Badger culling legal challenge fails

Bovine TB costs the UK economy more than £100m per year, mainly in farm payments

 

A legal bid to block badger culling in England has failed in the High Court.

The government says that culling will help combat cattle tuberculosis, which costs the UK more than £100m per year.
The Badger Trust argued that the cull was illegal, as it will at best make a small impact on the disease and could make it worse.
Culling is now likely to go ahead later this year in west Gloucestershire and west Somerset, with as many as 40 sites to be licensed eventually.
Badgers become infected with the bacteria that cause bovine TB, and can carry them from farm to farm, although more cattle contract the disease from contact with infected herds.
Plans to begin culling in Wales were recently abandoned in favour of a vaccination policy following the change of Welsh Assembly Government last year.
At the High Court hearing in London last month, the Badger Trust argued that the cull plans drawn up by the Department the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) were illegal on several grounds.
Badgers are generally protected under UK law, but exceptions are allowed for disease prevention.

David Williams Badger Trust

The trust's lawyers argued that that the small reduction in cattle TB incidence anticipated by government scientists did not qualify as "prevention".

The government does not set a specific target for the percentage reduction in cattle TB incidence it expects to see, but the latest evidence suggests that nine years after culling, incidence might fall by 9-16%.
Scientific evidence, stemming mainly from the UK Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), shows that culling can actually spread the disease, as it disturbs badgers' family groups and makes them roam further afield, coming into contact with more herds.
The government acknowledges this, but believes its culling strategy will get round the problem.

 

The trust also argued that the plan to have culling licences issued by Natural England was outside the law, and that the only person authorised to issue them was the Environment Secretary - currently Caroline Spelman MP.
In his judgement, Mr Justice Ouseley ruled against the trust on both counts.
"Although the Secretary of State has tried to interpret the science to her advantage, nothing has altered the basic finding that while badgers are implicated, killing them can make no meaningful contribution to tackling the disease, and cattle measures in themselves are sufficient if properly applied," said Badger Trust chairman David Williams.

Badgers (Meles meles) are protected by a number of UK and European laws

"We did not embark on this litigation lightly; and England now faces the prospect of 40,000 badgers being slaughtered over the next four years."
Costing the cull The trust also raised issues regarding cost.
The government says that cull areas must be at least 150 sq km in size, and the groups of landowners and farmers applying to cull must show they can access at least 70% of the land.

The groups will employ trained marksmen to shoot the badgers as they roam - so-called "free-shooting".

The effectiveness of free-shooting badgers has never been studied. In the RBCT, they were trapped in cages and then shot.
The trust pointed out that if free-shooting proves ineffective, farmers may have to resort to trapping - which would increase costs approximately 10-fold.
The government said it was pleased with the judgement.
"No one wants to cull badgers, but last year bovine TB led to the slaughter of over 26,000 cattle," said a Defra spokesman.
"To help eradicate the disease, it needs to be tackled in badgers.
"We will continue to work with the farming industry so badger control in two pilot areas can start as soon as is practical."
Natural England is currently processing the Somerset and Gloucestershire applications.
The judge left the option of a written appeal open to the trust, and it has a week in which to decide whether or not to pursue that avenue.
Humane Society International has mounted a parallel challenge through the EU, arguing that Defra's plans contravene the Bern Convention on protection of wildlife.

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Climate 'causes leaves to narrow'

Leaves are getting narrower on some plant species as a result of changes to the climate, a study has suggested.

A team of Australian researchers studies specimens from the wild and from herbarium collections stretching back more than 120 years.

Analysis of the herbarium samples found that leaf width had decreased by two millimetres.

The findings of the study, described as the first of its kind, appear in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Lead author, Greg Guerin, from the University of Adelaide, said the team chose narrow-leaf hopbush (Dodonaea viscosa subsp. angustissima) as it appeared to display different leaf characteristics in different climates.

"We followed this up by examining exciting herbarium collections before beginning to gather [field] data," he told BBC News.

The researchers looked at more than 250 herbarium specimens collected from one region: Flinders Ranges, southern Australia's largest mountain range.

Dr Guerin observed: "Historical herbarium collections provide immediate access to wide sampling throughout a geographic region and through time.

"You just can't replicate that kind of sampling, covering hundreds of kilometres... from one region over 130 years."

To support this data, the team gathered 274 field samples from a mountain, collecting specimens at every 50m drop in altitude.

"This gave us information on variation within populations and the local influence of altitude on leaf shape and size," Dr Guerin explained.

The analysis revealed a two-millimetre decrease in leaf width over 127 years across the region.

Between 1950 and 2005, the team added, there had been a 1.5C (2.7F) increase in the maximum temperatures in the region but there had been little change in rainfall patterns.

Next steps

Dr Guerin said: "The next step is to test whether similar patterns are emerging in other species and in other regions."

He acknowledged that because the study was the first of its kind, there was no comparable data at this stage.

"We chose a likely candidate species - one that appeared to vary in leaf shape with latitude - but given that the first species we tested revealed strong change over time, it may well be that similar shifts are occurring more widely."

Dr Guerin said that the shift in leaf shapes could, in some cases, have wider ecological consequences.

"The study is a new example of significant climate change responses to date," he said.

"We now know that every degree of warming is ecologically significant and generating ecological disequilibrium.

"There is some good news here in that some Australian plant species may have the potential to respond to and cope with increasing temperatures."

But he warned that other species might be less well suited to adapt.

"These species may rely more heavily on tracking favourable climate through migration.

"A recent study by a student in our group (the Andy Lowe laboratory) looked at the climate change sensitivity of a habitat-restricted plant species endemic to the same Flinders Ranges region in South Australia.

"The species had low adaptive capacity because of a combination of low genetic diversity and small, isolated populations.

"This is a problem because its current climate niche is predicted to shrink over this century."

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South Korea unveils 'scientific' whaling proposal

South Korea is proposing to hunt whales under regulations permitting scientific research whaling, echoing the programmes of its neighbour, Japan.

Hunting would take place near the Korean coast on minke whales. How many would be caught is unclear.

The South Korean delegation to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) said the research was needed "for the proper assessment of whale stocks".

Many governments at the IWC meeting condemned the Korean announcement.

There are several different stocks, or groups, of minke whales in the region, and one of the them, the so-called J-stock, is severely depleted.

