Combining two separate observations of cells in brain tumours could enable doctors to improve the success rate of radiotherapy. Speaking today (23 January) at the Institute of Physics Simulation and Modelling Applied to Medicine conference in London, chemical engineer Dr Norman Kirkby from the University of Surrey will explain how using the correct time intervals between a sequence of low dose radiotherapy sessions could increase the chance of curing brain cancers that tend to resist treatment.
A novel research project is looking at ways to recycle plastic bottles for use in the fashion industry in a bid to halt the landfill crisis.
Although recycled PET (Polyethylene terepthalate) has been used in a limited way in the fashion industry, Northumbria University PhD student Yukie Nakano is working to identify the barriers affecting the wider introduction of recycled textile products. Yukie, who is also a research assistant in the Centre for Design Research, is also experimenting with
ESA’s new micro-satellite PROBA has captured its first test images of the Earth’s surface using its small but powerful optical instrument, just two months after its launch from the Indian equator.
PROBA (Project for On Board Autonomy), the size of a small box and in orbit 600 km above the Earth’s surface, has provided scientists with its first detailed environmental images thanks to CHRIS – a Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer – the main payload on the 100 kg European spacecraft.
One of the more controversial environmental issues, which emerged in the final years of the Soviet era, was the plan to dam and reverse the flow of north-flowing rivers in order to irrigate the dry southern steppes. This scheme was roundly criticised by scientists and environmentalists at the time because of fears for the impact on the Arctic Ocean and global climate. It now appears that nature performed this experiment some 90,000 years ago.
This months issue of the Journal of Quaternary
One of the really big challenges in anthropology is to date accurately the arrival of humans in the different continents. New results, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Quaternary Science, show that humans arrived in Australia a lot earlier than was previously thought.
It is generally argued that humans evolved in Africa and then spread out over the other continents progressively through time, arriving in the most distant, such as Australasia, relatively recently. The
Combining two separate observations of cells in brain tumours could enable doctors to improve the success rate of radiotherapy. Speaking today (23 January) at the Institute of Physics Simulation and Modelling Applied to Medicine conference in London, chemical engineer Dr Norman Kirkby from the University of Surrey will explain how using the correct time intervals between a sequence of low dose radiotherapy sessions could increase the chance of curing brain cancers that tend to resist treatment.
New computer programme could settle literary debates.
To date, unlike us, computers have struggled to differentiate a page of Jane Austen from one by Jackie Collins. Now researchers in Italy have developed a program that can spot enough subtle differences between two authors’ works to attribute authorship 1 .
The program can tell a text by Machiavelli from one by Pirandello, Dante or a host of other great Italian writers. It constructed a language tree of the
Knitted pullovers protect penguins from oil discharge
Knitters around the world have pulled together to save thousands of oil-soaked little penguins on Phillip Island, southern Australia.
Ten thousand penguin-sized, pure-wool jumpers have flooded into the offices of the Tasmanian Conservation Trust in response to their call for emergency insulation for a vulnerable population of world’s smallest penguins – sometimes known as fairy penguins.
In mid-December 2001 a cru
“The occurrence of ozone mini-holes over Europe increases and any ozone layer recovery could only become measurable around 2010 at the earliest” concludes an assessment report, released today, on European research in the stratosphere. The report concerns loss of ozone, increases in ultraviolet radiation as well as the impact of aircraft on the atmosphere. It covers European research efforts during the period 1996-2000 including the Third European Stratospheric Experiment on Ozone – THESEO, which is t
Mobile phones can do more than communicate voice and data. The ability to determine the physical location of a mobile phone enables a broad range of mobile services to be offered, including location tracking of users, customised local service information and navigation. A recent EURESCOM study explored the communication needs of teenagers, how they could be met by location-based services, and which location technology is best suited.
In the EURESCOM study WOMBAT (Where are the Other Mobile B
Researchers at the University of Bristol have discovered that not all babies who wheeze will develop asthma in later life.
Dr Andrea Sherriff and asthma experts from the Institute of Child Health in Bristol and St George`s Hospital Medical School in London studied around 10,000 children taking part in the Children of the 90s project in Bristol.
The researchers discovered that over 60% of babies who wheezed in the first six months had stopped by 3½ years of age. When they we
Few things appear as delicate as a spider’s web, each gossamer strand one-tenth the width of a human hair. Yet pound for pound, the sturdiest spider silks are stronger than steel and stretchier than nylon. With such remarkable properties, it’s no wonder that researchers have made numerous attempts to synthesize spider silk for industrial and medical applications. (Efforts to farm the arachnids have failed as a result of their territorial nature.) Indeed, in the words of one scientist, this
Genes mean ladies like friends and partners that smell like their father.
Bachelors – ditch the Old Spice and don your prospective father-in-law’s clothes. Women prefer the scent of their dad, a study shows, and may choose their friends and partners accordingly.
Nervous new boyfriends can live or die by the nod of a date’s daunting dad. But Carole Ober and her team at the University of Chicago in Illinois have found a more fundamental fatherly influence: women prefe
Argon traces keep tabs on climate change.
A new method for detecting tiny quantities of a rare form of the element argon may help oceanographers to trace the vast undersea currents that regulate our planet’s climate.
The technique can pick out one atom of the rare isotope argon-39 (39Ar) amid 10 million billion other atoms. That’s equivalent to detecting less than a litre of water in America’s 300-mile Lake Michigan.
Philippe Collon, a nuclear physicist at the Lamon
Chimpanzee waste could shed light on the origins and spread of HIV.
Delving into droppings has given AIDS researchers a surprise. Far fewer chimpanzees than they had suspected have SIVcpz, the animal virus most like HIV.
The technique could shed much-needed light on the origins and evolution of the viruses that cause AIDS. “It’s a non-invasive means to study the wild relative of HIV in its natural environment,” says Beatrice Hahn, of the University of Alabama in Birmingham,
Researchers name the microbes that could produce power by munching pollution.
Bacteria could clear up oil spills and generate electricity at the same time. US scientists have identified microbes that produce power as they digest organic waste 1 .
The bacteria strip electrons from carbon in ocean sediments to convert it into the carbon dioxide they need for metabolism and growth. Usually the organisms just dump the electrons onto iron or sulphate minerals on
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