Iran's Biggest Worry: Growing Ethnic Conflict

By Robert Baer Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009

Iranian mourners carry the coffin of General Noor Ali Shooshtari, who was deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces, during a funeral ceremony in Tehran on Oct. 20, 2009

Vahid Salemi / AP

The Iranian regime has a problem, and it's not a velvet revolution or Israel's threat to bomb its nuclear facilities. No, what really keeps the mullahs up at night is the specter of ethnic and sectarian conflict — more attacks like the bombing on Oct. 18 in the remote southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, which killed 42 people, including five senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards Corps. The country's leaders cannot help but worry that the same divisions ripping apart Afghanistan and Pakistan are about to visit them.

Tehran immediately blamed outsiders — the U.S., Great Britain and Pakistan — for Sunday's suicide bombing because it cannot admit that it has its own homegrown Taliban. Whatever Iran says about Jundallah, the ethnic Baluch group that claimed responsibility for the attack, it's an indigenous movement. The body of its financing comes from Baluch expatriates, many in the Gulf, and Islamic charities. Its weapons and explosives are readily available in the mountains that span the border between Iran and Pakistan. (Read "Pakistan: Behind the Waziristan Offensive.")

Pakistani intelligence has indeed had contact with Jundallah over the years, but there's no good evidence that Pakistan created Jundallah from scratch. And there's certainly no evidence that Pakistan ordered the attack. In fact, Pakistani intelligence over the past few years has been arresting Jundallah members and turning them over to Iran.

American intelligence has also had contact with Jundallah. But that contact, as Iran almost certainly knows, was confined to intelligence-gathering on the country; a relationship with Jundallah was never formalized, and contact was sporadic. I've been told that the Bush Administration at one point considered Jundallah as a piece in a covert-action campaign against Iran, but the idea was quickly dropped because Jundallah was judged uncontrollable and too close to al-Qaeda. There was no way to be certain that Jundallah would not throw the bombs we paid for back at us. (See TIME's photo-essay "On the Front Lines in the Battle Against the Taliban.")

For Iran, the hard truth is that ethnic Persians make up only 51% of the population. The rest of the country is a mishmash of ethnic minorities, various religions, Muslim sects and semi-nomadic tribes. None has been entirely happy living under the mullahs' Shi'ite theocracy, especially Iran's Sunni citizens, which make up 9% of the population and include most of the Baluch. Iran's minorities have been susceptible to outside influences, but rarely have they felt strong enough to take on Tehran — which fears that that could change with the chaos at its borders. If, for instance, the U.S. were to suddenly pick up and leave Afghanistan, would the new Taliban government resist backing Jundallah? Or if Pakistan fails to subdue the tribal areas and its own Taliban, would this encourage Jundallah?

Tehran is obviously worried that it has a problem with or without a failure in Pakistan or Afghanistan. The five senior Revolutionary Guards officers killed on Sunday were on their way to a meeting with local tribal chiefs to talk about containing Shi'ite-Sunni violence in their province, and the agenda no doubt included what to do about Jundallah.

In that sense, ironically, Tehran is right that its security really does rest with Pakistan and the U.S. A catastrophic failure on their parts would create a threat that would take Iran many years to overcome.

Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.

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Leaping wolf snatches photo prize

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC news

Jose Luis Rodriguez's haunting portrait of an Iberian wolf won over the judges

A picture of a hunting wolf has won the prestigious Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 award.

Jose Luis Rodriguez captured the imaginations of the judges with a photograph that he had planned for years, and even sketched out on a piece of paper.

"I wanted to capture a photo in which you would see a wolf in an act of hunting - or predation - but without blood," he told BBC News. "I didn't want a cruel image."

With a great deal of patience and careful observation of the wolves' movements, he succeeded in taking the award-winning photograph.

Mr Rodriguez used a custom-built infrared trap to snap the the wolf as it leapt into the air.

The competition, now in its 45th year, is owned by BBC Wildlife magazine and London's Natural History Museum.

The panel of judges looked through more than 43,000 entries to this year's competition.

This is the fifth year that wildlife photographer Mark Carwardine has been on the judging panel. He said of the winning photo: "It's captured thousands of years of human-wolf interaction in just one moment."

