Oregon Health & Science University researchers have figured out how to turn a mouse into a factory for human liver cells that can be used to test how pharmaceuticals are metabolized.

The technique could soon become the gold standard not only for examining drug metabolism in the liver, which helps scientists determine a drug's toxicity.

The space shuttle Endeavour and its seven-member crew lifted off at 6:36 p.m. EDT Wednesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The astronauts are on their way to the International Space Station for an assembly mission, designated STS-118.

"This is serious business we're in here," said Endeavour's Commander Scott Kelly to the shuttle launch director shortly before lift off. "I'm proud of your team for getting Endeavour ready to go fly. I'm also proud of my crew and the rest of the astronaut office for the competence and professionalism and consistently making something that is incredibly difficult look easy."

Kelly then added, "We'll see you in a couple of weeks, and thanks for loaning us your space shuttle."

A new WWF study tracking pygmy elephants by satellite shows that the remaining herds of these endangered elephants, which live only on the island of Borneo, are under threat from forest fragmentation and loss of habitat.

Borneo pygmy elephants depend for their survival on forests situated on flat, low lands and in river valleys, the study found. Unfortunately, it is also the type of terrain preferred for commercial plantations. Over the past four decades, 40 percent of the forest cover of the Malaysian State of Sabah, on the northeast of the Island of Borneo – where most of pygmy elephants are – has been lost to logging, conversion for plantations and human settlement.

Most people think of Sir Isaac Newton as the father of gravity but he also created one of the earliest observations of interference in his “dusty mirror” experiment.

In a darkened room, he used a prism and a small hole in a screen to form a quasi-monochromatic beam from sunlight, which he shone onto a back-quick silvered mirror. The mirror was angled to return the beam back through the hole and on the screen. Newton observed dark and light rings of light, which he found “strange and surprising.”

It was 100 years later when the British scientist Thomas Young determined the rings were caused by interference at the screen between two paths of light scattering from dust particles on the mirror's front surface.

Even small fossils, such as bones from the hand or foot can tell us much about our ancestor’s and their behavior. Such may be the case with an ape that lived more than nine million years ago.

A study published in the latest journal issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences reports on the structure of the hand of Hispanopithecus, a critically important fossil from an ape that lived during the late Miocene of Spain.

Ape hands are typically viewed as a compromise between the ‘true hands’ of humans and the ‘foot-hands’ of other primates. There are carpal and metacarpal differences, among other things, and significant differences in proportions.

The long-term risk of suicide is tripled for women who have undergone cosmetic breast implant surgery, according to a new study led by Loren Lipworth, Sc.D., of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Md, and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn. This long-term study further confirms the link between breast implants and a strikingly high risk of suicide and other related causes of death.

The increased suicide risk, together with a similar increase in deaths from alcohol or drug dependence, suggests that plastic surgeons should consider mental health screening and follow-up for women who seek breast implants, according to the new study.