A University of Warwick physicist has uncovered how female cells are able to choose randomly between their two X chromosomes and why that choice is always lucky.

Human males have both a X and a Y chromosome but females have two X chromosomes. This means that in an early stage in the development of a woman’s fertilised egg the cells need to silence one of those two X chromosomes. This process is crucial to survival and problems with the process are related to serious genetic diseases.

By precisely controlling billions of individual electrons every second, they hope to develop new computing systems and increase the security of digital communication.

Much like the conveyor belt in a production plant, NPL’s electron surf machine delivers electrons one by one in a reliable steady stream at a rate of more than a billion a second. Whilst small streams of electrons can already be produced, until now no one has found a way to deliver them in a controlled fashion at such a high rate.

A large study has found that black Medicare patients are less likely than white patients to receive blood vessel opening procedures such as angioplasty following a heart attack, whether they are admitted to hospitals that provide or do not provide these procedures, but also experience higher mortality rates at 1 year, according to a study in the June 13 issue of JAMA.

Sleep disorders are common, costly and treatable, but often remain undiagnosed and untreated. Unrecognized sleep disorders adversely affect personal health and may lead to chronic sleep loss, which, in turn, increases the risk of accidents and injuries.

These problems are exacerbated in shift workers such as police officers, who may experience chronic sleep loss due to their schedules. A sampling of police officers shows a high incidence of sleep disorders among the members of this profession, according to a research abstract presented at SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).

he first and only over-the-counter product for weight loss approved by the Food and Drug Administration will be available Friday, June 15.

Orlistat, known by the brand name Alli, works by decreasing the amount of fat absorbed by the body. It is the OTC version of Xenical, a prescription weight loss pill. The good news: Orlistat has been tested and the prescription version has been used since 1999.

Using an ocean of data, sophisticated mathematical models and supercomputing resources, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are putting climate models to the test with particular focus on weather extremes.

Ultimately, the new methodology developed by Auroop Ganguly and colleagues could help determine to what extent there is a connection between human activity and climate change.

A chemist at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) is looking for unusual structures in snake venom and plans to prove their medical effectiveness.

What in the 1950s led to the development of Captopril, a drug for the treatment of hypertension, is being continued in an interesting new chapter with the analysis of venom from South American pit vipers and tropical rattlesnakes.

This column begins a new feature for this blog.  Every week or two, for the near future, I plan to have an interview with a well respected scientist or thinker on the subject of energy.  Regular readers of this blog know that I believe that facing and solving the multiple issues concerning energy is the single most pressing problem that we face as a species.  There is a lot of media coverage about energy, alternative energy and global warming, but what has been missing is the knowledge and point of view of scientists, at least in the main stream media.  What do the best and b

Scientists at the University of Portsmouth are using the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence to develop the world's first thinking car wheel.

The 'smart' wheel is being developed under a £200K Department of Trade and Industry-funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project with Hampshire-based company PML Flightlink Ltd.

The era in which standard serology tests divided populations into two basic blood groups, ABO and Rh, may soon be a thing of the past. Nearly a century after blood group analysis began, new technologies for genotyping of blood offer a far more accurate picture of blood groups, experts reported at the 12th Congress of the European Hematology Association.