US shale gas challenges Russian natural gas in Europe

November 12, 2010
Natural gas pipelines from Russia to Europe.

Natural gas pipelines from Russia to Europe: image via Wikipedia

“Peak gas”  like “peak food” and “peak resources” and like all “peak scenarios” keeps getting postponed. The US is awash with shale gas and has started re-exporting LNG it had contracted for to Europe challenging the dominance of Russian supplies of natural gas.

Money control reports:

The United States may play a role this winter in loosening Russia’s grip on the European market for natural gas by shipping liquefied natural gas across the Atlantic. Awash with domestic shale gas and with little need to import extra fuel, the United States has started re-exporting LNG cargoes, which firms had previously imported under contract, to countries where gas prices are much higher.

Such shipments could contribute to a growing pool of cheaper LNG going to Russia’s biggest export market this winter. In the longer term, U.S. plans to build plants to liquefy shale gas could create another rival to Russian pipelines. The first re-export cargo from the United States to Britain — a key access point for LNG into northern Europe via an Interconnector pipeline to Belgium — is set to sail over the weekend. “It is a landmark shipment,” said Zach Allen at NATS LNG analysts in Raleigh North Carolina. “LNG has, through the Interconnector, played a major role in reducing intake of Russian gas into western Europe.”

U.S. shale gas has already forced many LNG producers that had hoped to supply the North American market to find alternative buyers, with many cargoes ending up in Europe and driving spot gas prices below the price of oil-indexed Russian gas.

US re-exports to Europe are the latest sign that increases in shale gas production have transformed the global gas market. The International Energy Agency said on Tuesday that a decade-long period of oversupply was likely to push oil-indexed gas sellers to accept lower prices.

In February, Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom postponed it’s Shtokman LNG project because the United States, its target market, did not need more imports. Major European pipeline gas supplier Statoil has been forced to find alternative markets for LNG it had hoped to send to the United States, often selling it into Europe. Qatar, the world’s largest producer and exporter of LNG, has also pushed into both Norwegian and Russian markets by making large deliveries of cheap LNG into Britain and Belgium. US LNG imports have fallen to contractual minimums as gas prices have sagged, forcing importers whose terminals are sitting idle to change strategy and re-export to make the most of higher prices overseas.

US gas at USD 4.1 per million British thermal units (mmbtu) was about USD 3.3/mmbtu below UK prices on Tuesday and just under half the price of Russian gas in Europe in October, according to International Monetary Fund data. About 20 billion cubic feet of gas has already been re-exported from the United States this year, with some sent to Asia, where buyers have paid nearly USD 10 per mmbtu, and some to Latin America and the Middle East.

More of those US loaded cargoes could head to Britain over coming months, given that winter price increases are sharper in northern Europe than in the United States and that imports by South American and Middle Eastern buyers are usually confined to summer.

“US exports to Europe will remain rather exotic, but they underline once again the big risks for Russia of focusing some of its future projects on US markets,” said Valery Nesterov, energy analyst at Moscow-based Troika Dialog brokerage.

Cheniere Energy, operator of the Sabine Pass import terminal in Louisiana, announced plans in June to build a liquefaction plant at the terminal. It said on Tuesday that US bank Morgan Stanley hoped to secure some of its export capacity. Pending approval, the plant would export US-produced shale gas to markets all over the globe from 2015. It would be the first US LNG export plant in 40 years — following the old Kenai facility which supplies Asia from Alaska — and would be well placed to supply Europe. “LNG supplies from the United States can help lower gas prices in Europe and Asia and ultimately help lift prices in the States,” said Mikhail Korchemkin from Pennsylvania-based East European Gas Analysis.

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Sterile, male, GM mosquitoes released to fight Dengue

November 12, 2010
Ochlerotatus notoscriptus, Tasmania, Australia

Image via Wikipedia

PhysOrg.com:

Scientists have released genetically modified mosquitoes in an experiment to fight dengue fever in the Cayman Islands, British experts said Thursday.

