News Articles

Researchers stunned the world when they announced a cloaking device for the microwave range. This device made use of metamaterials that had a negative refractive index for electromagnetic radiation. The metamaterials were carefully designed split-ring resonators with a structure size much smaller than the wavelength. Only 10 stacked layers of metamaterials were necessary to achieve the desired invisibility effect.
Now, researchers from the group of Harald Giessen at the University of Stuttgart have succeeded in manufacturing a stacked split-ring metamaterial for the optical wavelength range (Na Liu et al., Nature Materials Jan. 2008 issue).

New research published today in the Journal of Cell Biology illuminates the mechanical factors that play a critical role in the differentiation and function of fibroblasts, connective tissue cells that play a role in wound healing and scar tissue formation.
When we are injured, the body launches a complex rescue operation. Specialized cells called fibroblasts lurking just beneath the surface of the skin jump into action, enter the provisional wound matrix (the clot) and start secreting collagen to close the wound as fast as possible. This matrix is initially soft and loaded with growth factors.
The fibroblasts "crawl" around the matrix, pulling and reorganizing the fibers.

The brain remains a complicated machine but researchers from the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), a joint project of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have made progress in explaining why, when we notice a scent, the brain can quickly sort through input and determine exactly what that smell is.
To do it, they created a biologically inspired algorithm for analyzing the brain at work and they have described a mechanism called “dynamic connectivity,” in which neuronal circuits are rewired “on the fly” allowing stimuli to be more keenly sensed.
“If you think of the brain like a computer, then the connections between neurons are like the software that the brain is running.

Researchers of the Institute of Molecular Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, have been working for more than 20 years on designing biological microchips for efficient and quick diagnostics of tuberculosis and other diseases.
The BIOCHIP-IMB company was set up at the Institute for production of domestic microchips. During the press-tour on November 15, 2007, the researchers told journalists about progress and achievements. The project of the laboratory of biological microchips at the Institute of Molecular Biology (Russian Academy of Sciences ) is one of the winners at the contest of projects on the “Living Systems” priority direction of the Federal Target Program guided by the Federal Agency for Science and Innovations (Rosnauka).

Time-lapse videos and computer simulations provide the first concrete molecular explanation of how a cell flexes tiny muscle-like structures to pinch itself into two daughter cells at the end of each cell division, according to a report in Science Express.
Cell biologists at Yale and physicists at Columbia teamed up to model and then observe the way a cell assembles the “contractile ring,” the short-lived force-producing structure that physically divides cells and is always located precisely between the two daughter cell nuclei.
“This contractile ring is thought to operate like an old-fashioned purse string,” said senior author Thomas D. Pollard, Sterling Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology at Yale.

If you do a search here on the LHC, you find all kinds of news articles.
The LHC was completed in April, except it wasn't, and parts broke, or were still being designed and testing will be delayed, except it's unimportant and it will still be the greatest thing ever. Maybe it will be. Or it will be another Hubble.
After yesterday's statements by CERN Director General Robert Aymar it's still unclear when it will be done or how it will work but, he says, 'good progress has been made on all fronts.'
So here's the latest:
The LHC is now fully installed in its 27 km tunnel.

Levels of cholesterol in the membranes of hair cells in the inner ear can affect your hearing, said a consortium of researchers from Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University and Purdue University in a report in today’s print edition of The Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Dr. William Brownell, professor of otolaryngology at BCM and his colleagues, said that the amount of cholesterol in the outer hair cell membrane found in the inner ear can affect hearing.
“We’ve known for a long time that cholesterol is lower in the outer hair cell membranes than in the other cells of the body,” said Brownell, senior author of the report “What we didn’t know was the relationship it had to hearing.”

Natural selection can occur at the cellular level, where it is detrimental to health. Fortunately it is normally controlled by a well-known pattern of ongoing cell differentiation in the mature tissues of animals, according to a new study published December 14 in PLoS Computational Biology.
The failure of normal cell differentiation patterns may explain cancer and senescent decline with aging, say researchers at the University of Arizona, the Santa Fe Institute, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Wistar Institute.
Darwinian natural selection and evolution is usually studied in populations of organisms, but it also applies to cellular populations; this is called “somatic” evolution.

It's been revealed that what Santa needs is a comfortable armchair and a fast finger to turn a 24,902 mile(a) shopping trip around the world into just 1 hour(b) spent in front of a computer, leaving Santa all rested up to do his Christmas Eve deliveries.
150 clicks are all it would take for Santa Claus to buy all the presents from across the world for a typical UK family(c). Santa need not spend £3370 on sleigh fares(d) nor travel 56 hours(e) on his famous sleigh to purchase the presents either, as he would in years past.

Another FDA-approved targeted cancer drug, sunitinib (SutentTM, Pfizer), may be associated with cardiac toxicity, report researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston), and Thomas Jefferson University (Philadelphia).
Their collaborative study, led by Ming Hui Chen, MD, MMSc, a cardiologist at Children’s who specializes in the cardiac health of cancer patients, appears in the December 15 issue of The Lancet, accompanied by an editorial.
Sunitinib is one of several new “smart” cancer drugs called tyrosine kinase inhibitors that targets specific signaling molecules inside cancer cells that aid cancer spread.

Single-cell organisms were already in existence 500 million years ago, with several thousand genes providing different cellular functions. Further developments seemed dependent on producing even more genes.
If so, a highly developed organism like a human should have resulted in several million genes yet the publication of the human genome showed us that a human only has around 25,000 genes – not many more than a fruit fly or a worm with approximately 15,000 to 20,000 genes.
It would appear that, over the last 500 million years, other ways to produce highly complex organisms have evolved. Evolution has simply found more efficient ways to use the genes already there.
But what could have made this possible?

A team led by a Cardiff University archaeologist has reconstructed a 3,000-year-old glass furnace, showing that Ancient Egyptian glassmaking methods were much more advanced than previously thought.
Dr Paul Nicholson, of the University’s School of History and Archaeology, is leader of an Egypt Exploration Society team working on the earliest fully excavated glassmaking site in the world. The site, at Amarna, on the banks of the Nile, dates back to the reign of Akhanaten (1352 - 1336 B.C.), just a few years before the rule of Tutankhamun.
It was previously thought that the Ancient Egyptians may have imported their glass from the Near East at around this time.