The development of drugs to combat some of the world’s most serious parasitic diseases is a step nearer with the discovery of a widely-shared gene that helps parasites to invade host cells.

The new understanding of the gene’s role in the single-celled parasite Toxoplasma gondii gives scientists a target to block that could stop the parasite literally in its tracks.

In experiments reported today in the journal Science, researchers at Imperial College London and the Univer

This project has been proposed in the doctoral thesis of professor Igor Egaña Santamarina of the Public University of Navarre, called “Design of complete mould QFT multivariable controllers”. Professor Mario Garcia Sanz, from the Department of Automation and Computer Science of the Public University of Navarre, has supervised the project.

Air traffic controllers and wind generator controllers

Control engineering involves the design of mathematical laws that modify the way i

A project which aims to make laboratory-grown leukaemia cells change form and then be used to prime a patient’s own immune system to kill off malignant cells has begun in Edinburgh. If successful, the study could give clinicians a way of destroying residual leukaemic cells which are undetectable by microscope. The findings could be helpful in the treatment of acute myeloblastic leukaemia (AML), one of the most common forms of leukaemia in adults.

Although about 70% of patients with AML achie

Get ready to rewrite those biology textbooks – again. Although the “lowly” blue-green algae, or Cyanobacteria, have long been credited as one of Earth’s earliest life forms and the source of the oxygen in the early Earth’s atmosphere, they might be neither.

By creating a new genetic family tree of the world’s most primitive bacteria and comparing it to the geochemistry of ancient iron and sulfur deposits, Carrine Blank of Washington University has found evidence that instead of Cyanobacter

The relationship between rocks and our health, and new methods for farming and countryside management to both encourage wildlife and make a profit, are just two of the exciting research projects highlighted in the latest issue of Planet Earth, the quarterly journal of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

The rock diet

Rocks are a vital source of the essential elements and minerals people need to stay healthy. The British Geological Survey (BGS) together with part

The basque company Endorasoft has created two computer systems that will offer to consumers and companies more services and possibilities for this kind of telephone systems.

Endorasoft is a company that develops software and hardware for applications in mobile telephone systems. At the present, they have two products, XSMS and XSIM, two new products in the market.

The XSMS is designed for massive sending of short messages by mobile phones. The objective is to avoid the rest