Minh-Hà Pham-Delègue of the Laboratory of Comparative
Invertebrate Neurobiology in Bures-sur-Yvette, France, and colleagues in Britain
and Belgium have investigated the effects of engineered rapeseed on pollinating
insects. The rapeseed contains genes, found naturally in some plants, that
produce protease inhibitors—proteins that interfere with enzymes in the
intestinal tracts of insects.

The idea is that beetles and other pests feeding on the leaves and stalks of
the engineered rapeseed should develop a lethal case of indigestion. But bees
would also be exposed to the destructive proteins, through nectar and pollen.
“Rapeseed is particularly important to bees,” says Pham-Delègue. “The
plants do not depend strictly on bees to pollinate them, but it is the first
plant to bloom in large quantities in the spring. Bees harvest a lot of nectar
from them.”

The researchers found no protease inhibitors in the pollen or nectar of the
rapeseed. But they suspect that because the proteins are expressed in the leaves
and stem of the plant throughout its life, they could be present in the pollen
and nectar at levels too low to be detected. If so, they could eventually become
concentrated in honey stored back at the hive, which the bees feed on.

To find out how bees might be affected by high levels of protease inhibitors
in stored nectar, the researchers exposed captive bees to sugar solutions
containing up to 100 times the concentration of proteins found in the tissues of
the engineered rapeseed. Bees fed on this solution for 3 months died up to 15
days earlier than those fed on normal sugar. After 15 days, the bees had trouble
learning to distinguish between the smells of flowers.

The researchers are now studying whether the toxic proteins do build up in
hives of bees feeding on the concentrated sugar solutions and on the transgenic
plants themselves, and if so, how quickly they accumulate. They point out that
the engineered rapeseed that eventually appears in farmers’ fields could secrete
higher levels of protease inhibitors than the plants they tested. Their work is
part of a three-year project begun last October to evaluate the impact of
transgenic plants on pollinating insects.

Vincenzo Balzani at the University of Bologna and Fernando Pina of the New
University of Lisbon are using an exotic salt called 4′-methoxyflavylium
perchlorate to make a miniature molecular memory. The flavylium unit has a
structure similar to anthocyanins, the pigments that give many fruits and
flowers their colour.

The salt solution has to be prepared in the dark, and is initially
colourless. But when it is exposed to light, one of the compound’s oxygen atoms
gains enough energy to move to a new position, altering the molecule’s structure
and turning the salt yellow.

The researchers say this effect can be used to record or “write” binary data.
Once it has been transformed into its yellow form, the 4′-methoxyflavylium ion
remains in this state as long as it is in an acidic solution. Light has no
effect on the coloured ion, so it can be optically detected or “read” without
being destroyed. But heating the solution, or making it less acidic, returns the
ion to its original colourless form.

Balzani says that 4′-methoxyflavylium perchlorate is the first known compound
that can be locked or unlocked by changing its temperature or acidity. “It’s a
completely well-described system that goes both ways,” he says. “You can write
and lock, then go back and erase and it’s ready to write again.”

The next step for Balzani and colleagues is turning their aqueous systems
into solid-state forms, such as a film or ordered array of molecules. So far, no
one has achieved this and Balzani says it could be 20 years before they do.

William Pietro of York University in Ontario says that if a
molecular memory could be developed it would have many uses. It could act in
detectors, responding to particular chemicals in the environment or be used in
implants to trigger insulin infusion devices. “But analogies with what exists
are too limiting,” he says. “With molecular electronics we’ll be able to make
devices which are heretofore unknown.”

FRENCH farmers will be horrified. The taste and consistency of a cheese
has as much to do with the breed of cow as the animal’s carefully controlled
diet.

