Study Finds Most Pork Contaminated

Nov 27, 2012 6:24pm

A sample of raw pork products from supermarkets around the United States found that yersinia enterocolitica, a lesser-known food-borne pathogen, was present in 69 percent of the products tested, according to a study released today by Consumer Reports.

The  bacteria  infects more than 100,000 Americans a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but  for every case that is confirmed with a laboratory test, about 120 more cases escape diagnosis. Symptoms can include fever, cramps and bloody diarrhea.

For its sample, Consumer Reports included the same pork products millions of Americans buy every day at their supermarkets. The study included 148 pork chops and 50 ground pork samples from around the United States.

In the samples tested, 69 percent tested positive for yersinia and 11 percent for enterococcus, which can indicate fecal contamination that can lead to urinary-tract infections. Salmonella and listeria, the more well-known bacterium, registered at 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

“The results were concerning,”  Urvashi Rangan, one of the authors of the report, told ABCNews.com. “It’s hard to say that there was no problem.  It shows that there needs to be better hygiene at animal plants. Yersinia wasn’t even being monitored for.”

In a written statement, the Pork Producer’s Council questioned the methods used by Consumer Reports, saying the number of samples tested, 198, did  ”not provide a nationally informative estimate of the true prevalence of the cited bacteria on meat.”

Despite the findings, Rangan said  it’s good to know that the bacteria can be killed by cooking the pork properly and by being vigilant about cross-contamination.

Pork cuts should be cooked to 145 degrees, while ground pork needs to reach a temperature of 160 degrees to kill the bacteria.

“Anything that touches raw meat should go into the dishwasher before touching anything else,” Rangan said. ”Juices from raw meat that touch the counter should be washed with hot soapy water.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture  said the findings “affirm that companies are meeting the established guidelines for protecting the public’s health.

“USDA will remain vigilant against emerging and evolving threats to the safety of America’s supply of meat, poultry and processed egg products, and we will continue to work with the industry to ensure companies are following food safety procedures in addition to looking for new ways to strengthen the protection of public health,” the department said in a statement.

ABC News’ Dr. Anita Chu contributed reporting. 

SHOWS: Good Morning America World News

Read More..

Lake life survives in total isolation for 3000 years

It is seven times as salty as the sea, pitch dark and 13 degrees below freezing. Lake Vida in East Antarctica has been buried for 2800 years under 20 metres of ice, but teems with life.

The discovery of strange, abundant bacteria in a completely sealed, icebound lake strengthens the possibility that extraterrestrial life might exist on planets such as Mars and moons such as Jupiter's Europa.

"Lake Vida is a model of what happens when you try to freeze a lake solid, and this is the same fate that any lakes on Mars would have gone through as the planet turned colder from a watery past," says Peter Doran of the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is co-leader of a team working in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica where Vida is situated. "Any Martian water bodies that did form would have gone through this Vida stage before freezing solid, entombing the evidence of the past ecosystem."

The Vida bacteria, brought to the surface in cores drilled 27 metres down, belong to previously unknown species. They probably survive by metabolising the abundant quantities of hydrogen and oxides of nitrogen that Vida's salty, oxygen-free water has been found to contain.

Co-research leader Alison Murray of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, is now investigating this further by growing some of the extracted cells in the lab. "We can use these cultivated organisms to better understand the physical or chemical extremes they can tolerate that might be relevant to other icy worlds such as Europa," she says.

Surprise composition

Murray and her colleagues were surprised to find so much hydrogen, nitrous oxide and carbon in the water. They speculate that these substances might originate from reactions between salt and nitrogen-containing minerals in the surrounding rock. Over the centuries, bacteria denied sunlight may have evolved to be completely reliant on these substances for energy. "I think the unusual conditions found in the lake have likely played a significant role in shaping the diversity and capabilities of life we found," she says.

