Scientists rebuild a heart
by introducing new cells


Scientists using human stem cells have rebuilt a working mouse heart after stripping it of all of its original cells.

A team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine first removed all of the cells from a mouse heart, a process they say takes 10 hours. The remaining scaffold of the heart was then repopulated with human-induced pluripotent stem cells. The cells were made into multipotential cardiovascular progenitor  cells. The cells were harvested from fibroblast cells from a small human skin biopsy.

“This process makes MCPs, which are precursor cells that can further differentiate into three kinds of cells the heart uses, including cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells,” said senior researcher Lei Yang, assistant professor of developmental biology at the Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “Nobody has tried using these MCPs for heart regeneration before. It turns out that the heart’s extracellular matrix – the material that is the substrate of heart scaffold – can send signals to guide the MCPs into becoming the specialized cells that are needed for proper heart function.”

The newly rebuilt heart began to beat at a rate of 40 to 50 beats per minute within a few weeks, the researchers said. While promising, they say more work must be done “to make the heart contract strongly enough to be able to pump blood effectively, and to rebuild the heart’s electrical conduction system correctly so that the heart rate speeds up and slows down appropriately.”

In the future, it might be possible to take a simple skin biopsy from a patient to derive personalized MCPs that can be used to seed a biologic scaffold and regenerate a replacement organ suitable for transplantation, Yang said.

“One of our next goals is to see if it’s feasible to make a patch of human heart muscle,” he added. “We could use patches to replace a region damaged by a heart attack. That might be easier to achieve because it won’t require as many cells as a whole human-sized organ would.”

In the United States, one person dies of heart disease every 34 seconds, and more than 5 million people suffer from heart failure, meaning a reduced ability to pump blood, said Yang.

“Scientists have been looking to regenerative medicine and tissue engineering approaches to find new solutions for this important problem,” Yang said. “The ability to replace a piece of tissue damaged by a heart attack, or perhaps an entire organ, could be very helpful for these patients.”

The findings were published in Nature Communications.


Manning gives an apology
in effort to reduce sentence


Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army soldier convicted of leaking 750,000 secret documents to the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, has apologized for his actions in a bid to get a lighter sentence after being convicted of espionage.  The sentencing phase of Manning's case is under way at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Bradley Manning broke his silence Wednesday, taking the stand, pulling out a piece of paper, and reading a statement in which he apologized for the leaks, which he said hurt people and the United States.

Manning, now 25 years old, told the judge he understood but did not appreciate the broader effects of his actions, which he said he believed were going to help people.  Manning said he understands he must pay a price for what he did, but hopes to one day move on and go to college.  He asked the judge to give him an opportunity to prove himself a good person.

His statement followed testimony by a military psychiatrist who said Manning suffers from a series of emotional problems including a gender identity disorder and symptoms of autism.  The psychiatrist also said Manning suffered problems related to fetal alcohol syndrome resulting from his mother's heavy drinking while she was pregnant with him.

Manning was convicted last month of leaking U.S. diplomatic cables, military communications, and video material while serving as an army intelligence analyst in Iraq in what is described as the largest leak of secret U.S. government files in history.

He was acquitted of the more serious charge of aiding the enemy, which carried a possible life sentence.  He still faces 90 years in prison on the charges for which he was convicted.    

Throughout the court martial, which began in early June, the defense has tried to present Manning not as a traitor but as a whistleblower who sought to expose what he believed was wrongdoing by the U.S. government. 

Manning's lawyers hope his apology and other testimony during the sentencing phase will help convince the judge that he was naïve, immature, well meaning, and suffering from conditions beyond his control.  

The judge is expected to read Manning's sentence in the coming days.


Flying lab helps researchers
keep track of climate change


Researchers studying global climate change have taken to the skies in a flying laboratory that is at the forefront of scientific discovery.

The lab is a Gulfstream V corporate jet that has been modified. In place of the luxury seats for business executives are banks of computers and dozens of weather instruments.  
 
"Many of them are mounted in locations around the fuselage," said Al Cooper, chief scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who helped develop the flying laboratory.

Some of the atmospheric chemistry measurements inside the airplane allow scientists to gather data as they fly through the air. Others measure remotely through the airplane windows. 

The flying lab is called HIAPER, which stands for High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research. HIAPER climbs high, to 16,000 meters, and travels far, more than 11,000 kilometers without refueling. Scientists helped craft the design and then lobbied to get it funded. 
 
“The community was really asking for these kind of capabilities for several reasons: one was the altitude capabilities they wanted to reach the upper parts of the atmosphere," Cooper said. "The other was long-range capabilities, to be able to conduct studies that are global in scope, so that we can monitor questions like what is the carbon dioxide distribution around the world.” 

The $81.5 million project was funded by the National Science Foundation. It is managed and operated by the national center in Boulder, Colorado. 

