BRUSSELS, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - The European Commission earmarked 217 million euros (310 million dollars) Thursday to fund 36 research projects aimed at producing safer and more environmentally-friendly aircraft.

'Research holds the key to many of the challenges we face in today's world, including how to make air transport safer, greener, quieter and more efficient,' said EU Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik.

BRUSSELS, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - The European Commission proposed on Wednesday to plough nearly half a billion euros into research for hydrogen-powered vehicles, while acknowledging that it is far from certain that they will be the 'car of the future.'

The Commission called for 470 million euros (665 million dollars) from the bloc's joint budget to be used to fund research into hydrogen-powered vehicles over the next six years, with the private sector matching the sum.

CAPE TOWN, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Research into a vaccine for AIDS, which is devastating in parts of southern Africa, got a boost following a 100 million dollar (70.6 million euro) initiative launched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The money, to be disbursed in grants over five years, beginning from 2008, will promote research into diseases afflicting poor countries, like AIDS and malaria, said a statement on the Foundation's website on Wednesday after a meeting of global health researchers in Cape Town, South Africa.

CHICAGO, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Researchers have come up with a new, inexpensive tool for increasing milk production without resorting to growth hormones, according to a study published Monday.

They have discovered that suppressing the serotonin in mammary glands can boost milk output by 15 percent.

Changes in the levels of this hormone can affect mood -- but scientists think they've found a way to do it without giving cows the blues.

CHICAGO, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Blood transfusions may do more harm than good for a majority of patients because banked blood begins to lose a key gas almost immediately after it is donated, researchers said Monday.

Nitric oxide facilitates the transfer of oxygen from red blood cells to tissues but it begins to be lost within three hours of being banked, according to two studies from Duke University Medical Center.

CHICAGO, Oct 5, 2007 (AFP) - Bird flu has mutated so that it can more easily spread to humans and a change in a single amino acid could radically increase its virulence, according to two new studies.

While there has been some transmission of bird flu among the family members of those first infected through close interaction with ill birds, the virus has not yet evolved to the point where it can spread easily among humans.

But researchers warn that it is moving in that direction and with the wrong combination of mutations it could become a pandemic flu.

CHICAGO, Oct 3, 2007 (AFP) - Snuggled into a huge belt of warm dust, an Earth-like planet appears to be forming some 424 light years away, scientists said Wednesday.

At somewhere between 10 and 16 million years old, the planet's solar system is still in its 'very young adolescence,' but is at the perfect age for forming Earth-like planets, said lead researcher Carey Lisse of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory.

STOCKHOLM, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - Rowdy bars may no longer be quite as dangerous thanks to a British professor who won a criminology prize on Wednesday for his work showing how injuries from broken glass can be reduced.

Jonathan Shepherd, a face surgeon and professor at Cardiff University, won the Stockholm Prize in Criminology with his research into bar fights and glass-related injuries.

STOCKHOLM, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - Lung cells grown from mouse embryo stem cells have been successfully implanted into the lungs of mice, a breakthrough that could one day help humans with sick lungs, researchers said on Tuesday.

The experiment was conducted by a team of scientists from London's Imperial College and is a 'global breakthrough' that 'opens up exciting new horizons for the treatment of lung disease,' a statement from the European Respiratory Society's (ERS) annual congress in Stockholm said.

STOCKHOLM, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - MP3 players/recorders detect some respiratory sounds better than traditional stethoscopes and could prove handy replacements in the future, two researchers told an international conference on respiratory diseases.

With better quality sound from MP3 players/recorders, some clinical sounds can be better heard and even recorded, stored on computers and fileshared, according to Neil Skjodt of the department of medicine at the University of Alberta and his audiologist colleague Bill Hodgetts.