It is the first time genetically altered mosquitoes have been set loose in the wild, after years of laboratory experiments and hypothetical calculations. But while scientists believe the trial could lead to a breakthrough in stopping the disease, critics argue the mutant mosquitoes might wreak havoc on the environment.

“This test in the Cayman Islands could be a big step forward,” said Andrew Read, a professor of biology and entomology at Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the project. “Anything that could selectively remove insects transmitting really nasty diseases would be very helpful,” he said.

Dengue is a potentially fatal mosquito-borne disease that can cause fever, muscle and joint pain, and hemorrhagic bleeding. More than 2.5 billion people are at risk and the World Health Organization estimates there are at least 50 million cases every year. There is no treatment or vaccine.

Unlike malaria, which is also spread by mosquitoes, dengue outbreaks are unpredictable and bed nets are of limited use because dengue-spreading mosquitoes also bite during the day.

Researchers at Oxitec Limited, an Oxford-based company, created sterile male mosquitoes by manipulating the insects’ DNA. Scientists in the Cayman Islands released 3 million mutant male mosquitoes to mate with wild female mosquitoes of the same species. That meant they wouldn’t be able to produce any offspring, which would lower the population. Only female mosquitoes bite humans and spread diseases.

From May to October, scientists released batches of genetically mutated male mosquitoes in cages three times a week in a 40-acre (16-hectare) area. By August, mosquito numbers in that region dropped by 80 percent compared with a neighboring area where no sterile male mosquitoes were released.

Luke Alphey, Oxitec’s chief scientific officer, said with such a small area, it would have been very difficult to detect a drop in dengue cases. But their modeling estimates suggested an 80 percent reduction in mosquitoes should result in fewer dengue infections.

Yeya Toure, who leads the World Health Organization’s team on Innovative Vector Control Interventions, called the Cayman Islands trial promising and said it’s worth continuing the genetic modification experiments. He said genetically altered mosquitoes aren’t meant to replace existing tools like insecticides, but to compensate for their limitations, like when mosquitoes develop resistance.

Read said creating mutated mosquitoes might actually be the least invasive way to control dengue. By keeping a lid on the mosquito population via genetic modification, Read said entire ecosystems would be spared the toxic effects of indiscriminately spraying pesticides.

Of course opponents of GM (Gene Modification) think this may be a “bad thing” even though the GM modified males cannot last more than a generation.

“If we remove an insect like the mosquito from the ecosystem, we don’t know what the impact will be,” said Pete Riley, campaign director of GM Freeze, a British non-profit group that opposes genetic modification.

He said mosquito larvae might be food for other species, which could starve if the larvae disappear. Or taking out adult mosquito predators might open up a slot for other insect species to slide in, potentially introducing new diseases.

Experts in the safety of genetically modified (GM) organisms have expressed concern over the release of GM mosquitoes into the wild on the Cayman Islands, which was publicised internationally only last month — a year after their initial release.

Ricarda Steinbrecher, a geneticist and co-director of EcoNexus — a UK-based non-profit research organisation — expressed surprise that the trials had occurred, saying that they had not been mentioned at the fifth meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety — which addresses international safety issues relating to GM organisms — in Nagoya, Japan, last month. She described the lack of publicity surrounding the trials as ‘worrying, both from the scientific perspective as well as public participation perspective’. Steinbrecher said that until a full, long-term environmental assessment of the Cayman trials has been carried out, the recently announced Malaysian trials of the same strain should not go ahead.

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Trent 900: Rolls Royce and Airbus statements

November 12, 2010

Trent 900 update

Friday, 12 November 2010

Rolls-Royce is now in a position to provide an update on its statement of 8 November concerning the engine failure on the Trent 900 powered A380 Qantas flight QF32 on 4 November 2010.

Immediately following this incident a regime of engine checks was introduced on the Trent 900s to understand the cause and to ensure safe operation. These have been conducted in parallel with a rigorous examination of all available evidence, including data from the damaged engine and its monitoring system, analysis of recovered material and interrogation of the fleet history.

