Electronics from the printer

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Hope for a rabies eradication strategy in Africa

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The global impact of climate change on biodiversity

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When three undergraduates set off on an expedition in 1965 to trap moths on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, little did they realise that they were establishing the groundwork for a study of the impacts of climate change.

New research led by the University of York has repeated the survey 42 years later, and found that, on average, species had moved uphill by about 67 metres over the intervening years to cope with changes in climate.

Many of China's 140 million old people find the crowd to be lonely

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IT has 20 per cent of the world's population with 1.4bn people – but China's rapid economic and social change has caused its pensioners to feel lonely and alienated, a new study suggests.

Although capitalism has brought prosperity and increased political power to China, it has also caused the weakening of a traditional society that had collectivism and strong family ties at its heart.

Infidelity produces faster sperm

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Until now, it has been difficult to prove that fast-swimming sperms have an advantage when it comes to fertilizing an egg. But now a research team at Uppsala University can demonstrate that unfaithful females of the cichlid fish species influence the males’ sperms. Increased competition leads to both faster and larger sperms, and the research findings now being published in the scientific journal PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, thus show that the much mythologized size factor does indeed count.

Baffling the body into accepting transplants

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An unexpected discovery made by a Sydney scientist has potential to alter the body's response to anything it perceives as not 'self', such as a tissue or organ transplant.

Stacey Walters, an immunology researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, has found that by greatly boosting the levels of the hormone BAFF in mice, it is possible to alter their immune systems so that they will accept tissue transplants without the need for any immunosuppression.

The findings have just been published in the Journal of Immunology.

Technology improves treatment options for drug users

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Melbourne, Australia, — 19 January 2009 — Australia's leading scientific journal in the substance use area, the Drug and Alcohol Review – published by Wiley-Blackwell, has released a special issue on the use of new technologies in the treatment of drug problems. The issue highlights the use of mobile phones, Internet and computers to treat drug use problems.

South African policy on adolescents' rights to access condoms is causing confusion

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In 2007, South Africa's new Children's Act came into effect, granting children 12 years and older a host of rights relating to reproductive health, including the right to access condoms. But current policies allow individual schools to decide whether or not to give out condoms—policies that two researchers, writing in this week's PLoS Medicine, say could damage the health of the country's youth.

Stop traffic crashes: Switch on the lights

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Street lighting provides a simple, low cost means of stemming the global epidemic of road traffic death and injury. Low income countries should consider installing more lights, and high income countries should think carefully before turning any off to reduce carbon emissions, is the advice from a new Cochrane Review.

Predicting politics: Professors model prediction markets

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Political prediction markets -- in which participants buy and sell "contracts" based on who they think will win an election -- accurately predicted Barack Obama's 2008 victory. Now Northwestern University researchers have determined that these markets behave similar to financial markets, except when traders' partisan feelings get in the way.

That was the case in the 2000 presidential election, where the researchers found that partisan feeling was so strong that it influenced trading.