The hepatitis C virus infects up to 500,000 people in the UK alone, many of the infections going undiagnosed. It is the single biggest cause of people requiring a liver transplant in Britain. Now scientists have found monoclonal antibodies which may be a significant step towards a vaccine.

A recent report from England found quantified the amount of money the British government makes just from printing currency. As it turns out, it amounts to a fairly sizable tax. In addition to the money that the government makes, currency leads to a lot of other costs associated with storage and security. There's not much doubt that digital money is far more efficient and cost effective. But the transition to a cashless society is taking a long time. Part of the problem is that payment providers (banks, credit card companies, etc.) are able to levy high fees on each transaction. In many cases, they make it worthwhile for merchants to opt for cash, even with its carrying costs. Eventually, situations where you'll need cash will become quite rare, but as long as digital money carries significant "taxes" of its own, cash will be around for some time.

A potential new biomarker for heart failure may be more powerful than established measures in identifying patients at increased risk for death from several causes. In their report, an international research team describes finding that blood levels of a protein called ST2 both indicate the presence of heart failure among patient with shortness of breath and powerfully predict the risk that a patient will die during the following year.

Four galaxies are slamming into each other and kicking up billions of stars in one of the largest cosmic smash-ups ever observed. The clashing galaxies, spotted by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, will eventually merge into a single, behemoth galaxy up to 10 times as massive as our own Milky Way. This rare sighting provides an unprecedented look at how the most massive galaxies in the universe form.