All Tasmanian devils may be infected with a fatal disease within
five years, biologists fear. A cancer that causes lethal face
tumours has spread to animals in Narawntapu National Park, which
was one of the last refuges from the disease for Australia's
largest carnivorous marsupial. It takes weeks rather than days
for the body's circadian rhythms to adjust when clocks move back
or forward an hour, a study in central Europe has found. Worst
affected are "night owls" who can stay locked into standard
"winter" time for weeks after clocks go forward in the spring
(Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.10.025). A factory
that will make the world's first "live" malaria vaccine from
radiation-weakened malaria parasites opens this Friday in
Rockville, Maryland. Sanaria will extract the parasites from the
salivary glands of mosquitoes raised on infected blood (New
Scientist, 23 December 2006, p 7). China has built a 1450-metre-
long ... To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive
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