20 February 2010 | NewScientist | 5

The product is actually three skin creams known as Olay Pro-X, designed to alter the expression of genes involved in skin ageing. Women using this for 24 weeks were as likely to see their wrinkles reduced as women on tretinoin, a drug for reducing skin-ageing. The judges were unaware of who had used which product (British

Journal of Dermatology, DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2133.2009.09436.x).

“I’m hoping that the public will fall for hard data and base their decisions on that,” says Richard Weller , a dermatologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who was not involved in the study.

SETI to expand?

FRANK DRAKE , the founder of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), wants to take the search for aliens further: about 82 billion kilometres away, in fact .

At this point in space, electromagnetic signals from planets orbiting distant stars would be focused by the gravitational lensing effect of our sun, making them, in theory, more easily detected. Drake wants to send spacecraft there in a bid to overhear alien communications, which would be too faint for telescopes on Earth to detect.

It’s neither a new or original idea, but it has never taken off because of the distances involved . With existing propulsion technologies, spacecraft would take hundreds of years to make the voyage, which is about 550 times the distance from Earth to the sun .

Gravitational lenses could also be used to transmit signals , amplifying them so they could travel further and potentiallyreach distant civilisations. It’s also possible, Drake says, that intelligent civilisations have built an intergalactic internet using such techniques and are just “waiting for us to log on”.

Drake spoke last week at the TED 2010 conference in Long Beach, California .

Own up, hit back

IN A flurry of recent interviews, the scientist at the heart of the “climategate” affair has broken a 12-week silence.

Phil Jones, former director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in the UK, has spoken about the controversy that followed publication of emails stolen from the CRU. He admitted to the journal Nature that his failure to keep records of the locations of weather stations used in a major study was “not acceptable”. In effect, Jones conceded that climate sceptic

Doug Keenan had been right in some of his criticisms of the paper, which ruled out local urban influences as a significant factor in global warming.

Jones said he may submit a correction to Nature, but

nonetheless hit back at bloggers and other critics for “hijacking the peer-review process. If they want to criticise, they should write their own papers,” he said.

“Jones admits his failure to keep records of weather stations’ locations was ‘not acceptable’ ”

THE genome club just claimed its

first clergyman, in the shape of

Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu

and a Khoisan man from the Kalahari

are the first southern Africans to

have their genomes sequenced

and published.

In November 2008, a Han Chinese

man and a Nigerian man became

the first non-whites to have their

genomes sequenced. Each of the

southern African genomes is a source

of further untapped genetic diversity.

Interestingly, their genomes are as

similar to Europeans’ as they are

to the other sequenced African

genomes – both from Yorubas.

The genome of Tutu, a Bantu,

yielded over 412,000 new variants.

An even greater number came from

the unnamed Khoisan – almost

744,000. This is probably because

Khoisans were among the earliest

human populations to form and

they have not interbred much with

other groups, says project leader

Stephan Schuster , a genomicist at

Pennsylvania State University in

University Park (Nature, DOI:

10.1038/nature08795) .

Schuster’s team say some of the

Khoisan’s mutations may be down to

the group’s largely hunter-gatherer

lifestyle. Meanwhile, variants lurking

in both new genomes may help

explain why some southern Africans

respond poorly to existing anti-

retroviral drugs that treat HIV. If so,

this could help design more effective

anti-retrovirals, says Schuster.

Tutu flies flag for African genomes

–Tutu leads the way–

CA

RS

TE

N W

IND

HO

RS

T/

WE

NN

60 SECONDS

Higgs gets massThe search for the Higgs boson got

a boost last week. The D0 and CDF

experiments at Fermilab’s Tevatron

collider in Batavia, Illinois, published

three papers in Physical Review

Letters showing that the “God

particle” must have a mass between

115 and 150 gigaelectronvolts.

Space panoramaThe International Space Station has

had a “penthouse” upgrade. Last

week, shuttle astronauts added

a new module called Tranquility

and a swanky observation dome

called Cupola. The dome has seven

windows and gives astronauts a

panoramic view of Earth and space.

Phantom menaceThe US Missile Defense Agency has

finally shot down a moving missile

with an airborne laser, but military

experts say the system – once known

as “Star Wars” – is not good enough

for combat. That’s because the

system only works if it gets within a

few hundred kilometres of a missile

less than 2 minutes after launch.

King Tut’s mummyThe most comprehensive analysis

yet of DNA from the remains of

Tutankhamen and 10 of his close

relatives has established that two

previously unnamed mummies are

indeed his mother and father, and

two fetuses his daughters. The

analyses suggest that Tutankhamen

probably died aged 19 from a leg

fracture followed by a malaria

infection ( Journal of the American

Medical Association, vol 303, p 638).

Prostate cancer zapMen with incurable prostate cancer

have responded well to a drug

called abiraterone, which shrank

or stabilised tumours for an average

of six months in the 47 subjects.

The best existing treatment

extends life by only two or three

months. Five of the 47 are still

taking the drug three years on and

a much larger trial is now planned.

For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news