GĂ©raud Pradel and colleagues at the Laboratory of Cheese Research in
Aurillac, France, part of the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA),
investigated the production of St-Nectaire, a semi-hard, slightly pungent,
creamy yellow cheese encased in a moulded rind. Over eight weeks, they fed 42
dairy cows from three breeds—Tarentaise, Montbéliarde and
Holstein—on native grasses that had been harvested on the same spring day
from the same Alpine pasture in the St-Nectaire region. The grasses had been
preserved either as hay or in silage form, and each cow was given each type of
fodder for a month at a time.

The researchers made 24 batches of cheese covering every combination of breed
and food, then left them to age for eight weeks. Then they analysed the samples
to see which microorganisms had developed, and to check on the content. The team
employed a panel of 10 trained volunteers to assess each batch of cheese for 15
sensory characteristics, such as grittiness, stickiness, saltiness, odour and
intensity of taste.

They found that although the type of fodder affected the colour of
the product—cows that had been fed silage produced a yellower
cheese—the taste, in general, depended on the breed of cow. Cheeses from
the milk of Tarentaise and Montbéliarde cows were “firmer and tastier”
than those made with milk from Holsteins. The milk from Tarentaise cows also
produced a more acidic cheese.

St-Nectaire is one of 33 French cheeses sporting a coveted Appellation
Controlée label, which means that it is strictly quality controlled. Some
11 000 tonnes are made each year, exclusively from the milk of cows in the
counties of Puy-de-DĂ´me and Cantal in central France.

The researchers hesitate to predict whether their findings will lead to
changes in the population of dairy cows in the region. “There’s quite a lively
debate in the region between partisans of each breed of cow,” says Pradel. “We
have cheese makers who make great cheeses using each breed.”

The scientists are now embarking on a study of how particular plants in
natural pastures contribute to the taste of St-Nectaire. Their research is part
of an INRA programme, begun in 1989, that is looking at cheese production
throughout France. Other cheese varieties under investigation include Abondance,
Munster, Morbier and Reblochon.

The findings are due to be published in The Journal of Dairy
Research early next year.

When an oil slick washes up on a beach, it kills off many of the bacteria
that are typically found in seaside sand and cuts off food sources for remaining
microbes. But a sprinkling of ground-up fish gives the bacteria much-needed food
to munch on while they adapt to the petroleum, says Stephane Lefloch, a chemist
with the Centre for Documentation, Research and Experimentation on Accidental
Water Pollution in Brest.

“Our theory was that by adding the fish meal, the bacteria would adapt more
quickly,” Lefloch says. “Their numbers would grow. And when there was no more
fish meal to eat, they would eat the petroleum faster because they would be more
numerous and already adapted to it.”

Lefloch and colleagues tested the theory in a four-month field study carried
out on the Brittany coast near Fouesnant. Wooden frames 6 metres square were
used to cordon off four patches of sand on the beach’s intertidal zone. An oil
spill was simulated by pouring 210 litres of crude oil into each of the plots.
Two oil-soaked plots were sprinkled with ground, dried fish fortified with
nitrogen and phosphorus. The initial dose of fish meal was dissolved by tides
washing over the enclosures, so a second measure was added three weeks
later.

Weekly samples of the contaminated sand showed that the bacteria in the plots
sprinkled with fish degraded petroleum hydrocarbons twice as fast as those in
both an untreated plot and one treated with the detergent solution used to clean
beaches after the Exxon Valdez spill.

Now Lefloch is waiting for a Norwegian team to report results of a
similar test done near Spitzberg, Norway. If that succeeds, the effectiveness of
feeding bacteria with fish meal will be tested in tropical climates.

When the MĂ©gajoules laser near Bordeaux comes online in 2012 it will be one of only two of its size in the world. It will focus 240 laser beams for a few billionths of a second on a peppercorn-sized capsule containing hydrogen isotopes to induce small thermonuclear reactions. From measurements of what then happens, computers will create models of the explosions of full-scale thermonuclear bombs. France says it needs this research to maintain its nuclear arsenal now that it has signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits explosive nuclear testing.

