Bum deal
Fat buttocks are preventing doctors from delivering medicines effectively. Victoria Chan at the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, and her team injected small air bubbles into the rears of 25 men and 25 women using a standard needle. CT scans showed that in 23 of the women and 11 men the injection ended up in fat rather than the underlying muscle. Chan says doctors should use longer needles on obese patients.
A jolt in time
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Training lay people to use defibrillators really does save lives, a two-year Italian study shows (European Heart Journal, DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehi654). Riccardo Cappato of the University of Milan says that if volunteers reach victims within 8 minutes they could save an extra 15 lives per 100 heart attacks.
Wish you were here
Venus Express has turned around to glance at Earth from 3.5 million kilometres away. On 23 November, the European Space Agency probe activated three of its instruments to photograph the Earth-moon system at visible, ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. It is due to reach Venus in April.
Launch pad blues
The launch of the first privately funded orbital rocket has been postponed to mid-December. An open valve on Falcon 1, built by Space Exploration Technologies, allowed liquid oxygen to boil off. Helium, used for pressurisation, also vented away when there was too little oxygen to keep it cool.
Cold comfort
Hundreds of children in the earthquake-devastated region of Pakistan administered Kashmir have contracted pneumonia, according to local health officials. Up to 20 centimetres of snow has fallen in some parts, heralding the harshness of the coming winter, but UN officials say the cold weather has not caused any dramatic increase in disease.