Given that fact, "we believe that scientific whaling on this stock borders on the reckless," New Zealand's delegation head, Gerard van Bohemen said.

But Joon-Suk Kang, the head of the South Korean delegation, said the programme was necessary to answer questions about minke whale stocks that non-lethal research had been unable to solve.

He said the proposal was not finalised, and that whaling would not begin until plans had been discussed by an international group of expert scientists convened by the IWC.

The Koreans' eventual stated aim is to prepare the ground for a resumption of "coastal whaling" - a rather vague concept that Japan is also pursuing, and that would see whale hunting return as a normal activity.

'Breach of faith'

The region around the port of Ulsan, in the south-east of South Korea, has a whale-eating tradition that appears to date back thousands of years, judging by prehistoric cave art.

Fishermen in the region already catch whales in fishing nets. Officially, this happens accidentally, but local environment groups say the minkes are deliberately caught, and that the meat is easily bought in markets and restaurants.

Dr Kang said that fishermen in the area are now complaining that a growing whale population is eating more and more fish.

Any government is entitled under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) to embark unilaterally on a scientific hunting programme, although Japan is the only one that currently does so.

Anti-whaling governments and conservation groups argue that Japan's programmes in the North Pacific and Antarctic are an abuse of process, as the regulation was originally designed to allow for the taking of a few whales here and there, and not hundreds per year.

They argue that the real purpose is to provide a supply of whalemeat, albeit to a dwindling customer base.

"Scientific whaling is an obsolete and sad consequence of a document drafted 60 years ago," said Monaco's IWC commissioner, Frederic Briand.

"There's no reason to do it, given the enormous body of scientific literature [on cetaceans] obtained via non-lethal means."

South Korea was one of the first countries to take the scientific whaling route after the global moratorium on commercial hunting came into place in 1986, but the programme was in operation for just a single season.

Then, the country came under intense diplomatic pressure to stop, and Dr Kang admitted to BBC News that his government is now likely to feel a similarly huge pressure not to start.

However, Korea, Japan, Iceland and Norway all complain regularly that anti-whaling governments have no intention of ever agreeing to a resumption of hunting anywhere, however healthy the stocks, and that this amounts to a breach of promises made when the moratorium came into existence.

Troubled waters

Earlier, Japan lodged a proposal to allow coastal whaling by four villages around the coast - among them Ayukawa, which was devastated by the 2011 tsunami.

It has tabled similar bids for many years, and they have always been defeated by anti-whaling governments, who view the move as a way of breaking the whaling moratorium.

Here, Australia's Donna Petrochenko was one of many taking the same line, telling the meeting: "This is commercial whaling, clear and simple."

Japan put its proposal to one side and it will be discussed again later in the meeting, although it is doubtful whether it will go to a vote, given that Japan clearly does not have the three-quarters share of the vote it would need to win.

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'Torrent of abuse'

 

'Torrent of abuse' hindering ME research

 

An estimated 250,000 people in the UK suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Scientists working on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), or ME, say they are being subjected to a campaign of vicious abuse and intimidation that is hampering research into the causes of the condition.

The harassment has included death threats, vilification on internet websites, and a series of official complaints alleging both personal and professional misconduct to universities, ethical oversight committees and the General Medical Council (GMC).
"It's direct intimidation in the sense of letters, emails, occasional phone calls and threats," says Professor Simon Wessely, of King's College London, who has received a series of death threats and threatening phone calls, and now has his mail routinely scanned for suspect devices.
"But more often indirect intimidation through my employer or the GMC. All of it intended to denigrate and try and make you into a leper."
Behind the vitriolic nature of the attacks, the core objection, by some activists, is the association of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with mental illness.
They claim the real cause is biological and want research to focus exclusively on identifying the - as yet undiscovered - virus responsible.

"Sadly some of the motivation seems to come from people who believe that any connection with psychiatry is tantamount to saying there is nothing wrong with you, go away, you're not really ill," says Dr Wessely.
"That's profoundly misguided. They fall victim to the label, and believe that the mere involvement of psychiatry denigrates them and denigrates the condition."
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a debilitating condition involving severe fatigue, painful muscles and joints, gastric complaints and poor memory and concentration. It is estimated there may be as many as a quarter of a million sufferers across the UK, but exactly what causes it is still a mystery.
That has been incredibly frustrating for patients who have often received short-shrift from doctors, and been branded as malingerers - the victims of "yuppy flu" - in the media. Even the existence of the condition has only recently received widespread acknowledgement by the medical establishment.

Speaking on the programme on Friday, ME Association's Dr Charles Shepherd condemned the abuse of researchers, but said sufferers had a justifiable complaint that almost no government-funded research was looking at the bio-medical aspects of the illness.
"The anger, the frustration, is the fact that all this effort, all this government-funding, has just been going to the psychological side," he said.
Hostility towards a psychiatric explanation for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome reached a peak in 2009 when research published in the journal Science appeared to show a link to the XMRV retrovirus.
But a series of follow-up studies failed to replicate the finding, unleashing another torrent of abuse - this time aimed at virologists, including Professor Myra McClure, of Imperial College, London.
"It really was quite staggeringly shocking, and this was all from patients who seemed to think that I had some vested interest in not finding this virus," she said. "I couldn't understand, and still can't to this day, what the logic of that was. Any virologist wants to find a new virus."

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or ME (Myalgic Encephalopathy)is a debilitating condition involving severe fatigue, painful muscles and joints, gastric complaints and poor memory and concentration
• It can leave patients bed-ridden in severe cases.
• Up to a quarter of a million people suffer from the disorder in the UK.

Professor McClure says she will not be doing any further research in this area, and that may be the single most important consequence of this campaign of abuse and intimidation.
According to the Wellcome Trust's Dr Mark Walport it would be a tragedy if serious researchers are put off working on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
"We clearly don't yet understand exactly what's going on, and if we're going to find out it needs good scientists to work on it," he says.
"But why would any scientist work on it if they know that all they're going to receive is a torrent of abuse?"

 

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"Huge Arctic fire hints at new climate cue"

An exceptional wildfire in northern Alaska in 2007 put as much carbon into the air as the entire Arctic tundra absorbs in a year, scientists say.

