POLYMAT, the University of the Basque Country’s Institute of Polymer Materials, is helping to solve the problem of contamination of polymers obtained through polymerisation processes involving emulsions. With European funding obtained four years ago, the project on removing monomer residues from polymers was undertaken. POLYMAT has been working in this field with the collaboration of three other universities (from Germany, Greece and Switzerland) as well as three foreign companies.

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The European Investment Bank (EIB) is lending EUR 300 million to finance the final phase of construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The loan will also help to finance the instrumentation to record and analyse the high-energy particle collisions at the LHC. A loan to enable construction of this major project was foreseen by CERN’s governing Council when it approved the LHC in 1996.

The EIB, the European Union’s long term

New Method Shown to be Effective for Detecting Down Syndrome at Mid-Trimester Scan

Looking at the nasal bones of fetuses at the mid-trimester scan could improve the detection of Down Syndrome during pregnancy, according to results to be published in the January 2003 issue of Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology, the official journal of the International Society of Ultrasound Obstetrics and Gynecology, which will be available online on 17 December 2002.

The most frequently oc

A group of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) have used a powerful laser in combination with innovative quantum mechanical computations to measure the flexibility of mouse antibodies.

The new technique, described in an upcoming issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is significant because protein flexibility is believed to play an important role in antibody-a

Surgeons at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago have documented the first use of a blood vessel from the abdomen to treat a blocked artery in the brain. The case study was published in the December issue of Surgical Laparoscopy, Endoscopy and Percutaneous Techniques.

The case involved a 49-year old man with a history of hypertension and heart disease and a blocked artery in the brain. The patient’s doctors were Dr. Constantine T. Frantzides, professor of surgery

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center report that two doses of the varicella vaccine for chicken pox given one to two months apart can be safe and effective in children with chronic kidney disease.

The findings, reported in the January issue of Pediatric Nephrology, are critical for chronic kidney disease patients, particularly children who will eventually undergo a kidney transplant. After transplantation, immunosuppressive medications put these children at high risk for