The pick of the science news
Rapture on raptor
A new species of dinosaur has been discovered in Inner Mongolia. Linheraptor exquisitusis a relative of Velociraptorand came to light when US researchers spotted part of the near-complete skeleton in 75-million-year-old sandstone rocks.
I only saw the tip of the claw sticking out of a cliff face, and it was a total surprise that the whole skeleton was buried deeper in the rock, says researcher Jonah Choiniere in a release from George Washington University.
The remains of the creature, which would have been an estimated 8ft high and 50lb, were found in 2008, but details have just been published in the journal Zootaxa.
Acne drug for HIV?
An antibiotic used to treat acne could help to keep an existing HIV infection under control in the body.
Minocycline targets T-cells in the immune system, rather than the virus itself, and in the lab it helped prevent the virus from emerging from latent infected T-cells, according to a study published online in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. The researchers believe it could improve HIV treatment if added to current drug regimes.
“The powerful advantage to using minocycline is that the virus appears less able to develop drug resistance because minocycline targets cellular pathways not viral proteins,” says study author Dr Janice Clements from Johns Hopkins University
“This is very exciting, because mankind has always thought about being invisible or having invisibility cloaks. This is the first proof of principle. It shows the technique works"
Researcher Dr Rod Ergin, commenting to Reuters on a tiny three-dimensional "invisibility cloak" that bends light. Details published in Sciencemagazine
