Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who triggered anxiety among parents over his suggestion of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, was struck off the medical register today for offences relating to dishonesty and failing to act in the best interests of vulnerable child patients. But as leading doctors and medical institutions condemned him and hailed an end to the controversy which caused measles, mumps and rubella vaccination rates to drop dangerously low, Wakefield launched a fresh war of words from New York, portraying himself to the media as a victim of the British establishment and insisting he would fight on in the interests of children with autism
Quantum teleportation has achieved a new milestone or, should we say, a new ten-milestone: scientists have recently had success teleporting information between photons over a free space distance of nearly ten miles, an unprecedented length. The researchers who have accomplished this feat note that this brings us closer to communicating information without needing a traditional signal, and that the ten miles they have reached could span the distance between the surface of the earth and space
Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium’s genetic software
and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species dictated
by the synthetic DNA
An expedition into the mountains of Papua New Guinea has revealed what may be the world’s smallest species of kangaroo. A research team that ventured into the Foja Mountains in 2008 have this week released their findings of a number of species new to science, including a new dwarf wallaby, Dorcopsulus. The wallaby inhabits the floor of the montane forests, and has been called beautiful
and gentle
by expeditioner Dr Kristofer Helgen, a zoologist at the Smithsonian Institution of Washington DC
Scientists have implanted the first functional glucose biofuel cell in a living animal. Unlike batteries that supply power to implants, a power-generating device may not have to be surgically removed and replaced, because glucose is a potentially limitless source of energy
A fifteen page story about the MMR vaccination controversy. As ever, I’m sure a few spelling errors have slipped past me. Feel free to point any out so I can correct them.
I did a ton of research on this piece. When I’ve got an extra minute, I’m going to add on a list of references, with links. Now! Let’s have a heated debate — via tallguywrites
Experts who studied almost 13,000 cell phone users over 10 years, hoping to find out whether the mobile devices cause brain tumours, said on Sunday their research gave no clear answer. A study by the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the largest ever to look at possible links between mobile phones and brain cancer, threw up inconclusive results but researchers said suggestions of a possible link demanded deeper examination
Metamaterials are man-made substances designed to do some very weird things that natural materials don’t. The path of a beam of light through a natural material like glass is predictable, but scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have engineered an optical material that bends light in the wrong direction. This new negative-index metamaterial (NIM) could have several valuable uses including invisibility cloaking, superlensing (imaging nano-scale objects using visible light) and improved light collection in solar cells
The husband-and-wife team of Arlen and Diane Chase tried a new approach to mapping archaeological sites using airborne laser signals that penetrate the jungle cover and are reflected from the ground below. They yielded 3-D images of the site of ancient Caracol, in Belize, one of the great cities of the Maya lowlands. In only four days, a twin-engine aircraft equipped with an advanced version of lidar (light detection and ranging) flew back and forth over the jungle and collected data surpassing the results of two and a half decades of on-the-ground mapping, the archaeologists said. After three weeks of laboratory processing, the almost ten hours of laser measurements showed topographic detail over an area of 80 square miles, notably settlement patterns of grand architecture and modest house mounds, roadways and agricultural terraces
A prosthetic foot that mimics the muscle actions of real feet has been short-listed for the UK’s top engineering prize. Four projects are on the shortlist for the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award, worth £50,000. Other projects on the shortlist include a better landmine detector, high-speed satellite broadband and a greener way to make acrylic plastic. The overall winner of the prize will be announced on 7 June
The world’s largest invertebrate is not a fast and voracious predator as previously thought, say scientists. The colossal squid, a creature once linked to maritime myth and feared as a sea monster, is really a slow drifting animal that ambushes unwitting prey. That conclusion was reached by studying the physiology and feeding habits of other deep sea species and scaling up to the colossal squid’s huge size
New computer forensic tools will make it possible to recover more data from corrupted hard drives so long as the missing filles haven’t been overwritten. Tools designed to harvest images from disks even after they have been deleted from the file system can be adapted to seek other file formats including Word documents, says Nasir Memon, a professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University
Thanks to Monsanto Roundup, American agriculture is in quite a fix. Monsanto’s genetically modified seed that’s supposed to survive spraying with their weedkiller is struggling against the pesticide-resistant weeds that evolved as a result of their own product
Future solid state disks may finally be able to catch up with the large capacities of mechanical hard drives, thanks to an ingenious project by a scientist at the North Carolina State University. Dr Jay Narayan has developed a silicon storage chip that stores data in magnetic nanodots, or quantum dots; tiny structures that can measure just 6nm in diameter. Each nanoscale dot stores a single bit of data, but you can squeeze so many dots onto a small area of silicon that the university says that a single chip can store an unprecedented amount of data
Mammoths had more than woolly coats to protect them from the frigid conditions of their sub-zero stomping grounds, scientists have discovered. The extinct beasts had a form of antifreeze blood that kept their bodies supplied with oxygen in the sub-zero temperatures, according to a study of DNA extracted from 43,000-year-old mammoth remains
Movie director James Cameron, of Avatar and Titanic fame, is helping to build a 3-D camera for the next robotic rover that NASA will send to Mars. NASA announced this month that Cameron is working with Malin Space Science Systems Inc. of San Diego to build an updated camera that, if completed in time, will be installed on the Mars Science Laboratory rover, which has been dubbed Curiosity. The rover’s cameras will be the machine’s science-imaging workhorse
, according to the space agency. Curiosity is scheduled to be launched in 2011
Japanese scientists from Tokyo University have invented a new substance that consists of 95% water. Obtained by adding two grams of clay and a small quantity of some organic matter into normal water, this new substance is jelly-like and is considered proper for usage in medicine for the long-term to stick tissues together. The study period is scheduled to end in September 2010, if the scientists can succeed in increase the density of the substance, it can be used to produce ecologically clean plastic materials
A moth new to science and found nowhere else in the world has been formally recognised as living in the UK. The 3mm-long micro moth, which lives in Hembury Woods in Devon, was recognised as a new species this year. This week, the biologist who discovered it is presenting the Natural History Museum of London with one of the first known specimens. The receipt of this type
specimen will mark the official acceptance of the moth’s existence in the country. The tiny micro moth, which has a wingspan of just 6mm, was first spotted in 2004
Silk has made its way from the soft curves of the body to the spongy folds of the brain. Engineers have now designed silk-based electronics that stick to the surface of the brain, similar to the way a silk dress clings to the hips. The stretchable, ultrathin design would make for better brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), which record brain activity in paralyzed patients and translate thoughts into movements of computer cursors or robotic arms. Because it’s so thin and flexible, a silk-based device could reach regions of the brain that were previously inaccessible
Like microscopic inchworms, cancer cells slink away from tumours to travel and settle elsewhere in the body. Now, researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College report in today’s online edition of the journal Nature that new anti-cancer agents break down the looping gait these cells use to migrate, stopping them in their tracks
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