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OB OY YL VEN? PATENTS GAGGED FOR NATIONAL SECURITY Sere orders can be slapped on private inventions in 13 of the 26 member countries of NATO, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. And the trend, from US figures at least, appears to be upwards. In the USA, 4,885 secrecy orders are now in place compared with 4,741 in 2001. In the UK, of the 30,000 patent applications sent to the UK Patent Office (UKPO) in Cardiff every year, 600 to 1,500 are pulled aside for closer scrutiny by military experts. "We don't reveal how many of those we prohibit from dissemination," says Patent Office information officer Jeremy Philpott. However, on the orders of the Ministry of Defence, the UKPO declassifies about 100 patents each year—typically a decade or two after they were filed. The US Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 says that whenever the "publication or dis- closure of the invention by the granting of a patent would be detrimental to the national security, the Commissioner of Patents shall order that the invention be kept secret". The UK Patents Act of 2004 runs along similar lines. In both cases, penalties for infringement include two years' imprisonment and/or heavy fines. (Source: New Scientist, 9 July 2005) "three-year, multimillion-dollar alliance" with Cadbury Schweppes a” Americas Beverages, which pro- duces sweetened soft drinks that are implicated in the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in the United States. Its parent company, Cadbury Schweppes, is the third- largest soft-drink manufacturer in the world, after Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. "Saying that sugar has nothing to do with diabetes is like saying that tobacco has nothing to do with emphysema," said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. "The American Diabetes Association has been so corrupted that they have sunk to the mentality of tobacco scientists who denied the link between tobacco and lung cancer." (Source: Corporate Crime Reporter press release, 16 May 2005, http:/www.corporate - crimereporter.com/diabetes051605.htm) AMERICAN DIABETES ASSOCIATION "BOUGHT OFF"? fter the American Diabetes Association received a large gift from a major manufacturer of sugar-sweetened beverages, its top medical official is claiming that sugar has nothing to do with diabetes. In an interview published on 16 May in Corporate Crime Reporter, Richard Kahn, the chief scientific and medical officer with the American Diabetes Association, said: "What is the evidence that sugar itself has anything to do with diabetes? There is no evidence." On 21 April, the ADA announced a SHOCK WAVES STIMULATE BONE GROWTH lasting bones with shock waves sounds like a bad idea, but it turns out that it stimulates bone growth. The non- invasive technique might help treat frac- tures that refuse to heal and perhaps even reduce the need for hip replacements by encouraging ageing joints to regenerate. Shock waves—single, high-pressure pulses—have long been used to break up kidney stones. They travel through soft tissue without causing damage but release their energy when they hit a hard sub- stance such as bone. Doctors noticed decades ago that people who had multiple treatments for kidney stones grew extra bone on the pelvis, even though later studies showed the waves do not damage these bones. Now Joerg Hausdorf's team at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, has studied the effect of shock waves on bone cells. The pulses stimulate production of an important bone growth factor, bFGH, Hausdorf told a meeting of the US and Canadian acoustical societies in Vancouver this week. He thinks shock waves activate the same growth mechanisms as stretching and pressure. (Source: New Scientist, 27 May 2005) FIRST PICTURES FROM THE SURFACE OF THE MOON TITAN 6 = NEXUS www.nexusmagazine.com AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 2005