Calcitonin, a hormone that lowers calcium levels in the blood and prevents bone loss, has only been available in an injectable and nasally-administered format to date. New research by Conway investigator, Dr David Brayden promises to ultimately deliver an oral method of treating osteoporosis patients with this hormone, which would have many advantages over current treatment regimes.
All drugs taken orally face the same problem; they must get from the gut into the bloodstream and avoid b
On 4 July 2005, the NASA Deep Impact spacecraft will visit Comet 9P/Tempel 1. It will launch a 370 kg impactor probe that should produce a crater on the surface of the comet and a plume of gas, dust and ejected material.
Although dramatic images of the impact may be sent to Earth in near-real time by the Deep Impact spacecraft and its impactor, the spacecraft themselves have limited remote sensing capability. The parent spacecraft will observe the impact from 500 kilometres di
Scientists at ETH Zurich have set a world record in mass spectrometry by observing the largest ever mass-to-charge ratio of over 1 Mio Dalton (MDa) using a special mass spectrometer. The researchers in the team of Prof. Renato Zenobi had to overcome two obstacles, the intact vaporization and ionization of the sample, as well as the detection of the very large ions. Modern soft ionization methods allow giant molecules such as proteins or DNA to be brought into the gas phase. The ETH researchers e
Researchers from the United Kingdom, France and the DUBBLE beamline at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) have made a step forward in research on glass. They have monitored the change in the structure of zeolites, crystalline solids, into an almost perfect glass when heated. They have done this by recording vibrations involving groups of atoms in zeolites that subsequently characterise the glass. Their results are published in the last issue of Science. Zeolites are porous cr
In this month’s issue of the freely available online journal PLoS Medicine, Dr. Thomas N. Williams and colleagues from Kilifi, Kenya, show that the protection against malaria given by carrying the gene for sickle cell haemoglobin may involve the immune system. Studying a group of children and adults in the Kilifi District of coastal Kenya, they found that this protection increased during childhood up to age 10, and then declined.
Malaria causes about a million deaths yearly,
Catastrophic floods in Central Europe in the summer of 2002 killed 110 people and caused more than 15 billion euros of damage. A powerful Decision Support System (DSS) promises to minimise the impact of severe flooding in the future.
Developed under the IST programme-funded project Ramflood, which ended in March, the system to assess the risk of flooding and improve emergency management has continued to be used at its two trial sites in Spain and Greece amid plans to extend its imp
Data from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission are providing convincing evidence that Saturn’s moon Phoebe was formed elsewhere in the Solar System, and was only later caught by the planet’s gravitational pull.
One way to unlock Phoebe’s secrets is using Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), developed by a team of US (JPL), French and Italian (ASI) scientists and engineers. The science team is made by a large international group of US, Italian, French an
Jules Verne, the first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), will be launched next year by a specific version of Ariane 5 called the Ariane 5 Evolution Storable upper stage Automated Transfer Vehicle, or A5 ES-ATV for short.
Although the ATV does not use the powerful ECA version of Ariane 5, which was launched successfully into geostationary orbit in February 2005, it does need an Ariane 5 equipped with the powerful Vulcain 2 main engine, and featuring the storable propellant upper
A unique material based on cobweb proteins is being created by Russian researchers of the State Research Center of Russian Federation GosNIIgentics, Scientific Research Center “Coal-Chemical Fiber”, State Research Center of Applied Microbiology in cooperation with their colleagues from Michigan University with support form the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) (project 1033.2).
The spider’s hunting net is built from several different proteins. Researchers ar
Owing to the system now being developed at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and that was presented this week at an international conference on biobanks, the university’s biobank will now be based on informatics as well as tissue and blood samples. The system will enable researchers to seek biobank samples linked to the vast databases of phenotype and genotype information on the individual donors and to a variety of other data sources.
The existence of large national epidemiological d
The Moscow chemists have suggested a way to produce insulin in pills instead of injections. They have developed polymeric capsules that would protect insulin from destructive effect of digestive juices. The research has been accomplished with financial support of the Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology of Russia within the framework of international scientific cooperation.
Once insulin appeared, diabetes mellitus is no longer a verdict for the patients. However, to contro
A specialist of the State Nature Conservation Area “Wrangel Island”, N.G. Ovsyanikov, has been observing polar bears closely for many years, when the bears arrived at the island coast in autumn, once pack-ice recedes. In the researcher’s opinion, perception of a polar bear as a solitary predator, which is not practically tied with its congeners, is not true. Polar bears do not lose sight of each other and build up rather complicated social relations.
When pack-ice starts thawing
The St. Petersburg researchers suggest that infrared emission should be used to treat burns. The Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises (FASIE) will help the authors in the framework of the “Start” program to develop and begin production of devices required for such treatment based on silicon light-emitting diodes.
A unique device based on silicon light-emitting diodes was developed by the St. Petersburg physicists – specialists of the Ioffe Physico-Technical I
CE Marking of Pall Filter Heralds a New Era in Transfusion Safety
The risk of receiving blood contaminated with variant Cruetzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD) prions may no longer be a concern for the thousands of people who require a transfusion. Pall Corporation (NYSE: PLL) announced today the Council of Europe (CE) marking of its Leukotrap Affinity Prion Reduction Filter System. It is the first and only technology that removes infectious prions that may be the causative agent of vCJD from r
All cells are encased within a protective lipid membrane. The membrane is studded with many hundreds of different proteins that transport nutrients, ions, and water into and out of the cell. Such membrane proteins also help cells recognize each other in the body, and make the nervous system work. Scientists at Stockholm University have now mapped out nearly all of the membrane proteins in the enteric bacterium Escherichia coli. Their study is published this week in Science magazine.
The t
Scientists at The University of Manchester have today unveiled new research which claims that going out in the midday sun, without sunscreen, is good for you.
The research, led by ultra-violet radiation expert Ann Webb, supports claims that exposing unprotected skin to the sun for short periods helps the body to produce essential Vitamin D.
Dr Webb has produced new figures which not only predict when is the best time to expose unprotected skin to the sun in order to maxim
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