Many patients diagnosed with HIV in the 1980s and 1990s have survived and now are entering their golden years. AIDS cases among the over-50 crowd reached 90,000 in 2003, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will account for half of all HIV/AIDS cases in the United States by 2015.

Nearly four decades after a fuel oil spill polluted the beaches of Cape Cod, researchers have found the first compelling evidence for lingering, chronic biological effects on a marsh that otherwise appears to have recovered.

A new study says targeting smaller lesions does little to significantly reduce the incidence of colorectal cancer and, in fact, results in extremely high financial costs and a large proportion of adverse events.

Infant formula and other baby foods that provide permanent protection from obesity and diabetes into adulthood could be on shop shelves soon, reports Lisa Melton in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. The foods, under development at the Clore Laboratory at the University of Buckingham, will be supplemented with leptin, the hunger hormone. Those who take the foods early in life should remain permanently slim.

A rock rat found in Laos in 1998 has turned out to be a "fossil species" - the sole survivor of a long-dead African family