But the existence of life in Lake Vida does not necessarily increase the likelihood that life exists in much older, deeper lakes under investigation in Antarctica, most notably Vostok and Ellsworth, which are 3 kilometres down and have been isolated for millions rather than thousands of years.

"It doesn't give us clues about whether there's life in Vostok or Ellsworth, but it says that under these super-salty conditions, life does OK," says Martin Siegert of the University of Bristol, UK, and leader of an expedition to Ellsworth which set off on 25 November. "We'll be drilling down 3 kilometres into the lake," he says.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1208607190

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

Read More..

Malaysian Islamic party urges Elton John show ban

KUALA LUMPUR: An Islamic political party on Tuesday urged the government of predominantly Muslim Malaysia to ban a concert by Elton John, saying the openly gay British pop icon promotes "immoral" values.

John, who is popular in Malaysia, is scheduled to perform on Thursday at a resort outside the capital Kuala Lumpur.

"This concert must be cancelled. Artists who are involved in gay and lesbian activities must not be allowed to perform in Malaysia as they will promote the wrong values," Nasrudin Hassan Tantawi, chief of the youth wing of the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), told AFP.

The legendary singer-songwriter, who is on the Asian leg of a worldwide tour, performed in Malaysia last November to a sell-out crowd despite a similar protest from the Islamic party.

The 65-year-old singer was married to his Canadian partner David Furnish, 49, in a civil ceremony in England in 2005. On Christmas Day 2010, they became parents to a child conceived using a donor egg and born to a surrogate mother.

Nasrudin said PAS did not plan any street protests to oppose the concert, but "will instead demand that authorities cancel the immoral performance to protect our society from social degradation".

On Monday, John courted controversy during a performance in China by dedicating his Beijing show to Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei.

PAS often protests concerts by Western acts, saying they promote promiscuity and corrupt the minds of youngsters.

The party is a key member of an opposition alliance led by Anwar Ibrahim that hopes to unseat Malaysia's long-ruling coalition in elections that must be called by mid-2013.

Homosexuality has long been taboo in Malaysia, where 60 per cent of the population is Muslim and sodomy is a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

- AFP/ck

Read More..

Bing's top searches reveal iPhone 5 as No. 1 news story

Bing reveals the top searches for 2012.

Believe it or not but the No. 1 most searched for news story on Bing this year has been the launch of Apple's iPhone 5. In fact, the debut of this device beat out the 2012 presidential election, the Olympics, and Superstorm Sandy, which followed respectively for the next top searches. The Honey Boo Boo reality TV show came in at No. 5.

Microsoft released its data on the top searched terms for 2012 today. The lists include information on travel destinations, fashion labels, celebrities, consumer electronics, fast food chains, and more. The tallies of the data are based on the aggregation of billions of user search queries.

Besides Internet users' typical celebrity fascination with Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, and Rihanna, technology also made a splash in searches this year. Not only did the
iPhone 5 top the news stories, but the launch of the Kindle Fire HD and Facebook's IPO also made the list at places 9 and 10.

Another category Bing rated was the most searched social networks -- and it's no surprise that Facebook came in No. 1 with its more than 1 billion users. Falling in line next came Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. As far as consumer electronics, the iPhone 5 also won this category with the
iPad, Samsung Galaxy S3,
Kindle, and the iPad 3 coming in next. Even with a launch late in the year, Windows 8 also made the list at No. 10.

"People's fascination with the latest smart phones, tablets and games consoles remains unfettered in 2012, with products from Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Samsung topping the list," Bing wrote in a blog post.

Read More..

Space Pictures This Week: Space "Horse," Mars Rover, More

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  High Horse

  Photograph by Greg Parker, Your Shot
  

  The Horsehead Nebula rears its pretty head in a November 17 photograph submitted to National Geographic's Your Shot photo community.

  Taken from the New Forest Observatory in the United Kingdom, the image shows how the nebula's horse head is part of a larger cloud of dust. Situated about 1,500 light-years away, the Horsehead Nebula is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against another, brighter nebula, according to NASA.

