The desire for healthy-looking skin has existed throughout the centuries and has often led humanity to flowers and other plants in search of assistance. COSMACTIVE treads the same path, but uses the latest in biotechnology to identify and extract the active ingredients from a wide range of plants.

Under the umbrella of the EUREKA project COSMACTIVE, the French research company Greentech has developed a new way of identifying and selecting active ingredients that gives it, and its Spanish par

Implications for treatment, defense against chemical weapons

A study led by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offers the first molecular explanation of how the body metabolizes and detoxifies cocaine and heroin. “We show for the first time how humans initiate the breakdown and clearance of these dangerous narcotics,” said Dr. Matthew R. Redinbo, assistant professor in the department of chemistry, and in the School of Medicine’s department of biochemist

Living longer and better medical treatments such as organ transplants and cancer therapy are all paradoxically increasing our risk of blood poisoning, according to experts in bacterial infections speaking at the Society for General Microbiology’s Spring Meeting in Edinburgh today, Monday 7 April 2003.

“The two commonest causes of blood poisoning are bacteria called Escherichia coli from the urinary tract, and Staphylococcus aureus carried on the skin or from a hospital drip,” says Professor

Using cold temperatures could help make quicker, cheaper and safer influenza vaccines, according to Dr Alison Whiteley at the Society for General Microbiology’s Spring Meeting in Edinburgh today, Monday 7 April 2003.

Influenza epidemics sweep the world every year killing the very young and the very old, but every thirty years or so a new virulent strain appears which kills people from every age group. These super-dangerous strains develop from viruses which normally infect birds, and the vac

Huge pulsed power machine enters fusion arena

Throwing its hat into the ring of machines that offer the possibility of achieving controlled nuclear fusion, Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine has created a hot dense plasma that produces thermonuclear neutrons, Sandia researchers announced today at a news conference at the April meeting of the American Physical Society in Philadelphia.

The neutrons emanate from fusion reactions within a BB-sized deuterium capsule pla

USC researchers uncover mechanism of class- switching in antibodies

A team of scientists from the Keck School of Medicine of USC has, for the first time, described a new, stable DNA structure in both mouse and human cells-one which differs from the standard Watson-and-Crick double helix and plays a critical role in the production of antibodies, or immunoglobulins.
The research will be published online in the journal Nature Immunology this week, and will appear in print in the jou