Scientific American Online

In early 2006 a self-styled “naturopathic” doctor, Chad Livdahl, pleaded guilty in Arizona to mail fraud and conspiracy to engage in mail and wire fraud, to misbrand a drug and to defraud the U.S. He was sentenced to nine years in prison. His wife and business partner in Toxin Research International, Inc., in Tucson, Zarah Karim, pleaded guilty to the same charges and received a six-year sentence. Both also paid heavy fines and restitution because, according to prosecutors, the couple had made at least $1.5 million in just more than a year by peddling tiny vials of fake Botox to doctors across the U.S. 

Botox, which is injected in minute amounts to smooth frown lines or relax muscle spasms, is far from the only medical product that inspires illicit manufacture and trade. The world market in counterfeit pharmaceuticals is estimated to be worth some $75 billion annually. But the active ingredient in Botox and related products differs from the constituents of other pharmaceuticals in a profound way: in its pure form, it is the deadliest substance known to science. In fact, botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) is grouped with the world’s most lethal potential biological weapons agents, sharing “Select Agent” status with the pathogens that cause smallpox, anthrax and plague. This biowarfare potential puts the existence of illicit laboratories churning out the toxin and of shady distributors selling it worldwide through the Internet into a more disturbing light than most pharmaceutical fraud.

Throughout their growth cycle, plants sprout all kinds of intricate and complex structures that range from scarcely apparent to invisible in the seedling stage. Leaves, flowers and seeds can appear, seemingly out of nowhere, from a smooth stem or branch. But the details of how cellular development occurs --why one cell might give rise to petal cells and another to bark--have often remained obscure to botanists and other scientists. [More]

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico continues to grow. The screw top placed on top of the broken well now captures more than 600,000 gallons a day and, yet, remains largely invisible behind a veil of oil that continues to spill, adding to the as much as 50 million gallons already in the ocean depths.  

Whereas it is the worst oil spill in U.S. history--it's just a piece of the devastation around the globe .  

In 1934, a Westchester stockbroker, Bill Wilson , promised his wife he’d never drink again. Then during the following spring, he nearly fell off the wagon. In a desperate move he called a local surgeon and drunk Bob Smith . It was that conversation that marked the first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous .

Celebrating its 75th Anniversary this year A.A.--with its 12 guiding principles to sobriety--is a hallmark institution for addicts. But does it work?

A Japanese spacecraft that visited an asteroid and perhaps even sampled its surface is returning home. The Hayabusa probe, launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2003, will release a heat-shielded return capsule on June 13 that may contain the first ever samples captured directly from an asteroid. [More]

Melting glaciers in Asia could cause food shortages for up to 60 million people who live in the region's major river basins, a new study finds.

But the research, published yesterday in Science , found that the shrinking glaciers will have less of an impact on Asia's freshwater supply than estimated in the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .

By Tom Bergin and Kristen Hays

LONDON/HOUSTON (Reuters) - Britain stuck up for beleaguered BP Plc on Friday against American criticism over a massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill that U.S. scientists said was far bigger than previously thought.

Aisha, Miriam and Akhi are three young factory workers in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.  They are poorly educated and badly paid.  But, like millions of other young women, they relish their freedom from the stultifying conformity of rural life, where women are at the constant beck and call of fathers, brothers and husbands.

There is something else.  The three women together have 22 siblings.  But Aisha plans three children, Miriam two and Akhi just one. They represent a gender revolution that many see as irrevocably tied to a reproductive revolution . Together, the changes are solving what once seemed the most difficult problem facing the future of humanity: growing population. 

With the World Cup soccer tournament underway in South Africa, a couple of things for the science-interested audience to watch for. First, the games will feature a new ball, called the Jabulani , the Zulu word for “celebrate.” And some players think something foul is afoot. They contend that the ball doesn’t behave the way a normal soccer ball should, that it even turns the wrong way in mid-air. Adidas, which makes the ball, claims that the players complaining all have contracts with Adidas’s competitors.

The Sports Technology Research Group at England’s Loughborough University designed the ball. The sections aren’t stitched together anymore. Instead, the seams are glued or heat-sealed. The group leader, Andy Harland, told the Telegraph newspaper, “We have created a ball that is almost perfectly round, and more accurate than ever before.” Well, millions of soccer fans will ultimately decide the latter.

Adventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions by Mark W. Moffett. University of California Press, 2010

[More]

The continuing economic crisis in the U.S. and Europe is quickly sharpening the debate over public finances. Several countries have budget deficits around 10 percent of national income or larger, and their governments must show their publics and the financial markets that they have a plan for dealing with these unprecedented peacetime imbalances.

In the wake of the financial panic in late 2008, most economies adopted fiscal stimulus packages of spending increases and tax cuts in keeping with Keynesian ideas (which I cautioned about in my March 2009 column). Because consumer spending was falling, offsetting the decline through higher government spending or by stimulating private spending by tax cuts was considered necessary. Keynesian thinking presumes that the financial markets will readily buy government bonds to finance the stimulus.

In ancient Mesozoic seas, the biggest predators might not have been entirely cold-blooded killers. Rather, a new study suggests some of these rapacious reptiles might have been able to regulate their own body temperature , thereby expanding their hunting ranges.  [More]

As the World Cup launches in South Africa this week, conservationists fear that gamblers looking for a little extra luck will turn to a source those of us in the West might not expect: the practice of smoking vulture brains .

The custom stems from the traditional medicine known in South Africa as muti . The vulture brains are dried, ground up and then smoked in cigarettes which supposedly give the users visions of the future. In addition to dreams of winning lotto numbers or sports teams, practitioners say the practice can give users an edge on taking tests or help their business attract more clients. A tiny vial of vulture brains sells for around $6.50, according to an article from AFP.

Declaring that endosulfan is unsafe, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it is about to ban one of the last organochlorine pesticides still used in the United States.

Endosulfan--used largely on vegetables, apples, melons and cotton--"poses unacceptable risks" to farm workers and wildlife, EPA officials said. In response, the agency is moving to cancel the pesticide's registration.

By Janet Fang

To follow the scent trail left by their prey across the ocean, sharks swim in the direction of the nostril that sniffed the odor first, scientists have found. [More]

Comets are usually thought of as icy, dusty emissaries from the deepest reaches of the solar system . But according to a new simulation, many of them could have originated somewhere even more exotic--in budding planetary systems around other stars. [More]

At least half of adults in developed countries have deficient levels of vitamin D , and low levels of this vitamin have been linked to bone fragility, cancer , heart disease and immune system problems . Variable levels of vitamin D, which is a by-product of a chemical reaction that occurs when UV light hits the skin and can be found in some fatty fish, across populations has largely been thought to be a simple matter of exposure: failure to get enough sun, eat fatty fish or take supplements would result in deficiency. [More]

The vast array of behaviors that are seen in autism spectrum disorder seems to cover an even deeper range of genetic complexity just below the surface. And the largest genetic study of autistic children and their parents to date has located a host of new variations in autistic individuals. [More]

I once took part in a vodka tasting contest, in which participants tried to tell an expensive brand from a cheap one. I don’t recall the exact outcome, for obvious reasons. But I do know that several people swore they could taste the difference. [More]