What Tim’s talking about on radio – 10 August
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about the extinction of Australia’s megafauna; regenerating hearts and limbs; the essence of being a sponge; childhood obesity; and more…
Biology
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What Tim’s talking about on radio – 4 August
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about the decline of tiny seaweeds in the ocean; diet and disease; orang-utan couch-potatoes; high tech odour prevention; and more…
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What Tim's talking about on radio – 4 August
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about the decline of tiny seaweeds in the ocean; diet and disease; orang-utan couch-potatoes; high tech odour prevention; and more…
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Can we feed nine billion people by 2050?
IUPAC Plenary Six and Seven, Wednesday 9:45am Chris Leaver, University of Oxford The world’s population has more than doubled in the past 50 years and the relative abundance of food has kept pace, with the poorest benefiting most. Yet one billion people are malnourished and live below the poverty line.
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Eye drug finds new life in Geelong diabetes trial
People with diabetes invited to participate in trial Media release: Geelong, Friday 23 April 2010 Modern drugs can stabilise adult onset diabetes but with some serious side effects. A Geelong-based company, Verva Pharmaceuticals, has a new approach – a drug used for many years to treat eye disease. In animal testing, the drug restored sensitivity…
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World’s tiniest scales
Measuring the contents of a single cell: the nano-machinery of life Scientists are developing a tiny set of scales that will be capable of weighing each of the 100 million or so different proteins in a human cell.
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A clean, safe vaccine booster
Most vaccines need a ‘magic’ booster or adjuvant to boost our immune response to the vaccine. But the best adjuvants are too toxic for human use.
Now NZ scientists believe they have created a powerful and safe adjuvant and are trialling it as part of a new cancer vaccine.
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Counting viruses and mustering molecules
How many viruses are there in your blood? How many dangerous nano-particles in your car exhaust?
qViro is a revolutionary New Zealand invention that offers the potential to quickly and cheaply answer these questions. It’s a feature of Ausbiotech – the national biotechnology conference – being held in Melbourne today.
The beta version is the size of a coffee grinder and can muster and count the number of viruses in a sample in minutes. This is a truly portable, desktop instrument that is powered from the USB drive of a computer.
Its competitors are the size of washing machines, may take days to get a result, or cost upwards of $50,000.
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A hero of women and science: 2008 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science
Ian Frazer Follow this link to Ian Frazer’s acceptance speech: http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=16238 Ian Frazer has created four vaccines to fight cervical cancer. Two of them-Gardasil and Cervarix-are now on the market. Both prevent infection with the virus responsible for most cervical cancers. The other two vaccines are in clinical trials and are designed to treat women…
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The miracle of milk revealed online
Milk is complex, and understanding its molecular biology is a difficult but rewarding challenge. Not only are human and cow milk of huge social and economic importance, the milk of other animals reveals much about the evolution and development of mammals – including us. Victorian researchers have created a unique computing resource to share information…