Information Dissemination — Russia has sent an official notification to NATO’s general secretary, Hoop Scheffer, proposing that “all upcoming military exercises planned in Georgia should be postponed or canceled.”

On any other day of the year, I would read news article discussing a disagreement between NATO and Russia regarding Black Sea naval activity and dismiss it, but this isn’t an average day. Earlier this week, as per the agreement between Russia and the Ukraine, Russian officials notified the Ukraine that 22 of its Black Sea Fleet vessels will leave Sevastopol for military maneuvers. Those ships were expected to depart earlier this week, but it was noteworthy when all of the amphibious ships deployed first rather than all of the ships at once.

The Black Sea Fleet has now deployed all 22 ships, which is getting some attention in the region because regional news reports have noted the Russian military exercises taking place in the Caucasus since the political turmoil and protests began last week in Georgia. There has been a lot of discussion over the past several days, mostly unverified hearsay and internet chatter, of movement of Russian troops towards the Russian-Georgian border and into Abkhazia as part of those exercises. Those rumors were confirmed today when an EU monitor told Reuters “it had registered Russian reinforcements at the boundaries between Georgian-controlled territory and South Ossetia and Abkhazia.”

A confidential assessment compiled by EU diplomats in Georgia and seen by Reuters said the Russian reinforcements included tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and “Grad” multiple-rocket launchers.

“Thus the situation at the ABL (administrative boundary line) remains in flux and volatile as Russian/South Ossetian forces continue to establish new facts on the ground,” said the the assessment, dated April 13. …

Russia’s intentions are unclear. On the same day Russia tells NATO to cancel military exercises, Russia also agrees to hold a fifth round of Geneva talks involving negotiators from Georgia, Russia, United States, and the breakaway regions of Abkhazia, and South Ossetia on May 18-19.

There is widespread belief that Russia helped finance the demonstrations that began April 9th, but it is noteworthy those demonstrations have become smaller and smaller each day. After a week of demonstrations, polls indicated the public mood was shifting away from the opposition, and Saakashvili remains the most popular politician in Georgia despite the protests and well funded media campaigns against him. Many experts appear to be in agreement the calls for his resignation have failed, and this will end in negotiations. To date, the opposition has dismissed any suggestion of sitting down with Saakashvili, so it is unclear when those negotiations will happen.

Given that the Russian funded political unrest with demonstrations has failed to achieve its goals, would Russia take military action instead?

It seemed very unlikely war would break out last August on the opening day of the Olympics. Russia may not be making a move against Georgia, but this is one of the largest Black Sea Fleet exercises we have seen in a long time, and the EU is monitoring large troop movements at the border at the same time, so even without a fire there is plenty of smoke. (05/01/09)
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BBC Medical Science – A good night’s sleep could reduce hyperactivity and bad behaviour among children, a Finnish study reports. It has been suggested that some children who lack sleep do not appear tired, but instead behave badly.

Of the 280 examined in the Pediatrics study, those who slept for fewer than eight hours were the most hyperactive. Experts said adequate sleep could improve behaviour in healthy children and reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It is recognised that chronic sleep deprivation is a problem for many adults in Western countries and that it can have consequences for their health and daily life. The team behind this research said not enough was understood about the role of sleep in children’s lives but it has been estimated that a third of US children do not get enough sleep.

In this research, the team from the University of Helsinki and Finland’s National Institute of Health and Welfare studied 280 healthy children aged seven or eight. They wanted to see if those healthy children who slept the least were the most likely to display the kind of symptoms associated with ADHD.

None of the children studied had the attention disorder.

Parents filled in questionnaires about their children’s usual sleeping habits and then noted how long their children slept for over seven nights. The children also wore devices called actigraphs, which measure movement, to monitor how long they actually rested for. Parents’ estimates of sleep duration were longer than the actigraph measurements, which the researchers say could be because they measured from bedtime or because they assumed their children were asleep when they were simply lying awake in bed or reading. The parents were also asked about their children’s behaviour, using measures normally used to diagnose ADHD.

The children whose average sleep duration as measured by actigraphs was shorter than 7.7 hours had a higher hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour score. They also had a higher ADHD symptom score overall.

Dr Juulia Paavonen, who led the study, said: “We were able to show that short sleep duration and sleeping difficulties are related to behavioural symptoms of ADHD. The findings suggest that maintaining adequate sleep schedules among children is likely to be important in preventing behavioural symptoms.” (05/01/09)
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BBC Viral Science — Preliminary analysis of the swine flu virus suggests it is a fairly mild strain, scientists say. It is believed that a further mutation would be needed in order for the H1N1 virus to cause the mass deaths that have been estimated by some. But at this point, it is impossible to predict with any accuracy how the virus will continue to evolve.