These investigations have led Rolls-Royce to draw two key conclusions. First, as previously announced, the issue is specific to the Trent 900. Second, the failure was confined to a specific component in the turbine area of the engine. This caused an oil fire, which led to the release of the intermediate pressure turbine disc.

Rolls-Royce continues to work closely with the investigating authorities.

Our process of inspection will continue and will be supplemented by the replacement of the relevant module according to an agreed programme.

These measures, undertaken in collaboration with Airbus, our Trent 900 customers and the regulators have regrettably led to some reduction in aircraft availability. This programme will enable our customers progressively to bring the whole fleet back into service.

Safety continues to be Rolls-Royce’s highest priority.

This undated image provided by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau shows a jagged and bent piece of a turbine disc from a Qantas superjumbo Rolls-Royce engine that exploded Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading an international investigation into the blowout on the world's newest and largest airliner, appealed for help from residents of Indonesia's Batam island to find the missing chunk of a turbine disc. (AP Photo/ATSB) EDITORIAL USE ONLY - No Sales

image provided by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau shows a jagged and bent piece of a turbine disc from a Qantas superjumbo Rolls-Royce engine that exploded Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/ATSB)

Rolls Royce does not identify the faulty component in its stement but there are reports that it was a faulty bearing box from Airbus.

Washington Post:

An Airbus executive said Friday that Rolls-Royce has identified a faulty bearing box as the cause of the oil leak problem implicated in the midair disintegration of an engine on one of the world’s largest airliners, an Australian newspaper reported.

Airbus Chief Operating Officer John Leahy told reporters in Sydney that Rolls-Royce had at some point fixed the bearing box on newer versions of the massive Trent 900 engine, a model designed for the massive A380 superjumbo. He said Rolls was now fixing it on older versions. The Herald Sun reported his comments on its website. His comments did not address why Rolls-Royce had not fixed the bearing box in older versions of the engine. Airbus did not elaborate and Rolls-Royce declined to comment on his remarks.

The box in question contains the metal ball bearings that allow movement of the drive shaft that spins the turbines inside jet engines. Investigators have said that leaking oil caused a fire in the engine of a Qantas A380 that heated metal parts and made the motor disintegrate over Indonesia last week, sending shrapnel into the wing and cutting vital safety systems before the jetliner landed safely in Singapore. They have focused on broken pieces of the engine’s heavy turbine disc, a plate that holds the turbine blades that move air through the motor. Engines on the A380 malfunctioned four times before the disintegration on the flight from Singapore to Sydney. All of the planes landed safely.

The problems dating to 2008 led to two warnings for airlines to check parts of the Trent 900. Three of the four problems centered on the turbines or oil system. Rolls-Royce Group PLC said in an update to investors Friday that the disintegration of the Qantas engine resulted from a problem in a specific component in the Trent 900, but it did not provide details. “The failure was confined to a specific component in the turbine area of the engine. This caused an oil fire, which led to the release of the intermediate pressure turbine disc,” Rolls-Royce said.

The statement supports a report from the European Aviation Safety Agency, which issued an emergency order Thursday requiring airlines to re-examine their Trent 900s and ground any planes with suspicious leaks.

Leahy said the new models of the Trent 900 had been redesigned to eliminate the problem of excess oil causing turbine fires. He said that Rolls-Royce was retrofitting the older versions with new parts to stop the oil leaks and computer software that would shut down an engine with leaking oil before it was put at risk of disintegration. “In the future the computer will have software that can identify a problem at the outset and it will shut down an engine before a turbine disc can go out of control and come apart,” Leahy told the Herald Sun. Leaks or oil stains have been discovered on six of the total of twenty A380s operated by Qantas, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines that use the Trent 900, a technologically advanced model designed to be lighter, quieter and more efficient than older engines. Qantas and Singapore Airlines have grounded nine of the world’s largest airliner between them while Germany’s Lufthansa has already replaced an engine on one of its A380s.

Rolls-Royce’s chief executive said the company will be replacing the relevant part to enable its customers to bring the whole fleet back into service. Airbus will take Rolls-Royce engines off the final assembly line in Toulouse, France, and send them to Qantas “so we can get Qantas back up and flying,” the Airbus press office said. The disintegration on the Qantas A380 was far more serious than the airline has implied in its public statements, however, experts said.

