Anti-HIV gel being developed in Brazil

Nice development out of Brazil. Not much details yet but apparently they have discovered an algae based gel to block the transmission of HIV for women. The real kicker of this gel, if and when it will be available in the market, is that it puts women in control of their own situation. The gel is to be applied by women (vaginally) and that the male partner will not be able to tell, according to researchers. Anyway to empower women to control their own situations (even if choice might not be available) especially in Africa, Latin America, and other areas of high gender inequality leads to a better situation. This way even if a woman is forced to sleep with a man (by force, for money, abusive relationship, etc.) the woman can protect herself from getting the HIV transmitted to her and furthermore her future children.

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HIV and Malaria - Is there a Link?

HIV is most easily spread when patients have high virus levels in their blood. A bout of malaria causes a temporary surge -- a stunning sevenfold increase (some claim up to 10 times)-- in those levels, said lead researcher Laith Abu-Raddad, a scientist at the University of Washington.

The surge may last six weeks to eight weeks. That is longer than it takes adults in intense malaria areas, where people get the parasitic disease once or twice a year, to recover from a typical bout and feel up to sexual activity again, he said.

Moreover, HIV patients are more susceptible to malaria reinfection because of their weakened immune systems.

Although this is a sad link, there is a silver lining...it will hopefully double the awareness for each of the conditions. When scientific evidence concludes that they are linked in a way that each can worsen the other and realizing how significant each of the conditions are...then maybe the world will pay more attention. (check out nothingbutnet.net to help)

BBC: Malaria/HIV story

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Ugandan men getting circumcised

This is good to hear...Men in Uganda are taking action since the new findings that circumcision can reduce the risk of contracting HIV by 50%.

BBC Story

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'Virgin births' for giant lizards

This is cool. I didn't know about this phenomenon. Read Article.

Actually it was not just discovered in Komodo Dragons but also in snakes and other animals.

Parthenogenesis: How does it work in snakes.

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Humans do the splits.

This is interesting. According to the BBC there has been studies that show that in 100,000 years our Humans will be split into two different sub-species. To summarize basically people who are rich, powerful, beautiful, healthy will marry each other (damn it this is why arranged marriages were good, us ugly guys could get that hottie and keep the genetic pool nice and diverse), while the poorer, less healthy, less intelligent will be the "underclass" humans who will evolve to be "dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures", that's amazing....this (Olivery Curry) is from England. Only in England can someone be soooo Politically Incorrect...I love it.

Another interesting point is that all humans will increase in intelligence and performance and peak at year 3000 but then after that we will decline because we will be too dependent on everything being done for ourselves. You know the gift and the curse of our current society is the following: We have become incredibly specialized in terms of services and skills. The good thing is now when you want to install an auto starter in your car for winter there is a special guy who does just that, he doesn't do speakers, he doesn't do electrical wiring of cars (he probably knows about it but his speciality and what he is efficiently good at is car starters). The problem with that, is that guy who is so specialized in his work becomes dumb in other fields. That's the curse, we would rather have people do everything we don't know, and naturally we don't know how to do most things because we are so specialized and concentrated in what we do that our brain seriously stops to function properly and loses its balance. Economically we are great, socially and psychologically we are retarded (HELLLLLLOOOOO CAPITALISM!!!!!). Anyways now that I got that off my chest...what was I saying....oh yeah because we will be so dependent on gadgets and technology in general to do everything we will decrease in mental performance (look at how people use the calculator to do every addition and subtraction no matter how basic, now that's a clue of whats in store for us). Here is the beauty, "social skills such as communicating and interacting with others could be lost along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust, and care" - Wow, John I think they are on to us bro, I don't need to live to the year 3000 to feel this way, I am already there !!!!!

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