STORYBOOK WOLF

The image of a photographer's dreams Enlarge Image

Mr Rodriguez won the Animal Portraits category and went on to win the top prize with this haunting image that the judges said captured the character of the wolf.

When he started planning the photograph, he feared that he might not be able to get close enough to the Iberian wolves.

This subspecies of the grey wolf lives close to human habitation in northern Spain. They are often persecuted by people who see them as a threat to livestock, and are consequently very wary of people.

Watching the animals as they returned to the same spot to collect food each night, Mr Rodriguez decided on his dream shot.

He eventually captured using a photographic trap that included a motion sensor and an infrared barrier to operate the camera.

He hopes that his picture, "showing the wolf's great agility and strength", will become an image that can be used to show just how beautiful the Iberian wolf is and how the Spanish can be proud to have such an emblematic animal.

Hasselblad 503CW with a 6x6 Fujichrome backing + Planar 80mm lens; 1/30 sec at f11; ISO 50; purpose-made Ficap infrared camera trap

CLASH OF THE YELLOWHAMMERS

The yellowhammer males fought over ownership of the oats Enlarge Image

Fergus Gill, who was 17 years old when he entered the competition, won this year's Young Photographer of the Year award for his picture of a brief but dramatic clash between two of the colourful UK songbirds.

He started planning the image in summer, collecting oat sheaves from a local farmer specifically as winter food for the yellowhammers.

One evening in February, hearing that snow was forecast for the next morning, Fergus set up his hide in the garden of his home in Scotland and hung out feeders for the birds.

"At one point I counted 32 yellowhammers feeding on the ground," he said.

When the snow fell, the birds jumped up on to the feeders and the males would occasionally fight over the oats.

"The spats were incredibly fast," he said. It took Fergus two days to capture the dramatic clash that earned him his award.

Nikon D300 + Nikon 200-400mm f4 lens at 220mm; 1/1000 sec at f5.6; ISO 500

RESPECT

Ryska the cat fiercely guarded her property Enlarge Image

With the help of his feisty cat, Igor Shpilenok won the Urban and Garden Wildlife category with this shot.

He spent five months as a ranger in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve in Kamchatka in the east of Russia, and took his cat Ryska with him for company.

"It's a very remote place and there were lots of animals - bears, foxes, wolverines - living near my cabin," he told BBC News.

"The cat was really jealous about me. If I started to look at the animals she would attack them. Just like woman," he smiled.

"Maybe she thought I was her pet."

But the animals were curious about the area's new residents, and drawn by cooking smells from the cabin. The foxes in particular would visit every day. "When they came within 20m, that was her boundary and chased them. It was really funny - foxes were climbing trees to get away from the cat."

Mr Shpilenok's wife, Laura Williams, selected the category-winning image. "It's ironic," she said. "He photographs the wilderness, but the two times he's won a category [in this competition] it's been the urban wildlife one. Because the wilderness is his back yard." Nikon D3 + 300mm lens; 1/500 sec at f4.5; ISO 640

SPRINGTAIL ON A SNOWFLAKE

Snowflakes make difficult terrain for tiny springtails Enlarge Image

Urmas Tartes won the Animals in their Environment category for this image of a springtail, otherwise known as a "snow flea" navigating its way through delicate snowflakes.

When the temperature drops below freezing, the insects climb down through the frosty crevasses to the warmer soil below.

"But they're only active a few degrees below zero," Mr Tartes told BBC News. "I had to 'ambush' the weather for just the right temperature and conditions."

"I was travelling with my wife and it started snowing slightly," he recalled. "We came to a place where we thought it might be possible [to see the insects] and the thermometer in the car said it was just the right temperature."

Mr Tartes had waited for the perfect weather in which the snow fleas would be active, but the snowflakes would remain frozen.

His patience paid off, and he managed to take over 100 shots while the insects negotiated their way through the tricky terrain.

He believes he captured something truly unique and that this was largely thanks to his knowledge of his country and its climate.

"I think the best of the photos I take are in my homeland," he told BBC News.

"There's a saying in Estonia that in order to see new things, you have to follow common paths - paths you know."

Canon EOS-5D Mark II + Canon MP-E65 f2.5 1-5x Macro lens; 1/200 sec at f14; ISO 400

THE LOOK OF THE JAGUAR

The male jaguar sat on the riverbank calmly staring at the photographer for an hour

Tom Schandy won the Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Wildlife for this image, which he took while working on a book project in Brazil.

"We spent a few days on a boat along Rio Paraguay and saw four jaguars in the space of three days.

"It was really amazing, because it is such a difficult animal to find.

"This one was very relaxed - it just lay on the river bank staring at us for more than an hour.

"It was a glimpse into the eye of the wilderness."

At sunset, the jaguar rose, yawned and scent-marked. Then he faded back into the dense forest.

Canon EOS-ID Mark III + 500mm f4 lens; 1/250 sec at f4; ISO 400; beanbag

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'Ethical' stem cell crop boosted

The research was done using fibroblast skin cells

US researchers have found a way to dramatically increase the harvest of stem cells from adult tissue.

It is a practical step forward in techniques to produce large numbers of stem cells without using embryos.

Using three drug-like chemicals, the team made the procedure 200 times more efficient and twice as fast, the Nature Methods journal reported.

It is hoped stem cells could one day be widely used to repair damaged tissue in diseases and after injuries.

Much of the work on stem cells has focused on those taken from embryos as they have an unlimited capacity to become any of the 220 types of cell in the human body - a so-called pluripotent state.

This is the first example in human cells of how reprogramming speed can be accelerated Professor Sheng Ding, study leader

But this has proven controversial and some campaigners have objected to their use on the grounds that it is unethical to destroy embryos in the name of science.

The creation of stem cells from human adult skin cells was first reported in 2007 by Japanese and US researchers, opening the way for new sources of stem cells.

It was done by using viruses to insert four genes into the cells which prompt the switching on and off of other genes and cause the cells to revert to stem cells.

But the process took weeks and the success rate was only about one in 10,000 cells.

Better and faster

The latest research builds on that process by adding specific chemicals to improve the process.

The Scripps Research Institute team had already boosted the number of cells created with two compounds initiating a naturally occurring process that moves the cell nearer to a stem-cell like state.

But they have now discovered that by adding thiazovivin, a small molecule involved in cell survival, they doubled that to get 200 times the number of transformed cells.

The final process also took two weeks compared with a month needed for the original.

Study leader Professor Sheng Ding said they had manipulated a "fundamental" process in the cell.

"Both in terms of speed and efficiency, we achieved major improvements over conventional conditions," he said.

"This is the first example in human cells of how reprogramming speed can be accelerated.

"I believe that the field will quickly adopt this method, accelerating research significantly."

Dr Keisuke Kaji, a stem cell researcher at the Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Edinburgh said the technique was a "great advance" in cell reprogramming technology.

He added it had already been shown in mouse cells but this was the first time in human cells.

"I am interested in how widely this drug can have positive effect, for example, if it helps to generate induced pluripotent stem cells from old people's cells which are usually more difficult to reprogram and if it can improve the efficiency in non-viral reprogramming strategies."

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UN backs Gaza 'war crimes' report

Both Israel and Hamas have rejected the charges in Mr Goldstone's report

The UN Human Rights Council has backed a report into the Israeli offensive in Gaza that accuses both Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes.

The report by Richard Goldstone calls for credible investigations by Israel and Hamas, and suggests international war crimes prosecutions if they do not.

Twenty-five countries voted for the resolution, while six were against.

Both Israel and the US opposed official endorsement of the report, saying it would set back Middle East peace hopes.

GOLDSTONE REPORT VOTE For: Argentina, Brazil, China, Russia and 21 others Against: US, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Ukraine Abstentions: Belgium, Bosnia, Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Slovenia and Uruguay No vote: UK, France and 3 others

The Palestinian Authority initially backed deferring a vote, but changed its position after domestic criticism.

Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans were killed in the 22-day conflict that ended in January, but Israel puts the figure at 1,166.

Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were killed.

'Culture of impunity'

Before the vote in Geneva - in which 11 countries abstained and five others, including the UK and France, chose not to vote - the Palestinian Authority's representative argued that the matter was simply about respect for the rule of law.

The UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, meanwhile insisted that now was the time to end the "culture of impunity" which continues to prevail in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

The report accuses Israel of using "disproportionate force" in Gaza UN seeks close Gaza scrutiny Key extracts from UN statement Full UN report on Gaza war

In contrast, the Israeli government had lobbied intensively against the resolution, saying the Goldstone report was biased against Israel and removed the right of nations to defend themselves against terrorists.

It also complained that the vote was not simply on the Goldstone report, but on a Palestinian-backed resolution that criticised Israel and ignored Hamas. The resolution also made references to recent Israeli actions East Jerusalem that were not in the document.

The US deputy representative in Geneva agreed, saying that the resolution's approach and "sweeping conclusions of law" made the prospect of a meaningful Middle East peace process more difficult.

As why it did not vote, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the BBC that the British and French governments had been "in the middle of detailed discussions with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel about three key issues - the establishment of an independent inquiry, humanitarian aid to Gaza and the restart of the peace process".

"The vote was called in the middle of those discussions and we thought it right to continue with our work on the three fundamental issues so that could really contribute to a reversal of what is a dangerous spiral of trust and mistrust in the Middle East," he said.

'One-sided resolution'

The BBC's Tim Franks in Jerusalem says momentum behind the Goldstone report will grow and the UN may take it up in New York.

ANALYSIS Jeremy Bowen BBC Middle East editor The row about the report is an antidote to any over-optimistic hope for peace. In many ways, it is a more honest expression of reality, of the deep divisions that exist, than the uncomfortable handshake between Israel's prime minister and the Palestinian Authority president that US President Barack Obama manufactured in New York last month. Mr Obama, who came to office hoping to renew and reinvigorate a peace process, has had another reminder of how difficult a job he has taken on. Israel says it will not take risks for peace, if it cannot defend itself. And the Israelis have once again been condemned in an international forum. There was some confusion among Israel's European allies. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown had a "robust" discussion with his Israeli counterpart last night, apparently talking about a British abstention in Geneva. The UK did not vote in the end, although initially the Foreign Office said it had abstained. Then Downing Street said it was a non-vote rather than a formal abstention. Perhaps Israeli pressure worked, partly. Perhaps Mr Brown decided to send a signal to the Israelis, but on second thoughts, not too much of one.

The 575-page report by the South African judge concluded that Israel had "committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity" by using disproportionate force, deliberately targeting civilians, using Palestinians as human shields and destroying civilian infrastructure during its offensive in Gaza.

It also found there was also evidence that Palestinian militant groups including Hamas, which controls Gaza, had committed war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity, in their repeated rocket and mortars attacks on southern Israel.

The report demanded that unless the parties to the Gaza war investigated the allegations of war crimes within six months, the cases should be referred to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

In the short term, the Human Rights Council resolution will provide some political relief for the Palestinian Authority (PA) President, Mahmoud Abbas, our correspondent says.

Mr Abbas had been the butt of intense criticism among the Palestinian public and from his Islamist rivals in Hamas, for initially trying to delay a vote on the Goldstone report, he adds.

In Ramallah, a spokesman for Mr Abbas welcomed the endorsement of the report and said international action should not end there.

Israeli and Palestinian representatives addressed the council ahead of the vote

"What is important now is to translate words into deeds in order to protect our people in the future from any new aggression," Nabil Abu Rudainah said.

A Hamas spokesman told the BBC it also supported further UN action, but said nothing about the charges against the group.

"We thank whoever voted for it, and we hope that this vote will be the beginning of the process to bring the Israeli war criminals to justice," Taher al-Nono said.

The Israeli foreign ministry rejected the "one-sided resolution", which it said ignored "the murderous attacks perpetrated by Hamas and other terrorist organisations against Israeli civilians" and the "unprecedented precautions taken by Israeli forces in order to avoid harming civilians".

"This resolution provides encouragement for terrorist organisations worldwide and undermines global peace. Israel will continue to exercise its right to self-defence, and take action to protect the lives of its citizens," the statement added.

If the report comes before the UN Security Council, the US is expected to veto any call for ICC action against Israel.

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If the US vetoes this thing hitting the security council, all hell will break lose. The U.S is no longer in step with Israel and it's own interests come first.

We've taken enough bullets over this situation. It's time for Israel to take responsibility for their own actions and not have the U.S veto their actions away.

Google sees record $1.6bn profit

Google profits beat analysts' expectations

Google has reported its highest quarterly profit, suggesting that the internet advertising market is bouncing back from the recession.

Google reported net profit of $1.64bn (£1bn) for the third quarter, a 27% increase on the same period a year ago.

Revenue for the three-month period came in at $4.38bn, which was well ahead of analysts' expectations of $1.29bn.

"The worst of the recession is clearly behind us," said Google chief executive Eric Schmidt.

"Because of what we have seen, we now have the confidence to be optimistic about our future."

Google's shares rose $16.44, or 3.1%, to $546.35 in extended trading.

The internet search engine has weathered the recession better than other advertising-dependent companies, and it was widely expected to be one of the first beneficiaries of an economic recovery.

"Google has no competition. Yahoo is withering on the vine and [Microsoft's] Bing is too tiny now," said Coin Gillis, senior analyst at Brigantine Advisors.

"They did great on every single metric. We think this is sustainable."

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'Magnetic electricity' discovered

"Magnetricity" only exists inside special types of crystals

Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: single magnetic charges that can behave and interact like electrical ones.

The work is the first to make use of the magnetic monopoles that exist in special crystals known as spin ice.

Writing in Nature journal, a team showed that monopoles gather to form a "magnetic current" like electricity.

The phenomenon, dubbed "magnetricity", could be used in magnetic storage or in computing.

Magnetic monopoles were first predicted to exist over a century ago, as a perfect analogue to electric charges.

Although there are protons and electrons with net positive and negative electric charges, there were no particles in existence which carry magnetic charges. Rather, every magnet has a "north" and "south" pole.

Current event

In September this year, two research groups independently reported the existence of monopoles - "particles" which carry an overall magnetic charge. But they exist only in the spin ice crystals.

These crystals are made up of pyramids of charged atoms, or ions, arranged in such a way that when cooled to exceptionally low temperatures, the materials show tiny, discrete packets of magnetic charge.

The loops of a magnetic field can be seen in the arrangement of iron filings

Now one of those teams has gone on to show that these "quasi-particles" of magnetic charge can move together, forming a magnetic current just like the electric current formed by moving electrons.

They did so by using sub-atomic particles called muons, created at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) ISIS neutron and muon source near Oxford.

The muons decay millionths of a second after their production into other sub-atomic particles. But these resulting particles "remember" the direction of the muons.

The team, led by Stephen Bramwell, from the London Centre for Nanotechnology, implanted these muons into spin ice to demonstrate how the magnetic monopoles moved around.

They showed that when the spin ice was placed in a magnetic field, the monopoles piled up on one side - just like electrons would pile up when placed in an electric field.

Professor Bramwell told BBC News that the development is unlikely to catch on as a means of providing energy, not least because the particles travel only inside spin ices.

"We're not going to be seeing a magnetic light bulb or anything like that," he said.

But by engineering different spin ice materials to modify the ways monopoles move through them, the materials might in future be used in "magnetic memory" storage devices or in spintronics - a field which could boost future computing power.

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Israel 'must answer' for Gaza war

Israel is accused of bombing civilian buildings without military necessity

The Palestinians have urged the UN to act to punish Israel for its offensive in the Gaza Strip last winter.

The move reverses a Palestinian decision to defer action on a UN report that accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the conflict.

Israel rejected the report as biased during a UN Security Council debate.

Meanwhile, UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged "credible" investigations by Israel and the Palestinians into allegations of war crimes during the conflict.

Palestinian U-turn

"The world has for too long witnessed Israel's impunity, knowing well that this has been repeatedly fuelled by the lack of punishment and accountability," Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki said during a Security Council debate on the Middle East on Wednesday.

UN condemns 'war crimes' in Gaza Israel condemns UN Gaza report Key excerpts: UN Gaza report

"The tragic consequences have been suffered by generations... We must break this obscene cycle," the minister added.

Mr Malki's comments represent a sharp policy reversal, says the BBC's Barbara Plett at UN headquarters in New York.

Under US pressure, the Palestinians had earlier agreed to defer action on the UN report by veteran South African judge and war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone, but that led to a public outcry, our correspondent says.

Meanwhile, Israel's envoy to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, said the UN report was biased and favoured terrorism.

"For those of us who seek to resume the peace process in the Middle East, debating the Goldstone in the Security Council is but a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

"If Israel is asked to take further risks for peace, the international community must recognise our right to self-defence," Ms Shalev said.

The Americans also said the report had an unbalanced focus on Israel, and opposed it being taken up by the Security Council, our correspondent says.

Separately, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged "credible" investigations by both sides into the conduct of the Gaza conflict "without delay".

"He [Mr Ban] hopes that such steps will be taken wherever there are credible allegations of human rights abuses throughout the world," UN Undersecretary General Lynn Pascoe told the Security Council.

Libya, a rotating member of the 15-seat Council, had been seeking a special session of the UN's top decision-making body to discuss the report, but agreed to bringing the monthly session on the Middle East ahead by one week.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is seeking a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to vote on the report.

Report's findings

The Goldstone report accuses Israel of using disproportionate force and deliberately harming civilians during the 22-day conflict which began on 27 December 2008.

Hamas militants are accused of indiscriminate rocket fire at Israeli civilians.

The report urges the Security Council to refer allegations to the International Criminal Court if either side failed to investigate and prosecute suspects.

Israel has rejected the evidence, saying it has already investigated its troops' conduct, clearing most of the subjects of wrongdoing. Hamas also denied committing war crimes.

Israeli military action destroyed thousands of homes, hundreds of factories and 80 official buildings in Gaza.

Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 people were killed in the violence between 27 December 2008 and 16 January 2009, more than half of them civilians.

Israel puts the number of deaths at 1,166 - fewer than 300 of them civilians. Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.

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What happened to global warming?

By Paul Hudson Climate correspondent, BBC News

Average temperatures have not increased for over a decade

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Recent research has ruled out solar influences on temperature increases

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.

In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

The UK Met Office says that warming is set to resume

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

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Jaw bone created from stem cells

The new bone was created from bone marrow stem cells

Scientists have created part of the jaw joint in the lab using human adult stem cells.

They say it is the first time a complex, anatomically-sized bone has been accurately created in this way.

It is hoped the technique could be used not only to treat disorders of the specific joint, but more widely to correct problems with other bones too.

The Columbia University study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The bone which has been created in the lab is known as the temporomandibular joint (TMJ).

The availability of personalized bone grafts engineered from the patient's own stem cells would revolutionise the way we currently treat these defects Dr Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic Columbia University

Problems with the joint can be the result of birth defects, arthritis or injury.

Although they are widespread, treatment can be difficult.

The joint has a complex structure which makes it difficult to repair by using grafts from bones elsewhere in the body.

The latest study used human stem cells taken from bone marrow.

These were seeded into a tissue scaffold, formed into the precise shape of the human jaw bone by using digital images from a patient.

The cells were then cultured using a specially-designed bioreactor which was able to infuse the growing tissue with exactly the level of nutrients found during natural bone development.

Big potential

Lead researcher Dr Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic said: "The availability of personalised bone grafts engineered from the patient's own stem cells would revolutionise the way we currently treat these defects."

Dr Vunjak-Novakovic said the new technique could also be applied to other bones in the head and neck, including skull bones and cheek bones, which are similarly difficult to graft.

The option to engineer anatomically pieces of human bone in this way could potentially transform the ability to carry out reconstruction work, for instance following serious injury or cancer treatment.

She said: "We thought the jawbone would be the most rigorous test of our technique; if you can make this, you can make any shape."

She stressed that the joint created in the lab was bone only, and did not include other tissue, such as cartilage. However, the Columbia team is working on a new method for engineering hybrid grafts including bone and cartilage.

Another major challenge for scientists will be to find a way to engineer bone with a blood supply that can be easily connected to the blood supply of the host.

Professor Anthony Hollander, a tissue engineering expert from the University of Bristol who helped produce an artificial windpipe last year, said there was still a lot of work to be done before the new bone could be used on patients.

But he said: "One of the major problems facing scientists in this field is how to engineer a piece of bone with the right dimensions - that is critical for some of these bone defects.

"This is a lovely piece of tissue engineering which has produced bone with a high degree of accuracy in terms of shape."

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