Tech

An international group of researchers has found that antibodies to the human papilloma virus type 16 (HPV16) develop in the body between six to 40 years prior to a clinical diagnosis of throat cancer, and their presence indicates a strong increased risk of the disease.

The study, which is published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology [1] today (Wednesday), also found that having HPV16 antibodies increased the risk of throat cancer far more in white people than in black: nearly 100-fold in white people, but 17-fold in black people.

People moving in and out of photographs used to be reserved for the world of Harry Potter. But now computer scientists at the University of Washington have brought that magic to real life.

New mechanical modeling of a network of active strike-slip faults in California's Imperial Valley suggests the faults are continuously linked, from the southern San Andreas Fault through the Imperial Fault to the Cerro Prieto fault further to the south of the valley.

A few years ago, Scott Villa of Emory University had a problem. Then a graduate student at the University of Utah, he was stumped with an issue never addressed in school: How does one film lice having sex?

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- New insights about how to understand and ultimately control the chemistry of ignition behavior and pollutant formation have been discovered in research led by Sandia National Laboratories. The discovery eventually will lead to cleaner, more efficient internal combustion engines.

"Our findings will allow the design of new fuels and improved combustion strategies," said Nils Hansen, Sandia researcher and lead author of the research. "Making combustion cleaner and more efficient will have a huge impact, reducing energy use around the globe."

The simplest home medical tests might look like a deck of various silicon chips coated in special film, one that could detect drugs in the blood, another for proteins in the urine indicating infection, another for bacteria in water and the like. Add the bodily fluid you want to test, take a picture with your smart phone, and a special app lets you know if there's a problem or not.

A team of UK scientists have identified the mechanism behind hardening of the arteries, and shown in animal studies that a generic medication normally used to treat acne could be an effective treatment for the condition.

The team, led by the University of Cambridge and King's College London, found that a molecule once thought only to exist inside cells for the purpose of repairing DNA is also responsible for hardening of the arteries, which is associated with dementia, heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke.

Previous research has shown that falcons intercept prey using the same guidance law as homing missiles, called proportional navigation. This guidance law is optimal against smoothly-manoeuvring aerial targets, but is prone to being thrown off by the zigzagging manoeuvres of terrestrial prey like hares or jackrabbits, and will not necessarily lead to a feasible flight path through the cluttered habitats that hawks frequent.

Governments have a wide variety of policy options at their disposal to respond to the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance, but many of these approaches have not been rigorously evaluated, according to a new study published this week in PLOS Medicine by Susan Rogers Van Katwyk of the University of Ottawa, Canada, and colleagues.

A study, published today in PNAS, has found a potential treatment for patients with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).

CRPS is a severe post-traumatic pain condition affecting one or more limbs and is associated with regional pain and sensory, bone and skin changes. The causes of CRPS, however, are yet to be fully understood.

Approximately 15 percent of patients with CRPS still have symptoms one year after onset that severely impact their quality of life. For these patients, prognosis is often poor and drug therapy for pain relief is rarely effective.

A new study by Imperial Brands, owners of leading vape brand blu, contributes to the increasing evidence base substantiating vaping's harm reduction potential compared to smoking.

The research, presented at the 58th annual meeting of the Society of Toxicology earlier this year, compared the in-vitro toxicological responses of a 3D model of human lung tissue to myblu vapour and cigarette* smoke across a range of biological endpoints.

Natural products, or their close derivatives, make some of our most potent medicines, among which macrocycles with their large carbon-rich ring systems are one class. The size and complexity of macrocycles has made it difficult to emulate and build on Nature's success in the laboratory.

Osaka, Japan - A team at Osaka University has created single-molecule nanowires, complete with an insulation layer, up to 10 nanometers in length. When they measured the electrical properties of these nanowires, the researchers found that forcing the ribbon-like chains to be flat significantly improved their conductivity compared with a twisted conformation. The findings may allow for a new generation of inexpensive high-tech devices, including smartphone screens and photovoltaics.

Under the JST-SENTAN program (Development of System and Technology for Advanced Measurement and Analysis, Japan Science and Technology Agency), the joint development team of Prof. Naoya Shibata at the University of Tokyo and JEOL Ltd., has developed a revolutionary electron microscope that incorporates newly designed magnetic objective lenses, and achieved direct, atom-resolved imaging of materials with sub-Å spatial resolution, with a residual magnetic field less than 0.2 mT at the sample position. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that such a goal has been achieved.

Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have helped to overturn almost a century of galaxy classification, in a new study using data from the longstanding Galaxy Zoo project. The new investigation, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, uses classifications of over 6000 galaxies to reveal that "well known" correlations between different features are not found in this large and complete sample.