The future of biolectronics - being able to diagnose diseases, detect poisons and monitor health instantly - may still seem far away, but it may be closer than you think.

Researchers understand what biochemical reactors they need to monitor and they know which microelectronics they would need to use. They have just been unable to combine them because measuring the ions in receptors within cell membranes destroyed the cells being measured.

A team at the Max Planck Institute say they have solved the problem and describe the coupling of a receptor to a silicon chip by means of a cell–transistor interface. True bioelectronics at its most basic level.

Physicians have recognized scoliosis, the abnormal curvature of the spine, since the time of Hippocrates, but its causes have remained a mystery -- until now. For the first time, researchers have discovered a gene that underlies the condition, which affects about 3 percent of all children.

The new finding lays the groundwork for determining how a defect in the gene -- known as CHD7 -- leads to the C- and S-shaped curves that characterize scoliosis.

"Hopefully, we can now begin to understand the steps by which the gene affects spinal development," says Anne Bowcock, Ph.D., professor of genetics, of medicine and of pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis.

Giant prehistoric penguins? In Peru? It sounds more like something out of Hollywood than science, but a researcher from North Carolina State University along with U.S., Peruvian and Argentine collaborators has shown that two heretofore undiscovered penguin species reached equatorial regions tens of millions of years earlier than expected and during a period when the earth was much warmer than it is now.

Paleontologist Dr. Julia Clarke, assistant professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at NC State, and colleagues studied two newly discovered extinct species of penguins. Peruvian paleontologists discovered the new penguins’ sites in 2005.

Recent studies showing that commonly used anesthetic agents can cause brain damage in animals don't prove that similar harmful effects occur in human newborns—and shouldn't affect current approaches to anesthesia in preterm and ill infants, according to a leading expert on pain management in newborns.

The July issue of the journal Anesthesiology features an editorial by Dr. Kanwaljeet J.S. Anand, Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Pharmacology, Neurobiology & Developmental Sciences in the College of Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Director of the Pain Neurobiology Lab at Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute.

Folk medicine, prayer, astrology, spells, mysticism - your treatment for disease in medieval times mattered most on the beliefs of the people around you rather than a codified study of the body.

It was commonly believed that body health resulted from a balance of the 'humours' in the body - black bile, phlegm and blood and yellow bile- and that a lack of balance meant an issue with a particular organ. Even today those beliefs are prevalent in the use of terms that described them then - if you have ever heard someone described as 'melancholic', it refers to an issue with their spleen resulting in too much black bile.

Many of the practices used then are still in use today.

18-year old Nicholas Tan Xue-Wei will soon depart for the U.S. to present a research paper at The 2007 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP'07), June 25 to 28, in Las Vegas.

Before returning home to Singapore, Nicholas will continue to represent Singapore's Bioinformatics Institute by presenting his research paper at the World Congress on Engineering 2007 (WCE 2007), July 2 to 4 in London.

Nicholas will speak about his research paper, titled “Towards A Serum-Free Medium: Growth Receptors And Signaling Pathways That Regulate Multipotency In Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells."