Muscular dystrophy - genomics raises hopes
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is a degenerative disease that strikes around 1 in 3,000 boys every year. Symptoms appear when they are toddlers and most do not live beyond their early twenties. There is currently no effective treatment, but now
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some new work is giving hope. Professor Dame Kay Davies from the University of Oxford explains how they can trick muscle cells into thinking they are in the developmental stage so they produce utrophin, a protein that can completely remove all muscular dystrophy symptoms. Following successful animal trials, human trials have started and she is very optimistic about the future.
Cashing in on carbon capture
The UK could soon start selling space in saltwater aquifers under the North Sea to store waste Carbon Dioxide. Stuart Haszeldine and colleagues at the Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage believe Carbon capture and storage offers a quick reduction of CO2 emissions, and buys time for nations to research renewable energy sources. Oh, and it´s a nice little earner for those that own the underground areas into which the liquefied CO2 will be pumped.
The cooperation conundrum
Any system of cooperation is vulnerable to cheats - something that vexed Charles Darwin and still causes problems today. Bob May discusses how religion might make us less likely to cheat and how our cheating instincts could cause problems at the Copenhagen conference on climate change in December 2009.
Creating art with bugs
At the British Association Science Festival in Guilford, Surrey, artists Heather Barnett and Anne Brodie explain how to use slime moulds and bioluminescent bacteria to produce works of art.
Green light for green racing car
Kerry Kirwan explains how to build a Formula One racing car with a top speed of 135 mph out of old carrots and how to power it with waste chocolate, cheese and wine. He hopes that this green car building technology will filter down to domestic vehicles one day.
Kiwi bees to the rescue
A huge decline in bumblebee numbers in the UK has led scientists to look to New Zealand to find replacements. Species introduced from the UK to New Zealand 120 years ago are being brought home by Nikki Gammans to help pollinate native wildflowers, fruits and vegetables.
Breaking the reproductive mould
A cyanobacterium and a fungus have become the unlikely subjects of an inter-kingdom porno movie. It challenges our views on mating and gene transfer - Lynn Margulis explains how this links to symbionts, the mitochondria in our own cells and that gene transfer between different organisms is more common than most people think.
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