SMC Heads-Up: Viagra and babies, Callaghan Innovation, future of media

SMC Heads-Up: Viagra and babies, Callaghan Innovation, future of media

Issue 239 12-18 July 2013

Viagra growth boost for small babies?

Sildenafil (brand name Viagra), a drug better known for it role in treating erectile disfunction, is the star in a new clinical trial aiming to save unborn children.

Researchers from Gravida, a Centre of Research Excellence specialising in growth and development, are soon to begin a randomised controlled trial (the STRIDER trial) testing the Sildenafil as treatment for babies developing slowly in the womb - a condition called interuterine growth restriction (IUGR).

Laboratory and animal studies have shown the drug can promote blood flow to the placenta by relaxing blood vessels, allowing more nutrients and oxygen to reach the developing baby.

The SMC held a media briefing with Gravida researchers yesterday, which you can listen and view here.

"You'll be familiar with the effect in the male pelvis, where it increases blood flow to a particular part of the body," Gravida trial leader Prof Phil Baker said in the briefing.

"However, our thinking was that there would be a similar focused effect in the female pelvis."

Another Gravida researcher, Dr Katie Groom of Auckland University highlighted the health benefits we can expect if the trial shows sildenafil to be effective.

"If we can determine a therapy that enhances fetal growth, and we can therefore delay delivery, we will improve not only these babies' survival rates, but also reduce the many complications that follow and can lead to life-long disability or disease." she said.

In October the researchers will begin recruiting mothers experiencing severe IURG to take part in the randomised placebo controlled trial, hoping to gather 122 participants across Australia and New Zealand.

You can listen to the full briefing and read more about the study on the SMC website.

Nethui - future of media on the agenda

InternetNZ's annual conference had an earnest tone this year as recent US revelations of state surveillance of online activity were examined in the local context.

But away from the discussions about the GCSB Bill and the gathering of so-called "metadata", Nethui attendees were brainstorming around the future of public interest journalism, media convergence and data journalism.

Science Media Centre manager Peter Griffin co-facilitated two sessions - one on ways to increase the focus on data journalism in New Zealand media outlets and another on possible ways of facilitating and funding public interest and investigative journalism.

Griffin, who visited a number of data journalism teams in the US as part of a Fulbright Harkness Fellowship trip to the US earlier this year, said data journalism was crucial as newsrooms attempted to tap open data from public sources and leaked records for insights into society.

"Every newsroom I visited in the US has a team of data journalists and we have seen the rise of the news app, where the collation and display of the data literally becomes the story. It is early days for data journalism in New Zealand, but it will become integral to a lot of the stories and investigations journalists do."

Keitha Boothe, programme leader of the NZ Open Government Data and Information programme at Land Information New Zealand, showcased a number of innovative uses for freely-available government data and data.govtnz, where requests can be lodged for access to sets of data.

In another session, freelance writer and former Herald senior feature writer Chris Barton outlined the changing priorities in the media as longform journalism comes under pressure and Alastair Thompson outlined his vision for the Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism, a not for profit he is setting up to help fund independent investigations.

Google Docs notes from the sessions can be accessed below:

Open data and the news

Media convergence

Border security key issue at meeting

Has New Zeland gone soft at the border? That was the key question raised at biosecurity forum held in Auckland this week.

Held by the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural & Horticultural Science (NZIAHS), the forum brought together researchers and policy makers to discuss New Zealand's current biosecurity situation and current directions.

Issues covered at the meeting garnered some wider attention from the media -- in particular a talk from NZIAHS past president John Lancashire drawing attention to weakening of New Zealand borders as a consequence of free trade deals.

"Free trade agreements put tremendous pressure on New Zealand to ease up on it's imports," Mr Lancashire told on Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon.

He also expressed concern the efforts to move tourists thorough biosecurity checks quickly could compromise border security in terms of invasive pests and diseases.

You can read further media coverage of the meeting on the Science Media centre website.

SMC global network featured in Nature

Fiona Fox, the chief executive and founder of the UK Science Media Centre, recently spent a day with Nature reporter Ewen Callaway recently and the resulting feature is a good insight into the SMC that kicked off a global collective of likeminded organisations that collaborate extensively.

The piece follows a series that ran in Columbia Journalism Review and which featured a wide range of perspectives on the SMCs, including from NZ Science Media Centre manager Peter Griffin.

The Knight Science Tracker also chipped in with an article looking at the prospects for a US Science Media Centre.

The Science Media Centres, which exist in the UK, Australia, Canada and Japan were also the subject of a panel discussion at the recent World Conference of Science Journalists held in Helsinki.

An excerpt from Nature (read in full here):

"The centre's aim is to get scientific voices into media coverage and policy debates - and by doing so, to improve the accuracy with which science is presented to the public. It tries to do this by providing select journalists with a steady flow of quotes and information from its database of about 3,000 scientists, and by organizing around 100 press briefings a year. 'Our philosophy is we'll get the media to do science better when scientists do the media better,' says Fox.

On the science radar this week...

Another pale blue dot, piano 2.0, stunning sharks, baby cry translator and why toothpaste and orange juice don't mix.

Callaghan's roadmap revealed

The Crown entity that will increasingly play a brokering role between science and the private sector - Callaghan Innovation, released its three year Statement of Intent this week.

