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brdgtTB test 'could save many lives'
BBC NEWS
A new diagnostic test for active tuberculosis infection could potentially save million of lives.
The test, developed by Imperial College London, has won a £10,000 award for medical innovation.
By growing samples in a special liquid, and analysing them with a sophisticated microscope, the TB bacteria can be identified in days, rather than weeks.
TB is the world's leading curable infectious killer, claiming 5,000 lives a day.
If left untreated, almost 70% of people with TB will die.
A single person with infectious TB can infect between 10-15 people a year.
The number of cases in the UK has increased by 25% over the last 10 years.
Drug impact
Not only does the new test enable the TB bacteria to be identified more quickly, it allows doctors to add various drugs to the liquid media in which the sample is grown to determine which would be of benefit in tackling the infection.
This is particularly important given the emergence of multi-drug resistant strains of the disease.
Dr David Moore, who developed the test, said: "Nearly two million people in the world are dying needlessly from TB, largely because of inadequate diagnostic resources.
"This is a tragedy because the disease is completely curable."
The test, currently being developed in Lima, Peru, has beaten 1,200 other entries to win the top prize at the Medical Futures Innovation Awards 2005.
The judges, chaired by Professor Sally Davies, director of research & development at the Department of Health, choose Dr Moore's test because of its simplicity and its huge potential to have a global impact.
Dr Andy Goldberg, founder of Medical Futures, said: "This innovation could have a profound impact on global healthcare delivery.
"It demonstrates the ingenuity of an innovator in taking a simple laboratory finding and applying it to meet a widespread clinical need.
"It's just what Alexander Fleming did in 1928 with Penicillin."
Paul Sommerfeld, of the charity TB Alert, told the BBC News website he was "very excited" by the test, but that more finance was needed to develop it further.
He said: "We desperately need new drug and diagnostic tools for TB.
"Despite the fact that the disease kills millions of people every year we are still using drugs that were developed about 40 years ago, and a diagnostic test that was developed in the 1880s."
# A UK company, Oxford Immunotec, also won a Medical Futures Innovation for a new blood test for diagnosing TB infection called T-spot.
Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4414396.stm
Remains of 'Godzilla' croc found
BBC NEWS
The fossilised remains of a crocodile that ruled the oceans 140 million years ago have been discovered in Patagonia.
Scientists have nicknamed the creature Godzilla, because of its dinosaur-like snout and jagged teeth.
The US-Argentine team of researchers believes the animal was a ferocious predator, feeding on other marine reptiles and large sea creatures.
The species is formally known as Dakosaurus andiniensis and has been unveiled in the journal Science.
Strange morphology
Unlike modern crocodiles, it lived entirely in the water, and had fins instead of legs. It measured 4m (13ft) from nose to tail and its jaws alone were a third of a metre (1ft) long.
Crocodiles became widespread during the Cretaceous Period (146 to 65 million years ago).
Other marine crocodiles alive then had long, slim snouts and needle-like teeth, which they used to catch small fish and molluscs. But this creature had a dinosaur-like snout and large, serrated teeth.
"These sorts of features are also present in carnivorous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex ," said co-researcher Diego Pol, of Ohio State University in Columbus, US.
"It shows a really unexpected morphology that nobody thought could be present in a marine crocodile."
Family tree
Palaeontologist Zulma Gasparini, of the National University of La Plata, Argentina, first came across a "Godzilla" specimen in 1996 in the Neuquen Basin, once a deep tropical bay of the Pacific Ocean.
But it was little more than a fragment and provided few clues to the creature's nature and habits.
However, two further specimens have recently been discovered, including a complete fossilised skull.
Computer analysis of the bones shows D. andiniensis belongs on the family tree of crocodiles. Scientists believe it evolved a different feeding strategy from its contemporaries.
The shape and size of its jaws and teeth suggest it hunted large marine vertebrates such as the giant marine reptile, Ichthyosaurus , rather than small fish.
Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4424734.stm
Hormones make women safer drivers
BBC NEWS
The female hormone oestrogen could give women the edge when it comes to tasks such as safe driving, say researchers.
Tests showed attention span and ability to learn rules were far better among women than men.
The Bradford University scientists told a hormone conference in London how tasks requiring mental flexibility favour women over men.
