Chasing the Universe's First Generation of Stars

Home»April»Chasing the Universe's First Generation of StarsA few years ago, Avi Loeb spent some time with his family near Cradle Mountain in the highlands of central Tasmania, a rugged island 150 miles south of Australia. Their cabin had no Internet connection, affording Loeb some free time after dinner to step outside and look up at the clear night sky, untainted by any trace of urban glow. He was bowled over by a dazzling spectacle: the countless stars of our galaxy, the Milky Way, airily stretched across the heavens. Off to the side, he could see our... Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with:The latest news, theories and developments in the world of scienceCompelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mindEnvironmental issues and their relevance to daily lifeCutting-edge technology and its impact on our futureRegistration is FREE and takes only a few seconds to complete. If you are already registered on DiscoverMagazine.com, please log in.

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[News & Analysis] Paleontology: The Ears Have It: First Snakes Were Burrowers, Not Swimmers

Science 8 November 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6159 p. 683
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6159.683-a Paleontology One of paleontology's sharpest debates concerns whether the first snakes crawled on land or swam in the water. Data on the inner ear anatomy of living and fossil snakes, presented at a recent meeting, suggest that snakes evolved from terrestrial, burrowing ancestors.

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China to land first probe on moon this year

China's Shenzhou 10 spacecraft and its carrier Long March 2-F rocket are seen being transferred to its launching site at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, Gansu province June 3, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Stringer

BEIJING | Wed Aug 28, 2013 10:07am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will land its first probe on the moon at the end of this year, state media reported on Wednesday, the next step in an ambitious space program which includes eventually building a space station.

In 2007, China launched its first moon orbiter, the Chang'e One orbiter, named after a lunar goddess, which took images of the surface and analyzed the distribution of elements.

That launch marked the first step in China's three-stage moon mission, to be followed by an unmanned moon mission and then the retrieval of lunar soil and stone samples around 2017.

The official Xinhua news agency said that the Chang'e Three was on track for a landing towards the end of the year.

"Chang'e Three has officially entered its launch implementation stage following its research and construction period," it cited a government statement as saying.

"The mission will see a Chinese orbiter soft-land, or land on the moon after using a technique to slow its speed, on a celestial body for the first time," Xinhua added, without providing further details.

Chinese scientists have talked of the possibility of sending a man to the moon after 2020.

China successfully completed its latest manned space mission in June, when three astronauts spent 15 days in orbit and docked with an experimental space laboratory critical in Beijing's quest to build a working space station by 2020.

China is still far from catching up with the established space superpowers, the United States and Russia, which decades ago learned the docking techniques China is only now mastering.

Beijing insists its space program is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities and said Beijing is pursuing a variety of activities aimed at preventing its adversaries from using space-based assets during a crisis.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Ron Popeski)

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TV Footage Shows Some Of The First Polio Shots Given In The U.S.

A recently digitized TV news archive highlights the big points of the 1950s and 1960s: Civil Rights and the polio vaccine.
School Polio Shot, 1955 A boy grimaces as he receives one of the first polio shots ever dispensed in Roanoke, Virginia. WSLS-TV footage archived by the University of Virginia Library

In 1955, days after officials introduced the "new, wonder vaccine" against polio to Roanoke, Virginia, local news station WSLS-TV asked some parents in the street about it. Of the four adults they interviewed, three said they planned to get their children vaccinated. "I do think it's a worthwhile project and I hope it's going to be a success," one woman said.

Another woman, however, seemed a bit more skeptical—a sentiment that some modern parents might recognize. "I think I shall wait until I see some of the results from the other children," she said.

That old footage is now available online, thanks to a new project by the University of Virginia Library. In 2010, the National Endowment for the Humanities gave the library a little more than a quarter of a million dollars to preserve and make digital copies of WSLS-TV broadcasts dating from 1951 to 1971, along with printed anchors' scripts. The library released the archive this week.

You can keyword search the archive, but the library has highlighted some of the coolest stuff. There are reports on the desegregation of local schools and the Civil Rights movement. And there's a page dedicated to the introduction of the polio vaccine to Roanoke, which served as a distribution center for the shot for most southwestern Virginia counties. The development of a successful polio vaccine was big news throughout the U.S.

