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On 26 July, The New England Journal of Medicine published a curious article suggesting that obesity spreads though social ties: if your spouse, sibling or friend has gained weight, chances are you also need to buy larger shirts. Unfortunately, the popular media decided to interpret this quite literally as obesity being contagious...
It was a busy year—the genomes of some celebrities were sequenced, vaccine clinical trials were halted and, at long last, embryonic stem cells from primates were created.
A vaccine has the potential to substantially reduce the AIDS death toll. In the wake of the recent halting of phase 2b trials of Merck's HIV vaccine candidate, a hard look at the field's expectations and strategies is in order.
By designing a new generation of prosthetic limbs that rely on electronic sensing, Hugh Herr has proven that he can put good ideas into motion. But he aims to go beyond simply restoring lost limb function.