The shortage of islet cells limits the development of islet transplantation. One new approach was reported in the October 21 issue of the World Journal of Gastroenterology because of its great significance in enhancing the output of islet cells.

The article describes the differentiation of rat pancreatic ductal epithelial cells into insulin-producing cells by the transfection of PDX-1. In recent years, though great efforts have been made to differentiate embryonic stem cells, pancreatic ductal epithelial multipotent progenitor cells and bone marrow stem cells into islet cells, the process of cell differentiation and growth is long. Moreover, the amount of islet cells of differentiation, and the insulin released by islets, is not enough to meet the clinical needs.

...and quite frankly I am pretty pissed off that his lectures have been cancelled. James Watson, Nobel Prize winner and cofounder of the structure of DNA told the Times of London that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically." So guess what? Most venues hosting Watson have decided to cancel his forthcoming public engagement talks.

Severely restricting calories leads to a longer life, according to research in the October issue of Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.

The study says such a diet can also maintain physical fitness into advanced age, slowing the seemingly inevitable progression to physical disability and loss of independence.

Using a rat model of life-time caloric restriction, they showed that the diet reduces the amount of visceral fat, which expresses inflammatory factors that in humans cause chronic disease and a decline in physical performance and vitality across the lifespan.

Thousands of high school students are currently deliberating over which university to attend next year. But which are the best? A study published in the open access journal BMC Medicine warns against using international rankings of universities to answer this question. They are misleading and should be abandoned, the study concludes.

The study focuses on the published 2006 rankings of the Times Higher Education Supplement "World University Rankings" and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University "Academic Ranking of World Universities".

Stars in dwarf spheroidal galaxies behave in a way that suggests the galaxies are utterly dominated by dark matter, University of Michigan astronomers state.

Astronomy professor Mario Mateo and post-doctoral researcher Matthew Walker measured the velocity of 6,804 stars in seven dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way: Carina, Draco, Fornax, Leo I, Leo II, Sculptor and Sextans. They found that, contrary to what Newton's law of gravity predicts, stars in these galaxies do not move slower the farther they are from their galaxy's core.

"These galaxies show a problem right from the center," Mateo said. "The velocity doesn't get smaller. It just stays the same, which is eerie."

Can sounds alter how masculine or feminine a person looks?

A new study by neuroscientists from Northwestern University focuses on the brain’s processing of such sensory information about another’s gender to examine whether hearing fundamentally changes visual experience.

The study concludes that it does, weighing in with findings that contribute to provocative evidence about multi-sensory processing of our world that has been emerging in recent years.

“Researchers have long thought that one part of the brain does vision and another does auditory processing and that the two really don’t communicate with each other,” said Grabowecky.

It's not just humans with a tendency for political maneuvering and nepotism. Rhesus macaques do it also, according to research by Dario Maestripieri, an expert on primate behavior and an Associate Professor in Comparative Human Development and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago.

“After humans, rhesus macaques are one of the most successful primate species on our planet; our Machiavellian intelligence may be one of the reasons for our success” wrote Maestripieri in his new book "Machiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World."

Maestripieri has been studying monkeys for more than 20 years and has written extensively on their behavior.

In the future everyone who is connected to the electric grid will be able to upload and download 'packets' of electricity to and from the network, according to one scenario by Dutch researcher Jos Meeuwsen of the Technical University Eindhoven.

He developed three scenarios for the Dutch electricity supply in the year 2050. The starting point is that in 2007, 50% of the consumption will originate from sustainable sources.

Due to the security of supply and the connection with the European market, electricity networks will always be necessary, says Meeuwsen. Further, due to an increasing demand for electricity it is important to include all possible energy options (including coal and nuclear energy) in the scenario development.

Polymer-based piezoelectric materials are currently the object of great interest in the world of industry because they enable their use in new applications in sectors such as transport and aeronautics, amongst others.

A definition of piezoelectricity – piezo being Greek for “subjected to pressure” - is the generation of the electrical polarisation of a material as a response to mechanical strain.

This phenomenon is known as direct effect or generator effect and is applied fundamentally in the manufacture of sensors (mobile phone vibrators, lighters, etc.). In these cases piezoelectric materials, also used in actuators, undergo an inverse or motor effect, i.e. a mechanical deformation due to the application of an electrical signal.