A study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET highlights a reduction in both HIV-1 incidence (the number of new cases) and prevalence (the number of cases in the population) from the beginning to the end of the past decade among a rural Ugandan population. Authors of the study conclude that the results could offer hope for other sub-Saharan countries where the HIV-1 infection rate remains high.
HIV-1 incidence rates in a community are a more accurate measure of epidemic trends than prevalence r
As film buffs queue to watch the new Spider-man movie, geography students from the University of Sussex have gone one better by discovering a new species of spider in the wild.
The second year undergraduates were taking part in a field course to the Seychelles, one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet. As part of this trip the students were responsible for helping to set insect traps in the Vallée de Mai, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Praslin, the second-largest island in
The Science Generation project which European research commissioner Philippe Busquin is presenting in Brussels today aims to make decision-makers, politicians and scientists, as well as the general public, better informed on action to be taken at the interface between life sciences and society. This project, receiving €1.44 million in EU funding, seeks to set up networks of scientists, students and journalists, extending into the regions, with colloquia and public opinion surveys and debates online
What questions will it answer; what opportunities will it offer?
History doesn’t record the moment when fully conscious humans asked the first question. The incessant push of human curiosity has nevertheless changed the world. Even so, despite the seemingly inexorable march of science and technology into the current century, questions don’t seem in short supply. Gwyn Williams, basic research program manager for Jefferson Lab’s Free-Electron Laser (FEL), suspects some im
It’s a conundrum that’s confounded the curious for several decades. In the past, some called it a crisis. More recently, it’s come to be known as a puzzle: a mystery that has occupied the minds of thousands of researchers worldwide.
Call it the Case of the Missing Spin. A mathematical property of all subatomic particles, including quarks, spin is roughly equivalent to the physical rotation of an object in the macroscopic world.
Physicists have long wondered how the
Anything over eight feet tall, six feet wide and weighing over 20 tons might be expected to have a healthy appetite. But no traditional foods are ingested by this behemoth. For the BigBite magnet, the nourishment of choice is subatomic particles, and lots of them. The BigBite spectrometer, which consists of the magnet along with its detectors, will be able to discern scattered particles over a range of energies and angles far greater than can be obtained with the other spectrometers used in Jefferson
A new vaccination strategy targeting telomerase, one of the enzymes responsible for making cancer cells immortal, has been developed at the Norwegian Radium Hospital. “The vaccine might offer a means of stabilising cancer”, states Professor Gustav Gaudernack at a press conference at the 18th UICC International Cancer Congress in Oslo this week.
A new vaccination strategy targeting telomerase, one of the enzymes responsible for making cancer cells immortal, has been tested by Professor Trond
Genes that are inappropriately turned on play a critical role in triggering some diseases. For researchers, the trick is learning how to deactivate these genes to treat illnesses. In a step toward reaching that goal, scientists at Stanford University Medical Center have developed a gene-therapy technique to switch off genes in mice. The finding could potentially lead to ways of treating such diseases as cancer, hepatitis C and AIDS.
In plants and lower organisms such as flies or worms, rese
In a new comparative study of insect repellents containing the chemical commonly known as DEET and plant-based repellents, products with DEET showed by far the greatest effectiveness in preventing mosquito bites, medical researchers say.
The study, appearing in the July 4 New England Journal of Medicine, found all products tested that did not contain DEET to be significantly less effective. Authors are Drs. Mark S. Fradin, a Chapel Hill, N.C., dermatologist and adjunct faculty member at the
The average back garden may contain twice as many species as have so far been identified on the whole planet, according to a study published today by British scientists.
But gardeners would need a microscope to observe the massive biodiversity, which exists almost entirely among micro-organisms in the soil.
Using new methods of analysis, Dr Tom Curtis, of the Department of Civil Engineering, Newcastle University, England, and colleagues, estimated that a tonne of soil could contain
Vienna, Austria: Women who have survived having leukaemia as children should receive fertility counselling because their reproductive life may be shortened even though they have an apparently normal menstrual cycle after treatment, according to Danish researchers.
Dr Elisabeth Larsen, a research assistant from the Fertility Clinic at Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark, has studied 26 long-term survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and found that they tended to have smaller ov
Blinding dust storms can seriously ruin your plans for a landing on Mars. ESA is adapting the global climate models that we use to forecast our weather on Earth for the turbulent conditions that Mars offers its future visitors.
You could hardly call the weather on Mars pleasant, and presently it is far from predictable. As well as having an average surface temperature of -63°C, and a thin, inhospitable atmosphere of mainly carbon dioxide, last year, a springtime dust storm smothered the enti
Scientists at Oxford University are developing a new Doppler Global Velocimetry (DGV) technique that will enable three-dimensional fluid velocity fields to be imaged reliably and accurately.
Over the last twenty years, a number of techniques have been explored to enable clear imaging of fluid flows, with the most advantageous being those that are non-intrusive. To date, one of the most important techniques has been particle image velocimetry (PIV). However, there is a major disadvantage wit
Every day accident and emergency units have to treat patients who have taken some sort of drug overdose. To give treatment doctors need to know what the patient has taken. The circumstances can make often this difficult to ascertain quickly.
Researchers are developing a new kind of biosensor, which can determine in minutes if a patient’s blood contains a particular compound, for example paracetamol. Currently this type of examination needs to be carried out in a laboratory, which is expens
Fear of needles and the discomfort of daily injections could soon be a thing of the past for women undergoing IVF treatment thanks to a new device which can administer hormones without a needle injection.
Dr Stuart Lavery, a Subspeciality Fellow in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at the Hammersmith Hospital in London, UK, told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Vienna today (Wednesday 3 July) that a team at the hospital had achieved the first pregnanci
A new high-resolution nuclear medicine imaging scanner specifically designed for breast exams has the potential to increase physicians’ ability to determine if a woman has breast cancer, and may be particularly useful for women with dense breasts. The results of this early study were reported in the July 2002 issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, published by the Society of Nuclear Medicine.
When compared with scintimammographic images taken on a standard gamma camera, the new came
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