A natural method of disarming some types of viruses may enable scientists to someday treat infections with HIV, the AIDS virus, according to a virologist at Jefferson Medical College.

Taking the lead from the common fruit fly, yeast and worms, scientists have recently shown that it may be possible to use small pieces of genetic material called short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) to inhibit HIV from making more copies of itself.

The process, called RNA interference (RNAi), was first di

A new type of nanotechnology-based filter that can separate out mixtures of biological molecules has been developed by researchers at the University of California, Davis. The technology could potentially be used, for example, to build small-scale devices for research in genomics by sorting mixtures of different proteins or DNA molecules.

The filter consists of a polycarbonate membrane etched with tiny, evenly-sized pores less than 10 nanometers — a few billionths of an inch — in size. The

New farm practices and new breeds of crops might someday add to mankind’s toolbox for controlling greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change.

Research under way at Purdue University seeks to control the most prominent of these greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, by corralling carbon on the farm in a process known as carbon sequestration.

The research is being supported with a grant of nearly $1 million to Purdue from the Consortium for Agricultural Soil Mitigation

A new high-resolution nuclear medicine imaging scanner specifically designed for breast exams has the potential to increase physicians’ ability to determine if a woman has breast cancer, and may be particularly useful for women with dense breasts. The results of this early study were reported in the July 2002 issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, published by the Society of Nuclear Medicine.

When compared with scintimammographic images taken on a standard gamma camera, the new came

Fear of needles and the discomfort of daily injections could soon be a thing of the past for women undergoing IVF treatment thanks to a new device which can administer hormones without a needle injection.

Dr Stuart Lavery, a Subspeciality Fellow in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at the Hammersmith Hospital in London, UK, told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Vienna today (Wednesday 3 July) that a team at the hospital had achieved the first pregnanci

Every day accident and emergency units have to treat patients who have taken some sort of drug overdose. To give treatment doctors need to know what the patient has taken. The circumstances can make often this difficult to ascertain quickly.

Researchers are developing a new kind of biosensor, which can determine in minutes if a patient’s blood contains a particular compound, for example paracetamol. Currently this type of examination needs to be carried out in a laboratory, which is expens