World

Roboticists are using the lessons of a 1930s human physiologist to build the world's fastest walking robot.

A new technique for creating artificial blood vessels outside the body using a patient's own stem cells has offered hope for people with heart disease.

One in four men and one in six women in the UK will die from heart disease and around 300,000 people a year suffer a heart attack. The disease is caused by a build-up of fatty deposits in blood vessels supplying the heart muscle with blood. If these are blocked completely the heart is starved of oxygen and stops.

Heart bypass surgery involves taking a length of artery from elsewhere in the body - usually the chest or leg - and using it to replace the furred-up heart artery.

Scientists have identified a genetic factor that is linked with a 20% to 30% increased risk of developing bowel cancer. Although very rare genetic mutations have been associated with the disease previously, the newly identified mutation - which is carried by over half the general population - is the most common yet discovered.

Researchers do not yet know which gene or genes are affected, let alone how they might cause the disease, but they say the finding will help to intensify screening of people most at risk for the disease.

A. Black Square by Kazimir Malevich; B. 'One (Number 31) ' by Jackson Pollack; C. 'Fountain' by Marcel Duchamp; D. 'Campbell's Soup Can' by Andy Warhol; E. 'Les Demoiselles D'Avignon' by Pablo Picasso.

 


IF ARAFAT were alive…" one hears this phrase increasingly often in conversations
with Palestinians, and also with Israelis and foreigners.


"If Arafat were alive, what's happening now in Gaza wouldn't be
happening…" - "If Arafat were alive, we would have somebody to talk
with…" - "If Arafat were alive, Islamic fundamentalism would not have
won among the Palestinians and would have lost some force in the neighboring
countries!"

In the meantime, the unanswered questions come up again: How did Yasser Arafat
die? Was he murdered? If so, who murdered him?