Tired of resigning yourself to wearing uncomfortable footwear or hunting for hours in search of the right shoes, but think a made-to-order pair will be prohibitively expensive? Think again. A European project has come up with a solution.

Around 300 people across Europe are currently wearing footwear that better fits their feet thanks to trials carried out by the ERGOSHOE project last year. Many more are likely to do the same as the European Commission-funded initiative brings it

Scientists at the Johnson Space Center in Houston were excited and awed Tuesday by what they saw when the sample-return canister from the Stardust spacecraft was opened.

“It exceeds all expectations,” said Donald Brownlee, a University of Washington astronomy professor who is principal investigator, or lead scientist, for Stardust. “It’s a huge success. We can see lots of impacts. There are big ones, there are small ones.”

Stardust returned to Earth in a spectacular re-entr

Adult stem cells may be free of the ethical concerns that hamper embryonic stem cell research, but they still pose formidable scientific challenges. Chief among these is the doggedness with which adult stem cells differentiate into mature tissue the moment they’re isolated from the body. This makes it nearly impossible for researchers to multiply them in the laboratory. And because adult stem cells are so rare, that makes it difficult to use them for treating disease.

Now

New research shows that it is undamaged nerve fibres that cause ongoing spontaneous pain, not those that are injured.

These unexpected findings, by Dr Laiche Djouhri, Professor Sally Lawson and colleagues from the University of Bristol, UK, are reported in the Journal of Neuroscience today [25 January, 2006].

Previous research into ongoing chronic pain has tended to focus on the damaged nerve fibres after injury or disease and overlooked the intact fibres. This new unders

In a discovery that could greatly accelerate the search for genetic causes of heart disease, a multi-disciplinary Duke University research team has found that the common fruit fly can serve as a powerful new model for testing human genes implicated in heart disease.

The finding is important, the Duke team said, because the entire genome of the fruit fly is well understood and catalogued, enabling researchers to systemically screen genes to identify potential gene mutations or vari

Results from a new study indicate that hybrid laboratory antibodies derived from chimpanzees and humans may provide a potentially safe and effective way to treat the serious complications that can occur following smallpox vaccination–and possibly may even protect against the deadly disease itself. The study, led by researchers with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), appears online this week in the Proceedings of th

Identity Swap: Finding the variants that human history has favoured

Sequence differences in less than 0.2% of the 3-billion-base human genome play a vital role in a bewildering variety of human disease. Today, researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Cambridge University’s Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, together with international colleagues report in PLoS Genetics their detailed maps of differences implicated in disease as well as genes that are u

Finding the variants that human history has favoured

Sequence differences in less than 0.2% of the 3-billion-base human genome play a vital role in a bewildering variety of human disease. Today, researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Cambridge University’s Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, together with international colleagues report in PLoS Genetics their detailed maps of differences implicated in disease as well as genes that are unchanged in r

UCLA paleobiologist J. William Schopf and colleagues have produced 3-D images of ancient fossils — 650 million to 850 million years old — preserved in rocks, an achievement that has never been done before.

If a future space mission to Mars brings rocks back to Earth, Schopf said the techniques he has used, called confocal laser scanning microscopy and Raman spectroscopy, could enable scientists to look at microscopic fossils inside the rocks to search for signs of life, such as

A new identity theft study conducted by leading University of Leicester criminologist, Professor Martin Gill and sponsored by Capital One found that second-hand computers – which account for one in 12 computers in use worldwide1 – can be a potential treasure trove of personal information – putting users at risk of fraud and identity theft. The study urges personal and business computer users to ensure that all data is removed from their computers prior to disposing of them.

During his

Systematic postoperative surveillance of patients with rectal and colorectal cancer has demonstrated to produce an improvement in the survival of these patients. Nevertheless, it is currently discussed whether a more intensive surveillance strategy would provide significant advantage compared to a less aggressive strategy. The methodology currently used for testing and the frequency tests are applied are highly heterogeneous. So, in order to compare the efficiency of two surveillance strategi

Bacterial infections can strike anyone, and they can sometimes be fatal. Because more and more bacteria are becoming resistant to the pre-eminent remedy – antibiotics – the search for new remedies against bacterial infections is in high gear. Research by scientists from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected to Ghent University shows that certain mice, by nature, can withstand particular bacterial infections. Elucidation of the biological process that underlies

Neurologist Mike Harrington of Pasadena, California’s Huntington Medical Research Institutes argues that soon we may be able to detect brain disease before symptoms even begin. The secret is in the cerebrospinal fluid, the clear liquid that cushions our brain and spinal cord.

As guest editor for the January 2006 issue of the respected medical journal Disease Markers (Volume 22, Issues 1-2), published by IOS Press, which was themed to the study of neural markers, Harrington

A team of scientists at the John Innes Centre(1) in Norwich, UK led by Dr Graham Moore have a completely new understanding of the structure of a gene complex in wheat that controls the pairing of its chromosomes, knowledge of which has the potential to revolutionise wheat breeding.

Dr Moore said “The transfer of useful traits such as disease, drought and salt tolerance from wild species into wheat is a difficult and complex process. This new insight into the molecular nature of Ph1 and how

The Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) — a project developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — is seeking 800 older adults to participate in a study aimed at identifying biological markers of memory decline and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Ultimately, scientists hope that brain and biological changes can be detected before memory decline and other symptoms appear, allowing the effectiveness of drugs to be evaluated at the earliest possible time.

The $6

A Chinese astronomer from the University of St Andrews has fine-tuned Einstein’s groundbreaking theory of gravity, creating a ‘simple’ theory which could solve a dark mystery that has baffled astrophysicists for three-quarters of a century.

A new law for gravity, developed by Dr. Hong Sheng Zhao and his Belgian collaborator Dr. Benoit Famaey of the Free University of Brussels (ULB), aims to prove whether Einstein’s theory was in fact correct and whether the astronomical mystery

Every year, East Coast fever destroys the small farmer’s dream of escaping poverty in Africa. Killing more than a million cattle and costing some $200 million annually, this tick-borne disease rages across a dozen countries in eastern and central Africa. Now, an international team of scientists has taken the first major step toward a vaccine to prevent East Coast fever. Their work, published in the February 13-17 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, s

The search for El Dorado in the Amazonian rainforest might not have yielded pots of gold, but it has led to unearthing a different type of gold mine: some of the globe’s richest soil that can transform poor soil into highly fertile ground.

That’s not all. Scientists have a method to reproduce this soil — known as terra preta, or Amazonian dark earths — and say it can pull substantial amounts of carbon out of the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s

The tendency to use drugs depends on each individual person. Not all those who have access to drugs become addicts, therefore there may be personality characteristics that influence their use. One such characteristic is the pursuit of new sensations found in people that like looking for risk at all times. Although some studies have already suggested a link between these people and a higher probability of becoming drug addicts, shopaholics or gambling addicts, until now no study has objectively fou

Increased carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly making the world’s oceans more acidic and, if unabated, could cause a mass extinction of marine life similar to one that occurred 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology will present this research at the AGU/ASLO Ocean Sciences meeting in Honolulu, HI on Monday, Feb 20.

Caldeira’s computer models have predicted that the oceans will become far more