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HIV virus T-cell electromicrograph
health
18 May 2018

Healthy competition intensifies 30-year quest for HIV vaccine

In 1984, after HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS, the US secretary of health, Margaret Heckler, declared a vaccine would be found within two years. Reports of a mysterious virus predominantly affecting gay men had been growing across the US and, with awareness rising, the World Health Organization had held its first conference to address the global situation earlier that year. But there was still little understanding of how the disease evolved and spread.

Researchers are working on methods that are faster than laboratory tests to determine if food has been tampered with. Image credit - Pixabay/ Hans, licensed under CC0
agriculture | health
14 May 2018

Forensic accounting can predict future food fraud

Food fraud, where different or low-quality food is deliberately mislabelled and sold as high-quality goods, risks the health of consumers as well as the economic viability of producers and manufacturers. To combat this, researchers have figured out that analysing the past and present behaviour of criminal activity could predict what they might target in the future.

Dr Heidi Larson portrait
health | interview
26 April 2018

Rise in vaccine hesitancy related to pursuit of purity – Prof. Heidi Larson

The rise of alternative health practices and a quest for purity can partly explain the falling confidence in vaccines which is driving outbreaks of preventable diseases such as measles, according to Heidi Larson, professor of anthropology, risk and decision medicine at the UK’s London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is working to understand the causes of vaccine hesitancy in order to devise ways of rebuilding trust.

Metal-organic frameworks as seen under an electron microscope are made up of crystals that together shape multi-dimensional structures with vast surface areas. Image credit - CSIRO/ Dr Paolo Falcaro, Dr Dario Buso, licensed under CC BY 3.0 (colour changed)
health | industry
25 April 2018

Large surface area lends superpowers to ultra-porous materials

Some materials are special not for what they contain, but for what they don’t contain. Such is the case with metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) – ultra-porous structures that are being developed for a variety of future applications from fire-proofing to drug-delivery.

Microplastics are considered the most common form of marine litter. Image credit - Nils Ally, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0
environment | health
23 April 2018

Sticky tape and simulations help assess microplastic risk

Tiny pieces of plastic, now ubiquitous in the marine environment, have long been a cause of concern for their ability to absorb toxic substances and potentially penetrate the food chain. Now scientists are beginning to understand the level of threat posed to life, by gauging the extent of marine accumulation and tracking the movement of these contaminants.

This human liver organoid gives researchers hope that animal-based studies about drug safety will be a method of the past one day. Image credit - Dr Helmuth Gehart/ TOXANOID
health
11 April 2018

Lab-grown tissues to improve reliability of safety tests for drugs, chemicals

Testing the safety of medicines and chemicals on organ-like structures developed from various types of stem cells could reduce the reliance on animal testing and streamline chemical and drug development, according to scientists in the Netherlands who are in the early stages of developing such technology. 

Keeping epilepsy from materialising at a young age could give young patients the chance for normal brain development. Image credit - Pixnio, licensed under CC0 public domain
health
06 April 2018

Delaying epilepsy onset could reduce impact on development

The case of a young boy with a rare genetic disorder over a decade ago has led to a multi-million Euro research project that is raising hopes of new approaches to childhood epilepsy.

Codeine addiction is a widespread problem which can be hard to diagnose, study says. Image credit - U.S. Air Force/ Senior Airman Hailey R. Staker
health
04 April 2018

Europe's silent opioid epidemic

As opiate addiction continues to grip the United States – killing more than 100 people per day in 2016 – researchers are trying to get a handle on the scale of the problem in Europe.

There are three sources of variability in fertility - genetics, the family environment and the individual environment. Image credit - Pxhere/872310, licensed under Creative Commons CC0
health
29 March 2018

Genetic profiling could improve IVF success

Genetic profiling could help determine whether an embryo created through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) is likely to successfully transfer to the womb, increasing the success rate of the procedure.

As many as 6.5 million premature deaths every year are attributed to air pollution, according to the World Health Organization. Image credit – Public domain
health | environment
05 March 2018

Ultrafine pollution particles create air of menace

An air quality study has for the first time detected nano-sized particles of air pollution in children’s urine. With a diameter of just 100 nanometers - a thousandth of the width of a human hair - these ultrafine particles are the smallest particles found in air pollution and have been linked to heart disease and respiratory conditions in previous studies.

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