A team of researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, working in partnership with colleagues from Senegal, has found that intermittent preventive malaria treatment of children under five has a dramatic impact on malaria frequency.
In a randomised, placebo-controlled trial, 1,136 children aged between two months and five years received either intermittent preventive treatment, consisting of one dose of artesunate plus one dose of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, or t
From cell manipulation to micro assembly, micro robots devised by an international team of researchers offer a glimpse of the future.
The MICRON project team, led by the Institute for Process Control and Robotics (IPR), Karlsruhe, Germany, brought together eight international partners. Funded under the European Commission’s FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) initiative of the IST programme, MICRON set out to build a total of five to ten micro robots, just cubic centimetres in si
Drawing on lab experiments and computer studies, Johns Hopkins researchers have learned how a common protein delivers its warning message to cells when an infectious agent invades the body. The findings are important because this biological intruder alarm causes the body’s immune system to leap into action to fight the infection. Learning more about how this process works, the researchers said, could lead to better treatments for diseases that occur when the immune system overreacts or pays to
Aircraft technicians these days are as likely to use a laptop as a printed manual and logbook, and to turn to the Internet for the latest job-status reports and technical information.
Engineers from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are assisting them, using current computer and database technology to help military aircraft maintainers get their work done more efficiently. A team from GTRI’s Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory (EOSL) has been developing and improvi
A team of scientists has identified a cellular mechanism that may help explain the puzzle of why people of African descent are more susceptible to tuberculosis infection and why, once infected, they develop more severe states of the disease than whites. The team includes researchers from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The paper will appear online in the February 23 issue of Science Express.
Approximately eight million peopl
A new horizon for mass fatality radiology
A team led by a University of Leicester forensic pathologist is believed to be the first in the world to use a new radiological approach for mass fatality investigation.
Traditionally 2 types of radiology are used in mass fatality and temporary mortuary investigations -that of fluoroscopy and plain x-ray.
These techniques however are time consuming, yield limited information and are a health and safety hazard to those workin
There are growing concerns over the effects of increased consumption of sodas and fruit drinks among adolescents in the United States. A study in the February issue of The Journal of Pediatrics examines this trend among black and white girls over a ten year period.
Ruth Striegel-Moore, Ph.D., and colleagues from several institutions studied three-day food diaries kept by 2,371 girls who participated in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Growth Health Study. The food
Breakthrough will lead to new insights about sense of taste
Researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center have succeeded in growing mature taste receptor cells outside the body and for the first time have been able to successfully keep the cells alive for a prolonged period of time. The establishment of a viable long-term model opens a range of new opportunities to increase scientists’ understanding of the sense of taste and how it functions in nutrition, health and disease.
Newly published research by a Princeton engineer suggests that understanding how air travels across the sunroof of a car may one day make jet engines less noisy.
Clarence Rowley, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, did not actually conduct his experiments on a sunroof. Rather, he and collaborators used computer simulations and subsonic wind tunnels at Princeton and at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, to experiment with models that rese
University of Rochester Medical Center scientists have demonstrated a new technology that accurately and rapidly detects the meat-spoiling and sometimes dangerous E. coli bacteria.
The unique technology uses a protein from the suspect bacteria as part of the sensing system that also includes a silicon chip and a digital camera.
The journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics published an article on the technology in its February issue. Benjamin Miller, Ph.D., an associate pro
Researchers quantify stratosphere damage with an eye toward ozone hole recovery
A new atmospheric model is able to quantify man-made versus naturally occurring damage to the stratosphere with an eye toward repairing the diminishing ozone layer that is located within the stratosphere. That’s the premise of a paper published in this week’s Science titled, “Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling.”
Researchers used a model to
NASA’s Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer astronomy satellite is back in full operation, its aging onboard software control system rejuvenated and its mission extended by enterprising scientists and engineers after a near-death experience in December 2004.
Observations with the orbiting telescope resumed Nov. 1, 2005, about ten months after the third of four onboard reaction wheels, used to precisely point the spacecraft and hold it steady, stopped spinning. After two months of e
New research into a missing link in climatology shows that the Earth was not overcome by a greenhouse period when dinosaurs dominated, but experienced rapid fluctuations in temperature and sea level change that resulted in a balance of the global carbon cycle. The study is being published in the March issue of Geology.
“Most people think the mid-Cretaceous period was a super-greenhouse,” says Darren Gröcke, assistant professor and Director of the Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry L
Engineers have found a way to pinpoint and identify the tiny iron oxide particles associated with Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases in the brain.
The technique is likely to accelerate research on the cause of the diseases and could lead to the first diagnostic procedure for Alzheimer’s in patients while they are alive.
“We’re the first to be able to tell you both the location of the particles and what kind of particles they are,” said Mark Davidson, a Unive
Did you ever arrange to meet a friend at a busy street corner, then rush up to a total stranger thinking it was your friend? Neuroscientists have a theory to explain why such potentially embarrassing mistakes occur. They probe the underlying perceptual and neural processes of visual search by studying how distracters affect performance of a visual search task. One might intuitively expect that as background noise created by distracters and errors increase, confidence in one’s decision plummets
Evolutionary paths to new therapeutic drugs, as well as a wide assortment of other enzyme products, have been created through, of all things, intelligent design. A team of researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have developed a technique in which the evolution of an important class of proteins is steered towards a desired outcome.
“We’ve taken enzymes that are promiscuous, meaning they have the capa
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