Riviste scientifiche

The polymer, called Nafion, can "remember" three distinct shapes when heated – the best yet for a shape-memory polymer

A study shows the contraceptive pill could be helping women live longer, but not that it has more pros than cons, says Jessica Hamzelou

All today's stories on newscientist.com at a glance, including: better living through green chemistry, getting electric cars onto the power grid, and why 'Terminator' asteroids could re-form after being nuked

For many people, "chemical" is still a dirty word – but wooden trousers, dream creams and mussel muscles are coming to the rescue

To celebrate Pi day this weekend, New Scientist serves up some lesser-known facts about the famous ratio, from appearances in nature to unusual poetry

See what New Scientist found when we were invited to see the botanical gardens' hidden places

Pixelh8, who makes music using the sounds of obscure technology, has written a suite of music inspired by astronomers – we have some excerpts

A fine mist of toxic metal will not choke off the fusion reactions inside the planned ITER reactor, as physicists had feared

That's the message of a review of a pioneering programme run over the past decade in two jails and two secure mental hospitals

The world's most intelligent invertebrates can be tricked by HD images, letting us study their personalities and behaviour

When the surge of plug-in vehicles hits the streets over the next few years, how will our electricity grids cope?

The proposed new laws would result in the innocent being punished for offences that have not even taken place, says Jim Killock

On March 8, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria launched its report, The Global Fund 2010: Innovation and Impact, presenting results so far and outlining challenges and new strategies. Since its inception in 2002, the Fund has grown into an impressive force in the landscape of global health initiatives. By its own estimation, the Fund has supported programmes that have saved around 4·9 million lives. It has allocated US$19·2 billion and disbursed $10 billion to 144 countries.

What do spinach, peanut butter, tomatoes, and cookie dough have in common? They have all been the source of major foodborne outbreaks and recalls in the USA over the years, and have led to widespread illness and a sharp drop in public confidence in food safety. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 76 million cases of foodborne illness occur yearly in the USA, which accounts for 325 000 admissions and 5000 deaths.

In 2004, the UN General Assembly discussed the global burden of road-traffic accidents for the first time, mainly thanks to an effort by Oman to raise the profile of the problem within the UN. Still, few member states, especially low-income and middle-income nations where most deaths on the roads occur, were interested in the issue. Now, 6 years on, the story is very different. Last week, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution to make 2011–20 the Decade of Action for Road Safety. 98 countries, including Russia, France, and Brazil, co-sponsored the resolution.

Although high blood pressure is one of the most important treatable risk factors for cardiovascular disease, the mechanisms leading to clinical events are poorly understood. Many believe that clinic blood pressure accounts for most of the risk and for the benefits of antihypertensive drugs. In The Lancet today, Peter Rothwell and co-workers challenge this notion, and present comprehensive data in two Articles (one a cohort study, the other a meta-analysis) and one Review on long-term (visit-to-visit) variability of blood pressure and cardiovascular risk. Moreover, a third Article is published online today on a similar issue in The Lancet Neurology.

Chronic low-back pain is becoming increasingly common. Freburger and colleagues showed an increase in the prevalence of debilitating chronic low-back pain over 14 years. In 1992, the prevalence was 3·9%, and in 2006, it was 10·2%. The overall prevalence increase was 161%, with an increase of 11·4% per year. Low-back pain is a major concern to all when the rapid increase in health-care expenditures worldwide is taken into consideration.

Just under 9 million children aged under 5 years died in 2008 and nearly 40% of these deaths were due to two diseases: pneumonia and diarrhoea. Diarrhoea remains the second leading cause of death in children younger than 5 years globally. Nearly one in every five child deaths—around 1·5 million a year—is due to diarrhoea, which kills more children than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.

Medical complicity in torture is not new. Evidence of medical involvement dates back to the 16th century, and the participation of medical personnel in torture under military and other dictatorships throughout the 20th century is well documented. Should we then be so surprised to learn, as we have done most recently from Physicians for Human Rights, that US military medical personnel have been working closely alongside interrogation teams in the war on terror, devising and monitoring techniques some of which, such as waterboarding, have been condemned by the Attorney General of the USA as torture.