Researchers at The University of Queensland have contributed to the discovery of three new genes which increase the risk of motor neuron disease (MND), opening the door for targeted treatments.

Professor Naomi Wray from UQ's Queensland Brain Institute was involved in the data analysis as a part of an international study of more than 30,000 people.

"These three new genes open new opportunities for research to understand a complex and debilitating disease which currently has no effective treatments," Professor Wray said.

"Crucially, we hope Australian patients will be included in the next phase of the study, thanks to funds raised by the Ice Bucket Challenge."

Light from a distant galaxy can be strongly bent by the gravitational influence of a foreground galaxy. That effect is called strong gravitational lensing. Normally a single galaxy is lensed at a time. The same foreground galaxy can - in theory - simultaneously lens multiple background galaxies. Although extremely rare, such a lens system offers a unique opportunity to probe the fundamental physics of galaxies and add to our understanding of cosmology. One such lens system has recently been discovered and the discovery was made not in an astronomer's office, but in a classroom. It has been dubbed the Eye of Horus (Fig. 1), and this ancient eye in the sky will help us understand the history of the universe.

Classroom Research Pays Off

Baby boomers, adults born between 1945 and 1965, are five times more likely to have been exposed to the hepatitis C virus (HCV).

As a result, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force recommend that all patients in that age group get tested.

But the simple blood test, designed to detect and prevent illness before the virus wreaks havoc, is infrequently performed on baby boomers whose routine medical appointments are often crammed with other preventive measures and tests -- as well as time spent addressing active problems that require a doctor's immediate attention.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - What's good for crops is not always good for the environment. Nitrogen, a key nutrient for plants, can cause problems when it leaches into water supplies. University of Illinois engineers developed a model to calculate the age of nitrogen in corn and soybean fields, which could lead to improved fertilizer application techniques to promote crop growth while reducing leaching.

Civil and environmental engineering professor Praveen Kumar and graduate student Dong Kook Woo published their work in the journal Water Resources Research.

Retailers are openly flouting the ban on tobacco sales near schools in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province in South-Central China, reveals research published online in the journal Tobacco Control.

Furthermore, marketing strategies targeting children are "pervasive," the study shows, prompting the authors to urge officials to take swift action to enforce the regulations.

Tobacco retail sales are prohibited within 100 metres of schools in many large cities in China, but it's not clear how well this zoning regulation is being enforced.

The NFL's schedule makers face a lot of uncertainty when they sit down every spring to put together the next season's Monday Night Football schedule. They want viewers and they want to give teams national exposure. 

Yet the games won't be played for several months, and all sorts of things can happen that make a game which seems compelling in April a viewership bust in October: Players might be traded, injured or leave in free agency, and there is often a great deal of parity so a playoff team from one season may take a nosedive the next. A Monday Night Football schedule that once appeared to be filled with ratings winners is riddled with games few fans are interested in watching.