News in perspective

Upfront–

“There’s absolutely no benefit

from taking these supplements,

and I would suggest people avoid

them,” says Christian Gluud of

Copenhagen University Hospital

in Denmark, who co-led the study.

Supplement manufacturers

are claiming many of the trials

included people who were already

sick. “You can’t expect an

antioxidant supplement to reverse

20 years of chronic smoking,”

says Judy Blatman of the Council

for Responsible Nutrition in

Washington DC, which represents

US supplement makers.

Gluud stands by his results,

however. “Seventy per cent of the

participants were healthy,” he says.

BEWARE all ivory poachers.

The cops are on your case, thanks

to a DNA test that reveals the

geographical origin of ivory.

Developed using comparisons

of elephant DNA from different

regions, the test can theoretically

pinpoint to between 500 and

1000 kilometres the origin of

a particular sample. In its first

use, the test showed that a huge

cache of 532 tusks, seized in

Singapore in 2002, came mainly

from Zambia, not from multiple

IT HAS been called the last

marine frontier. Now seabed

that was hidden for thousands

of years below Antarctic ice sheets

has been visited. Nearly barren

in some places, in others it is

teeming with life.

The unexplored zone was

covered by the Larsen A and B ice

shelves until they collapsed in

1995 and 2002 respectively.

Researchers led by Julian Gutt,

based at the Alfred Wegener

Institute for Polar and Marine

Research in Bremerhaven,

Germany, sent down a remotely

operated submersible to capture

video footage and collect samples.

Where the ice shelves scraped

along the bottom, the seabed is

bare. In other areas, animals and

plants are thriving and seem to

be long established. In particular,

there are a lot of sea cucumbers,

normally found at depths below

2000 metres but now discovered

living above 850 metres . Among

potentially new species are two of

octopus and 15 new shrimp-like

amphipods. One amphipod is

10 centimetres long, putting it

among the biggest ever seen in

Antarctica. Gutt also says his team

has evidence of the past presence

of a rare “cold seep” – a seabed

vent that would have spewed

methane and sulphides and

supported life.

“The break-up of these ice

shelves opened up huge, near-

pristine portions of the ocean

floor, sealed off from above for

at least 5000 years,” he says.

The mission was the first

of 13 planned for International

Polar Year, which was formally

launched on Thursday.

WASTING money on vitamin

supplements that may not work is

one thing. But what if those same

pills actually harmed you? That’s

the question raised by an analysis

of 68 clinical trials of vitamin

supplements involving almost a

quarter of a million participants.

It found people taking vitamin

A supplements are 16 per cent more

likely to die than those not taking

supplements within the trial

period, while beta-carotene and

vitamin E supplement-takers are

at 7 and 4 per cent greater risk (The

Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 297, p 842).

Confusion reigns among defence analysts

over Iran’s claim to have launched a

rocket to a sub-orbital altitude. The

country’s existing 2000-kilometre-range

tactical missiles are already known to

be capable of reaching that altitude,

so analysts can’t understand why Iran

should brag about it. Might it mean that

an attempted orbital mission failed?

On Sunday, the Iranian state

broadcaster’s website said Iran had

“fired a missile able to reach space”.

This was later revised to say the rocket

“would rise to about 150 kilometres”

before landing by parachute. Low-Earth

orbit starts at 200 kilometres.

“My guess is that this is a cobbled-

together explanation for something that

didn’t quite work,” says Rob Hewson,

a rocket specialist at Janes, the UK-based

SPACE SHOT OR POLITICAL STUNT?military publisher. He doubts Iran’s

1970s-era rocket technologies are up

to orbital standards and suspects it may

be “grandstanding”.

”We haven’t any confirmation that

this launch took place at all,” says Rick

Lehner of the US Missile Defense Agency

in Washington DC. If Iran is getting

closer to orbital technology, he says,

“that would demonstrate proper staging

of rocket motors” and the capability to

launch a long-range missile.

Andrew Brookes of the International

Institute for Strategic Studies in London

thinks Iran merely “lobbed an old

missile up in the air to prove it can”

in the face of the 21 February UN Security

Council deadline requiring it to cease

its nuclear enrichment programme,

a deadline that Iran ignored.

–The elephant’s address is in its DNA–

“The break-up of these ice shelves opened up huge portions of the ocean floor”

–Iran likes to show off its rockets–

Life that ice hid Supplement irony

Tracing poachers

6 | NewScientist | 3 March 2007 www.newscientist.com

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