Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have shown that rifampicin, an antibiotic used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis, can prevent the formation of protein fibrils associated with the death of brain cells in people with Parkinson’s disease. The drug also dissolved existing fibrils in laboratory tests.
The researchers studied the effects of rifampicin in test tube experiments and are currently doing studies with cell cultures and mice to see if the sa
Ultrasound-guided biopsy lets some women avoid additional surgery
A key question after a cancer diagnosis is whether the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes. Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have found a new non-surgical technique that can help doctors determine when breast cancer has invaded the lymph nodes, sparing some women an extra trip to the operating room.
The technique, which uses ultrasound along with a fine needle biops
T cells activated in the gut during inflammatory bowel disease can be re-routed to the liver and cause chronic liver disease, according to Eksteen and colleagues in the December 1 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine.
A chronic liver disease known as primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) has been linked to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in the past. But the connection between the two disorders has been unclear, especially as the liver condition often develops years afte
A big advantage of space robots is that they need neither food nor drink and can support very inhospitable conditions. More important still, although expensive to design and produce, their loss is always preferable to that of an astronaut. At this month’s ASTRA 2004 workshop robots designed in ESA’s space research and technical centre in the Netherlands attracted much attention.
“On Earth, robots regularly take over when it comes to repetitive tasks or when human health ma
Every year over 130,000 people in England and Wales suffer a stroke and up to 85% of them are left with weakness in their arms, making day-to-day tasks difficult. New robotic technology being developed at Leeds will help patients recover more quickly and regain their independence.
The intelligent pneumatic robotic system supports the arm, senses the patient’s efforts and guides them through a series of arm exercises. The system should help the NHS make the most of stretched resources an
More Difficult Overall Conditions Expected for 2005
During the first nine months of 2004, the Lenzing Group succeeded in increasing its consolidated sales…
Combination of ILOG JRules and IBM WebSphere MQ Workflow Creates Agile BPMMOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – November 9, 2004 ILOG® (NASDAQ: ILOG; Euronext: ILO, ISIN:…
U.S. Business Rules Revenue Growth at 33% ILOG® (NASDAQ: ILOG; Euronext: ILO, ISIN: FR0004042364) today announced revenues of $28.3 million for its fiscal…
Plastic optic fibres are 1-millimetre diameter threads, similar to a guitar string. Nowadays, optic fibres are used in the home, cars, trains and aeroplanes, for example.
How is the information transmitted?
At one end of the fibre the light source, either LED or laser, is attached. Lasers are faster and, thereby, can send greater quantities of information; but they are also more expensive.
Light emanating from the source will immediately propagate through the fi
“Smart” drugs capable of targeting specific brain cells to control psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia may be ready for early clinical trials within three years, with the launch of a $1.5 million project to take place at the Brain Research Centre (BRC), a partnership of the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI).
The new drugs would be the first significant change in decades to medications used to treat psychiatric d
Holy Grail of geology found: Measuring elevation over geological eras
A Field Museum scientist has developed a novel way to determine land elevation as continents moved around the Earth through geological ages. Knowing how high mountains and plateaus were in the past will help scientists to study how our climate system evolved. “Understanding the past elevation of land surfaces, also known as paleoelevation, has been one of geology’s Holy Grails,” said Jennifer McElwain, Ph
The device, which analyses the brain waves of the driver, has been designed by the students at the Public University of Navarre and presented at the XVIII Technical Seminar on Automotion.
A system to prevent somnolence would be of great advantage for professional drivers, who spend many hours behind the steering wheel of their vehicle. It is estimate that sleepiness causes 1% of accidents.
The system was presented at the XVIII Technical Seminar on Automotion. This year’
ALS is an incurable, paralyzing neurodegenerative disorder that strikes 5 persons in every 100,000. The disease commonly affects healthy people in the most active period of their lives − without warning or previous family history. Researchers from VIB (the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology), under the direction of Prof. Peter Carmeliet (Catholic University of Leuven), have previously shown the importance of the VEGF protein in this disease. Now, new research from thi
Ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, a series of commentaries in this week’s issue of THE LANCET outline the current and future priorities in the global effort to curb the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
The first commentary is a call to action for a renewed public-health strategy to prevent sexually transmitted HIV. Against a background of twenty years of debate over the value of different behaviour-change approaches, authors Daniel Halperin (University of California San Francisco, USA) a
Authors of a public-health article in this week’s issue of THE LANCET are calling for urgent international action to address the chronic lack of investment in human resources which is limiting the chance of tackling diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB. The Lancet article is an executive summary of a fuller report about human resources investment and global health being published by Harvard University Press.
The key premise of the article and full report is that no amount o
Urban planners must recognise that green spaces are not produced by professional designers alone, but by ordinary residents and all manner of plants and insects, animals and birds making themselves at home in our cities and towns, says new research sponsored by the ESRC.
What makes urban green spaces green is that they are ‘living’ – and it is this ‘more-than-human’ interactivity that is key to understanding what makes cities habitable, argues the study led by Professor Sarah Wha
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