Anchor Script for a 1955 Polio Vaccine News Spot:  WSLS-TV, archived by the University of Virginia Library

Interestingly, the archive shows that at the beginning, scientists didn't know everything about the vaccine they were giving out. A decade after the first Roanokans received shots, a 1965 WSLS-TV broadcast carried the city health commissioner's call for locals to begin or finish their immunization program. Re-immunization was important, he said, "because the length of time a person is protected by either [the Salk or Sabin forms of the vaccine], is still a matter of conjecture." The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommend three or four shots for lifetime protection against polio.

[University of Virginia Library]

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Realistic robot carp created: First robot fish with autonomous 3-D movement in Asia

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Who Was the First Human Ancestor? - Instant Egghead

From the time of Charles Darwin science has painted a picture of our earliest ancestor in the image of a chimpanzee. Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon explains how new fossil evidence is redrawing the lines of human evolution.

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NASA Tests First Deep-Space Internet

Artist concept of interplanetary internet. Image credit: NASA/JPL
Larger view November 18, 2008

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.

Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about more than 32 million kilometers (20 million miles) from Earth.

"This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary Internet," said Adrian Hooke, team lead and manager of space-networking architecture, technology and standards at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

NASA and Vint Cerf, a vice president at Google, Inc., in Mountain View, Calif., partnered 10 years ago to develop this software protocol. The DTN sends information using a method that differs from the normal Internet's Transmission-Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP communication suite, which Cerf co-designed.

The Interplanetary Internet must be robust enough to withstand delays, disruptions and disconnections in space. Glitches can happen when a spacecraft moves behind a planet, or when solar storms and long communication delays occur. The delay in sending or receiving data from Mars takes between three-and-a-half to 20 minutes at the speed of light.

Unlike TCP/IP on Earth, the DTN does not assume a continuous end-to-end connection. In its design, if a destination path can't be found, the data packets are not discarded. Instead, each network node keeps custody of the information as long as necessary until it can safely communicate with another node. This store-and-forward method, similar to basketball players safely passing the ball to the player nearest the basket, means that information does not get lost when no immediate path to the destination exists. Eventually, the information is delivered to the end user.

"In space today, an operations team has to manually schedule each link and generate all the commands to specify which data to send, when to send it, and where to send it," said Leigh Torgerson, manager of the DTN Experiment Operations Center at JPL. "With standardized DTN, this can all be done automatically."

Engineers began a month-long series of DTN demonstrations in October. Data were transmitted using NASA's Deep Space Network in demonstrations occurring twice a week. Engineers use NASA's Epoxi spacecraft as a Mars data-relay orbiter. Epoxi is on a mission to encounter Comet Hartley 2 in two years.

"There are 10 nodes on this early interplanetary network," said Scott Burleigh of JPL, lead software-engineer for the demonstrations. "One is the Epoxi spacecraft itself and the other nine, which are on the ground at JPL, simulate Mars landers, orbiters and ground mission-operations centers."

This month-long experiment is the first in a series of planned demonstrations to qualify the technology for use on a variety of upcoming space missions, said Jay Wyatt, manager of the Space Networking and Mission Automation Program Office at JPL. In the next round of testing, a NASA-wide demonstration using new DTN software loaded on board the International Space Station is scheduled to begin next summer.

In the next few years, the Interplanetary Internet could enable many new types of space missions. Complex missions involving multiple landed, mobile and orbiting spacecraft will be far easier to support through the use of the Interplanetary Internet. It could also ensure reliable communications for astronauts on the surface of the moon.

The Deep Impact Networking Experiment is sponsored by the Space Communications and Navigation Office in NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA's Science Mission Directorate and Discovery Program in Washington provided experimental access to the Epoxi spacecraft. The Epoxi mission team provided critical support throughout development and operations.

JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institution of Technology in Pasadena.

