7 November 2009 | NewScientist | 7

farming nations (Norway, the UK, Chile and Canada) of everything from making feed to transporting young fish ( Environmental Science

and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es9010114 ). Feed – mainly soy, fish and animal protein – had by far the most impact.

Norway, which has farmed salmon the longest, scored best on nearly all fronts, largely because it wastes very little fish food. If everyone matched Norway, says Pelletier, the industry’s greenhouse emissions would be 10 per cent lower, though they are already half that of either pork or beef production.

Cassini takes a dive

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft got up close and personal with Saturn’s moon Enceladus on 2 November, when it made its deepest ever plunge into the icy plumes the moon emits . The manoeuvre might reveal complex organic molecules that hint at life.

Plumes of ice particles and water vapour shoot out from long fissures, nicknamed “tiger stripes”, at Enceladus’s south pole. The plumes may originate from underground liquid water, a potential habitat for life.

Cassini has previously flown at least 260 kilometres from the surface, cautiously keeping its distance from the densest part of the plumes. Mission controllers decided to make it dive right in after they determined that the ice grains would not pose a threat if the spacecraft made a slow approach. They used the gravity of Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan, to steer Cassini onto a trajectory that took it into the plumes just 100 kilometres above Enceladus’s south pole.

Analysis of the data could reveal “something completely unexpected”, says John Spencer of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “We’re going somewhere we have never been before.”

Climate imperative

IF THE world fails to act soon on climate change, “preserving security and stability even at current levels will become increasingly difficult”. That’s the blunt message of a statement released in Washington DC last week by 10 high-ranking military officials from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the US.

The group, which makes up the military advisory council of the Institute for Environmental Security in The Hague, the Netherlands, is calling on governments to produce an

“ambitious and equitable” international agreement at the Copenhagen climate talks in December (see page 12).

“Environmental security and climate change in particular are now issues which threaten

world security and peace,” says Brigadier General Wendell King of the US Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

“Preserving stability will become increasingly difficult if the world fails to act on climate change”

IF YOU want to do something well,

do it yourself. Newly industrialised

countries of the “south” are

developing cheap treatments for

neglected tropical diseases, filling

the void left by western drug firms,

which focus on diseases of the rich .

The world’s poorest people suffer

from tropical diseases such as rabies,

hookworm and river blindness. Yet

few treatments have been developed

by big pharma: of 1556 drugs

approved between 1975 and 2004,

only 21 were for such diseases.

Now the first inventory of drugs

developed by small southern

companies to tackle diseases of the

poor reveals a further 62 treatments

for tropical diseases, with 28 already

on sale, including a cholera vaccine.

Many are only sold locally, and so

could be exported, says Peter Singer

of the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre

for Global Health in Toronto, Canada,

and co-author of the inventory in

Health Affairs (DOI: 10.1377/

hlthaff.28.6.1760). “It’s a new vein

of gold that hasn’t been fully mined.”

Singer admits that donated drugs

from western companies may have

helped tackle some neglected

diseases, but only on an ad hoc basis.

In contrast, southern companies are

developing tailored and affordable

products. To illustrate potential

savings, Singer cites a hepatitis B

vaccine developed in India , which

though not strictly for a tropical

disease, costs just 28 cents per shot

compared with $25 in the west .

Southern comfort for world’s poor

–In need of treatment–

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EN

TO

RF

INN

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AN

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60 SECONDS

Lunar landing prizeThe $1 million winner of the 2009

Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander

Challenge is Masten Space Systems

of Mojave, California. Entrants had

to fly an uncrewed rocket for 180

seconds and land on a surface similar

to the moon’s. Masten’s landing was

the most accurate, but rival teams

cried foul after it was given an extra

day to fly following technical hitches.

US lifts HIV travel banThe US will lift the ban on admitting

visitors with HIV early next year, two

decades after it was first imposed.

UNAIDS has welcomed the move,

and is urging the six countries that

still ban HIV-positive visitors,

including China, South Korea

and Ukraine, to follow suit.

Lab-grown corneasCorneas grown from human

stem cells could be used to screen

cosmetics, sparing rabbits from

eye-damaging tests. So says the

International Stem Cell Corporation

of Oceanside, California. The firm

uses donated human eggs to create

stem cells, which are then grown

into spheres of corneal tissue.

Climate falloutAfrican nations suspended several

meetings at the final round of

pre-Copenhagen climate talks in

Barcelona, Spain, on Monday. They

were protesting against the targets

industrial nations have set to limit

global warming, which the nations

say are insufficient.

Separate sharksGreat white sharks in Australia

and California may look the same,

but they are only distant cousins.

Salvador Jorgensen of Stanford

University in California and his team

tracked great whites in the eastern

Pacific and analysed their genes to

show they are a genetically discrete

population. They suggest the sharks

arrived in American waters over

12,000 years ago and have been

evolving separately since.

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