Experiments using pigs genetically engineered for compatibility with the human immune system have raised hopes that cross-species transplantation could soon become an option for patients with diabetes and other currently incurable diseases.

However, scientific hurdles remain before the ultimate goal of inducing long-term tolerance of animal tissues and organs in human recipients, according to Dr. David Cooper of Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

"The potential benefits of successful xenotransplantation to large numbers of patients with very differing clinical conditions remain immense, fully warranting the current efforts being made to work towards its clinical introduction," he writes.

A new substance analyzer has been developed by the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics and Automation in Moscow.

Its functionality is to automatically determine the content of up to 20 chemical elements in the periodic table between calcium and bismuth but in a package small enough to fit in a rucksack.

Basically it runs an X-ray generator over the surface of the core, stimulating all atoms of the specimen within a radius of slightly less than 2 centimeters. It will then independently measure “secondary” fluorescent radiation: the atoms stimulated by X-ray, when coming back to the quiescent state, exude excess energy in the form of radiation and the device records that radiation.

In the search for better ways of treating children with brain cancer the study, a twelve-year research effort carried out by the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group at The University of Nottingham revealed that a significant proportion of children under the age of three, with the brain tumor ependymoma, can be spared the effects of radiotherapy by using chemotherapy — without compromising their chances of survival.

Experts in the field of childhood cancer recognise that radiotherapy can be harmful to a young child’s developing brain. It can affect IQ, short term memory, growth and puberty. The effective treatment of patients under the age of five remains, say the researchers, one of the more difficult tasks in pediatric oncology.

In what advocates hailed as a major advance for scientific communication, the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved a measure directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide free public online access to agency-funded research findings within 12 months of their publication in a peer-reviewed journal. With broad bipartisan support, the House passed the provision as part of the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill.

Removing invasive predators from island breeding colonies could save more seabirds for less cost than reductions in fishing, a study of Australia’s Eastern Tuna and Billfish Fishery (ETBF) has found.

According to one of the authors of a paper on the findings in the August edition of Frontiers in Ecology and Environment, CSIRO scientist Dr Chris Wilcox, a major challenge for fisheries worldwide is to reduce their impact on ‘bycatch’ species such as seabirds.

“Australian Commonwealth fisheries have made strong efforts towards reducing bycatch, including modifying fishing gear and restricting areas and periods of fishing, but these measures are not always effective, leading to costly interventions such as fishery closure,” Dr Wilcox says.

Faster growth, darker leaves, a different way of branching - wild varieties of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana are often substantially different from the laboratory strain of this small mustard plant, a favorite of many plant biologists.

Which detailed differences distinguish the genomes of strains from the polar circle or the subtropics, from America, Africa or Asia has been investigated for the first time by research teams from TÃbingen, Germany, and California led by Detlef Weigel from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.