One More Poll: Obama On A Roll

A blockbuster study in which US researchers reported that they had turned human skin cells into embryonic stem cells contained errors, its lead author has acknowledged. Shoukhrat Mitalipov nevertheless adamantly stood by the conclusions of the study published last week in journal Cell, which reported that human stem cell lines for the first time had been created via cloning. The journal Nature contacted Mitalipov after an anonymous online critic on PubPeer spotted four separate problems in the paper. In an interview with Nature, Mitalipov confirmed that three errors were made in the rush to publish — but denied the fourth issue raised was an error and said the overall conclusions were unaffected. “The results are real, the cell lines are real, everything is real,” said Mitalipov, a reproductive biology specialist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Beaverton. “I personally made the cells,” he said. “I saw them grow into colonies.” He blamed the errors on his rush to publish the research, which he hoped to present next month at the International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting. “Maybe it was rushed,” he said. “It was my mistake.” Mitalipov said his research team will be issuing an erratum correcting the flaws, and hopes that other scientists will try to duplicate his findings, which will lend it even more credibility. “The first thing we want to do is have people confirm our results,” Mitalipov said. “We are not hiding these cell lines.” The scientific community was divided as to how seriously to view the errors. Robin Lovell Badge, who heads the Division of Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London, warned against a rush to condemn. “I expect the errors above were also due to the rush to publish. The authors should be given a chance to answer and correct mistakes,” he told Nature. Others said they were surprised that Cell accepted the paper in just days — a time they deemed insufficient for proper peer review. “The four-day review process was obviously inadequate,” said Arnold Kriegstein, director of the stem cell program at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s a degree of sloppiness that you wouldn’t expect in a paper that was going to have this high profile,” Kriegstein told the British journal. “One worries if there is more than meets the eye and whether there are other issues with the work that are not as apparent,” he said. The cloning method written about in the article was described as an important breakthrough because it does not destroy embryos in creating the type of stem cell that can morph into any other type of cell in the body. The technique involves transplanting an individual’s DNA into an egg cell that has been stripped of genetic material, a variation of a method called somatic cell nuclear transfer. Scientists said the research could one day offer new pathways in the fight against Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries and blindness. Since the reprogrammed cells use genetic material from the patient, there is no concern about transplant rejection. Another advantage of the technique is that it circumvents some of the ethical challenges inherent when using fertilized embryos to obtain stem cells.

At least six cars were torched in Stockholm Thursday evening as police called in reinforcements bracing for a fifth night of riots in the Swedish capital’s immigrant-dominated suburbs. The riots, which have shattered Sweden’s image abroad as a peaceful and egalitarian nation, have sparked a debate in Sweden about the assimilation of immigrants, who make up about 15 percent of the population. Many of the immigrants who have arrived due to the country’s generous refugee policy struggle to learn the language and find employment despite numerous government programmes. Police said Thursday they would be calling in reinforcements from other parts of the country as they braced for more trouble in coming days. In Rinkeby, one of the city’s immigrant-dominated areas, firefighters rushed late Thursday to put out flames that engulfed six cars parked alongside each other. Five cars were totally gutted, and one sustained more moderate damage, according to an AFP photographer on the scene. Police said between 300 and 500 people were gathered around the blazing cars. Firefighters meanwhile said a school in another immigrant-heavy suburb, Tensta, was set ablaze but quickly extinguished. The previous night, the fire brigade had been called to some 90 different blazes, most of them caused by rioters. Early Thursday, rioters hurled rocks at a local police station in the Kista district, near the suburb of Husby where the unrest began on Sunday night. Rocks were also thrown at two local police stations south of the Swedish capital. In the southern suburb of Skogaas, a restaurant was badly damaged after it was set ablaze. “We are gradually becoming more like other countries,” said Aje Carlbom, a social anthropologist at Malmoe University. The troubles are believed to have been triggered by the fatal police shooting of a 69-year-old Husby resident last week after the man wielded a machete in public. The man then fled to his apartment, where police have said they tried to mediate but ended up shooting him dead in what they claimed was self-defence. Local activists said the shooting sparked anger among youths who claim to have suffered from police brutality. During the first night of rioting, they said police had called them “tramps, monkeys and negroes.” Two people, including one police officer, were reported injured in the first four nights of rioting. Police meanwhile downplayed the scale of the events. “Every injured person is a tragedy, every torched car is a failure for society… but Stockholm is not burning. Let’s have a level-headed view of the situation,” said Ulf Johansson, deputy police chief for Stockholm county. Residents of areas largely populated by immigrants are suffering from segregation, anthropologist Carlbom told AFP. “Living as a young person in these segregated areas can be very hard in many ways. You have virtually no contact with other Swedes and a lot of times I don’t think you have a good understanding of Swedish society,” he said. For example, some 80 percent of the 12,000 residents in Husby are immigrants. Due to its liberal immigration policy, Sweden has in recent decades become one of Europe’s top destinations for immigrants, both in absolute numbers and relative to its size. In the past decade it has welcomed hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and the Balkans, among others. This is not the first time the Scandinavian country has seen riots among immigrants. In 2010, up to 100 youths threw bricks, set fires and attacked the local police station in the immigrant-dominated suburb of Rinkeby for two nights. And in 2008, hundreds of youths rioted against police in the southern Swedish town of Malmoe, sparked by the closure of an Islamic cultural centre in the suburb of Rosengaard that housed a mosque. Integration Minister Erik Ullenhag attributed the violence to high unemployment and social exclusion in Sweden’s immigrant-dominated areas. “We know that there is discrimination in these areas, and these events don’t improve the image of these areas, where there is a lot of positive stuff going on but which is totally eclipsed right now,” he told TT. In Husby, overall unemployment was 8.8 percent in 2012, compared to 3.3 percent in Stockholm as a whole, according to official data. And a total of 12 percent in Husby received social benefits last year, compared to 3.6 percent in Stockholm as a whole. The riots have received international media attention, with some comparisons being drawn to similar problems assimilating immigrants in other European countries such as Britain and France.

First lady to put child victims of Hurricane Sandy to workDaily CallerThe White House announced Thursday that first lady Michelle Obama will be welcome the child victims of Hurricane Sandy to the White House Kitchen Garden and put them to work harvesting the summer crop. According to a White House press Michelle Obama invites students affected by Sandy to help harvest White House The Hill (blog)Children Affected by Hurricane Sandy to Join First Lady Michelle Obama for the Whitehouse.gov (press release)all 3 news articles »

WASHINGTON—A website partially funded by the oil and gas industry could be a "constructive" tool for federal regulators as they consider requiring public disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations, Senate Energy Committee Chairman Ron Wyden said Thursday.

Connecticut's Senate has approved a proposal that could pave the way for electronic voting in future elections. The bill, which passed unanimously Thursday, would permit the expansion of absentee voting methods for members of and more »