But in an article in the June issue of the magazine Opto & Laser Europe, several leading scientists suggest that MĂ©gajoules and its American equivalent, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, could be used to develop new types of weapon, such as bombs that do not use uranium fission to trigger explosions. Current hydrogen bombs require a uranium trigger.

“These installations are potentially dangerous toys,” plasma physicist Sebastian Pease, former director of Culham Laboratory near Oxford, told New ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. “Lurking in the background is the possibility that if you can make a fusion explosion with a laser, you may be opening the route to making nuclear explosions without using plutonium or uranium. So it might become easier for people the world over to make nuclear explosions.”

The French Atomic Energy Commission, which is behind the Mégajoules project, refuses to comment beyond claiming that objections to it are “political”.

Construction work on the NIF started last month and should be completed in 2003. The NIF has similarly been a source of controversy and the focus of several public hearings and scientific reviews since proposals for it were put out for public discussion in 1994.

A GROUP of European scientists is trying to stop a mining company from
excavating the world’s last untouched natural nuclear fission “reactor”. The
reactor was formed 2 billion years ago when pockets of high-grade uranium ore
went critical in what is now Gabon, in western Africa.

The reactor, the only one of 15 in the region to escape mining, is
essentially a prehistoric nuclear waste repository. “It contains fission
products very similar to spent fuel from modern reactors,” says François
Gauthier-Lafaye of the Centre for Surface Geochemistry in Strasbourg, who leads
the campaign to preserve the site. “Because the surrounding hydrologic
environment is still intact, it is an opportunity for us to observe how buried
uranium isotopes and fission products behave—which ones are contained,
which ones migrate and how far they travel.”

The first of Gabon’s natural reactors was discovered in 1972, when mining
geologists noticed that some ore samples contained unusually low amounts of
uranium-235, the radioisotope consumed in nuclear fission. Further studies
revealed the presence of fission products such as isotopes of neodymium.
Researchers deduced that around 2 billion years ago uranium-235 became so
concentrated in some deposits that the fission process was capable of sustaining
itself. The resulting chain reactions lasted hundreds of thousands of years,
first because they were moderated—slowed down—by groundwater, and
secondly because the deposits lacked neutron-absorbing elements such as boron
and vanadium that would have damped down the fission process.

The 14 reactors that have been mined for their uranium lie in the Franceville
basin, at Oklo. The one intact reactor that the scientists hope to preserve is
at Bangombé, 30 kilometres southeast of Oklo. The ore deposit there lies
10 metres below the surface and contains 100 to 200 tonnes of uranium.

Gauthier-Lafaye, who is in Gabon studying the reactors at Oklo, says that the
French government, acting on behalf of the scientists, has reached an unofficial
agreement with the French-Gabonese mining company COMUF to postpone work at the
Bangombé deposit for a year.

The Bangombé reactor should be of particular importance to the US
government, says Gauthier-Lafaye, because it is very similar in structure to the
proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

IF ALL goes to plan, a team of volunteers will next week experience the
planet’s ultimate high—the 8848-metre summit of Mount
Everest—without leaving the balmy Mediterranean climate of
Marseilles.

In only the second experiment of its kind, eight virtual “climbers” have been
locked inside a hypobaric chamber while the pressure is gradually lowered to
about one-third that at sea level. The air inside the chamber will then be as
rarefied as that breathed by any mountaineer brave enough to climb the world’s
highest peak without breathing equipment.

The virtual trip to Everest’s peak and back will take 33 days. The goal is to
study the physiological and psychological changes that affect people at high
altitudes. “We want to know, for example, what causes low efficiency of the
muscles,” says physiologist Jean-Paul Richalet of the University of Paris North,
one of the principal investigators on the project. “Is the muscle intact and the
command from the brain decreased, or is it that the muscle doesn’t respond to
the command?”

