BREAKING: Nanoparticles loaded with bee venom kill HIV

Nanoparticles carrying a toxin found in bee venom can destroy human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) while leaving surrounding cells unharmed, researchers atWashington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown. The finding is an important step toward developing a vaginal gel that may prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

“Our hope is that in places where HIV is running rampant, people could use this gel as a preventive [...]

STUDY: 10,000 germ species live in and on healthy people

WASHINGTON (AP) — They live on your skin, up your nose, in your gut – enough bacteria, fungi and other microbes that collected together could weigh, amazingly, a few pounds.

Now scientists have mapped just which critters normally live in or on us and where, calculating that healthy people can share their bodies with more than 10,000 species of microbes.

Don’t say “eeew” just yet. Many of these organisms work to keep [...]

Why you shouldn’t even bother trying to remember last night: Drunken blackouts are caused by alcohol switching off brain’s memory function

Alcohol ‘switches’ off brain region that encodes memory – and some are more vulnerable than others
Not necessarily because people drink more

Waking up after a heavy night’s drinking and being fuzzy about what happened is an experience many people have had.

It’s often said that alcohol killing off brain cells is behind the blackouts, but according to a study what’s actually happening is that booze is preventing new memories being recorded in [...]