On the Radar

The pick of the science news

St Patrick’s day Science Zone

St Patrick’s Festival celebrations this coming Sunday will have a scientific twist with Science Zone at the Big Day Out in Merrion Square.

The free show, which is hosted by Discover Science and Engineering, is aimed at children but should be of interest to the whole family and will feature a science show aired every half hour between noon and 6pm, a K’Nex Challenge workshop, and energy bike and a mini-science fair of hands-on and demonstration activities.

See science.ie for more details.

Shedding light on veggie vitamins

A new study suggests that supermarket lights could enhance the vitamin content of fresh vegetables. Research by the United States’ Department of Agriculture compared spinach that had either been exposed to fluorescent light or kept in the dark under simulated retail conditions.

Folic acid content in the leaves that were exposed to light jumped by between 84 per cent and and 100 per cent, according to the research published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Even after three days of constant light exposure, spinach leaves had increased levels of vitamins K and E as well as folic acid and beneficial carotenoid pigments.

HIV hides out in bone marrow

The Aids virus can hide out in bone marrow in an infected person, according to a study published in Nature Medicine.

HIV infection is notoriously hard to eradicate from the body because latent reservoirs of the virus can go undetected by drugs and the immune system.

So far, such reservoirs have been identified within immune cells, and the new study highlights marrow as another hiding place. “Antiviral drugs have been effective at keeping the virus at bay. However once the drug therapy is stopped, the virus comes back,” said Kathleen Collins, a researcher from the Univeresity of Michigan.

“Ultimately to cure this disease, we’re going to have to develop specific strategies aimed at targeting these latently infected cells.”