“The main thing this gives us is the ability to measure in place," Cooper said. "There are some remote sensors that the plane carries as well to be able to extend those measurements above and below the plane as it flies along. So the instruments that it carries measure along the flight track and they measure with high resolution, much higher than you can get in any other way.”

Among the instruments taking measurements in real time are dropsondes packed in epoxy-hardened cotton tubes and jettisoned from the aircraft.  Center engineer Nick Potts says they record pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed.

During Tropical Storm Gaston, researchers used HIAPER to analyze disturbances that showed the potential to develop further.
“As the sondes falls, it is measuring these parameters," he said. "It is telemetering them or radioing them out much like your cell phone talks to a base station, where instead of just talking to the base station, we are talking to the plane.”

From a seat behind a computer, Potts sends a message to an automated dropsondes launcher, which looks a lot like a vending machine in the rear of the craft. The tubes are stacked in slots waiting for his command.

“The aircraft, we can actually fly to where we are interested in going," Potts said. "So often times these things are used in hurricanes. So we fly to the hurricane, fly around the hurricane and then pick spaces where we want to launch them. What their real observational purpose is for it to help with prediction models for hurricanes and where they land.” 

Potts says better predictions can ultimately save lives. Among HAIPER’s recent projects was a mission to study plumes of dust and pollutants blown from Asia, and flights to analyze severe weather across Colorado’s Front Range and the adjacent Great Plains.


Chile copper mine workers
embark on surprise strike


Workers began a surprise strike at the world's largest copper mine, Chile's Escondida, Wednesday morning to demand improved working conditions and pay.
 
The work stoppage at Escondida, controlled by global miner BHP Billiton, was initially planned to last 24 hours, but the timeframe will be evaluated in the coming hours, union representative Marcelo Tapia said.
 
All operations have been halted, said Tapia, adding the union's 2,500 workers had dropped their tools. "It's due to a variety of issues that the company has not been responding to."
 
He added that workers at BHP's Spence and Cerro Colorado mines also joined the labor action, which kicked off at 8 am local time
 
BHP and Rio Tinto, which own 30 percent of Escondida, declined to comment.
 
Escondida produced 1.1 million tons of copper last year, about 20 percent of the output from No. 1 copper producer Chile.
 
The mine's union stunned the copper market in 2011 by staging a two-week work stoppage, sending the mine's output tumbling.
 
Workers clinched a new contract agreement in January, at the time easing fears of labor unrest at the mine.
 
Labor action has been galvanized in mining powerhouse Chile as unions seek to get their issues heard ahead of the November presidential election.


Vietnam coffee industry
in chaos over huge debts


Desks are empty, the office silence broken only by a handful of staff chit-chatting or playing on cellphones. It's another slow day at the headquarters of Vinacafe, a state-owned firm once the vanguard of Vietnam's coffee export boom.
 
“There's no one here for you to talk to,” a receptionist said when asked who was in charge at the Vietnam National Coffee Corporation in Ho Chi Minh City, the hub of an industry that produces 17 percent of the world coffee output.
 
The bosses and managers of Vinacafe have either quit or were not at work that day, like most of the 80-plus staff the company says are employed there, according to the company Web site.
 
Vietnam is the world's biggest producer of the strong-flavored robusta beans, used for instant coffee, and has experienced a decade of solid growth which has seen coffee exports reach $3 billion a year.
 
But its coffee industry is now in crisis, plagued by tax evasion, mismanagement, insolvency, high interest rates and a credit squeeze. Many coffee operators are trapped with crippling debt and banks are reluctant to lend them more money.
 
Vietnam's credit crunch is blamed largely on state-owned enterprises that borrowed big during the economic boom of the past decade and squandered cash on failed investments, which has left banks crippled by one of Asia's highest bad-debt ratios.
 
Of the 127 local coffee export firms that operated in Vietnam a year ago, 56 have ceased trading or shifted to other businesses after taking out loans they can't repay, according to industry reports.
 
Few coffee exporters are willing to talk about their financial problems. In Communist Vietnam, people are often reluctant to speak publicly about sensitive issues like politics and business, especially to foreign media.
 
But Nguyen Xuan Binh is one major coffee exporter who admits he's in deep trouble.
 
His firm, Truong Ngan, is wilting from $28 million of debt owed to seven banks from which it borrowed at interest rates of 20 percent. With barely any cash flow, its only collateral is its stock of coffee beans, enough to fill 200 small trucks.
 
“Now the banks want to come and repossess all that we have, our 4,000 tons of coffee,” Binh said.
 
Vietnam's 2013/2014 coffee crop is forecast to be a bumper harvest, around 17 million to 29.5 million 60-kg bags, based on a poll, adding to a global oversupply and pressuring coffee prices which have lost about 10 percent since October.
 
