Adventure Ausrama Blog

Catching dengue fever is a constant fear in Australia. Like malaria it is spread by mosquitoes. Its full name Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever. You can become very sick indeed if you develop the hemorrhagic form, though it seldom causes death. Drugs made for sepsis infection are being used to treat dengue in mice. They has yet to be used on humans. Hopefully new methods for early detection and treatment with drugs will stop progression to the severe dengue. A new finding could move treatment along a bit. The dengue virus NS1 protein causes immune cells to "leak" blood vessels. TLR4 is the pathway that triggers the response. Some existing drugs do block this pathway. Ironically, many of them did not stop sepsis. They were failures! Other diseases also use the NS1 method of infection. Work has to be done to explore the battery of drugs already available to hopefully find successful treatments for these related illnesses. ◆ Chemistry by Ty Buchanan   ◆ Adv

There is nothing worse than parking in a shopping center car park, doing your shopping, then coming out to find another driver has reversed out and scraped your rear "bumper" A compulsory radar reversing system should be introduced for all vehicles. VicRoads is doing something about this. Their maintenance fleet has been fitted with radar-based reverse braking technology. The main target is not vehicle damage: it is injuries to employees who are hit when trucks are reversing. No less than 18 workers were struck from 2003 to 2012. The system detects anything directly in the reversing path of a vehicle. All new motor vehicles are now fitted with such technology in Europe, the US and Japan. Where is Australia with regard to this? It can prevent injuries, save lives and last but not least stop unwanted damage.  Insurance companies could even offer lower premiums as a result. VicRoads will share its trial data with others involved in the transport industry. I

Scientists have made mice transparent - let us hope they were dead first! Studying the human body and test animals in general is difficult because usually one has to carry out dissections to see inside.  The new process will change medicine. Lipids block sunlight in bodies, so it has to be replaced with acrylamide which is just transparent hydrogel. After the acrylamide is absorbed, the bodies are placed into detergent which absorbs the lipids. Electricity is also applied to reduce the time taken to "clean" tissue. The treated mice do not keep their original shape. They end up like gel in a plastic bag. Internal organs can be clearly seen, however. After staining, the structure of organs can be seen as shown in the picture above. Micro-slicing has been used to date. A computer assembles a 3D structure for study. Both systems will probably be used in future as each as its benefits. There are plans to adapt the transparency technique to evaluate tissue in c