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Month: September 2011

In Catalonia, a Last Day of Bullfighting

The Catalonia region of Spain bade farewell to bullfighting on Sunday with a corrida in Barcelona’s Monumental bullring featuring José Tomás, probably the country’s most popular matador.

After putting to death their respective bulls in front of a sell-out crowd in the 20,000-seat arena, Mr Tomás, along with another bullfighter Serafín Marín, were carried shoulder high from the ring into the streets by ecstatic fans. Others, meanwhile, invaded the ring to gather some of its sand as a souvenir of the final fight, which follows a vote last year by the Catalan regional Parliament to ban bullfighting.


Read more…

Gamers Disarm AIDS Virus Attack on Immune System

Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

The exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where — exceptionally in scientific publishing — both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors. Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV. Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.

But a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that “unfolds” the molecule and rotates it in order to reveal potential targets for drugs.

Read more… Thanks John for the link.