Comet ISON moving closer
and amateurs can see it now


Comet ISON was spotted and photographed by amateur astronomers as the highly-anticipated arrival of the icy space visitor nears.

"I photographed Comet ISON on September 15 using my 4-inch refractor," reports astrophotographer Pete Lawrence of Selsey in the United Kingdom.  "The comet's tail is nicely on view even through this relatively small instrument."

In Aquadilla, Puerto Rico, astronomer Efrain Morales Rivera saw the comet on Sept. 14 "rising above the canopy of the rain forest just minutes before sunrise. I used a 12-inch telescope," he said.

ISON, which will make its closest approach to the sun Nov. 28, has the potential to be a spectacular sight, depending on how it reacts to the solar heating it will receive.

NASA, the U.S. space agency, said that in mid-September the approaching comet was glowing like a star of 14th magnitude. That's dimmer than some forecasters expected.

"Certainly we would love it to be a couple of magnitudes brighter right now," said researcher Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C., "but it's doing just fine. I'd say it's still on course to become a very eye-catching object."

NASA cautions that comets are capable of fizzling at the last minute even after months of promising activity.

However, if ISON survives its brush with solar fire, it could be visible to the naked eye, NASA said.

Based on the latest images, internationally known comet expert John Bortle said "ISON appears likely to survive the inbound leg of its journey all the way to the Sun. It will probably brighten more slowly than all the early hype led the public to believe. Nevertheless, Comet ISON should very briefly become exceptionally bright, at least rivaling the planet Venus in the hours preceding its closest approach to the sun."

After Nov. 28, ISON will emerge from the sun's glare well-positioned for observers in the northern hemisphere. The comet's tail will likely be visible to the naked eye in both the morning and evening sky throughout December.

The last comet that did this sort of thing was Comet Lovejoy, which gave viewers in the Southern Hemisphere a view of the comet’s tail stretching halfway across the sky.


Hepatitis C cocktail  helps
eliminate disease in trial


At least 150 million people in the world have a chronic liver disease called hepatitis C, according to the World Health Organization.  Hepatitis C runs the gamut from a mild disease to a deadly one. While there's no vaccine to prevent it, researchers have found a combination of drugs that cures many difficult cases.

Researchers have been looking for ways to cure or prevent hepatitis C infections. Hepatitis C is contagious, and it can cause liver failure, liver cancer and death.

“Chronic hepatitis C infection is the leading reason why we have liver transplantation in the United States," said Anthony Fauci from the National Institutes of Health.

Fauci headed a study that focused on patients who lived in poor, urban areas, mostly African-American who already had liver disease. These patients were given a new drug, sofosbuvir, which has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

“Sofosbuvir is an agent that acts directly against the hepatitis C virus itself. It interferes with one of the enzymes that’s important for this virus to replicate itself," Fauci said.

The patients also received rivavirin, an older drug that fights hepatitis C. After receiving both drugs for a period of time, between 50 and 70 percent of the patients were cured. They did not have the hepatitis C virus in their blood.

The treatment excluded interferon, a drug frequently given by injection to combat the disease.

Interferon can cause serious effects that make it difficult to take, but the combination of drugs given in the trial had minimal side effects, and none of the patients dropped out.

Hepatitis C is considered a silent killer because most people don't know they have it until the disease is advanced. Catching it early prevents liver cancer and liver failure, and improves the odds of a cure, which is why Fauci says aggressive screening is as important as finding drugs that are easy to take.

“The idea of getting these people diagnosed and, if they need it, to get them into a treatment regimen is a very important public health imperative," he said.

The study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.


Vaccine targets commonality
of seasonal influenza viruses


Scientists have moved a step closer toward developing a universal vaccine against seasonal influenza, which can cause severe illness and occasionally death.  The concept for the vaccine grew out of a natural experiment during the 2009 global flu pandemic.

The process for developing a protective vaccine against the sometimes deadly viral infection is imperfect at best.  The problem, say experts, is that drug developers are always trying to stay one step ahead of the pathogen, as they attempt to predict which of a number of circulating viral strains is going to emerge as the dominant one that year.
 
Currently, vaccines contain proteins from several strains, designed to produce antibodies to stimulate a protective immune response.  But the virus continuously mutates, so a vaccine cocktail is not effective after one flu season.
 
Ajit Lalvani, the Imperial College of London chairman of infectious diseases says British researchers have drawn the blueprint for a universal vaccine against all varieties of influenza.
 
Instead of stimulating antibody production, Lalvani says the new vaccine would ramp up production of CD8 killer T cells, immune system cells that attack core influenza proteins, which are the same in all strains of the virus.
 
“Such a vaccine would induce T cells that would be able to recognize new viruses that have not even been identified yet.  In other words, future pandemic strains.  In that sense, it’s a universal vaccine.  And it will be different to existing vaccination where currently every year a new vaccine has to be developed, which is why we are always one step behind,” he said.
 
Lalvani and colleagues proved CD8 T cells could be used as the basis of a universal vaccine by recruiting some 350 staff members and students in the autumn of 2009 during the start of the flu pandemic.
 
The participants donated blood samples and were given nasal swabs.  Every three weeks, they answered questions about their symptoms.  If they fell ill and experienced any flu symptoms, they used the nasal swabs and sent them to a laboratory for testing.
 
Researchers found those with the most severe symptoms had the lowest T cell counts, while those who caught the flu, but had very mild or virtually no symptoms had the greatest number of CD 8 cells.
 
Lalvani says this natural experiment provided researchers with the ingredients to make a universal flu vaccine.
 
“Since we know what the components are, we know what T cell needs to be induced, we really have the design of the vaccine in hand.  It’s now a matter of producing it and carrying out clinical trials to confirm safety and effectiveness,” he said.
 
Lalvani predicts that a universal flu vaccine will become available within the next five years. An article on a universal influenza vaccine was published in the journal Nature Medicine.


China's luxury markets
thrive despite crackdown


China is cracking down on government excess and corruption. Advertisements for luxury goods are banned, and it’s riskier than ever for officials to flaunt their wealth. But even with the official focus on austerity and China’s slowing economy, Chinese demand for luxury goods continues.

In the rich port city of Shanghai, luxury shops are like convenience stores, there is one on almost every corner.  China is the world’s second largest market for luxury brands.  By 2015, McKinsey and Co. estimates the country will account for more than 20 percent of the global luxury market.

Luxury industry analyst Pablo Mauron said that despite the challenges, he is still upbeat about the future.

Mauron, who is the general manager China of the Digital Luxury Group said that while there are some signals of slowing, overall luxury brands remain confident about China.

“They keep investing massively in China, opening new stores. In Shanghai, we have new malls, new luxury malls opening every month almost,” Mauron said.

After years of breakneck expansion, China’s economic growth is hovering around 7.5 percent.  While that’s not bad and a level many countries would envy, it’s a sharp change in China after years of annual growth around and above 10 percent.

Embarrassed by corruption scandals that have highlighted the privilege of China’s ruling Communist Party elite, the government has banned lavish banquets, gift giving and ostentatious displays of wealth.

Yang Dacai, the former Chinese official who also is known as brother watch, was sentenced to 14 years in prison earlier this month. Yang’s corruption was exposed when a blogger noticed that he frequently wore expensive luxury watches and asked how he could afford the flashy timepieces on a civil servant's salary.

In late August, China announced it was expanding consumption taxes on even more luxury goods.

While these things could spell trouble for high-end retailers, Mauron said companies so far are not worried, and remain focused on the traditional challenges of luxury brands.

“The key challenge, no matter what the context, around some controversy over gifting with corruption or problems, issues with the taxes, I think the main challenge is still the same,” Mauron said. “Which is how to boost the local consumption and how to find some reasons to buy locally when the consumers know it is more expensive.”

Luxury goods are even more expensive in China than overseas, because of high import and consumption taxes. That has led many Chinese to shop abroad in Europe and the United States in search of better deals.

Such savvy shoppers are part of China’s growing affordable luxury sector. Ken Grant, the head of FDKG Insight, said the sector is one that brands are finding new ways to reach.

"Luxury brands are all trying very hard to find new customers, which means they need to innovate in what they do, they need to introduce new products,” said Grant. “Perhaps products that they did not traditionally have, they are expanding their lines and maybe introducing some lower price point products to attract new consumers.”

Demand is also growing for China’s own luxury goods. The wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping has helped boost interest in high-end Chinese fashion by wearing only locally designed brands on her trips overseas.

French luxury and retail group Kering has put its backing behind the jewelry company Qeelin. The brand combines Chinese culture with French craftsmanship. Chinese brand Shang Xia mixes modern design with Chinese culture, and its biggest investor is French luxury brand Hermes.

Without such backing, it is far more difficult for local brands to compete, Grant said. “They need to be around long enough and their challenge is whether they’ve got the stamina to do that or whether the people who invest the money are willing to invest for a long time,” he said.

Many traditional luxury brands took decades to establish their reputation. In a recent survey of the most sought after luxury products in China, only one Chinese brand was among the top 50. That jewelry brand, Chow Tai Fook, was founded in China back in 1929.


Aviation group seeking
U.N. carbon accord


Airlines Monday urged a U.N. aviation group to back a mandatory global framework to curb airline emissions, saying failure to reach a deal would revive threats of a trade war.
 
The International Air Transport Association, which represents some 200 airlines, said the United Nations' aviation agency could agree on a new system when its 191 states continue their assembly in Montreal this week.
 
The U.N.'s International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets standards for air travel, is under pressure to make headway toward resolving one of the worst aviation disputes in years, pitting the European Union against its trade rivals. The organization meets in full once every three years.
 
Greenhouse gas emissions from commercial flights are growing at a steep rate. The EU in 2011 came up with regulations to charge airlines for carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe over EU airspace, but it has suspended the scheme to allow opponents, led by China and the United States, to agree on a global plan to curb aviation emissions under U.N. auspices. The EU has threatened to put the scheme back into effect if there is no deal.
 
“If the assembly agrees what could be done from 2020, and what should be done in the meantime, I believe governments will work toward implementing that,” said Tony Tyler. He is director general of the International Air Transport Association.
 
Earlier this month, preliminary negotiations led to a breakthrough ahead of the full meeting, but diplomats say some countries, such as India, are still unhappy about the plan which would allow the EU to charge only for its own airspace.
 
China has suspended billions of dollars of orders of Airbus jets to protest the original European scheme.

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Red line shows the rain belt in northern summer. Blue is during the winter.

Rain belt migration seen
changing global conditions


As the planet continues to warm, a northward shift of Earth’s wind and rain belts could make a broad swath of regions drier, including the Middle East, American West and Amazonia, while making monsoon Asia and equatorial Africa wetter, says a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study authors base their prediction on the warming that brought Earth out of the last ice age, some 15,000 years ago. As the North Atlantic Ocean began to churn more vigorously, it melted Arctic sea ice, setting up a temperature contrast with the Southern Hemisphere where sea ice was expanding around Antarctica. The temperature gradient between the poles appears to have pushed the tropical rain belt and mid-latitude jet stream north, redistributing water in two bands around the planet.

Today, with Arctic sea ice again in retreat, and the Northern Hemisphere heating up faster than the south, history could repeat itself. “If the kinds of changes we saw during the deglaciation were to occur today that would have a very big impact,” said the study’s lead author, Wallace Broecker, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Marshaling climate data collected from around the world, from tree-rings, polar ice cores, cave formations, and lake and ocean sediments, Broecker and study coauthor, Aaron Putnam, a climate scientist at Lamont-Doherty, hypothesize that the wind and rain belts shifted north from about 14,600 years ago to 12,700 years ago as the northern hemisphere was heating up.

At the southern edge of the tropical rain belt, the great ancient Lake Tauca in the Bolivian Andes nearly dried up at this time while rivers in eastern Brazil slowed to a trickle and rain-fed stalagmites in the same region stopped growing.  In the middle latitudes, the northward advance of the jet stream may have caused Lake Lisan, a precursor to the Dead Sea in Jordan’s Rift Valley, to shrink, along with several prehistoric lakes in the western U.S., including Lake Bonneville in present day Utah.

Meanwhile, a northward shift of the tropical rains recharged the rivers that drain Venezuela’s Cariaco Basin and East Africa’s Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika. Stalagmites in China’s Hulu Cave grew bigger. Evidence for a stronger Asian monsoon during this time also shows up in the Greenland ice cores.

The process worked in reverse from about 1300 to 1850, the study authors hypothesize, as northern Europe transitioned from the relatively warm medieval era to a colder period known as the Little Ice Age.  Ocean circulation slowed, and sea ice in the North Atlantic Ocean expanded, the climate record shows. At the same time, rainfall declined in monsoon Asia, leading to a series of droughts that have been linked to the decline of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer civilization, China’s Ming dynasty and the collapse of kingdoms in present day Vietnam, Myanmar and Thailand.

In the southern hemisphere, the reconstruction of glacier extents in New Zealand’s Southern Alps suggests that the mid-latitudes may have been colder during medieval times, supporting the idea of a temperature contrast between the hemispheres that altered rain and wind patterns.

A similar migration of Earth’s wind and rain belts happens each year. During summer, the tropical rain belt and mid-latitude jet stream migrate north as the Northern Hemisphere heats up disproportionately to the south, with more continents to absorb the sun’s energy. As the Northern Hemisphere cools off in winter, the winds and rains revert south.

Sometimes the winds and rains have rearranged themselves for longer periods of time. In the 1970s and 1980s, a southward shift of the tropical rain belt, attributed to air pollution cooling the northern hemisphere, is thought to have brought devastating drought to Africa’s Sahel region. The tropical rain belt has since reverted back, and may be moving north, the study authors say, as suggested by a number of recent droughts, including in Syria, northern China, western U.S., and northeastern Brazil.

Consistent with the study, at least one climate model shows the tropical rain belt moving north as carbon dioxide levels climb and temperatures warm.  “It’s really important to look at the paleo record,” said Dargan Frierson, an atmospheric scientist at University of Washington whose modeling work supports the authors’ hypothesis. “Those changes were huge, just like we’re expecting with global warming.”

The study authors acknowledge that their hypothesis has some holes. In the past, changes in sea ice cover drove the temperature gradient between the two hemispheres while today rapidly rising industrial carbon emissions are responsible. So far, there is also no clear evidence that ocean circulation is increasing in the North Atlantic or that the monsoon rains over Asia are strengthening (though there is speculation that sulfate aerosols produced by burning fossil fuels may be masking this effect).

As air pollution in the Northern Hemisphere declines, temperatures may warm, creating the kind of temperature contrast that could move the winds and rains north again, said Jeff Severinghaus, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who was not involved in the study.

“Sulfate aerosols will probably get cleaned up in the next few decades because of their effects on acid rain and health,” he said.  “So Broecker and Putnam are probably on solid ground in predicting that northern warming will eventually greatly exceed southern warming.”