Despite irrefutable proof that HIV treatments have proven benefits, AIDS denialists continue to deny their value. In a paper just published online in Springer’s journal AIDS and Behavior, Professor Myron Essex and Dr. Pride Chigwedere, from the Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative in the US, provide additional proof that withholding HIV treatments with proven benefits led to the death of 330,000 people in South Africa as the result of AIDS denialist policies. They also show that the harm has not been reversed and highlight that when denialism enters public health practice, as in South Africa, the consequences are disastrous.

Biophysicists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), Germany, have published the results of single-molecule experiments that bring a higher-resolution tool to the study of protein folding. How proteins arrive at the three-dimensional shapes that determine their essential functions - or cause grave diseases when folding goes wrong - is considered one of the most important and least understood questions in the biological and medical sciences. Folding itself follows a path determined by its energy landscape, a complex property described in unprecedented detail by the TUM researchers.

Apple will unveil its “latest creation” Jan. 27 in San Francisco, the company said in an e-mail to journalists Monday. Whether that creation will be a tablet, new iPhone or other device is not known.

RED TAPE: Fake fundraising efforts for the Haiti disaster are spreading like wildfire on Facebook. Dozens of fan pages have been set up, urging users to join and promising a $1 donation for each member.

(PhysOrg.com) — Creepy, crawly spiders and bugs are just some of the unusual creatures in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) invertebrate collections. While many find insects a nuisance, ARS scientists rely on these collections to study insect species and to find ways to protect U.S. crops and people from them.

A top scientist said Monday he had warned in 2006 that a prediction of catastrophic loss of Himalayan glaciers, published months later by the UN’s Nobel-winning climate panel, was badly wrong.

(AP) — Will Phoenix rise from the dead? Don’t bet on it.

A huge wave-generating quake capable of killing as many people as in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami could strike off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and the city of Padang is in the firing line, a team of seismologists said on Sunday.

Online maps, mobile phone donations, wikis and a slew of websites are being deployed as telecoms firms, technology giants and startups set aside their rivalries and put the latest tools to work to help earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Google is learning that being a star contender in the smartphone arena takes more than a big name and well-crafted hardware. Nexus One has stumbled since its grand launch on January 5 as buyers grumble that there is nowhere to go but online for answers to complaints or questions.

(AP) — Here’s a recession bargain: the space shuttle. NASA has slashed the price of these 1970s era spaceships from $42 million to $28.8 million apiece.

Microsoft’s new Internet search engine Bing posted a modest gain in its share of the US search market in December while partner Yahoo! saw its share dip slightly, online tracking firm comScore said.

Science editor Alan Boyle’s Weblog: Rescuers from all around the world are converging on Haiti in the wake of this week’s earthquake - and not all of them are human. Finding survivors amid the rubble of Port-au-Prince is a job tailor-made for dogs and devices.

Give money to help Haiti by cell phone or via online? Some of it may depend on how much you want to give. The mobile giving campaign launched this week seeks smaller amounts — such as $5 and $10 per person. Larger donations are best made through other means.

The back up system of HIFI, the state of the art Dutch space instrument on ESA’s Herschel space telescope, has been switched on successfully.