  (See "'Soccer Ball' Nebula Discovered by Amateur Astronomer.")

  Published November 26, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Green Lit

  Photograph by Jeremy La Zelle, My Shot
  

  Green curtains of aurora stretch over the sky in the Alaska Arctic in a picture submitted to National Geographic's My Shot on November 17.

  "The constantly changing kaleidoscope of colors are reminiscent of a fireworks display—but without sound," photographer Jeremy La Zelle wrote with his submission.

  "All we hear is the quiet peaceful sounds of a freezing Alaska night."

  (See "Aurora Pictures: Best Fall Photos of Northern Lights.")

  Published November 26, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Martian Vista

  Image courtesy Caltech/NASA
  

  NASA's Curiosity rover snapped this picture after moving 83 feet (25 meters) eastward on November 18—the 102nd Martian day, or sol, of its mission to study whether life once existed on Mars.

  The view shows Yellowknife Bay, part of the Glenelg area of the Gale Crater, which is located near the base of a three-mile-high (five-kilometer-high) mountain rich with layered sediment deposits laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

  (Read more about the Gale Crater.)

  Published November 26, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Gilded Mountains

  Image courtesy ESA

  The sands of the Sahara appear like golden brush strokes around the Tibesti Mountains in a March 2012 satellite image recently released by the European Space Agency.

  Located in Chad and Libya, the mountains' highest peak is Emi Koussi-pictured above as a circular structure in the lower-right portion of the dark area.

  Lava flows can be seen extending from the westernmost volcano, Toussidé.

  (See volcano pictures.)

  Published November 26, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Photograph by Quang Nguyen Luong and F. Motte, Herschel SPIRE/ESA

  Published November 26, 2012

  
  

');

---

 $'+ doc.ngstore_price_t +'';
html += ' $'+ doc.ngstore_saleprice_t +'';
} else {
html += ' $'+ doc.ngstore_price_t +'';
}
html += '

';

$("#ecom_43331 ul.ecommerce_all_img").append(html);




o.totItems++;

}// end for loop
} // end if data.response.numFound != 0

if(o.totItems != o.maxItems){
if(o.defaultItems.length > 0){
o.getItemByID(o.defaultItems.shift());
} else if(o.isSearchPage && !o.searchComplete){
o.doSearchPage();
} else if(!o.searchComplete) {
o.byID = false;
o.doSearch();
}
}// end if
}// end parseResults function

o.trim = function(str) {
return str.replace(/^\s\s*/, '').replace(/\s\s*$/, '');
}

o.doSearchPage = function(){
o.byID = false;

var tempSearch = window.location.search;
var searchTerms ="default";
var temp;

if( tempSearch.substr(0,7) == "?search"){
temp = tempSearch.substr(7).split("&");
searchTerms = temp[0];
} else {
temp = tempSearch.split("&");
for(var j=0;j 0){
o.getItemByID(o.defaultItems.shift());
} else if(o.isSearchPage){
o.doSearchPage();
} else {
o.doSearch();
}

}// end init function

}// end ecommerce object

var store_43331 = new ecommerce_43331();





store_43331.init();

Read More..

Co. Paying Just $1,200 for Each Factory Fire Life

A company that makes clothes for Sean Combs' clothing brand ENYCE and other U.S. labels reassured investors that a factory fire that killed 112 people over the weekend would not harm its balance sheet, and also pledged to pay the families of the dead $1,200 per victim.

In an announcement Monday, Li & Fung Ltd., a middleman company that supplies clothes from Bangladesh factories to U.S. brands, said "it wishes to clarify" that the deadly Saturday night blaze at the high-rise Tazreen Fashions factory outside Dhaka "will not have any material impact on the financial performance" of the firm.

