Dinosaur experts bust up prehistoric party theory

SALT LAKE CITY – So maybe there was no dinosaur dancing after all.

Paleontologists say there are no signs of dinosaur tracks at a remote spot along the Utah-Arizona border that was previously described by University of Utah geologists as a "dinosaur dance floor" for its density of tracks.

"We didn't observe a single footprint," said Andrew Milner, paleontologist at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm in southwestern Utah.

He was one of four paleontologists who hiked into the area last week after a heavily publicized study claiming there were more than 1,000 previously unknown dinosaur tracks crammed onto less than an acre in the Arizona portion of Vermillion Cliffs National Monument.

"We went up there optimistic, really hoping we were going to find footprints," Milner said Friday.

They quickly determined there were none. Instead, it was a dense collection of potholes caused by erosion in the sandstone, they said.

And the supposed tail-drag marks in the rock? Probably another result of erosion, the paleontologists said.

Marjorie Chan, a University of Utah researcher who co-authored the "dinosaur dance floor" study, said she's open to the paleontologists' views and says she'll team up with other researchers for another examination of the site.

"I'm interested in the truth, no matter what the outcome is," Chan said.

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Cold front could thwart Friday's shuttle launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – An approaching cold front could thwart NASA's plans to launch space shuttle Endeavour on Friday on a flight to the international space station.

But the seven astronauts arrived Tuesday ahead of the countdown start and hopeful for an on-time liftoff.

"This mission is all about home improvement, home improvement both inside and outside," shuttle commander Christopher Ferguson said after arriving from Houston with his crew.

During the 15-day mission, the astronauts will deliver a new bathroom, kitchenette, two bedrooms and exercise machine, as well as a water recycling system — and a new resident for the space station. A new astronaut will replace one of the three space station residents.

The plan is to expand the living quarters of the space station so the crew can be doubled to six by next June.

"On the inside of the space station, the walls are largely up," Ferguson said. "... Well, it's moving day. It's time to fill them up."

Ferguson also noted the never-before-attempted repairs that are planned for outside the space station. Three of the crew will take turns going outside to clean and lubricate a clogged joint that is preventing one set of solar wings from turning automatically toward the sun, and they'll replace its bearings.

This will be NASA's first shuttle launch since the end of May.

"We haven't had a launch for a while, so we're really excited to be back in the saddle again," said test director Jeff Spaulding.

The threatening cold front was moving across the central part of the nation Tuesday and was expected to bring rain and thick clouds to the launch site by week's end.

Shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters said there was a 60 percent chance of acceptable conditions at the 7:55 p.m. Friday liftoff time and only a 40 percent chance on Saturday.

"The timing of the front will be critical," she said.

NASA has a shuttle launch window until Nov. 25.

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Fat kids found to have arteries of 45-year-olds

NEW ORLEANS – Obese children as young as 10 had the arteries of 45-year-olds and other heart abnormalities that greatly raise their risk of heart disease, say doctors who used ultrasound tests to take a peek inside.

"As the old saying goes, you're as old as your arteries are," said Dr. Geetha Raghuveer of Children's Hospital in Kansas City, who led one of the studies. "This is a wake-up call."

The studies were reported Tuesday at an American Heart Association conference.

About a third of American children are overweight and one-fifth are obese. Many parents think that "baby fat" will melt away as kids get older. But research increasingly shows that fat kids become fat adults, with higher risks for many health problems.

"Obesity is not benign in children and adolescents," said Dr. Robert Eckel, a former heart association president and cardiologist at the University of Colorado-Denver. It is why the American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended cholesterol-lowering drugs for some kids, he noted.

Raghuveer wanted to see if early signs of damage could be documented. She and colleagues used painless ultrasound tests to measure the thickness of the wall of a major neck artery in 70 children, ages 10 to 16. Almost all had abnormal cholesterol and many were obese.

No one knows how thick a 10-year-old's artery should be, since they're not regularly checked for signs of heart disease, so researchers used tables for 45-year-olds, who often do get such exams.

The kids' "vascular age" was about 30 years older than their actual age, she found.

