Scientists say that Artificial sweeteners do nothing to help weight loss and could actually cause us to pile on the pounds.
Our bodies are unable to distinguish between the calorie-free sugar substitutes widely used in the food industry and the real thing, research suggests.
Artificial sweeteners behave in a similar way to sugar, by activating sensors in the gut which are key to the absorption of glucose.
As a result, the body processes extra sugar – and all the calories that go with it. For the dieter, it means little or no weight loss. Over time, it could even lead to extra pounds being put on.

Zdnet reported today the story of Robert Goldman, the story of a software engineer, who invented a medical device that could save the lives of countless terminally ill cancer patients.

Mr Goldman developed a feeder vessel that can directly deliver chemotherapy treatment to cancer cells. His idea was to create a catheter small enough so you could pass it through the blood vessels and go as close as possible to the tumour to deliver treatment . His research was motivated by efforts to try and save his sister which diagnosed with terminal cancer.  It’s a fantastic story of his stubbornness to try and succeed in an area he knew absolutely nothing about, and with experts that told him it couldn’t be done.

Best of all he then created his company and the device has just been approved by the FDA

The bbc website today reported that two new antibodies that neutralise the HIV virus have been discovered.This is an important find because antibodies are one of the most natural way to treat a virus.

Before this finding only four antibodies to HIV had been discovered that were widely agreed to be broadly neutralising. However, all four worked by binding to a place on HIV that has proven difficult for vaccine-makers to exploit

The latest duo are potentially much more useful because they bind to the virus at sites which scientists believe are more accessible.

Keith Alcorn, of the HIV information service NAM, said: “Identifying antibodies that act against a broad range of HIV types will be critical for the development of an effective vaccine.
“We need to remember that this is an early stage of research.
“HIV vaccine research will be a long-term effort and we certainly shouldn’t expect these findings to lead to a vaccine in a few years.
“A lot more work on antibodies and vaccine design is going to be needed to come up with vaccines that can be put into clinical trials.”
The IAVI team joined forces with the Scripps Research Institute, and the biotechnology companies Theraclone Sciences and Monogram Biosciences on the project.

I have read a few articles around the subjects and i thought the finding were interesting.
When you’ve had a hard workout you may experience muscle pain and the odd adage is telling you that this pain is caused by the buildup of lactic acid in the muscle.
DOMS is not caused by lactic acid buildup in the muscle. This is the myth that refuses to die. Within one hour after exercise, most, if not all, of the lactic acid produced is removed and recycled.
The lactic acid myth was passed fro the scientific community to mainstream because scientist genuinely believed for a long time that lactic acid was the cause of pain.
“It’s one of the classic mistakes in the history of science,” Dr. Brooks said.”
Its origins lie in a study by a Nobel laureate, Otto Meyerhof, who in the early years of the 20th century cut a frog in half and put its bottom half in a jar. The frog’s muscles had no circulation — no source of oxygen or energy.
Dr. Myerhoff gave the frog’s leg electric shocks to make the muscles contract, but after a few twitches, the muscles stopped moving. Then, when Dr. Myerhoff examined the muscles, he discovered that they were bathed in lactic acid.
A theory was born. Lack of oxygen to muscles leads to lactic acid, leads to fatigue.

So what does cause muscle pain ?
Studies show that the vast majority of pain associated with DOMS is caused by the action of stretching muscles ‘Eccentric’, in which the muscle fibers are lengthened as force is applied to them.

Lactic acid is actually a fuel. Muscles make it deliberately, producing it from glucose, and they burn it to obtain energy. The reason trained athletes can perform so hard and so long is because their intense training causes their muscles to adapt so they more readily and efficiently absorb lactic acid.