Risky sexual behavior and substance abuse have always orbited HIV but it isn't just shared needles; drugs like cocaine make people engage in lots of other risky behaviors.

The epidemiology of how HIV spreads is well know but relatively little research has been done into how drugs impact the body's defenses against the virus. A new paper examines how cocaine affects a unique population of immune cells called quiescent CD4 T cells, which are resistant to the virus that causes AIDS.

They found that cocaine makes the cells susceptible to infection with HIV, causing both significant infection and new production of the virus. 

Industry has made efforts to reuse or to transport shale gas wastewater to deep injection wells, but wastewater is still discharged into the environment, after being treated, in some states. 

In western Pennsylvania, water that comes from Marcellus shale is naturally high in salinity and radioactivity but a new Duke study examined the quality of shale gas wastewater resulting from hydraulic fracturing and found that the stream water above and below the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility disposal site that is derived from the Marcellus shale gas flowback water showed elevated levels of radioactivity, salts and metals.

High concentrations of some salts and metals were also observed in the stream water.

Where is 'sea level' and how far above sea level is a particular place located? 

Quite a lot of things may go wrong in bridge building and the inhabitants of the German and the Swiss parts of Laufenburg were looking forward to a new bridge over the Rhine, the High Rhine Bridge, when they were taken aback by an embarrassing error: The heights of the two bridge parts growing towards each other differed by 54 centimeters.

Researchers have managed to measure the internal pressure that enables the herpes virus to infect cells in the human body, a discovery which paves the way for the development of new medicines to combat viral infections and indicates ways to stop herpes infections in the future.

Are you on Team Quantum Dots or Team Nanowires when the topic of future nanoscale energy-harvesting technology in solar panels comes up?

10 percent of the US is left handed and that is a similar ratio to many populations around the world so it would seem to be biological.

But a new paper in the journal Heredity has ruled out a 'strong genetic determinant' in influencing handedness. 

Professor John Armour, Dr. Angus Davison (both The University of Nottingham) and Professor Chris McManus (University College London) conducted a twin study examining the whole genome of nearly 4,000 subjects from the London Twin Research Unit to compare left and right handed participants.