ON THE RADAR

The pick of the science news

Question time

Log on next Wednesday for a Science/AAAS online seminar, in which participants can pose questions to leading figures in Irish science. The event, The State of the Nation: Science in Ireland, will look at the funding and research opportunities here and the challenges and opportunities facing the Irish scientific community.

Speakers include Frank Gannon, director-general of Science Foundation Ireland, Patrick Cunningham, the Government's chief scientific adviser, Ciarán Regan, a neuroscientist from UCD and Leonora Bishop from IDA Ireland. Submit your questions to speakers in advance on sciencecareers.org/webinar

Swapping fats for a healthier diet

Want to improve your health? Then swap saturated fats in your diet for healthier versions. But how well you respond could depend on your genes, according to the EU-funded Lipgene project, which has looked at the "metabolic syndrome", a condition that increases the risk of diabetes. The five-year long project was co-ordinated by University College Dublin.

Tomorrow, researchers from the 25-lab consortium involved will discuss the findings at a public meeting in UCD. The full title of the project is "Diet, genomics and the metabolic syndrome: an integrated nutrition, agro-food, social and economic analysis."

• See ucd.ie/lipgene for more.

By numbers

2

The number of alcoholic drinks a healthy middle-aged woman can have each day without increased risk of irregular heartbeat, the Journal of the American Medical Associationsays.

95,000

The proposed price, in US dollars (€75,000), of a trip 38 miles above the Earth's surface on the XCOR Aerospace Lynx spacecraft, due to start test flights in 2010.