Is it possible to combine a three-dimensional wire model of a face with real pictures of the same face? And is it possible to get the computer that is forming the new image to follow the face even when the person in question makes sudden movements or partially covers her face with her hand? These are a couple of the research questions for the Image Coding Group at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Linköping University in Sweden. The aim is to find a new technology for information-efficient

These days our supermarket shelves are filled with more and more so-called “functional foods” foods with special health-promoting properties. These products often represent a “high-tech” product line, in the twilight zone between food and medicine. Agricultural researcher Cecilia Mark-Herbert from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU, has now studied the market for these products. Her doctoral dissertation shows that developing these foods requires not only new products, but also new

For several days last week, the protective ozone layer over Europe thinned considerably. Scientists monitoring ozone coverage using a rapid mapping technique based on data from the GOME (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) instrument aboard ESA`s ERS-2 satellite detected finger-like ozone thinning over Europe.

“From 28-30 January, we observed a pronounced `streamer event`,” explains DLR`s Thilo Erbertseder, “where streamers of tropical air pushing up from the equatorial regions spread over s

The next generation of biomaterials will help the body heal itself by prompting cells to repair their own tissues, scientists report today.

Writing in a review in the journal Science, Professors Larry Hench and Julia Polak of Imperial College, London, highlight the potential of `third generation` biomaterials that activate specific cells and genes of the individual they are implanted into.

Pioneering work by the two authors recently led to the discovery of a family of bone f

Glue ear — a frequent cause of deafness in children — could be a result of gastric reflux, which results in stomach proteins accumulating in the middle ear via the Eustachian tube, suggest authors of a research letter in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.

Glue ear is common among children after middle-ear infections (otitis media); effusion, produced by mucus cells, occurs in the middle ear and cannot be cleared. It is a particular problem for young children because of the angle and imm

Nuclear tests up gene mutation risk.

People in the remote former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan who were exposed to fallout from nuclear-weapon tests have more genetic mutations in their eggs and sperm than normal, researchers have found 1 . Their children could inherit health defects caused by such mutations.

The Soviet Union detonated 470 nuclear weapons at the Semipalatinsk nuclear-testing site between 1949 and 1989, many above ground. The blasts showered r