Dr. Éric A. Cohen, Director of the Human Retrovirology Research Unit at Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal, and his team have published a discovery that could lead to the development of a new class of drugs to combat HIV.

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) causes AIDS by depleting essential immune cells called CD4+T lymphocytes in infected individuals, resulting in a compromised immune system. At the center of this process is the HIV protein, viral protein R (Vpr), which stops infected CD4+T cells from dividing and as a consequence compromises their immune function.

In addition, by arresting cell division, Vpr helps HIV to harness the infected cell’s resources to enhance viral replication.

When a strand of DNA breaks in the body's cells, it normally does not take long until it has been repaired. Now researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have discovered a new mechanism that helps to explain how the cell performs these repairs.

The new results examine a phenomenon called 'cohesion', whereby two copies of a chromosome in the cell nucleus are held tightly together by a protein complex called cohesin. Cohesion fulfils an important function during cell division as the newly copied chromosomes, the sister chromatids, have to stay together until the right moment of separation. If the chromatids come apart too early, there is a risk of the daughter cells getting the wrong number of chromosomes, something that is often observed in tumor cells.

In an experiment modeled on the classic “Young’s double slit experiment” and published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, researchers have powerfully reinforced the understanding that surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) move as waves and follow analogous rules.

The demonstration reminds researchers and electronics designers that although SPPs move along a metal surface, rather than inside a wire or an optical fiber, they cannot magically overcome the size limitations of conventional optics.

Touted as the next wave of electronics miniaturization, plasmonics describes the movement of SPPs -- a type of electromagnetic wave that is bound to a metal surface by its interaction with surface electrons.

Chitin and Chitosan have been extracted from lobster waste and used in medicine and biomedicine by a team from the University of Havana. These researchers’ work has led to the development of a procedure to obtain surgical materials with great healing and antiseptic properties.

Chitin is a polymer very common in nature as part of animals’ and plants’ physical structures. Only cellulose is more abundant than chitin, which makes this compound a highly important renewable resource that can easily be found in arthropods, insects, arachnids, molluscs, fungus and algae.

Just in time for the weekend, this study from Dutch researcher Ingmar Franken says that while alcohol does not make good things any better it can make bad things a lot less worse. Previously researchers thought that alcohol primarily affected the 'reward' system in the brain. Franken found that was not so.

In the case of pleasant experiences alcohol was found to have hardly any influence. The ‘rosy glasses’ that alcohol is said to cause is therefore just a temporary filter for the more 'sober' issues in life.

It turns out they do.* And it can tell us a lot about learning.

In fact, "competitive fandom" is such a growing field that University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professors Erica and Rich Halverson are spending their summer studying something they love - fantasy baseball, and why people play such games.

It's an area ripe for analysis. Sixteen million adults played fantasy sports in 2006, spending an average of just under $500 a year and generating an economic impact of more than $1 billion a year, according to the Fantasy Sports Industry Trade Association. The majority of those first began playing the game offline and spend about three hours per week managing their teams, according to the trade group.