A woman's oestrogen levels may prime the part of the brain involved in such skills - the frontal lobe - they said.
They asked 43 men and women aged 18-35 to perform a battery of neuropsychological tests that assessed skills such as spatial recognition memory, rule learning, attention, planning and motor control.
The women were far better at being able to shift their attention from one stimulus to another, making it easier for them to perform everyday actions like driving and reading.
This might explain why girls find it easier than boys to concentrate at school and why women are more careful drivers, the researchers hypothesise.
Speaking at the Society for Endocrinology meeting, they said: "This study demonstrates that tasks requiring mental flexibility favour women over men, an area previously not considered to elicit strong sex differences.
"Driving could be an example of how this is applied to everyday life.
"Our study suggests that oestrogens may positively influence neuronal activity in the frontal lobes, the area of the brain stimulated by tasks of attention and rule learning, which could explain the female advantage when performing these tasks."
Over-simplified
However, other researchers in the past have suggested that spatial skills such as map reading and parking may be difficult for some women because they had too little testosterone in the womb.
Dr Peter Marsh, author of Driving Passion: The Psychology of the Car, believes men and women have inherent differences which manifest themselves behind the wheel.
He says men like risk-taking, the thrill of the chase and sensation-seeking, while women are more cautious.
Women's accidents tend to be at roundabouts and T-junctions but at slower speeds than men, who are involved in more serious crashes because they can't brake quickly enough.
Dr Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Northumbria who has researched spatial awareness and gender differences, said: "The thing about driving is that it is not a single skill. There are many skills involved. There is a motor skill, there is rule learning, attention, spatial awareness and confidence as well.
"What we tend to find is that in certain aspects men are better - things like navigation, spatial awareness and confidence. But they have more accidents.
"For things like attention, there is evidence that females are better.
"There is a female advantage on certain frontal cortex tasks. We know that this brain area has oestrogen receptors so it is sensitive to this hormone.
"But we have to be cautious. The researchers have not looked at driving tests, so it is a bit of a leap for them to extrapolate.
"We would like to see more research on driving ability."
Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4406176.stm
BBC NEWS
A new diagnostic test for active tuberculosis infection could potentially save million of lives.
The test, developed by Imperial College London, has won a £10,000 award for medical innovation.
By growing samples in a special liquid, and analysing them with a sophisticated microscope, the TB bacteria can be identified in days, rather than weeks.
TB is the world's leading curable infectious killer, claiming 5,000 lives a day.
If left untreated, almost 70% of people with TB will die.
A single person with infectious TB can infect between 10-15 people a year.
The number of cases in the UK has increased by 25% over the last 10 years.
Drug impact
Not only does the new test enable the TB bacteria to be identified more quickly, it allows doctors to add various drugs to the liquid media in which the sample is grown to determine which would be of benefit in tackling the infection.
This is particularly important given the emergence of multi-drug resistant strains of the disease.
Dr David Moore, who developed the test, said: "Nearly two million people in the world are dying needlessly from TB, largely because of inadequate diagnostic resources.
"This is a tragedy because the disease is completely curable."
The test, currently being developed in Lima, Peru, has beaten 1,200 other entries to win the top prize at the Medical Futures Innovation Awards 2005.
The judges, chaired by Professor Sally Davies, director of research & development at the Department of Health, choose Dr Moore's test because of its simplicity and its huge potential to have a global impact.
Dr Andy Goldberg, founder of Medical Futures, said: "This innovation could have a profound impact on global healthcare delivery.
"It demonstrates the ingenuity of an innovator in taking a simple laboratory finding and applying it to meet a widespread clinical need.
"It's just what Alexander Fleming did in 1928 with Penicillin."
Paul Sommerfeld, of the charity TB Alert, told the BBC News website he was "very excited" by the test, but that more finance was needed to develop it further.
He said: "We desperately need new drug and diagnostic tools for TB.
"Despite the fact that the disease kills millions of people every year we are still using drugs that were developed about 40 years ago, and a diagnostic test that was developed in the 1880s."
# A UK company, Oxford Immunotec, also won a Medical Futures Innovation for a new blood test for diagnosing TB infection called T-spot.
Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4414396.stm
Remains of 'Godzilla' croc found
BBC NEWS
The fossilised remains of a crocodile that ruled the oceans 140 million years ago have been discovered in Patagonia.
