Parents, note! Your neighbourhood may determine whether your kids are overweight, a new study has found.

Children living in areas surrounded by fast food outlets are more likely to be overweight or obese, according to researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in UK and their colleagues.

The research looked at weight data from more than a million children in UK and compared it with the availability of unhealthy food from outlets including fish and chip shops, burger bars, pizza places, and sweet shops.

They found that older children in particular are more likely to be overweight when living in close proximity to a high density of unhealthy eating outlets.

"We found that the more unhealthy food outlets there are in a neighbourhood, the greater the number of overweight and obese children," said Professor Andy Jones, from UEA's Norwich Medical School, who led the research.

"The results were more pronounced in secondary school children who have more spending power to choose their own food. But the association was reversed in areas with more healthy food options available," Jones said.

"If we can use these findings to influence planning decisions and help create a more healthy food environment, we may be able to help reverse this trend for future generations," study co-author Andreea Cetateanu, from UEA's school of Environmental Sciences, said.

"Public health policies to reduce obesity in children should incorporate strategies to prevent high concentrations of fast food and other unhealthy food outlets.

"But there is no quick fix - and any interventions for tackling childhood obesity and creating environments that are more supportive for both physical activity and better dietary choices must be part of the bigger picture looking at the whole obesity system," Cetateanu said.

The research team used data from the National Child Measurement Programme which records the height and weight of one million children at the majority of state schools in England annually.

Indian-origin scientists have successfully developed a radical new technique that may kill brain tumours by hijacking them into toxic pits or areas of the body that are safer to operate on.

One factor that makes glioblastoma cancers so difficult to treat is that malignant cells from the tumours spread throughout the brain by following nerve fibres and blood vessels to invade new locations.

Now, researchers have learned to hijack this migratory mechanism, turning it against the cancer by using a film of nanofibres thinner than human hair to lure tumour cells away.

Instead of invading new areas, the migrating cells latch onto the specially-designed nanofibres and follow them to a location - potentially outside the brain - where they can be captured and killed.

Using this technique, researchers can partially move tumours from inoperable locations to more accessible ones.

Though it would not eliminate the cancer, the new technique reduced the size of brain tumours in animal models, suggesting that this form of brain cancer might one day be treated more like a chronic disease, researchers said.

"We have designed a polymer thin film nanofibre that mimics the structure of nerves and blood vessels that brain tumour cells normally use to invade other parts of the brain," said Ravi Bellamkonda, lead investigator and chair of the Wallace H Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

"The cancer cells normally latch onto these natural structures and ride them like a monorail to other parts of the brain. By providing an attractive alternative fibre, we can efficiently move the tumours along a different path to a destination that we choose," said Bellamkonda.

Treating the Glioblastoma multiforme cancer, also known as GBM, is difficult because the aggressive and invasive cancer often develops in parts of the brain where surgeons are reluctant to operate.

Even if the primary tumour can be removed, however, it has often spread to other locations before being diagnosed.

"The signalling pathways we were trying to activate to repair the spinal cord were the same pathways researchers would like to inactivate for glioblastomas," said first author of the study, Anjana Jain, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

Tumour cells typically invade healthy tissue by secreting enzymes that allow the invasion to take place, Jain said. That activity requires a significant amount of energy from the cancer cells.

"Our idea was to give the tumour cells a path of least resistance, one that resembles the natural structures in the brain, but is attractive because it does not require the cancer cells to expend any more energy," she said.

Details of the technique were reported in the journal Nature Materials.

Scientists are planning an ambitious project to map the human brain down to each neuron and the molecules that make it work.

Eighty universities and research centres from 22 European Union countries will work with others in US, Japan and China on the 10-year "Brainome" project.

A key aim of the project is to develop a deeper understanding of the factors that control intelligence, personality and the risk of mental illness, 'The Times' reported.

The knowledge of the way the brain computes can also be applied to technology.

Karlheinz Meier, of Heidelberg University in Germany, a researcher on 'neuromorphic computing' - the term for systems that mimic the brain - said it is possible to merge realistic brain models with new hardware for a completely new paradigm of computing - one that more closely resembles how the brain itself processes information.

"The brain has the ability to efficiently perform computations that are impossible even for the most powerful computers while consuming only 30 Watts of power," Meier said.

The three key organisations at the heart of the Brainome are the Human Brain Project, which is creating a "virtual brain" housed in a supercomputer near Dusseldorf; the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, which is trying to map the cortex, the seat of consciousness and reasoning; and Harvard University's brain research through advancing innovative neurotechnologies initiative.

Scientists have claimed to have discovered a mechanism involved in stabilizing key HIV proteins and thereby concealing sites where some of the most powerful HIV neutralizing antibodies bind.

Numerous spikes jut out of the surface of HIV, each containing a set of three identical, bulb-shaped proteins called gp120 that can be closed together or spread apart like the petals of a flower. Some of the most important sites targeted by HIV neutralizing antibodies are hidden when the three gp120s, or the trimer, are closed, and the gp120 trimer remains closed until the virus binds to a cell.

The researchers discovered that certain amino acids located on the gp120 protein undergo a process that stabilizes the trimer in its closed position. In this process, called sulfation, the amino acids acquire a sulfur atom surrounded by four oxygen atoms.

By either blocking or increasing sulfation of these amino acids, the researchers changed the sensitivity of the virus to different neutralizing antibodies, indicating that the trimer was being either opened or closed.

The scientists suggest that if the synthesized gp120 widely used in HIV research were fully sulfated during manufacture, the resulting product would adopt a more true-to-life structure and more closely mirror the way the immune system sees unbound HIV. This might help generate a more effective HIV vaccine.

The researchers add that full sulfation of gp120 may enable scientists to crystallize the molecule more readily, which also could advance HIV vaccine design.

The study has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers have claimed that sunlight could help to reduce high blood pressure.

According to British researchers, exposure to sunlight changes the levels of nitric oxide in the skin, dilating blood vessels and thus easing hypertension.

Martin Feelisch, a professor of experimental medicine at the University of Southampton in southern England, said that small amounts of NO (nitric oxide) are transferred from the skin to the circulation, lowering blood vessel tone, asserting that as blood pressure drops, so does the risk of heart attack and stroke.

For their study, the research team analyzed 24 volunteers who were exposed to ultraviolet (UVA) light from tanning lamps for two 20-minute sessions.

In one session, the volunteers were exposed to both the UVA rays and the heat of the lamps but in the second the UV was blocked so that only the heat of the lamps affected the skin.