The Anaktuvuk River fire burned across more than 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles), doubling the extent of Alaskan tundra visited by fire since 1950.

With the Arctic warming fast, the team suggests in the journal Nature that fires could become more common.

If that happens, it could create a new climate feedback, they say.

Fires in the tundra are uncommon because the ground is covered in snow and ice for large periods of the year.

Temperatures are low even in summer, and the ground can also remain wet after the ice has melted.

But 2007 saw unusually warm and dry conditions across much of the Arctic - resulting, among other things, in spectacularly fast melting of Arctic sea ice.

This created conditions more conducive to fire, and when lightning struck the tundra in July, the Anaktuvuk River fire ignited.

"Most tundra fires have been very small - this was an order of magnitude larger than the historical size," said Michelle Mack from the University of Florida in Gainesville, who led the research team on the Nature paper and is currently conducting further field studies in Alaska.

"In 2007, we had a hot, dry summer, there was no rain for a long period of time.










"So the tundra must have been highly flammable, with just the right conditions for fire to spread until the snow in October finally stopped it."

According to the team's calculations, the statistics of the fire are remarkable.

It is the largest on record, doubling the cumulative area burned since 1950.

It put carbon into the atmosphere about 100 times faster than it usually escapes from the ground in the Arctic summer, and released more than 2 million tonnes.

Although a small contribution to global emissions, this is about the same amount as the entire swathe of tundra around the Arctic absorbs in a single year.

There is some vegetation on the summer lands, which did burn; but the main fuel is carbon in the ground itself.

The Anaktuvuk fire burned down to a maximum depth of 15cm (6in), and was burning carbon sequestered away over the last 50 years.

What this implies for the future is uncertain.

Climate models generally predict warmer temperatures across the Arctic, which could increase the frequency of fires and so a net loss of carbon into the atmosphere - reinforcing global warming.

On the other hand, plant life could flourish under these conditions, potentially increasing absorption and sequestering of carbon from the atmosphere.

In a news story published well before the Nature paper came out, another of the US research team, Gaius Shaver from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, said the northern region of Alaska could become "vastly different from the frozen, treeless tundra of today.

"And it's one that may feed back positively to global climate change."

On reflection

Another impact of the fire that has yet to be fully assessed is that the blackened soil absorbs more solar energy than normally vegetated tundra.

This abets melting of the permafrost layer below.

"Once permafrost melts beyond a certain depth on a slope, then all of the organic layer slides down the slope like a landslide," Dr Mack told BBC News.

"This whole issue of melting can lead to other huge changes in drainage, in areas of wetlands - releasing carbon that's been frozen since the Pleistocene [Epoch, which ended more than 10,000 years ago]."

The latest data on Arctic sea ice, meanwhile, reveals that 2011 could well see a melting season that will beat the 2007 record.

Currently, about the same area of sea is covered in ice as at the same point in 2007, which the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) ascribes to "persistent above-average temperatures and an early start to [the] melt".

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"WHO: Hepatitis toll 'in millions'"

Medical experts are calling for global action to tackle the viruses that cause the liver disease hepatitis.

The first worldwide estimates in drug users show 10 million have hepatitis C while 1.3 million have hepatitis B.

Writing in the Lancet, experts say only a fraction of those who could benefit are receiving antiviral drugs.

Only one in five infants around the world are vaccinated against hepatitis B at birth, they say.

The figures, published in the Lancet, show about 67% of injecting drug users in the world have been exposed to hepatitis C, while around 10% have come into contact with hepatitis B.

In the UK, around half of injecting drug users have been infected with the hepatitis C virus, while the rate for exposure to hepatitis B is 9% - the highest in western Europe.

The research was led by Prof Louisa Degenhardt of the Centre for Population Health, Burnet Institute, Melbourne, Australia, and Paul Nelson from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.

They say: "The public-health response to blood-borne virus transmission in injecting drug users has mainly centred on HIV.

"Maintenance and strengthening of the response to HIV in injecting drug users remains crucial, but the significance of viral hepatitis needs to receive greater attention than it does at present."

Commenting on the study in the Lancet, Dr Joseph Amon, of Human Rights Watch, New York City, US, said: "This study provides us with a first step and powerful data to draw attention to the problem of viral hepatitis in people who use drugs.

"The next step is to challenge governments to act, and hold them accountable for implementation of rights-respecting and evidence-based programmes."
Health risks

Hepatitis is caused by five main viruses - A, B and C, and, more rarely D and E.

Hepatitis B is the most common, and can be passed from mother to baby at birth or in early childhood as well as through contaminated injections or injected drug use.

Hepatitis C is also spread through using unsterile needles and less commonly through unsafe sex or sharing razors or toothbrushes.

The E virus, caught from infected water or food, is a common cause of outbreaks of the disease in developing countries, said the World Health Organization.

Many of those carrying hepatitis are not aware they have it and can unknowingly transmit it to others.

                                                                                                                                        

Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them       
                                                                                                                                                  

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"Trojan asteroid seen in Earth's orbit by Wise telescope"

Astronomers have detected an asteroid not far from Earth, moving in the same orbit around the Sun.

The 200-300m-wide rock sits in front of our planet at a gravitational "sweet spot", and poses no danger.

Its position in the sky makes it a so-called Trojan asteroid - a type previously detected only at Jupiter, Neptune and Mars.

2010 TK7, as it is known, was found by Nasa's Wise telescope. The discovery is reported in this week's Nature journal.

It is a fascinating observation because the relative stability and proximity of Trojans would make possible targets for astronaut missions when we eventually go beyond the space station.

2010 TK7 is probably not the rock of choice, simply because it travels too far above and below the plane of Earth's orbit, which would require a lot of fuel to reach it.

Nonetheless, its detection means it is highly likely there are other, more suitable Trojans out there waiting to be found.

The difficulty is the viewing geometry that puts any Trojan, from the perspective of an Earth-based telescope, in bright skies.

It took an orbiting telescope sensitive to infrared light to pick up 2010 TK7.

Wise, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer launched in 2009, examined more than 500 Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), 123 of which were new to science.

The authors of the Nature paper sifted through data on these rocks, looking for the candidates that might be Trojans.

Follow-up work on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope confirmed the status of 2010 TK7.