As the virtual mountaineers eat, sleep and perform a battery of physical
and mental exercises, they are being monitored by an international team of
physiologists, neurologists, cardiologists, psychologists and nutritionists. The
scientists are measuring the volunteers’ consumption of oxygen and recording the
water content of their bodies by providing the men with drinking water
containing isotopes that can be tracked in blood and urine samples. The
volunteers are being subjected to mild electric shocks to see how well their
muscles contract at different simulated altitudes.

To cope with the rarefied atmosphere at high altitude, the body produces more
oxygen-carrying red blood cells, which thicken the blood. Some researchers
believe that this phenomenon, called haemoconcentration, actually reduces the
efficiency with which oxygen diffuses into muscle tissue. So another test aims
to find out whether thinning the blood will make muscles more efficient. In the
test, the men hook themselves up to an intravenous drip of a sterile solution
and pedal a stationary bicycle. The scientists are also studying the volunteers’
ability to concentrate and solve problems, both individually and as a group.

As New ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ went to press, altitude sickness had set in. The
men were exhausted, suffering from insomnia, breathing more rapidly and
complaining of headaches. They had also acquired an increased sensitivity to
sweet and bitter tastes.

When the volunteers reach the simulated summit on 30 April, they will not be
asked to ride the bike. But Richalet suspects that one or two of them may be
tempted to give it a try. “It could be an important challenge for them,” he
says.

FRENCH scientists have sown the seeds—some 250 000 of them—of
one of the longest-running research projects ever planned. Forestry scientists
are gearing up to track the life cycle and genetic diversity of oak trees in
four plantations over the next 250 years.

Oaks are among the most economically and biologically important trees in
Europe, says Alexis Ducousso, a geneticist at the National Institute for
Agronomic Research (INRA) in Bordeaux. In 1996, sales of oak timber in France
alone reached almost £100 million. “Oak stands have the highest commercial
value and greatest biodiversity of any forests in Europe, but we know relatively
little about them,” says Ducousso.

INRA hopes the project will fill the gaps in that knowledge. Beginning in
1986, acorns of the two predominant species, Quercus petraea, the
sessile oak, and Q. robur, the common or pedunculate oak, were
collected from 130 forests throughout Europe and from as far afield as Armenia.
The acorns were germinated and then transplanted to four locations in central
and northeastern France. Divided into 115 stands of sessile oak and seven stands
of pedunculate oak, the trees cover 140 hectares and will mature in about 15
years.

Already DNA studies of the saplings have revealed that both species are split
into an eastern and a western population. The dividing line runs from the
Burgundy region in France through Luxembourg to Denmark. Some 13 000 years ago,
northern oak forests were wiped out when glaciers covered Europe—only
southern regions of Spain, Italy and the Balkans remained free from ice.
ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s believe the oaks’ east-west divide results from natural reforestation
after the glaciers melted. Both species expanded north at an average rate of 500
metres per year. The pedunculate oaks began the northwards march first, aided by
jays which cache acorns several kilometres from the original tree. Descendants
of Spanish oaks now form stands in western Europe, while trees of Balkan origin
comprise the oak forests of the east.

As the experimental stands mature, the researchers plan to study the
processes of natural selection that are expected to cut the population of 250
000 saplings to about 10 400 adult trees. Studies on pollination and seed
dispersal are also planned.

So far, the experiment has cost roughly ÂŁ220 000. Whether funding will
continue until the year 2250 remains to be seen. But some benefits may come in
just a little more time than it takes to age a barrel of good cognac.

The researchers are looking for genes that control the production of whisky
lactone, a tannic acid found only in sessile oaks. It gives wine and cognac a
prized “oaky” flavour. Currently, foresters do not distinguish between the two
species of oak when harvesting wood for barrels. With the aid of a test to
identify trees carrying the gene, coopers will be able to build better barrels
for connoisseurs.

FRANCE’s highest court has thrown a monkey wrench into plans to convert
the world’s largest fast-breeder reactor, Superphénix, into a research
site and nuclear waste incinerator.

