Cartilage, a tissue in the human body that cannot heal itself, has long been a target of tissue engineers. Cartilage is the skeleton's shock absorber, and its stiffness, strength and other mechanical properties derive not from living cartilage cells but from the densely woven matrix of collagen and proteoglycan that surrounds them. This extracellular matrix, or ECM, is produced during cartilage development in children, but cannot be repaired following injury in adulthood.

Injured cartilage often serves as the focal point for arthritis formation, so tissue engineers have long sought a means of growing new cartilage that can be transplanted into adults to repair damaged joints before arthritis can develop. Unfortunately, cartilage is difficult to engineer, in part because there are no natural healing processes to mimic.

Bioengineers at Rice University have discovered that intense pressure -- similar to what someone would experience more than a half-mile beneath the ocean's surface -- stimulates cartilage cells to grow new tissue with nearly all of the properties of natural cartilage. The new method, which requires no stem cells, may eventually provide relief for thousands of arthritis sufferers.

President Bush is having a tough 2008 but one group in Europe thinks the USA is the model of conservation when it comes to Cormorant management.

The Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) is regarded by fishermen in Europe as the "black plague" that steal their fish and eat them in front of their eyes, while conservationists celebrate the increase in the number of cormorants as proof of the fact that the conservation measures of recent decades have been successful.

The Cormorant breeds in the North and the Baltic Sea area but winters in the proximity of the Mediterranean - therefore it is an issue for the EU, not local government. But the fishermen impacted do not want other European countries determining their fate. And most of the countries agree that whether the cormorant population in Europe is half a million or one and a half million, depending on who provides the data, the focus of conservation work should be on endangered species.

Aiming to gain a better understanding of the situation of abortion in Africa and Latin America, a research team jointly involving Institut de Recherche Pour le Développement and "El Colegio de Mexico" reviewed the scientific literature published from the early 1990s up to the present. Their conclusion is that women from the deprived social classes have to resort to unsafe illegal abortions, contrary to those from better-off sections of society, making abortion an equality issue that should be addressed.

What scientific literature could they have studied? Data in the area of abortion is still highly fragmented. Women face heavy legal and social penalties if they decide to have an abortion that is not by medical necessity. For Latin America, apart from a study run in urban areas of Colombia, wide-ranging surveys based on representative samples of the population are lacking.

Dr Adrian Bowyer, a senior lecturer in engineering in the Faculty of Engineering & Design at the University of Bath, has created RepRap, an open source prototype machine that has succeeded in making a duplicate of itself - by printing its own parts and building a clone.

RepRap is short for replicating rapid-prototyper. RepRap employs a technique called ‘additive fabrication’. The machine works a bit like a printer, but rather than squirting ink onto paper, it puts down thin layers of molten plastic which solidify. These layers are built up to make useful three-dimensional (3D) objects.

RepRap has, so far, been capable of making every day plastic goods such as door handles, sandals and coat hooks. Now, the machine has also succeeded in copying all its own 3D-printed parts.

Saving energy is big business these days and automobiles are a prime target for savings because two-thirds of the energy from fuel is wasted in the form of heat - about 30 percent through the engine block and a further 30 to 35 percent as exhaust fumes.

Researchers are working on a thermoelectric generator that converts the heat from car exhaust fumes into electricity. The module feeds the energy into the car’s electronic systems. This cuts fuel consumption and helps reduce the CO2 emissions from motor vehicles.

There is clearly a great need for thermoelectric generators (TEGs). These devices convert heat into electrical energy by making use of a temperature gradient. The greater the temperature difference, the more current TEGs can produce.

A new type of exercise equipment, first designed for actor Christopher Reeve, who played "Superman" in the 1977 film and its three sequels, can prevent serious lifestyle illnesses in paraplegic patients, according to a new exercise study.

In the study completed last year, patients who were paralyzed from the chest or waist down experienced an average increase in their oxygen uptake by 25 per cent and in their heart pumping volume by fully 37 per cent – after just eight weeks of training on the bike.

Patients who are unable to walk after a spinal injury have a poorer quality of life and shortened lifespan compared to non-paralyzed counterparts. Sitting passively in a chair makes people susceptible to weight and digestion problems, lower bone density, diabetes and heart/circulation problems.