Modern information and communication technologies (ICT) allow completely new opportunities to provide medical care and health information to developing countries. Inhabitants of regions lacking access to medical care can receive advice, diagnosis and assistance with treatment via a computer centre. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the international university network Universitas 21 are now cooperating in an endeavour to develop and spread what is known as e-health.
“It is i
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2005 jointly to Yves Chauvin Institut Français du Pétrole, Rueil-Malmaison, France, Robert H. Grubbs California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA and Richard R. Schrock Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA “for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis”.
Metathesis – a change-your-partners dance
This year’s Nobel Prize
Microbiologists from the University of Bradford believe they may be closer to developing a vaccine that can protect newborn babies from being infected by the common and potentially fatal bacteria Group B Streptococcus.
Group B Streptococcus (GBS) are the most common bacteria attacking newborn babies, affecting 1 in 1000 births, and killing up to 6 per cent of those infected. It infects around 700 babies in the UK each year and kills around 100 of those infected, according to the
Imagine being able to communicate in your own handwriting with your mobile phone, PDA, laptop or PC without any cables. The VPen does just that. It looks like a space age pen, but works like a mouse, pen, keyboard or graphic tablet.
Dealing with cables during mobile working can be awkward. VPen, developed by partners in the IST programme-funded VIPDATA project, is wireless, yet features a long talk and standby time of several days. It is a convenient little device the size of a s
Swedes eat on average twice as much meat, and considerably more fruit and vegetables in the early 21st century than in the 1870s. Nevertheless, the surface area required to produce our food has decreased, measured per person. But this decrease is largely based on non-sustainable use of resources.
How did our eating habits, and food production, change between 1870 and 2000? And how have these changes in turn affected our environment? Tina Schmid Neset has studied these questions
Danish astrophysicists have for the first time observed the visible light from a so-called short gamma-ray burst. Observations show that these short, intense bursts of gamma-ray emission most likely originate from the violent collision of two merging neutron stars. The results are being published in Nature on October 6th.
Stars do not always meet gently. Two neutron stars rarely meet, but when they do, they smash into each other and the expected result is a short, gigantic explosion.
An international survey published today (Thursday 6 October) in Europe’s leading cardiology journal, European Heart Journal[1], reveals that fewer than half of the heart patients in the study who smoked quit after suffering their first coronary event, with one out of five continuing to smoke despite advice to stop.
Epidemiologist and lead author of the study, Dr Wilma Scholte op Reimer, said it was “unbelievable” that so many carried on smoking after a life-threatening event
National laboratory practices “Leave No Trace” environmental sampling
“Leave No Trace” is a popular ethic for outdoor recreationists who advocate a natural landscape. Now it is also applicable to groundwater sampling collection sites along the Columbia River in southeastern Washington State.
Hydrologists from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are using a simple apparatus of ¼-inch-diameter plastic tubing to collect samples at varying levels
For almost a decade, scientists thought they understood the surface structure of cubic gallium nitride, a promising new crystalline semiconductor. Research by an interdisciplinary team of nanoscientists from Ohio University and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, however, turns that idea on its head.
Their study published in the Sept. 30 online issue of the journal Physical Review Letters provides a fresh – and they argue, more accurate – look at the surface structure of the cr
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania may not have turned lead into gold as alchemists once sought to do, but they did turn lead and selenium nanocrystals into solids with remarkable physical properties. In the October 5 edition of Physical Review Letters, online now, physicists Hugo E. Romero and Marija Drndic describe how they developed am artificial solid that can be transformed from an insulator to a semiconductor.
The Penn physicists are among many modern researchers
As the Amazon River floods every year, a sizeable portion of South America sinks several inches because of the extra weight – and then rises again as the waters recede, a study has found.
This annual rise and fall of earth’s crust is the largest ever detected, and it may one day help scientists tally the total amount of water on Earth.
“What would you do if you knew how much water was on the planet?” asked Douglas Alsdorf, assistant professor of geological scienc
A possible culprit? Gulf’s “Loop Current”
Scientists monitoring ocean heat and circulation in the Gulf of Mexico during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have a new understanding of how these tropical storms can gain intensity so quickly: The Gulf of Mexico’s “Loop Current” is likely intensifying hurricanes that pass over eddies of warm water that spin off the main current.
“A positive outcome of a hurricane season like this is that we’ve been able to learn more a
The first close-up look at a pro-inflammatory signaling molecule involved in immune response in mammals suggests that researchers “should rethink what they are doing” in creating drugs based on a fruit-fly model, scientists say.
Reporting in the Oct. 1 issue of the Journal of Immunology, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign unveiled the crystal structure of mouse interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase-4 (IRAK-4).
They found a distinct highly stru
Inexpensive technique verified in full-scale tests at three coal-fired power plants
Researchers at Lehigh University’s Energy Research Center (ERC) have developed and successfully tested a cost-effective technique for reducing mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
In full-scale tests at three power plants, says lead investigator Carlos E. Romero, the Lehigh system reduced flue-gas emissions of mercury by as much as 70 percent or more with modest impact on
Marriage of theory, experiment is first for multi-domain protein folding
In unprecedented new research, scientists at Rice University have combined theory and experiment for the first time to both predict theoretically and verify experimentally the protein-folding dynamics of a large, complex protein. The interdisciplinary research appears this week in two back-to-back papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Researchers have successfully combined co
Study finds no significant side effects in children treated up to two years
new study has found that an all-day, extended-release stimulant for treating attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) remains effective for up to two years without significant side effects. In the October issue of the Journal of the American Association of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, a multi-institutional research team reports finding that treatment with Concerta, a once-daily form of the dru
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