An experimental vaccine appears to give monkeys some protection against a version of HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. Scientists say the research gives big clues about the most essential elements needed to develop a successful HIV vaccine for humans. In the study, published today in the journal Nature, scientists gave rhesus monkeys a vaccine against SIV, the monkey version of HIV. The monkeys were then exposed to a strain of the SIV, a difficult-to-treat strain that was different than the one used to create the vaccine. The monkeys that were vaccinated seemed to be partially protected against the virus, which reduced their susceptibility to infection by 80 percent. When the monkeys did become infected, the amount of the virus that appeared in their blood was substantially lower than monkeys that were not vaccinated. The successful vaccines all contained an essential element, called Env, which helps the virus bind to the antibodies that can destroy it. (ABCNews.com)

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When it comes to search and rescue operations, developers are always coming up with innovative new ways to reach survivors. Breath-sniffing electro dogs, Gumby doing the robot limbo and a debris-swimming robot inspired by the sandfish lizard have all been recent prototypes designed to save the day.The latest project comes from a team of computer and electrical engineers from the University of Michigan who are mounting miniature cameras on the backs of small insects. Researchers believe the insect’s ability to get into small spaces could help locate people faster.Led by professor Khalil Najafi, the project’s technology is designed to take advantage of the insect’s kinetic energy to power microphones and cameras mounted to the insects. Najafi’s team has already developed a device that can harness the energy of the green June beetle’s wing movement. Next, the team wants to put tiny generators on the beetle’s wings to create enough power to fully operate a microphone and camera. (DiscoveryNews.com)

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A Maryland man lost while hiking on New Year’s Eve is thanking modern technology for his rescue, MyFoxDC reports. Christopher Tkacik wasn’t alone out in the woods, he had his best friend and hiking companion with him, his dog named Boo. The pair are back home in Mount Airy, Md., safe and sound, rescued with the help of his smartphone by helicopter after being lost in the woods. Tkacik and his pooch were hiking in Gambrill State Park when they crossed the same creek for the fourth time and knew they were lost. He called 911 and the sheriff sent a helicopter. “Having a charged phone made a world of difference,” says Tkacik. “If I didn’t have a phone, I would have been stuck really bad.”After four hours of searching, two rescuers eventually rappelled 150 feet down from a park police helicopter and escorted Tkacik and his best friend Boo out of the woods. (DiscoveryNews.com)

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As many as 10 people jumped into an icy Utah river to help save three trapped children after a car plunged down a 10-foot embankment and flipped over, the state’s Highway Patrol said Sunday. The rescuers helped turn the Honda Accord upright in the Logan River, and one man shot out the car’s window with a handgun and cut a seat belt to help free the children after the Saturday afternoon accident, patrol Lt. Steve Winward said. The driver, Roger Andersen, 46, of Logan, lost control as he tried to brake while heading northbound on U.S. 89 during slick conditions. His 9-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son were trapped along with a second 9-year-old girl. The boy and his sister were flown by air ambulance to Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Bonnie Midget, a hospital spokeswoman, said Sunday both are doing well after spending the night in intensive care. They were taken out of intensive care Sunday but still in the hospital, listed in fair condition as they recover from hypothermia. The father and the second girl escaped injury, authorities said. (NYDailyNews.com)

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Imperial College London researchers, Richard Murphy and Lei Wang, calculated that the estimated 1.5 billion cards and 83 square kilometers (20,500 acres) of wrapping paper thrown away by UK residents during the Christmas season could create 5-12 million liters (1.3-3.2 million gallons) of ethanol biofuel. With that much fuel, one of London’s iconic double-decker buses could travel 18 million kilometers (11 million miles), said the researchers in a press release. That’s enough to circle the Earth nearly 450 times, or take 23 round-trips to the Moon. “If one card is assumed to weigh 20g and one square meter of wrapping paper is 10g, then around 38,300 tonnes [42,219 tons] of extra paper waste will be generated at Christmas time,” said Murphy in a press release. “Our research shows that it would be feasible to build waste paper-to-biofuel processing plants that give energy back as transport fuel.” (DiscoveryNews.com)

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A “lost world” of sea creatures was discovered near Antarctica, British scientists announced Wednesday. Scientists doing their first exploring of deep-sea vents in the Antarctic said it was unlike anything found around other hydrothermal vents — a world populated by new species of anemones, predatory sea stars, and piles of hairy-chested yeti crabs. It was “almost like a sight from another planet,” said expedition leader Alex Rogers, a professor of zoology at Oxford University. Even in the eye-popping world of deep-sea vents, the Antarctic discoveries stand out, with the unfamiliar species of crabs found crowded in piles around the warm waters emanating from the seafloor. Many of the animals found at the vents have never been found at hydrothermal vents in other oceans, Rogers said. “To see these animals in such huge densities was just amazing,” Rogers told LiveScience. (FoxNews.com)

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A Swedish woman has discovered her wedding ring on a carrot growing in her garden, 16 years after she lost it, says a newspaper. Lena Paahlsson had long ago lost hope of finding the ring, which she designed herself, reports Dagens Nyheter. The white-gold band, set with seven small diamonds, went missing in her kitchen in 1995, she told the paper. Although the ring no longer fits, she hopes to have it enlarged so she can wear it again. She took the ring off to do some Christmas baking with her daughters, but it disappeared from the work surface where it had been left, she explained to Dagens Nyheter. The family searched everywhere and years later took up the tiling on the floor during renovations, in the hope of finding the ring. It was not until 16 years later when Mrs Paahlsson was pulling up carrots in her garden that she noticed one with the gold band fastened tightly around it.The couple believe the ring fell into a sink back in 1995 and was lost in vegetable peelings that were turned into compost or fed to their sheep. (BBC.co.uk)