The fire broke out on the ground floor of the nine-floor building as hundreds of workers were upstairs on a late-night shift producing fleece jackets and trousers for the holiday rush at American stores, including Wal-Mart, according to labor rights groups. Fire officials said the only way out was down open staircases that fed right into the flames. Some workers died as they jumped from higher floors.

PHOTOS from the factory fire.

After reassuring investors about its financial health, Li & Fung's statement went on to express "deepest condolences" to the families of the dead, and pledge the equivalent of $1,200 to each family. The company also said it would set up an educational fund for the victims' children.

Bangladesh Garment Factory Fire Leaves 112 Dead Watch Video

As reported on "ABC World News with Diane Sawyer" earlier this year, Bangladesh has become a favorite of many American retailers, drawn by the cheapest labor in the world, as low as 21 cents an hour, producing clothes in crowded conditions that would be illegal in the U.S. In the past five years, more than 700 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in factory fires.

READ the original ABC News report.

WATCH the original 'World News' report on deadly factories.

"[It's] the cheapest place, the worst conditions, the most dangerous conditions for workers and yet orders continue to pour in," said Scott Nova, executive director of Worker Rights Consortium, an American group working to improve conditions at factories abroad that make clothes for U.S. companies. Nova said the fire was the most deadly in the history of the Bangladesh apparel industry, and "one of the worst in any country."

Today, U.S. companies extended condolences to the families of the victims, and scrambled to answer questions about the dangerous factory that had been making their clothes.

Wal-Mart inspectors had warned last year that "the factory had violations or conditions which were deemed to be high risk," according to a document posted on-line.

Yet Wal-mart clothing continued to be made at the factory, according to workers groups who found clothing with Wal-Mart's private label, Faded Glory, in the burned out remains along with clothing for a number of other U.S. labels, including ENYCE, Dickies and a brand associated with Sears.

Wal-Mart confirmed Monday that its clothes were being made at the Tazreen factory. Even though Wal-Mart is famed for maintaining tight control over its supply chain, the company said its clothes were being made at the plant without its knowledge.

Read More..

New vaccine may give lifelong protection from flu

Flu season has come early this year in parts of the northern hemisphere, and many people are scrambling to get their annual vaccination. That ritual may someday be history.

In a first for any infectious disease, a vaccine against flu has been made out of messenger RNA (mRNA) – the genetic material that controls the production of proteins. Unlike its predecessors, the new vaccine may work for life, and it may be possible to manufacture it quickly enough to stop a pandemic.

We become immune to a flu strain when our immune system learns to recognise key proteins, called HA and NA, on the surface of the flu virus. This can happen either because we have caught and fought off that strain of flu, or because we received one of the standard vaccines, most of which contain killed flu virus.

Flu constantly evolves, however, so those proteins change and your immunity to one year's strain does not extend to following year's. For this reason, a new vaccine has to be produced each year. Most flu vaccines are grown in chicken eggs or cell culture, a process that takes at least six months.

This time lag means that the World Health Organization has to predict months in advance which viruses are most likely to be circulating the following winter. Drug companies then make a new vaccine based on their recommendations. Of course, these recommendations can be wrong, or worse, when a completely new flu virus causes a pandemic, its first waves can be over before any vaccine is ready.

Freeze-dried vaccine

Now there could be a solution. The mRNA that controls the production of HA and NA in a flu virus can be mass-produced in a few weeks, says Lothar Stitz of the Friedrich-Loeffler Institute in Riems Island, Germany. This mRNA can be turned into a freeze-dried powder that does not need refrigeration, unlike most vaccines, which have to be kept cool.

An injection of mRNA is picked up by immune cells, which translate it into protein. These proteins are then recognised by the body as foreign, generating an immune response. The immune system will then recognise the proteins if it encounters the virus subsequently, allowing it to fight off that strain of flu.

Similar vaccines have been made of DNA that codes for flu proteins. But DNA vaccines seem unlikely ever to be approved, because of worries that they might be incorporated into human DNA, disrupting gene regulation.

