Scientists have devised a new antibiotic based on vancomycin that is effective against vancomycin-resistant strains of  methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other disease-causing bacteria. The new vancomycin analog appears to have not one but two distinct mechanisms of anti-microbial action, against which bacteria probably cannot evolve resistance quickly.

Over half of the Earth's accessible agricultural land is already under cultivation because ecological factors such as climate, soil quality, water supply and topography determined the suitability of land for agriculture when people had to just find the best spots.

There are various knobs turning for the future of food. Science has made it possible for food to be grown with less environmental strain in more and more areas but climate change may impact global agriculture.

Don't bank on it. Credit: Sabinurce

By Kristine Alexander, University of Vermont

From government control of health care to new reproductive technologies in this century, we'll need to be able identify key issues, articulate their values and concerns, deliberate openly and find ways forward.

The Hastings Center and the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues have teamed up to publish a series of essays to highlight the best practices in teaching bioethics and to identify gaps in our knowledge of how best to inspire and increase moral understanding, analytical thinking in the moral domain, and professional integrity. The first three of these essays, which appear in the current Hastings Center Report, focus on bioethics education for practicing clinicians.

New research has found clownfish larvae can swim up to 400 kilometers in search of a home, which makes them better able to cope with environmental change.

Clownfish spend their entire adult lives under the protection of their host anemone but as babies they must wander the open ocean.

As part of the international study, a team of researchers to southern Oman, where they collected samples of the only two known populations of the Omani clownfish, Amphiprion omanensis. 

Clownfish spend their entire lives nestling in the protective tentacles of host anemones. Credit: Tane Sinclair-Taylor

Artificial sweeteners are promoted as aids to weight loss and diabetes prevention but a new study finds they could actually hasten the development of glucose intolerance and metabolic disease, and in a surprising way: by changing the composition and function of the gut microbiota, the substantial population of bacteria residing in our intestines.

The work was based on experiments in mice and humans by Dr. Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Immunology, who led this research together with Prof. Eran Segal of the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics.

Research lab and hospital equipment are two areas where competition drives costs up - if Lab A has a need for a new piece of equipment, Lab B has to get it and that same goes for hospitals. Companies have no reason to undercut each other because the actual market is not that big. 

Help may be on the way for a commonly used piece of equipment: the syringe pump. A team led by an engineer at Michigan Technological University has published an open-source library of designs that will let scientists slash its cost. Syringe pumps are used to dispatch precise amounts of liquid, as for drug delivery or mixing chemicals in a reaction. They can also cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

An ultracompact dwarf galaxy known as M60-UCD1 harbors a supermassive black hole – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking object.

The astronomers used the Gemini North 8-meter optical-and-infrared telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea and photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope to discover that M60-UCD1 has a black hole with a mass equal to 21 million suns. Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes – and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

There is never enough of this golden beauty. Credit: bradhigham, CC BY

By Angela White, University of Sheffield