It traces quite a complex path at its orbital point. Currently, it is about 80 million km from Earth, and should come no closer than about 25 million km.

The team says its orbit appears stable at least for the next 10,000 years.

2010 TK7's existence should not really be a surprise. Jupiter, Neptune and Mars all have collections of rocks sitting in the so-called Lagrange points 60 degrees ahead of or behind the planets in their orbits.

In the case of Jupiter, the number of Trojans now tops 1,000 rocks.

"These objects are difficult to find from Earth, simply because they're not very big and they're pretty faint, and they're close to the Sun as seen from Earth," explained Christian Veillet from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and a co-author on the Nature study.

"But we can find them from space, and future satellites will likely find some more. We think that there are others which will be very close to the Earth and have motions that make them relatively easy to reach. So, they could be potential targets to go to with spacecraft," he told BBC News.









                                                                                                                               Back to Black











                                                                                               

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"Vesta rock turns for Dawn probe"

Vesta rock turns for Dawn probe

The giant asteroid Vesta is revealing more of itself to the US space agency's (Nasa) Dawn mission.

The probe has beamed back further images since entering into orbit around the 530km-wide rock on 17 July.

Dawn took the latest batch as it was travelling from the day side to the night side of Vesta.

The different lighting conditions provide scientists with additional information about the varied features on the rock's pockmarked surface.

As Dawn circles its target, so the asteroid itself turn on its axis. The rock rotates once every five hours and 20 minutes.

Dawn will spend a year studying Vesta before moving on to the biggest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter - the dwarf planet Ceres.

Already, though, there is much to excite those interested in the Solar System's minor planetary bodies.

Dawn's principal investigator says he has been surprised by the number and size of the impact craters on Vesta - there are far more of them and they are much bigger than he had expected before the mission set out.

And in a tantalising trailer of pictures yet to be released, Professor Chris Russell, from the University of California Los Angeles told the BBC this week: "The surface is much more colourful; the colours are deeper than they are on the [Earth's] Moon.

"The Moon is rather bland compared to the surface [of Vesta].

"That was my first surprise when we started taking some colour images. There are orange regions, and bluish regions. The colours are deeper than I've seen before on asteroidal and lunar-type bodies."

We should start to see some of these colour pictures in the next week or so.

Asteroids are fascinating for what they can tell us about the earliest days of the Solar System.

These wandering rocks are often described as the rubble that was left over after the planets proper had formed.

Vesta and the 950km-wide Ceres are both evolved bodies - that is, objects that heated up and started to separate into distinct layers.

In the case of Vesta, this process became quite advanced. It probably has a metal core and scientists expect to see evidence on its surface of past high temperatures, and perhaps even ancient lava flows.

Ceres on the other hand is much less dense, indicating it retains large quantities of water. Scientists suspect this could be in an icy band hidden below a dusty surface.

The images we have seen so far of Vesta have come from Dawn's framing camera system, which was developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

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"Heatwave record for US and Canada"

 Heatwave breaks records in parts of US and Canada

A heatwave has baked eastern parts of the US and Canada, as temperatures surged to record-breaking highs in some parts.

The mercury in Newark, New Jersey, reached 108F (42C) on Friday, the highest ever recorded in the city.

In Canada, an extreme heat alert remained in effect, a day after two dozen cities and towns broke their previous single-day heat records.

At least 22 deaths have been blamed on the heat.

Across the US alone, where nearly half of the population was under a heat advisory, more than 220 heat records have tumbled.
Sewage spillage

Many regions in the central US and parts of the eastern seaboard have seen heat indexes - a combination of temperature and humidity - topping 43C.

Airports near Washington and Baltimore hit 40.5C (105F); Boston 39.5C (103F); Portland, Maine, and Concord, New Hampshire, 38.5C (101F); and Providence, Rhode Island, 38C (100F).

Philadelphia - where bathers at public swimming pools were asked to leave every half hour to allow a new crowd to enjoy a cooling dip - saw temperatures of 40C (104F).

New York City also hit 40C, just a degree short of its all-time high, although with the oppressive humidity, it felt like 45C (113F).

As New Yorkers roasted in the heat, health officials warned them to stay out of the water at four beaches on New York Harbor after a sewage treatment plant damaged by fire began pumping raw waste into the Hudson River.

Several hundred homes and businesses in New York were hit with temporary blackouts.

Voltage was reduced in several neighbourhoods in the city and suburbs to keep underground cables from overheating.
Teenager dies

On Friday, the medical examiner's office in Chicago listed heat stress or heat stroke as the cause of death for seven people.

An 18-year-old landscape gardener who died on Thursday night in Louisville, Kentucky, had a temperature of 43C (110F), a coroner said.

In Canada, temperature records were broken in two dozen cities across Ontario and Quebec on Thursday, including the hottest ever July temperature in Toronto, at 37.9C (100.2F).

Asphalt and concrete pavements and buildings in cities were "re-radiating" the heat, forecasters said.

Eli Jacks, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told the BBC: "This is an exceptionally strong ridge of high pressure that really has an exceptional scope and duration."

The combination of high heat and humidity make it hard for the human body to cool itself - because sweat does not evaporate efficiently, he added.

Officials in the central state of Missouri say 13 people have died, and there have also been fatalities in neighbouring Oklahoma, including a three-year-old boy.

In the south, more than three-quarters of Texas is suffering from drought amid the worst dry spell in the state for decades.

High temperatures - the number one weather-related killer in the US - claim 162 lives on average in the country each year.

The most severe heatwave in modern North American history took place during the Great Depression in 1936. The heat that summer was blamed for more than 5,000 deaths in the US and Canada.

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''Scalpel' hope for muscle disease"

Molecular scalpel hope for Duchenne muscular dystrophy

A 'molecular scalpel' shows promise in patients with a deadly muscle wasting condition, according to researchers.
The gene for the protein dystrophin is damaged in people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

A drug trial on 19 children, published in the Lancet, used the 'scalpel' to remove the damage and restore dystrophin production.

The charity Muscular Dystrophy Campaign said there was "real hope for the future".

Duchenne muscular dystrophy affects one in every 3,500 newborn boys.

Throughout life the muscle wastes away and children can need a wheelchair by the age of 10. The condition can become life-threatening before the age of 30, when it affects the muscles needed to breathe and pump blood around the body.
 