But only a few firms, like Vietnam's top coffee exporter Intimex Group, which accounts for a quarter of exports and made $1.2 billion in revenue in 2012, will benefit from this year's crop. The rest will be lucky to survive, with a government assessment of the coffee industry painting a bleak picture.
 
The value of non-performing loans or debts in the sector likely to go unpaid stands at 8 trillion dong ($379 million), or 60 percent of all coffee industry loans, said a July circular signed by the Deputy Agriculture Minister Vu Van Tam.
 
“No one wants to admit they're going bankrupt,” said one coffee trader in Ho Chi Minh City, who like many of his competitors, asked that his name be withheld. “Once they go bankrupt, they can never borrow from banks again and their businesses are finished.”
 
Even in the coffee-rich central highlands of Daklak, export firms are fast going bankrupt. “Only half have survived this past year,” a local government trade official said.
 
Struggling coffee exporters blame local banks for their predicament, citing high interest rates issued to lure depositors due to high inflation in 2010-2011, which has in turn curbed the economy to its slowest pace in 14 years.
 
Many overseas coffee dealers say Vietnamese exporters dug themselves into a hole by overzealous borrowing for expansion and bungled attempts to play the global robusta futures market, which rallied to a three-year peak around $2,600 a ton in early 2011 but then plunged to the current level below $2,000.
 
Unscrupulous middlemen have also played a part in the crisis, cheating exporters by selling them weighted coffee bags and inferior beans which are difficult to sell or fetch lower prices.
 
“What I found out is the market there is quite dirty. Middlemen often sell poor beans to exporters. They even put metal bolts in the bags to outweigh them,” said Joyce Liu, an investment analyst at Phillip Futures in Singapore.
 
In an attempt to support its biggest currency earner among agriculture exports, the government last month extended the loan repayment period for coffee firms from 12 to 36 months.
 
But traders said the move was more aimed at helping troubled banks, by preventing coffee exporter debts being classified as non performing loans.
 
Banks say they have no ban on further lending to coffee exporters, with rates still high at 10 to 16.5 percent, but admit they are reluctant to do so.
 
“We don't have any barrier with lending to coffee companies, but we have to be very careful with bad debt. The coffee business is now very unstable so it's not on our preference list,” said a deputy manager at a major commercial lender in Ho Chi Minh City, who asked not to be named.
 
The Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (Vicofa) has sought government approval to stockpile 300,000 tons, a fifth of the country's output, to try to boost prices, and offer exporters soft loans to finance purchases of beans from farmers.
 
But the last such stockpiling effort in 2010 flopped, with only 60,000 of the 200,000-ton target stored because of logistical glitches and slow disbursement of funds.
 
For cash-strapped exporters, selling beans to repay debts is more important than stockpiling for potential price gains.
 
But domestic prices are trading near a 16-month trough below 40,000 dong a kg ($1.90) after benchmark London futures sank to a 32-month low on concerns over rising global output. Prices below 40,000 dong usually deter farmers from selling.
 
“Even top exporters are now having problems,” said a dealer in Singapore who trades Vietnamese beans. “I don't think they are going to buy 300,000 tons. How do you expect companies which are suffering from heavy losses to find cash?”
 
While a prolonged crisis in Vietnam could curb exports, second-largest robusta producer Indonesia may seize the opportunity to sell more beans as the country's production is forecast to hit an all time high this crop year.
 
Without a dramatic increase in global consumption, top producer Brazil and some other producing countries could lift world inventory to a five-year high in the 2013/2014 crop year, keeping further downward pressure on prices.
 
“There may be a revamp of the entire coffee industry, and I think those who immediately benefit from the situation in Vietnam are Brazil and Indonesia,” said Liu.
 
Domestic traders believe the only solution to Vietnam's coffee crisis rests with the government and banks that are able to lend, but say the banks are shunning coffee exporters or offering them interest rates they can't handle.
 
“I'm sure those struggling companies can recover if they get support from banks. But it's unlikely they'll get it,” said the director of a leading firm, who asked not to be identified by name.


White House butler movie
is about more than race


"The Butler" carries the signature of acclaimed director Lee Daniels, whose film "Precious" won an Oscar. Now, he tells the story of the civil rights movement through the eyes of a White House butler as he served eight U.S. presidents.

In "The Butler," Cecil Gaines is the unassuming servant who epitomizes race relations in 1950s America. Forrest Whitaker offers a layered interpretation of Cecil.

"At that time, to have a position where you're working in the White House was a big deal economically speaking, socially speaking. But then there are also those who look at people in the service industry as uncle Toms, or people who are servants,
 Whitaker said. "You can serve without being servile, and I think there is a very big difference between the two things."

Cecil doesn’t fight for social change but he unwittingly affects it by serving eight presidents.

But Cecil is not as sure-footed at home as he is at the White House. His wife, Gloria, resents his long hours and turns to alcohol and other temptations. His eldest son, Louis, a civil rights activist, looks down at his father.

