Desperate for an Autism Cure

Summaries of newsworthy papers include: Competition and the Internet; Digitizer in Chief; Leafing Behind a Carbon-Filled World; Turning Human Evolution on its Head?; The Elusive Theory of Everything

This press release contains:

· Summaries of newsworthy papers:

Mind: Desperate for an Autism Cure

Science Agenda: Competition and the Internet

Information Science: Digitizer in Chief

Technology: Leafing Behind a Carbon-Filled World

Evolution: Turning Human Evolution on its Head?

And finally … Physics: The Elusive Theory of Everything

PDFs of all the papers mentioned on this release can be found in the relevant journal’s section of http://press.nature.com. Press contacts for the Nature journals are listed at the end of this release.

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[1] Mind: Desperate for an Autism Cure (p 80)

As many as 75 percent of autistic children receive alternative treatments for their challenging behavioral and psychological condition that are neither developed nor tested by conventional medicine. As Nancy Shute explains in this month’s issue of Scientific American, some of these treatments are bogus while others have serious side effects, which prompts parents, scientists and advocates to yearn for better solutions.

There is no clear answer yet for what causes autism and how it could be treated. In the past decade in the U.S., with increased public awareness of the disorder, autism research funding has increased by 15% every year. However, as Shute explains, the therapies for children are lagging behind. And this “lack of empirically vetted therapies makes it far easier for sellers of untested treatments to market hope.” The disconnect leads many parents to try controversial and sometimes dangerous dietary supplements, drugs or physical treatments that offer little evidence of success.

Author contact:
Nancy Shute (science writer, Washington D.C., USA)
Tel: +1 202 251 6265
E-mail: [email protected]

[2] Science Agenda: Competition and the Internet (p 14)

Reclassifying broadband Internet as a “telecommunications service” rather than an “information service” could help bring the U.S.’s poor broadband performance closer to that of other developed countries such as France or Japan. In this month’s Scientific American, the editors call on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take this important step toward freeing the Internet.

The slower service and higher prices found in the U.S. put the country “at risk in the global race for leadership in innovation,” notes FCC chairman Julius Genachowski. However, the U.S. has not always been at a disadvantage. In fact, as the editors explain, our performance only started to decline in 2002 when the FCC classified broadband as an “information service,” which implied broadband was akin to a content provider rather than an infrastructure provider.

Reversing this decision might be unpopular with large Internet providers, whose monopolies could be broken, but it has been shown to be an effective way to improve the speed and reliability of broadband in other countries.

Author contact:
Editors at Scientific American are available to comment on this topic; please contact the Press Office
E-mail: [email protected]

[3] Information Science: Digitizer in Chief (p 90)

Is it possible for technology to revolutionize the way we interact with government? Featured in this month’s Scientific American is an exclusive interview with the U.S.’s first chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, who discusses how to pull federal infrastructure into the information age and make government data freely and easily available online.

As Kundra explains, he’s trying to close the huge gap between how people go online to make a hotel reservation or shop, versus how we interact with the public sector, whether it’s paying taxes, applying for aid or collecting benefits. “Part of what we’re trying to do is fundamentally reengineer the back-end systems, the processes, to make sure that the experience the American people have with the government looks much more like the experience they have when they interact with a private-sector company,” explains Kundra. The interview highlights the ultimate goal for the chief information officer and his team, which is to better engage citizens with their government.

Author contact:
Michael Moyer (Scientific American, New York City, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 212 451 2448
E-mail: [email protected]

[4] Technology: Leafing Behind a Carbon-Filled World (p 86)

To avoid the potentially debilitating effects of global warming, civilization must be able to generate more than 10 trillion watts of clean, carbon-free energy by 2050—three times the U.S.’s average energy demand. In this month’s Scientific American, Antonio Regalado discusses one way we can meet this clean energy target: artificial leaves.

Scientists are using various methodologies to harness the sun’s energy and turn it into fuel that can be stored. These include genetically altered algae that pump out biofuels or biological organisms engineered to excrete oil. Some believe that the best solution could be artificial leaves that capture solar rays and churn out chemical fuel on the spot. The feature focuses on the work of Nathan Lewis of the California Institute of Technology, who is designing artificial, silicon-based leaves to do just that.

Regalado explains that there are currently several labs crafting prototypes of leaves—about the size of computer chips—designed to produce fuel in the form of hydrogen fuel rather than fuel in the form of glucose that natural leaves create. Though a few prototypes have successfully produced small amounts of this “solar fuel,” Regalado warns that “the technology has to be improved so the fuel can be manufactured on a massive scale, very inexpensively.”

Author contact:
Antonio Regalado (science writer, São Paulo, Brazil)
Tel: +1 202 470 0753
E-mail: [email protected]

[5] Evolution: Turning Human Evolution on its Head? (p 40)

To determine how modern-day human populations in disparate parts of the world have come to differ genetically, Jonathan Pritchard and his colleagues have studied genetic changes that have occurred in Homo sapiens over the past 60,000 years. In this month’s Scientific American, he discusses the interplay between natural selection and ancient population history in determining who has certain gene variants today.

The best way to understand human evolution would be to track the changes of favored genes—and the physical traits they manifest—through time. However, this is difficult due to the fact that ancient DNA quickly degrades. Using newly developed technology, Pritchard’s team is able to examine genetic variations in modern humans and look for signs of natural selection that have occurred in our past.

Author contact:
Jonathan Pritchard (University of Chicago, IL, USA)
E-mail: [email protected]

[6] And Finally … Physics: The Elusive Theory of Everything (p 86)

What we consider our personal and universal reality could be just one of many realities. This concept, though foreign to most of us, is the framework of quantum theory and its evident incompatibility with classical physics, write Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in this month’s Scientific American.

Many physicists are starting to share a common view: that there may not be any one theory that unifies all of physics. Instead, Hawking and Mlodinow propose a “model-dependent realism” in which a physical theory is a model that comes with its own picture of reality. Different theories may describe different ranges of phenomena, but when their domains of applicability overlap, their predictions ought to be in agreement with one another as well as with experiments. “[I]t is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only whether it agrees with observation. If two models agree with observation, neither one can be considered more real than the other.”

As in so many science fiction movies, there could be many versions of reality—one for each of our current and future theories of nature and our universe.

Author contacts:
To contact either Stephen Hawking or Leonard Mlodinow, please contact the Press Office
E-mail: [email protected]

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Published: 23 Sep 2010

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