This Anopheles gambiae mosquito is obtaining a blood meal as it feeds on a human host.



An preliminary malaria vaccine has been found to be safe, to generate an immune system response and to offer protection against malaria infection in healthy adults, according to the results of an early-stage clinical trial published Thursday in the journal Science.

The vaccine, known as PfSPZ Vaccine, was developed by scientists at Sanaria, Inc., of Rockville, Maryland. The clinical evaluation was conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, and their collaborators at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the Naval Medical Research Center, both in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Malaria is transmitted to humans by the bite of an infected mosquito. After the bite occurs, infectious malaria parasites in the immature, sporozoite stage of their life cycle first travel to the liver, where they multiply, and then spread through the bloodstream, at which time symptoms develop.

The PfSPZ Vaccine is composed of live but weakened sporozoites of the species Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly of the malaria-causing parasites.
 
“The global burden of malaria is extraordinary and unacceptable,” said Anthony S. Fauci,  National Institutes of Health director. “Scientists and health care providers have made significant gains in characterizing, treating and preventing malaria. However, a vaccine has remained an elusive goal. We are encouraged by this important step forward.”

The Phase I trial, which took place in Bethesda, received informed consent from and enrolled 57 healthy adult volunteers ages 18 to 45 years who never had malaria. Of these, 40 participants received the vaccine and 17 did not. To evaluate the vaccine’s safety, vaccinees were split into groups receiving two to six intravenous doses of PfSPZ Vaccine at increasing dosages. After vaccination, participants were monitored closely for seven days. No severe adverse effects associated with the vaccine occurred, and no malaria infections related to vaccination were observed.

Based on blood measurements, researchers found that participants who received a higher total dosage of PfSPZ Vaccine generated more antibodies against malaria and more T cells, a type of immune system cell, specific to the vaccine.

To evaluate whether and how well the PfSPZ Vaccine prevented malaria infection, each participant, the vaccinees as well as the control group that did not receive vaccine, was exposed to bites by five mosquitoes carrying the P. falciparum strain from which the PfSPZ Vaccine was derived. This controlled human malaria infection procedure, a standard process in malaria vaccine trials, took place three weeks after participants received their final vaccination. Participants were monitored as outpatients for seven days and then admitted to the  National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, where they stayed until they were diagnosed with malaria, treated with anti-malarial drugs and cured of infection, or shown to be free of infection.

The researchers found that the higher dosages of PfSPZ Vaccine were associated with protection against malaria infection. Only three of the 15 participants who received higher dosages of the vaccine became infected, compared to 16 of 17 participants in the lower dosage group who became infected. Among the 12 participants who received no vaccine, 11 participants became infected.

“In this trial, we showed in principle that sporozoites can be developed into a malaria vaccine that confers high levels of protection and is made using the good manufacturing practices that are required for vaccine licensure ,” said Robert A. Seder, chief of the Cellular Immunology Section of the Vaccine Research Center and principal investigator of the trial.

An important challenge in the continued development of PfSPZ Vaccine is that the vaccine currently is administered intravenously, a rare delivery route for vaccines. Previous studies at lower doses have shown that the more common injections into the skin and under the skin) did not yield as strong an immune response as the intravenous route.

“Despite this challenge, these trial results are a promising first step in generating high-level protection against malaria, and they allow for future studies to optimize the dose, schedule and delivery route of the candidate vaccine,” said Seder.

A number of follow-up studies are planned, including research to evaluate the vaccine’s different dose schedules, possible protection against other Plasmodium strains and the durability of protection.



Opinions on Snowden mixed,
U.S. interviews indicate


The White House has cancelled a planned summit meeting next month between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin. One of the reasons given was Moscow’s decision to grant asylum to an American who leaked top secret information.
 
The American, former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, is wanted in the United States on espionage charges after he leaked information about how the super-secret National Security Agency monitors U.S. and international telephone and Internet traffic. 
 
Snowden is now living in Russia after spending more than a month in the transit area of a Moscow airport. But his plight has triggered a discussion on the issue of treason.
 
In other words, is Snowden a traitor?
 
For John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the issue is clear.
 
“I do consider him a traitor. He has taken vital secrets of the United States, undoubtedly given some to China, given some to Russia. Russia and China may have them all now for what we know,” Bolton said.
 
“Some people say well that’s not really espionage, because espionage only takes place when you give it to one government,” Bolton continued. “I’d have to say making it public is worse than espionage, because then you have 190 governments that learn America’s secrets.”
 
David Barrett, a national security expert teaching at Villanova University, sees Snowden in a different light.
 
“I would regard him as a defector. There are a lot of different names that are used to describe him: whistleblower, leaker,” Barrett said. “Sure, I’d call him a defector. This is a very serious event for a person who works for an intelligence agency, who signs documents agreeing to keep things secret. I think it is a very serious thing to reveal those secrets, to leave this country and reveal these secrets.”
 
Snowden received this temporary asylum visa to Russia Aug. 1.

The U.S. Justice Department has filed criminal charges against Snowden: theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person.
 
Snowden tries to justify his actions by saying one of the reasons he leaked the documents was to start a discussion about the U.S. government’s secret spying programs.
 
Stephen Vladeck, an expert on national security law at American University College of Law, says those discussions would not be happening now if it weren’t for Snowden’s action.
 
“I think it’s a good thing that they are happening,” he said. “At the end of the day, if someone asks me ‘is Edward Snowden a criminal or a whistleblower,’ I would say ‘yes’ – he’s both. And that’s okay.
 
“And that goes to the larger point that we have to keep in mind that sometimes doing what’s legal and doing what’s right are not necessarily the same thing,” said Vladeck.
 
Aziz Huq, an expert on national security issues and constitutional law at the University of Chicago, says one thing is for sure: Edward Snowden is not a traitor.
 
“We have a very precise definition of treason in American law,” Huq says. “And it’s a definition that is embedded, not just in a federal statute. It is actually embedded in the Constitution. And it refers to a very narrow class of intentional forms of aiding an enemy in times of war.”
 
For example, says Huq, those Americans who fought with the Nazi army were traitors and there were treason prosecutions and executions in World War II.
 
“The last person who was indicted for treason, a chap named Adam Gadahn, who is an American, who went to join al-Qaida and serve as one of their English language spokesperson. There is a very strong argument for indicting him under the treason statute because he has gone and aided, in an affirmative and intentional way, an enemy of the United States. Those conditions and those cases are nothing like Snowden’s case.”
 
Huq says there is something extraordinarily inappropriate about using the word traitor with respect to somebody who has disclosed information that is unquestionably relevant to the public debate.”
 
A majority of Americans seem to agree with Huq. A recent Quinnipiac University poll says 55 percent of those questioned believe Snowden is a whistleblower, but not a traitor.



Clinton and baseball star
among those getting medals


A former U.S. president, a Hall of Fame baseball star, a country music icon and a television personality are among 16 recipients of the U.S. Medal of Freedom.

The medal is the country's highest civilian honor, created 50 years ago by the late president John F. Kennedy.

This year's recipients include former president Bill Clinton, who established the Clinton Foundation following his second term.  Other recipients include former baseball superstar Ernie Banks, who played for the Chicago Cubs for 19 years, Loretta Lynn, the country music superstar known as the "Coal Miner's Daughter" for her tales of poverty and heartbreak, and entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey, who is best known for creating "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

President Barack Obama says these individuals and the other recipients dedicated their lives to enriching ours by sharing their talents with the world.

The Medal of Freedom will be handed out later this year at a White House ceremony.

The other recipients include former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, the late U.S. senator from Hawaii Daniel Inouye, Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, Republican senator from Indiana and arms control advocate Richard Lugar, Mexican-born Nobel prize-winning chemist Mario Molina, the first U.S. female astronaut Sally Ride, the late civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, Cuban-born jazz superstar Arturo Sandoval, former college basketball coach Dean Smith, writer and women rights activist Gloria Steinem, minister and early civil rights campaigner C.T. Vivian and Patricia Wald, the first female judge appointed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.



Goats plow into vegetation
at famous Washington site


While members of the U.S. Congress are on vacation this month, work continues around the U.S. Capitol. Not by Congressional aides, though. A herd of goats was set loose in the historic Congressional Cemetery to clean up a snarly environmental problem.

The goats came to eat. And, they didn’t lose any time, says handler Brian Knox, who owns a company called Eco-Goats.

“They will eat until midnight and get up and eat at three o’clock in the morning and have something else to eat too," said Knox.

The historic Congressional Cemetery dates to 1807.  While it’s not officially connected to Congress, the graveyard is the final resting place of some 200 congressmen and their families, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, composer John Philip Sousa and even a circus performer who was killed by a tiger when in town.

The goats are here to remove the overgrown thicket that blocks a view of the Anacostia River on one end of the property, says Paul Williams, president of the Association for the Preservation of the Historic Congressional Cemetery.  
 
“We brought in the goats because we have an invasive species problem in our wooded area, not in our burial area. But those vines tend to kill the big mature trees and in turn the trees tend to fall on our historic headstones," said Williams.

Williams says that goats are a more ecologically friendly alternative to removing the vines by hand cutting, chemicals or heavy equipment.

Knox has 60 goats on the job.

“So the perfect place to put the goats is where you don’t have anything you want to save, because they are pretty indiscriminate. I refer to them as herbicide with legs," he said.

The animals are confined behind electric and chain link fences to keep them off the actual burial ground, which is neatly mowed.  Paul Williams says while the goats aggressively consume the vegetation non-stop, they are also attracting visitors to the historic landmark.    

“It really is bringing people. We’re treating it as an education program to bring people into this beautiful cemetery," he said.

Knox expects his goats to clear the nearly one hectare plot in about a week. By the time Congress gets back in town, they will be long gone and on to another job.



Ingredient in herbal medicine
appears to be cancer cause


A plant compound in herbal medicines and used for thousands of years may be responsible for urinary tract cancers and kidney damage common in Asia.

Known as aristolochic acid, the ingredient is found in the plant Aristolochia, commonly known as birthwart.  The vine is used to treat arthritis, gout and inflammation as well as a weight loss remedy.

Researchers studied the genetic makeup of 19 cancer patients exposed to aristolochic acid and seven patients with urinary tumors but no known exposure to the herbal medicine.

Scientists were able to directly tie the protein fingerprints to urinary tumors in patients in the aristolochic acid group.

They found 753 mutations in the toxin-exposed group compared to just 91 abnormalities in the tumors of cancer patients who did not take the herbal remedies.

Bin Tean Teh of National Cancer Center Singapore is co-author of a study that identified the genetic protein mutations in toxin-exposed participants.
 
Teh, in an interview with the journal Science Translation Medicine, said aristolochic acid was a powerful carcinogen or cancer-causing substance.

“This carcinogen caused actually more mutations than say smoking-related lung cancer or even the ultraviolet radiation associated skin cancer, melanoma,” said Teh.

Health officials in many Western countries have long suspected that Aristolochic acid is a carcinogen, and banned its import.

The medicinal vine has also been found to be an environmental hazard, contaminating wheat fields in the Balkans, where it grows naturally.

Teh’s article, along with a second study on the cancer-promoting genetic mutations of aristolochic acid, are published in Science Translational Medicine.



NASA has eye on Europa
for possible robotic landing


The U.S. space agency, NASA, is looking at the idea of sending a robot lander to Jupiter’s ice-covered moon, Europa, figuring it’s the most likely place in the solar system to harbor extraterrestrial life.

That idea has now taken a big step forward with a NASA study group report detailing what a trip to Europa would be like. Europa presents a tantalizing target because scientists believe there’s a large ocean of liquid water under the icy crust, water that could be home to some kind of life.

"If, one day, humans send a robotic lander to the surface of Europa, we need to know what to look for and what tools it should carry," said Robert Pappalardo, the study's lead author, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

"There is still a lot of preparation that is needed before we could land on Europa, but studies like these will help us focus on the technologies required to get us there, and on the data needed to help us scout out possible landing locations,” he said. “Europa is the most likely place in our solar system beyond Earth to have life today, and a landed mission would be the best way to search for signs of life."

Some key questions posed in the paper included what makes up the reddish freckles and cracks that have been viewed on Europa’s surface.

While scientists have gotten detailed imagery from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the mid-to-late 1990s, they need better photos to provide a better context about Europa’s composition.

