Singapore researchers have developed an unlimited number of pure insulin-producing cells from mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs).

Coaxing a patient's own cells to hunt down and tackle infected or diseased cells is a promising therapeutic approach for many disorders. But until now, efforts to follow these specially modified cells after their reintroduction to the body have relied on short-term monitoring techniques that don't give a complete picture of the cells' status.

There may be less than 20,000 rhinoceros in the world, with one species perhaps already extinct and another with possibly only four animals remaining in the wild. As the populations of these animals age and become infirm, successful breeding becomes increasingly difficult. In an article scheduled for publication in Theriogenology, An International Journal of Animal Reproduction, researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, Zoo Budapest and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, report on the first live birth of a rhinoceros resulting from artificial insemination (AI) with frozen and thawed semen.

A chance discovery by a team of scientists using optical probes means that changes in cells in the human body could now be seen in a completely different light.

The research team reproduced the masterwork Girl with a Pearl Earring in the miniature dimension of 200 microns wide or about the thickness of two hairs. Canadian researchers have created a new protein patterning technique that's enabled them to reproduce complex cellular environments and a miniature version of a masterpiece painting. According to a new study published in the journal Lab on a Chip, scientists from Université de Montréal, the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital Research Centre, McGill University and the Montreal Neurological Institute have developed a laser technology that can mimic the protein patterns that surround cells in vivo and that could lead to great advances in neuroscience.

A team led by a Montana State University professor has found a fungus that produces a new type of diesel fuel, which they say holds great promise.

When German President Horst Köhler awards the German Future Prize for 2008 on 3 December in Berlin, researchers and research projects funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) will once again be the focus of attention. Professor Axel Haverich, a heart surgeon and Leibniz prizewinner from Hannover Medical School (MHH), and his two colleagues Dr. Serghei Cebotari and Dr. Michael Harder are one of four teams who have made the final round of the President's award for engineering and innovation, worth 250,000 euros. This is the result of the preliminary selection that was announced on Tuesday by the Head of the Office of the Federal President, Undersecretary of State Dr. Gert Haller, in Berlin. The three scientists were nominated for the development and successful transplantation of tissue engineered biological cardiac valves for children , which grow with the patients – an innovation in both medicine and medical technology which has been supported by the DFG with funds from the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.

Engineers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a "plug-and-play" synthetic RNA device--a sort of eminently customizable biological computer--that is capable of taking in and responding to more than one biological or environmental signal at a time.

The gecko's amazing ability to stick to surfaces and walk up walls has inspired many researchers to manufacture materials that mimic the special surface of a gecko's foot. The secret behind the gecko's ability to stick so well is a forest of pillars at the micro-/nano-scale on the underside of the gecko's foot. Because there are so many pillars so close together, they are held tightly to the surface the gecko is walking on by a molecular force called the Van der Waals force. This relatively weak force causes uncharged molecules to attract each other.

In the tiny realm of nanotechnology, scientists have used a wide variety of materials to build atomic scale structures. But just as in the construction business, nanotechnology researchers can often be limited by the amount of raw materials. Now, Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University researcher Hao Yan has avoided these pitfalls by using cells as factories to make DNA based nanostructures inside a living cell.