The document, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, projects that CI will have income of around $240 million a year for the next three years, most of it coming from the Crown in the form of operating revenue and grant revenue to fund R&D grants.

The plan to boost private sector R&D efforts will include a revamp of CI's Gracefield campus as an "innovation precinct", the development of Avatar, a "state-of-the-art social media and cloud-based" site for searching innovation resources, and new training schemes Better by Capital, Better By IP and Better by Market Creation.

CI advised that the future direction outlined in the SOI would have implications for the scientists it employs.

"Teams whose research is primarily fundamental and early stage, may be a better fit with research-focused universities or CRIs," it notes.

"Over the first six months of the 2013/14 year we will be engaging in a process with our research teams and with universities and CRIs to finalise which teams will transfer from Callaghan Innovation."

The Callaghan Innovation 3-year Statement of Intent can be downloaded here.

Quoted: Radio New Zealand

"My feeling is that we have gone a bit soft."

John Lancashire, Past President of the NZ Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science, on border biosecurity efforts.

New from the SMC

In the News:

Kiwi chick to boost gene pool: A kiwi chick released on an island off the Kapiti coast may be the key to securing the future for the world's most endangered kiwi - the rowi.

Invader defence: New Zealand's border 'softness' was a key issue discussed at a recent biosecurity conference.

Briefings:

Drug trial for growth restricted babies: NZ scientists are launching a trial to study the potential growth boosting effects of sildenafil (commonly known by brand name Viagra) for underweight babies in the womb.

Sciblogs highlights

Some of the highlights from this week's posts:

Callaghan Innovation taxis to the start(up) of the commercialisation runway - Peter Kerr breaks down the latest news from the country's fledgling innovation crown agent.

sticK

Fluoridation - topical confusion - A very patient Ken Perrott continues to lay out the science behind water fluoridation in the context of the current public debate.

Open Parachute

Gut feelings: Links between digestion and depression - Could bacteria in your stomach have a significant impact on brain function? Christine Jasoni explaines why it isn't as crazy an idea as it sounds.

Souther Genes

Research highlights

Please note: hyperlinks point, where possible, to the relevant abstract or paper.

Shifting ice shakes up Antarctic sea-life: The 1995 melting and disintegration of the Larson A ice shelf in Antarctica has led to substantial shift in sea floor sea life, according to European researchers. They found that changes in competition and predation lead to a tripling of the biomass of glass sea sponges -- a species previously thought to be very slow growing.

Current Biology

Singing from the heart: When people sing in a choir their heart beats are synchronised, so that the pulse of choir members tends to increase and decrease in unison. The findings come from a German study looking not only at the physiology of signing and music, but how this research could be applied for medical purposes, primarily within rehabilitation and preventive care.

Frontiers in Neuroscience

Rice the future of silicon? A new study has shown that the silica in rice husks can be converted to silicon and turned into anodes for high capacity lithium batteries. The authors suggest recycled rice husks could serve as a massive and largely untapped resource to help meet the need for silicon in lithium-ion batteries used in advanced portable electronics and hybrid electric vehicles.

PNAS

Sniffing out bladder cancer: UK researchers have built a device that can read odours in urine to help diagnose patients with early signs of bladder cancer. The ODOREADER® can diagnose bladder cancer from a sample in under 30 minutes. Testing the device on 24 cancer patients and 74 controls, they found the device could detect cancer with 100% accuracy. However the researchers say larger trials will be needed before it can be used clinically.

PLOS ONE

Bed time health effects: A study of the sleeping habits of 11,000 children aged 3-7 years, has revealed that irregular bedtimes can impact intellectual performance on reading and maths tests - not just the next day, but over longer periods of time as well. The authors point out that irregular bedtimes could disrupt natural body rhythms and cause sleep deprivation, undermining the plasticity of the brain and the ability to acquire and retain information.

Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

Policy updates

Some of the policy highlights from this week:

Trans-tasman x-ray vision: The government has announced it will be trailing a new system where border biosecurity staff receive x-rays of incoming visitor's baggage from Australian airports.

Animal welfare: The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (NAWAC) issued its 2012 Annual Report this week.

Riverside planting: A change to the Tax Act 2007 will see Riparian plantings by farmers deducted as operational expenses rather than capital expenditure, aiming to enhance planting by farmers.

Upcoming sci-tech events

• Eureka and Sir Paul Callaghan Awards for Young Science Orators - 12 July, Wellington.

• Einstein's Universe - Lecture and concert - 15 July, Hamilton; 16, Napier; 17, Palmerston North.

• Biolive2013 - Biology Educators Association of New Zealand conference - 14-17 July, Christchurch

• Geologic and geomorphic impacts of the 2010-2012 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence and local evidence for large prehistoric earthquakes - 2013 Hochstetter Lecture from Dr Mark Quigley - 17 July, Hamilton.

• Eroding Landscapes - Further lecture from Dr Mark Quigley - 18 July, Hamilton.

• Epidemics and pandemics - a numbers game? - 10x10 lecture from Dr Mick Roberts - 18 July, Dunedin.

For these and more upcoming events, and more details about them, visit the SMC's Events Calendar.

ENDS

© Scoop Media