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GLOBAL NEWS ... cellphone positioning, other countries are not far behind. In the US, a similar law will force network operators to track a phone's location to within 50 metres by 2005 and to make this data available to emergency services. Network operators have been quick to spot the business opportunities this offers. If they can locate a caller for the emer- gency services, why not for other purposes too? Now the first businesses to exploit this information are beginning to appear and they provide a glimpse of the kinds of services we can expect in future. In the UK, the network operator Vodafone enables its customers to use their phones to find the nearest ATM, cinema or a plumber. Another service allows busi- nesses to track their employees—whic particularly useful in the courier industry, for example. And a London-based start-up called Zingo has begun exploiting the ser- vice to put callers in touch with the nearest available taxi. Parents can even sign up to see where their children are, or at least where they left their mobile phones. This is just the beginning. Expect to see services become more accurate and wide- spread as the technology develops. (Source: New Scientist, 18 October 2003) The Sahel droughts have been among the worst the world has ever seen, and caused the infamous famines that crippled coun- tries such as Ethiopia in the 1980s. Now Alessandra Giannini of the International Institute for Climate Prediction in Palisades, New York, has compared 70 years of rainfall data for the drought-prone Sahel with sea-surface temperatures in the tropics. She found a strong correlation between the two, especially between rain- fall and temperatures in the Indian Ocean. As the ocean got warmer, rainfall decreased all along the heavily populated Sahel, south of the Sahara. The research was published online by the journal Science (http://www.sciencexpress.org). When Giannini ran a climate model in which the only variable was sea-surface temperatures, it accurately reproduced the arid 1940s, the wet 1950s and 1960s, the dry 1970s and 1980s, and the partial recov- ery in the 1990s. Giannini says the oceans have an effect because warm waters upset the atmospheric circulation, weakening the monsoon and triggering drought from Senegal to Ethiopia. (Source: New Scientist, 18 October 2003) untouched, while microwaving virtually eliminated them, the team found (Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, vol. 83, p. 1511). Microwaves destroy more antioxidants probably because they generate higher tem- peratures, said Garcia-Viguera. "Internal heating is much more damaging." Pressure cooking and boiling have inter- mediate effects. Neither destroys as great a proportion of the antioxidants as microwaving. But many of the remaining antioxidants leach out into the water during cooking, leaving only 20 to 45 per cent of the levels found in raw broccoli. In a separate study in the same journal (p. 1389), Riitta Puupponen-Pimia at VTT Biotechnology in Espoo, Finland, found that blanching vegetables before freezing also decreases their nutrient content. Freezing also causes small losses. (Source: New Scientist, 25 October 2003) UK GM CROPS TRIAL CONFIRMS FEARS FOR BIODIVERSITY Res of the world's largest trial on the effects of genetically modified (GM) and conventional crops on biodiversity were presented in London in mid-October. The trial was launched in 1999 to address fears expressed by English Nature, one of the government's wildlife advisers, that the powerful weedkillers applied to GM crops might hasten the decline in farm- land wildlife that began with the birth of modern farming 50 years ago. It investi- gated whether three flagship weedkiller- resistant GM crops—oilseed rape, sugar beet and maize—were better or worse for wildlife than their conventionally bred counterparts. Two of the crops—the rape and the beet—flopped miserably (see Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol. 358, p. 1775). -_— The trial showed that Las commer’) the crucial factors for WATS Fe wildlife are the type of herbicide farmers apply and when they apply it, rather than whether the crop is GM or not. The results were remarkably consistent, no matter where in the UK the MICROWAVE COOKING ZAPS NUTRIENTS IN FOOD Sccaming is by far the best way to cook vegetables and microwaving them is the worst, according to a study that compared the nutrients left in broccoli cooked in dif- ferent ways. Cristina Garcfa-Viguera's team at CEBAS-CSIC, one of Spain's scientific research council centres, in Murcia, mea- sured the levels of antioxidants such as flavonoids left in broccoli after steaming, pressure cooking, boiling or microwaving. Steaming left antioxidants almost WARMER OCEANS MAY TRIGGER CLIMATE CHANGE Wwe oceans may be reponsible for triggering the droughts that have engulfed the Sahel region of Africa for much of the past 30 years. A new comparison of rainfall data with sea-surface temperatures in the tropics undermines two alternative theories, which blame the drought on deforestation or the influence of sulphurous clouds wafting to the African continent from Europe. GF a ay: ‘2 crops were grown or which year, said Les Firbank, who coordinat- ed the trial from the Centre for Ecology and 8 = NEXUS www.nexusmagazi ne.com DECEMBER 2003 — JANUARY 2004