Media contacts: Rhea Borja 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
rhea.r.borja@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Katherine Trinidad 202-358-1100
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Katherine.trinidad@nasa.gov

2008-216

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New Study Shows Very First Stars Not Monstrous

Scientists are simulating how the very first stars in our universe were born. This diagram shows a still from one such simulation. The cube on the right is a blown up region at the center of the box on the left. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kyoto Univ.
› Full image and caption November 10, 2011

PASADENA, Calif. -- The very first stars in our universe were not the behemoths scientists had once thought, according to new simulations performed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Astronomers "grew" stars in their computers, mimicking the conditions of our primordial universe. The simulations took weeks. When the scientists' concoctions were finally done, they were shocked by the results -- the full-grown stars were much smaller than expected.

Until now, it was widely believed that the first stars were the biggest of all, with masses hundreds of times that of our sun. The new research shows they are only tens of times the mass of sun; for example, the simulations produced one star that was as little as 43 solar masses.

"The first stars were definitely massive, but not to the extreme we thought before," said Takashi Hosokawa, an astronomer at JPL and lead author of the new study, appearing online Friday, Nov. 11 in the journal Science. "Our simulations reveal that the growth of these stars is stunted earlier than expected, resulting in smaller final sizes."

The early universe consisted of nothing more than thin clouds of hydrogen and helium atoms. A few hundred million years after its birth, the first stars began to ignite. How these first stars formed is still a mystery.

Astronomers know that all stars form out of collapsing clouds of gas. Gravity from a growing "seed" at the center of the cloud attracts more and more matter. For so-called normal stars like our sun, this process is aided by heavier elements such as carbon, which help to keep the gas falling onto the budding star cool enough to collapse. If the cloud gets too hot, the gas expands and escapes.

But, in the early universe, stars hadn't yet produced heavy elements. The very first stars had to form out of nothing but hydrogen and helium. Scientists had theorized that such stars would require even more mass to form, to compensate for the lack of heavy elements and their cooling power. At first, it was thought the stars might be as big as one thousand times the mass of our sun. Later, the models were refined and the first stars were estimated to be hundreds of solar masses.

"These stars keep getting smaller and smaller over time," said Takashi. "Now we think they are even less massive, only tens of solar masses."

The team's simulations reveal that matter in the vicinity of the forming stars heats up to higher temperatures than previously believed, as high as 50,000 Kelvin (90,000 degrees Fahrenheit), or 8.5 times the surface temperature of the sun. Gas this hot expands and escapes the gravity of the developing star, instead of falling back down onto it. This means the stars stop growing earlier than predicted, reaching smaller final sizes.

"This is definitely going to surprise some folks," said Harold Yorke, an astronomer at JPL and co-author of the study. "It was standard knowledge until now that the first stars had to be extremely massive."

The results also answer an enigma regarding the first stellar explosions, called supernovae. When massive stars blow up at the end of their lives, they spew ashes made of heavier elements into space. If the very first stars were the monsters once thought, they should have left a specific pattern of these elements imprinted on the material of the following generation of stars. But, as much as astronomers searched the oldest stars for this signature, they couldn't find it. The answer, it seems, is that it simply is not there. Because the first stars weren't as massive as previously thought, they would have blown up in a manner akin to the types of stellar explosions that we see today.

"I am sure there are more surprises in store for us regarding this exciting period of the universe," said Yorke. "NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will be a valuable tool to observe this epoch of early star and galaxy formation."

For technical details and videos visit http://www-tap.scphys.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~hosokawa/firststarstop_e.html .

The California Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA.  More information about JPL is online at www.jpl.nasa.gov .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

2011-348

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Crucial step in human DNA replication observed for the first time

An elusive step in the process of human DNA replication has been observed, for the first time, by scientists at Penn State University in the lab of Stephen J. Benkovic. The step, which is crucial for DNA replication in humans and other forms of life, previously had remained mysterious and had not been well studied in human DNA. For illustrative purposes, this image represents a crucial molecular player in the process, by a hand, which is loading the sliding clamp ring onto DNA. Credit: Benkovic lab, Penn State University

(Phys.org) —For the first time, an elusive step in the process of human DNA replication has been demystified by scientists at Penn State University. According to senior author Stephen J. Benkovic, an Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry and Holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Chemistry at Penn State, the scientists "discovered how a key step in human DNA replication is performed." The results of the research will be published in the journal eLife on 2 April 2013.

