[naturenews] from [nature.com]
[naturenews]
Published online 26 January 2010 | Nature 463, 414 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463414a
News
What will the next solar cycle bring?
Orbiting mission will probe the Sun's activity.
Lizzie Buchen
Solar activity is on the rise.NASA/lMSALThe Sun is rousing from an unusually heavy slumber. On 19 January, the otherwise calm and quiet Sun erupted in a violent blast of light and energy — an M-class solar flare, the largest observed in nearly two years. Over the next 24 hours, four more M-class flares erupted from the same sunspot, each more powerful than the one before.
It was a welcome bit of excitement for solar physicists, who have been languishing during the quietest period of solar activity in nearly a century. Sunspots, flares and the plasma-spewing eruptions known as coronal mass ejections typically wax and wane on an 11-year cycle, but the most recent solar cycle has lasted for 12.5 years. "A number of my colleagues were wondering if there would even be a new cycle," says solar physicist David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
On 9 February, NASA plans to launch its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), just in time to watch the Sun's activity. Using a suite of imaging instruments, the SDO will probe the inner workings of the Sun, including how material flowing within it helps to generate its magnetic field and how that energy is released. The findings could help researchers to improve their understanding of the fluctuations in solar activity that can, at their peak, scramble electricity grids and throw Global-Positioning-System devices off by dozens of metres.
"The Sun is getting much more interesting to look at," says Frank Eparvier, a solar physicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "We really want to get the SDO up there to watch the rise to the next maximum."
Eparvier is one of 13 scientists charged with combing through dozens of predictions and issuing the official prediction of the timing and strength of the upcoming solar cycle, cycle 24. In April 2009, the group reached a consensus that the solar maximum would arrive relatively late, in May 2013, and be less intense than average, with only 90 sunspots per day at its peak (see graphic). But there was a notable dissenter: Mausumi Dikpati at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder thinks that cycle 24 will have at least 150 sunspots at its maximum. The last solar cycle peaked at around 120 sunspots.
Strength to strength
The difference for cycle 24 boils down to the different methods used to predict solar activity. Historically, the most reliable prediction methods have been 'precursor' techniques that rely on the strength of the magnetic field during the previous minimum. A number of precursor models all suggest that the peak for solar cycle 24 will be small.
But Dikpati uses a different method, a solar-dynamo model that incorporates theories of how material within the Sun travels from its poles toward the equator. She argues that the material can take decades, not a few years, to make this journey — meaning that the last maximum doesn't say much, if anything, about what the next one will be like.
Dikpati says that her model has retrospectively predicted the past eight cycles with 96% accuracy. Those earlier cycles, however, were also used to calibrate the model, and the model has not been used yet to predict future activity. "The true test we want to see is to make a prediction before [the cycle] has actually happened," says Doug Biesecker of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado. The predictions of other solar-dynamo models have differed from Dikpati's.
The SDO may help to clear up the confusion by giving the deepest look yet at the flow fields inside the Sun. It will also measure the magnetic field at the surface, take high-resolution images of the corona and measure the Sun's extreme ultraviolet output.
From an orbit offset from Earth's equator, the observatory will take images every 10 seconds for 5 years, giving astronomers their first near-continuous look at the Sun's activity. Currently astronomers only take one to two images a day, and they can only see the part of the Sun that faces Earth.
[naturenews]
Published online 26 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.34
News
Head of German drug agency to leave post
Board calls time on embattled director of pharmaceutical evaluation institute.
Quirin Schiermeier
{{Peter Sawicki, chief of Germany's Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.}
Horst Galuschka/DPA – Report}
The German agency that judges the effectiveness of medicines is to lose its controversial director later this year.
Peter Sawicki has had a tumultuous tenure as the founding director of the Cologne-based Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG). He has drawn fire from pharmaceutical companies, who say that the institute has been too strict in determining which medicines can be prescribed by physicians under the nation's mandatory health-insurance scheme.
But supporters say that his work at IQWiG has been a vital part of efforts to counter sharply rising costs in Germany's public-health system. Since the institute was set up in 2004, it has issued reports and recommendations on the efficacy of 66 drugs and treatments available under the national health-insurance system. And earlier this month, 600 physicians, medical professors and health experts signed a letter supporting Sawicki, which was sent to federal health minister Philipp Rösler.
On 22 January, IQWiG's board announced that Sawicki will not have his contract renewed when it expires at the end of August. In November 2009, he was investigated by an independent auditing firm for leasing company cars without proper clearance, but investigators found that he had tacit approval to do so. However, the board last week criticized Sawicki for minor irregularities in the institute's administration. Sawicki rejects the accusations.
Cheaper or better?
The pressure on Sawicki has been growing since Germany's coalition government, elected last year, ordered a review of IQWiG.
Critics have claimed that the institute's methods of assessing the effectiveness of new drugs are flawed. Examples include its negative verdict in 2006 on clopidogrel, a drug developed by Sanofi-Aventis for treating arterial diseases.
Together with his colleagues from the institute, Sawicki also co-authored a report1 last year warning of possible increased cancer risks from an insulin analogue made by Sanofi-Aventis, which led to a sharp fall in the company's share price. An independent study later argued that the warning was unwarranted, due to "serious errors" in methodology2. Sawicki maintains that an increased cancer risk does exist3.
The institute has also been slammed for a lack of clarity in its verdicts. "Industry, patients' organizations and physicians fail to understand many of the IQWiG's assessments," says Cornelia Yzer, chief executive of the VFA, the German Association of Research-based Pharmaceutical Companies.
When evaluating the cost-effectiveness of drugs, IQWiG uses a different methodology to that of the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, a leading European centre in the field. Some say that IQWiG's approach is biased against new drugs that offer incremental benefits over existing, cheaper therapies.
"Effectiveness and cost–benefit studies carried out by IQWiG have not been up to international standards," says Joerg Hasford, a medical statistician at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. "I can't help feeling that the institute's hidden agenda has been to restrict access to expensive drugs on pseudo-scientific grounds, when what would really be required is an honest political debate about rising costs in health care."
Sawicki counters that Hasford, who has served as an adviser to Sanofi-Aventis, has a potential conflict of interest in the matter. He adds that it is "very difficult" to develop new drugs that have enough added medical value to justify the extra costs. "Reports to that effect are a confounded nuisance to the pharmaceutical industry," he acknowledges. "Logically so, since they will reduce company profits."
References
1. Hemkens, L. G. et al. Diabetologia 52, 1732-1744 (2009). | Article | PubMed
2. Pocock, S. J. & Smeeth, L. Lancet 374, 511-513 (2009). | Article
3. Hemkens, L. G., Bender, R., Grouven, U. & Sawicki, P. T. Lancet 374, 1743-1744 (2009). | Article
[naturenews]
Published online 26 January 2010 | Nature 463, 414 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463414a
News
What will the next solar cycle bring?
Orbiting mission will probe the Sun's activity.
Lizzie Buchen
Solar activity is on the rise.NASA/lMSALThe Sun is rousing from an unusually heavy slumber. On 19 January, the otherwise calm and quiet Sun erupted in a violent blast of light and energy — an M-class solar flare, the largest observed in nearly two years. Over the next 24 hours, four more M-class flares erupted from the same sunspot, each more powerful than the one before.
It was a welcome bit of excitement for solar physicists, who have been languishing during the quietest period of solar activity in nearly a century. Sunspots, flares and the plasma-spewing eruptions known as coronal mass ejections typically wax and wane on an 11-year cycle, but the most recent solar cycle has lasted for 12.5 years. "A number of my colleagues were wondering if there would even be a new cycle," says solar physicist David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
On 9 February, NASA plans to launch its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), just in time to watch the Sun's activity. Using a suite of imaging instruments, the SDO will probe the inner workings of the Sun, including how material flowing within it helps to generate its magnetic field and how that energy is released. The findings could help researchers to improve their understanding of the fluctuations in solar activity that can, at their peak, scramble electricity grids and throw Global-Positioning-System devices off by dozens of metres.
"The Sun is getting much more interesting to look at," says Frank Eparvier, a solar physicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "We really want to get the SDO up there to watch the rise to the next maximum."
Eparvier is one of 13 scientists charged with combing through dozens of predictions and issuing the official prediction of the timing and strength of the upcoming solar cycle, cycle 24. In April 2009, the group reached a consensus that the solar maximum would arrive relatively late, in May 2013, and be less intense than average, with only 90 sunspots per day at its peak (see graphic). But there was a notable dissenter: Mausumi Dikpati at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder thinks that cycle 24 will have at least 150 sunspots at its maximum. The last solar cycle peaked at around 120 sunspots.
Strength to strength
The difference for cycle 24 boils down to the different methods used to predict solar activity. Historically, the most reliable prediction methods have been 'precursor' techniques that rely on the strength of the magnetic field during the previous minimum. A number of precursor models all suggest that the peak for solar cycle 24 will be small.
But Dikpati uses a different method, a solar-dynamo model that incorporates theories of how material within the Sun travels from its poles toward the equator. She argues that the material can take decades, not a few years, to make this journey — meaning that the last maximum doesn't say much, if anything, about what the next one will be like.
Dikpati says that her model has retrospectively predicted the past eight cycles with 96% accuracy. Those earlier cycles, however, were also used to calibrate the model, and the model has not been used yet to predict future activity. "The true test we want to see is to make a prediction before [the cycle] has actually happened," says Doug Biesecker of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado. The predictions of other solar-dynamo models have differed from Dikpati's.
The SDO may help to clear up the confusion by giving the deepest look yet at the flow fields inside the Sun. It will also measure the magnetic field at the surface, take high-resolution images of the corona and measure the Sun's extreme ultraviolet output.
From an orbit offset from Earth's equator, the observatory will take images every 10 seconds for 5 years, giving astronomers their first near-continuous look at the Sun's activity. Currently astronomers only take one to two images a day, and they can only see the part of the Sun that faces Earth.
[naturenews]
Published online 26 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.34
News
Head of German drug agency to leave post
Board calls time on embattled director of pharmaceutical evaluation institute.
Quirin Schiermeier
{{Peter Sawicki, chief of Germany's Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.}
Horst Galuschka/DPA – Report}
The German agency that judges the effectiveness of medicines is to lose its controversial director later this year.
Peter Sawicki has had a tumultuous tenure as the founding director of the Cologne-based Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG). He has drawn fire from pharmaceutical companies, who say that the institute has been too strict in determining which medicines can be prescribed by physicians under the nation's mandatory health-insurance scheme.
But supporters say that his work at IQWiG has been a vital part of efforts to counter sharply rising costs in Germany's public-health system. Since the institute was set up in 2004, it has issued reports and recommendations on the efficacy of 66 drugs and treatments available under the national health-insurance system. And earlier this month, 600 physicians, medical professors and health experts signed a letter supporting Sawicki, which was sent to federal health minister Philipp Rösler.
On 22 January, IQWiG's board announced that Sawicki will not have his contract renewed when it expires at the end of August. In November 2009, he was investigated by an independent auditing firm for leasing company cars without proper clearance, but investigators found that he had tacit approval to do so. However, the board last week criticized Sawicki for minor irregularities in the institute's administration. Sawicki rejects the accusations.
Cheaper or better?
The pressure on Sawicki has been growing since Germany's coalition government, elected last year, ordered a review of IQWiG.
Critics have claimed that the institute's methods of assessing the effectiveness of new drugs are flawed. Examples include its negative verdict in 2006 on clopidogrel, a drug developed by Sanofi-Aventis for treating arterial diseases.
Together with his colleagues from the institute, Sawicki also co-authored a report1 last year warning of possible increased cancer risks from an insulin analogue made by Sanofi-Aventis, which led to a sharp fall in the company's share price. An independent study later argued that the warning was unwarranted, due to "serious errors" in methodology2. Sawicki maintains that an increased cancer risk does exist3.
The institute has also been slammed for a lack of clarity in its verdicts. "Industry, patients' organizations and physicians fail to understand many of the IQWiG's assessments," says Cornelia Yzer, chief executive of the VFA, the German Association of Research-based Pharmaceutical Companies.
When evaluating the cost-effectiveness of drugs, IQWiG uses a different methodology to that of the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, a leading European centre in the field. Some say that IQWiG's approach is biased against new drugs that offer incremental benefits over existing, cheaper therapies.
"Effectiveness and cost–benefit studies carried out by IQWiG have not been up to international standards," says Joerg Hasford, a medical statistician at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. "I can't help feeling that the institute's hidden agenda has been to restrict access to expensive drugs on pseudo-scientific grounds, when what would really be required is an honest political debate about rising costs in health care."
Sawicki counters that Hasford, who has served as an adviser to Sanofi-Aventis, has a potential conflict of interest in the matter. He adds that it is "very difficult" to develop new drugs that have enough added medical value to justify the extra costs. "Reports to that effect are a confounded nuisance to the pharmaceutical industry," he acknowledges. "Logically so, since they will reduce company profits."
References
1. Hemkens, L. G. et al. Diabetologia 52, 1732-1744 (2009). | Article | PubMed
2. Pocock, S. J. & Smeeth, L. Lancet 374, 511-513 (2009). | Article
3. Hemkens, L. G., Bender, R., Grouven, U. & Sawicki, P. T. Lancet 374, 1743-1744 (2009). | Article
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