By crushing a widely used semiconductor into nanoparticles, researchers said this week they have created a compound that could lead to cleaner, more efficient refrigerators, solar power plants and other devices. The crushed material makes it possible to conduct electricity without conducting so much heat, solving a problem that has baffled engineers for 50 years.
Overeating disrupts entire networks of genes in the body, causing not only obesity, but diabetes and heart disease, in ways that may be possible to predict, researchers reported on Sunday. The researchers developed a new method of analysing DNA and used it to discover that obesity is not only complex, but complex in ways that had not been previously understood.
No image available
/ 20 November 2007
The United Nations has slashed its estimates of how many people are infected with HIV/Aids, from nearly 40-million to 33-million. In a report to be issued on Tuesday, the UN says revised estimates on HIV in India account for a large part of the decrease.
No image available
/ 8 November 2007
A cold virus used to make an experimental HIV vaccine that was discontinued in September somehow may have caused volunteers to be more susceptible to Aids, the vaccine’s developers said on Wednesday. Researchers were doubly dismayed when it appeared that those who had been vaccinated were more likely to become infected.
Fruit bats that roost in caves are apparently the source of Marburg virus, which causes a deadly hemorrhagic fever related to Ebola virus, researchers said on Tuesday. Tests of 1 100 bats of various species turned up the virus in only one common species of fruit bats.
Researchers studying bird flu viruses said on Thursday they may have come up with a way to vaccinate people before a feared influenza pandemic. Experts have long said there is no way to vaccinate people against a new strain of influenza until that strain evolves. That could mean months or even years of disease and death before a vaccination campaign began.
No image available
/ 24 January 2007
Altruism, one of the most difficult human behaviors to define, can be detected in brain scans, United States researchers reported this week. They found activity in a specific area of the brain could predict altruistic behavior — and people’s own reports of how selfish or giving they are.
No image available
/ 20 January 2007
Daydreaming seems to be the default setting of the human mind and certain brain regions are devoted to it, United States researchers reported on Friday. When people are given a specific task to do, they focus on that task but then other brain regions get busy during down time, the researchers report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
No image available
/ 13 October 2006
African-Americans hoping to use DNA to find their roots may have to look harder than previously thought, researchers said on Thursday in a study they said shows Africans are too genetically mixed to make tracing easy. Several companies now offer to help Americans trace their African ancestry using mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to daughter virtually unaltered.