Computer screen pop-ups may slow down your work more than you think, according to new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Although the actual interruption may only last a few moments, the study shows that we then lose more time when we try to find our place and resume the task that was interrupted.

The research, led by Dr Helen Hodgetts and Professor Dylan Jones at Cardiff University, examined the cost of on-screen interruptions in terms of the time taken to complete a simple seven-step computer task.

The researchers found that, even after only a five second interruption, people take longer than normal to complete the next step in the task they are working on.

“The interruption breaks our cognitive focus on the task in hand, so we have to work out where we were up to and what we were planning to do next before we can resume the task at our original speed” explains Dr Hodgetts.

The interruptions only caused a few seconds delay in resuming the simple task set in the experiments but in a more realistic work environment, where there is more information to retrieve after the interruption, the loss of concentration could have a greater impact on work performance.

“Our findings suggest that even seemingly brief and inconsequential on-screen pop-up messages might be impacting upon our efficiency, particularly given their frequency over the working day,” says Dr Hodgetts.

Other results from the study show that an interruption lag – a brief time between a warning for an upcoming interruption and the interruption itself- can reduce the time we lose trying to find our place again

A warning sound was found to be most effective because it allows us to consolidate where we are in the current task before transferring our attention to the interruption. In contrast, a flashing warning signal on the computer screen can be just as disruptive as the interruption itself

The benefits of having time to rehearse our place or lay down mental ‘cues’ to help us back to where we were in a task (before we divert our attention to deal with an interruption) has practical implications for the design of computer pop-ups.

The researchers suggest that e-mail alerts and similar pop-up messages should be as small and discrete as possible and should not obscure the original activity. Better still, any visual alert should disappear after a few seconds if not responded to, so that we can be aware that there is incoming information without having to interrupt our current task.

The researchers also point out obvious practical steps that computer users can take to minimise unscheduled pop-up notifications, particularly whilst engaging in tasks that require a lot of planning or concentration:

Instant-messenger systems should be turned off or at least set to ‘busy’ so that colleagues are aware that unimportant interruptions are not welcome; and e-mail alerts could be turned off or only enabled for messages that the sender tags specifically as high priority.

Scientists have shown in the laboratory that metal nanoparticles damaged the DNA in cells on the other side of a cellular barrier. The nanoparticles did not cause the damage by passing through the barrier, but generated signalling molecules within the barrier cells that were then transmitted to cause damage in cells the other side of the barrier.

The research was carried out by a team at the University of Bristol and colleagues, and is published online this week in Nature Nanotechnology.

The team grew a layer of human cells (about 3 cells in thickness) in the lab. They then used this barrier to examine the indirect effects of cobalt-chromium nanoparticles on cells that were lying behind this barrier.

The amount of DNA damage seen in the cells behind the protective barrier was similar to the DNA damage caused by direct exposure of the cells to the nanoparticles.

Dr Patrick Case, senior author on the study, said: “We need to be clear that our experimental set up is not a model of the human body. The cells receiving the exposure were bathed in culture media, whilst in the body they might be separated from the barrier by connective tissue and blood vessels. The barrier cells were malignant cell line and 3 cells in thickness whilst all barriers in the body are less thick and of non malignant cells.”

Gevdeep Bhabra, lead author on the paper, said: “Even though this work was done in the laboratory, our results suggest the existence of a mechanism by which biological effects can be signalled through a cellular barrier, thus it gives us insights into how barriers in the body such as the skin, the placenta and the blood-brain barrier might work.”

Professor Ashley Blom, Head of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Bristol, added: “If barriers in the body do act in this way, then it gives us insight into how small particles such as metal debris or viruses may exert an influence in the body. It also highlights a potential mechanism whereby we might be able to deliver novel drug therapies in the future.”

These findings suggest that the indirect, as well as the direct, effects of nanoparticles on cells might be important when evaluating their safety.

A detailed picture of the seeds of structures in the universe has been unveiled by an international team co-led by a Cardiff University scientist.

The team has obtained extremely precise data about the early universe, using a telescope near the South Pole in the Antarctic.

Their measurements of the cosmic microwave background – a faintly glowing relic of the hot, dense, young universe – provide further support for the standard cosmological model of the universe. The findings confirm the model’s prediction that dark matter and dark energy make up 95% of everything in existence, while ordinary matter makes up just 5%.

In a paper published in the November 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, researchers on the QUaD telescope project have released detailed maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The researchers focused their measurements on variations in the CMB’s temperature and polarization to learn about the distribution of matter in the early universe. Polarization is the direction in which vibrations travel from all light rays, which is at right angles to the ray’s direction of travel.

The light from the early universe was initially unpolarized but became polarized when it struck moving matter in the very early universe. By creating maps of this polarization, the QUaD team was able to investigate not just where the matter existed, but also how it was moving. The results very closely match the temperature and polarization predicted by the existence of dark matter and dark energy in the standard cosmological model.