Scientists have nicknamed the creature Godzilla, because of its dinosaur-like snout and jagged teeth.
The US-Argentine team of researchers believes the animal was a ferocious predator, feeding on other marine reptiles and large sea creatures.
The species is formally known as Dakosaurus andiniensis and has been unveiled in the journal Science.
Strange morphology
Unlike modern crocodiles, it lived entirely in the water, and had fins instead of legs. It measured 4m (13ft) from nose to tail and its jaws alone were a third of a metre (1ft) long.
Crocodiles became widespread during the Cretaceous Period (146 to 65 million years ago).
Other marine crocodiles alive then had long, slim snouts and needle-like teeth, which they used to catch small fish and molluscs. But this creature had a dinosaur-like snout and large, serrated teeth.
"These sorts of features are also present in carnivorous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex ," said co-researcher Diego Pol, of Ohio State University in Columbus, US.
"It shows a really unexpected morphology that nobody thought could be present in a marine crocodile."
Family tree
Palaeontologist Zulma Gasparini, of the National University of La Plata, Argentina, first came across a "Godzilla" specimen in 1996 in the Neuquen Basin, once a deep tropical bay of the Pacific Ocean.
But it was little more than a fragment and provided few clues to the creature's nature and habits.
However, two further specimens have recently been discovered, including a complete fossilised skull.
Computer analysis of the bones shows D. andiniensis belongs on the family tree of crocodiles. Scientists believe it evolved a different feeding strategy from its contemporaries.
The shape and size of its jaws and teeth suggest it hunted large marine vertebrates such as the giant marine reptile, Ichthyosaurus , rather than small fish.
Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4424734.stm
Hormones make women safer drivers
BBC NEWS
The female hormone oestrogen could give women the edge when it comes to tasks such as safe driving, say researchers.
Tests showed attention span and ability to learn rules were far better among women than men.
The Bradford University scientists told a hormone conference in London how tasks requiring mental flexibility favour women over men.
A woman's oestrogen levels may prime the part of the brain involved in such skills - the frontal lobe - they said.
They asked 43 men and women aged 18-35 to perform a battery of neuropsychological tests that assessed skills such as spatial recognition memory, rule learning, attention, planning and motor control.
The women were far better at being able to shift their attention from one stimulus to another, making it easier for them to perform everyday actions like driving and reading.
This might explain why girls find it easier than boys to concentrate at school and why women are more careful drivers, the researchers hypothesise.
Speaking at the Society for Endocrinology meeting, they said: "This study demonstrates that tasks requiring mental flexibility favour women over men, an area previously not considered to elicit strong sex differences.
"Driving could be an example of how this is applied to everyday life.
"Our study suggests that oestrogens may positively influence neuronal activity in the frontal lobes, the area of the brain stimulated by tasks of attention and rule learning, which could explain the female advantage when performing these tasks."
Over-simplified
However, other researchers in the past have suggested that spatial skills such as map reading and parking may be difficult for some women because they had too little testosterone in the womb.
Dr Peter Marsh, author of Driving Passion: The Psychology of the Car, believes men and women have inherent differences which manifest themselves behind the wheel.
He says men like risk-taking, the thrill of the chase and sensation-seeking, while women are more cautious.
Women's accidents tend to be at roundabouts and T-junctions but at slower speeds than men, who are involved in more serious crashes because they can't brake quickly enough.
Dr Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Northumbria who has researched spatial awareness and gender differences, said: "The thing about driving is that it is not a single skill. There are many skills involved. There is a motor skill, there is rule learning, attention, spatial awareness and confidence as well.
"What we tend to find is that in certain aspects men are better - things like navigation, spatial awareness and confidence. But they have more accidents.
"For things like attention, there is evidence that females are better.
"There is a female advantage on certain frontal cortex tasks. We know that this brain area has oestrogen receptors so it is sensitive to this hormone.
"But we have to be cautious. The researchers have not looked at driving tests, so it is a bit of a leap for them to extrapolate.
"We would like to see more research on driving ability."
Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4406176.stm
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-12 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-12 09:37 pm (UTC)*headdesk* I thought Brits were supposed to be better writers than Americans.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-12 10:07 pm (UTC)