Damage from engine shrapnel to the wing over the engine occurred very close to the wing’s front spar, one of two support beams in the wing that attach the wing to the plane, said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board and an expert on airline maintenance. If the shrapnel had hit the spar it could possibly have weakened the spar and even have caused the wing to fall off, he said.

As it was, the shrapnel appears to have damaged electrical cables and hydraulic lines inside the wing, Goglia said. Pilots were unable to close the landing gear doors, an indication of hydraulic damage, and had difficulty shutting down the engine next to the engine that disintegrated, an indication of an electrical problem, he said. The A380 has four engines.

Photos and video of the incident and its aftermath show the shrapnel clearly ruptured a hydraulic line and an electric line in the wing, cutting off the pilots’ control of half the brake flaps and the remaining engine on the affected wing, along with the door of the landing-gear compartment, said Joerg Handwerg, a spokesman for the pilots’ union for Lufthansa.

In its trading update Friday, London-based Rolls-Royce said the incident will cause full year profit growth “to be slightly lower than previously guided,” but it also said that the company’s other operations will help to offset any losses. Back in July, the company said that its underlying profits would grow by 4-5 percent compared to 2009.

Shares in the company rose after the update – a signal that investors are happy to see a definitive statement after days of silence from the world’s second-biggest engine maker behind General Electric and one of the last globally important industrial manufacturing companies in Britain.

Rolls-Royce shares were up 4 percent at 607.5 pence ($9.74) in midmorning trade on the London Stock Exchange.

Handwerg said that minor problems are routine for any jet engine, but it is possible that the issues were an indication that regulators did not adequately check the engine before approving it for commercial use.

“When you see we have a problem with not just one of these engines but several then it points towards that we have a problem in the certification process,” Handwerg said.

 

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G 20 ends: “We know we must do something but we don’t know what …”!

November 12, 2010

Everybody agreed that a currency war was a “bad thing” but each country – of course – denied that it would ever indulge in such a thing. All agreed that the world was a dangerous place and that there were “grave imbalances”. The US blamed China and China blamed the US but they did try to engage and tone down the earlier rhetoric. It started a little acrimoniously but ended with fine words and a task passed on to the IMF to set “indicative” guidelines.

It is no doubt a “good thing” that the leaders do meet and at least try to think a little outside the box but few have the ability to look much beyond immediate domestic issues and domestic politics. The European leaders did at least have a “break out” meeting to address the problems in Ireland.

Reuters –

G20 leaders closed ranks Friday and agreed to a watered-down commitment to watch out for dangerous imbalances, yet offered investors little proof that the world was any safer from economic catastrophe.

The developing and emerging nations agreed at the summit in Seoul to set vague “indicative guidelines” for measuring imbalances between their multi-speed economies but, calling a timeout to let tempers cool, left the details to be discussed in the first half of next year.

Leaders vowed to move toward market-determined exchange rates, a reference to China’s tightly managed yuan that the United States has long complained is undervalued.

They pledged to shun competitive devaluations, a line addressing other countries’ concern that the U.S. Federal Reserve’s easy-money policy was aimed at weakening the dollar.

In a nod to emerging markets struggling to contain huge capital inflows, the G20 gave the okay to impose “carefully designed” control measures. They also agreed that there was a critical, but narrow, window of opportunity to conclude the long-elusive Doha round of trade liberalization talks launched in 2001.

After weeks of verbal jousting, the United States and China sought to bury the hatchet over rows about China’s “undervalued” currency and the global risks created by the U.S. printing money to reflate its struggling economy. “Exchange rates must reflect economic realities … Emerging economies need to allow for currencies that are market driven,” Obama said. “This is something that I raised with President Hu (Jintao) of China and we will closely watch the appreciation of China’s currency.”

Tim Condon, head of research at ING Financial Markets in Singapore said it was “hard to disagree” with the vows of the leaders but they had fallen short of the progress hoped for going into the summit.

