Test 'predicts breast cancer resistance'

A genetic test could one day spot breast cancer patients most at risk of relapsing after treatment with a commonly used powerful chemotherapy.

The find could spare patients the side-effects of a drug destined to fail.

US researchers tested tumours for activity from two genes which appeared to cut the effectiveness of a class of cancer drugs.

UK cancer experts said it was another step towards "personalised" cancer treatment.

The fact that a drug may be highly effective in some patients, but not others, cannot be easily explained.

Scientists now believe that the molecular properties of patients and their tumours may be the key to understanding this - and choosing the right type of treatment.

The team from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston, Massachusetts, scanned the genetic code of tumours taken from women who had undergone treatment, looking for differences which could account for differences in outcome, focusing on a single class of drugs called anthracyclines.

They found a small region on a single chromosome, and within it two genes which seemed to be unusually active in drug-resistant tumours.

When checks were made on samples from 85 other women, those with high levels of activity from these two genes were those who did worst when treated with anthracyclines.

They believe that by checking tumours in advance, treatment regimes could be changed to those involving alternative drug types.

'Appropriate treatment'

Dr Eric Winer, director of the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber, said: "While this work remains preliminary, it may ultimately help us use the anthracyclines in a much more thoughtful manner and allow us greater ability to personalise our breast cancer treatments to the tumour and the patient."

UK cancer charities welcomed the research, although they cautioned that it could be some time before the results were confirmed and any test developed.

Meg McArthur, from Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: "This research is a step towards discovering why some patients benefit more than others from a common form of chemotherapy.

"Research like this is important for identifying the appropriate treatment for individual patients."

Oliver Childs, from Cancer Research UK, said: "Finding ways to predict how patients will respond to chemotherapy is important to help them benefit as much as possible from their cancer treatment.

"It is too early to say whether this research will lead to a predictive test, but work like this inches us a little closer towards an age of personalised cancer treatment."

'Super-fast broadband' in UK homes by 2017 - Tories

The Conservatives have unveiled plans to deliver a "nationwide super-fast broadband", part of which could be funded from the BBC licence fee.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne said a Tory government would deliver speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to the "majority" of homes by 2017.

He said cabling in rural areas could be paid for by private investors or by part of the licence fee.

But Labour said the Tories had opposed plans to improve broadband.

The government has set a target that homes should have access to speeds of 2Mbps by 2012.

'Thousands of jobs'

Mr Osborne told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "In the 19th Century we built the railways. In the 20th Century we built the motorways.

"In the 21st Century let's build the super-fast broadband network that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for Britain."

The Tories said money from private investors would pay for better cabling.

But it was added that it might not be attractive for private companies to install broadband cabling in some rural areas, in which case a proportion of the BBC licence fee could be used.

The Conservatives said the BBC could continue to set aside 3.5% of its licence fee - which currently goes to the digital switchover - to fund broadband expansion.

For Labour, Treasury Minister Stephen Timms said: "On broadband it's not Britain but the Tories that are playing catch-up.

"Labour have already announced measures for rolling out broadband across the country - and the Tories have opposed the plans to make that happen. "

'Fantasy economics'

The Liberal Democrats accused the Tories of operating "fantasy world economics".

"Anyone can promise the earth - what matters is how you pay for it," culture, media and sport spokesman Don Foster said.

"All independent research shows that the market simply cannot provide high-speed broadband in all parts of the country in the short term without investment.

"Hints that the license fee payer will be hit are the closest the Tories come to explaining how they intend to pay for this."

A government report on the UK's digital future - dubbed Digital Britain - was published in June 2009.

The action plan included universal access to broadband by 2012.

The wide-ranging report also tackled internet regulation and public service broadcasting.

Shrewd stars make music add up

When unknown singers pen personalised songs for their biggest fans and top stars let people mess around with their hits, they have one thing in common.

They are both finding new ways to make money from their music that do not rely on the old-fashioned ways of simply selling records and gig tickets.

With music sales declining, artists, record labels and even opera houses are being more inventive in order to encourage fans to fork out.

