Fitness in a pill?

Widely reported the other day:

Researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego reported that they had found two drugs that did wonders for the athletic endurance of couch potato mice. One drug, known as Aicar, increased the mice’s endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment.

A second drug, GW1516, supercharged the mice to a 75 percent increase in endurance but had to be combined with exercise to have any effect.

The wording in this excerpt is a bit misleading, as the drugs had already been developed for other applications. I have seen reference to at least one study that suggests that GW1516 may increase the risk of intestinal cancer. In any event, the researchers were clearly well aware of the possibility of abuse:

With money from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Dr. Evans has devised a test to detect whether an athlete has taken the drugs and has made it available to the World Anti-Doping Agency, which prepares a list of forbidden substances for the International Olympic Committee. Officials at the anti-doping agency confirmed that they were collaborating with Dr. Evans on a test but could not say when they would start using it.

The article doesn't state whether the test has been patented, and if so, who will profit from it.

Although the notion of building muscular endurance through medication sound great, there are still some big questions here. First, how dramatic is a 44% or even 75% endurance increase in four weeks when starting out from a low baseline? If you're talking about a real coach potato, four weeks of daily runs of steadily increasing length should yield something more like a doubling of endurance, no drugs required. Then there's the question of how much else is going on beyond increased muscular endurance. Are there going to be cardiovascular benefits in any way comparable to those provided by normal exercise? Finally, what happens when very fit mice are given these drugs?

Queen Victoria's underclothes at auction

A pair of bloomers that once belonged to Queen Victoria have been sold for £4,500 at an auction in Derby.

The knickers have a 50in (127cm) waist and date from the 1890s, which indicates the monarch had a large girth as she approached her old age. . .

A chemise with a 66-inch (167cm) bust, which also belonged to the UK's longest-reigning monarch, sold for £4,000 while her nightdress went for £5,500 at the auction.

From the BBC.

Antikythera Olympic connection

The Antikythera mechanism still deserves to be better known, so if the discovery that it also was calibrated to track the four-year cycles of the various ancient Greek games -- the Olympic being only one -- temporarily overshadows all the other amazing things it could do, who's to complain?

There are many writeups of this story, but if you want the full picture, go straight to the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project website.

Preserving WW2 internment camps

Interesting article in the International Herald Tribune: "Quest to preserve internment sites for Japanese Americans during World War II proves difficult".

Largest ancient Greek ship find

An ancient Greek trading ship that had lain on the seabed off the coast of Gela in southern Sicily for 2,500 years was brought to the surface for the first time on Monday. The ancient Greek vessel is 21 metres long and 6.5 metres wide, making it by far the biggest of its kind ever discovered. Four Greek vessels found off the coasts of Israel, Cyprus and France are at most 15 metres long.

The one in Gela is also of particular value for scholars who will be able to delve into Greek naval construction techniques thanks to the amazing find of still-intact hemp ropes used to 'sew' together the pine planks in its hull - a technique described in Homer's Iliad.

Full article here.