Science Media Centre

New Zealand science has made a key contribution to international research which has laid open the genetic history of sheep — one of the world’s most important livestock species — with the potential to garner economic benefits for sheepfarmers. The new study, published today in  PLoS Biology, maps out how humans bred  sheep for specialised [...]

Biotech regulators in Britain have started public consultation on experimental reproductive procedures proposed to treat rare mitochondrial diseases, and scientists have been given 5.8 million pounds ($NZ11.1m) to investigate the safety of the techniques. And the  Nuffield Council on Bioethics is conducting an ethical review on the imnplications of the DNA-swapping technologies, which involve transferring [...]

About 600 New Zealand women — and potentially as many as 1000 to 2000 — prescribed a synthetic estrogen decades ago, may have daughters facing the same issues as 53 American women who have gone to court in Boston to sue drug companies who made and promoted the drug. A study in the New England [...]

The MeNZB vaccine developed to control New Zealand’s meningococcal B epidemic in 2004-5 has helped researchers to create another, more advanced vaccine targeting more variants of the bacterial pathogen. The MeNZB vaccine was a  regionally specific vaccine for New Zealand targeting the B serotype of the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis, which cause meningococcal diseases, including meningitis. [...]

Not only humans have trouble with overdosing on caffeine — New Zealand’s  National Poisons Centre has had five calls about pets  with problems. Staff at the centre –which gets about  35,000 calls a year — said today they had received  received 128 caffeine-related calls over the seven years to the end of 2010, of which [...]

A new review has cast doubt on the findings of a large study which identified a link between hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer, but experts are treating the conclusions of both pieces of research with caution. In the ongoing debate over the benefits and harms of hormone replacement therapy, an international team of researchers [...]

New Zealand researchers are looking at two important marine species, snapper and dolphins, in the wake of ground-breaking lab-based research showing predators select prey for a nutritionally-balanced diet that will give them the best chance of producing healthy offspring. Nutritional ecologist Professor David Raubenheimer, of  Massey University — whose work with researchers at Oxford, Exeter, [...]

An American university has filed a lawsuit against a New Zealand hypnotherapist for breach of copyright after he published what it describes as cheat sheet for one of its psychology tests. A Napier-based hypnotherapist, Andrew Dobson, says he has removed from his website information about a psychological test which the University of Minnesota claims breached [...]

A hunt for extrasolar planets has revealed that, on average, every star in the Milky Way has at least one companion planet. New Zealand researchers have participated in the work,  published in Nature, which found  that stars in our galaxy have an average of 1.6 planets orbiting them. The study is the product of  the [...]

Nicotine may help improve mild memory loss in older adults, according to a new study – but experts are stressing that the findings are not a licence to self-medicate with patches or cigarettes. A clinical trial, published today in the journal Neurology, examined the effects of low-dose nicotine in people with mild cognitive impairment, which [...]

International concern is growing over the high rupture rate of a particular brand of silicone breast implant, compounded by fears that implant may also increase cancer risk. The French company implant Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) was shut down in 2010 after authorities recalled its implants when surgeons reported abnormally high rupture rates. It was later [...]

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