Morbid Monday
Suicides are more likely on Monday than any other day of the week, at least in England and Wales. Between 1993 and 2002, 12 people killed themselves on a typical Monday, compared with a daily average of 10. The UK鈥檚 National Statistics office, which did the analysis, blames it on Monday being a 鈥渘ew beginning鈥�. But the biggest number of suicides on a single day 鈥� 23 鈥� occurred on Saturday 1 January 2000.
Blood test for BSE
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Misshapen prion proteins, which cause degenerative brain diseases such as BSE in cows and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, can now be detected in blood. The technique could allow contaminated blood donations to be intercepted and enable diagnosis in cattle before they develop symptoms (Nature Medicine, DOI: 10.1038/nm1286).
Superbug killer
A new weapon against the drug-resistant 鈥渟uperbug鈥� MRSA was unveiled at the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington DC on Monday. The drug gets inside bacteria by mimicking a component of their cell walls and then deactivates an enzyme that usually protects the microbes, triggering a deadly chain of events.
Soggy success
Iraq鈥檚 iconic marshlands are recovering after extensive draining during Saddam Hussein鈥檚 regime. A UN analysis of satellite photos shows considerable improvement from 760 square kilometres of marsh in 2002 to a peak of just under 5000 square kilometres after the winter rains in March 2005.
Dial M for music
Two of the most popular consumer technologies of the moment 鈥� the cellphone and the iPod 鈥� could merge. Speculation is mounting that Apple is about to unveil a mobile phone capable of running its iTunes software. The cellphone manufacturer Motorola has been collaborating with Apple on developing such a device since 2004.