Ruling on a lawsuit filed by several environmental groups, the Council of
State has invalidated a 1994 government decree authorising operation of the
nuclear plant for both power generation and research. The council wants a new
public inquiry before the reactor, which is currently shut down for renovation,
can be restarted. As New ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ went to press, Prime Minister Alain
Juppé had not decided whether to order such an inquiry, which is likely
to be lengthy.

Whatever decision he takes, it is bound to be controversial. Two senior
ministers have already taken opposite sides on the issue. While environment
minister Corinne Lepage agrees that a new public inquiry is needed to redefine
Superphénix as a research tool, industry minister Franck Borotra believes
that only slight modifications to the 1994 decree are required.

Controversy and delay are nothing new to Superphénix. Located on the
banks of the RhĂ´ne about 50 kilometres west of Lyon, the breeder reactor
is owned and operated by NERSA, a consortium of French, German, Italian, Dutch
and Belgian partners. The plant is designed to produce 1200 megawatts of
electricity and has cost about 30 billion francs (ÂŁ3.3 billion) to build
and operate so far.

Since the reactor was hooked up to the national power grid in January 1986,
it has worked at full capacity for a total of only 10 months. Its most serious
problems included two leakages of liquid sodium, which is used to cool the
reactor and vaporises on contact with air. These forced the plant to shut down
in 1987 and again in 1990.

Since 24 December last year, the reactor has been closed for modifications to
its core. The renovations, which involve removing secondary uranium rods, will
make the reactor consume more plutonium than it produces. The gradual conversion
of Superphénix from reactor to waste plutonium incinerator was to be
completed in 2003.

The French atomic energy authorities had planned experimental burns of
plutonium and neptunium as early as this summer. “So far, we have not changed
our schedule of experiments,” says nuclear physicist Pascal Anzieu, who heads
the Superphénix research programme. But the court decision means that a
lengthy delay is possible.

SENIOR French scientists are fighting a law which lowers their retirement
age from 68 to 65 years. The new law, which takes effect immediately, is
supposed to open up positions for young scientists. But opponents say that it
will fail, is discriminatory and threatens the country’s scientific
research.

“The situation in the near future is going to be absurd,” says Luc
Montagnier, who will be 65 in August. “It’s clear that some laboratories will
fall apart in the coming months.” Montagnier, one of the team that discovered
HIV, is this week leading a delegation of scientists to the Ministry for Higher
Education and Research.

The legislation abolishes a 10-year-old law which allowed top-level
scientists to carry on working for three years beyond the standard civil service
retirement age of 65. However, the new regulation applies only to directors of
research at publicly funded research institutions such as the National Centre
for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the National Institute of Health and Medical
Research (INSERM). University professors and government advisers will still be
allowed to work to 68.

Although the French National Assembly and the Senate passed the new law in
December, the first many research directors knew about it was when they received
letters late last month telling them they would have to retire this year. They
described the news as “brutal and unexpected”. About 100 scientists with CNRS
and INSERM, who have planned research projects through to the year 2000, must
now hang up their lab coats—in some cases within six months.

In response to their protests, Guy Aubert, the director-general of CNRS, says
that scientists may continue to work as “emeritus” researchers until they reach
68. This does not satisfy the researchers, who point out that emeritus status
strips them of administrative control of their projects. Research teams will
have to disband or regroup, they say.

The new laws will cripple around 150 research programmes led by older
directors that employ young students and researchers. Projects under threat
include preliminary clinical trials of gene treatments for AIDS patients and
development of a vaccine for HTLV-1, the human T lymphotropic virus which
infects white bloods cells and can trigger leukaemia.

For CNRS, the enforced retirement at 65 will save around 76 million francs
(£8.2 million)—less than 1 per cent of the annual payroll.
Montagnier and other researchers say this will not be enough to create positions
for young scientists.