New approach

The instructions for making a protein are in the genetic code, but this can be disrupted by mutations or deletions in the code.

Stem cell and gene therapy research has tried to find ways of introducing a functional dystrophin gene.

This study tried to do the best it could with the damaged code.

The researchers at the Institute of Child Health at University College London injected tailored pieces of antisense RNA - the scalpel.

This removed a piece of the genetic code allowing it to be matched up either side of the mutation.

The result is a shorter, but still functional, dystrophin.

In the trial, seven out of the 19 children had some degree of dystrophin production restored - all of them were receiving the highest doses.

Professor Francesco Muntoni, lead researcher, told the BBC: "The best result was 20% of normal dystrophin levels. That is quite remarkable considering the study was for 12 weeks.

"I've worked with patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy for many years and this is the first time we can say with confidence that we've made a significant breakthrough towards finding a targeted treatment."

However, he said that as the scalpel was tailored to a specific mutation it could not benefit everyone, in this case around 13% of patients.


"The second most common mutation affects 11% - which needs another scalpel."

Dr Marita Pohlschmidt, director of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, said the study was "quite a big deal".

"If we can change severe symptoms in Duchenne into something milder, that would be fantastic.

"We have fought to find a treatment for this devastating condition for the past 50 years. Today we can say with real confidence that we're going to win that battle. Parents of these boys can have real hope for the future."

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"'Exciting' Ice Age rock art find "

Carving found in Gower cave could be oldest rock art

An archaeologist believes a wall carving in a south Wales cave could be Britain's oldest example of rock art.

The faint scratchings of a speared reindeer are believed to have been carved by a hunter-gatherer in the Ice Age more than 14,000 years ago.

The archaeologist who found the carving on the Gower peninsula, Dr George Nash, called it "very, very exciting."

Experts are working to verify the discovery, although its exact location is being kept secret for now.

Dr Nash, a part-time academic for Bristol University, made the discovery while at the caves in September 2010.

He told BBC Wales: "It was a strange moment of being in the right place at the right time with the right kit.

"For 20-odd years I have been taking students to this cave and talking about what was going on there.

"They went back to their cars and the bus and I decided to have a little snoop around in the cave as I've never had the chance to do it before.

"Within a couple of minutes I was scrubbing at the back of a very strange and awkward recess and there a very faint image bounced in front of me - I couldn't believe my eyes."

He said that although the characteristics of the reindeer drawing match many found in northern Europe around 4,000-5,000 years later, the discovery of flint tools in the cave in the 1950s could hold the key to the carving's true date.

"In the 1950s, Cambridge University undertook an excavation there and found 300-400 pieces of flint and dated it to between 12,000-14,000 BC.

"This drawing was done with the right hand and the niche is very, very tight and the engraving has been done by somebody using a piece of flint who has drawn a classic reindeer design.

"My colleagues in England have been doing some work in Nottinghamshire at Creswell Crags and got very nice dates for a red deer and one or two other images of around 12,000-14,000 BC.

"I think this [newly found carving] may be roughly the same period or may be even earlier."
 
Glacial geology

The limestone cliffs along the Gower coast are known for their archaeological importance.

The Red Lady of Paviland, actually the remains of a young male, is the earliest formal human burial to have been found in western Europe. It is thought to be roughly around 29,000 years old.

It was discovered at Goat's Hole Cave at Paviland on Gower in 1823 by William Buckland, then a geology professor at Oxford University.

Dr Nash added: "We know from the glacial geology of the area this was an open area just before the ice limit came down from the glaciers 15,000-20,000 years ago and it stops just about 2km short of the cave site.

"We know hunter fisher gatherers were roaming around this landscape, albeit seasonally, and they were burying their dead 30,000 years ago and making their mark through artistic endeavour between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago."

The find is now being officially dated and verified by experts at the National Museum of Wales and Cadw.

Its location will be revealed to the public in the future.

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"India to have 'green' regulator "

India announces environment regulator

India will set up an environment regulator to bring in a "complete change" in the process of granting clearances for industries.
PM Manmohan Singh said the regulator would also ensure the compliance of "green norms" by industry.

India's environment ministry has been often embroiled in controversy over how to balance development with the preservation of the environment.

This has led to the delay of a number of projects across the country.

Announcing the setting up of the independent National Environment Appraisal and Monitoring Authority, Mr Singh said it will "lead to a complete change in the process of granting environmental clearances".

Correspondents say Mr Singh's move follows the stalling of several industrial and mining projects after the environment ministry refused to clear them.

Mr Singh said that economic growth should accommodate environmental concerns.

"There is now a general agreement that environment cannot be protected by perpetuating the poverty of developing countries...

"But it is no longer acceptable to take it as given that a certain degree of environmental degradation and over-exploitation of natural resources in the cause of promoting growth is inevitable," Mr Singh told a seminar in Delhi on Sunday.

There have been a number of controversies over environmental clearances of some big projects in India in recent months.

In May the environment ministry cleared the South Korean company Posco's plan to build a steel plant in the eastern state of Orissa after a government panel earlier said the plant's environmental clearances should be scrapped.

The $12bn plant is India's single biggest foreign investment and has faced stiff opposition from the local people, campaigning to save farmland and forests.

And in January the ministry declared a privately built hill resort town in Maharashtra state illegal.

On the other hand, some recent decisions of the ministry have been criticised by environmentalists - they include the go-ahead to a new Mumbai (Bombay) airport and a nuclear power station in Maharashtra.

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"US lab also sees 'hints' of Higgs "

Higgs boson 'hints' also seen by US lab

A US particle machine has seen possible hints of the Higgs boson, it has emerged, after reports this week of similar glimpses at Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) laboratory.
The Higgs boson sub-atomic particle is a missing cornerstone in the accepted theory of particle physics.

Researchers have been analysing data from the Tevatron machine near Chicago.

The hints seen at the Tevatron are weaker than those reported at the LHC, but occur in the same "search region".

Physicists have cautioned that these possible hints could disappear after further analysis.

But researchers also say when the US and European results are taken together, they start to paint an "intriguing" picture.

The results are being presented and discussed at the Europhysics conference in Grenoble, France.

The Tevatron and LHC machines work on similar basic principles, accelerating beams of particles to high energies around a tunnel before smashing them together.

