4 | NewScientist | 12 May 2012

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A SCIENTIST in the US has died of a disease caused by the bacteria he was studying. The tragedy highlights the dangers of research on human respiratory germs.

Richard Din was working on Neisseria meningitidis at the Veterans Health Research Institute in San Francisco. Some strains can cause lethal meningitis when inhaled.

Din developed fever, headache and chills, then a rash – a sign of meningococcal blood infection. He died just 17 hours after symptoms started.

Deaths from N. meningitidis have plummeted because of vaccines against four common strains, or serogroups. A vaccine

for serogroup B, on which Din was working, has proved elusive. Later this year, Swiss-based company Novartis expects to license Bexsero, the first general

Researcher death vaccine against serogroup B. There has been a dispute for the

past six months over publishing research showing how to create a lethal H5N1 bird flu that can spread readily between mammals.

Among the chief concerns, says Michael Osterholm at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, is that publication will lead to similar work in other labs, where lab infections could release the viruses. Din’s friends and colleagues are being treated to keep them safe and stop them spreading bacteria. Flu would be harder to contain, says Osterholm.

Moon shot, by Jove!GANYMEDE, here we come. A €1 billion mission to place a spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter’s largest moon – in fact, the largest moon in the solar system – has received the green light from the European Space Agency.

Called the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, or Juice, the spacecraft will fly past two other Jovian moons – Callisto and Europa – before ending up in orbit around the monster moon.

“Ganymede appeals to geologists, astrobiologists,

magnetophysicists and atmospheric scientists,” says Emma Bunce, a physicist at the University of Leicester, UK, and a member of the Juice science team. “It’s clearly a very rich environment, which is why we are so excited to be going.”

Ganymede is a large, ice-covered moon with a thin oxygen atmosphere and a subsurface ocean, which could potentially harbour life. It is also the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field. The plan is to launch Juice in 2022 and for it to reach Ganymede in 2032.

Fleeing frackingMEET the latest player in the “fracking” for natural gas debate: the pronghorn. Drilling is causing these US ungulates to vacate their Wyoming wintering grounds.

In winter, pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) migrate to the upper Green river basin.This area has seen a boom in gas drilling.

Jon Beckmann of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Montana tracked 125 female pronghorn.

–Don’t aim at the chest–

–Going elsewhere–

Taser heart attack linkBEING hit with a Taser stun gun in the chest can lead to cardiac arrest and death, according to a new study.

The research by Douglas Zipes, a heart specialist at the Krannert Institute of Cardiology in Indianapolis, Indiana, was based on records he acquired as a plaintiff’s expert witness in a number of lawsuits involving US police use of the controversial stun gun. Zipes examined eight cases between 2006 and 2009 in which “previously clinically healthy males” aged between 16 and 48 lost consciousness during or after tasings, when one or both of the current-carrying darts were lodged “near or over the heart”. Seven of them died.

In each case, Zipes analysed how long each shock lasted and cardiac responses measured by paramedics,

when available (Circulation, DOI: 10.1161/ circulationaha.112.097584 or bit.ly/stundeath). He found that 50,000-volt stuns to the chest can induce irregular heartbeats that lead to cardiac arrest.

The study will fuel opposition to the weapon, which Amnesty International says has now been associated with over 500 deaths in the US. The US National Institute of Justice recently posted videos advocating caution in the way police use Tasers and pointing out that they are not meant to be fired at the chest.

The weapon’s maker, Taser International of Scottsdale, Arizona, is disputing Zipes’s peer-reviewed findings, saying there are “key facts that contradict the role of the Taser device” in all eight cases.

“Din developed fever, headache and chills, then a rash. He died 17 hours after symptoms started”

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