“They decided just to put down a lot of laudable objectives as the conclusion of the meeting and hope that they can do better, that more can be accomplished in future meetings,” he said. The G20 has fragmented since a synchronized global recession gave way to a multi-speed recovery. Slow-growing advanced economies have kept interest rates at record lows to try to kickstart growth, while big emerging markets have come roaring back so fast that many are worried about overheating.

But at least the G20 spouses apparently had a good time  in what looks like sunny autumn weather!

Main Image

The spouses of G20 world leaders walk through a park in Seoul November 12, 2010. Credit: REUTERS/Yonhap/Pool SOUTH KOREA

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The DC3 lives on

November 12, 2010

Translated freely from Ny Teknik:

When  German polar researchers needed to acquire a further research plane,  they selected the Basler BT-67, a newly built version of the classic DC3.

The Basler BT-67 fitted with skis: image Ny Teknik

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research needed to supplement its fleet of aircraft that can fly over the Arctic and Antarctic. They already had good experience with their Polar 5 and have now ordered another, Polar 6, to perform measurements simultaneously over the two poles.

The plane chosen is a Basler BT-67, basically a modern version of the classic DC3 built today by Basler Turbo Conversions of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA.
Compared with a classic DC3 the Basler is 40 inches longer, has 35 percent more volume, can load 43 percent more cargo, is 24 percent faster and carries twice as much fuel.
Instead of reciprocating engines in the original DC3 the Basler is equipped with turboprop engines from Pratt & Whitney.
Warren Basler, who founded the company, thought it was a pity that such a sound design as the DC3 would not live on. The company has been making planes since 1990.

From Wikipedia:

The Basler BT-67 is a conversion of the DC-3. Basler refurbishes DC-3s at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, fitting them with Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-67R turboprop engines, lengthening the fuselage by 40 in (100 cm) with a fuselage plug ahead of the wing and strengthening the airframe in selected areas. The airframe is rated as having “zero accumulated fatigue damage.” This and extensive modifications to various systems and avionics result in a practically brand-new aircraft. The BT-67s have been supplied to civil and military customers in several countries.

The 75th Anniversary of the DC-3’s first flight will be on December 17, 2010.

The Classic DC3 has been flying since 1935: image http://www.wmof.com

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Rolls Royce to announce “solution” to Trent 900 problem later today

November 12, 2010

Rolls Royce are due to make a Trading Report today. They have informed their customer airlines and Airbus that they will announce that they have found the cause of the Trent 900 engine failure on the Qantas A 380 and have a planned solution. But Airbus expects that implementing the solution will take some time and will not be a quick fix.

Qantas Airbus A380 after making emergency landing at Singapore's Changi airport

Uncontained failure of the QF 32 RR Trent 900

Sydney Morning Herald:

British jet engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce will announce this afternoon that it has found a solution to the engine failure that caused a Qantas A380 to make an emergency landing in Singapore last week. Rolls-Royce is due to release a statement at 6pm AEST revealing that it has identified the problem with the Trent 900 engines and will make changes to their software.

This is aimed at enabling the engines to be shut down before they reach a stage at which they are about to disintegrate. Airbus’s chief operating officer, John Leahy, said in Sydney today that he had been informed that Rolls-Royce would issue a statement late today stating that they had found the cause of the engine explosion last week.

“They know they have found a solution to what caused the problem. They know how to fix that now but it will take some time,” he said.

Mr Leahy said he did not know how long it would take to make the changes.

Rolls-Royce’s investigation into the midair incident involving QF32 on November 4 had focused on an oil fire which had caused the failure of the number two engine’s intermediate turbine disc.

Rolls Royce investors will be watching closely:

RR one month share price

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Where Science gets done

November 12, 2010

(Reuters) – The United States still leads the world with its scientific clout, armed with highly respected universities and a big war chest of funding, but Europe and Asia are catching up, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Friday.

But U.S. influence is waning — not because the United States is doing less, but because other countries are doing more, Thomson’s Jonathan Adams and David Pendlebury found. “In 1981, U.S. scientists fielded nearly 40 percent of research papers in the most influential journals,” they wrote.

