Science & Technology World

Veteran British game makers have featured strongly in the Queen's New Year Honours list. In total, four games figures won honours including Oliver and Paul Collyer, the brothers behind the Championship Manager series. Also honoured were Rodney Cousens, head of Codemasters and Paul Jackson former head of industry group Elspa. Dr Andrew Herbert, who manages Microsoft's Research labs in Cambridge, was given an OBE. The two brothers were made Members of the British Empire (MBE) in recognition for their services to the UK's computer games industry. The pair founded Sports Interactive in 1992 and have been behind the iconic Football and Championship Manager games. In a statement posted to the Sports Interactive site, the pair said: "We are really proud to have been given this honour, which is something we never thought would happen to us." "We're still heavily involved in the games, with Paul heading up the match engine, and Ov heading up Football Manager Live, and we look forward to many more years making games with the rest of the team that so many people out there enjoy to play." Rodney Cousens, currently boss of Codemasters, was made a Commander of the British Empire ( CBE) also for services to the computer games industry. Mr Cousens began his career in gaming in 1981 and has worked at Activision and Acclaim. Recent games from Codemasters include Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and Fuel. Paul Jackson was given the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his long service at EA and on the board of the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (Elspa). He is currently head of specialist game firm Rail Simulator. An OBE was also awarded to Andrew Herbert, who is current managing director of Microsoft's UK research labs in Cambridge. He won his honour for services to computer science.

UK firm Spinvox, which converts voicemails into texts, has been bought by speech recognition company Nuance for $102.5 m (£64 m). The deal is worth $66 m in cash and $36.5 m in stock, about a third shy of the earlier rumoured $146 m price tag. Nuance told BBC News it is too early to say what impact the deal will have on Spinvox's 230 staff. It also declined to comment on whether Spinvox founders Christina Domecq and Daniel Doulton will remain on board. "At the beginning of the year Spinvox was riding high as one of Britain's most promising technology companies," said BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. "But the year has ended with it being sold at a knock-down price which means its investors are not likely to see much of a return." More than $200 m has been invested in the company so far and it had also been given a £30 m loan. "Nuance is likely to have been more interested in Spinvox's contracts with major telecoms firms - such as Telefonica - than in its technology," added Mr Cellan-Jones. Spinvox investor Invesco Perpetual had confirmed in September that Spinvox was up for sale. In recent months doubts had been cast on how effective Spinvox's speech-to-text software actually was. The company claims to use advanced voice recognition software for its service, but the BBC found that human operators were also involved in transcribing many messages. "Around the world, the voice-to-text market has experienced tremendous growth over the last year," said John Pollard, vice president of Nuance Voice-to-Text Services. "With Spinvox's robust infrastructure, language support and operational experience, we will broaden the reach and capabilities of our platform."

Researchers believe they have identified the source of fatal tumours that threaten to wipe out the wild population of Tasmanian devils. Writing in Science, an international team of scientists suggest cells that protect nerves are the likely origin of devil facial tumour disease ( DFTD). The disease is a transmissible cancer that is spread by physical contact, and quickly kills the animals. DFTD has caused the devil population to collapse by 60 % in the past decade. "To look more closely at the tumours' origin, we sequenced the genes that are expressed in this devil cancer and compared them with other genes that are expressed in other devil tissues," explained lead author Elizabeth Murchison, from the Australian National University in Canberra. She told the Science podcast the team's findings delivered surprising results. "We found that the tumours expressed genes that were normally only expressed by Schwann cells, which are cells that are found in the peripheral nervous system that protect nerves." 'Genetically distinct' The researchers sampled 25 different tumours from all over Tasmania, the only place on the planet where the world's largest carnivorous marsupials are found. DEVILS IN DETAIL Scientific name: Sarcophilus harrisii Devils were given their common name by early settlers, who were haunted by "demonic growls" Largest living carnivorous marsupial Now only found in Tasmania Can live up to five years in wild Weight: male 10-12 kg; female 6-8 kg They favour habitats where they can shelter by day and scavenge by night They found that the growths were genetically distinct from their hosts, but were identical to one another. Dr Murchison, who is also a researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, US, said the teams findings had a number of positive outcomes: " Most importantly, this has led to the development of a diagnostic test for the disease. "Devils are susceptible to a number of different types of cancer. Just like humans, they can get breast cancer, leukaemia, etc - especially in their old age. "Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference between these types of cancer and the transmissible disease. "Now that we know that these very specific Schwann genes are expressed in the cancer, we can use these genes as diagnostic markers." DFTD was first described in the mid-1990 s, when devils with large facial tumours were photographed in north-eastern Tasmania. By the end of 2008 , the disease - which kills infected animals within nine weeks - had been confirmed at 64 locations, covering more than 60 % of the Australian island state's mainland. Experts warn that without intervention, the disease could wipe out the wild population of the world's largest carnivorous marsupial within decades. Dr Murchison hoped identifying the catalogue of genes associated with DFTD would lead to the development of vaccines, or possibly therapies. "As yet, unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to help the devils that have the disease," she said. "This devil facial cancer is very unusual as it is an infection cancer; it is a little bit like an organ transplant," she said. "In an organ transplant, you have an organ that is transplanted into an unrelated individual. In the case of the devil cancer, you have a cancer that is transplanted into another unrelated devil through biting. "One of the big questions about this cancer is why it is not being rejected or being recognised as a foreign graft. "If we could understand that... we could perhaps use this data to develop a vaccine that could help the devils' immune system reject the cancer before it takes hold."

Scientists have analysed DNA extracted from the remains of a 30 ,000- year-old European hunter- gatherer. Studying the DNA of long-dead humans can open up a window into the evolution of our species ( Homo sapiens ). But previous studies of this kind have been hampered by scientists' inability to distinguish between the ancient human DNA and modern contamination. In Current Biology journal, a German-Russian team details how it was possible to overcome this hurdle. Svante Paabo, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues used the latest DNA sequencing techniques to study genetic information from human remains unearthed in 1954 at Kostenki, Russia. Excavations at Kostenki, on the banks of the river Don in southern Russia, have yielded large concentrations of archaeological finds from the Palaeolithic (roughly 40 ,000 years ago to 10 ,000 years ago). Some of the finds date back as far as 45 ,000 years. " The ironic thing is that our group has been one of those that raised this issue " Professor Svante Paabo, Max Planck Institue The DNA analysed in this study comes from a male aged 20-25 who was deliberately buried in an oval pit some 30 ,000 years ago. Known as the Markina Gora skeleton, it was found lying in a crouched position with fists reaching upwards and a face orientated down towards the dirt. The bones were covered in a pigment called red ochre, thought to have been used in prehistoric funeral rites. The type of DNA extracted and analysed is that stored in mitochondria - the "powerhouses" of cells. This mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from a mother to her offspring, providing a unique record of maternal inheritance. Using technology pioneered in the study of DNA from Neanderthal bones, they were able to distinguish between ancient genetic material from the Kostenki male and contamination from modern people who handled the bones, or whose DNA reached the remains by some other means. The new approach, developed by Professor Paabo and his colleagues, exploits three features which tend to distinguish ancient DNA from modern contamination. One of these is size; fragments of ancient DNA are often shorter than those from modern sources. Previous ancient DNA studies used the widespread polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology. PCR amplifies a few pieces of genetic material, generating thousands to millions of copies of a sequence. But the researchers found many fragments of ancient DNA were too small to be amplified by PCR. A second characteristic of ancient DNA was its tendency to show particular changes, or mutations, in the genetic sequence at the ends of DNA molecules. A third feature was a characteristic breakage of molecules at particular positions in the DNA strand. Trust issues The apparent ease with which modern DNA can infiltrate ancient remains has led many researchers to doubt even those studies employing the most rigorous methods to weed out contamination by modern genetic material. "The ironic thing is that our group has been one of those that raised this issue," Professor Paabo told BBC News. "To take animal studies on cave bears, for example, if we use PCR primers specific for human DNA on cave bear bones, we can retrieve modern human DNA on almost every one. That has made me think: 'how can I trust anything on this'." Using the new techniques, the researchers were able to sequence the entire mitochondrial genome of the Markina Gora individual. Future studies like the one in Current Biology could help shed light on whether the humans living in Europe 30 ,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of modern populations or whether they were replaced by immigrants who introduced farming to the continent several thousand years ago. The modern gene pool contains a wide variety of mtDNA lineages. Studying these maternal lineages provides scientists with clues to the origins and histories of human populations. Scientists look for known genetic signatures in order to classify an individual's mtDNA into different types, or "haplogroups". These haplogroups represent major branches on the family tree of Homo sapiens . Early arrival The researchers were able to assign the Kostenki individual to haplogroup "U2 ", which is relatively uncommon among modern populations. U2 appears to be scattered at low frequencies in populations from South and Western Asia, Europe and North Africa. Despite its rarity, the very presence of this haplogroup in today's Europeans suggests some continuity between Palaeolithic hunters and the continent's present-day inhabitants, argue the authors of the latest study. U2 , along with closely related haplogroups such as U5 , are among those which could plausibly have arrived in Europe during the Palaeolithic. Geneticists use well-established techniques to " date" particular genetic events, such as when a haplogroup first diversified. The "U" branch ( comprising haplogroups U1 , U2 , U3 and so on) appears to be more ancient than many other genetic lineages found in Europe. A recent study found a very high percentage of U types in the skeletal remains of ancient hunter- gatherers from Central Europe compared with later farming immigrants and modern people from the region. Meanwhile, an analysis last year of mtDNA from 28 ,000- year-old remains unearthed at Paglicci Cave in Italy showed this individual belonged to haplogroup "H" - the most common type found in modern Europeans.