Cells taken from people with a rare syndrome linked to autism could help explain the origins of the condition, scientists suggest.
The Stanford University team turned skin cells from people with "Timothy syndrome" into fully-fledged brain cells.
The abnormal activity found in these cells could be partially corrected using an experimental drug, Nature Medicine reports.
UK researchers warned the findings might not apply to everyone with autism.
Compared with the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide thought to show characteristics of autism, "Timothy syndrome" is vanishingly rare, affecting an estimated 20 people across the planet.
People who have the syndrome frequently display autistic behaviour, such as problems with social development and communication.
Because it is caused by a single gene defect rather than a combination of small genetic flaws, each making a tiny contribution, it presents a useful target for scientists looking to examine what goes wrong in the developing brain of a child with autism.
Ready for work
The US researchers used a technique developed recently to generate brain cells called neurons from only a sample of the patient's skin.
This allowed them to examine their development in the laboratory, and even use them to test out possible treatments.
They found obvious differences between neurons grown from Timothy syndrome patients, and those from healthy "control" subjects.
The healthy neurons developed into different subtypes, ready for work in different regions of the brain.
In contrast, the proportion of neurons developing into each subtype was different in the Timothy syndrome samples - more were equipped to work in the upper part of the cerebral cortex, and fewer in the lower part.
This meant there were fewer neurons equipped to work in a part of the brain called the corpus callosum, which has the role of helping the left and right "hemispheres" of the brain communicate.
These differences echoed those already observed in mice specially bred with the Timothy syndrome genetic fault.
In addition, the neurons were making too much of a particular body chemical linked to the manufacture of dopamine and norepinephrine, which play a significant role in sensory processing and social behaviour.
Dr Ricardo Dolmetsch, who led the study, said that the abnormalities found tallied with other evidence that autism was due in part to poor communication between different parts of the brain.
The team managed to reduce significantly the number of these malfunctioning neurons by adding a drug as they developed.
This, they said, meant it might be possible one day to treat this defect in a real patient, although the drug used was not currently suitable for children due to side-effects.
The National Autistic Society gave a cautious welcome to findings, but warned that they did not necessarily offer insights into every form of autism.
Researcher Georgina Gomez said: "Timothy syndrome is only one form of autism and so these findings only give a very limited picture of what might cause the condition.
"More work would need to be done to substantiate this particular piece of research."
EU Parliament Votes To Oppose Most Farm Antibiotic Use mengele-westof
A quick post, because I’m on a ferocious deadline, but still can’t let this news go by. In a vote that’s non-binding but high profile and influential, the European Parliament has resolved to end “prophylactic use” of antibiotics in farming, and to prevent any “last resort” antibiotics from being used in animals, in order to keep resistance from developing so that the drugs will still be effective in human medicine.
This is a significant development. The European Union has already banned “growth promotion,” the use of micro-doses of antibiotics that cause meat animals to fatten more quickly. What the Parliament is doing here is asking the European Commission, the EU’s law-making body, to add “disease prevention” use to the ban. That’s the delivery of treatment-strength doses of antibiotics to all animals on a farm in order to prevent their becoming ill as a result of the confinement conditions in which they are held. It accounts for a substantial portion of the antibiotics used in agriculture, and is a major driver of the emergence of antibiotic-resistant organisms.
The “Resolution on the Public Health Threat of Antimicrobial Resistance” says, in part, that the body:
29. Calls on the Commission to make legislative proposals to phase out the prophylactic use of antibiotics in livestock farming;
30. Stresses that the livestock and intensive fish-farming sectors should focus on preventing disease through good hygiene, housing and animal husbandry, as well as strict bio-security measures, rather than the prophylactic use of antibiotics;
31. Calls, in particular, for the establishment of good practices for animal husbandry which minimise the risk of antimicrobial resistance; emphasises that these practices should in particular apply to young animals brought together from different breeders thus increasing the risk of communicable diseases;…
33. Calls for a separation between the active ingredients and effect mechanisms used in human medicine and veterinary medicine, to the extent possible, to reduce the risk of resistance against antibiotics being transferred from livestock to humans, but points out that this must not result in the imposition of restrictions on existing treatment options that are effective;
34. Considers that the use of so called ‘last resort’ antibiotics targeting problematic human pathogens should be permitted for agricultural use only under licensed conditions combined with resistance monitoring, preferably on an individual basis…
For a quick read, here’s the press release, and for a longer one, here’s the full resolution, which admirably tackles overuse and misuse of antibiotics in human medicine, shortfalls in drug development, and the need for new quick diagnostics as well. Note also that it does not forbid the use of antibiotics to treat individual sick animals; no one that I am aware of has ever argued against that. According to the UK paper Farmers’ Guardian, agricultural unions are already objecting.
