MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2013•THE BULLETIN
MART TODAY
A3
TART • Discoveries, breakthroughs, trends, namesin the news— the things you needto knowto start out your day
It's Monday, Oct. 21, the 294th day of 2013. There are 71 days left in the year.
CUTTING EDGE
SCIENCE
HAPPENINGS Gay marriage —Same-sex marriages are scheduled to begin in NewJersey.
New study: Bloody
ini m n'
rag maynot have been from LouisXVI
PreSidettt —President Barack Obama attends political fundraisers in Dallas.
By Elizabeth Pennisi ScienceNOW
HISTORY Highlight:In1879, Thomas Edison perfected a workable
electric light at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J. In1797, the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, also known as "Old Ironsides," was christened in Boston's harbor. In1805, a British fleet commanded by Adm. Horatio Nel-
son defeated aFrench-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar; Nelson, however, was killed. In1917,members of the1st Division of the U.S. Army training in Luneville, France, became the first Americans to see action on the front lines of World War I. In1944, during World War II,
U.S. troops captured theGerman city of Aachen. In1959,the Solomon R.Gug-
genheimMuseum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opened to the public in New York.
In1960,Democrat John F. Kennedy andRepublican Richard Nixon clashed in their
fourth and final presidential debate in New York. In1962, the Seattle World's Fair closed after six months and nearly10 million visitors.
(President John F.Kennedy, scheduled to attend the closing
ceremony, canceled because of what was described asa "head cold"; the actual reason turned out to be the Cuban
Missile Crisis.) In1967,the Israeli destroyer INS Eilat was sunk by Egyptian missile boats near Port Said;
47 Israeli crew memberswere lost. In1969, beat poet and author Jack Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Fla., at age 47. In1971, President Richard
Nixon nominated Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist to the
U.S. SupremeCourt. (Both nominees wereconfirmed.) In1986, pro-Iranian kidnap-
pers in Lebanonabducted American EdwardTracy (he was released in August1991). In1991, American hostage
Jesse Turner wasfreed by his kidnappers in Lebanon after
nearly five years in captivity. Ten years ago:Invoking a hastily-passed law, Florida Governor Jeb Bushordered a feeding tube reinserted into
Terry Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman at the center of a bitter right-to-die battle. The
Senate voted to banthe practice that critics call partial-birth abortion. The U.N. General
Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution demanding that Israel tear down a barrier jutting into the West Bank.
Five yearsago:Dozensof members of the Mongol motorcycle gang werearrested by federal agents in six states on a variety of charges following a three-year investigation
in which undercover agents infiltrated the group. Iraq's Cabinet decided to ask the U.S.
for changes to the draft agreement that would keepAmerican troops there for three more
years. One year ago:Former senator and1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern died in South Dakota
at the age of 90. AWisconsin man, Radcliffe Haughton,
opened fire at the spawhere his wife worked, killing her and two others and wounding four other women before turning
the gun on himself.
BIRTHDAYS Author Ursula K. LeGuin is 84. Rock singer Manfred Mann is 73. TV's Judge Judy Sheindlin
is 71. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is 64. Actress-author Carrie Fisher is 57. Actor Ken Watanabe is 54. Actress Melora Walters is 53. — From wire reports
"Frank," an exhibit at the Smithsonian, gives a glimpse at some technologies that could save lives in the future. By Chad Garland Cronkite News Service
WASHINGTON — Frank's s keleton looks l ik e i t w a s made in a bike shop, his arms and hands operate on batteries and a computer program lets him have an "almost human-like conversation." Frank is a bionic man, built for a S mithsonian Channel special about state-of-the-art man-made body parts gathered from around the globe. Bertolt Meyer, host of the documentary, was at the National Air and Space Museum with Frank last week to tout the documentary. Frank will remain on display at the museum through December, when he will be dismantled and his parts returned to the organizations that donated them for the project. But the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart that pumps plastic blood through his plastic veins was made in Tucson, Ariz., and it is the only one of Frank's internal organs that is more than a prototype. "All the other bits that we see here, like the artificial pancreas here, the first prototype of an artificial kidney, spleen and lung — they're all still prototypes and still have a very long way to go," said Meyer. "Whereas theheart is already being used in patients." M ichael G a r ippa, c h i e f executive officer of Tucsonbased SynCardia Systems Inc., which manufactured Frank's heart, said the opportunity to work with th e Smithsonian was "too good to say no to." "I think this was a real honor for us and a great chance for technology that's largely been kept under a rock to get a lot of extra attention," Garippa sa>d. Meyer, a social psychologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, said the documentary was "first and foremost an educational project," meant to show viewers the latest developments in the field. But it was also an education for him. "I was absolutely stunned," he said of th e p r ogress in prosthetics and artificial body parts. Meyer, who was born without the lower part of his left arm and uses a prosthetic himself, said he hopes the program will also spark a conversation about what continuing development in this area could mean for society. "What if an artificial heart can buy u s m o r e l i fespan — what will a s o ciety like that look like?" Meyer asked. "These (questions) kind of alter the ethical implications of this technology." While some of the developments may seem like science fiction, much of it is closer to science fact, said Dr. Daniel Tang, a surgeon at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, who is featured in the documentary. "Have we gotten to the point where mechanical pumps can replace a heart transplant'?" Tang asked. "It's close." The Total Artificial Heart is used to temporarily replace a human heart for a patient awaiting a transplant, sometimes for years, Tang said. Though it has been around largely in the same form since 1981, he said, the man-made heart like that in Frank is a "miracle of medicine" at a time when there are not enough human hearts available for transplant. "The a mount o f do n o r
.=iyagi
Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press
The first-ever walking, talking bionic man stands on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The model is a 6-foot-tall robot built entirely from bionic body parts and implantable synthetic organs.