Part of the DNA replication process—in humans and in other life forms—involves loading of molecular structures called sliding clamps onto DNA. This crucial step in DNA replication had remained somewhat mysterious and had not been well studied in human DNA replication. Mark Hedglin, a post-doctoral researcher in Penn State's Department of Chemistry and a member of Benkovic's team, explained that the sliding clamp is a ring-shaped protein that acts to encircle the DNA strand, latching around it like a watch band. The sliding clamp then serves to anchor special enzymes called polymerases to the DNA, ensuring efficient copying of the genetic material. "Without a sliding clamp, polymerases can copy very few bases—the molecular 'letters' that make up the code of DNA—at a time. But the clamp helps the polymerase to stay in place, allowing it to copy thousands of bases before being removed from the strand of DNA," Hedglin said.

Hedglin explained that, due to the closed circular structure of sliding clamps, another necessary step in DNA replication is the presence of a "clamp loader," which acts to latch and unlatch the sliding clamps at key stages during the process. "The big unknown has always been how the sliding clamp and the clamp loader interact and the timing of latching and unlatching of the clamp from the DNA," said Hedglin. "We know that polymerases and clamp loaders can't bind the sliding clamp at the same time, so the hypothesis was that clamp loaders latched sliding clamps onto DNA, then left for some time during DNA replication, returning only to unlatch the clamps after the polymerase left so they could be recycled for further use."

To test this hypothesis, the team of researchers used a method called Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), a technique of attaching fluorescent "tags" to human proteins and sections of DNA in order to monitor the interactions between them. "With these tags in place, we then observed the formation of holoenzymes—the active form of the polymerase involved in DNA replication, which consists of the polymerase itself along with any accessory factors that optimize its activity," Hedglin said. "We found that whenever a sliding clamp is loaded onto a DNA template in the absence of polymerase, the clamp loader quickly removed the clamp so that free clamps did not build up on the DNA. However, whenever a polymerase was present, it captured the sliding clamp and the clamp loader then dissociated from the DNA strand."

The team members also found that, during the moments when both the clamp loader and the clamp were bound to the DNA, they were not intimately engaged with each other. Rather, the clamp loader released the closed clamp onto the DNA, allowing an opportunity for the polymerase to capture the clamp, completing the assembly of the holoenzyme. Subsequently, the clamp loader dissociated from DNA. "Our research demonstrates that the DNA polymerase holoenzyme in humans consists of only a clamp and a DNA polymerase. The clamp loader is not part of it. It disengages from the DNA after the polymerase binds the clamp," Hedglin added.

Benkovic noted that this mechanism provides a means for the cell to recycle scarce clamps when they are not in use for productive replication.

Journal reference: eLife

Provided by Pennsylvania State University

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Bioengineers develop world's first microfluidic device for rapid separation and detection of non-spherical bioparticles

How the I-shape pillar array works. Non-spherical cells such as rod-shaped ones are rotated by I-shape pillar to increase their effective hydrodynamic size, isolating them from samples. Credit: National University of Singapore

A bioengineering research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) team led by Associate Professor Zhang Yong has developed a novel microfluidic device for efficient, rapid separation and detection of non-spherical bioparticles. Microfluidic devices deal with the behavior, precise control and manipulation of fluids that are geometrically constrained to sub-millimeter scale. This new device, which separates and detects non-spherical bioparticles such as pathogenic bacteria and malaria infected red blood cells, can potentially be used for rapid medical diagnostics and treatment.

Bioparticles such as bacteria and red blood cells (RBC) are non-spherical. Many are also deformable – for example, our blood cells may change shape when affected by different pathogens in our body. Hence, the team's shape-sensitive technique is a significant discovery. Currently, separation techniques are mostly designed for spherical particles.

Though the team is focusing mainly on the rapid separation and detection of bacteria from pathological samples at the moment, their device has potential as a rapid diagnostic tool as well. Their new technique can potentially replace an age-old method of detection based on bacterial culture.

Explained Assoc Prof Zhang, "The old method was developed about 100 years ago, but it is still being used today as the mainstream technique because no new technique is available for effective separation of bacteria from pathological samples like blood. Many of the pathogenic bacteria are non-spherical but most of microfluidic devices today are for separating spherical cells. Our method uses a special I-shape pillar array which is capable of separating non-spherical or irregularly-shaped bioparticles."