Known as "monetisation" in business speak, that was the main theme at the largest music industry gathering of the year, the Midem conference in Cannes. And some of the best ideas are below.

THE PERSONAL TOUCH

When American singer-songwriter Allison Weiss from Athens, Georgia, wanted to make a new EP, she turned to her fans to raise the money she needed.

But rather than just asking for donations, she sold personalised products and experiences that she thought her fans would love.

Forty dollars (£25) got a signed copy of the EP, $100 (£62) got a hand-written thank you letter and $300 (£185) got a CD-R of Weiss performing five acoustic songs of your choice. For $500 (£310), two people got songs written especially for them about subjects they chose. ("Nothing explicit, sorry guys," she warned.)

The singer did this via the website Kickstarter, which helps raise funds for all types of creative projects with the proviso that the backers must get some kind of reward.

"Alison let her small fanbase on Twitter and Tumblr know that she was doing this project, trying to raise this money, and within 10 hours she had raised her full $2,000 (£1,240) goal and she ended up raising four times that by the time it was over," says Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler.

Another musician charged fans $40 to come round to his house for a meal, while someone else asked supporters for $70 (£43) to spend a day in the recording studio and contribute handclaps to her album.

BANDS MEET BRANDS

Bands that took the corporate buck may once have been accused of selling out, but commercial sponsorship is now often seen as a smart way to fund your music.

Hal Ritson sings with Young Punx and is Dizzee Rascal's live musical director

So UK dance act The Young Punx accepted sponsorship from beer company Warsteiner, which wanted to raise its profile among clubbers in Germany.

Warsteiner put on club nights where The Young Punx DJ'd and performed live, the company gave away their music, used it in its MTV ads and the band featured the drink in their podcasts.

"They were paying to have us associated with their brand," says Young Punx singer and Dizzee Rascal's live musical director Hal Ritson. "We were happy to be associated with their brand since our brand is basically having a few drinks and having a good time."

During last year's promotion, according to Facebook statistics, the number of Young Punx fans in Germany shot up and Germany went from being "a territory of no relevance" to third on the list behind the UK and USA.

"That's a fanbase that came through one year without us maybe selling many records, but with many, many people hearing our music. And we got paid, so everyone's happy."

FAT LADY, BIG SCREEN

When Peter Gelb took over New York's Metropolitan Opera in 2006, he was faced with an ageing, dwindling audience.

The Met broadcasts on more than 60 screens

The Met had broadcast its productions on radio for almost 80 years, so Gelb decided to see whether he could bring in a new audience - and new money - by offering the "full blown visual experience" in cinemas as well.

The live broadcasts started on 60 screens but are now shown in more than 1,000 cinemas around the world, with typical ticket prices around $20 (£12) in the US.

"We approach them very much like a sports broadcast," Gelb says, with backstage cameras capturing the action in the "locker room" and an off-duty star such as Renee Fleming or Placido Domingo acting as a reporter and interviewing singers as they come off stage.

The Met keeps half of the box office takings, he says. "That 50%, when there are hundreds of thousands - which is the average attending these transmissions - more than covers the incremental costs of producing them in high definition.

"And it actually provides a profit stream which helps us cover our other costs, which are extremely high."

GIG MEMENTOES

Kiss fans who saw the rock band on their 2009 US tour had the chance to take the show home with them in their back pockets when they walked out of the venue.

Kiss have made hundreds of thousands of dollars from instant USB recordings

"We do a multi-track recording of each night and make the recording available on a USB drive right at the end of the show," says Gerrit Schumann from German company Music Networx, which makes the recordings.

"We have USB duplicators that do it pretty much automatically at the venue. We stop recording about half an hour before the end of the show and include a download code, with which the fan can then download the encores and remaining 30 minutes online."

Each stick cost about $20 and an artist will get anywhere between 20-50% of the price, he says. With around 1,000 sticks sold a night at 58 dates last year, that adds up to several hundreds of thousands of dollars for Kiss.

They will do it all again for their European tour this year, where they will also introduce an instant download-to-mobile option.

Kiss, already the masters of music merchandise, are also selling meet-and-greet gig packages for £905 per person in the UK.

MIX IT UP

Letting fans remix, re-record and generally mess around with songs by established artists has given those songs a lucrative new lease of life.

Michael Jackson songs were available to remix as part of an album promotion

I Am T-Pain is an iPhone app that lets users record themselves singing along to songs by the US rapper with the help of AutoTune, and post their recordings to Facebook and other sites. Costing $3 (£1.85) - three times the cost of an average song on iTunes - the app sold more than 600,000 copies in two months.

French company MXP4 provides technology that lets fans loose on songs by the likes of Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and David Guetta in a similar way, both online and on the iPhone.

Users can remix tracks and buy their mixes - at a premium price - or record their own vocals and share the results with friends, who may then discover the originals.

In the next 10 years, the music experience will be revitalised in the same way that 3D has revitalised movies and innovations like the Wii and Rock Band have revitalised gaming, says MXP4 chief executive Albin Serviant.

"Our vision is about having a 3D music experience, where you can not only play and listen to music but play with it, remix it, get the lyrics on the fly, share with friends and record your own version."

Shoes may have changed how we run

Wearing cushioned running shoes may have changed the way in which many of us run, new research suggests.

Using slow-motion footage, scientists have discovered that experienced barefoot runners land very differently from runners who wear shoes.

The researchers showed that runners who have trained barefoot tend to strike the ground with their forefoot or mid-foot, rather than their heel.

The team described their findings in the journal Nature.

Barefoot runners, the scientists say, may be at less risk of certain types of injury than those who wear cushioned running shoes.

Cushioned landing

The question of how best to support and protect a runner's feet is something that has intrigued both scientists and sports shoe designers.

This analysis, the researchers said, took an evolutionary approach to that question.

The research team used a combination of highly sensitive scales, high speed cameras, and 3-D motion analysis to compare barefoot runners to those wearing running shoes.

Their results showed that "shod" runners tended to strike the ground with their heel first.

"This creates an impact; it's like someone hitting your heel with a hammer with up to three times your body weight," said the lead researcher, Dr Daniel Lieberman from Harvard University in the US.

"Those collision forces have been implicated, by several studies, in certain kinds of repetitive stress injuries.

"Shoes work because they cushion much of that force - slowing it down, mostly."

But experienced barefoot runners appear to have developed a different way to prevent the pain, striking the ground with the forefoot or mid-foot.

"By forefoot or mid-foot striking correctly, one can almost completely eliminate that collision, making barefoot running comfortable," said Dr Lieberman.

He explained that the style adopted by barefoot runners may, in some respects, be less damaging.

Dr Lieberman's footage also demonstrated the specialised anatomy of the human foot, and caused him and his colleagues to propose that modern sports footwear may have altered how people run.

Minimal shoes

The results could be of interest to sports shoe designers

Many successful distance runners have competed barefoot, including the South African-born athlete Zola Budd.

This has caused researchers to question whether barefoot running might well be more efficient.

Dr William Jungers, an anatomical scientist from Stony Brook University in New York, who was not involved in this study, said that the findings had "potentially useful and thought-provoking implications for sports medicine and running shoe design".

He explained, in an accompanying article in Nature, that by striking the ground with their forefoot, a barefoot runner could take fuller advantage of energy stored in the ankle and in the arch of the foot.

But, as Professor Lieberman explained, "there are tradeoffs."

"Barefoot runners have to use their calf muscles and Achilles tendon much more to control ankle flexion. So people who switch to this style of running are much more likely to develop calf problems if they don't do so slowly, carefully and with a lot of stretching."

Dr Jay Stock, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Cambridge in the UK, told BBC News: "This provides compelling evidence that modern footwear may change the way in which people run, and in turn, cause greater stress on our bodies."

He said that it was also very interesting that "many of the world's best athletes run with a forefoot strike".

Dr Jungers concluded: "An evidence-based approach is badly needed to assess the competing claims as to what, if anything, is the best cover for a runner's foot."

World's most famous 'unseen' diamond

The room was dimly lit. Armed guards stood at both entrances and enormous ironclad doors were slid shut to seal the gallery.

Nobody spoke above a whisper as we waited for the first glimpse in half a century of one of the world's most extraordinary gems.

The Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond was last seen in public at the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels. After that, it disappeared and its whereabouts remained a mystery until Laurence Graff, a billionaire diamond dealer, bought it at auction in 2008, appending his surname.

He and his son Francois were in the gallery of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC as the blue stone, was brought up from a secret vault and finally revealed.

Flawless beauty

"I've been privileged over the years to own some of the world's most important and famous diamonds, but I would say that the Wittelsbach-Graff is the most valuable and the most beautiful," he said.

Under ultraviolet light, the diamond has an orange hue

Sitting unadorned on a silken white cloth, it glittered grey and blue in the low light. Classed as "internally flawless" it is said to have exceptional colour and becomes intense orange when viewed under ultraviolet light.

"When I saw this stone, I knew it was a stone we had to have," said Laurence Graff. "I had the opportunity to examine and value it in my own offices, and I came to the conclusion it was one of the rarest stones I'd ever seen."

'True perfection'

Initially valued at around $15m, Mr Graff paid more than $25m. In a controversial move he had it re-cut and polished, reducing it from 35.5 carats to little over 31 carats. Critics say the act compromised the historical integrity of the stone, but Mr Graff disagrees.

"I decided that to create beauty, or acts of beauty, is not a sin. All we did was remove the blemishes and now it's true perfection. It's the most wonderful diamond to hold in your hand. It's got the most incredible feel to it - a magical feel. We have managed to bring out the true colour of the stone without changing the faceting or the shape.

"The true rarity of the diamond, whatever its history, is the diamond itself. The history will continue. Every diamond that was ever mined, every diamond that was ever polished and cut, is still with us. Who knows the story that this stone will tell in a thousand years time. I'm sure it will gather very romantic stories, mysterious stories, intriguing stories, but at the end of the day the true beauty of the stone will remain. That will always be the best story."

Francois Graff compared the decision to restoring a priceless painting. "If you discovered a Leonardo da Vinci with a tear in it and covered in mud, you would want to repair it. We have similarly cleaned up the diamond and repaired damage caused over the years."

Distant cousins

The Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond originated in India. In 1664, Philip IV of Spain gave it to his daughter, the Infanta Margarita Teresa to celebrate her engagement to Emperor Leopold of Austria.

In 1772, it acquired its name by passing to the Wittelsbach family of the House of Bavaria. After World War I, Bavaria became a republic and the Crown Jewels, including the diamond were sold.

For the next hundred years it was rarely seen in public.

"It's probably the most famous diamond the world has never seen," said Jeffrey Post, curator of the Smithsonian National Gem Collection. "It's always been lurking out there - but we've never seen it."

The Wittelsbach-Graff was secretly transported to the museum in the dead of night, a week before it was due to go on display.

The Hope and the Wittelsbach are believed to be in a class by themselves

Mr Post and some of the nation's leading diamond experts locked themselves in the vault to spend the time examining it and comparing it to the legendary Hope - the world's largest blue diamond at 45.52 carats - which is the star of the National Gem Collection.

It was thought that the two may once have been part of the same crystal, but tests proved negative. Although they share significant similarities and come from the same place, the Hope and the Wittelsbach-Graff are more like distant cousins than siblings.

"We had this confluence of history with two of the world's great diamonds," said Mr Post, "and an unparalleled opportunity to examine them. Diamonds have been mined for hundreds of years but in all that time these two stand in a class by themselves unlike any other diamond found."

Diamonds are typically formed about 100 miles underground and are billions of years old. They can tell scientists much about the history of the planet.

The Wittelsbach-Graff will be displayed alongside the Hope at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History until August. After that, its future is uncertain.

Laurence Graff says it may move to London's Natural History Museum - but it could also be sold. If that happens, it could disappear for another hundred years.