. Seat 16E is too busy surfing porn sites to care. Seat 17C just wants to sleep.
AIRCELL - Delivering high-speed Internet services using a 3-megahertz frequency band licensed from the Federal Communications Commission for $31 million in 2006. Initial service over continental United States, with plans to expand to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. Service on some flights of AMR Corp. (nyse: AMR - news - people )'s American Airlines and Virgin America to begin in 2008. Prices expected at about $10 a flight, though Virgin may offer cheaper, la carte services on seatback computers. Aircell LLC is based in Itasca, Ill.

LIVETV - Delivering e-mail and instant-messaging services only using a 1-megahertz frequency band licensed by the FCC for $7 million. Service over continental United States. LiveTV parent JetBlue Airways (nasdaq: JBLU - news - people ) Corp. launched free service on one aircraft on Dec. 11. LiveTV is based in Melbourne, Fla.

ROW 44 - Partnering with Hughes Communications (nasdaq: HUGH - news - people ) Inc.'s Hughes Network Systems to deliver high-speed Internet services via satellite. Global coverage planned. Scheduled to launch on an aircraft of Alaska Air Group Inc. (nyse: ALK - news - people )'s Alaska Airlines in spring 2008. Alaska hasn't set prices; free service for frequent fliers is possible. Row 44 Inc. has headquarters in Westlake Village, Calif.

PANASONIC AVIONICS - Partnering with Intelsat Ltd. for satellite-based, high-speed Internet services. Global coverage planned. GSM cellular phone offerings through AeroMobile Ltd. approved in Australia. Tested on Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd., with other, unnamed airlines expected in late 2008. Panasonic plans to charge about $12 an hour or $22 per 24-hour period. Panasonic Avionics Corp., part of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (nyse: MC - news - people ), is based in Lake Forest, Calif.

ONAIR - Leveraging standard GSM cellular phone technology to deliver voice, data and Internet services. Approved by European Aviation Safety Agency, with coverage elsewhere pending. No current plans to offer service in North America, where many cell networks use different technology. Following Dec. 17 launch on Air France (nyse: AKH - news - people ), OnAir plans to service European no-frills carrier Ryanair (nasdaq: RYAAY - news - people ) Ltd., British Midland Airways Ltd. and Portugal's TAP by mid-2008. Fees will vary and generally will be billed directly by passer's cell phone provider. OnAir is a joint venture between aircraft manufacturer Airbus and SITA, an information-technology company serving airlines. OnAir has headquarters in Geneva


Welcome to the promise of the Internet at 33,000 feet — and the questions of etiquette, openness and free speech that airlines and service providers will have to grapple with as they bring Internet access to the skies in the coming months.

"This gets into a ticklish area," said Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's chief inventors and generally a critic of network restrictions. "Airlines have to be sensitive to the fact that customers are (seated) close together and may be able to see each other's PC screens. More to the point, young people are often aboard the plane."

Stem cell breakthrough like turning lead into gold

third team of researchers has found a way to convert an ordinary skin cell into valued embryonic-like stem cells, with the potential to grow batches of cells that can be directed to form any kind of tissue.

Their study, published on Sunday in the journal Nature, shows the approach is not a rare fluke but in fact something that might make its way into everyday use.

Scientists hope they are starting an age of regenerative medicine, in which people can get tailor-made treatments for injuries, diseases such as Parkinson's and diabetes, and in which scientists can study disease far better than before.

IT WAS the kind of breakthrough scientists had dreamed of for decades and its promise to help cure disease appears to be fast on the way to being realised.

Researchers in November announced they were able to turn the clock back on skin cells and transform them into stem cells, the mutable building blocks of organs and tissues.

Then just earlier this month a different team announced it had cured sickle cell anemia in mice using stem cells derived from adult mouse skin.

"This is truly the Holy Grail: To be able to take a few cells from a patient - say a cheek swab or few skin cells - and turn them into stem cells in the laboratory," said Robert Lanza, a stem cell pioneer at Advanced Cell Technology.

"This work represents a tremendous scientific milestone - the biological equivalent of the Wright Brothers' first airplane," he said.

"It's bit like learning how to turn lead into gold."

Stem cells offer enormous potential for curing and treating disease because they can be transformed into any cell in the body and then hopefully used to replace damaged or diseased cells, tissues and organs.

But stem cell research has been highly controversial because - until now - viable embryos had to be destroyed to extract the stem cells.

US President George Bush has banned all federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells and access to stem cells in other countries has also been restricted because of the difficulty in finding women willing to donate their eggs.

The new technique, while not yet perfected, is so promising that the man who managed to clone the world's first sheep, Dolly, is giving up his work cloning embryos to focus on studying stem cells derived from skin cells.

"The fact that (the) introduction of a small number of proteins into adult human cells could produce cells that are equivalent to embryo stem cells takes us into an entirely new era of stem cell biology," said Ian Wilmut, the Scottish researcher who first created a viable clone by transferring a cell nucleus into a new embryo.

