Australian Government Joins US Energy Department in $83m Solar Research Project

The Australian Federal Government has announced an $83 million solar research program in partnership with the United States. The eight-year project will bring together six Australian universities, the CSIRO and the US department of energy.

Its aim is to create new technology that will reduce the cost of solar power. Australia’s Energy Minister Martin Ferguson says it is the biggest solar energy research investment in Australia’s history :: Read the full article »»»»

Can we say, ASPIRIN THE WONDER DRUG… yet?

It’s NO secret that aspirin is my favourite drug! - Australian Scientists Probe Aspirins Role in Cancer Treatment + www.cankler.com.au/wiki-aspirin - since it’s discovery by Arthur Eichengrün in the 1880s, this wonder of nature has been a cure-all. Aspirin has been in and out of vogue since the early 20th century, now thankfully, it’s back in.

Back in February we looked at new work by researchers from Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute, who said that they had made an important discovery about how cancer spreads. A 2010 article published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology had previously suggested that aspirin may reduce the risk of death from breast cancer.

Scientists have known for years that common drugs like aspirin can help cancer patients, but they weren’t sure why. Peter Mac researchers have now found a link between drugs like aspirin and the ability for cancer tumours to spread in the body  :: Read the full article »»»»

International Scientists Band Together on AIDS Cure

A team of international scientists say the prospects for finding a cure for AIDS in the near future are realistic, after unveiling a roadmap to cure the disease in Washington overnight. Major investments in science have resulted in the worldwide availability of over 20 anti-HIV drugs. Despite these successes, these therapies have limitations. They do not eradicate HIV, requiring people to remain on expensive and potentially toxic drugs for life. The new roadmap to cure is intent on ending this suffering.

In what organisers are calling a first, scientists have come up with a coordinated plan to tackle AIDS since the disease was discovered 31 years ago. Over the past two years the International AIDS Society – IAS – has convened a group of international experts to develop a roadmap for research towards an HIV cure. Published online in an abridged form tomorrow, Friday July 20, in Nature Reviews Immunology, Towards an HIV Cure identifies seven important priority areas for basic, translational and clinical research and maps out a path for future research collaboration and funding opportunities.(

Approximately 34 million people around the world are HIV positive, and in 2010 more than 21,000 Australians were living with HIV infection :: Read the full article »»»»

Melbourne Researchers Find Botox Eases Multiple Sclerosis Tremors

Researchers have found that Botox can significantly reduce the severity of tremors in patients with the debilitating inflammatory disease, Multiple Sclerosis.

Researchers injected 23 patients with either Botox or a placebo over six months during the trial at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. They then videoed the volunteers to see if the botox made a difference.

Multiple sclerosis (MS), also known as “disseminated sclerosis” or “encephalomyelitis disseminata”, is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms.

Disease onset usually occurs in young adults, and it is more common in women. It has a prevalence that ranges between 2 and 150 per 100,000. MS was first described in 1868 by Jean-Martin Charcot :: Read the full article »»»»

First Non-Trekky Demonstration of Temporal Cloaking

According to Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki, humanity’s earliest-known encounter with cloaking technology came in the year 1986 in San Francisco. Admiral James T. Kirk decloaked the Klingon Bird-of-Prey he was commanding to waylay and frighten some whale hunters from killing two humpback whales. Researchers from Cornell Universitys, School of Applied and Engineering Physics have uncovered a remarkable ability to manipulate and control electromagnetic fields to produce effects such as perfect imaging and spatial cloaking, the invisibility cloak!? By distorting electromagnetic fields researchers are able to steer light around a volume of space so that anything inside this region is invisible, the effect has clearly generated huge interest.

“A cloaking device is – according to the Trekkies we spoke to –  a form of stealth technology that utilizes the selective bending of light to render a starship completely invisible to the naked eye, the electromagnetic spectrum and most available sensors. It has been encountered in varying forms over the centuries (2151) and is apparently most useful against Klingon’s and Romulan’s!!?” so say the proponents of prospicientific fictions such as Roddenberry based technologies. Read the full article »»»»

First Non-Trekky Demonstration of Temporal Cloaking

According to Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki, humanity’s earliest-known encounter with cloaking technology came in the year 1986 in San Francisco. Admiral James T. Kirk decloaked the Klingon Bird-of-Prey he was commanding to waylay and frighten some whale hunters from killing two humpback whales. Researchers from Cornell Universitys, School of Applied and Engineering Physics have uncovered a remarkable ability to manipulate and control electromagnetic fields to produce effects such as perfect imaging and spatial cloaking, the invisibility cloak!? By distorting electromagnetic fields researchers are able to steer light around a volume of space so that anything inside this region is invisible, the effect has clearly generated huge interest.

“A cloaking device is – according to the Trekkies we spoke to –  a form of stealth technology that utilizes the selective bending of light to render a starship completely invisible to the naked eye, the electromagnetic spectrum and most available sensors. It has been encountered in varying forms over the centuries (2151) and is apparently most useful against Klingon’s and Romulan’s!!?” so say the proponents of prospicientific fictions such as Roddenberry based technologies. Read the full article »»»»