From May the stipulations which bar him from poaching key Jupiter staff will end and it is widely rumoured that a number

From May the stipulations which bar him from poaching key Jupiter staff will end and it is widely rumoured that a number of fund managers are preparing to make the jump to their former boss, whose New Star is seen as being in the ascendant in City circles.. A single African antelope imported into the country by a British safari park may have been the source of the BSE epidemic, shows a five-year study by an internationally renowned team of New Zealand scientists. A single African antelope imported into the country by a British safari park may have been the source of the BSE epidemic, shows a five-year study by an internationally renowned team of New Zealand scientists.The scientists, who were commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture (Maff) in 1996 to investigate the cause of the outbreak, believe that the disease spread into British cattle herds after an infected antelope died and was rendered into meat and bone meal.The team, led by Roger Morris, professor of animal epidemiology at Massey Uni- versity, in Palmerston North, in North Island, reject the commonly-held theory that BSE originated in sheep infected with scrapie, a similar disease, which were ground up for animal feed.They also dispute the findings of last year's government inquiry, which found that BSE probably began in a cow with a genetic mutation. Instead, they conclude, it was almost certainly brought into Britain by a species of wildlife from overseas. Several hundred antelopes were introduced into Britain to populate safari parks that opened in the early Seventies. Most of the parks were in the south-west of England where, the scientists have established with near-certainty, the disease first spread to cattle on farms.Professor Morris told The Independent that many species of antelope are susceptible to BSE, and substantial numbers died of the disease in wildlife parks in the Eighties after being fed contaminated feed.His theory is that BSE occurs naturally in wild antelopes in a low-level form, and that an apparently healthy animal carrying the disease was imported from eastern Africa and became sick and died after incubating it for several years.

"We can't be certain that this is what happened, but it is definitely the most plausible explanation," he said. Professor Morris declined to name the safari park where the infected antelope is thought to have died.Another theory examined by the scientists is that the disease originated in an infected whale or dolphin that washed up on a beach in the south-west and ended up as animal feed.Professor Morris said that their research had emphatically confirmed that BSE was spread through contaminated animal feed. "But we believe the BSE agent came from outside the UK because Britain and many other countries had been feeding meat and bonemeal for more than a century without any problems."The scientists examined 35 hypotheses about the evolution of the epidemic after setting up a database containing two million cows ­ the entire cattle population on British farms at the time ­ and mapping the provenance of every BSE case.Their research, which is to be published in the scientific journal Nature later this year, concludes that the outbreak began in the mid-Seventies ­ not in the Eighties, as is generally believed.Professor Morris, who has sent two teams of scientists to Britain to advise Maff on strategies to control the foot-and-mouth epidemic, believes that the antelope died between 1972 and 1977 and that its brain and organs ended up in a batch of cattle feed given to 1,000 dairy cows on a farm in the south-west. The disease was recognised by government veterin- arians in 1986.The research team used advanced computer modelling techniques to chart the theoretical spread of BSE, and applied 12 criteria to measure different hypotheses."The antelope theory ranks the highest," Professor Morris said. "It was simply an unfortunate chance event that one infected animal was brought in and finished up in meat and bone meal." He said the theory could be proved with certainty if clear evidence of BSE was found in an antelope roaming wild in the African bush. But he added that it would be extremely difficult, since sick antelopes are swiftly devoured by lions ­ which are also known to suffer from the disease.He has discounted lions as the source of the British outbreak, since dead lions here are extremely unlikely to end up as animal meal..

A technique pioneered by Leonardo da Vinci for measuring the amount of light reflected on to the dark side of the Moon has indirectly supported the idea that global warming has increased during the past five years. A technique pioneered by Leonardo da Vinci for measuring the amount of light reflected on to the dark side of the Moon has indirectly supported the idea that global warming has increased during the past five years. Scientists at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in New York have refined Leonardo's method of observing "earthshine" ­ the light reflected from the Earth on to the side of the Moon that is never illuminated by the Sun ­ to investigate how much of the Sun's energy is being bounced back into space.Philip Goode, the leader of the team of scientists, said that reflectance, or "albedo", was a key factor in determining whether the Earth would continue to warm up as the greenhouse effect worsened.Mr Goode said: "The Earth's climate is driven by the net sunlight it absorbs. We have found surprisingly large ­ up to 20 per cent ­ seasonal variations in the Earth's reflectance. Further, we have found a hint of a 2.5 per cent decrease in Earth's albedo over the past five years."The scientists measured the amount of earthshine on the dark side of the Moon during the week before and immediately after a new moon, when less than half the lunar disk was illuminated.They took albedo measurements over 200 nights using instruments attached to a six-inch telescope and compared them with those taken over 70 nights between 1994 and 1995. They took into account seasonal fluctuations and the effects ofdifferences in cloud cover and atmospheric scattering by averaging their measurements over these periods of time.Steven Koonin, professor of theoretical physics at the institute and a member of the team, saidthat looking at earthshine on the Moon over a long period of time was perfect for monitoring any changes in the Earth's climate, thus highlighting any global warming.Professor Koonin said: "Earthshine observations are ideally suited to this because, in contrast to satellite determinations of the albedo, they are self calibrating, easily and inexpensively performed from the ground and instantaneously cover a significant fraction of the surface of the globe.". Finding the origins of BSE is no arcane matter of little relevance to today.