NEWS:-
ORAL SEX LINKED TO MOUTH CANCEROral sex can lead to oral cancers. That's the conclusion of researchers who have proved what has long been suspected, that the human papilloma virus (HPV) can cause oral cancers. The study compared 1670 patients who had oral cancer with healthy volunteers. The strain of HPV seen most commonly in cervical cancer (HPV16) was found in most of the oral cancers. The people with oral cancer containing HPV16 were three times as likely to report having had oral sex as those whose tumour did not contain HPV16. The risk, thankfully, is only around 1 in 10,000 people developing oral tumours each year. Page 10
SUPERFLU IS BEING BREWED IN THE LABA team of researchers in the US have told New Scientist they are tweaking the genes of the H5N1 bird flu virus to see if they can turn it into a strain capable of spreading from human to human. These researchers and other groups considering similar experiments argue that the work is needed to answer crucial questions about the nature of the flu virus. Others disagree, saying the work is reckless and could risk creating a virus that could kill tens or hundreds of millions if it got out of the lab. Pages 6-7
FIRST ROBOT POWERED BY MUSCLE POWERResearchers in a Los Angeles lab have for the first time used living muscle tissue to propel a micromachine. The team have used heart muscle fibres to propel a silicon microrobot as the muscle contracts and relaxes. The research was initially funded by NASA to design "musclebots" that could one day repair micrometeorite punctures on spacecraft. But the hope is that the technology will have other future applications such as helping paralysed people to breathe without the help of a ventilator. Page 23
BATTERYLESS IMPLANTS TO MONITOR HEARTMiniature sensors, the size of a grain of rice, might soon be implanted into the heart of patients with congestive heart failure. The new implant, developed in the US, is batteryless and will allow doctors to measure blood pressure inside the heart more frequently than the current method, which involves inserting a catheter into the heart via an artery. Page 14
BIG BROTHER KEEPS EYE ON LAB ANIMALSA Big Brother-type system could monitor the behaviour and well-being of lab animals 24 hours a day. The system, being developed by a team at the University of California, consists of a small computer with built-in camera attached to the side of a cage. Video footage can be sent wirelessly from hundreds of cages to a main computer. The system means the animals do not need to be removed from their cages for behavioural experiments, which can cause stress and confuse results. Pages 12-13
CONTINUED"¦
MAGIC CUBE CONJURES STORIES FROM THIN AIRA novel interactive approach to telling children's stories has been developed by researchers in Singapore. The Magic Story Cube is an updated version of the standard "magic cube" toy made up of wooden or plastic blocks that can be unfolded in a variety of ways to tell different stories. To watch the story, the user wears a virtual reality headset which is plugged into a computer together with an attached camera. The user follows numbers and arrows to unfold the cube, and the computer superimposes audio and animated 3D video clips, which tell the story. Page 22
SALMON CRISIS IN NORWAYSalmon stocks in Norway are under threat from a deadly parasite being spread by record numbers of a trout-salmon hybrid. Biologists fear the hybrid fish will wander from stream to stream spreading the parasite, and are calling for increased efforts to sterilise the nation's rivers with a poison that kills the parasite. Page 14
SHORT STORY : MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE"¦TVA TV set that becomes a mirror at the flick of a switch will go on sale in the UK next month. The screen, developed by Philips of the Netherlands, is covered with a thin semi-reflective sheet and mounted in a picture frame. Page 22
FEATURES:-
DOWN WITH THE FLU?Experts fear they are dealing with a race against time with the bird flu (H5N1) currently rampaging across Asia. If H5N1 mutates or hybridises with a human flu virus, it could develop into a strain as deadly as the one that killed 40 million people in 1918. The good news is researchers now have a vaccine to defeat this killer. But will manufacturing companies be ready for mass production if a pandemic strikes, and who will get it? Pages 36-39
WE CAN REBUILD THEM"¦Today we are on the verge of an important technological leap in prosthetic limbs, which should transform the lives of people who have lost arms or legs. The world's first bionic limb, which is surprisingly close, will be wired directly into the nervous system so that recipients will be able to move them with their mind and feel lifelike sensations from them. Pages 26-29
CHAOTIC HEAVENSUntil now planetary scientists have ignored the occasional extra gravitational pull on our planet when Jupiter and Saturn's orbits are in alignment around the sun. But a team of researchers believe this event causes chaos in the solar system whenever it happens, unleashing asteroid storms. They have calculated that a burst of planetary chaos occurred 65 million years ago and could have been responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs. Pages 32-35
DARK SECRET OF THE LAKEWhen the Nile perch was introduced to Lake Victoria in the 1950s and 1960s, the numbers of the lake's native cichlid fish plummeted rapidly. Now the lake faces another problem - nutrient pollution - which combined with the predatory perch has diminished the diversity and numbers of cichlids even further. Researchers are worried that what has happened to Lake Victoria could happen to other lakes in Africa. Pages 40-43
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NewScientist is the world's leading science and technology news weekly, boasting a circulation of 145,000. The magazine is now available to readers worldwide, with US, Australian and Russian editions of NewScientist now being published.
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