More Than A Watches

Hero worship at the expense of historical accuracy? Surely not. It has been portrayed as the story of the lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his day despite the hindering efforts of those ranged against him, saving thousands of lives.

On the one side was John Harrison, the self-taught clockmaker from a humble Yorkshire background. On the other, the 18th Century’s wealthy elite charged with the task of presiding over the problem of longitude – the knotty task of working out how far west or east a ship has sailed.

Harrison’s story has been the subject of a best-selling book and an award-winning film but science historians believe that the true account of how the problem of longitude was solved has yet to be told.

To uncover the full story, they have started dusting off the forgotten archives of the British Board of Longitude, the panel of distinguished experts set up in 1714 to sit in judgement over proposed solutions to the Longitude Problem. The Board was responsible for awarding the £20,000 prize – equivalent to about £3m today – to the first person to come up with a way for ships to navigate safely at sea by knowing longitude.

“Think of The X Factor, but much more money and much more important,” said Professor Simon Schaffer of the University of Cambridge. He is the principal investigator on the archival research project which is being jointly conducted with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. The prize was the first time the government had used legislation to address a specific scientific problem.

In Dava Sobel’s 1995 book Longitude, and the later film based on it, carpenter’s son Harrison is depicted as the solitary virtuoso pitched against the scientific establishment of a society suffocated by class, exemplified by the eminent gentlemen who sat on the Board of Longitude.

But Professor Schaffer and his colleagues believe that the important role of the Board of Longitude in finding a solution has been largely forgotten or downplayed in the rush to promote Harrison as the unsung hero of the popular story. Far from being a force of conservatism, the board, they believe, did much to generate the climate of open inquiry that allowed pioneering scientific research to flourish – a climate that fostered Harrison’s historic achievement.

“The Board of Longitude has had a pretty bad history because it has either been forgotten or condemned. Its creation was a turning point in British history, but after it was abolished in 1828 it was largely forgotten and its impact was never properly assessed,” Professor Schaffer said.

Indeed, Professor Schaffer goes as far as to suggest that British science today owes the Board a debt of gratitude rather than contempt, because in effect it laid much of the groundwork for the kind of state-funded scientific research that we now take for granted. The precedent of the Board of Longitude may indeed have led Britain to become one of the global leaders of modern science.

“It has been forgotten, I think, because we don’t like remembering how important the state is in promoting science and technology in British history. And we ignore or condemn the Board of Longitude because there is a hero in this story and his name is John Harrison.”

He added: “We still like to believe that we are a nation of enthusiastic amateurs like Harrison, making huge breakthroughs against the odds and in spite of a state hostile to scientific progress. In fact, we have a long history of state-sponsored ingenuity which made Britain into a military and technological world player. The Board is in many ways that history.”

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She tells lies. She's a lousy tipper. She billed the Republican Party more than $3,000 for the underwear she bought during the last Presidential election, including dozens of Spanx girdles. Oh, and for all the cutesy charm that Sarah Palin projects in public, she's got a nasty habit of bullying staff, losing her temper with friends and family, and, when particularly upset, throwing tin cans at her husband, Todd.

Fresh from a week that seemed to cement her status as the most valuable brand in American conservatism, and saw her both receive top billing at a vast "tea party" rally in Washington, and almost single-handedly alter the direction of a Senate race in her native Alaska, Palin is on the receiving end of a brace of vintage journalistic hatchet jobs from the left and right sides of the political spectrum.

The first, a vast profile of the self-proclaimed "Mamma Grizzly," which covers 18 pages of next month's Vanity Fair, devotes more than 10,000 words to a mixture of revelation, allegation and innuendo regarding both her public and private persona, detailing what it calls her "erratic behaviour," her "pattern of lying," and what the magazine's reporter Michael Gross describes as the "sad, mouldering strangeness" of her everyday existence.

The second comes courtesy of Meghan McCain, the daughter of Palin's former running mate John, whose new book Dirty, Sexy Politics, describes the former Governor of Alaska as a "a time bomb" who is addicted to attention and whose eccentric behaviour brought "drama, stress, complications, panic, and loads of uncertainty," to the 2008 campaign trail.

Like almost everything else that involves Palin – who, despite her habit of avoiding interviews in what she calls the "lamestream media," has still not ruled out a run for the 2012 Presidency – the broadsides are receiving endless attention. As befits an increasingly polarised nation, they are sparking outrage in conservative circles and a mixture of mirth and disbelief in liberal ones. Palin takes issue with the allegation and has responded with an attack on Vanity Fair, calling into question its facts and reporting standards.

In truth, Vanity Fair's article is a curious mixture of un-sourced innuendo and minor revelation which was mostly staggering for its sheer scale. The magazine spent four months trailing the former Alaska governor on the various speaking engagements that have helped her earn $13m since quitting last year.

