Science & Technology News

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New research that sheds light on the methods and machinery used by HIV to infect cells provides insight into the tricky virus that potentially could guide the development of a vaccine against the virus that causes AIDS, according to U.S. government and other scientists. Separate studies published on Wednesday describe in detail the structure and dynamics of the spike on the surface of the human immunodeficiency virus that it employs to fuse with and enter cells. …

By Sven Nordenstam and Ben Hirschler STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) – A German and two American scientists won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for smashing the size barrier in optical microscopes, allowing researchers to see individual molecules inside living cells. U.S. citizens Eric Betzig and William Moerner and Germany’s Stefan Hell won the prize for using fluorescence to take microscopes to a new level, making it possible to study things like the creation of synapses between brain cells in real time. …

By Kiyoshi Takenaka and David Alexander TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan and the United States agreed on Wednesday to map out how they will work together if Tokyo needs to use force to help protect a friendly country under attack, as they update defence cooperation guidelines for the first time in nearly two decades. The development follows Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s historic step away from Japan’s post-war pacifism in July, when the Japanese government reinterpreted pacifist Article 9 of the constitution to end a ban that has kept its military from fighting abroad. …

By Ryan McNeill (Reuters) – As sea levels rise, tidal flooding along the U.S. coast is likely to become so common that parts of many communities, including the nation’s capital, could become unusable within three decades, according to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Rising sea levels create a higher platform for tides and storm surges. Scientists compare the effect to slam dunks in basketball: Raising the gymnasium floor would increase the number of slam dunks per game. …

By Julien Pretot PARIS (Reuters) – Not everything related to wine gets better with age, as a young generation of French wine experts can attest. Take Benoit Perrot and brothers Matthieu and Antoine Mondesert, all in their early thirties, who last November founded Demain les Vins (Tomorrow’s Wines). Their business model combines selling with crowdfunding, an approach which this year will benefit Antoine Sunier, a 34-year-old who took up winemaking in the Beaujolais region after turning his back on telecoms. …

By Michelle Moghtader DUBAI (Reuters) – President Hassan Rouhani called on Tuesday for Iran’s universities to admit more foreign students and lecturers, dismissing conservatives’ fears that more interaction with the outside world would encourage espionage. His remarks at Tehran University appeared to be a fresh riposte to hardliners in the Islamic Republic’s faction-ridden political leadership who have been waging a determined campaign against his policies of international engagement. …

By Inmaculada Sanz and Kate Kelland MADRID/LONDON (Reuters) – The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that Europe would almost certainly see more cases of Ebola after a nurse in Spain became the first person known to have caught the virus outside Africa. With concerns growing globally that Ebola could spread beyond West Africa, where it has already killed more than 3,400 people in the worst outbreak in history, Spanish officials tried to reassure the public that they were tackling the threat. But health experts said the risk of a full-blown outbreak outside Africa was slim. …

By Niklas Pollard and Ben Hirschler STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) – An American and two Japanese scientists won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for inventing a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source, leading to the creation of modern LED light bulbs. Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan and Japanese-born U.S. citizen Shuji Nakamura won the prize for developing the blue light-emitting diode (LED) — the missing piece that now allows manufacturers to produce white-light lamps. …

An Anglo-American scientist and a Norwegian husband-and-wife research team won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for discovering the brain’s navigation system — the inner GPS that helps us find our way in the world.