(Article information from the BBC Online)

The free wi-fi link will be accessible to all of Niue's 2,000 residents as well as tourists and business travelers.

People will need a laptop with a wi-fi card installed to access the service.

The service is being supplied by a charitable group called the Niue Internet Users Society and will employ the same radio technology used for the numerous wireless networks springing up around Europe.

Wi-fi uses radio technology to send data over the airwaves, removing the need for computer cables.

Niue is already a sophisticated internet nation. Free e-mail services were introduced in 1997 and free broadband has been offered at the island's internet café since the spring.

Wi-fi, however, is particularly well-suited to the South Pacific island.

The new wireless link is likely to benefit Niue's tourist industry.

A substantial portion of its tourism comes from visiting yachts during the non-cyclone seasons.

Those with onboard computer equipment with wi-fi cards will be able to surf the net from their boats.

Local residents, especially those in congested telephone areas, will find the service extremely useful.

One government office is already hooked up to the technology and others will join it as soon as the appropriate hardware is installed.

Niue is something of a leader when it comes to developing affordable and dependable internet services.

Wi-fi is ideal for small islands such as Niue but in Europe experts are questioning whether the wireless bubble is about to burst.

So-called wi-fi hotspots that are springing up in cafes, hotel lobbies and airports in many European cities are unlikely to make money and the networks will remain patchy, said analyst firm Forrester.

A group of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and several other institutions has solved the structure of an antibody that effectively neutralizes human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

The antibody binds to sugars on the surface of HIV and effectively neutralizes the virus because of its unique structure, which is described in the latest issue of the journal Science.

This new structure is an important step toward the goal of designing an effective vaccine against HIV, and it gives the researchers a new way to design antibodies in general.

One of the most compelling medical challenges today is to develop a vaccine that will provide complete prophylactic protection to someone who is later exposed to this virus. An important part of such a vaccine will be a component that elicits or induces effective neutralizing antibodies against HIV in the blood of the vaccinated person.

In rare instances some people have produced antibodies that broadly neutralize HIV. One such antibody, called 2G12, was isolated from an HIV-positive individual about a decade ago by Hermann Katinger, a doctor at the Institute for Applied Microbiology of the University of Agriculture in Vienna, Austria and one of the authors on the paper. This antibody is not like ordinary antibodies.

The 2G12 antibody forms an unusual "dimer" interface where two antibodies create an unusual multivalent binding interface with multiple binding sites that recognizes an unusual arrangement of 2-3 "oligomannose" sugars on the surface of protein spikes called gp120 that decorate the coat of HIV. This allows the antibody to properly target HIV virions as foreign pathogens. The sugars are human but their arrangement is foreign-and it is this arrangement that the antibodies recognize.

These results are a step in the direction of designing an effective AIDS vaccine because it reveals what these neutralizing antibodies should look like. The next step is to use the structure of the antibody as a template to design an "antigen" that would stimulate the human immune system to make 2G12 or similar broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV.

The results are also important because the structure of the antibody is something that has never been seen before.

The World Health Organization estimates that around 40 million people are living with HIV worldwide. During 2001 alone, more than four million men, women, and children succumbed to the disease, and by the end of that year, the disease had made orphans of 14 million children. In the United States, 40,000 people are infected with HIV each year.

The TSRI study combined experts from several institutions besides TSRI, including Pauline M. Rudd, Ph.D., and Raymond A. Dwek, D.Phil., D.Sc., FRS, from the Glycobiology Institute at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Also involved in the study were researchers in the Department of Biological Science and Structural Biology at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

The research article, "Antibody Domain Exchange is an Immunological Solution to Carbohydrate Cluster Recognition" is authored by Daniel A. Calarese, Christopher N. Scanlan, Michael B. Zwick, Songpon Deechongkit, Yusuke Mimura, Renate Kunert, Ping Zhu, Mark R.Wormald, Robyn L. Stanfield, Kenneth H. Roux, Jeffery W. Kelly, Pauline M. Rudd, Raymond A. Dwek, Hermann Katinger, Dennis R. Burton, and Ian A. Wilson and appears in the June 27, 2003 issue of the journal Science.

The research was supported by The Skaggs Institute for Research, which funds The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI.

Scientists at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have developed an explanation for a bizarre but not uncommon medical condition in which patients fail to see half of their visual world.

The condition follows traumatic brain injury, stroke or other brain damage. Despite the inability of patients to "see" half of what is before their eyes, many visual areas of the brain are still largely intact, said John G. McHaffie, Ph.D., associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy and senior author.

McHaffie and his colleagues now have an explanation. They report in the current issue of Nature that signals from a brain area called the basal ganglia may be preventing those intact visual areas from functioning properly.

One likely treatment is to disrupt some actions of the basal ganglia so the remaining intact visual areas can function again.

McHaffie said patients who have the malady may eat only half a plate of food, or when they draw pictures, only depict half the scene, such as half a tree or a fork with only two tines.

Estimates of the incidence vary widely. Neglect of the left side is most common following a stroke or brain injury involving the right hemisphere of the brain and occurs in perhaps 10 percent of those patients.

Often the malady resolves itself. But for others, no treatment exists.

McHaffie said their research shows that there are two kinds of cells in the basal ganglia. Some work on the same side of the brain, some on the other side. Some of these cells in the basal ganglia "have properties unlike those that neuroscientists have previously seen," he said.

Microelectrodes enabled the team -- which also included Huai Jiang,, Ph.D., assistant professor -- to observe individual cells of the basal ganglia in action. They determined what kind of neurotransmitters the cells used when they fired, and which other cells got the message.

They found the basal ganglia are simultaneously enhancing and suppressing visual activity in the superior colliculi -- which are centers for visual reflexes and eye movements -- on both sides of the brain. The system ordinarily is carefully balanced by other visual elements. But when damage occurs to the visual cortex through a stroke or brain injury, the balance is disrupted and neglect may result.

So, said Barry E. Stein, Ph.D. professor and chairman of the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy and a co-investigator, the solution may be to disrupt the activity of the basal ganglia. There is a population of cells in the basal ganglia that have been identified by this research and appear to be responsible. By disrupting their function, it may allow the remaining portion of the visual brain on the damaged side to function.

The balance would be restored, and the visual neglect would disappear.

(Article information from BBC Online)

Hong Kong has been declared free of SARS, 20 days after the last confirmed case of the disease in the territory.

The World Health Organization called the development a "very significant achievement in the history of SARS control", following 296 deaths from the disease in Hong Kong.
But officials are warning that the territory must remain vigilant if it is to avoid the kind of recurrence of the pneumonia-type disease experienced by the Canadian city of Toronto.
Toronto reported two new SARS deaths on Sunday, despite the apparent tailing off of the disease there.

Impact is likely to linger, however. Hong Kong's economy was already in a battered state before the disease struck, and the virus has also had political implications.

The Hong Kong authorities' response to the outbreak has been the subject of widespread criticism, and the spread of the disease - which originated in southern China - has underlined Hong Kong's vulnerability to events within China.

Only Beijing, Taiwan and Toronto are still on the WHO list of SARS-infected areas following the disease's peak in March and April.

The UN body attributes the success in tackling the disease to effective quarantine methods.

SARS has killed more than 800 people worldwide - most of them in Asia - since the disease first appeared in southern China last November.

In Hong Kong, 296 people died of the disease and 1,755 became ill. At the height of the SARS epidemic in early April, Hong Kong had 60 to 80 new cases of the disease each day.

There are still 28 people in hospital - including 11 in intensive care - but 1410 people have recovered and been discharged.

Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-Hwa, gave a news conference at a housing estate on the Kowloon peninsula, which saw the worst outbreak in the city.

More than 300 residents were infected by faulty sewage pipes, which left at least 42 people dead.

The latest SARS victims in Toronto were a 55-year-old man and an 81-year-old woman, the Canadian Government said. Thirty-eight people have now died of SARS in Canada - the only country outside Asia to have reported SARS fatalities.

As Hong Kong welcomed its removal from the list of locations affected by SARS, it also mourned a second hospital doctor to have been died from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

Dr Cheng Ha-yan, 30, was buried with honors at Gallant Garden, a special graveyard for those who died performing their duties with courage.

Dr Cheng - the eighth health care worker in Hong Kong to die of SARS - had volunteered to work in a SARS ward.

After almost four months, the global public health emergency caused by the sudden appearance and rapid spread of SARS is coming to an end.

The SARS virus, a new and unique member of the coronavirus family, first emerged in mid-November in southern China. One of the key questions now is whether SARS - pushed out of its new human host as chains of transmission are broken - will return.

The question arises because of the behavior of other comparatively new and poorly understood viruses, including those that cause the Ebola and Marburg haemorrhagic fevers. These viruses periodically surface to cause outbreaks, usually limited to a defined geographical area, and then fade away to hide in some animal or environmental reservoir until conditions again become ripe for spread to humans.

The question of whether SARS will likewise resurface must remain open pending better understanding of the circumstances that allowed the new disease to emerge. The SARS virus is thought to have jumped to humans from some animal or environmental source.

Many new viruses that jump from animals to humans, including the Nipah, Hendra, and hanta viruses, do not spread efficiently from one person to another and thus do not cause large and sustained outbreaks with a potential for rapid international spread. The SARS virus, however, spreads readily from person to person. Factors in the hospital environment have worked to amplify this efficient transmission considerably. In addition, though SARS has a high case fatality (around 15%), it allows enough of its victims to survive long enough to spread the disease to others - an effective survival strategy for a new virus.

The WHO scientific coordinator for SARS, Dr Klaus Stöhr, is presently in China working together with scientists there to develop and prioritize a SARS research agenda. Research on the origins of the SARS virus is expected to top the agenda.

In the meantime, WHO has good reason to believe that, should SARS resurface later this year, the global impact will be milder than experienced during the initial global emergency. Five reasons support this view.

First, the world's public health systems have demonstrated their capacity to move quickly into a phase of high alert. The prompt detection and isolation of imported cases in African and India are good examples of both the level of vigilance and its effectiveness in preventing further spread. Some of the former SARS hotspots, including Hong Kong and Singapore, plan to maintain a high level of vigilance, supported by measures for screening and detection, until at least the end of the year.

Second, the world knows what to do. Control measures, though centuries old, have demonstrated their capacity to completely halt outbreaks, as most recently seen in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Beijing.

Third, the intensive research effort currently under way can be expected to improve scientific understanding of SARS and yield better control tools, most notably a rapid and reliable point-of-care diagnostic test.

Fourth, resolutions adopted during the May World Health Assembly have strengthened WHO's capacity to respond to outbreaks in important ways. In effect, these resolutions allow WHO to move from a passive reliance on official government notifications to a proactive role in warning the world as soon as evidence indicates that an outbreak poses a threat to international public health.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, SARS has underscored the importance of immediately and fully disclosing cases of any disease with the potential for international spread. In the present climate of opinion, influenced by the lessons learned from SARS, it appears unlikely that any country would choose to conceal cases, should SARS resurface. In addition, SARS is simply too big a disease to hide for long.

For these reasons, WHO is optimistic that, should SARS return, it will not do so with a vengeance.