No fleas on me

A chemical made by a fungus might hold the key to a new anti-flea treatment for dogs and cats. Writing in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Merck scientist Peter Meinke and his colleagues explain how they have developed an orally-active anti-flea and tick drug based on a chemical called nodu...

Stressed Men Take More Risks

Stressed men take more risks, while stressed women play it safe, according to research published in the Journal PLoS One this week. Nichole Lighthall, from the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology, asked volunteers to play a computer game designed to measure risk taking, ca...

A rush of blood to the head

We often talk about angry people as having had a metaphorical sudden rush of blood to the head, but new research from scientists in the US, published in the journal Cardiovascular Ultrasound suggests that it might actually be true. This is research by Tasneem Naqvi and Hahn Hyuhn, who were using ul...

Electric Cars too Quiet

Electric cars have been accused of being too quiet, and posing a risk to the vision impaired, and prompting the Japanese government to review whether to add a noise making device. Hybrid vehicles make very little noise when running on the batteries, and have become the country’s top selling cars in...

Liver cancer gene link

There are some interesting new results out this week about the link between Hepatitis B infection and cancer, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Hepatitis B infection is relatively rare in the West, but it's a big problem in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. And the bad thing ab...

The World Conference of Science Journalists

Earlier this week, it was the World Conference of Science Journalists. Nearly a thousand science writers and broadcasters from all over the world got together in Westminster, not at the houses of Westminster, but down just the road from there, to help each other out and to share some ideas and here...