LONDON (Reuters) – Usain Bolt, already the world’s fastest man, could lop another 0.18 seconds off his 100 meter sprint world record even without running any faster. It’s just a question of getting a few conditions right – and doing the maths.

Luckily for the top Jamaican sprinter, John Barrow, a professor of mathematical sciences at Britain’s Cambridge University, has done the calculations for him.

He’s also done some serious sums on the triathlon – an event he describes as “crazily constructed” and “ridiculously biased” – and on high jumping, archery, rowing and 100 or so other sports he feels could do with a little more number crunching.

His mission, he says, is to enrich understanding of sport and enliven appreciation of maths. All at the same time.

“It’s about getting some perspective on how far there is to go,” Barrow told Reuters ahead of a series of talks on the maths behind the Olympics in Cambridge and in London, host city for the 2012 Games.

NEW RECORD COULD BE 9.40 SECONDS

With Bolt, the distance is set – at 100 meters – but there’s a lot that could be done with the timing, according to Barrow.

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have found a link between genetic variants in an area of the genome that controls immune response and the risk of contracting podoconiosis, a disfiguring and disabling leg disease that affects almost 4 million people, mainly in Africa.

In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, researchers compared the genomes of 194 people in southern Ethiopia affected by the disease with 203 people in the same region who were not affected. They found three genetic variants that increase the risk of developing the disease.

Podoconiosis, or “podo” as it is often called, is a type of elephantiasis, or leg swelling, caused by an abnormal reaction to minerals found in soil.

It is found in farming communities in tropical Africa, Central America and northwest India, often among people who cannot afford shoes. It was added to a World Health Organisation (WHO) list of neglected tropical diseases in 2011.

“There are still many places round the world where people cannot afford a pair of shoes,” said Gail Davey, a co-researcher on the study. “For some people, this means cold, cut or bruised feet, but for others it can lead to podoconiosis, which can have a significant impact on their quality of life”.

Experts say years of walking, ploughing or playing barefoot on soils of volcanic origins which contain irritant mineral particles appears to trigger changes in the lymph system in the legs, which in time can lead to swelling in the feet and legs.

According to the Geneva-based WHO, around a million people in Ethiopia and another 500,000 in Cameroon are estimated to be affected by podoconiosis.

LONDON (Reuters) – We’ve pickled it, desiccated it, drilled it, mummified it, chopped it and sliced it over centuries, yet as the most complex entity in the known universe, the human brain remains a mysterious fascination.

With samples of Albert Einstein’s preserved brain on slides, and specimens from other famous and infamous heads such as the English mathematician Charles Babbage and notorious mass murderer William Burke, an exhibition opening in London this week is seeking to tap into that intrigue.

Curators say it reveals “the mind as matter” with a historical perspective on what humans have done to brains in the cause of medical intervention and scientific enquiry.

“(This) single fragile organ has become the object of modern society’s most profound hope fears and beliefs – and some of the most extreme practices and advanced technologies,” said Marius Kwint, the show’s co-curator, who spoke to reporters at a preview at the Wellcome Collection in central London.

“The different ways in which we have treated and represented real physical brains open up a lot of questions about our collective minds.”

Scientists reckon the brain contains 100 billion nerve cells and some 100 trillion synapses or neural connections.

BASIC TOOLS

LONDON (Reuters) – A genetic discovery could help explain why flu makes some people seriously ill or kills them, while others seem able to bat it away with little more than a few aches, coughs and sneezes.

In a study published in the journal Nature on Sunday, British and American researchers said they had found for the first time a human gene that influences how people respond to flu infections, making some people more susceptible than others.

The finding helps explain why during the 2009/2010 pandemic of H1N1 or “swine flu”, the vast majority of people infected had only mild symptoms, while others – many of them healthy young adults – got seriously ill and died.

In future, the genetic discovery could help doctors screen patients to identify those more likely to be brought down by flu, allowing them to be selected for priority vaccination or preventative treatment during outbreaks, the researchers said.

It could also help develop new vaccines or medicines against potentially more dangerous viruses such as bird flu.

Paul Kellam of Britain’s Sanger Institute, who co-led the study and presented the findings in a telephone briefing, said the gene, called ITFITM3, appeared to be a “crucial first line of defense” against flu.

When IFITM3 was present in large quantities, the spread of the virus in lungs was hindered, he explained. But when IFITM3 levels were lower, the virus could replicate and spread more easily, causing more severe symptoms.

LONDON (Reuters) – The development of a novel antidepressant ground to a halt this week when researchers found it did not make patients feel any better than the pills they were already taking.

The drug firms took the hit, with shares tumbling in Targacept, while AstraZeneca wrote off a total of $146.5 million for the drug’s failure.

It was bad news for investors and bad news for patients – and a depressingly familiar tale for drugmakers seeking to develop new treatments for brain illnesses.

Data from Thomson Reuters Pharma shows returns for pharmaceutical companies in the antidepressant market are collapsing – despite widespread use of pills like Prozac – as patents expire and new drugs fail to make it to market.

Some Big Pharma firms are quitting the field altogether. Others are hacking back investment and shedding jobs.

These might seem like prudent decisions in an increasingly expensive and frustrating field. Other diseases such as cancer and diabetes are reckoned to be better areas to be in these days. Yet some scientists say the timing could hardly be worse.

Researchers who study the brain believe they are finally figuring out the basic mechanics of depression and other mental disorders, discoveries that should open the door to far more effective ways to tackle illnesses that can cripple society.

LONDON (Reuters) – Tobacco-related deaths have nearly tripled in the past decade and big tobacco firms are undermining public efforts that could save millions, a report led by the health campaign group the World Lung Foundation (WLF) said on Wednesday.

In the report, marking the tenth anniversary of its first Tobacco Atlas, the WLF and the American Cancer Society said if current trends continue, a billion people will die from tobacco use and exposure this century – one person every six seconds.

Tobacco has killed 50 million people in the last 10 years, and tobacco is responsible for more than 15 percent of all male deaths and 7 percent of female deaths, the new Tobacco Atlas report found. (www.tobaccoatlas.org)

In China, tobacco is already the number one killer – causing 1.2 million deaths a year – and that number is expected to rise to 3.5 million a year by 2030, the report said.

That is part of a broader shift, with smoking rates in the developed world declining but numbers growing in poorer regions, said Michael Eriksen, one of the report’s authors and director of the Institute of Public Health at Georgia State University.

“If we don’t act, the projections for the future are even more morbid. And the burden of death caused by tobacco is increasingly one of the developing world, particularly Asia, the Middle East and Africa,” he said in an interview.

Almost 80 percent of people who die from tobacco-related illnesses now come from low- and middle-income countries. In Turkey, 38 percent of male deaths are from smoking-related illnesses, though smoking also remains the biggest killer of American women too.

LONDON (Reuters) – Three new studies published on Wednesday added to growing scientific evidence suggesting that taking a daily dose of aspirin can help prevent, and possibly treat, cancer.

Previous studies have found that daily aspirin reduces the long-term risk of death due to cancer, but until now the shorter-term effects have been less certain – as has the medicine’s potential in patients already diagnosed with cancer.

The new studies, led by Peter Rothwell of Britain’s Oxford University, found that aspirin also has a short-term benefit in preventing cancer, and that it reduces the likelihood that cancers will spread to other organs by about 40 to 50 percent.

“These findings add to the case for use of aspirin to prevent cancer, particularly if people are at increased risk,” Rothwell said.

“Perhaps more importantly, they also raise the distinct possibility that aspirin will be effective as an additional treatment for cancer – to prevent distant spread of the disease.”

This was particularly important because it is the process of spread of cancer, or “metastasis”, which most often kills people with the disease, he added.

Aspirin, originally developed by Bayer, is a cheap over-the-counter drug generally used to combat pain or reduce fever.

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have discovered how electroconvulsive or electric shock therapy – a controversial but effective treatment – acts on the brains of severely depressed people and say the finding could help improve diagnosis and treatment of mental illness.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) involves first anaesthetizing the patient and then electrically inducing a seizure.

It has a controversial reputation – gained in part because of its role in the 1975 film “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” starring Jack Nicholson – but is a potent and effective treatment for patients with mood disorders like severe depression.

Yet despite it being used successfully in clinical practice around the world for more than 70 years, scientists have until now not been entirely clear how or why it works.

Now a team from Aberdeen University in Scotland has shown for the first time that ECT affects the way different parts of the brain involved in depression communicate with each other.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal they found ECT appears to turn down overactive connections between parts of the brain that control mood and parts that control thinking and concentrating.

This stops the overwhelming impact that depression has on patients’ ability to enjoy life and carry out day-to-day activities, they said.

LONDON (Reuters)- On New Year’s Eve 2004, after months of losing weight and suffering fevers, night sweats and shortness of breath, student Anna Watterson was taken into hospital coughing up blood.

It was strange to be diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB)- an ancient disease associated with poverty – especially since Watterson was a well-off trainee lawyer living in the affluent British capital of London. Yet it was also a relief, she says, finally to know what had been making her ill for so long.

But when Watterson’s infection refused to yield to the three-pronged antibiotic attack doctors prescribed to fight it, her relief turned to dread.

After six weeks of taking pills that had no effect, Watterson was told she had multi-drug resistant TB, or MDR-TB, and faced months in an isolation ward on a regimen of injected drugs that left her nauseous, bruised and unable to go out in the sun.

“My friends were really shocked,” Watterson said. “Most of them had only heard of TB from reading Victorian novels.”

Tuberculosis is often seen in the wealthy West as a disease of bygone eras – evoking impoverished 18th or 19th century women and children dying slowly of a disease then commonly known as “consumption” or the “white plague”.

But rapidly rising rates of drug-resistant TB in some of the wealthiest cities in the world, as well as across Africa and Asia, are again making history.

LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) – Vital medical research is under threat in Britain because ferry companies and airlines are bowing to pressure from animal rights activists and refusing to carry animals destined for laboratory testing, scientists and drugmakers said on Wednesday.

Researchers said all ferry companies operating routes into Britain had now banned the import of mice, rats and rabbits, which are used in research labs to explore the potential of experimental new drugs.

“Threats to the carriage of these animals will slow down the progress of essential and life-saving biomedical research,” scientists from the Medical Research Council, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, the Association of Medical Research Charities and others said.

While the vast majority of animals used for research in Britain are bred here, there are certain programmes where experts from different parts of the world find it essential to share specific strains of animals, scientists said.

“It takes a long time to breed these animals, and if their transport is stopped then researchers will have to recreate them, requiring the unnecessary use of many more animals over successive generations,” they said in a joint statement.

With strict rules in place to ensure humane transport, international animal transit mostly relies on airlines, partly because flying means shorter travel times.

In Britain, however, ferries have been increasingly relied upon since previous campaigns by animal rights activists prompted airlines and airports to withdraw from the business.