Hospital managers are planning to postpone thousands of non-emergency operations next Wednesday, because of the public sector strike over pension changes.
Patients across the UK have been sent letters warning them of the disruption.
Diagnostic tests and outpatient appointments will also be delayed, but hospitals insist emergency and critical care will not be affected.
Managers say they are preparing as they would for Christmas or bank holidays.
An estimated 400,000 nurses and healthcare assistants, as well as paramedics, physiotherapists, and support staff like cleaners and administrators have said they will join the action on 30 November over changes to public sector pensions.
However, the main medical unions - the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives and the British Medical Association are not taking part.
The Department of Health in England said it was expecting at least 5,500 non-emergency procedures like hip and knee operations to be rearranged.
More than 12,000 patients are likely to have diagnostic tests postponed, and 40,000 outpatient appointments are expected to be rescheduled.
On an average day, 28,000 patients have planned treatments or operations in England and there are 60,000 diagnostic tests.
However, managers say they are putting plans in place to make sure people can still get emergency or urgent care, in the way they do on bank holidays or at Christmas.
999 calls
Patients needing urgent treatment like chemotherapy and kidney dialysis will still be able to get it, and maternity units will remain open.
Calls to 999 will still be answered, but patients are being urged to think hard and only call if it is a genuine emergency.
The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, said health service workers should not take action that harms the interests of patients.
"I would ask staff to consider carefully whether going on strike is the right thing to do," he said.
Unison's head of health Christina Nacanea said members did not take strike action lightly.
"Most of them will first and foremost ensure that there is adequate cover is in place and that patients' safety is not compromised," she said,
"But by the same token they will be wanting to demonstrate their opposition to what the government is trying do to their pensions."
Once tower blocks were the answer to a housing crisis but many people came to hate them. With Sheffield's Park Hill estate being refurbished for its 50th birthday, can people learn to love them again, asks architect and broadcaster Maxwell Hutchinson.
1945 saw Britain as victors and victims - lost men, lost skills, lost industry, and, most significant, a critical shortage of homes.
The new Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee was a democratic victor but a scapegoat for government's failure to come up with solution to he critical homes' crisis.
Homes were the most pressing and seemingly insoluble of of all post war social issues. There was no labour force, no bricks, and acres of still-smoking slums.
Enter continental pre-war modernist architecture, forged in the creative minds of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and others, and kept alive in the fertile minds of Britain's young architects, who had been plucked away from their studied enthusiasm for the new modernism to fight a war.
They returned, not demoralised by the fighting, but with a fervent zeal for modernism. They brought with them a solution, and government loved it. Housing problem? What problem? Build them high, make them in factories, and slot them into the waste lands of easily cleared slums.
There were no Nimbys [not-in-my-back-yard] then. No pressure groups, no conservation areas - British towns and cities were one huge brownfield site.
So the British tower block was born. Glasgow rebuilt a city with more tower blocks than any other city in Europe. It's still the case. London's East End cheered as cloud-scraping towers provided modernity, inside lavatories, central heating, Formica, and hot baths.
Tower blocks were the answer to a major housing crisis
But this vision did not last long. The middle class saw tower blocks as ghettos that they would rather pass by. Post-war families boomed, but the ideologically inspired dreams of cheap, quality, high-rise housing started to be neglected and demonised.
The tower block started to be seen as all that was misguided about post-war Britain. Maintenance was often abysmal - lifts failed, rubbish chutes were blocked, garages were burnt by vandals.
There had been doubts, but events triggered by an early morning cup of tea in a tower block in east London on 16 May 1968 turned the UK wholeheartedly against high-rise living and all that it stood for.