“By 2009, that figure was down to 29 percent. During the same period, European nations increased their share of research papers from 33 percent to 36 percent, while research contributed by nations in the Asia-Pacific region increased from 13 percent to 31 percent.” China is now the second-largest producer of scientific papers, after the United States, with nearly 11 percent of the world’s total. In 2008, Asian nations as a group passed the United States with $387 billion in research and development spending, compared with $384 billion in the United States and $280 billion in Europe.

Precisely half of U.S. research focuses on the biological sciences “just at the time when Asian nations are focusing on and investing substantial sums in engineering, physical sciences, and technology,” the report notes. In the United States, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology (MIT and Caltech) led in research, the report found. Outside the United States, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences lead.

Earlier this week the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, released a report showing similar findings. UNESCO said in 2002, almost 83 percent of research and development was carried out in developed countries but this dropped to 76 percent by 2007. It found China was leading the pack of emerging nations with 1.4 million researchers.

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Qantas preparing for summer schedules without their A 380 fleet?

November 11, 2010

It seems that Qantas are preparing their summer schedules allowing for a potentially long non-availability of their A380s.

SMH (Business Day) reports that signs have emerged (that) Qantas’ flagship A380 aircraft may be out of service over the summer holidays, with its new schedule for international flights in coming weeks not including the A380.

Fairfax media says the airline’s A330 aircraft have replaced Boeing 747s on several Asian routes, freeing up the Boeing 747s to fly on the long-haul routes to Los Angeles and London. Fairfax quoted aviation insiders as saying that the Qantas A380 fleet was likely to remain grounded for weeks with the engine problem likely to be taking quite some time.

Qantas says it still hopes the A380s will be cleared within days, but at this stage it can provide no update and it won’t return the A380s to service until it can guarantee absolute safety.

Aviation Week reveals that all the changes and inspections of the engines on the A380s are straining the operations of Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa.

The decisions by Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Lufthansa to replace Trent 900 engines on parts of their Airbus A380 fleets indicates continued uncertainty over what prompted the uncontained engine failure on a Qantas Airways A380 and is highlighting the operational strains when one of the mega-transports is not available.

But the upheaval in A380 operations – the first significant disruptions for the Airbus flagship since it entered service in 2007 – also is highlighting the challenges airlines face when having to replace an A380 in day-to-day operations. To mitigate the effects, Lufthansa, for instance, is rushing to make its engine change so it will not have to miss another flight.

One issue for Lufthansa is that the latest engine change will consume its last available spare Trent 900.

With three of its 12 A380s grounded for engine changes, an SIA spokesman acknowledges that there will be flight disruptions to passengers. All three aircraft are displaced from the airline’s home base, with one located in London and the other two at Sydney.

The Age also reports that Airlines are frustrated with Roll-Royce’s reluctance to communicate publicly. Even Emirates – which uses different engines on its A380 – said it was worried that passengers might be frightened off.

“We really don’t want this aircraft tarnished with a reputation for failures in certain areas,” said Emirates’ president Tim Clark. ”One thing we will not allow is a contagion effect.”

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Stem Cells turn injured rodents into Mighty Mice

November 11, 2010

The implications for the possible treatment of wasted muscles – and perhaps even for aged, wasted muscles – is immense.

(Reuters) – Injecting stem cells into injured mice made their muscles grow back twice as big in a matter of days, creating mighty mice with bulky muscles that stayed big and strong for the rest of their lives, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

Mighty Mouse

If the same applies to humans, the findings could lead to new treatments for diseases that cause muscles to deteriorate, such as muscular dystrophy.

It may even help people resist the gradual erosion of muscle strength that comes with age, Bradley Olwin, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and colleagues reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. “This was a very exciting and unexpected result,” Olwin, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

“We found that the transplanted stem cells are permanently altered and reduce the aging of the transplanted muscle, maintaining strength and mass.” Olwin’s team experimented on young mice with leg injuries, injecting them with muscle stem cells taken from young donor mice. Stem cells are unique in that they can constantly renew themselves, and form the basis of other specialized cells. These cells not only repaired the injury, but they caused the treated muscle to increase in size by 170 percent. Olwin’s team had thought the changes would be temporary, but they lasted through the lifetime of the mice, which was about two years.