Safety advantage

That is not a risk with mRNA, which cannot become part of the genome. For this reason, "RNA probably has advantages over DNA as concerns safety," says Bjarne Bogen of the University of Oslo, Norway, who is working on a DNA vaccine for flu.

Trial RNA vaccines have failed, however, after being destroyed rapidly in the blood. But CureVac, a company in Tübingen, Germany, has found that a protein called protamine, binds to mRNA and protects it. It has an mRNA vaccine against prostate and lung cancer tumours in human trials.

"Amazingly, mRNA vaccines have never been really tested against infectious diseases," says Stitz. His team used CureVac's process to make durable mRNA vaccines for common human flu strains, as well as H5N1 bird flu. In mice, ferrets and pigs, the vaccines rapidly elicited protective levels of antibodies.

Two-pronged immunity

They also induced cell-mediated immunity, which is an immune response that does not involve antibodies but activates blood cells such as killer T-cells to destroy specific pathogens. Vaccines made only of the proteins do not elicit this type of response. Having both types of immunity clears infection faster, and can also protect against flu for longer, as cell-mediated reactions still recognise flu viruses after they have evolved enough to evade antibodies.

A true universal vaccine for flu, however, would induce immunity to proteins that are the same in all flu viruses, but which flu normally hides from the immune system. Stitz's team made an mRNA vaccine to one such protein from an ordinary seasonal flu. The vaccine not only protected animals from that flu strain, but also from H5N1 bird flu.

Vaccines that work against all flu strains could eventually be given once in childhood, like vaccines for other diseases. Meanwhile, Stitz is also working on an mRNA vaccine for rabies. "We think that mRNA would provide an excellent platform against viral, bacterial and fungal diseases," he says.

Journal reference: Nature Biotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/nbt.2436

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

Read More..

Cambodian ex-king to be cremated on February 4

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia's beloved former monarch Norodom Sihanouk, who died aged 89 last month, will be cremated on February 4 following an elaborate ceremony, Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Monday.

The cremation will be preceded by a procession on February 1 that will see Sihanouk's coffin carried from the royal palace in Phnom Penh to a funeral pyre in a nearby park, the premier said in a speech on national radio.

"It will be a big ceremony," Hun Sen said.

More than a million mourners are expected to line the streets for the lavish procession, which will be broadcast live on television, government spokesman Khieu Kanharith told AFP.

"After the procession, the body will stay at the (cremation) site for three days to give people a chance to pay their respects," he said.

A tall cremation pyre is already under construction near the royal residence.

Sihanouk, who abdicated in 2004 after steering Cambodia through six decades marked by independence from France, civil war, the murderous Khmer Rouge regime and finally peace, died of a heart attack in Beijing on October 15.

The death of the popular royal, who is currently lying in state at the palace, plunged his nation into deep mourning. Hundreds of thousands filled the capital's boulevards when his body returned home from China last month.

Out of respect for the late monarch, the government has cancelled this week's Water Festival celebrations, an annual event that usually draws millions of visitors to the capital to enjoy dragon boat racing, fireworks and concerts.

"It's not appropriate when the royal body lies inside the royal palace for us to laugh happily outside the palace," Hun Sen said.

- AFP/de

Read More..

Facebook uses posters to push employees to switch to Android

Poster in Facebook headquarters encouraging employees to switch from iPhone to Android handsets.

(Credit:
Josh Constine/TechCrunch)

Borrowing a page from war posters of yesteryear, Facebook is using posters of its own to encourage employees to dump their iPhones for
Android devices.

After it was reported in August that Facebook employees were being "nudged, cajoled, and even ordered to give up their iPhones for Android devices," the social networking giant appears to be stepping up its campaign. Posters encouraging employees to "switch today" have begun appearing on the walls at the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, according to a TechCrunch report.

