Time-lapse videos and computer simulations provide the first concrete molecular explanation of how a cell flexes tiny muscle-like structures to pinch itself into two daughter cells at the end of each cell division, according to a report in Science Express.

Cell biologists at Yale and physicists at Columbia teamed up to model and then observe the way a cell assembles the “contractile ring,” the short-lived force-producing structure that physically divides cells and is always located precisely between the two daughter cell nuclei.

“This contractile ring is thought to operate like an old-fashioned purse string,” said senior author Thomas D. Pollard, Sterling Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology at Yale.

If you do a search here on the LHC, you find all kinds of news articles.

The LHC was completed in April, except it wasn't, and parts broke, or were still being designed and testing will be delayed, except it's unimportant and it will still be the greatest thing ever. Maybe it will be. Or it will be another Hubble.

After yesterday's statements by CERN Director General Robert Aymar it's still unclear when it will be done or how it will work but, he says, 'good progress has been made on all fronts.'

So here's the latest:

The LHC is now fully installed in its 27 km tunnel.

Levels of cholesterol in the membranes of hair cells in the inner ear can affect your hearing, said a consortium of researchers from Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University and Purdue University in a report in today’s print edition of The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Dr. William Brownell, professor of otolaryngology at BCM and his colleagues, said that the amount of cholesterol in the outer hair cell membrane found in the inner ear can affect hearing.

“We’ve known for a long time that cholesterol is lower in the outer hair cell membranes than in the other cells of the body,” said Brownell, senior author of the report “What we didn’t know was the relationship it had to hearing.”

Natural selection can occur at the cellular level, where it is detrimental to health. Fortunately it is normally controlled by a well-known pattern of ongoing cell differentiation in the mature tissues of animals, according to a new study published December 14 in PLoS Computational Biology.

The failure of normal cell differentiation patterns may explain cancer and senescent decline with aging, say researchers at the University of Arizona, the Santa Fe Institute, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Wistar Institute.

Darwinian natural selection and evolution is usually studied in populations of organisms, but it also applies to cellular populations; this is called “somatic” evolution.

It's been revealed that what Santa needs is a comfortable armchair and a fast finger to turn a 24,902 mile(a) shopping trip around the world into just 1 hour(b) spent in front of a computer, leaving Santa all rested up to do his Christmas Eve deliveries.

150 clicks are all it would take for Santa Claus to buy all the presents from across the world for a typical UK family(c). Santa need not spend £3370 on sleigh fares(d) nor travel 56 hours(e) on his famous sleigh to purchase the presents either, as he would in years past.

Another FDA-approved targeted cancer drug, sunitinib (SutentTM, Pfizer), may be associated with cardiac toxicity, report researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston), and Thomas Jefferson University (Philadelphia).

Their collaborative study, led by Ming Hui Chen, MD, MMSc, a cardiologist at Children’s who specializes in the cardiac health of cancer patients, appears in the December 15 issue of The Lancet, accompanied by an editorial.

Sunitinib is one of several new “smart” cancer drugs called tyrosine kinase inhibitors that targets specific signaling molecules inside cancer cells that aid cancer spread.