These collisions can generate new particles which can then be picked up by detectors built at the points where particle beams cross over.

The LHC, which is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel below the French-Swiss border, has two detectors looking for the Higgs: Atlas and CMS. Each is staffed by a different team of scientists.

The Tevatron has a comparable arrangement, with two detectors called DZero and CDF.
 
Just a quirk?

On Friday, the Atlas and CMS teams reported finding what physicists call an "excess" of interesting particle events at a mass of between 140 and 145 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).

The excess seen by the Atlas team has reached a 2.8 sigma level of certainty. A three-sigma result means there is roughly a one in 1,000 chance that the result is attributable to some statistical quirk in the data.

Now, the US DZero and CDF experiments have also seen hints of something at about 140GeV.

Professor Stefan Soldner-Rembold, spokesperson for the DZero detector team, told BBC News: "There are some intriguing things going on around a mass of 140GeV.

The Atlas experiment is one of two multi-purpose experiments at the LHC

Professor Soldner-Rembold, from the University of Manchester in the UK, added: "There might be some picture emerging from the fog."

The Tevatron is also seeing the same type of interesting particle events as the LHC. In these events, one elementary particle "decays", or transforms, into another with a smaller mass.

The interesting fluctuations seen at the Tevatron and the LHC are dominated by what might be the Higgs decaying into a pair of "W boson" particles.

But the Tevatron results are currently at the one-sigma level of certainty - a lower level of statistical significance than those presented by the Atlas and CMS teams.

Five-sigma is the level of certainty generally required for a formal discovery. At this significance level there is about a one in 1,000,000 chance that a bump in the data is just a fluke.

However, says Professor Soldner-Rembold, the fact that teams working independently are now seeing similar phenomena point to an exciting possibility.

The existence of the Higgs boson was first proposed in the 1960s by Edinburgh University physicist Peter Higgs. The boson helps confer the property of mass on all other particles through their interaction with something called the Higgs field.

The efforts put into finding the boson relate to its status as the last missing piece in the the Standard Model - the most widely accepted theory of particle physics.

The Standard Model is a framework that explains how the known sub-atomic particles interact with each other. If the Higgs boson is not found, physicists would have to find some other mechanism to explain where particles get their mass.

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"Animal testing 'requires tighter regulation'"

Better regulation is needed to govern rapidly expanding research in animals containing human tissue or genes, the Academy of Medical Sciences says. 


It said such studies were necessary for medical research, but that new ethical issues could emerge and called for a national body of experts.


It said "category three" experiments on monkey brains, resulting in "human-like" behaviour, should be banned.


The government said it would consider the recommendations.


Dr Robin Lovell-Badge, from the National Institute for Medical Research, said: "Everyone laughs at talking meerkats and cats with opposable thumbs, but if we were actually doing that in the labs I don't think people would be so happy."
Cancer drugs


Introducing human material into animals has furthered medical research.


Putting human breast tumour cells into mice has allowed researchers to test cancer drugs on human tissue.
Continue reading the main story




Stroke damaged mice showed some recovery when their brains were injected with human neural stem cells, which has led to human clinical trials. 


Mice with Down's syndrome have had a whole human chromosome added to their genome to help researchers learn more about the condition.


Professor Christopher Shaw, from King's College London and one of the report's authors, said animals with human material were "hugely important. Is [the field] going to shrink and go away? No. I'm confident it will lead to new treatments."


The academy report said it was anticipating "a major increase in the use of these techniques".


However it raised concerns that some cases would fall through gaps in the regulation.


The authors said that, for example, experiments on an embryo which contained predominantly human material would be controlled by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the embryo would not progress beyond 14 days. For embryos which are mostly animal, but contained some human material, they said there was "no regulation at all".


Animal research is regulated by the Home Office's animal procedures committee.


Professor Martin Bobrow, chair of the Academy of Medical Sciences, said: "Our report recommends that the Home Office puts in place a national expert body, within the existing stringent system of animal research regulation, to provide specific advice on sensitive types of 'animals containing human material' research."


The academy recommended three classifications for research on animals containing human material.


Most would be "category one" and have no more restrictions than any other study on animals.
'Valuable study'


Category two experiments could be allowed but "would require strong scientific justification". The report suggested this would include adding genes to non-human primates and significant changes to an animal to make it "more human-like".


Category three experiments would not be allowed, such as letting any mixed embryo develop past 14 days or breeding animals with human influenced sperm or egg cells and modifying non-human primates to create human-like awareness or behaviour.


Professor Bobrow was keen to stress that "nobody has done any of these things", but the Academy of Medical Sciences said it wanted guidelines in place rather than waiting until the horse had bolted.


Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone said: "We welcome the valuable contribution of this study to the understanding of the complex ethical, scientific and animal welfare issues involved in this area of research. 


"We will consider the recommendations carefully."

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Fifteen pilot whales in trouble in Kyle of Durness

Two whales have come ashore and up to 15 others were in difficulty in shallow water at Kyle of Durness, on the north Highland coast.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said the whales were believed to be from a pod of as many as 60.

The long-finned pilot whales may have been hunting prey or had sought a place to rest.

A Royal Navy bomb disposal team training in the area has offered its help in any rescue effort.


British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) and Scottish SPCA inspectors headed for the scene.

Highland Council countryside ranger Donald Mitchell and nine coastguard volunteers have been monitoring the situation.

Mr Mitchell said that at low tide only a narrow channel of sea remained.

Kyle of Durness opens out into Balnakeil Bay.

Charlie Phillips, a Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) field officer, said the area was remote and it would take rescuers sometime to reach the scene.

Mr Phillips told the BBC News Scotland website: "It is going to be tricky.

"It is a remote and difficult place to get to."

Mr Phillips added: "The whales may have come in from the Pentland Firth, following prey or trying to find somewhere to rest."


Marine strandings

He said a young female pilot whale was found at Scourie, in Sutherland, a few weeks ago.

The Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) said it understood that two whales were stranded on the shore.

SAC vet Dr Andrew Brownlow, who leads the Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme, was driving to the scene.

The college said: "The latest report is that two of the whales have become stranded on the shore, 15 are currently in shallow water and at significant risk of becoming stranded and at least another 20 whales may be heading towards the shallows.

