Transplant truths
When potential US transplant recipients join the waiting list they should say how willing they鈥檇 be to accept 鈥渉igh-risk鈥� organs that might, for example, be infected with HIV. This would help avoid litigation and costly delays, write researchers in The New England Journal of Medicine (vol 358, p 2832).
Pain-relieving peppers
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Neuroscientists have confirmed what traditional Chinese medicine has known for centuries: that the molecule responsible for the buzzing tingle of Sichuan peppers 鈥� fruits of the so-called toothache tree 鈥� is an effective anaesthetic. It generates a feeling akin to 鈥渢ouching one鈥檚 tongue to the terminals of a 9-volt battery鈥� (Nature Neuroscience, ).
Cheetahs transcend politics
Despite a bitter international row over Iran鈥檚 nuclear ambitions, the Iranian government has joined forces with the United Nations Development Programme to save the Asiatic cheetah. The cat is critically endangered, with fewer than 100 individuals remaining in the Iranian deserts.
The end isn鈥檛 nigh
Sleep easy, the world鈥檚 most powerful particle smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, will not gobble us all up. So says a report from the collider鈥檚 safety assessment group. It鈥檚 the latest attempt to quash rumours that the LHC could create Earth-obliterating black holes or strangelets, and comes to largely the same conclusion as the group鈥檚 previous study in 2003.
Giant icy tongue
An enormous sea-ice 鈥渢ongue鈥� is growing at an astonishing rate from the Antarctic鈥檚 West Ice Shelf. Steve Rintoul at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre in Australia says it often grows several hundred kilometres in just a few weeks. He reckons a major ocean current draws ice out to sea (Journal of Geophysical Research, ).