hiv

Stars sometimes cause us vast moral dilemmas.

Should we support those stars who gyrate appallingly, but whose music we secretly love? Should we adore those stars whose songs we adore, but whose personal life seems a sewer of broken hearts and severed senses?

Now there is another parameter to this axis of complication.

Lady Gaga, she of the interesting designer fashions and music for gym clothes, is, along with other stars, quitting Facebook and Twitter.

There are those for whom this news might signify disaster on a worldwide scale. Lady Gaga, after all, has more than 7 million Twitter followers, … Read more

Scott Stein of CNET's Digital City Podcast is the latest victim we've pulled into The 404 studio to co-host the show while Jeff is honeymooning in Hawaii.

Scott brings his expertise in mobile computing to help us discuss today's stories about elderly iPad-ing, cracking iPhone 4s, the link between hyper-texting teens and risky behavior, mobile STD testing, and how to protect your kids from digital predators that happen to be named Wilson G. Tang.

The holidays are approaching quicker than we thought, but Scott is already prepared with a brand-new Apple iPad for his father-in-law, proving the universality of all Apple products. Scott's a dedicated iPad user himself, but still hopes for the day when all syncing is done in the cloud...unfortunately, that feature lives in same Apple dimension as external storage and flawless cellular reception, so we'll likely see it materialize in the iPad 19G.

We haven't completely fallen down the Apple rabbit hole yet, but we do come up with a new digital concept called the Syncing Centipede, so listen up, but don't you dare steal the idea.

Apple has its own internal problems to deal with, and yet another iPhone 4 flaw has surfaced, this time regarding several cases causing cracks and scratches on the back of the phone.

The irony of this story is twofold: first, Apple used to recommend these recalled cases to mitigate the initial reception crisis, and second, what about Apple claiming that the glass on the iPhone 4 was supposedly 30 times stronger than the 3G's plastic back and therefore less prone to scratches? Let's take bets on how many of these "flaws" will miraculously disappear with the introduction of the iPhone 5.

Or maybe we should just get rid of phones altogether, because apparently teens who text more than 120 times a day (media's calling them "hyper-texters") are more likely to engage in risky behavior like sex, drugs, and alcohol abuse.

So says a study done at 20 public high schools in Cleveland last year, where researchers found that one in five students were hyper-texters, one in nine are hyper-social networkers, and one in four students had sent or received a sext message!

This understandably makes Scott worried for his own young kids, and he makes a good point about the importance of parents setting rules to limit the amount of texting and Internet use per day. Semirelated story: We need more Superparents like this!

Studies suggest that anywhere from 2 to 13 percent of patients in emergency rooms are HIV positive, according to Charlotte Gaydos, a clinical microbiologist at Johns Hopkins University. So the emergency room seemed like a logical place to test whether an untrained person is able to self-administer his or her own HIV test, and then accurately read the results (one line means negative, two lines mean positive).

In an urban hospital, researchers from Johns Hopkins offered people in the emergency room the option to test themselves for HIV while they waited. More than 90 percent of the people they asked … Read more

Physicist Tanmoy Bhattacharya and HIV researcher Bette Korber are creating an evolutionary genetic family tree based on samples taken by the international Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology consortium, in order to compare the evolutionary history of more than 10,000 sequences from more than 400 people with HIV.

If they can identify common features of the virus as it is transmitted, researchers might be able to create a vaccine that recognizes the virus before the body's immune system reacts to--and mutates--it.

What already sounds like a lot of data, however, could balloon further, hence the importance of Roadrunner. &… Read more

For years, researchers have been working on microbicides (intravaginal gels, rings, and films) that can prevent the transmission of viruses such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Only a handful ever made it to human clinical trial, and ran into issues such as women not using them, or the antiviral drugs in the microbicides not lasting long enough. Some microbicides even seemed to increase the risk of transmission.

Now, researchers at the University of Utah seem to have greatly improved on a microbicide they first wrote about in 2006, according to a study published this week in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.… Read more

What's worse than malaria? Malaria with a syphilis shooter. But seriously--a Canadian company has just introduced several "rapid tests" that can instantly detect various combinations of tropical and sexually transmitted diseases.

MedMira this week launched its expanded line of Multiplo rapid tests at the U.S. military's Advanced Technology Applications for Casualty Combat Care Conference in St. Pete's Beach, Fla.

The Multiplo tests will be used to diagnose conditions such as HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis, malaria and dengue fever in various combinations. This combo feature enhanced by, in some cases, instant results, is … Read more

I will be attending the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine this week. For the twelfth year, Pop!Tech will convene a network of 600 remarkable thinkers, doers, leaders, and global change agents in science, technology, social innovation, business, environmentalism, globalization, media, education, and many other fields for a four-day exploration of ideas shaping the future.

This year, the organizers will pay particular attention to the 21st century dynamics between systems based on scarcity and those based on abundance, in areas ranging from digital social networks to biology to peacemaking. Among the speakers are Chris Anderson (Wired, "The Long … Read more