While Facebook used to give its employees primarily iPhones, the aim of the Android effort is apparently to improve functionality for the app, which has been criticized as slow, thin on useful features, and a drain on resources. The aim of this so-called dog-fooding, in which employees are encouraged to use their own products, would be to improve the Facebook experience on the smartphone platform with the largest marketshare; recent data shows Android controlling 68.1 percent of the smartphone market, while Apple's iOS nabbed only 16.9 percent.

One such poster gracing Facebook's walls included a large graph displaying IDC data that predicted Android would control about twice as much of the smartphone market as iPhone in 2016. Both posters encouraged employees to contact Facebook's help desk immediately to arrange to have their device switched to Android.

CNET has contacted Facebook for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

When asked about the posters by TechCrunch's Josh Constine, a Facebook spokesperson said: "We don't encourage one device over another. We let employees choose."

News of the posters emerged as Facebook released new versions of its app for iOS and Android. However, while Facebook trumpeted that the iOS app was "rebuilt from the ground up," the Android app update was relatively minor.

Read More..

Distant Dwarf Planet Secrets Revealed

Orbiting at the frozen edges of our solar system, the mysterious dwarf planet Makemake is finally coming out of the shadows as astronomers get their best view yet of Pluto's little sibling.

Discovered in 2005, Makemake—pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh after a Polynesian creation god—is one of five Pluto-like objects that prompted a redefining of the term "planet" and the creation of a new group of dwarf planets in 2006. (Related: "Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule.")

Just like the slightly larger Pluto, this icy world circles our sun beyond Neptune. Researchers expected Makemake to also have a global atmosphere—but new evidence reveals that isn't the case.

Staring at a Star

An international team of astronomers was able for the first time to probe Makemake's physical characteristics using the European Southern Observatory's three most powerful telescopes in Chile. The researchers observed the change in light given off by a distant star as the dwarf planet passed in front of it. (Learn how scientists found Makemake.)

"These events are extremely difficult to predict and observe, but they are the only means of obtaining accurate knowledge of important properties of dwarf planets," said Jose Luis Ortiz, lead author of this new study and an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, in Spain.

It's like trying to study a coin from a distance of 30 miles (48 kilometers) or more, Ortiz added.

Ortiz and his team knew Makemake didn't have an atmosphere when light from the background star abruptly dimmed and brightened as the chilly world drifted across its face.

"The light went off very abruptly from all the sites we observed the event so this means this world cannot have a substantial and global atmosphere like that of its sibling Pluto," Ortiz said.

If Makemake had an atmosphere, light from the star would gradually decrease and increase as the dwarf planet passed in front.

Coming Into Focus

The team's new observations add much more detail to our view of Makemake—not only limiting the possibility of an atmosphere but also determining the planet's size and surface more accurately.

"We think Makemake is a sphere flattened slightly at both poles and mostly covered with very white ices—mainly of methane," said Ortiz.

"But there are also indications for some organic material at least at some places; this material is usually very red and we think in a small percentage of the surface, the terrain is quite dark," he added.

Why Makemake lacks a global atmosphere remains a big mystery, but Ortiz does have a theory. Pluto is covered in nitrogen ice. When the sun heats this volatile material, it turns straight into a gas, creating Pluto's atmosphere.

Makemake lacks nitrogen ice on its surface, so there is nothing for the sun to heat into a gas to provide an atmosphere.

The dwarf planet has less mass, and a weaker gravitational field, than Pluto, said Ortiz. This means that over eons of time, Makemake may not have been able to hang on to its nitrogen.

Methane ice will also transform into a gas when heated. But since the dwarf planet is nearly at its furthest distance from the sun, Ortiz believes that Makemake's surface methane is still frozen. (Learn about orbital planes.)

And even if the methane were to transform into a gas, any resulting atmosphere would cover, at most, only ten percent of the planet, said Ortiz.

The new results are detailed today in the journal Nature.

Read More..