Another question is about the geological activity on the moon. Before a landing could be made, scientists would need to know how active the surface is and “how much rumbling is there from the periodic gravitational squeezes” from Jupiter.

"Landing on the surface of Europa would be a key step in the astro-biological investigation of that world," said Chris McKay, a senior editor of the journal Astrobiology, who is based at NASA Ames Research Center in California. "This paper outlines the science that could be done on such a lander. The hope would be that surface materials, possibly near the linear crack features, include biomarkers carried up from the ocean."

The paper appears in the journal Astrobiology.



Human-like computer setup
takes a different approach


IBM researchers have announced the development of a breakthrough software system designed to operate a new generation of cognitive computers that work like the human brain.

IBM said the new system is “inspired by the function, low power, and compact volume of the brain.” It could lead to an entire new era of computing with machines that learn and interact more naturally with people.

They say new machines could mimic the brain’s ability for perception, action and cognition.

The company says the long-term goal is to “build a chip system with ten billion neurons and hundred trillion synapses, while consuming merely one kilowatt of power and occupying less than two liters of volume.”

“Architectures and programs are closely intertwined and a new architecture necessitates a new programming paradigm,” said  Dharmendra S. Modha, a senior manager on the project.

While modern computing systems excel at number crunching, the amount of data produced these days is pressing the limits of this old way of processing data. The brain, which operates more slowly than some modern-day computers is, however, much better at recognizing, interpreting and acting on patterns while using only the amount of energy required to light a 20 watt light bulb, while only occupying the space of a two-liter bottle.

This new ecosystem, according to IBM, is “tailored for a new class of distributed, highly interconnected, asynchronous, parallel, large-scale cognitive computing architectures.”

For example, the human eye takes in over a terabyte of data per day, interpreting the most important data for, say, navigation. Systems built from these new chips could lead to low power, lightweight eyeglasses to help the visually impaired.

To date, the most well-known cognitive computer is IBM’s Watson, which famously defeated two human competitors on a popular television quiz show.

These innovations are being presented at The International Joint Conference on Neural Networks in Dallas, Texas.


Obama will meet the press
to discuss Putin and terrorism


President Barack Obama will hold a formal news conference today. The decision to cancel a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and terrorism threats that forced the temporary closure of U.S. embassies, are likely to dominate the event.

It will be Obama's first opportunity to speak publicly about his decision to cancel the summit with President Putin.  They were to have met in Moscow before next month's G-20 summit in St. Petersburg.

In explaining the decision, the White House has said that despite cooperation with Russia in several areas, there was not enough progress on key issues in the bilateral agenda to make a summit constructive.

Russia's decision to grant temporary asylum to Edward Snowden, the admitted leaker of information about U.S. electronic surveillance programs, was a factor as the White House put it, in the summit decision.

Obama will have a chance to expand on that when he addresses the media in the East Room.

Thursday, spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. position remains that Snowden should be returned to the United States to face espionage charges. 

With U.S. and Russian officials going ahead with Washington talks on Friday, Carney said Snowden is just one of many issues on which to engage with Russia in a relationship marked by challenges.

"We still do have cooperation with the Russians on number of important issues, and we will continue to engage with the Russians as we are tomorrow to try to make progress on those and other areas.  But there is no question that we have run into some obstacles on some important issues," said Carney.

Other issues include the political crisis in Egypt, and the civil war in Syria, including the status of arms and aid flows to Syrian rebels, in addition to domestic issues such as his push for comprehensive immigration reform.

President Obama is also certain to be asked about the terrorism threat warning that forced the temporary closure of nearly two dozen U.S. embassies across the Middle East, North Africa and other areas.

Asked how long the current level of vigilance would have to be maintained,  Obama's spokesman declined to provide a time line, but stressed the very specific nature of the threat.

"This was not the ongoing, generalized reality that we have groups and individuals out there in the world who want to do harm to the United States, this was more specific than that," said Carney.

On the diplomatic rebuke to President Putin, White House spokesman Carney was asked whether President Obama and President Putin might still meet at some point in St. Petersburg during the G20 summit.

Since Russia is hosting the summit, Carney said it is likely the two will meet, but not in any formal bilateral session.

Friday's news conference comes a day before Obama and his family are due to depart Washington for a nine-day vacation in Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.