The team was jointly led by Professor Walter Gear, Head of the School of Physics and astronomy at Cardiff University and Professor Sarah Church of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), jointly located at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University.

Professor Gear said: “Studying the CMB radiation has given us extremely precise pictures of the Universe at just 400,000 years old. When we first started working on this project the polarization of the CMB hadn’t even been detected and we thought we might be able to find something wrong with the theory. The fact that these superb data fit the theory so beautifully is in many ways even more amazing. This reinforces the view that researchers are on the right track and need to learn more about the strange nature of dark energy and dark matter if we are to fully understand the workings of the universe.”

Michael Brown, of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, lead author of the new study added: “With these new QUaD measurements, we have tested further our standard model of the Universe. Reassuringly, the model has passed this test remarkably well.”

Professor Sarah Church, Deputy Director of KIPAC, said: “When I first started in this field, some people were adamant that they understood the contents of the universe quite well. But that understanding was shattered when evidence for dark energy was discovered. Now that we again feel we have a very good understanding of what makes up the universe, it’s extremely important for us to amass strong evidence using many different measurement techniques that this model is correct, so that this doesn’t happen again.”

Obama - born to lead?

Why did Barack Obama win the US election and did the fact he is over six feet tall influence the voters? In a synthesis of research, published in Current Biology this month, the authors of the paper ‘The Origins and Evolution of Leadership’ argue that due to ‘a hangover from our evolutionary past’ factors like age, sex, height and weight play a major part in the determining our choice of leaders.

Author Professor Mark van Vugt, an Associate Member of the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford, said: ‘Traits like height, age, gender, masculinity/femininity, and weight all appear to matter when we vote for our leaders. These are likely hangovers from our evolutionary past – ancestral leadership prototypes that are context-dependent. When we face particular threats, like war, these elicit particular prototypes, such as the need for a masculine leader. Therefore, leaders who match these ancestral prototypes have a better chance of being elected.’

The article says that although human societies continue to rely heavily on political, economic, military, professional and religious leaders to function effectively, there is a consistently high rate of leadership failure. Nearly three quarters of business failures in corporate America are due to managerial incompetence, the study points out. It asks whether new approaches might be useful in understanding when and why human leadership succeeds and fails – including Nature’s own lessons on what works best in different contexts.

Author Dr Andrew King, from the Zoological Society of London, said: ‘Evolution has fashioned principles governing leadership and followership over many millions of years. We need to ground the complex, even mystical, social phenomenon of leadership in science. Through empirical observation, theoretical models, neuroscience, experimental psychology, and genetics, we can explore the development and adaptive functions of leadership and followership. This analysis of data, combined with an evolutionary perspective on leadership, might highlight potential mismatches so we can see how evolved mechanisms of leadership are possibly out of kilter with our relatively novel social environment.’

Author Dr Dominic Johnson, from the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh, said: ‘ The role of leadership has often been overlooked in the natural sciences – especially its important but under-explored role in the evolution of cooperation, yet it is arguably one of the most important themes in the social sciences. There are converging ideas and developments in both the natural and social sciences that suggest that leadership and followership share common properties across humans and other animals, and these point to evolutionary origins. By identifying such origins and examining which aspects are shared with other animals offers us better ways of understanding, predicting and improving leadership today.’

‘The Origins and Evolution of Leadership’ by Dr Andrew King, from the Institute of Zoology; Dr Dominic Johnson, from Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh; and Professor Mark van Vugt, an Associate Member of the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford, is published this month in Current Biology.

For full paper, see www.cell.com/current-biology/home

A major report on managing the health effects of climate change, launched jointly by ‘The Lancet’ and UCL today, says that climate change is the biggest global-health threat of the 21st century.

Lead author Professor Anthony Costello (UCL Institute for Global Health) says that failure to act will result in an intergenerational injustice, with our children and grandchildren scorning our generation for ignoring the climate change threat – with moral outrage similar to how we today look back on those who brought in and did nothing to stop slavery.

‘Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change’ is the work of UCL academics from many disciplines across the university – including health, anthropology, geography, engineering, economics, law and philosophy. Professor Costello says that this climate-change project brought down the traditional interdisciplinary barriers common at all universities, and hopes it could act as a model for global governance bodies to work together.

The UCL team focused on key areas: patterns of disease and mortality, food security, water and sanitation, shelter and human settlements, extreme events, and population migration.

Professor Costello says: “The big message of this report is that climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people, not just an environmental issue about polar bears and deforestation. The impacts will be felt not just in the UK, but all around the world – and not just in some distant future but in our lifetimes and those of our children.”

Disease and mortality

The UCL–Lancet Commission discusses the global health implications of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections – from the optimistic average global temperature rise of 2 degrees C to the catastrophic 6 degrees C. The authors consider a wide range of pathways through which climate change could exert its effects on health, some of which may happen before others. Changing patterns of disease and mortality would emerge in a greater rate of transmission and geographic spread of traditionally tropical endemic diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. Heat – the ‘silent’ killer – has a major effect on mortality, with the 2003 heatwave causing up to 70,000 excess deaths in Europe. While some people believe populations in India and Africa may be more resistant to heatwaves, there is little evidence of this and major heatwaves could increase death rates in these populations more than in high-income countries.

Food security, water and sanitation

Food and water security will be a major issue as climate change progresses. Scientists believe that crops are much more sensitive to temperature changes than first thought – a 1 degree C change can make a difference of 17% in yields. Professor Costello says: “If we are going to get early changes in the next 20 or 30 years, falling crop yields could trigger more of an effect through rising food prices. Look at what happened last year when food prices rose globally. And one billion people currently have calorie-deficient diets – this situation will get worse as demand increases from India, China and other nations with a population boom.” Up to 250 million people in Africa will face water shortages by 2020 if no action is taken on adaptation. Water and sanitation are crucial to prevent gastroenteritis and malnutrition. Melting glaciers, and changing river flows and rainfall patterns, are already causing flooding and droughts.

Urbanisation and extreme events

Rapid urbanisation, particularly in developing nations, leads to inadequate housing, particularly slums, which are the most exposed during extreme climatic events. Extreme events, including cyclones and hurricanes, have doubled over the past 20 years, according to the insurance companies who insure against them. But in an event such as a cyclone, a rich nation would normally have relatively few casualties compared to poorer countries. Consider Hurricane Katrina with a loss of 1,850 lives compared with the recent cyclone in Burma which is thought to have claimed 150,000 lives. Of the 20 largest cities in the world, 13 are on a coast. While sea levels have been predicted to rise, from anywhere between 0.5m and 1.2m over the 21st century, some predictions as high as 5m are beginning to emerge. This would be catastrophic.

A tipping point

Professor Costello says: “We might be reaching a tipping point in public opinion. I think the health lobby has come late to this debate and should have been saying more. Young people realise this is the great issue of our age.”

He proposes three action points leading from this report: “First, we have to add the health lobby to the mitigation debate – they must emphasise the threat to our children and grandchildren from greenhouse-gas emissions and deforestation. Second, there must be a focus on health systems – there is massive inequality in health systems throughout the world. Because of this, the loss of healthy life years as a result of global environmental change is predicted to be 500 times higher in Africa than in European nations, despite Africa making a minimal contribution to the causes of climate change. Third, we must develop win–win situations whereby we mitigate and adapt to climate change and at the same time significantly improve human health and wellbeing. There are major health benefits from low-carbon lifestyles, which can reduce obesity, heart and lung disease, diabetes and stress.”

He concludes: “We believe that all the main players – in health, politics, science, technology and civil society – must come together. The UCL–Lancet Commission laid out a framework for action, and we have called for a collation of information on the health effects of climate change leading up to a major international conference in the next two years. We especially want representation from poorer nations. This conference would set out some clear indicators, targets and accountability mechanisms. We need a new 21st-century public-health movement to deal with climate change.”

‘Lancet’ editorial

An accompanying editorial in ‘The Lancet’ states: “UCL is a university that has combined a distinguished history of moral engagement with a more recent revitalised global purpose, expressed through its strengthened commitment to global health in teaching, research and institution building. In preparing to undertake its work for this first Lancet Commission, the UCL team, led by Anthony Costello, reached out beyond health to engineers, political scientists, lawyers, geographers, anthropologists, economists, philosophers, and students, among others. They discovered new ways to review evidence and integrate ideas collaboratively.

“And through these efforts, they identified five critical challenges that scientists, clinicians, and policymakers will have to address if climate change is not to become the biggest catastrophe threatening human survival. First, there is a massive gap in information, an astonishing lack of knowledge about how we should respond to the negative health effects of climate change. Second, since the effects of climate change will hit the poor hardest, we have an immense task before us to address the inadequacies of health systems to protect people in countries most at risk. Third, there is a technology challenge. Technologies do have the potential to help us adapt to changes in climate. But these technologies have to be developed out of greater research investments into climate change science, better understanding about how to deliver those technologies in the field, and a more complete appreciation of the social and cultural dimensions into which those technologies might be implanted. A fourth challenge is political: creating the conditions for low-carbon living. And finally there is the question of how we adapt our institutions to make climate change the priority it needs to be. …

“Our commitment is long term. With UCL and other partners, we plan to convene an international summit in two years’ time to review progress and priorities in our collective responses to the urgent and alarming health effects of climate change.”

The Grand Challenge of Global Health

The cross-fertilisation and application of our expertise is being coordinated through the UCL Institute for Global Health. It is developing an institution-wide agenda leading to strategies, programmes, research and teaching to bring our combined expertise to bear on the Grand Challenge of Global Health.

Dr Daniel Müllensiefen

Software developed by an academic at Goldsmiths, University of London could spell the end for future melody plagiarism.

Dr Daniel Müllensiefen, from the Department of Psychology and formerly working in Computing, has co-published research on how to predict court decisions on music plagiarism using cognitive similarity algorithms.

The study has recently been published by the European specialist journal Musicae Scientiae and results were presented publicly for the first time at the international conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences in Music (ESCOM) in Finland in August.

Daniel worked alongside Marc Pendzich, an expert on cover versions and music re-mixes from the Institute of Musicology University of Hamburg, on the software which is based on modelling court decision for cases of alleged melodic plagiarism employing a number of similarity algorithms.

The two researchers used court cases from the US as a testbed for their software and 90 per cent of the court decisions were predicted correctly by the newly developed algorithms.

Tune plagiarism in pop music is a common and often feverishly debated phenomenon, so controversial due to the vast amounts of money involved in today’s pop music industry.

Artists as high profile as Madonna, George Harrison and the Bee Gees have all been involved in music plagiarism cases.

The similarity between melodies is assumed to be a very important factor in a court’s decision about whether a new tune is an illegitimate version of a pre-existing melody.

Under the current system, the jury is advised by expert witnesses to come to a decision – something both Daniel and Marc have indeed done – but they admit that one of the long term effects of their work could substantially alter the need for a jury and expert witnesses.

“The most provocative question you could ask is whether this software could replace a jury and expert witnesses in court,” Daniel said.

“Also, on a very popular level you could claim that the software can detect melodic plagiarism in popular music automatically. Thus, in principle we could develop this into a business where songwriters and music publishers submit songs and we test against a database whether there are any highly similar pre-existing melodies in it.”

Currently these developments are hypothetical due to the sample of cases it has been tested on being so small (20 cases), but Daniel and Marc are working on a follow-up study to include more US cases and to test whether the prediction accuracy holds also true for British and German plagiarism suits.

A daily dose of aspirin can prevent the occurrence of cancer in people with a genetic predisposition towards Lynch syndrome, a Newcastle University scientist has told Europe’s largest cancer congress.

Lynch syndrome is a condition which accounts for around 5 per cent of all colon cancers.

John Burn: We believe that aspirin may have an effect on the survival of aberrant stem cells in the colon.

Professor John Burn, from the Institute of Human Genetics at Newcastle University told the congress ECCO 15 – ESMO 34 held in Berlin on September 21 2009, that he believed that he and his colleagues may have uncovered a simple way of controlling cancer stem cells, which are essential to the formation of malignant tumours.

The clinical trial, which involved 1071 carriers of the Lynch syndrome mutation in 42 centres worldwide, randomised participants to a daily dose of 600mg aspirin and/or 30g Novelose, a resistant starch that escapes digestion in the small intestine.

“Although there were many reports that aspirin might have a beneficial effect in a range of cancers”, said Professor Burn, “they were from case control and epidemiological studies. We decided that the only way to achieve conclusive proof was to undertake a randomised trial in a high risk population.”

Lynch syndrome, often called hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC), is a type of inherited cancer of the digestive tract, particularly the colon and rectum. People with Lynch syndrome have an increased risk of cancers of the stomach, small intestine, liver, gallbladder ducts, upper urinary tract, brain, skin, and prostate. Women carriers also have a high risk of developing endometrial and ovarian cancers.

These patients tend to develop cancer quickly, so the scientists expected to see answers at an early stage. The first results were disappointing, however; at an average of 29 months after randomisation the scientists saw no evidence of the benefits of aspirin in the high risk population studied.

“Our original design allowed for long term post trial follow-up,” said Professor Burn. “We’ve managed to track down most of those who completed the trial – around 75 per cent of the original consent cohort – with information extending up to 10 years from randomisation. We have found that, around four years after randomisation, there was a divergence in the incidence of cancers between the aspirin and placebo groups. To date, there have been only six colon cancers in the aspirin group as opposed to 16 who took placebo. There is also a reduction in endometrial cancer. This is a statistically significant result and we are delighted – all the more so because we stopped giving the aspirin after 4 years, yet the effect is continuing, and is directly correlated with the duration of aspirin use on the trial.”

Although scientists believe that diet is a major factor in the prevention of colorectal cancers, there are no randomised trial data which can prove it, since running proper, controlled trials of diet is extremely difficult. However, there is a strong inverse relationship between colon cancer and how much starch people eat. Resistant starch, after escaping digestion in the upper gut, is fermented in the colon and forms short chain fatty acids which are powerful anti-cancer agents.

“Our very large colon probably evolved to capture such nutrients from our forefathers’ diets”, explained Professor Burn, “because we were giving starch as well as aspirin we would also have expected to see a decrease in cancers in the placebo group. However, there could be a number of reasons for this result – perhaps patients didn’t take the starch every day, or that it simply wasn’t resistant enough.”

There were minor problems due to aspirin side effects; out of over 1000 people 11 in the aspirin group had notable gastro-intestinal bleeds or ulcers as opposed to 9 in the placebo group. But this was counter-balanced by fewer strokes and heart attacks in the aspirin group. The mechanism by which aspirin protects against cancer has yet to be elucidated, but the scientists believe that cancer stem cells are involved.

“We do not think that the mechanisms discussed to date are likely to provide an explanation”, said Professor Burn. “For example, the inflammatory enzyme COX2 is over-expressed in early cancer, but our results suggest an effect that predates the cancer, and may even predate the adenoma which precedes it. We believe that aspirin may have an effect on the survival of aberrant stem cells in the colon. These cancer stem cells are normally resistant to chemotherapy, but if a stem cell mutates but does not reveal its potential until an adenoma is formed, and if aspirin reduced the chances of such cells surviving, this would explain our results.”

The team intends to undertake a further study to see whether a smaller dose of aspirin would have the same beneficial effect or not.

“We are planning to ask all people with Lynch syndrome to agree to “toss a coin” and take, say, either one or two aspirin tablets per day. Then we can see whether the people on the lower dose have the same protection, with fewer side effects. The problem is that, to have a significant result, this will need about 10 times as many people, but the good news is that everyone gets treated,” said Professor Burn.

The University of California is launching an unprecedented statewide collaboration for breast cancer patients with the goal of revolutionizing the course of their care by designing and testing new approaches to research, technology and health care delivery.

Laura J. Esserman MD

Named the ATHENA Breast Health Network, the groundbreaking project will initially involve 150,000 women throughout California who will be screened for breast cancer and followed for decades through the five UC medical centers. ATHENA is a University of California system-wide project supported by a $5.3 million University of California grant and a $4.8 million grant from the Safeway Foundation.

The project is expected to generate a rich collection of data and knowledge that will shape breast cancer care in the way the renowned Framingham heart study changed the care of patients with heart disease.

“ATHENA is a model of multi-institutional collaboration and demonstrates the enormous potential in shared systems,” said John D. Stobo, MD, UC senior vice president for health sciences and services. “This is a great example of the power of our statewide university network of academic medical centers; this initiative will demonstrate that the total of what can be accomplished by UC functioning as an integrated system can far exceed the sum of contributions by the individual campuses. ATHENA represents an unprecedented opportunity to play a leadership role in driving critical changes in health care. The public nature of the UC institutions make them uniquely positioned to study the appropriateness and effectiveness of treatment. It also allows for the applied use of new scientific evidence, much of which has been developed in the UC medical centers, to truly change the delivery of care.”

The medical centers involved in the large-scale demonstration project are UC San Francisco as the host campus, UC Davis, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine. Also participating in the collaboration are the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, the Northern California Cancer Center, Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative, the National Cancer Institute’s BIG Health Consortium, and the Center for Medical Technology Policy.

“We are excited to be supporting this innovative collaboration that, to date, has the clearest potential to produce ground breaking research that will bring us closer to a cure,” said Larree Renda, Safeway Inc. executive vice president, chief strategist and administrative officer and chair of the Safeway Foundation.

Breast cancer, the most common cancer in women, is a devastating and costly disease, striking more than 200,000 women annually and killing more than 40,000 women each year, according to the American Cancer Society. In the United States, more than $20 billion is spent annually screening and treating the disease.

ATHENA is designed to more efficiently integrate financing, technology, research and clinical care, creating an infrastructure model that could be utilized for many medical conditions.

“Our goal is to improve survival and reduce suffering from breast cancer, to accelerate research and compress the time to implement innovations in clinical practice,” said ATHENA principal investigator Laura Esserman, MD, MBA, professor of surgery and radiology, director of the UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center and co-leader of the breast oncology program at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“By working together as a community, the University of California medical centers, their affiliates, primary care and specialty physicians and patient advocates will work to change the options for patients today and create a better future for all women at risk for developing breast cancer,” she added.

The goals of the ATHENA initiative are:

To create common systems to integrate clinical research and care across the UC campuses to advance the science of prevention, screening, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer.

To drive innovation across the UC system to deliver and finance more effective and efficient systems for personalized and biologically targeted care, using breast cancer as a prototype.

To create a biospecimen repository that has broad racial and ethnic representation.

To reduce morbidity and mortality by gaining a molecular understanding of breast cancer and factors that fuel breast cancer risk.

To improve understanding of who is at risk for what kind of cancer, and whether the risk of that cancer is significant or minimal.

To generate the evidence for developing more effective and less toxic treatments and to drive innovation in prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

To provide tools to change the way patients and providers interact to prevent and manage the disease.

The science fueling personalized medicine is experiencing explosive growth. Molecular tests are now available that can analyze a breast cancer tumor and categorize the risk of breast cancer recurrence with and without treatments, according to Esserman.

“Giving doctors sophisticated tools to tailor treatments to the individual tumor will revolutionize care, potentially enabling thousands of women to safely forgo toxic treatments and providing those at high risk of dying from their cancer with more targeted and effective treatments,” said Esserman. “Equally, if not more exciting, is the promise of molecular tools to more accurately predict the risk of getting breast cancer, which may ultimately lead to better ways to prevent the disease.”

Women who present for breast cancer screening at the five UC medical centers and their affiliates will be enrolled into the ATHENA Breast Health Network and followed for decades. All women undergoing screening and treatment will be offered the opportunity to collaborate by contributing information about themselves, any risk factors they have, including health status, and other related lifestyle behaviors, such as diet, tobacco and drug use, environmental factors, gynecological history and family risk. This information will be used to help target prevention services now and in the future. Women diagnosed with breast cancer will additionally join a “survivorship cohort” comprised of women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

“We will be able to create a state-wide cohort of women at risk of breast cancer and develop the optimal methods for the early detection of all types of breast cancer,” said Robert Hiatt, MD, PhD, professor and co-chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF. He is also director of population sciences and deputy director of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, and his research focuses on breast cancer and the environment. “The size and diversity of the survivorship cohort and the depth and quality of the information we’ll have will be unprecedented and will enable the development and testing of robust new models of cancer outcomes and prognosis.”

The UC system is particularly well-positioned for a project of ATHENA’s magnitude because the medical centers annually screen as many as 80,000 women, and diagnose 2,500 patients with breast cancer. Still, said Esserman, the new project calls for “a re-imagining and then a re-engineering so that we can continually improve what we do—to improve our current processes, to streamline communication and access to information among care providers and patients, and to improve the efficiency of services.”

The potential rewards are significant, she stressed. “This project will standardize the collection of structured data from both patients and physicians so that it is computable, interoperable, and reusable, and it will integrate molecular profiling at the time of diagnosis, and create an unparalleled biospecimen repository. The result will be a network that enables personalized care informed by science and that fuels the accelerated and continuous improvement in treatment options and outcomes,” said Esserman. “With ATHENA, wisdom will be waging war against breast cancer and the learning system will continue to evolve until we have cured this disease.”

While the ATHENA Breast Health Network focuses on breast cancer, the tools and infrastructure developed for this project are readily transferable to other cancers and conditions. ATHENA has the potential to serve as a transformative model to drive innovation, alter the culture of research and clinical practice and ultimately change health care delivery, according to the project team.

For further information, visit http://www.AthenaCareNetwork.org.

A new study by researchers at the University of Southampton has found that sea levels have been rising across the south coast of England over the past century, substantially increasing the risk of flooding during storms.

The team has conducted a major data collection exercise, bringing together computer and paper-based records from across the south of England, from the Scilly Isles to Sheerness, to form a single data set of south coast sea levels across the years.

Their work has added collectively about 150 years worth of historic data to the existing record of English Channel sea-level change and extended the data along the south coast. Their findings are published in the latest edition of the journal Continental Shelf Research.

The data shows that both average sea levels and extreme sea levels have been rising at a similar rate through the 20th Century. The rate of rise is in the range 1.2 to 2.2 mm per year, with 1.3 mm per year recorded at Southampton.

Coastal engineering expert Professor Robert Nicholls, of the University’s School of Civil Engineering and the Environment, who conducted the study, comments: “While these changes seem small, over a century they accumulate and substantially increase the risk of flooding during storms, unless there have been corresponding upgrades to flood defences. A water level that had an average likelihood of occurring once every 100 years in 1900 now has an average likelihood of occurring on average every 10 to 25 years, depending on the site considered. As sea levels continue to rise and probably accelerate, this increase in the likelihood of flooding will continue.”

The most significant extension to the records is that of sea level changes at Southampton where the record now begins in 1935.

Paper-based records at St Mary’s on the Isles of Scilly, Weymouth, Southampton and Newhaven have been used to greatly extend existing computer-based records, while the records at Devonport and Portsmouth have both been extended and corrected for pervious errors of interpretation.

This new data is feeding into ongoing efforts to increase the understanding and management of flooding.

The work was conducted by Professor Robert Nicholls, Dr Neil Wells from the University’s School of Ocean and Earth Science based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and Dr Ivan Haigh, formerly of the University of Southampton and now at the University of Western Australia.

Chickens are no longer a lean alternative to red meat

In 1976, the Royal College of Physicians and the British Cardiac Society recommended eating less fatty red meat and more poultry instead because it was lean. However, recent research has shown that this may not be the case today.

A new paper published in the journal Public Health Nutrition by Cambridge University Press describes analysis of the chickens as sold in 2004-2006, compared to historical data.

First the content of omega 3 DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) has fallen to less than a third of the value in the 1970s. Secondly, the fat content of the chicken carcass has risen; now providing about three times the calories compared to protein. Such chickens are no longer a protein rich food but a fat rich food, and the organic chickens analysed fared little better.

These chickens are fed largely on cereals and whether organic or not, the cereals contain little omega 3 fatty acids. The value of the omega 3 DHA is that it is utilised for the brain and vital organs. Traditionally, chicken meat and hens eggs would have been valuable land sources of omega 3 DHA. Fully free range chickens would get the omega 3 from the green foods (grass, leaves and small animals that eat plants). However, feed areas maintained 24 hours a day with omega 3 deficient food destroys the incentive of the birds to search for such foods, even if they are allowed out of doors.

In addition, the denial of exercise and again 24-hour availability of energy dense and omega 3 deficient food provides exactly the recipe for weight gain which means fat gain. Genetic selection for fast weight gain makes that situation worse. The biochemical analysis of the meat of the birds is not only consistent with the loss of omega 3 and increase in fat, but also the lack of exercise and the selection for fast weight gain which exacerbates the loss of omega 3.

Omega 3 DHA is important for the brain, its growth and function and to get the same amount of DHA from a 1Kg chicken today, you would need to eat about 4 chickens at a cost of £12 which at the same time would be associated with 5,000 calories of fat. Many scientists also consider that the rise in mental ill health is due to the loss of omega 3 DHA in the diet.

Abstract from the paper ‘Modern organic and broiler chickens sold for human consumption provide more energy from fat than protein‘

Objective: In 1976, the Royal College of Physicians and the British Cardiac Society recommended eating less fatty red meat and more poultry instead because it was lean. However, the situation has changed since that time, with a striking increase in fat content of the standard broiler chicken. The aim of the present study was to report a snapshot of data on fat in chickens now sold to the public.

Design: Samples were obtained randomly between 2004 and 2008 from UK supermarkets, farm shops and a football club. The amount of chicken fat was estimated by emulsification and chloroform/methanol extraction.

Setting: Food sold in supermarkets and farms in England.

Subjects: Chicken samples.

Results: The fat energy exceeded that of protein. There has been a loss of n-3 fatty acids. The n-6:n-3 ratio was found to be as high as 9:1, as opposed to the recommendation of about 2:1. Moreover, the TAG level in the meat and whole bird mostly exceeded the proportion of phospholipids, which should be the higher for muscle function. The n-3 fatty acid docosapentaenoic acid (DPA, 22 : 5n-3) was in excess of DHA (22 : 6n-3). Previous analyses had, as usual for birds, more DHA than DPA.

Conclusions: Traditional poultry and eggs were one of the few land-based sources of long-chain n-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, which is synthesized from its parent precursor in the green food chain. In view of the obesity epidemic, chickens that provide several times the fat energy compared with protein seem illogical. This type of chicken husbandry needs to be reviewed with regard to its implications for animal welfare and human nutrition.

Adam Maloof

Princeton University scientists have shown that, in ancient times, the Earth’s magnetic field was structured like the two-pole model of today, suggesting that the methods geoscientists use to reconstruct the geography of early land masses on the globe are accurate. The findings may lead to a better understanding of historical continental movement, which relates to changes in climate.

By taking a closer look at the 1.1 billion-year-old volcanic rocks on the north shore of Lake Superior, the researchers have found that Earth’s ancient magnetic field was a geocentric axial dipole — essentially a large bar magnet centered in the core and aligned with the Earth’s spin axis.

Some earlier studies of these rocks had led other teams to conclude that the magnetic field of the ancient Earth had a far more complex structure — some proposing the influence of four or even eight poles — implying that present models of the supercontinents that relied on paleomagnetic data and an axial dipole assumption were wrong.

The report, which will appear in the October issue of Nature Geoscience, says that previous efforts to interpret the ancient geomagnetic field in rocks from North America were confused by the rapid migration of the continent toward the equator in the distant past.

The researchers “neatly lay to rest the long-standing controversy over the nature of Earth’s magnetic field 1.1 billion years ago,” writes geoscientist Joseph Meert of the University of Florida in an essay that accompanies the report.

“In this paper, we show that Earth’s magnetic field has been more stable in the past than originally believed,” said Adam Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton and one of the paper’s authors.

Paleomagnetic data from volcanic rocks studied by Princeton University scientists at Mamainse Point in Ontario, Canada, are helping researchers understand continental motion during the assembly of the ancient supercontinent Rodinia. Here, Adam Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton, observes these rocks along the edge of Lake Superior as part of the study. (Photo: Nicholas Swanson-Hysell)

The Earth’s magnetic field wraps around the globe, shielding life from harmful cosmic rays. It is emanated by the Earth’s iron core and is shaped by a multitude of factors, including the spinning of the Earth and circulatory motion influenced by the Earth’s rotation and temperature differences between the inner core’s outer layers and the lower mantle.

The researchers obtained magnetic measurements from a thick stack of lava flows in the Lake Superior region. The lavas erupted when geologic forces attempted to tear apart central North America forming the Keweenawan Rift. The researchers used the tiny magnetic minerals within the volcanic rocks to record the orientation of the geomagnetic field at the time the rocks erupted onto the Earth’s surface. By knowing how those grains pointed to the magnetic field of that time, the scientists could deduce the latitude where they were located when the lava flows erupted and cooled. The grains pointed to where “paleo-north” was for each rock.

Studying layers of the basaltic lava flows, they used the information to track how the Earth’s magnetic poles have “flipped” over the eons, with the North Magnetic Pole becoming the South Magnetic Pole and vice versa. The team studied three of these reversals that occurred over a few million years.

The scientists plan to use the data to better understand how continents moved in the distant past, massing to form supercontinents. “We needed to be able to have a working model of how the geomagnetic field behaved in the past if we are going to talk about where plates have moved, how fast they’ve moved and how ancient supercontinents were configured,” said Nicholas Swanson-Hysell, a graduate student at Princeton and the first author on the paper.

The well-exposed layering of basalt flows in formations near Lake Superior is aiding scientific understanding of the geomagnetic field in ancient times. Nicholas Swanson-Hysell, a Princeton graduate student, examines the details of the top of a lava flow. (Photo: Catherine Rose)

Knowing the proper location of continents is key to understanding the climate of any era, Maloof said, because the shape and location of continents affect ocean currents, global average temperatures and wind patterns. And by understanding in detail what Earth’s climate was like in ancient times, he noted, scientists can better comprehend the climate of today and make more accurate projections for the future.

According to scientific reconstructions, a supercontinent known as Rodinia existed between 1 billion and 800 million years ago. The extreme cooling of the global climate about 700 million years ago and the rapid evolution of primitive life during subsequent periods are often thought to have been triggered by the breaking up of Rodinia.

Rodinia predated a more recently created supercontinent called Pangaea, which came together about 300 million years ago. Scientists have pieced Rodinia together by comparing rocks with similar geological features that are now widely dispersed.

Knowing that they have confirmed the structure of the Earth’s magnetic field at that time gives Maloof and Swanson-Hysell the confidence to learn more about the supercontinent and that epoch.

“For the past 30 years, scientists have feared that the geometry of Earth’s field was complex and varied,” Maloof said. “Such a complex field made it very hard for people to reconstruct the ancient geography of the planet because they could not rely on a predictable field. We show that these fears were unfounded — at least for 1.1 billion years ago — and that the evidence for a complex ancient field was an artifact of the way rocks had been sampled.”

Other researchers on the paper included: Benjamin Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and David Evans of Yale University.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Sigma Xi, Agouron Institute and Princeton University.

Sending science down the phone

Scientists from the University of Bath have helped to develop new mobile phone software that will help epidemiologists and ecologists working in the field to analyse their data remotely and map findings across the world without having to return to the lab.

Dr Ed Feil and PhD student Fadaa al Own from the Department of Biology & Biochemistry, working with academics from Imperial College, say the software will also enable members of the public to act as ‘citizen scientists’ and help collect data for community projects.

The researchers have developed an application for ’smartphones’ that allows a scientist or member of the public to collect and record data, photos and videos – for example to document the presence of an animal or plant species – and then send this information to a central web-based database. The website records the user’s location, using the phone’s GPS system, and it can then display all of the data collected on this topic across the world, using Google Maps.

Users can also use their smartphones to request and view all the maps and analyses available. The new technology, which is funded by the Wellcome Trust, means that groups of researchers should be able to quickly and easily build up and share maps of, for example, the distribution of an endangered species or cases of a disease, and analyse patterns that emerge. The Imperial team is currently using the software, known as EpiCollect, as a tool in their studies of the epidemiology of bacterial and fungal infectious diseases.

Dr Ed Feil said: “This is a very exciting project and opens up all sorts of possibilities for amateurs, research scientists, and teachers alike, by exploiting the sophisticated features of mobile phone technology.”

The technology has already been used by Dr Nick Waterfield, also from the University’s Department of Biology & Biochemistry to study nematode worms, which are pathogenic to insects, from various sites throughout Thailand.

The researchers suggest that members of the public could also get involved in scientific research using the tool and that schools could also use the software, for example on biology field courses.

Suitable smartphones for EpiCollect use the Android open-source operating system, developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It means that software developers can produce their own applications to run on the phones and anybody can download the software for free. There are currently several different handsets available in the UK and the new software will be available to anybody with one of these phones. The researchers have also produced a beta version for the iPhone, so the software will soon be available to even more people.

In order to use the new system, a researcher sets up a web database for their particular study and a specific version of EpiCollect is produced that can be loaded on multiple phones, allowing users to start collecting and submitting data.

Dr Ed Feil and Fadaa al Own are two of five authors of the study that was published in PLoS One.