Researchers have already demonstrated in the lab that the materials the body uses to make proteins can also successfully suppress several different types of viruses, including HIV and influenza A, by disrupting the formation of viral proteins. Less clear, however, was how to get these virus-busting molecules where they needed to be in the body in order to keep viruses from spreading. Now a team of Yale University researchers believe they have found an effective way of delivering these special, short-interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules to specific locations within the body's biological battlefield.

Public health advocates have long touted the female condom as a way for women to protect themselves against HIV, especially if their partner didn’t want to use a male prophylactic. But while the female condom has been distributed around the world over the last 16 years, it may make a bigger splash if it's cheaper. 

The polyurethane sheath, originally approved in 1993, costs anywhere from $2.80 to $4 a piece – a steep price for women in developing countries to whom the condom was marketed (never mind those in the U.S., who could pick up several of the male version for not much more than that — or for free), Reuters reports. That may change, now that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a next-gen female condom made of synthetic nitrile (a form of rubber) that costs less money for its manufacturer, the Chicago-based Female Health Company, to make. The cost of the new female condom, FC2, could fall to around 60 cents per device for health groups and government agencies that want to buy them, according to the newswire. Male condoms typically cost around 50 cents each.

Wondering if your sweetheart is going to buy you a box of condoms instead of a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day? Maybe your lover's celebrating two holidays at once: February is also National Condom Month.

Yes, public health advocates chose the most romantic time of year to promote the condom, that ubiquitous rubber device that safe-sex folks love and most of us love to hate (including Seinfeld's George Costanza, as you'll see in this clip). Which isn’t to say it's not useful: 19 million new sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) occur in the U.S. each year, half of them among people ages 15-to-24, according to the American Social Health Association (ASHA). Latex condoms, used correctly, can prevent HIV transmission 80 percent to 95 percent of the time, according to a 2008 review in Sexual Health. They also reduce the risk of STDs, including gonorrhea, Chlamydia and trichomoniasis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says, and are 85 percent to 98 percent effective in preventing pregnancy.

If the Web is such an effective dating vehicle, why not also use it to alert the participants of the consequences of hookups gone bad? That's the idea behind inSPOT, which uses short and not so sweet electronic postcards to quickly spread, so to speak, the news that a partner has a sexually transmitted disease (STD).

The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) and nonprofit Internet Sexuality Information Services (ISIS), launched inSPOT in 2004 after surveying the Bay Area's gay male community to better understand how, when and if they had notified sexual partners who they had potentially infected with an STD. Researchers report in this week's PLoS Medicine that the majority of men said that they were much more likely to inform serious than casual partners. ISIS and the SFDPH  started inSPOT after concluding that partners would be more willing to fess up if they could do it easily and anonymously. The site gives users a choice of e-cards to send. They take a somewhat humorous tack in an attempt to ease recipients' shock upon receiving one. Among them: "It's not what you brought to the party, it's what you left with," and "Got laid. Was happy. Got tested. Wasn't Healthy."