The bodyeclectic "Frank" is not a complete person — he is missing key parts like a brain, digestive system and skin — but he brings together in
one "body" more than adozenman-made parts. In addition to
the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart, Frank's parts list includes: • Skull implants printed with a 3-D printer. • The Argus II system that turns video into electrical impulses the
brain can "see." • NeoSpeech software and a chatbot computer program that turns text into speech and lets Frank have "almost human-like
conversation." • A cochlear implant that turns sound into electrical impulses. • A 3-D-printed synthetic windpipe that can use a patient's stem cells to prevent rejection.
• An artificial lung that filters air and oxygenates blood. • An artificial pancreas that helps regulate blood-sugar in diabetics without insulin injections.
• A blood substitute made of plastic molecules with an iron atom at their core that carries oxygen, but does not fully replace human blood. • A manmade spleen, still under development, that filters toxins from the bloodstream.
• Battery-powered prosthetic arms. • Touch Bionic i-Limb prosthetic hands. • Prosthetic hips that rotate up to130 degrees. • Knees that adjust to different environments with the help of
gyroscopes, accelerometers and microprocessors.
It seemed like the perfect forensic tale. Earlier this year, a geneticist concluded that the remains of a bloodsoaked cloth stored for centuries in an 18th century gourd likely belonged to the severed head of the last French king, Louis XVI — a conclusion supportedbythe fact that the DNA matched that taken from a mummified head belonging to his direct ancestor, King Henry IV. So confident were some people about the findings that a company now offers a blood test for anyone who wants to see if they, too, are descendants of this royal family. But new r esearch rel eased last w e e k c a l l s into question the i dentities of both the blood and the head, arguing that the DNA in those samples does not match the DNA in living relatives of these kings. The data "make a strong case," against the previous work, says Cristian Capelli, a geneticist at the University of Oxford in England who was not involved with the work. According t o le g end, when King Louis XVI was beheaded in 1793 during the F r ench R e volution, a witness soaked up his blood with a handkerchief and stored it in a decorated
gourd. A few years ago, the family that owned the gourd asked geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain, to look at the DNA from the remains of the cloth. At the time, all he could say was that the DNA came from a blue-eyed European male because he didn't have any DNA from any of the king's relatives. (Louis XVI supposedly had blue eyes.) So Lalueza-Fox turned to the mummified head of Henry IV for help. Henry IV was a direct ancestor of Louis XVI, so a match would p r o v id e fu r t h er evidence that the blood belonged to the French king. Lalueza-Fox was able to isolate a small amount of Y chromosome from the inner part o f t h e h e ad, which is transmitted from male to male each generation. Enough of it matched
the blood's Y chromosome for him to conclude that the blood and head came from individuals who were related to each other. French historian Philippe Delorme wasn't c onvinced. There was so little Y chromosome from the head that the matchup could have been by chance. He teamed up with geneticist Jean-Jacques Cassiman from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and identified three living descendantsof the French kings, members of t h e H o use of Bourbon, to find out what the Y chromosome of that lineage should look like. They analyzed the Y chromosomes of these male relatives, and came up with a "Bourbon" Y chromosome profile. That profile did not match that obtained from the blood and head, Cassiman, Delorme, and their colleagues reported this month in the European Journal of Human Genetics. Who is r ight depends in part on w hat th e B ourbon family tree really looks likeand that is also under dispute. Cassiman and Delorme argue that the three relatives they analyzed come from different branches of the tree, so the matching parts of their Y chromosome indicate true Bourbon inheritance. But Lalueza-Fox and his French historian collaborator Philippe Charlier think t hat th e l i ving relatives all trace back to Philippe I, who was gay and thus perhaps unlikely to have actually fathered the next generation. "It seems likely that what we have here is just a case of false paternity within a royal family," says LaluezaFox, who sticks by his original work. "Moreover, we should be cautious with the genealo-
gies claimed by people. These are often less accurate than we may think." Both sides think the best way to get to the bottom of this forensic tale would be to study the DNA of more living relatives. But neither has the funds to do so. So for now, the new work "leaves still open the hunt for true remains of these historical figures," Ca-
pelli says.
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• BiOM ankles invented by a rock-climbing biophysicist and
engineer. •TheRex exoskeleton thathelps Frank "walk"and m ay one day
replace wheelchairs.
hearts that are available is far overshadowed by the number of people on the waitlist," Tang said. "That kind of discrepancy only continues to grow." The SynCardia heart has been implanted in about 1,200 patients worldwide since the 1980s, pumping real b lood through real veins — unlike the plastic blood it pumps for Frank. Garippa said it is the only device approved in the U.S., Canada and the European Union for treatment of heart failure involving both ventricles. In the past, patients with the device had to stay in the hospital "tethered" to a 500-pound
vice makes is possible for patients to go home. Garippa said the portable device has passed Food and Drug A d ministration t r i als and he hopes it will get full FDA approval in November. If approved, the new device would reduce costs and hardships associated with protracted hospital stays, he said. The SynCardia heart is also becoming more widely available, with the number of centers certified to implant it soon to increase from nearly 90 to 125 worldwide, a number that Garippa said will ultimately reach about 400. Tang sees a day when arconsole, Tang said, driving up tificial organs may be made costs and limiting how many of synthetic tissue instead of people could get th e m a n- metal and plastic. "It's an amazing time we're made heart. But a relatively new 13.5-pound portable de- living in," Tang said.
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