Happy hour linked to pub violence

A Cardiff University study has established a link between pub violence and happy hour-style drinking promotions.
The findings also show that pub staff themselves need to do more to stop heavily intoxicated customers from continuing to drink.
T…

Welsh scientists ‘clone’ human virus

A team of Welsh scientists have successfully cloned a human virus offering new hope for the treatment of potentially life-threatening diseases.
Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a major infectious cause of congenital malformations worldwide. The vi…

Gene find raises hopes of new treatment for bowel cancer

A significant breakthrough by scientists at Cardiff University and the University of Edinburgh will enable new drugs to be developed, which could prevent bowel cancer. Researchers led by Professor Adrian Bird at Edinburgh and Professor Alan Clarke at Cardiff have discovered a gene, called MBD2, which is essential for bowel cancer cells to grow, but is dispensable in normal cells. The findings of the research, funded in part by the Wellcome Trust and published in the journal Nature Genetics, raise the possibility that drugs which inactivate MBD2 could prevent human bowel cancer without harming normal cells.

New protein will help fight inflammation

A joint research project by scientists in Cardiff, UK, has developed a new protein, which could end the suffering of thousands. The research, by scientists at Cardiff University and the University of Wales College of Medicine (UWCM), and funded mainly by the Wellcome Trust, is designed to tackle the problem of chronic inflammation ? which can lead to serious disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and bacterial peritonitis. Now a two-year development programme is getting under way to check the therapeutic potential of this new protein in the management of acute infection, to enable pharmaceutical and biotech companies to create a product for clinical use.

Microorganisms isolated in space

Indian and British researchers say they have successfully isolated microorganisms living in the upper atmosphere, as high as 40 km up. Whether the organisms originate on Earth or are “seeding” the planet from passing comets is the subject of some debate. “Contamination is always a possibility in such studies but the ‘internal logic’ of the findings points strongly to the organisms being isolated in space, at a height of 41km,” said one of the lead researchers. “Of course the results would have been more readily accepted and lauded by critics had we isolated novel organisms, or ones with NASA written on them! “