“When the muscles were examined two years later, we found the procedure permanently changed the transplanted cells, making them resistant to the aging process in the muscle,” Olwin said in a statement.

Olwin and colleagues said when they injected the cells into a healthy leg, they did not get the same effect, suggesting there is something important about injecting the cells into an injured muscle that triggers growth.

“The environment that the stem cells are injected into is very important, because when it tells the cells there is an injury, they respond in a unique way,” he said.

The team hopes eventually to find drugs or combinations of drugs that mimic the behavior of transplanted cells,” Olwin said. The findings are encouraging for human research, but Olwin cautions that putting stem cells from young mice into other young mice is not the same thing as making old muscles young again.

And the study is in mice, not people.

The paper is

Prevention of Muscle Aging by Myofiber-Associated Satellite Cell Transplantation by John K. Hall, Glen B. Banks, Jeffrey S. Chamberlain and Bradley B. Olwin. Sci Transl Med 10 November 2010: Vol. 2, Issue 57, p. 57ra83
DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3001081

ABSTRACT

Skeletal muscle is dynamic, adapting to environmental needs, continuously maintained, and capable of extensive regeneration. These hallmarks diminish with age, resulting in a loss of muscle mass, reduced regenerative capacity, and decreased functionality. Although the mechanisms responsible for this decline are unclear, complex changes within the local and systemic environment that lead to a reduction in regenerative capacity of skeletal muscle stem cells, termed satellite cells, are believed to be responsible. We demonstrate that engraftment of myofiber-associated satellite cells, coupled with an induced muscle injury, markedly alters the environment of young adult host muscle, eliciting a near-lifelong enhancement in muscle mass, stem cell number, and force generation. The abrogation of age-related atrophy appears to arise from an increased regenerative capacity of the donor stem cells, which expand to occupy both myonuclei in myofibers and the satellite cell niche. Further, these cells have extensive self-renewal capabilities, as demonstrated by serial transplantation. These near-lifelong, physiological changes suggest an approach for the amelioration of muscle atrophy and diminished function that arise with aging through myofiber-associated satellite cell transplantation.

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Mount Merapi eruption images from Nasa

November 11, 2010

The steep-sided, cone-shaped Mount Merapi volcano is both boon and curse to the people of Indonesia. Volcanic ash from its frequent eruptions makes the soil fertile enough to support a large population. It is also one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes, posing a constant threat to tens of thousands of people who live in its shadow. On October 26, 2010, the volcano once again turned destructive, unleashing a series of eruptions that had killed at least 44 people and forced 75,000 people from their homes, said CNN on November 4.

Eruption at Mount Merapi, Indonesia

Eruption at Mount Merapi, Indonesia: Nov 1st: image NASA

 

The mountain has been shrouded in clouds throughout the eruption, but on October 30 the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the thermal signature of hot ash and rock and a glowing lava dome. The thermal data is overlaid on a three-dimensional map of the volcano to show the approximate location of the flow. The three-dimensional data is from a global topographic model created using ASTER stereo observations.

The Center of Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation reported that two pyroclastic flows moved down the volcano on October 30. A pyroclastic flow is an avalanche of extremely hot gas, ash, and rock that tears down the side of a volcano at high speeds. ASTER imaged one of those flows.

Merapi shows no signs of slowing. After several days of eruptive episodes, the volcano began an eruption on November 3 that was five times more intense than on October 26 and lasted more than 24 hours. It is the most violent eruption at the volcano since the 1870s, said local geologists.

See more NASA images at:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/event.php?id=46815

Eruption at Mount Merapi, Indonesia

SO2 cloud from Mt. Merapi: 4th November: image NASA

Eruption at Mount Merapi, Indonesia

Ash plume from Mt. Merapi 8th Nov: image NASA

 

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