According to New Scientist, Californian company Sonitus Medical has created a small device that connects around the teeth and uses bone conductivity to translate sounds picked up by a microphone in the deaf ear into vibrations transmitted through the jawbone and "heard" by the one working ear. Tests are already underway for the device to see how it deals with other forms of deafness, with plans to submit findings to the FDA next year for a late 2010 release.

No news as of yet for a similar device for toothless hobos. Perhaps in 2011.

2010 preview: Tooth-mounted hearing aid for the masses [New Scientist]

The cells, discovered in 2005, are called Th17; they're thought to trigger inflammation and tissue injury associated with autoimmune diseases, but scientists at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center testing an assumed link between Th17 and cancer discovered exactly the opposite of what they expected. Instead of promoting the growth of cancer within a body - as inflammation tends to do - Th17 appeared to restrict it. This discovery opens the door to a potential new treatment for cancer victims, according to MD Anderson's Chen Dong:

While there is much work to be done, these findings imply the possibility of taking a patient's Th17 cells, expanding them in the lab and then reinfusing them as a treatment.

Autoimmune disease cells harnessed to fight cancer [New Scientist]

A team of researchers led by Dennis Burton of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, discovered not only two "extremely potent" HIV antibodies, but also which part of the virus that the antibodies recognized, which was previously unknown as a binding site. Wayne Koff, senior vice president of research and development at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and member of the research team says,

It's the discovery of the target that's the key thing... Our hypothesis now is that if you bind to the [newly discovered target area], you neutralise the virus, as that's how it appears on the surface of the virus... The expectation is that we'll find more. We hope there will be a number of sites that are vulnerable, and we'll know that in a few months' time.

As well as continuing to look for more weak spots, scientists now have to create vaccines that will help others create the antibodies to fight the virus in future.

Discovery of HIV's weak spot boosts vaccine quest [New Scientist]

British scientists Nicholas Grassly of Imperial College London and Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh have studied the virus' rate of spread, and discovered that it's much slower than many had thought... in fact, only just fast enough to keep itself from dying out:

If the new virus spreads from one infected person to the next at about the same speed as ordinary flu, that gives an idea of how many cases there may have been in that time. A mathematical model permits the calculation of an important variable called R0 – the number of additional people infected, on average, by each case. If R0 is less than one, an infection dies out.

Grassly also cautions that the estimate is very preliminary. But with the data available now, he gets an R0 of 1.16 – enough for the virus to keep going, but only just.

Don't celebrate just yet, however; New Scientist points out that the flu pandemic of 1918 first presented with a similarly low rate of spread (1.45) that jumped to 3.75 during a more deadly second wave. For now, though, here's hoping that the rate falls just that little bit further to take it over the edge.

First genetic analysis of swine flu reveals potency [New Scientist]

Daphne Bavelier, from the University of Rochester, New York, has turned into something of a gaming evangelist; six years ago, she proved that playing games made you more adept at completing visual tasks, and now she's on the way to proving that they also improve your eyesight.

A recent study conducted by Bavelier showed that gamers playing what she terms as "action" games (first person shooters) for 50 hours over a nine week period had a 43% increase in their ability to perceive contrast, a discovery that may pave the way to the first non-lens and non-surgical treatment for amblyopia, or failure to identify contrast, which affects 3% of the population of western society. Her study has led to the University of California in Berkeley starting an amblyopia trial where games will be prescribed as treatment.

Shoot 'em up video games are good for your eyesight [New Scientist]