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'BREAKTHROUGH' IN MALARIA FIGHT

By Phil Mercer
BBC News, Sydney

Australian scientists have identified a potential treatment to combat malaria by

pinpointing the process that helps the disease hijack red blood cells.

They have found the key to an adhesive that stops the parasite being flushed out of the body
by the immune system. The removal of just one of these compounds is enough to bring the
process to a halt. Researchers in Melbourne believe their discovery could be a major
breakthrough in the fight against the disease. They have identified eight proteins that allow
this glue-like substance onto the surface of a hijacked cell.

Proteins are nature's building blocks. They are large molecules that are essential for the
function of cells in the body. Professor Alan Cowman, a member of the research team at the
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, said targeting those proteins could be a
key to fighting malaria. "We essentially block the virulence or the capacity of the parasite to
cause disease," he said. Malaria is preventable and curable, but can be fatal if not treated
promptly.

The disease kills more than a million people each year. Many of the victims are young
children in sub-Saharan Africa.

HAPPINESS 'IMMUNE TO LIFE EVENTS'

Momentous events in your life such as having children, or getting married, may make
you happier, but only temporarily, say researchers.

Our basic happiness level essentially stays the same There is the concept of a
throughout adult life, the Economic Journal reports. 'thermostat' of happiness - when
Economists from the UK, US and France based their a big event happens to you,
conclusions on a 20-year analysis of the life satisfaction whether it is positive or negative,
of hundreds of people from Germany. the spring stretches, but returns
Even after traumatic events, overall mood dipped but back to its former state quite
then recovered. quickly
The study looked at a psychological process called
"adaptation" - the way in which humans adjust to new Francois Moscovici
circumstances, good or bad. White Water Strategies
The German volunteers, aged between 18 and 60 at the start of the study, were then
questioned again regularly over the following two decades and asked to rate their own
happiness.

They were also asked to report any major events so that the researchers could plot the
relationship between the event and overall levels of satisfaction.
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They found that only unemployment gave a long-lasting decline in overall mood in the five
years after the event. In other traumatic events, such as widowhood or divorce, overall mood
dipped, but then recovered.

Negative events
For positive events, such as marriage or childbirth, the effect was equally transient - the
researchers calculated that the happiness increase delivered by the birth of a child lasted for
two years before the volunteers ratings were back to normal.

Dr Yannis Georgellis, a senior lecturer at Brunel University, and co-author of the report, said
that it suggested that old adages such as "time heals" were true in many cases. He said: "It's
consistent with other findings that people recover from negative events very quickly - there
was some literature on people who became paraplegic, who, when interviewed a few years
later, had similar levels of happiness to those who had not been affected this way. "Likewise,
there are studies of lottery winners who are no happier in the long term."

Francois Moscovici, director of psychological consultancy firm White Water Strategies, said
that there was plenty of evidence that people had a fixed, underlying "range" of happiness,
which could be temporarily affected by major events, but not usually for long periods. "There
is the concept of a 'thermostat' of happiness - when a big event happens to you, whether it is
positive or negative, the spring stretches, but returns back to its former state quite quickly."