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New Imaging Sheds Light On Basic Building Blocks of Life
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the UK's national synchrotron facility are studying the structure of Containment Level 3 pathogens such as Aids, Flu and Hepatitis. They use high intensity X-Rays to study the atomic and molecular structure of pathogens too small to be examined under a microscope. This leads to a greater understanding of how they work. They have already produced results on the hand, foot and mouth virus. This is the first time Level 3 pathogens have been imaged in this way."
AIDS(which, while nasty, is pretty stubbornly fluid-borne) shares a containment level with the flu(which, while merely annoying, cuts a broad and temporary swath through the population pretty much every time somebody gets the winter sniffles)? Are 'containment levels' based much less on ease of transmission than the name would suggest?