BBC Medical Science — Fergus Walsh reports: Do you want to avoid catching H1N1 swine flu? … You could find a remote, uninhabited island until a vaccine is created. I think that’s going a bit far. But the best defence is age.

So far, the over-65s has been the group least likely to catch the infection. This has led to me receiving cheery comments from retired people saying that it’s the first time in some while that they’ve felt glad to be old.

So why aren’t they falling ill? The likeliest explanation is that they have built up immunity over years of exposure to other H1N1 flu viruses. That might also help to explain why most other people get a mild infection.

But I’m still puzzled as to why 30- to 50-year-olds are suffering a disproportionate amount of severe illness. In fact, I’m a bit puzzled as to exactly which age groups - under the age of 65 - are most at risk of severe illness.

In her speech in Geneva yesterday, Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general, had this to say:
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BBC Rain Forest Science — Five years ago, few knew there was a forest here. Its discovery by the scientific community is down to a very 21st-Century research tool.

“I used Google Earth to locate all the mountains over 1,500m that were closest to Mount Mulanje in Southern Malawi,” Dr Julian Bayliss, head of the cross-border conservation project, told me. “Mount Mabu was selected through Google Earth as one of these sights.”

Dr Bayliss’s project, funded through a British scheme called the Darwin Initiative, looked for similarities between different patches of medium altitude rainforest. When images of Mount Mabu were analysed, it became clear that there was a large patch of dark green of which there was no official record. A quickly arranged visit to northern Mozambique confirmed what Dr Bayliss had suspected.

“It was at that stage I realised that we were dealing with what looks like the biggest rainforest in Southern Africa,” he said. Travelling with Dr Bayliss and a team of scientists on to Mabu, I saw what had so excited them. Unlike most of the forests in southern Africa there was no sign of any logging or burning having taken place. The 7,000 hectares of Mount Mabu are in pristine condition.

“This is an island of evergreen forest in a sea of savannah,” Professor Branch said. What that means is that the animals inside Mabu have had very little interaction with other groups of forest dwellers. …

That now translates into many of the species being new to science.

Declaring a new species is a process fraught with the fear of being proved wrong. But Mabu’s scientists are quietly confident that, in the last year, they have found more than 10 new species. “Whatever we see we pick up, and there’s a high probability that it’s going to be a new species,” Dr Bayliss said.

His own specific passion is butterflies. I watched his eclectic team, which included a 75-year-old enthusiast, as they scoured the forest canopy for new discoveries. They weren’t disappointed. Four new butterflies are set to be confirmed, with one of them likely to bear Dr Bayliss’s name. (06/12/09)

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BBC Space Science — Seven shuttle astronauts (photo to the right) will blast off from Florida on Saturday to join up with six colleagues already on the International Space Station (ISS). The orbiting platform has never before had so many individuals moving around it at the same time.

The Endeavour ship is scheduled to lift off at 0717 local time (1117 GMT). The flight-time to the ISS is just three days. The union some 350km above the planet will be a significant moment for the space station project as it nears the end of its construction phase.

The 13 spacefarers represent all the major station partners, with seven from the US, two each from Russia and Canada, and one each from Europe and Japan. Their ages range from 37 to 55; all but one are men.

Although 13 people have been in space at the same time once before, in 1995, they were not all in the same place.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” said Endeavour commander Mark Polansky, a veteran of two prior spaceflights. “We know it’s going to be challenging with 13 people aboard.”

His ship is visiting the station to deliver the final components of Japan’s Kibo laboratory. During five spacewalks, an external platform will be added to the lab which will enable those experiments to be performed that require materials to be exposed to the harsh environment of space. Endeavour astronauts also have to fit equipment to the exterior of the platform such as batteries and a spare space-to-ground antenna.

In addition, Endeavour will deliver a new crew member (Tim Kopra) to the ISS and bring back another (Koichi Wakata) who has lived aboard the platform for more than three months.

Endeavour is making the 127th space shuttle flight, and the 29th to the station. Seven more flights to the station remain before the shuttles retire in 2010. (06/12/09)

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New York Times Science — The second annual World Science Festival, a five-day extravaganza of performances, debates, celebrations and demonstrations, including an all-day street fair on Sunday in Washington Square Park, began with a
star-studded gala tribute to the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson at Lincoln Center Wednesday night. …

Photo: Yo-Yo Ma, with giant ants, honoring the biologist Edward O. Wilson, on backdrop, at Alice Tully Hall on Wednesday. …

Over the next three days the curious will have to make painful choices: attend an investigation of the effects of music on the brain with a performance by Bobby McFerrin, or join a quest for a long-lost mural by Leonardo Da Vinci at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Learn about the science behind “Battlestar Galactica” with actors from the show, or head to one of various panels of scientists and philosophers arguing about free will, alternate universes, science and religion, time and what it means to be human?

On Saturday there’s a chance to play naturalist, scouring a pair of New York parks under professional guidance in what Dr. Wilson calls a “BioBlitz” for flora, fauna and “all things crawly.” On Sunday you can get your hands in a variety of experiments at the street fair, including a “CSI”-style crime scene.

The festival is the brainchild of Brian Greene, a Columbia University physicist and mathematician and best-selling author, and his wife, Tracy Day, a former producer for ABC. They say they thought of the project after attending a science festival in Genoa, Italy, and being impressed by seeing science bubbling through the streets and cafes.

The idea is to mix up art, theater and music with the inevitable talking heads and professional interlocutors like Charlie Rose or Alan Alda, who can keep the discussion moving and down to earth, in order to
entice an audience that didn’t know it was interested in science. Ms. Day likes to describe the strategy this way: “Bring them in for the art and have them leave with science.”

Last year more than 100,000 people stood in block-long lines to watch dancers reinterpret string theory, Oliver Sacks interpret his own failing eyesight, scientists debate quantum mechanics and what it means to be human. There were about 46 events, including a daylong street fair in Washington Square Park. In the end everything sold out, the organizers said.

“We learned that there is an untapped hunger in the public for a way into science.” said Dr. Greene, who recently sat down with Mr. Alda (who was accompanied by a ghost Twitterer), to discuss the festival. (06/12/09)

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