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The links between HIV transmission and the degree to which people are able to adopt realistic plans to achieve future projects, in other words, hope, have been overlooked in policies to tackle HIV/AIDS. New research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) argues that hope is a powerful tool in the battle to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Testing men for elevated levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in the blood -- the gold standard screening test for prostate cancer -- may be biased against obese men, whose PSA levels tend to be deceptively low. And this bias may be creating more aggressive cancers in this population by delaying diagnosis, according to a new study led by investigators in the Duke Prostate Center and the Durham Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center.

Long established medical interventions to help couples with infertility problems do not seem to improve fertility, according to a study published on bmj.com today.

These findings challenge current practice in the UK and national guidelines should be reviewed in the light of this evidence, say the authors.

August 8, 2008 – Cone-rod dystrophies (CRDs) are a group of eye diseases caused by progressive loss of the photoreceptor cells in the retina. In a study published online in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers have identified a novel mutation in a gene associated with CRD in dogs, raising hopes that potential therapies can be developed for people suffering from these eye disorders.

DERMATOLOGY: Possible new treatment for psoriasis

New data, generated by Thomas Jung and colleagues, at Novartis Exploratory Development, Switzerland, have indicated that a drug known currently as AEB071 can reduce the clinical symptoms of psoriasis, a chronic, currently incurable autoimmune skin disease.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida College of Pharmacy researchers have discovered a marine compound off the coast of Key Largo that inhibits cancer cell growth in laboratory tests, a finding they hope will fuel the development of new drugs to better battle the disease.

Most stroke patients can't recall when their symptoms started or do not arrive at the hospital in a timely manner, so they cannot be considered for time-dependent therapies such as the clot-busting drug tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), researchers reported in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

In chemistry as in life, threesomes are not known to break up neatly.

And while open-minded thinkers have insisted that clean three-way splits do happen, nobody had actually witnessed one – until now.

A paper in the Aug. 8 issue of Science provides the first hard evidence for the simultaneous break-up of a molecule into three equal parts.

Previous studies of so-called "concerted break-ups" had only suggested their existence, said co-author Anna Krylov, a theoretical chemist at the University of Southern California.

PROVIDENCE, R.I – Approximately half of all new HIV infections in the United States result from the sexual risk behaviors of men who have sex with men. Now, a new study led by a researcher at The Miriam Hospital provides additional insight into which of these men are most likely to transmit HIV to others, potentially paving the way for the development of more targeted prevention programs.

Refrigerators and other cooling devices may one day lose their compressors and coils of piping and become solid state, according to Penn State researchers who are investigating electrically induced heat effects of some ferroelectric polymers.

"This is the first step in the development of an electric field refrigeration unit," says Qiming Zhang, distinguished professor of electrical engineering. "For the future, we can envision a flat panel refrigerator. No more coils, no more compressors, just solid polymer with appropriate heat exchangers."

A newly discovered function for a hormone in melons suggests it plays a role in how sexual systems evolve in plants. The study, conducted by French and American scientists, appears in the latest issue of the journal Science.

People with Crohn's disease (CD) are seven-fold more likely to have in their gut tissues the bacterium that causes a digestive-tract disease in cattle called Johne's disease. The role this bacterium may or may not play in causing CD is a top research priority, according to a new report released by the American Academy of Microbiology. The reports points out that the cause of CD is unknown, and the possible role of this bacterium—which could conceivably be passed up the food chain to people—has received too little attention from the research community.

A pre-cancerous condition linked to chronic acid reflux often gets overlooked. Can the medical community do a better job intervening? Researchers from the Hutchinson-MRC Research Centre in Cambridge think so.

The road from disease research to disease cure isn't usually a smooth one. One role which bridges the laboratory and the clinic is that of the "clinician-scientist" – a doctor who understands disease both in the patient and in the Petri dish. Yet an editorial published in Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM), http://dmm.biologists.org, contends that clinician-scientists in the UK and elsewhere are not prospering, but rather are "under threat in a hostile environment".

Researchers have shown that they can effectively tackle HIV-1 with small bits of gene-silencing RNA by delivering them directly to infected T cells, the major targets of the virus. While earlier studies had shown such a strategy could fight against many viruses including HIV-1, the new study in mice with human blood cells, so-called humanized mice, is the first to demonstrate an effective approach to systemic delivery in a living animal.