Over-the-counter cough medicines could give early warning of bioterrorism.

Tracking over-the-counter sales of cough medications for unseasonable surges could be a way of spotting imminent anthrax epidemics, say US researchers 1 .

In the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States, scientists are working on ways to detect a biological attack quickly and so minimize its effects. Because a sore throat and cough are the first symptoms of anthra

Invading insect empire stretches 6,000 kilometres.

An invading empire has conquered Europe. One super-colony of South American ants, with millions of nests and billions of individuals, stretches 6,000 kilometres around the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, researchers have found.

Every ant in the colony treats every other as its nest-mate – even though they may be quite unrelated. The nests have buried their differences to create the largest cooperative unit ever discovered

A joint ESA and UNESCO scheme to keep watch on endangered gorilla habitats from space is the subject of a two-day ESRIN workshop this week.

Representatives of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the World Wildlife Fund, the International Gorilla Conservation Fund and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International and United Nations Environment Programme are among those who will attend the meeting in Frascati near Rome to discuss possible partnership and agr

Blood vessel prostheses work best when the biochemical and mechanical properties match reality as much as possible and when they are made of biodegradable material. To this end tissue technologists grow natural vascular wall cells, endothelial cells, in a biodegradable tube made of collagen. According to Professor István Vermes tissue technologists are overly concerned with developing stem cells, necessary to build blood vessels, and not enough with the development of the vascular skeleton or scaffo

A research group of the Microtechnology Centre at Chalmers, MC2, at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden, has developed an ultra-sensitive device for detecting the presence of organic molecules present in space. Organic material as far away from us as many thousands of light years can be discovered this way. The sensor, which has a world record for sensing low amounts of heat, will be a vital part in satellite systems for the Herschel Mission, a remote sensing satellite project at th

Waiting lists will not be eliminated by makeshift measures like a policy on absenteeism or recruiting people returning to work after having a family. The best way to balance supply and demand in the health care services is the application of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and in particular telemedicine. These are care innovations of the future for which government will also have to open their pockets. This was the political message brought by prof.ir. Theo de Vries in his inaugural le