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The ultimate science fair was held earlier this month as the Siemens Foundation held its annual Math, Science & Technology competition. The competition’s goal is to find the best and brightest in high school scientists and award them scholarships ranging from $10,000 to $100,000. Two seniors from Oak Ridge High School in Tennessee, Ziyuan Liu and Cassee Cain, won the top award in the team category for their combined use of Xbox 360’s Kinect with a camera and depth sensor to analyze the movement of someone’s gait.Connecting the devices to a robotic leg and including computer vision algorithms made it possible for Liu and Cain to analyze human walking patterns, providing a way to understand those who have movement affecting injuries, like amputees or joint replacement patients. The students hope that this project could contribute to the design of prosthetics and develop an affordable gait analysis device, which would let doctors check a patient’s progress without an office visit. (DiscoveryNews.com)

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Banana-Sam, a much-loved squirrel-monkey stolen from his enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo, has been safely returned, officials said. The monkey was found Saturday night — a day after he disappeared from the zoo — at a park by a passer-by who spotted the primate in the bushes, the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement. The passer-by coaxed the monkey from the bushes into his backpack, and then called the authorities, according to the statement. “Although hungry, trembling and thirsty, Banana-Sam is currently safe back,” the zoo said in a statement. (CNN.com)

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Harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) had been missing from San Francisco Bay since Word War II, but they’ve returned in increasing numbers in recent years. The marine mammals had been gone so long that the species may have collectively forgotten about the bay, Jonathan Stern, a cetacean researcher at San Francisco State University told NPR. During the war, San Francisco was a major ship-building center and naval yard. The Navy even stretched a 7-mile-long underwater net across the mouth of the bay to stop Japanese submarines from entering. Outside the bay, hundreds of mines made the waters treacherous. After the war, things got worse. The postwar industrial and population boom flooded the water with sewage and factory pollution in the 1950s and ’60s. The Clean Water Act of 1972 signaled the beginning of the bay’s rebirth. After decades of water quality improvement, the porpoises have returned. Associates at Golden Gate Cetacean Research have identified 250 individual porpoises in the bay using distinctive scars on the animals’ bodies. (DiscoveryNews.com)

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The Blog would like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! May 2012 bring nothing but the best.

As the director of KnowYourPlanet, Mark Kragh’s day job is to resell solar panels to small businesses and hobbyists. But in February he will travel to Kenya to distribute specially-made kits he is giving away as charity, and to show local people how to make more. For many in Africa there is little access to electricity due to mains power shortages. Infrastructure has not kept pace with the explosion in mobile phone ownership so it is not unusual for people to walk for several hours just to charge their phones. The kits he creates are made from solar panels that manufacturers have rejected. “There are very strict rules,” said Mr Kragh. Slight chips in the corner render the panels useless for traditional solar energy use but perfect for the DIY kits Mr Kragh has designed. He aims to make them deliberately makeshift, creating a fairly crude circuit of solar panels on plywood. Armed with a £5,000 grant from charity World in Need, Mr Kragh aims to build at least 1,000 kits when he arrives, training local people along the way so that they can build new ones and service old ones. The ultimate goal is to create a $1 (64p) solar charger which has at least a five year lifespan. (BBC.co.uk)

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Spending more time at school may increase intelligence, according to a study of Norwegian men. The research, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggested that an extra year in the classroom could boost IQ by nearly four points. The authors said that extra schooling had a “sizeable effect” on IQ in early adulthood. (BBC.co.uk)

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No doubt, gold is a beautiful and popular precious metal. But it’s also soft and tends to scratch easily. Making it more resilient requires mixing it with other metals, but that reduces its quality. Now a research team from the EPFL in Switzerland, with support from Swiss watchmaker Hublot, have created a very hard high-quality gold. And recently, they unveiled the shiny result. “What is radically new is being able to make something that is both extremely hard and 18-karat gold. The challenge was to stick with that boundary,” said Andreas Mortensen, a metallurgy professor at the EPFL in Switzerland who led the work. Metallurgy lecturer Ludger Weber, postdoc Reza Tavangar and materials engineer Senad Hasanovic collaborated with Mortensen to develop the new gold. To make the new gold, the EPFL team used boron carbide, a ceramic that’s one of the hardest materials in the world, along with diamonds. This material has numerous applications, including as a component in bulletproof vests. (DiscoveryNews.com)

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A 15-year-old American has become the youngest person to climb the highest mountains on each of the seven continents, completing the feat by summiting Antarctica’s Mount Vinson over the weekend. Jordan Romero, who last year at age 13 became the youngest person to climb the world’s tallest peak Mt. Everest, was descending to base camp Sunday after reaching the summit of Vinson Massif with a team that included his father and his stepmother, according to his team’s website. “We’re at the roof of Antarctica,” a member of Team Jordan said in a webcast from near the 16,067-foot (4,897-meter) peak on a frigid but “legendary day.” (DiscoveryNews.com)

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