A new cancer vaccine platform works by enhancing the ability of the immune system to recognize cancer by leveraging anti-viral memories it already has - due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst outbreak of the last 70 years.
Cholesterol level testing at about 15 months of age could prevent heart disease later in life, say doctors in a study published by British Medical Journal today.
Their rationale? Hereditary high cholesterol, known as familial hypercholesterolaemia, affects about two in every 1000 people and causes very high levels of low density lipoprotein (LDL) or ‘bad cholesterol’ in the blood. It carries a high risk of death from coronary heart disease.
Treatment to lower cholesterol reduces the risk substantially, but is it worth the expense to test all children for something that will impact .2% of the population?
The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its lowest level this week since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage – a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable.
In the mosaic image above, created from nearly 200 images acquired in early September 2007 by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument aboard ESA’s Envisat satellite, the dark gray colour represents the ice-free areas while green represents areas with sea ice.
Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre said: "We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3 million sq km which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006.
The international car industry is currently presenting many environmentally friendly models at the IAA, the biggest car exhibition in the world. Can the idea sell in the home of Aston-Martin and Jaguar?
Estimates say 64% of British drivers could use hybrids and 21% are thinking hybrid for their next new car. They would even be willing to pay $1900 more than for a conventional car, according to market research institute Maritz Research.
"There is huge enthusiasm for hybrids amongst British consumers," explains Christian Vorwerck, director of marketing at Maritz Research. "The potential for the car industry is massive."
Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have discovered in a single pass about a dozen otherwise invisible galaxies halfway across the Universe. The discovery, based on a technique that exploits a first-class instrument, represents a major breakthrough in the field of galaxy 'hunting'.
The team of astronomers led by Nicolas Bouché have used quasars to find these galaxies. Quasars are very distant objects of extreme brilliance, which are used as cosmic beacons that reveal galaxies lying between the quasar and us. The galaxy's presence is revealed by a 'dip' in the spectrum of the quasar - caused by the absorption of light at a specific wavelength.
The team used huge catalogues of quasars, the so-called SDSS and 2QZ catalogues, to select quasars with dips.
Medical researchers who want to use previously collected samples from biobanks in their research have to contend with guidelines and regulations from among various countries, making it extremely complicated to carry out major international studies. In the latest issue of Nature Biotechnology, Swedish ethics researchers at the Center for Bioethics (CBE), together with leading biobank researchers, put forward a pioneering solution: a set of practical ethical guidelines for biobank research.
Biobanks consist of systematically gathered biological samples and are valuable for both research and medical treatments. When tissues samples are linked to good clinical data, they become indispensable to medical science.
The corpses of James Brown, Anna Nicole Smith and Saddam Hussein were voyeuristic spectacles for a public greedy for a last look at celebrity lives, according to an academic speaking at the Death, dying & disposal conference organised by the University of Bath today.
Despite a lasting taboo over the ‘everyday’ dead of war and disaster, celebrity corpses have come to feed contemporary popular culture’s obsession with the cadaver of forensic investigation.
Revolymer, a spin out company from the University of Bristol, has completed development of its new Clean Gum that can be easily removed from shoes, clothes, pavements and hair. Preliminary results also indicate that the gum will degrade naturally in water.
The company has completed initial street trials on pavements in local high streets as part of a collaborative agreement with local councils. In the two trials, leading commercial gums remained stuck to the pavements three out of four times. In all tests the Revolymer gum was removed within 24 hours by natural events.
A fossilized whale skeleton excavated 20 years ago amid the stench and noise of a seabird and elephant seal rookery on California's Año Nuevo Island turns out to be the youngest example on the Pacific coast of a fossil whale fall and the first in California, according to University of California, Berkeley, paleontologists.
Whale falls, first recognized in the 1980s, are whale carcasses that fall to the deep-ocean floor where, like an oasis in the desert, they attract a specialized group of clams, crabs and worms that feed for up to decades on the oil-rich bones and tissues.
Some scientists think these random, deep-ocean oases are stepping stones for organisms moving from one ocean floor environment to another - whether a hot vent, a cold seep or a whale carcass - in search of sustena
Differences in sexual behaviours do not fully explain why the US HIV epidemic affects gay men so much more than straight men and women, claims research in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.
In 2005, over half of new HIV infections diagnosed in the US were among gay men, and up to one in five gay men living in cities is thought to be HIV positive. Yet two large population surveys showed that most gay men had similar numbers of unprotected sexual partners per year as straight men and women.
US researchers applied a series of carefully calculated equations in different scenarios to study the rate at which HIV infection has spread among gay men and straight men and women.
In the last century, more than 100 million people have perished in violent conflict, very often because of local clashes between ethnically or culturally distinct groups. In a novel study this week in Science, researchers report on a mathematical model that can predict where ethnic conflict will erupt.
The study, conducted by scientists at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) and Brandeis University, can be applied to many areas and its predictions were tested on distinct ethnic groups in India and the former Yugoslavia. The researchers applied a model of global pattern formation that differentiates regions by culture. They discovered that heterogeneous areas with poorly- defined boundaries were prone to ethnic conflict.
It's like car-pooling, but only for the rich and famous who want to show their green credentials. Madonna, the Prince of Wales and 3000 other beautiful people have been invited to join the world's first private flight sharing club. This will allow them to still get around in style but reduce the environmental impact and cost of private jets that are currently flying empty 40% of the time.
The Flightshare Private Members Guild is the brainchild of Farnborough UK based David Lacy, an aviation veteran of 26 years who was the first to introduce carbon offsets to the European private jet industry last year.
Skis equipped with an ingenious new self-waxing device that enables them to travel quicker could make a dramatic entry onto the skiing scene in the 2008/09 World Cup season.
The device continuously applies fresh wax to the bottom of the ski during a race. Its developers are now working with manufacturers, with the aim of incorporating it into skis used in top-class international competition as early as next year.
Validated test results from the Alps show that skiers using the revolutionary system can complete a course 1-2% quicker than using conventional skis, which gradually lose their pre-applied layer of wax as they descend a slope.