Enlarge

Microfluidic chip which is only slightly bigger than a Singapore $1 coin. Credit: National University of Singapore

The method developed by the NUS team can complete the diagnosis process in less than an hour compared to 24-48 hours required for bacterial detection by using conventional methods. Their device is also efficient in separating red blood cells (RBCs) from blood samples as RBCs are non-spherical. This enables rapid detection of diagnostic biomarkers which reside in blood sample.

One of the most challenging aspects for the team was designing and fabricating a device that is capable of detecting even the smallest dimension of bioparticles and still provide reasonably good throughput (amount which can be processed through the system in a given time).

How it works and moving forward

Scientists have tried to address the problem of separating non-spherical bioparticles by using techniques such as restricting the flow of particles but these have not shown to be as effective. However, the NUS Bioengineering team's I-shape pillar array device has proven to be successful.

The I-shape pillar array induces rotational movements of the non-spherical particles which in turn increases the effective hydrodynamic size of the bioparticles flowing in the device, allowing for efficient separation. Their design is able to provide 100 percent separation of RBCs from blood samples, outperforming conventional cylindrical pillar array designs.

The device can also potentially separate bioparticles with diverse shapes and sizes. The team has tested their device successfully on rod-shaped bacteria such as Escherichia coli (common bacteria which can cause food poisoning). So far, this has been difficult to achieve using conventional microfluidic chips.

The team's findings were published in the reputed journal Nature Communications on 27 March 2013, in a manuscript titled "Rotational separation of non-spherical bioparticles using I-shaped pillar arrays in a microfluidic device".

Said Assoc Prof Zhang, "With our current findings, we hope to move on to separate other non-spherical bioparticles like fungi, with higher throughput and efficiency, circumventing the spherical size dependency of current techniques."

More information: "Rotational separation of non-spherical bioparticles using I-shaped pillar arrays in a microfluidic device" Nature Communications, 27 March 2013.

Journal reference: Nature Communications

Provided by National University of Singapore

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New chart shows the entire topography of the Antarctic seafloor in detail for the first time

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U.S. Navy to field first laser weapon, could shoot down a drone

The amphibious transport dock ship USS Ponce is seen underway in the U.S. 5th fleet area of responsibility in the Red Sea in this February 16, 2011 handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy.

Credit: Reuters/U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Scott Pittman/Handout

WASHINGTON | Mon Apr 8, 2013 7:49pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy said on Monday it will deploy for the first time a laser weapon on one of its ships that could be capable of shooting down drones and disabling vessels.

"The future is here," said Peter Morrison at the Office of Naval Research's Solid-State Laser Technology Maturation Program.

The weapon is being billed as a step toward transforming warfare. Since it runs on electricity, it can fire as long as there is power at a cost of less than $1 dollar per shot.

"Compare that to the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to fire a missile, and you can begin to see the merits of this capability," Chief of Naval Research Rear Admiral Matthew Klunder, said in a statement.

The prototype, which one official said cost between $31 million and $32 million to make, will be installed aboard the USS Ponce, which is being used as a floating base in the Middle East, sometime in fiscal year 2014, which begins in October.

A Navy video showing the laser shooting down a drone can be seen at youtu.be/OmoldX1wKYQ

Klunder said the Navy expects that someday incoming missiles will not be able to "simply outmaneuver" a highly accurate laser beam traveling at the speed of light.

A new report from the Congressional Research Service praises the laser technology but also notes drawbacks, including the potential it could accidentally hit satellites or aircraft. Weather also affects lasers.

"Lasers might not work well, or at all, in rain or fog, preventing lasers from being an all-weather solution," it said in its report issued on March 14.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Xavier Briand)

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First mobile app for green chemistry fosters sustainable manufacturing of medicines

Mention mobile applications, or mobile apps, and people think of games, email, news, weather, productivity and other software for Apple, Android and other smart phones and tablet computers. But an app with broader impact—the first mobile application to foster wider use of the environmentally friendly and sustainable principles of green chemistry—is the topic of a report in the American Chemical Society's new journal, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

Sean Ekins, Alex M. Clark and Antony Williams point out that the companies that manufacture medicines, electronics components and hundreds of other consumer products have a commitment to work in a sustainable fashion without damaging the environment. That's the heart of "green chemistry," often defined as "the utilization of a set of principles that reduces or eliminates the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products."

Their article describes a guide on doing so for solvents, key ingredients in processes for making medicines. Some traditional processes generate 25-100 times more waste than the chemical they are making (e.g., pharmaceuticals). The solvents guide was developed by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute's Pharmaceutical Roundtable, a group of 14 pharmaceutical companies. The Green Solvents mobile app version of the guide for Apple devices covers 60 different solvents and is available online at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/green-solvents/id446670983?mt=8, and the Lab Solvents app for Android devices is available online at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mmi.android.labsolvents.

More information: "Incorporating Green Chemistry Concepts into Mobile Chemistry Applications and Their Potential Uses", ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng., 2013, 1 (1), pp 8–13. DOI: 10.1021/sc3000509

Abstract
Green Chemistry related information is generally proprietary, and papers on the topic are commonly behind pay walls that limit their accessibility. Several new mobile applications (apps) have been recently released for the Apple iOS platform, which incorporate green chemistry concepts. Because of the large number of people who now own a mobile device across all demographics, this population represents a highly novel way to communicate green chemistry, which has not previously been appreciated. We have made the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute (ACS GCI) Pharmaceutical Roundtable Solvent Selection Guide more accessible and have increased its visibility by creating a free mobile app for the Apple iOS platform called Green Solvents. We have also used this content for molecular similarity calculations using additional solvents to predict potential environmental and health categories, which could help in solvent selection. This approach predicted the correct waste or health class for over 60% of solvents when the Tanimoto similarity was >0.5. Additional mobile apps that incorporate green chemistry content or concepts are also described including Open Drug Discovery Teams and Yield101. Making green chemistry information freely available or at very low cost via such apps is a paradigm shift that could be exploited by content providers and scientists to expose their green chemistry ideas to a larger audience.

Provided by American Chemical Society

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First tests of old patent medicine remedies from a museum collection

What was in Dr. F. G. Johnson's French Female Pills and other scientifically untested elixirs, nostrums and other quack cures that were the only medicines available to sick people during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries?

Scientists provided a glimpse today based on an analysis of a museum collection of patent medicines used in turn-of-the-century America. It was part of the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, which is being held here this week.

Mark Benvenuto, Ph.D, who headed the study, explained that hundreds of untested products were sold in stores, by mail order or in traveling medicine shows during the patent medicine era. The products were called "patent medicines" not because they had been granted a government patent, but from an unrelated term that originated in 17th century England.

"This was an era long before the controlled clinical trials and federal regulations that ensure the safety and effectiveness of the medicines we take today," Benvenuto explained. "Many patent medicines had dangerous ingredients, not just potentially toxic substances like arsenic, mercury and lead, but cocaine, heroin and high concentrations of alcohol."

The samples came from the collection of the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Mich. The museum houses artifacts celebrating American inventors of various items, including planes, cars, trains, machines, furniture and more. The 50 patent medicines in the analysis were among hundreds in the museum's Health Aids collection. The results of Benvenuto's study are on display at the museum.

Undergraduate students working under Benvenuto's supervision performed the bulk of the research. Andrew Diefenbach, a senior and mechanical engineering major at the university, presented the group's research in a talk here today. He got involved in the project as a freshman in Benvenuto's general chemistry course. "I'm interested to see what other comments people have, and what kind of things they may have thought of that we haven't thought of so far that we can use to further the research," Diefenbach said.

Some of the ingredients in the samples of old patent medicines, including calcium and zinc, actually could have been healthy and are mainstays in modern dietary supplements, said Benvenuto. He is with the University of Detroit Mercy. But others were clearly dangerous. Analysis of Dr. F. G. Johnson's French Female Pills, for instance, revealed iron, calcium and zinc. But the nostrum also contained lead, which is potentially toxic. Others contained mercury, another potentially toxic heavy metal, and arsenic.

Benvenuto explained that the presence of heavy metals may have been due to contamination. On the other hand, there actually was a rationale for including some of them. Arsenic and mercury were mainstays for treatment of syphilis, for instance.

Provided by American Chemical Society

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