One of the greatest advantages of the new technique is its simplicity: it takes just four genes to turn the skin cell back into a stem cell.

This, unlike the complex and expensive process developed by Mr Wilmut, can be done in a standard biological lab. And skin cells are much easier to harvest than embryos.

"It's an explosion of resources," said Konrad Hochedlinger, of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Prior to this discovery, researchers who wanted to look at how diseases developed would usually have to study animals or organs harvested from cadavers because embryonic stem cells were so hard to use and access.

But stem cells derived from skin, tissues and organs can be grown in a petri dish, making it easier for researchers to map the genetic structure of diseased cells, a process which could unlock a cure.

They could also allow researchers to do chemical screening to identify drugs which may cure or treat a disease, a process which could significantly speed up the process of bringing life-saving drugs to the market.

The use of skin cells will eventually allow doctors to create stem cells with a specific patient's genetic code, eliminating the risk that the body would reject transplanted tissues or organs.

Researchers have already shown this is possible when they cured sickle cell anaemia in mice.

They used skin cells taken from the tails of sick mice, transformed them into stem cells, manipulated those stem cells into healthy bone marrow cells and then transplanted them into the sick mice.

And since the new cells came from the sick mice, there was also no need for dangerous immuno-suppressant drugs to prevent rejection.

But leading stem cell researchers warned that the skin cells were not yet - and might never be - a substitute for embryonic stem cells.

"This new research is just the beginning - we hardly understand how these cells work," said James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who led one of the two teams which made the simultaneous discoveries.

"It is not the time to abandon stem cell research," Thomson said, adding that embryonic stem cells will remain the "gold standard" by which other research is measured.

Further research is also needed to find a safer way to transform the skin cells and to make sure that the cells do not deteriorate over time.

Prior to this discovery, researchers who wanted to look at how diseases developed would usually have to study animals or organs harvested from cadavers because embryonic stem cells were so hard to use and access.

But stem cells derived from skin, tissues and organs can be grown in a petri dish, making it easier for researchers to map the genetic structure of diseased cells, a process which could unlock a cure.

They could also allow researchers to do chemical screening to identify drugs which may cure or treat a disease, a process which could significantly speed up the process of bringing life-saving drugs to the market.

The use of skin cells will eventually allow doctors to create stem cells with a specific patient's genetic code, eliminating the risk that the body would reject transplanted tissues or organs.

Researchers have already shown this is possible when they cured sickle cell anaemia in mice.

They used skin cells taken from the tails of sick mice, transformed them into stem cells, manipulated those stem cells into healthy bone marrow cells and then transplanted them into the sick mice.

And since the new cells came from the sick mice, there was also no need for dangerous immuno-suppressant drugs to prevent rejection.

But leading stem cell researchers warned that the skin cells were not yet - and might never be - a substitute for embryonic stem cells.

"This new research is just the beginning - we hardly understand how these cells work," said James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who led one of the two teams which made the simultaneous discoveries.

"It is not the time to abandon stem cell research," Thomson said, adding that embryonic stem cells will remain the "gold standard" by which other research is measured.

Further research is also needed to find a safer way to transform the skin cells and to make sure that the cells do not deteriorate over time.

Apple working on auto-volume control for iPods

Technology compitition is done by quality development
Amid concerns of hearing damage for iPod owners, technological giant Apple is set to introduce a line of the popular music-playing devices that will automatically decrease their volume, the London Daily Mail reported Sunday.

A new patent reveals that the next iPods and iPhones will be able to automatically calculate how long a person has been listening and at what volume before turning down the sound level, the Mail reported.

Click here to read the full story in the London Daily Mail.

The device will also be capable of calculating the amount of "quiet time" between when the iPod is turned off and when it is restarted, making it possible for volume to be increased again.

Currently, iPods are capable of playing music at over 100 decibels when anything over 70 decibels is considered unsafe, the Mail reported.

Apple is developing a volume control device for its iPods that would automatically calculate how long a person has been listening and at what volume, before gradually reducing the sound level, all in an effort to protect users' hearing, according to the London-based Daily Mail.

Citing a new patent application, the report--to which Apple declined to comment--says the "device will also calculate the amount of 'quiet time' between when the iPod is turned off and when it is restarted, allowing the volume to be increased again to a safe level."

In February 2006, a Louisiana man filed a class action suit against Apple, saying the computer maker failed to take adequate steps to prevent hearing loss among iPod users. That was followed by warnings from politicians and researchers on hearing-loss hazards related to MP3 player use.

Apple responded by releasing a free software update for some iPods that lets listeners set a maximum volume limit. But we haven't heard much on the matter since.

Let's turn to rocker Pete Townshend for his foreshadowing quote: "I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf," he said on his Web site two years ago. "Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK...But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead."