Monkey tests hint compound could paralyse malaria parasite in humans.
A new-found chemical can root out malaria parasites hiding in red blood cells and stop them reproducing. It may become a much-needed new weapon in the war against one of the world’s biggest killers.
The compound clears monkeys of infection with the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum at doses far lower than existing antimalarial drugs. But testing in humans is a few years away at least, say
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is lower at the weekend.
The climate-monitoring station on Mauna Loa volcano on Hawaii, 3,400 metres above sea level, could hardly be farther away from it all. Yet even here there is no escaping the weekly rhythm of modern life. The observatory records lower concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the weekend than during the week.
Because there is no known natural cause of such a seven-day cycle, Randall Cerveny of Arizona State Univer
’Sleeping your life away’ could be more than a saying.
Excessive sleeping may increase your risk of an early death by up to 15%. So hints a new analysis of data collected on one million people by the American Cancer Society. The figures cast doubt on the reputed benefits of eight hours’ sleep a night.
People with the longest lives get only seven hours of sleep each night, find psychiatrists at the University of California, San Diego 1 . Why seven is the magi
Tyrannosaurus rex , Apatosaurus and the other dinosaur giants capture the popular imagination. But paleontologists often focus on smaller fry – especially with regard to the origin of birds, which are believed to have evolved from petite, predatory dinosaurs. Researchers describe one such specimen — the partial skeleton of a previously unknown genus of chicken-size dinosaur that roamed China’s Liaoning province nearly 130 million years ago — today in the journal Nature. According to
Joint work with IETF produces XML-based solution for digital signatures, foundation for Secure Web services
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued XML-Signature Syntax and Processing (XML Signature) as a W3C Recommendation, representing cross-industry agreement on an XML-based language for digital signatures. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its widespread
A team of physicists in the United States has made an important step towards making quantum computing a reality. Research into a new type of noiseless quantum information bit, or qubit, is published today in the joint Institute of Physics and German Physical Society journal, New Journal of Physics.
At a sub-atomic scale the laws of quantum physics lead to strange new properties of matter. For several years physicists have been trying to exploit this quantum weirdness to build a new type of `
Reptile history reveals daring escape from Madagascar
Land-lubber chameleons navigated the oceans to spread around the world. Stowed away on tree rafts, the animals were ferried to distant shores, new research suggests 1 .
Chameleons aren’t good swimmers: their mitten-like feet are made to grasp twigs and trees. Yet the intrepid animals charted the seas several times in the past 26 million years, say Chris Raxworthy of the American Museum of Natural History i
Patients who have been newly diagnosed with breast cancer now have access to the experiences of other people living with the disease via the multi-media website DIPEx (Database of Individual Patient Experiences), a resource of patient interviews in written form, audio and video clips. From today [13 Feburary 2002] the DIPEx website includes a new module on breast cancer, in addition to hypertension and prostate cancer.
The aim of the new module is to prepare those diagnosed with breast cancer fo
Combining Hubble Space Telescope images with radio observations has revealed a highly unusual system consisting of a fast spinning pulsar and a bloated red companion star. The existence of the system is something of a mystery – the best explanation so far is that we have our first view of a millisecond pulsar just after it has been `spun up` by its red companion star.
Although more than 90 specimens of the exotic species of fast-spinning `millisecond pulsars` are known today, no observation
From cutlery and cooking pans to the inside of a Formula 1 car engine or a huge chemical process plant, stainless steel is all around us. It’s not meant to corrode, but it can, and when it does the results can be disastrous, whether it’s a hole in your dishwasher or a failed industrial plant.
Unlike rusting, stainless steel corrosion is highly localised and apparently random. Tiny holes called pits can drill through a substantial thickness of steel in a relatively short time. The pits can ca
Average insect brain should help spot defects and their causes.
Two hair’s breadths long and five across – that’s the average capacity of a fly’s brain, German researchers have calculated. They hope to set a benchmark for crania by which oddballs can be judged.
Although it is a creature of little brain, the fruit fly ( Drosophila ) is popular with geneticists. Researchers often study flies that lack a particular gene, looking for flaws that might hint at
Our skin takes its oxygen straight from the air.
The James Bond movie Goldfinger spawned the urban myth that a person can suffocate if air cannot reach their skin. But the plot contains a grain of truth, new research reveals – our skin gets its oxygen from the atmosphere, not the blood.
Air supplies the top 0.25-0.4 mm of the skin with oxygen, dermatologist Markus Stücker of the Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany, and his colleagues have found. This is almost 10 times
Large scale study spells out links with pregnancy and miscarriage.
Childless women are at a higher risk of developing breast cancer, confirms one of the largest studies on reproductive factors and the disease, but those who suffer miscarriages are not. Researchers are pinning down key risk factors in the hope of working out exactly how they increase susceptibility.
How pregnancy and abortion alter women’s chance of developing breast cancer has been the subject of conflictin
The mealybug Phenacoccus herreni feeds on cassava plant sap, inducing shrivelling. It causes extensive damage in cassava growing areas in South America. However, it can be parasitized by two wasps, Acerophagus coccois and Aenasius vexans which act out a ritual to recognize and select the individuals they are going to parasitize. A wasp moves from one side to the other of a potential victim, investigating it by palpation with their antennae. Once this “drumming and turning” procedure completed, the wa
Ethical considerations aside, a major issue in cloning is whether or not clones are as healthy as normally conceived animals. The evidence so far has been mixed. Some cloned cows have received clean bills of health, but Dolly suffers from premature arthritis, and many cloned animals are obese. According to a report published online today by the journal Nature Genetics, mice cloned from somatic cells fare particularly poorly. Indeed, the study found that cloned mice had significantly shorter life span
Underwater video reveals lobsters behaving badly.
A lobster-pot is more like a Wild West saloon than a cunningly laid snare. Lobsters show up for food and a fight, and only the unlucky few get reeled in, underwater video footage is revealing.
Camera recordings show that lobster traps catch a mere 6% of the animals that enter them. The result suggests that lobsters’ rowdy behaviour could be confusing attempts to count and size them, and so to manage the fishery 1
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