Health hot news

Presentations made at scientific conferences this week announced recent successes in utilizing Biolog technology to advance our understanding of important pathogenic bacteria. At the Texas and South Central ASM meeting in Austin, Texas, Professor Lacy Daniels’ group from Texas A & M University presented their most recent findings using Biolog Phenotype MicroArray (PM) Technology to study species of the genus Mycobacterium.

Technology that can determine the concentration of nanomaterials in living tissue has been licensed by The University of Texas at Austin to Houston-based nanoTox Inc. The technology comes from the laboratory of Dr. James Tunnell , an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the

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.

The xCELLigence System from Roche Applied Science enables researchers to monitor and quantitatively assess cell attachment and spreading in real-time. The technique is non-invasive and does neither require lab- and cost-intensive cell labeling nor cell lysis or fixation. With this quick and economical method, the user can monitor the effect of matrix proteins on biological events in one single experiment.

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. Prof David Parker from Durham University’s Chemistry Department was working with experts from Glasgow University, and a team of international researchers, when they discovered dramatic changes in the way that light was emitted by optical probes during a series of experiments.

The Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) is very pleased to announce that its bid to bring the 15th European Microscopy Congress (EMC) to London in 2012 has been successful. The aim of the RMS’s 2012 bid was to take advantage of the attention that London will receive in the run-up to and during the Olympics and Paralympics, and to stage a genuine festival of microscopy immediately afterwards at London’s ExCeL from 16th to 21st September 2012.

Tiny DNA tweezers can catch and release objects on-demand Researchers in China are reporting development of a new DNA “tweezers” that are the first of their kind capable of grasping and releasing objects on-demand. The microscopic tweezers could have several potential uses, the researchers note. Those include microsurgery, drug and gene delivery for gene therapy, and in the manufacturing of nano-sized circuits for futuristic electronics.

The xCELLigence Real-Time Cell Analyzer (RTCA) System from Roche Applied Science utilizes impedance read-out to noninvasively quantify cellular status in real-time. Several cell-based applications have been developed for the xCELLigence System so far. Among them are cellular quality control, cell proliferation or cytotoxicity.

Marrying a sensitive detector technology capable of distinguishing hundreds of different chemical compounds with a pattern-recognition module that mimics the way animals recognize odors, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a new approach for “electronic noses.

Soybeans no longer a musical fruit? Soybeans may drop off the list of musical fruit. Scientists in Singapore are reporting victory over some consumers’ No. 1 complaint about soy products - the “flatulence factor” caused by indigestible sugars found in soy.