A separate study tied childhood obesity to abnormal enlargement of the left atrium, one of the chambers of the heart. Enlargement is a known risk factor for heart disease, stroke and heart rhythm problems.

Julian Ayer, a researcher at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Sydney Australia, did ultrasound exams on 991 seemingly healthy children ages 5 to 15. He saw a clear link between rising weight and size of the left atrium.

A third study by Dr. Walter Abhayaratna of Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, also used ultrasound tests and found impairment in the heart's ability to relax between beats in children who were overweight or obese.

The study involved the first 150 children participating in a larger community-based study.

Earlier research he helped conduct found more rigid arteries in such children — a possible sign of plaque deposits starting to form.

"Even at this young age of 10, you can have children who have got arterial stiffness who are comparable to 30- and 40-year-olds," he said.

Dr. Michael Schloss, a New York University heart disease prevention specialist, said the evidence shows obesity is more than a cosmetic issue for children.

"If you've seen what's on the menu for most school lunches, these findings are no surprise," he said. "The time has come to seriously deal with the issue of childhood obesity and physical inactivity on a governmental and parental level."

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Studies: Vitamin pills don't prevent heart disease

NEW ORLEANS – Vitamins C and E — pills taken by millions of Americans — do nothing to prevent heart disease in men, one of the largest and longest studies of these supplements has found.

Vitamin E even appeared to raise the risk of bleeding strokes, a danger seen in at least one earlier study.

Besides questioning whether vitamins help, "we have to worry about potential harm," said Barbara Howard, a nutrition scientist at MedStar Research Institute of Hyattsville, Md.

She has no role in the research but reviewed and discussed it Sunday at an American Heart Association conference. Results also were published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

About 12 percent of Americans take supplements of C and E despite growing evidence that these antioxidants do not prevent heart disease and may even be harmful.

Male smokers taking vitamin E had a higher rate of bleeding strokes in a previous study, and several others found no benefit for heart health.

As for vitamin C, some research suggests it may aid cancer, not fight it. A previous study in women at high risk of heart problems found it did not prevent heart attacks.

Few long-term studies have been done. The new one is the Physicians Health Study, led by Drs. Howard Sesso and J. Michael Gaziano of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

It involved 14,641 male doctors, 50 or older, including 5 percent who had heart disease at the time the study started in 1997. They were put into four groups and given either vitamin E, vitamin C, both, or dummy pills. The dose of E was 400 international units every other day; C was 500 milligrams daily.

After an average of eight years, no difference was seen in the rates of heart attack, stroke or heart-related deaths among the groups.

However, 39 men taking E suffered bleeding strokes versus only 23 of the others, which works out to a 74 percent greater risk for vitamin-takers.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and several vitamin makers. Results were so clear that they would be unlikely to change if the study were done in women, minorities, or with different formulations of the vitamins, Howard said.

"In these hard economic times, maybe we can save some money by not buying these supplements," she said.

A second study found that vitamins B-12 and B-9 (folic acid) did not prevent heart disease either, supporting the results of previous trials. That study involved more than 12,000 heart attack survivors and was led by Dr. Jane Armitage of the University of Oxford in England.

___

On the Net:

JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org/

Heart meeting: http://www.americanheart.org/

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Study: Wider cholesterol drug use may save lives

NEW ORLEANS – People with low cholesterol and no big risk for heart disease had dramatically lower rates of heart attacks, death and stroke if they took the cholesterol pill Crestor, a large study found.

The results, reported Sunday at an American Heart Association conference, were hailed as a watershed event in heart disease prevention. Doctors said the study might lead as many as 7 million more Americans to consider taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, sold as Crestor, Lipitor, Zocor or in generic form.

"This takes prevention to a whole new level, because it applies to patients who we now wouldn't have any evidence to treat," said Dr. W. Douglas Weaver, a Detroit cardiologist and president of the American College of Cardiology.

The study also gives the best evidence yet for using a new test to identify people who may need treatment, according to a statement from Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The new research will be considered by experts reviewing current guidelines.

However, some doctors urged caution. Crestor gave clear benefit in the study, but so few heart attacks and deaths occurred among these low-risk people that treating everyone like them in the United States could cost up to $9 billion a year — "a difficult sell," one expert said.

About 120 people would have to take Crestor for two years to prevent a single heart attack, stroke or death, said Stanford University cardiologist Dr. Mark Hlatky. He wrote an editorial accompanying the study published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Everybody likes the idea of prevention. We need to slow down and ask how many people are we going to be treating with drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent heart disease, versus a lot of other things we're not doing" to improve health, Hlatky said.

Statins are the world's top-selling drugs. Until this study, all but Crestor have already been shown to cut the risk of heart attacks and death in people with high LDL, or bad cholesterol.

But half of all heart attacks occur in people with normal or low cholesterol, so doctors have been testing other ways to predict who is at risk.

One is high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, or CRP for short. It is a measure of inflammation, which can mean clogged arteries as well as less serious problems, such as an infection or injury. Doctors check CRP with a blood test that costs about $80 to have done.

A co-inventor on a patent of the test, Dr. Paul Ridker of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, led the new study. It involved 17,802 people with high CRP and low LDL cholesterol (below 130) in the U.S. and 25 other countries.

One-fourth were black or Hispanic, and 40 percent were women — important because previous statin studies have included few women. Men had to be 50 or older; women, 60 or older. None had a history of heart problems or diabetes.

They were randomly assigned to take dummy pills or Crestor, the strongest statin on the market, made by British-based AstraZeneca PLC. Neither participants nor their doctors knew who was taking what.

The study was supposed to last five years but was stopped in March, after about two years, when independent monitors saw that those taking Crestor were faring better than the others.

Full results were announced Sunday. Crestor reduced a combined measure — heart attacks, strokes, heart-related deaths or hospitalizations, or the need for an artery-opening procedure — by 44 percent.

"We reduced the risk of a heart attack by 54 percent, the risk of a stroke by 48 percent and the chance of needing bypass surgery or angioplasty by 46 percent," Ridker said.

Looked at another way, there were 136 heart-related problems per year for every 10,000 people taking dummy pills versus 77 for those on Crestor.

Remarkably, every single subgroup benefited from the drug.

"If you're skinny it worked, if you're heavy it worked. If you lived here or there, if you smoked, it worked," Ridker said.

AstraZeneca paid for the study, and Ridker and other authors have consulted for the company and other statin makers.

One concern: More people in the Crestor group saw blood-sugar levels rise or were newly diagnosed with diabetes.

Crestor also has the highest rate among statins of a rare but serious muscle problem, so there are probably safer and cheaper ways to get the same benefits, said Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the consumer group Public Citizen.

"It is highly unlikely that (the benefits are) specific to Crestor," said Wolfe, who has campaigned against the drug in the past.

Crestor costs $3.45 a day versus less than a dollar for generic drugs.

Drs. James Stein and Jon Keevil of the University of Wisconsin-Madison used federal health statistics to project that 7.4 million Americans, or more than 4 percent of the adult population, are like the people in this study.

Treating them all with Crestor would cost $9 billion a year and prevent about 30,000 heart attacks, strokes or deaths, they calculate.

"That's pretty costly. This would be a very difficult sell" unless a person also had family history or other heart disease risk factors, said Dr. Thomas Pearson of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Pearson was co-chairman of a joint government-heart association panel that wrote current guidelines for using CRP tests to guide treatment.

Researchers do not know whether the benefits seen in the study were due to reducing CRP or cholesterol, since Crestor did both.

This study and two other government-sponsored ones reported on Sunday "provide the strongest evidence to date" for testing C-reactive protein, and adding it to traditional risk measures could identify millions more people who would benefit from treatment, Nabel's statement says.

U.S. Crestor prescriptions totaled $420 million in the third quarter of this year, up 23 percent from a year earlier. In the rest of the world, third quarter sales were $520 million, up 33 percent.

Sales have been rising even though two statins — Zocor and Pravachol — are now available in generic form.

___

On the Net:

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

Heart conference: http://www.americanheart.org

Government: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/Cad/CAD_WhatIs.html

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The aircraft mission

The agencies involved in this exciting project are the United States National Science Foundation, the British Antarctic Survey, the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Australian Antarctic Division, Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration and the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research. Nine aircraft are involved in this ambitious project. In addition to the two specially equipped science aircraft from UK and US, seven others will support the project by transporting people, fuel, equipment and supplies to both field camps.

Fuel to AGAP South will be moved by air and by overland traverse from where it is currently stockpiled. An overland traverse will head out of South Pole arriving at AGAP South on 10th December. Air drops using a C17 are planned for four dates in November to bring additional fuel to AGAP North.
2-3 December 2008: GAMBIT. The BAS twin otter survey aircraft will move to AGAP-North. The survey team will also move to AGAP-North in a BAS support Twin Otter (VPF AZ). The BAS Twin Otter survey aircraft will remain at AGAP-North for 37 days maximum. The goal is to complete 43 survey flights. If weather and field conditions are good flights could take as little as 29 days.

11 December: The USAP aircraft will transfer to AGAP-South to be in place when the early GAMBIT science team arrives.

17 December 2008: The USAP utility twin otter aircraft begins its deployment of 25 seismic stations for the GAMSEIS project. Of the 25 sites to be visited, 15 stations are to be new installations; 10 existing stations are to be serviced (~ 3 hrs per station to be serviced). The stations to be serviced actually take more ground time than the “to be installed” stations. This process includes removing the battery data logger box from the ice, brought back for service at AGAP-South and put into another box install at another site. Sixteen flight days with a double crew are targeted for this effort.







17 December 2008 – 10 January 2009: GAMBIT- USAP Twin Otter aircraft begins flying at AGAP-South. Fifty-four flights are necessary to complete the science program. Assuming a production rate of 1.85 flights per day from the Lake Vostok survey, 39 flights are likely to be completed in the 21 day planned flight operation window. Any option to begin survey flights sooner will facilitate the completion of the science program. The USAP Survey aircraft will conduct flights that require refuelling at a location know as AGO-1 and AGAP-North.

5-10 January 2009: The BAS Survey Twin Otter and team will work from AGAP-South. If fuel is available at AGO-3 the BAS Survey Otter will acquire the geophysical lines over the northern Recovery Lakes at the end of the season. The airframe will transfer back to McMurdo via AGO-1.

10 January 2009: the USAP Survey aircraft will transfer back to McMurdo where the geophysical equipment will be removed. The aircraft will be released to other projects on 16 January.

16 January 2009: The BAS aircraft will depart McMurdo via Pole for Patriot Hills and Rothera on. The survey team will depart with NSF through New Zealand.















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TCU, Utah to play BCS elimination game

SALT LAKE CITY – Welcome to the BCS Buster playoffs. When No. 11 TCU visits No. 10 Utah on Thursday night, the winner is assured of staying alive for at least another week in the Bowl Championship Series sweepstakes. The loser can start making other postseason plans.

"It's everything you want. It's what you coach for," TCU coach Gary Patterson said. "Now we are in a situation where you see in three hours who can score one more point."

Most other seasons, the focus on this game would be the Mountain West Conference championship. The Utes (9-0, 5-0) and Horned Frogs (9-1, 6-0) are the only teams left without a league loss and the winner will have the inside track for the outright conference title.

But both teams are also in the top 12 of the BCS, one of the qualifying benchmarks for the top tier of bowls. The series only hands out one berth to a non-BCS conference school, and with Boise State of the Western Athletic Conference still in contention, a loss at this point would end any hope.

"It's like you have finals and then you've got vacation," Patterson said. "All you think about is you've got to get to finals to get vacation. Vacation is the No. 1 priority, but you know what? Vacation is not going to be a lot of fun if you flunk all your finals."

TCU hasn't flunked anything this season. The Horned Frogs' only loss was 35-10 to Oklahoma, which is respectable considering the sixth-ranked Sooners average almost 50 points per game. The only other team to hold Oklahoma to so few points was Texas in a 45-35 win for the Longhorns.

The Frogs have already taken out one potential BCS Buster with a 32-7 win over BYU three weeks ago. TCU held BYU to just 297 yards of offense, including 23 yards rushing.

"They're just tearing it up on defense. I don't know if I've seen a defense play as well as they have," Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. "You name it, they're doing it on defense. That is very impressive, what they've been able to do."

Utah is the original BCS Buster and is trying to be the first school to sneak in one of the big-money games twice. TCU is trying to be the first to earn a berth despite losing a game.

The speculation about who could be this year's BCS Buster has been building throughout the season, especially after TCU's win over BYU.

Although the BCS bylaws are complicated, Utah's route to getting there is simple. Stay unbeaten and the Utes, who are No. 8 in the BCS standings, can get the automatic berth.

"We control what we can control. Go out and win football games and let the rest take care of itself," quarterback Bryan Johnson said.

Utah is expecting Rice-Eccles Stadium to be packed Thursday night, despite a winter storm that hit Salt Lake City and covered the foothills above campus in white. Utah is encouraging fans to wear black and will hand out 35,000 black rally towels.

The Utes are also expected to debut black uniforms instead of their usual red. It's a move that didn't work well for Georgia earlier this season when Alabama beat the black-clad Bulldogs 41-30, but the Utes are trying to create a special atmosphere for the game.

Although with everything on the line, wardrobes won't matter much.

"It's pretty much the conference championship game, if you think about it," TCU linebacker Jason Phillips said. "It's definitely a lot of fun to play when you know there's a lot of people watching and you have a big audience."

TCU has one opponent left after Utah and can clinch at least a share of the Mountain West title with a win Thursday. The Frogs don't play again until they host Air Force on Nov. 22.

Utah still has San Diego State next week, then No. 17 BYU at home in a rivalry game that will be even bigger if there are still BCS implications.

"I don't even think about the BCS. We're just trying to find a way to beat TCU," Whittingham said. "You only worry about what you can control and we obviously have no control over that other than try to win games each week."

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Signs of Late Volcanism Seen on Moon

Volcanic activity on the far side of the moon may have lasted longer than previously thought, recent images from a Japanese lunar satellite suggest.

The finding, detailed in the Nov. 7 issue of the journal Science, could help shed light on the moon's formation and evolution.

Scientists think that the moon formed when a rogue planet about the size of Mars crashed into Earth and ripped out a chunk of the planet's molten mantle. Some of the material from that chunk began to orbit Earth, gradually cooling over millions of years to form the moon.
The lunar surface is dead now, but over the millions of intervening years since it formed, it experienced bouts of volcanic activity.
Scientists have studied lunar volcanic features, the most common of which are mare (dark "seas") basalts, from orbit to determine when they formed. Radiogenic dating is the best way to date mineral deposits, but samples from the moon's surface are limited, and come only from a few locations on the moon's nearside.
Another way to estimate the age of volcanic features is to count the number of impact craters they have: the younger the feature, the fewer the craters that mark its surface.
A group of researchers did just that for two areas on the far side of the moon, the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin and Mare Moscoviense, with images from the Terrain Camera aboard the Japanese polar lunar orbiter SELENE (KAGUYA). The orbiter launched on Sept. 14, 2007, and began its mission observing the moon's surface on Dec. 21.
Most mare volcanism ceased on the moon's far side about 3 billion years ago, but at a few locations, Junichi Haruyama of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and his colleagues estimated that mare deposits were only about 2.5 billion years old, suggesting that some episodic volcanism continued after the main thrust had ended.

Volcanism also continued on the nearside, apparently lasting longer than on the far side, the researchers found. In Oceanus Procellarum, for example, basalts have been estimated to be a young 1 billion years old.
The difference in the termination of volcanic activity on the two sides of the moon could be related to a thicker crust on the far side, or fewer heat-producing radioactive elements on the far side compared to the near side, the authors said.

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Ancient cave yields clues to Chinese history

WASHINGTON – A stalagmite rising from the floor of a cave in China is providing clues to the end of several dynasties in Chinese history. Slowly built from the minerals in dripping water over 1,810 years, chemicals in the stone tell a tale of strong and weak cycles of the monsoon, the life-giving rains that water crops to feed millions of people.

Dry periods coincided with the demise of the Tang, Yuan and Ming dynasties, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

In addition, the team led by Pingzhong Zhang of Lanzhou University in China noted a change in the cycles around 1960 which they said may indicate that greenhouse gases released by human activities have become the dominant influence on the monsoon.

The Wanxiang Cave is in Gansu Province, a region where 80 percent of the rainfall occurs between May and September.

Chemical concentrations in the stalagmite indicate a series of fluctuations lasting from one to several centuries and roughly similar to records of the Little Ice Age, Medieval warm period and Dark Age cold period recorded in Europe.

There were decade-long fluctuations between A.D. 190 and 530, the end of the Han Dynasty and most of the Era of Disunity, the researchers said. From 530 to 850 the monsoon declined, covering the end of the Era of Disunity, the Sui Dynasty and most of the Tang Dynasty.

The monsoon remained weak, with another sharp drop between 910 and 930, then it rose sharply over 60 and remained strong until 1020.

The researchers found that after 1020 the monsoon varied but was generally strong until a sharp drop between 1340 and 1360: the mid 14th-century monsoon weakening. It stayed weak, with substantial fluctuation, until a sharp increase between 1850 and 1880.

According to the researchers, the 9th-century dry period contributed to the decline of the Tang Dynasty and the Mayans in Mesoamerica. It also may have contributed to the lack of unity during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, they said.

The following strengthening of the monsoon may have contributed to the rapid increase in rice cultivation, the dramatic increase in population, and the general stability at the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, they suggested, adding that the end of the Yuan and the end of the Ming are both characterized by unusually weak summer monsoons.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundations of the United States and China, the Gary Comer Science and Education Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Male hormone patch increases libido in women

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Postmenopausal women with low sexual desire levels reported improved sexual function after they were treated with a patch in which the male hormone testosterone was applied through the skin, a clinical study has found. However, more studies are needed to confirm the safety of this treatment.

"Many postmenopausal women continue to be sexually active despite a high level of sexual dissatisfaction, engaging in sexual activity to please their partner and maintain domestic harmony," lead author Dr. Susan R. Davis, at Monash University in Prahran, Australia, and fellow researchers note.

While testosterone has proved effective for increasing libido among postmenopausal women who are on hormone replacement therapy, the effectiveness of this approach in women who are not taking estrogen is unknown.

There has also been some concern that testosterone administered without being tempered by another hormone may adversely affect circulating lipid (fat) levels, glucose (sugar) metabolism or breast tissue.

The APHRODITE trial (A Phase III Research Study of Female Sexual Dysfunction in Women on Testosterone Patch without Estrogen), conducted at 65 centers in Australia, Europe, and North America, included postmenopausal women who reported significant loss of sexual desire that was causing personal distress.

In this study, 267 women were assigned to receive transdermal testosterone at 150 g/day, 267 were treated with the patch testosterone at 300 g/day, and a third group of 277 women received placebo. The patches (Intrinsa, Procter & Gamble) were applied to the abdomen twice a week. The group assignments were all random and neither the patients nor the clinicians knew what each group was given.

At 24 weeks, an increase in the frequency of satisfying sexual episodes was significantly greater in the group receiving the 300 g testosterone dose than the placebo group, but not significantly greater in the group that received the lower dose of testosterone.

Both testosterone groups also had significantly increased scores for sexual desire and decreases in personal distress.

"The increase in the frequency of satisfying sexual episodes was modest but appeared to be clinically meaningful," the authors comment.

The most common hormone side effect was an increase in unwanted hair growth in the higher-dose group. The frequency and severity of other side effects events -- acne, baldness, and voice deepening -- did not differ between the treatment groups. There were no clinically relevant changes in blood lipid levels, glucose metabolism or liver function in any of the groups.

Of concern was the diagnosis of breast cancer in four women in the testosterone groups. The authors note that one of the subjects was symptomatic, with a bloody nipple discharge prior to study entry, and another was diagnosed after 4 months of treatment. The other two were diagnosed after 52 weeks and 104 weeks of treatment.

"Additional data are needed to assess the long-term safety of testosterone use in women with estrogen depletion," the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, November 6, 2008.

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Fearsome T-Rex was one nosy dinosaur

PARIS (AFP) – Tyrannosaurus Rex could sniff out distant prey even at night, yet another reason the flesh-ripping predator reigned supreme as king of the dinosaurs, according to a study published on Wednesday.
Earlier research had shown that the towering T-rex could see better than an eagle and would have been able to run down the fastest of humans.
The new study now unveils a previously unheralded weapon in the fearsome theropod's arsenal: a dangerously keen sense of smell.
Any trace of the brains of dinosaurs, which roamed Earth for tens of millions of years up to the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago, has long since disappeared.
But a trio of scientists led by Darla Zelenitsky at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada found a novel way to gage the sniffing prowess of T-rex and a couple dozen other meat-eating dinosaurs and primitive birds.
By examining fossil skull bones, the researchers were able to measure the size of indentations made by olfactory bulbs, the part of the brain associated with the sense of smell.
"Living birds and mammals that rely heavily on smell to find meat have large olfactory bulbs," Zelenitisky said in a statement.
The same animals also tend to prowl for prey at night, and cover vast areas, he added.
Of all the dinosaurs examined, the T-rex had the largest olfactory bulb relative to its overall size.
The study, published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also found that primitive birds had high-performance odor detectors, challenging a long-held assumption about the evolution of winged vertebrates.
"It has been previously suggested that smell had become less important than eye sight in the ancestors of birds, but we have shown that this wasn't so," said Zelenitsky.
Archaeopteryx, for example, which took to the skies during the Jurassic Period some 150 million years ago, had a sense of smell comparable to meat-eating dinosaurs along with excellent eye sight, the study said.
Somewhere along the way birds began to lose their sense of smell, but the decline probably happened far later than previously thought, the study concludes.

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Japanese clone mouse from frozen cell, aim for mammoths

TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese scientists said Tuesday they had created a mouse from a dead cell frozen for 16 years, taking a step in the long impossible dream of bringing back extinct animals such as mammoths.
Scientists at the government-backed research institute Riken used the dead cell of a mouse that had been preserved at minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a temperature similar to frozen ground.
The scientists hope that the first-of-a-kind research will pave the way to restore extinct animals such as the mammoth.
The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
The scientists extracted a cell nucleus from an organ of the dead mouse and planted it into an egg of another mouse which was alive, leading to the birth of the cloned mouse, the researchers said.
"The newly developed technology of nucleus transfer greatly improved the possibility of reviving extinct animals," the research team led by Teruhiko Wakayama said in a statement.
"Even though reviving extinct animals is often described in films and novels -- such as in Michael Crichton's 'Jurassic Park' -- it had in reality been impossible," they said.
Cells from dead bodies have previously been useless as they are ruined in the freezing process. But Wakayama's team discovered a way to extract a nucleus intact from a frozen cell by grinding cell tissues into multiple pieces.
The cloned mouse was able to reproduce with a female mouse, it added.
But the researchers said tough challenges remain ahead in terms of how to restore extinct animals, which would require breeding with animals that are still alive.
To revive a mammoth, researchers would need to find a way to implant a cell nucleus of a mammoth into the egg of an elephant and then implant the embryo into an elephant's uterus, it said.
The elephant is the closest modern relative of the mammoth, a huge woolly mammal believed to have died out with the Ice Age.
But Akira Iritani, a mammoth expert at Kinki University in Osaka, said it was only a matter of time before researchers could find a mammoth for a resurrection project.
"I have high hopes that we will be able to find a fine sample," he told public broadcaster NHK.
"It's said that there are more than 10,000 mammoths lying underneath Siberia," he said.
Even if it is impossible to recreate a whole animal, the process could create cloned embryonic stem cells for extinct species, giving a boost to research on evolution and zoology, he said.
Cloning can be controversial in terms of both bioethics and, if the animals are eaten, food safety.
Earlier this year, a report by the European Union warned that cloning can threaten the health of livestock.
South Korea's parliament has passed a law to regulate research into cloning, following a scandal in which a now-disgraced expert falsely claimed to have made the first human clone stem cells.

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This year's Antarctic zone hole is 5th biggest

NEW YORK – This year's ozone hole over Antarctica was the fifth biggest on record, reaching a maximum area of 10.5 million square miles in September, NASA says. That's considered "moderately large," NASA atmospheric scientist Paul Newman said in a statement.
NASA has tracked the size of the hole for 30 years. Last year, it was 9.7 million square miles, about the size of North America.
The hole is an area of depletion in the stratospheric ozone layer, which blocks harmful ultraviolet rays from space. Created by human-produced gases, the ozone hole generally forms in August and grows to its maximum size in September or October before breaking up.
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On the Net:
NASA's ozone hole watch: http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/


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Intel's Core i7 Passes Muster

The first desktop PCs using a chip family called Intel Core i7 -- code-named Nehalem -- were found to handle some computing chores 30% to 40% faster than other comparable Intel chips, according to test results published by Web sites that include ExtremeTech, LegitReviews and AnandTech. Performance gains were particularly impressive for tasks such as video encoding and rendering three-dimensional images, the reviewers said.
Machines based on Core i7 chips were not much faster for some games and other standard software, the Web sites reported. The machines also consume more power than some existing Intel chips, indicating that the first model won't be suitable for portable computers.
"We know it's going to be the de facto chip for high-end desktops," predicted Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest, a company that manufactures PCs for gamers and other performance enthusiasts. "Already we've had huge interest."
Systems based on the new chips are not expected to go on sale until Nov. 17. But Intel provided sample chips to reviewers, who published their findings Monday. The sites also published pricing for the chips, which ranges from $284 for a model that operates at 2.66 gigahertz to $999 for an "Extreme Edition" model for gamers that operates at 3.2 gigahertz.

The Core i7 gets its speed from a series of major design changes that exploit Intel's advanced production processes -- including a feature called an integrated memory controller that was pioneered by rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Each chip has the equivalent of four calculating engines -- each of which can simultaneously complete up to two instructions--and has a pipeline to fetch data from memory chips with more than twice the capacity of prior chips, said Steve Smith, an Intel vice president and director of operations for its digital enterprise group.
Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is also adding a feature that automatically boosts the operating speed of the chip for some chores. In addition, through a technique called over-clocking, some reviewers have operated the 3.2 gigahertz Extreme Edition model at up to 5 gigahertz, Mr. Smith said.
Intel is expected to introduce a Core i7 model for servers in the first half of 2009 and a model for portables in the second half.
AMD, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is reserving its next performance boost for servers. It is expected to introduce a chip this month, code-named Shanghai, that is its first to adopt a sophisticated manufacturing process that Intel already uses for many of its products.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

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International Space Station Litter Crashes Into Pacific

(RTTNews) - Monday, NASA officials reported that a refrigerator-sized ammonia tank that was thrown off the International Space Station over a year ago, finally crash-landed into the Tasman Sea late Sunday.The 1,400-pound tank was discarded in July 2007 to clear the way for future assembly work by space walker Clay Anderson. NASA officials said that the reentry would have a very low likelihood of impacting anybody.Originally, the tank was originally planned to be sent down on a space shuttle, but plans changed and it was simply tossed off the station. The speed of the tank gradually slowed down due to friction, thus descending, and becoming subject to more friction and so on. The tank hit the earth's atmosphere at an altitude of about 50 miles and was mostly disintegrated with any debris falling into the Pacific Ocean between Australia and New Zealand scientists said.Station Program Manager Mike Suffredini said that things are not thrown overboard from the space station haphazardly, but have a policy that has certain criteria to meet before any object can be discarded.

by RTT Staff WriterFor comments and feedback: contact editorial@rttnews.com

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