Exposure to carcinogens in traffic emissions at particular lifetime points may increase the risk of developing breast cancer in women who are lifetime nonsmokers, a study by epidemiologists and geographers at the University at Buffalo has found.

Their study was conducted among women who lived in Erie and Niagara counties of New York State between 1996 and 2001. They found that higher exposure around the time of first menstruation to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), potential carcinogens found in traffic emissions, was associated with increased risk of premenopausal breast cancer.

In East Africa, where days of heavy rains and flooding have led to numerous deaths and entire villages being wiped out, locals are reporting an unprecedented rise in Somalia's Shabelle River and that a major water surge may be headed into the centre of the country, the United Nations said today.

New insights by Duke University Medical Center researchers as to how HIV evades the human immune system may offer a new approach for developing HIV vaccines. The findings suggest some HIV vaccines may have failed because they induce a class of antibodies that a patient's own immune system is programmed to destroy.

The Duke team discovered that certain broadly protective antibodies, which recognize and latch onto the HIV protein gp41, resemble antibodies made in autoimmune diseases. In most people, the immune system destroys these types of antibodies to prevent attacks against self.

By studying animals, Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that the antibiotic minocycline might help alleviate HIV's negative effects on the brain and central nervous system, problems that can develop even though antiretroviral therapy controls the virus elsewhere in the body.

Five monkeys infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a very close relative of HIV, and treated with minocycline had less damage to brain cells, less brain inflammation, and less virus in the central nervous system than six infected monkeys that received no treatment, the researchers report in the April 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Ophthalmologists at Rush University Medical Center implanted Artificial Silicon Retina (ASR) microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The implant is a silicon microchip 2mm in diameter and one-thousandth of an inch thick, less than the thickness of a human hair.

Four patients had surgery Tuesday, January 25. The fifth patient is scheduled for a later date.

Nonlinear Dynamics Ltd, a leading provider of bioinformatics solutions, today announced further details of its global OEM partnership with PerkinElmer, Inc. (NYSE: PKI), a leading provider of drug discovery, life science research and analytical solutions.