Oprah Winfrey offers an Oscar-worthy performance as Gloria.

"I think of all of the men and women who served either as butlers or chefs, cooks, maids, janitors, and I think that the 'aha'  is the grace and nobility that it took to do that, to hold your head up every day, to build a family, and build a life that supported you and your community," she said. "I just have a greater sense of pride for that man, those men and that time."

Martin Luther King, played by Nelson Ellis, tells Louis that a butler or a maid, although perceived as subservient, is in many ways subversive without knowing it.  Cecil Gaines was certainly that. His character is based on Eugene Allen, the real White House butler, who witnessed major events while serving as the White House butler for 34 years.

But the film is ultimately about America, says filmmaker Daniels.

"It's a civil rights story, but it is a father and son story," he said. "And the father and son story transcends race."

The film has a healing effect. And, while it serves as a reminder of racial struggle and injustice, it also celebrates Americans' ability to overcome.

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About 10 percent of the U.S. population suffers from dyslexia, a condition that makes learning to read difficult. Dyslexia is usually diagnosed around second grade, but the results of a new study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology could help identify those children before they even begin reading, so they can be given extra help earlier.

The study, done with researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital, found a correlation between poor pre-reading skills in kindergartners and the size of a brain structure that connects two language-processing areas.

Previous studies have shown that in adults with poor reading skills, this structure, known as the arcuate fasciculus, is smaller and less organized than in adults who read normally. However, it was unknown if these differences cause reading difficulties or result from lack of reading experience.

“We were very interested in looking at children prior to reading instruction and whether you would see these kinds of differences,” says John Gabrieli, professor of health sciences at the university's McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

Gabrieli and Nadine Gaab, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, are the senior authors of a paper describing the results in the Aug. 14 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Lead authors of the paper are MIT postdocs Zeynep Saygin and Elizabeth Norton.

The new study is part of a larger effort involving approximately 1,000 children at schools throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. At the beginning of kindergarten, children whose parents give permission to participate are assessed for pre-reading skills, such as being able to put words together from sounds.

“From that, we’re able to provide — at the beginning of kindergarten — a snapshot of how that child’s pre-reading abilities look relative to others in their classroom or other peers, which is a real benefit to the child’s parents and teachers,” Ms. Norton said.
The researchers then invite a subset of the children to come to MIT for brain imaging. The Journal of Neuroscience study included 40 children who had their brains scanned using a technique known as diffusion-weighted imaging, which is based on magnetic resonance imaging.

This type of imaging reveals the size and organization of the brain’s white matter — bundles of nerves that carry information between brain regions. The researchers focused on three white-matter tracts associated with reading skill, all located on the left side of the brain.

When comparing the brain scans and the results of several different types of pre-reading tests, the researchers found a correlation between the size and organization of the arcuate fasciculus and performance on tests of phonological awareness — the ability to identify and manipulate the sounds of language.

Phonological awareness can be measured by testing how well children can segment sounds, identify them in isolation, and rearrange them to make new words. Strong phonological skills have previously been linked with ease of learning to read. “The first step in reading is to match the printed letters with the sounds of letters that you know exist in the world,” Ms. Norton said.

The researchers also tested the children on two other skills that have been shown to predict reading ability — rapid naming, which is the ability to name a series of familiar objects as quickly as you can, and the ability to name letters. They did not find any correlation between these skills and the size or organization of the white-matter structures scanned in this study.

Brian Wandell, director of Stanford University’s Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, says the study is a valuable contribution to efforts to find biological markers that a child is likely to need extra help to learn to read.

“The work identifies a clear marker that predicts reading, and the marker is present at a very young age. Their results raise questions about the biological basis of the marker and provides scientists with excellent new targets for study,” says Wandell, who was not part of the research team.

The left arcuate fasciculus connects Broca’s area, which is involved in speech production, and Wernicke’s area, which is involved in understanding written and spoken language. A larger and more organized arcuate fasciculus could aid in communication between those two regions, the researchers say.

Gabrieli points out that the structural differences found in the study don’t necessarily reflect genetic differences; environmental influences could also be involved. “At the moment when the children arrive at kindergarten, which is approximately when we scan them, we don’t know what factors lead to these brain differences,” he says.

The researchers plan to follow three waves of children as they progress to second grade and evaluate whether the brain measures they have identified predict poor reading skills.

“We don’t know yet how it plays out over time, and that’s the big question: Can we, through a combination of behavioral and brain measures, get a lot more accurate at seeing who will become a dyslexic child, with the hope that that would motivate aggressive interventions that would help these children right from the start, instead of waiting for them to fail?” Gabrieli said.

For at least some dyslexic children, offering extra training in phonological skills can help them improve their reading skills later on, studies have shown.