Was it the evolution of the hand, or of the brain, that enabled prehistoric toolmakers to make the leap from striking off simple flakes of rock to fashioning a sophisticated hand axe?
A new study finds that the ability to plan complex tasks was …
Why do some of the one million people who sustain head injuries annually in United States experience a mysterious second wave of brain damage days after the initial injury — just when they appear to be recovering? Limited clinical trials using an…
Producing tightly focused beams of high energy X-rays, to examine everything from molecular structures to the integrity of aircraft wings, could become simpler and cheaper according to new research.
Today, in Nature Physics, researchers from Imp…
A variant of last year’s pandemic influenza linked to fatal cases carried a mutation that enabled it to infect a different subset of cells lining the airway, according to new research. The study, due to be published next week in the Journal of Virol…
Seamless fabric that can be sprayed on to skin and other surfaces to make clothes, medical bandages and even upholstery will be demonstrated this Thursday, in advance of the Science in Style spray-on fashion show next week at Imperial College London…
Researchers describe how to carry out the first experimental test of string theory in a paper published tomorrow in Physical Review Letters.
String theory was originally developed to describe the fundamental particles and forces that make up…
The number of children admitted to English hospitals with bacterial pneumonia decreased by a fifth in the two years following the introduction of a vaccine to combat the disease, according to a new study published today in the journal Thorax.
B…
Researchers have recently gained funding for the UK’s first rowing research programme, which aims to reveal the secrets of the best and safest rowing technique. Thanks to funding from the Henley Stewards Charitable Trust and assistance from the British International Rowing Office (through UK Sport) they are contributing to improving top rowers’ performance with the development of a biofeedback system that gives instant visual feedback on their rowing technique. This helps to harmonise their movements with fellow rowers, while at the same time avoiding the causes of lower back pain.
A team of researchers from Imperial College London, the Charing Cross Hospital and University College London have identified a protein which could be used to protect against neuro-degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, motor neurone diseases and the damage caused by strokes.
Structural analysis has revealed for the first time how a key messenger in the body’s chemical communication system hooks up with one of the proteins that delivers it to sites of action in the body. Using X-ray crystallography, scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Hawaii have identified the location of four binding sites on human serum albumin (HSA), the principal protein in blood plasma, to which the chemical messenger thyroxine attaches.
An international team of researchers has estimated that the fatality rate for SARS is considerably higher than some early estimates. According to a paper published online today in The Lancet, which examines data from the first nine weeks of Hong Kong’s epidemic, the case fatality rate, among those admitted to hospital, in patients 60 years of age and older is estimated to be far higher (43.3%, 95% confidence interval 35.2 to 52.4%) than those below 60 (13.2%, 95% confidence interval 9.8 to 16.8%).
In studies using rats, researchers from Duke University Medical Center and the Imperial College, London, have found evidence that the chemically inert gas xenon can protect the brain from the neurological damage often associated with the use of the heart-lung machine during coronary artery bypass surgery. The researchers say that xenon appears to block receptors on nerve cells in the brain that can be “overstimulated” in response to the surgery. This overstimulation can lead to nerve cell damage or death.