Beetham Tower, Manchester (2006): UK's tallest residential building
Trellick Tower, London (1972): Erno Goldfinger's building is now popular with residents
Park Hill estate in Sheffield (1961): Now Grade II* listed and being refurbished
Robin Hood Gardens (1972): Praised by some, but due for demolition
Ivy Hodge lived on the 18th floor Ronan Point, a 22-storey tower, named after Harry Louis Ronan, a chairman of the London borough of Newham's Housing Committee, which had opened on 11 March 1968.
As Hodge struck a match to light her stove, a gas explosion ripped the corner out of the tower. That corner fell down like a pile of loosely stacked tiles.
That was how the block and many more like it were built, story-high, load-bearing concrete panels stacked sky-high with what proved to be appallingly badly made joints. Hodge survived but four residents died and 17 were injured in the disaster.
Hodge's cup of tea had brought down more than the corner of one tower - it shattered the public's confidence in all high-rise dreaming.
The innate enthusiasm of the English for vernacular architecture took hold of the nation's mood - all would now be comfortable brick, near the ground with pitched roofs, garden front and rear. It would be just like good old England.
Some towers are now regarded as "cool"
Such was the government's overreaction at the events in Newham that they tore up their high post-war ideals and started an orgy of tower destruction.
The undeserved perception of failed idealism was celebrated by spectacular displays of demolition pyrotechnic. The tower block had failed and picnic parties sat on London's Hackney Marshes as tower after tower exploded and crashed into a pile of wasted idealism and dreams.
But all was not lost. Some energetic and visionary young architects and property developers have seen merit in the towers in the 21st Century.
Many of the old towers are still there - their very existence proving they are intrinsically sustainable. A tidy-up of the common areas, new lifts, a permanent concierge, entry-phone system and high-rise slums could become desirable homes.
London's famous Trellick Tower, by the architect Erno Goldfinger, is now a 30-storey style pile. That goes for towers in Glasgow, now swathed in multicoloured insulating overcladding.
Not all concrete ideals of the post-war building boom have survived, Alison and Peter Smithson's polemic Robin Hood Gardens in east London is not long for this life, despite the protestations of the architectural elite. Concrete cancer, poor maintenance and the vandalism of social discontent have had their way - down it will come.
But there is nothing intrinsically flawed with the idea of high-rise living. Sustainability, good maintenance, careful management and a sense of ownership can make things work.
If the lift works, towers are particularly suitable for the elderly - great views, peace and quiet, neighbours who can still remember the post-war devastation.
Towers also work for the young - they are convenient, give a good leg-up on the housing market, and, with good neighbours, great fun. There is plenty of time to have children and move into a predictable estate on the outside of town. In the meantime, one can enjoy life with one's head in the clouds.
There is now a new generation of high-rise
The tower of homes is making a refreshing comeback. New technology means faster, more reliable lifts, and acoustic improvements mean greater privacy.
New materials and structural engineering innovations produce a new architectural language for the tower. Although concrete is still an essential part of the buildings' structure, it is no longer a singular cladding material.
The new towers benefit from the introduction of colour and texture. The tower prejudice has all but gone - today's urban world is once again reaching for the sky.
An Australian hospital has launched an inquiry after staff treating a woman carrying twin boys accidentally terminated the wrong foetus.
Doctors had told the woman that one of her babies had a congenital heart defect that would require numerous operations, if he survived.
The woman chose to abort the 32-week foetus but staff injected the wrong twin.
The hospital in Melbourne described it as a "terrible tragedy".
"The Royal Women's Hospital can confirm a distressing clinical accident occurred on Tuesday," it said in a statement.
"We are conducting a full investigation and continue to offer the family and affected staff every support."
The woman went on to have an emergency caesarean to end the life of the sick foetus.
'Thorough investigation'
Victorian Health Minister David Davis said the hospital investigation would be overseen by an independent expert.
"I am very much determined to get to the bottom of what went wrong," he said.
State Premier Ted Baillieu echoed his sentiments, saying: "I don't think it's appropriate for anybody to draw any conclusions other than this is a horrible tragedy.
"We'll make sure that the investigation is as thorough as it can be."
In a brief statement, the family asked for privacy "at what has been a very difficult time for us".
The researchers hope to gain insights into autism
Just exactly who are 'the rich'?