"Should any of the whales fail to make it back out to sea and do not survive, Dr Brownlow will lead post mortem examinations with the aim of identifying what has caused them to come ashore.

"This enables the Strandings Scheme to monitor trends in causes of marine strandings which in turn allows identification of any new or developing hazards to marine mammals in Scottish waters."

In May, two pilot whales were found dead in a Hebridean loch after experts feared more than 60 of the animals had been at risk of becoming beached.

The pod had got into difficulty in Loch Carnan in South Uist.

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"Mandrill monkey makes 'pedicuring' tool"

A crude "pedicure" carried out by a mandrill at Chester Zoo suggests the monkeys are capable of more advanced tool use than previously thought.

Scientists from Durham University, UK, filmed the mandrill stripping a twig and using the resulting tool to clean under its toenails.

They published the findings in the journal Behavioural Processes.

Mandrills are the fifth species of Old World monkey seen deliberately modifying tools.

Non-human apes, including chimpanzees and orangutans, can adapt basic tools for specific jobs. 

One well-known example of this behaviour is termite fishing in chimpanzees, where the animals strip down grasses to make fishing rods that they then poke into termite mounds to snag the nutritious insects.

"It is an ability that, up until a few years ago, was thought to be unique to humans," said Dr Riccardo Pansini, who led the research.

The new findings, he said, indicate that monkeys' intelligence may too have been underestimated.

"The gap between monkeys and great apes is not as large as we thought it was in terms of tool use and modification," he told BBC Nature.

Dr Pansini captured the footage while studying stress-related behaviour in the zoo's mandrills. 

His research during that time helped inform the design of a specially landscaped enclosure, which contained shrubs to give the animals hiding places. The design won an animal welfare award in 2007.

In the footage that Dr Pansini captured, a large male mandrill strips down a twig, apparently to make it narrower. The animal then uses the modified stick to scrape dirt from underneath its toenails.

Though the scientist was excited to witness this deliberate tool modification, he said it was not entirely surprising. 

"Mandrills have been seen to clean their ears with modified tools in the wild," he told BBC Nature. "This was thought to help prevent ear infections and therefore might be an important behaviour in terms of hygiene."

He thinks the captive setting may have helped bring out this behaviour. 

"Animals have more time in captivity to carry out tasks that are not focused on looking for food or mating," he said. "So in zoos, you can occasionally pick up behaviours that are a little bit strange.

"In the wild this 'pedicuring' would be considered trivial," he explained. "But cleaning their ears with the same modified tool probably gave the animals some relief from the pain in their ears.

"So we're witnessing the same behaviour that's used in quite important tasks being adapted for a less important task," Dr Pansini said.

Dr Amanda Seed, an expert in primate tool-use from the University of St Andrews, UK, praised the researchers for capturing such interesting footage. 

She added, though, that it was not entirely clear that the mandrill was deliberately modifying the stick for the specific goal of producing a "sharpened toenail-cleaning tool". 

She told BBC Nature: "For me, the behaviour is closer to what we already know from other species, using a stick for self-cleaning purposes, than the tool modification of say chimpanzees - which rake their stick tools through their teeth to produce a brush for gathering termites. 

"But these definitions are always tricky. You could say that as soon as an animal pulls a branch from a tree, they're modifying that branch." 

Dr Sonya Hill a research officer at Chester Zoo, added that research findings from zoos could have a "direct impact on evidence-based conservation and husbandry practices".

"They can also contribute to a wider body of scientific knowledge, as this mandrill study has shown."

The enclosure the zoo designed for the mandrills won an animal welfare award

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"Vesta rock turns for Dawn probe"

More of asteroid Vesta's southern polar region,
seen from a distance of about 10,500km

The giant asteroid Vesta is revealing more of itself to the US space agency's (Nasa) Dawn mission.

The probe has beamed back further images since entering into orbit around the 530km-wide rock on 17 July.

Dawn took the latest batch as it was travelling from the day side to the night side of Vesta.

The different lighting conditions provide scientists with additional information about the varied features on the rock's pockmarked surface.

As Dawn circles its target, so the asteroid itself turn on its axis. The rock rotates once every five hours and 20 minutes.

Dawn will spend a year studying Vesta before moving on to the biggest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter - the dwarf planet Ceres.

Already, though, there is much to excite those interested in the Solar System's minor planetary bodies.

Dawn's principal investigator says he has been surprised by the number and size of the impact craters on Vesta - there are far more of them and they are much bigger than he had expected before the mission set out.

And in a tantalising trailer of pictures yet to be released, Professor Chris Russell, from the University of California Los Angeles told the BBC this week: "The surface is much more colourful; the colours are deeper than they are on the [Earth's] Moon. 

"The Moon is rather bland compared to the surface [of Vesta].

"That was my first surprise when we started taking some colour images. There are orange regions, and bluish regions. The colours are deeper than I've seen before on asteroidal and lunar-type bodies."

We should start to see some of these colour pictures in the next week or so.

Asteroids are fascinating for what they can tell us about the earliest days of the Solar System. 

These wandering rocks are often described as the rubble that was left over after the planets proper had formed.

Vesta and the 950km-wide Ceres are both evolved bodies - that is, objects that heated up and started to separate into distinct layers.

In the case of Vesta, this process became quite advanced. It probably has a metal core and scientists expect to see evidence on its surface of past high temperatures, and perhaps even ancient lava flows. 

Ceres on the other hand is much less dense, indicating it retains large quantities of water. Scientists suspect this could be in an icy band hidden below a dusty surface.

The images we have seen so far of Vesta have come from Dawn's framing camera system, which was developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

This image was acquired last weekend. Here the distance to Vesta is about 15,000km

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"Mars rover aims for deep crater"

Nasa's next Mars rover will be aimed at one of the planet's deepest craters.

MSL-Curiosity weighs almost a tonne and is the size of a Mini Cooper.

It will carry instruments to study whether Mars had the conditions in the past to support microbial life.

The US space agency has selected an equatorial depression called Gale Crater to investigate that question.

The $2.5bn rover will launch from Florida in November.

It should touch-down at the Red planet in August 2012.

Gale Crater is about 155km in diameter, and its lowest point is about 4.6km below datum, the reference point on Mars from which all other elevations are measured.

