Leading public-health scientists highlight in a study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET how confronting major risk factors that lead to poor health could have a substantial effect in reducing premature deaths and morbidity globally-especially in the poorest areas of the world. This preventive approach would also reduce the prevailing health inequalities that exist between the world’s richest and poorest nations.

Majid Ezzati from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA, Christophe

The new Director-General of WHO is calling for global collaboration to tackle the crisis identified by The Lancet’s Child Survival Series, which concludes in this week’s issue.

The series has highlighted a global public-health disaster: over 10 million children under five years dead every year; the majority from easily preventable causes. In a Commentary in this week’s issue, Dr JW Lee highlights three key priorities for action. He comments: “First, the health of children and mothers must be

Forget blue skies research, it is clouds that have focused minds at the University of Leicester where scientists are tackling the causes of ozone depletion.

Atmospheric scientists in the Department of Physics and Astronomy are spearheading the MAPSCORE project, a European Commission Environment project which investigates a major cause of ozone depletion – high altitude polar clouds which activate the chlorine originally from CFCs and lead eventually to severe ozone destruction.

The UK Analytical Partnership (UKAP), now in its third year, has announced five prime areas for analytical innovation: biomimetic analysis, health sensors, managing the chemical environment, real-time analysis/factory of the future and analysis in design. UKAP will be staging a number of events in the autumn to enable input from parties interested in involvement with these projects.

Richard Bahu of the Oxis Partnership, co-author of this foresight study for UKAP´s Innovation Network w

Two University of Toronto astronomers and a U.S. colleague have made the first-ever measurements of the size and shape of massive dark matter halos that surround galaxies

‘Our findings give us the clearest picture yet of a very mysterious part of our universe,’ says principal investigator Henk Hoekstra, a post-doctoral fellow at University of Toronto’s Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. ‘Using relatively simple physics, we can get our first direct glimpse of the size an

Innovative test based on nanoshells could provide critical info for ER doctors, others

Nanotechnology researchers at Rice University have developed a new method of testing whole blood that could allow emergency room doctors and other point-of-care health professionals to rapidly diagnose a variety of ailments, including hemorrhagic stroke, heart attack, and various infectious diseases.
The test, which is faster than existing whole-blood immunoassays, uses gold nanoshells, tiny op