UK experts at the National Institute for Medical Research outlined on Friday the work they are due to start on samples of the virus sent from the US. The research, being done at the World Influenza Centre in Mill Hill, will be vital for working out the structure of the virus, where it came from, how quickly it is capable of spreading and its potential to cause illness.

Analysis done so far suggests what they are dealing with is a mild virus and nowhere near as dangerous as the H5N1 avian flu strain that has caused scientists so much concern over the past decade. Influenza A viruses are classified according to two proteins on the outer surface of the virus - hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N).

The swine flu strain is a H1N1 virus, the same type as seasonal flu which circulates throughout the world every year, and kills roughly 0.1% of those infected or higher in an epidemic year.

Professor Wendy Barclay, chair in influenza virology at Imperial College London says initial indications suggest there is nothing about the genetic make-up of the new virus which is a cause for particular concern. The key to its potential lies largely in the H1 protein. “There are two aspects - one is which receptors the virus tends to bind to and what we see is that it is binding to the upper respiratory tract rather than deep in the lungs. When a flu virus binds to the upper respiratory tract, it tends to cause mild illness but can be easily spread as people cough and sneeze. If a virus binds further down in the lungs, it tends to cause much more severe illness, as in the case of the H5N1 avian flu virus which has caused concern in recent years.”

“With the H1 gene we also look at the cleavage site,” she adds. “The virus has to be cut into two pieces to be active and it uses an enzyme in the host to do that. Most influenza viruses are restricted to the respiratory tract because they use enzymes in the lungs. But some, like H5 viruses can evolve to cut into two pieces outside the lungs, so they can replicate outside the respiratory tract.”

These initial indications are largely guesswork from looking at the genetic sequence of the virus and comparing that to what is known from work on other influenza viruses. It will take weeks and months of biological analysis to properly get a handle on the potential of the H1N1 virus. (05/01/09)
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BBC Plant Science — Scientists have identified why excessive fertilisation of soils is resulting in a loss of plant diversity. Extra nutrients allow fast growing plants to dominate a habitat, blocking smaller species’ access to vital sunlight, researchers have found. As a result, many species are disappearing from affected areas.

A team from the University of Zurich, writing in Science, warned that tighter controls were needed in order to prevent widespread biodiversity loss. Estimates suggest that the global level of nitrogen and phosphorous available to plants has doubled in the past 50 years.

Looking at grasslands, the researchers said it was widely recognised that an increase of chemical nutrients in an ecosystem led to a loss of diversity, but the mechanism of how it was occurring had been difficult to determine.

“You would think that more [nutrients] would lead to more biodiversity,” said co-author Andrew Hector, a researcher at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Environmental Sciences. “Yet it is considered to be one of the main threats to biodiversity this century.”

Professor Hector explained that there were two main hypotheses: “One is that the presence of more resources led to a general increase in the strength of competition among plants.”

“The other is a little bit more mechanistic,” he told BBC News. “When you get an increase in fertilisation, you get an increase in productivity, leading to increased plant biomass and increased shading. This shifts the idea to light being the critical resource, with shorter species being shaded out by taller species, resulting in a loss in diversity.” (05/01/09)
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BBC Anthropological Genetic Science – A genetic map of Africa - the continent from which all modern humans originate - has provided information about its huge diversity of language and culture. It is the result of the largest African genetic study ever undertaken.

The work revealed the continent to be the most genetically diverse place on Earth, and identified descendents of our earliest human ancestors. The international team of scientists describe their 10-year study in the journal Science.

The team, led by Sarah Tishkoff from the University of Pennsylvania, studied genetic material from 121 African populations. They collected over 3,000 samples, and identified 14 “ancestral population clusters”. These are groups of populations with common genetic ancestry, who share ethnicity and similarities in both their culture and the properties of their languages.

“This is a spectacular insight into the history of African populations and therefore the history of mankind,” said Muntaser Ibrahim, a researcher from the University of Khartoum, who was also involved in the study. …

Dr. Tishkoff’s team had to gather genetic samples from some of the continent’s most remote communities. To extract the important information from blood samples, they have to be “spun down”, using a centrifuge to produce a pellet containing the DNA.

“In the most remote areas, we used a centrifuge that plugged into a car battery,” Dr Tishkoff recalled. Largely as a result of these difficulties, a large amount of the group’s data comes from populations that have never previously been studied genetically. This allows the map to provide an entirely new link between biology, and existing anthropology and linguistic information.

The research also located the origin of modern human migration in south-western Africa, near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola.

This is based on the widely-accepted theory that the highest level of genetic diversity is in the oldest population - the one that has had the longest to evolve. The site is the homeland of the indigenous San communities, Dr Tishkoff explained.

“It’s not surprising but it’s a very neat finding because the San have already been shown to have the oldest genetic lineages, suggesting they may be descendents of a population ancestral to all modern humans.” (05/01/09)
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