The landing zone will be much narrower than the crater's width. But Nasa has high confidence the rocket-powered descent system designed for MSL-Curiosity can put it inside a target zone less than 20km across.

If this Skycrane, as it is known, works as planned, the rover will be delivered close to the central peak of the crater.

This is a huge mountain that contains layers of deposits that should offer an impressive view of millions of years of Martian geological history.

"What we've learnt over 150 years of exploration is that if you start at the bottom of the pile of layers and you go to the top, it's like reading a novel," said mission project scientist John Grotzinger from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"We think Gale Crater is going to be a great novel about the early environmental evolution of Mars that offers strong prospects potentially for the discovery of habitable environments, and maybe even a shot at discovering organic compounds."

Dr Grotzinger stressed that MSL-Curiosity is not a life-detection mission; it cannot identify microbes or even microbial fossils. But it can assess whether ancient conditions could have supported organisms.

This means Gale must show evidence for the past presence of water, a source of energy with which life forms could have metabolised, and a source of organic compounds with which organisms could have built their structures.

Gale has been chosen because satellite imagery suggests it may well be one of the best places on Mars to look for these biological preconditions.

The Skycrane will lower MSL-Curiosity on to the relatively flat valley floor on the end of tethers before blasting away to a safe distance. The robot will then drive up to the base of the central mountain.

In front of it, the rover should should find abundant quantities of clay minerals that will give fresh insight into the very wet early epoch of the Red Planet. Above the clays, the deposits change to sulphates, which relate to a period in time when Mars was still wet but was beginning to dry out.

In addition, there is evidence water flowed down the mountain at some point in the past, cutting a deep gully and depositing sediments out on the plain.

The rover will get to investigate all of this.

"The suite of things that we can see at Gale represents a diverse number of environments over a long period of time, possibly tens to hundreds of millions of years, plus the modern environment," said Dawn Sumner, a geologist at the University of California Davis, US.

"It's also going to be just an incredibly beautiful place - it will be a lot like the southwest of the US, areas like Monument Valley where you have steep-sided cliffs with the rover going in the shallower valleys between them," the co-chair of the landing site working group explained.
Drop-down mock-up

Gale was selected after a rigorous investigation of some 60 competing sites. The selection process took five years and involved about 150 researchers.

High-resolution imagery was acquired of the best sites, and Nasa even built models of some of the site surfaces and dropped a simulation rover on to them to assess their suitability.

Michael Watkins, the mission's project engineer, said the expected precision of the new entry, descent and landing system meant that the space agency could have chosen any of the top contenders.

"We can control the lift of the vehicle a little bit during entry and we can cancel out some unexpected differences in atmospheric drag that would cause the landing zone to be large," he told reporters.

"Previous missions have had landing zones that have been up to 10 times larger than MSL. MSL is going to land in a 20km-across spot."

MSL-Curiosity has been funded for an initial surface mission of two years. But the fact that Nasa's Opportunity rover continues to roll across the Red Planet today, seven years after landing, suggests the new vehicle may have a very long life ahead of it. What is more, the new vehicle carries a nuclear battery that will provide ample power on a planet where dust storms can blight the operation of solar panels.

MSL-Curiosity is currently being prepared for its November launch at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center.

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"Large Hadron Collider results excite scientists"

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has picked up tantalising fluctuations which might - or might not - be hints of the sought-after Higgs boson particle.

But scientists stress caution over these "excess events", because similar wrinkles have been detected before only to disappear after further analysis.

Either way, if the sub-atomic particle exists it is running out of places to hide, says the head of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), which runs the LHC.

He told BBC News the collider had now ruled out more of the "mass range" where the Higgs might be.

The new results are based on analyses of data, gathered as the vast machine smashes beams of protons together at close to light speeds.
Primary goals

Scientists from two different experiments (Atlas and CMS) based at the LHC are scouring the wreckage of these collisions.

One of their primary goals is to search for hints of the Higgs, which is the last missing piece in the Standard Model - the most widely accepted theory of particle physics.

Without the Higgs, physicists cannot explain why particles have mass. But despite the best efforts of scientists working on both sides of the Atlantic to detect it experimentally, the boson remains a theoretical sub-atomic particle.


The Standard Model is a framework that explains how the known sub-atomic particles interact with each other. If the Higgs boson is not found, physicists would have to find some other mechanism to explain where particles get their mass from. It would also require researchers to change the Standard Model.

Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director-general of Cern, said the amount of data gathered was a factor of 20 greater than had been amassed at the same time last year.

"With one inverse femtobarn, you cannot cover the entire mass region which is allowed for the Higgs boson," Professor Heuer told me.

"However, the experiments can now - unfortunately - exclude quite a large part of this allowed mass region."

Physicists think the Higgs will most probably be found in the low-mass region - between 114 GeV (gigaelectronvolts) and 140 GeV. While the gigaelectronvolt is a unit of energy, in particle physics, mass and energy can be interchanged because of Einstein's equivalence idea (E=MC2).
Fluctuations

Professor Heuer said that searches at low masses had picked up small fluctuations "here and there", but that this was expected because physicists were analysing small numbers across a number of different "channels".

"The whole thing becomes more interesting the more data we collect," he explained.

News of the surplus of interesting events - seen by both the Atlas and CMS teams - were outlined at the European Physical Society's HEP 2011 conference here in Grenoble, France.

The most significant excess is seen at a mass of 145 GeV and is above the two-sigma level of certainty. Another fluctuation is seen by the Atlas experiment at the higher mass of 250 GeV, with a two-sigma level of certainty.

A three-sigma result means there is roughly a one in 1,000 chance that the result is attributable to some statistical quirk in the data.

Five sigma means there is about a one in 1,000,000 chance that the "bump" is just a fluke and is the level generally required for a formal discovery.

Dave Charlton, who works on the Atlas experiment at the LHC, called the excess of events "intriguing".

But the particle physicist from the University of Birmingham, UK, told BBC News these "could go up to three sigma, or they could disappear".

The Large Hadron Collider is a vast machine built in an underground tunnel that runs in a circle for 27km under the French-Swiss border.

It accelerates two beams of proton particles at light speed around the circular tunnel and smashes them together at selected collision points around the underground ring. By looking at what is produced in these particle collisions, physicists should be able to shed further light on the nature of the cosmos

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