Tag Archives: science

NASA set the web aflame this weekend with a promise that they would have a “major announcement” about Mars today. Sadly, the big reveal is not about little green men – but it IS fascinating. Via the Guardian: Liquid water runs down canyons and crater walls over the summer months on Mars, according to researchers who say the discovery raises …

Every year my pal Mark King attends the AIDS Conference and sends us informative and entertaining recaps of the goings-on. In today’s report, King interviews the “Berlin Patient” – the first man considered have been cured of HIV. King also visits with some of the noted activists in attendance and reports on the #TransLivesMatter activists that took over the stage …

NASA’s Cassini–Huygens probe launched back in October 1997 and 18 years later it continues to provide fascinating discoveries. Via Science Daily: A global ocean lies beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s geologically active moon Enceladus, according to new research using data from NASA’s Cassini mission. Researchers found the magnitude of the moon’s very slight wobble, as it orbits Saturn, can …

NBC reports: A new set of images has been received from the New Horizons spacecraft, showing close-up images of Pluto taken on July 15 (and only just recently processed) while it was passing by the dwarf planet at high speed — but not so fast it couldn’t see terrain so varied it’s astonishing astronomers. “If an artist had painted this …

A Italian study has linked homophobia with psychoticism in a research paper that should have been titled “Duh.” Via the International Business Times: Led by researchers at the University of L’Aquila in Italy, the team asked 551 university students, aged between 15 and 30, to complete several psychometric tests to examine the psychological factors that could correlate with homophobia. Using …

Noted author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, who came out earlier this year, has died of cancer at the age of 82. USA Today reports: Sacks, 82, wrote in a Times essay in February that he was in the late stages of a melanoma that had spread to his liver. He died at his home in New York City, longtime personal …

TIME Magazine reports: The first drug to treat a lack of female sexual desire has been approved by federal authorities. The drug flibanserin, which has been coined “female Viagra,” was approved Tuesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The drug is intended to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD)—a persistent lack of libido—in premenopausal women. The agency had …

Poz.com reports: A group of 15 researchers and clinical investigators at Northwestern University received a $17.5 million grant to develop an implant capable of delivering meds that protect against HIV, according to a press release from the McCormick School of Engineering. The hope is that the implants would last for up to a year. The five-year project is underwritten by …

Via Science Magazine: A highly unusual clinical trial in Guinea has shown for the first time that an Ebola vaccine protects people from the deadly virus. The study, published online today by The Lancet, shows that the injection offered contacts of Ebola cases 100% protection starting 10 days after they received a single shot of the vaccine, which is produced …

Via the Charlotte News & Observer: Groundbreaking research conducted at UNC-Chapel Hill has demonstrated that potent drug cocktails can disable HIV to the point that the deadly virus can’t be transmitted to other people through sexual activity. The findings were announced Monday by AIDS researcher Myron Cohen at the eigth International AIDS Society Conference in Vancouver, Canada. Cohen, UNC’s chief …

NBC News reports: The world has made “extraordinary progress” against AIDS, slashing the rate of new infections by more than a third and saving nearly 8 million lives since 2000, a new report finds. Fifteen years of work to make sure more people get drugs that can keep them healthy and keep them from infecting others has had spectacular effects …

Via the New York Times: It was like New Year’s Eve in Times Square as the countdown clock ticked down to zero. “We’re going to do our 10-9-8 thing and you can get your flags out,” S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto told the people gathered here at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics …

Some YouTube commenters don’t think he really answered the question regarding “evolutionary sense.”

Via press release: The Academy concludes that reparative therapies aimed at “curing” or changing same-sex orientation to heterosexual orientation are pseudo-scientific, ineffective, unethical, abusive and harmful practices that pose serious threats to the dignity, autonomy and human rights as well as to the physical and mental health of individuals exposed to them. Based on sound scientific evidence, its commitment to …

VICE has launched a three-part series titled The Truvada Revolution.  A drug called Truvada is the first the FDA-approved means of preventing HIV infection. If an HIV-negative person takes the pill every day, they’re nearly 99 percent protected from contracting the virus. Controversy continues to surround the broad uptake of Truvada, but the landscape of safer sex and HIV-prevention changes …

The federal government has halted a large clinical trial on early HIV treatment because results already in conclusively show that newly diagnosed patients do best if they start on anti-retroviral therapy immediately. Via the New York Times: The study was stopped more than a year early because preliminary data already showed that those who got treatment immediately were 53 percent …

Poz.com reports: Daily Truvada as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against HIV takes five to seven days to reach top estimated effectiveness among men who have sex with men (MSM). High levels of protection are maintained for perhaps a week after the last dose. According to levels of drug detected in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), and comparisons of those results to …

Via the New York Times: Years ago, curing AIDS was considered so out of the question that some scientists dared not even mention the possibility. But in the latest sign that attitudes are changing, the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is teaming up with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to start a research institute and a company aimed …