It alleges she is "warm and effusive in public, and angry in private," that she is paranoid and vindictive towards former friends, and it revels the details of the occasional sense-of-humour failures which inspired the headline: "The Sound and the Fury."

The piece quotes a "friend" of Palin and her husband Todd, who once witnessed a domestic dispute. "They took all the canned goods out of the pantry, then proceeded to throw them at each other," recalls the friend. "As soon as she enters her property and the door closes, even the insects in that house cringe. She has a horrible temper, but she has gotten away with it because she is a pretty woman."

During the campaign, an un-named "aide" is quoted as claiming that Palin "lashed out" at the slightest provocation, sometimes screaming at staff and throwing objects. Asked about her temper, Todd told a staffer: "You just got to let her go through it... Half the stuff that comes out of her mouth she doesn't even mean."

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Pregnant muslim women who fast during Ramadan are likely to have smaller babies who will be more prone to learning disabilities in adulthood, according to new research.

Scientists in the United States also found that the women were 10 per cent less likely to give birth to a boy if they had fasted during Ramadan.

The trend was clearest if the fasting was done early in the women's pregnancy, and during the summer months, when long hours of daylight called for them to go longer without food.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and a time when Muslims across the world fast from dawn until sunset. Three in four Muslim pregnancies overlap with Ramadan and surveys indicate that the majority of pregnant Muslims observe the fast. This year, it falls between 11 August and 9 September.

Although pregnant women may request an exemption from fasting, they are expected to "make up" the fasting days missed during pregnancy after their baby is born.

Previous research has suggested that this requirement may discourage pregnant women from seeking the exemption, since they do not want to be the only member of their household fasting. Some Muslims also interpret Islamic law as requiring pregnant women in good health to fast.

Since fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam and is a central part of Muslim culture, many women may fear a loss of connection with their communities or would feel guilty if they did not observe Ramadan.

The study, which used census data from the US, Iraq and Uganda, also discovered long-term effects on the adult's health and his or her future economic success.

Douglas Almond, of Columbia University, and Bhashkar Mazumder, of the Federal Research Bank of Chicago, the authors of the research, concluded: "We generally find the largest effects on adults when Ramadan falls early in pregnancy.

"Rates of adult disability are roughly 20 per cent higher, with specific mental disabilities showing substantially larger effects. Importantly, we detect no corresponding outcome differences when the same design is applied to non-Muslims."

Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, an imam from Leicester, said sharia (Islamic law) would never expect a woman to fast if it had an adverse effect on either the mother or child.

"Sharia would not want the mother to unnecessarily burden herself," he said. "There's no point being needlessly brave. When Ramadan falls during the winter months, more women will fast. But when it falls during the summer, when you might have to fast for 16 or 17 hours, it is understandable that fewer mothers will be fasting."

Nusrat Hussain, a mother of four from Ilford, fasted during her second pregnancy, which fell during Ramadan.

"It was something I wanted to do. But I started to feel dizzy and my husband and I decided I should stop. There's no Islamic compulsion to fast if you're pregnant but I think people do sometimes feel pressured within some cultures," she said.

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Stoke have reached an agreement with Monaco for the season-long loan of Eidur Gudjohnsen.

The former Chelsea and Barcelona striker, who spent last season on loan at Tottenham, is currently having discussions at the Britannia Stadium.

If the 31-year-old were to sign he would be the second deadline day capture for the Potters with possibly more to come.

Former midfielder Salif Diao, whose contract expired at the end of last season, has re-joined the club on a two-year deal while Stoke are also in discussions with Portsmouth's Marc Wilson.

In addition to his new contract the 33-year-old Senegalese will also take on an ambassadorial role for the club in Africa and other parts of the world.

"It's great to be back home. I love the club and I love the supporters, so I always hoped something could be sorted out," he said.

"I feel there is still unfinished business and I want to help Stoke City continue the excellent progress made in my time here.

"Tony Pulis is more than a manager to me and I want to repay the faith that he has shown in my ability at this stage in my career.

"I believe I can still make a big contribution as a player but it is also very exciting that I have another important role to play which could help bring new talent to the club in the future."

Pulis added: "It is fantastic to see Salif back because he is not only an experienced head, he is a good person to have around the place.

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More than a million revellers were thought to have attended the Notting Hill Carnival yesterday, making it Europe's largest street festival, which has been held every August bank holiday since 1966.

An estimated five tonnes of chicken and 25,000 bottles of rum were consumed, and some 16,000 records were played at 41 different sound systems. There were no reported gun incidents. Getty Images

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The government's official health watchdog today urges doctors' professional bodies to draw up guidance on the appropriate prescribing of painkillers and amphetamines amid evidence of their increasing use on patients by health professionals.

The Care Quality Commission also says changes are needed to the system for regulating and monitoring the use of these and other controlled drugs, to better identify any improper prescribing of drugs such as diamorphine, which was used by GP Harold Shipman to kill at least 15 patients and possibly up to 200.

An accidental overdose of the same drug administered by German locum Daniel Ubani was responsible for the death of 70-year-old David Gray in Manea, Cambridgeshire, in 2008, an incident which has led to a shake-up of out-of-hours services by family doctors.

The commission also warns that "safety gains" made in the last three years "are not lost in the current drive to save costs". Vigilance is essential, it says, although health and social care organisations are monitoring controlled drugs more effectively since tougher rules were introduced in 2007 because of Shipman.

But the way information is collected still does not always identify the way individual practitioners are using the drugs, especially when they are not prescribed to named individuals.

This means it is impossible to distinguish between the use of drugs being purchased from pharmacists by hospices for palliative care, and by individual doctors or others. There were 18,289 such requisitions in England last year, up from 10,657 in 2008.

More drugs are being also prescribed by health workers other than doctors, including nurses and pharmacists.

The medical royal colleges for GPs, physicians and psychiatrists are being asked to develop particular guidance on opioids, which are used for treating drug dependence as well as treating pain, and amphetamine stimulants.

But the increased use in the NHS of other controlled drugs, including tranquillisers, sleeping tablets, anabolic steroids and growth hormones, broadly reflects good practice within the NHS and improved access to drugs for patients, says the commission.

Gillian Arr-Jones, the commission's chief pharmacist who wrote the report, said: "We are regulators. We don't produce guidance. We expect the [professional] experts to produce guidance and then, by regulation, expect people to follow the expert guidance."

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Doris Gardiner was one of the last survivors of a long-forgotten Second World War tragedy that, in its scale, sadly rivals both Aberfan and Lockerbie. But for her mother's illness on that fateful day, she would almost certainly have been yet another of the many names so poignantly recorded on the village war memorial.

Wednesday 23 August 1944 began like any other day in the sleepy Lancashire village of Freckleton. Situated on the banks of the River Ribble, once the traditional haunt of smugglers, during the Second World War it played host to a large contingent of American airmen, based mostly at the neighbouring Warton aerodrome.

At its heart lay Holy Trinity primary school where 176 children, many of them evacuees, were in their second day of a new term. In charge of the infant class and looking forward to her impending retirement was Louisa Hulme. Replacing Doris Catlow, who was absent that day nursing her sick mother, was a 21-year-old local girl, Jennie Hall.

At 10.30am, an American Liberator Bomber 42-50291 took off from Warton on a routine test flight. Eleven minutes in, a huge explosion, thought to have been sparked by a bolt of lightning, tore the huge plane apart. Large parts of the fuselage rained down on the village, hitting the school and a neighbouring snack bar. In the ensuing inferno, 61 people were killed, including 38 members of that infant class; it was the greatest loss of civilian life outside London during the Second World War.

Initially many, including her own fiancée, then serving with the RAF in Burma, believed that Doris had perished. Only later did the story of her escape gradually emerge. She led the procession of mourners as all the victims were quickly buried in a mass grave close to the ruins of the school. A fortnight later came another funeral, this time of Louisa Hulme, who had subsequently died in hospital. As was her wish, she was laid to rest alongside her pupils.

The daughter of a Lancashire builder, Doris Catlow was educated at Blakey Lodge school, Blackburn, before, in 1937, training as a teacher at St Katherine's College, Liverpool. She qualified in 1939, her first appointment taking her to Freckleton. Like many, she was deeply traumatised by the disaster, and she subsequently moved closer to her family home, taking a position at Intack school. But no matter where her career took her she never forgot the children who perished, nor the young teacher who died covering for her.

Following her marriage in 1946 to David Gardiner, she and her husband moved to Scotland, where she enjoyed a long and successful teaching career. Initially working at Bankhead school in Glasgow, she later moved into the independent sector, first to Brooklea school and later to Carnwadric and Arden schools. For six years, from 1970 until 1976, together with her husband, she ran Park Lodge, a combined nursery and preparatory school close to Loch Lomond in Dumbartonshire.

It took three decades before she felt able, in some small way, to come to terms with the events of the past and return to Lancashire. Settling back on the Fylde coast, there, as a prominent member of the distinctive White Church in Fairhaven, she proved a tireless worker for charitable causes.

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Bulldozers are ripping open the gorse and grass covered hills above the 900-year-old village of Urzig in the heart of Germany's river Mosel wine region. The kilometre long furrows of deep red earth left in their wake are clearly visible from the 17th century timbered wine tasting inns on the village waterfront.

The scars on the idyllic landscape of steep flinty slopes renowned for their fine Rieslings are the first visible evidence of a controversial project that is enraging some of the world's leading wine buffs and causing a furious political row between conservationists and planners almost half a century after it was first conceived.

The earth is being been gouged out of the ground above Urzig to make way for a series of four-lane Autobahn access roads. The motorway sections are designed to funnel traffic on to a mammoth four lane flyover called the Hochmoselbruecke that was first drawn up back in the 1960s.

If the planners in Germany's premier wine growing region get their way, the €280m (£234m) bridge will be spanning the Mosel river 480 feet above the valley floor on its 10 concrete support pillars by the end of the decade. The vast construction will dwarf the old oak beamed villages and their churches and vineyards below.

Several of the access roads for the bridge have already been completed and now the regional government of Germany's Rhineland Palatinate state – which is home to 5,000 vineyards – has put the flyover out to tender with a view to finishing the project by 2016.

The state government insists that the bridge is needed to improve traffic flow on a major transcontinental route that links Rotterdam with southern Europe. From its standpoint the flyover is already a fait accompli. But for people like Patrick Schenk, an Urzig inhabitant and vintner's son who was not only born in the town but makes his living selling wine, the project is nothing short of a disaster: "It is the most idiotic scheme imaginable, because like everywhere else Germany has to save billions right now," he told The Independent as he stood inside his Roman era Urzig wine cellar. "It is a classic case of politicians giving in to a powerful construction lobby and it will drive away tourists and wreck the landscape. When I see the mess left by the bulldozers I feel like crying."

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Usain Bolt will become the "best paid athlete in track and field history" after agreeing an extension to his deal with Puma that ties him to the company beyond the London Olympics. The world's fastest man is set to earn more than £10m over three years, a deal that equates to what Cristiano Ronaldo is paid by Nike.

Bolt, the world record holder at 100m and 200m, will be the stellar attraction in 2012 and has chosen to remain with the German company who have backed him since he was 16. "I'm very happy with the figure," said Bolt, who celebrated his 24th birthday on Saturday. It represents a sizeable increase on the £1m a year he had been earning and propels him above Yelena Isinbayeva, the Russian pole vaulter estimated to have been the previously best paid athlete. But while his deal may be on a par with Ronaldo's, top footballers still earn considerably more overall, while Tiger Woods, for all his problems, has an annual income of around £13m from his deal with Nike alone.

Bolt ended his season after defeat by Tyson Gay in Stockholm earlier this month, citing a back injury, and is now "chilling" in Jamaica. "He's an iconic global sports star and as such he's now renumerated," said Jochen Zeita, Puma's chairman.

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Vitamin D protects the body against a range of serious illnesses by binding to the DNA of the body's cells and directly controlling the genes implicated in diseases such as multiple sclerosis, diabetes and cancer, a study suggests.

It is the first time that scientists have found direct evidence to suggest that the "sunshine vitamin", which is made by the skin in the presence of sunlight, directly controls a network of genes linked with a wide variety of serious disorders.

Although previous studies have linked vitamin D deficiency with a growing list of illnesses, especially the autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and type-1 diabetes, until now scientists have not been able to show how it could trigger so many different disorders.
The latest study suggests a possible mechanism by showing that vitamin D binds directly to parts of the human genome that house the genes known to be linked with these serious autoimmune disorders, which result from a person's immune system attacking the body's own tissues.

"A surprisingly large number of genes that have been highlighted by gene-associated studies in autoimmunity and cancer seem to be regulated by vitamin D," said Professor George Ebers, a clinical neurologist at the Radcliffe hospital in Oxford.

"This is indirect, but intriguing evidence that vitamin D will prove to be a major player in the key gene-environment interactions that expose us to diseases," Professor Ebers said.

It is estimated that a billion people in the world could be suffering from deficiencies in vitamin D, which can be ingested in the diet in small amounts but is primarily produced by the skin when exposed to direct sunlight, so the findings could have major health implications for people living in northern latitudes with low levels of sunlight.

The researchers, funded by the Wellcome Trust, analysed human cells that had been stimulated by the active form of vitamin D. They found that the vitamin D receptor protein bonded to a total of 2,776 sites along the DNA of the genome. They also found that the vitamin had a significant effect on altering the activity of 229 genes located near to these sites.

"We screened the whole genome and found all the sites where vitamin D binds. The evidence is now quite solid that not only is there binding but we've been able to show that it actually affects the functioning of the gene. It's not just sticking to that region, it's actually altering gene expression," Professor Ebers said.

"We show there's an excess of genes that are associated with a bunch of autoimmune conditions that seem to have the vitamin D regulation feature. I don't think we can say [this is] cause and effect, but it's not a coincidence. It is clearly not there by chance. There's a very substantial bias among these genes that have been highlighted as playing a role in these autoimmune conditions, and that have turned out to be regulated by vitamin D," he explained.

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