Many of the drugs we use in hospitals, such as antibiotics, antifungals and anti-cancer drugs, are produced by bacteria that live in the soil beneath our feet.

UPDATE: Tiziano tells me that he has been misquoted by the Guardian - he was quoting himself a colleague when he mentioned the 20:1 bet. Sorry to say this bet is not on, at least until the person who offered the bet in the first place will manifest him- or herself....

I bet most of you, who are interested in Physics, know what I mean when I talk about "the 750 GeV particle". Last December, the ATLAS and CMS experiments released information about a tantalizing hint of a new particle with a mass in the 750 GeV ballpark. The resonance was seen in the decay to pairs of energetic photons. Since both experiments see more or less the same thing, this may be a fluctuation, but if it is, it is a really rare one. 

They look like small, translucent gems but these tiny 'gel' slivers hold the world of a patient's tumour in microcosm ready for trials of anti-cancer drugs to find the best match between treatment and tumour.

The 'gel' is a new 3D printable material developed by QUT researchers that opens the way to rapid, personalised cancer treatment by enabling multiple, simultaneous tests to find the correct therapy to target a particular tumour.

Professor Dietmar W. Hutmacher from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation said the new material was a gelatine-based hydrogel that mimicked human tissue.

Athens, Ga. - An overwhelming number of researchers still struggle within the black hole of the effectiveness and safety of stem cell therapy for neurological diseases. While the complexity of understanding how neurons grow, connect and function has long been studied, it remains a mystery, one that graduate student Forrest Goodfellow in the University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center is helping unravel.

Goodfellow, a graduate student in the University of Georgia's Regenerative Bioscience Center, has developed a unique approach of marrying stem cell biology and 3-D imaging to track and label neural stem cells. His findings were published in the journal Advanced Functional Material.

A new analysis based on two long-term aging studies--one of Roman Catholic nuns, the other of Japanese American men--provides what may be the most compelling evidence yet that dementia commonly results from a blend of brain ailments, rather than from a single condition. This is often the case even when an Alzheimer's diagnosis has been given, say the researchers.

A team led by Dr. Lon White, with the University of Hawaii and the Veterans Affairs-affiliated Pacific Health Research and Education Institute, analyzed data on more than 1,100 people who had taken part in the Nun Study or the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study. Both studies followed hundreds of aging adults and included brain autopsies upon their death.

High-risk prescribing and preventable drug-related complications in primary care are major concerns for health care systems internationally, responsible for up to 4 per cent of emergency hospital admissions.

Now a major study of drug prescribing has shown that intervening in primary care health practices can significantly reduce rates of high-risk prescribing of drugs.

The results of the study have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study, led by NHS Tayside and the University of Dundee, has also shown that the change in prescribing patterns can lead to significant reductions in related emergency admissions to hospital, although the researchers say this finding requires further examination.

Biogas is an important energy source that plays a central role in the energy revolution. Unlike wind or solar energy, biogas can be produced around the clock. Could it soon perhaps even be produced to meet demand? A team of international scientists, including microbiologists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), scientists from Aarhus University and process engineers from the Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum (DBFZ), have been studying the feasibility of this kind of flexible biogas production. Among their findings, for example, is the discovery that biogas production can be controlled by altering the frequency at which the reactors are fed.

In a cutting-edge treatment for Alzheimer's disease, EPFL scientists have developed an implantable capsule that can turn the patient's immune system against the disease.

Veteran foreign correspondent and broadcaster Michael Buerk is getting tired of “bleeding heart” celebrities.

In an interview in the latest issue of the Radio Times, Buerk said that he was “a little sniffy about celebs pratting around among the world’s victims”.

It's an age-old quandary: Are we born "noble savages" whose best intentions are corrupted by civilization, as the 18th century Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau contended? Or are we fundamentally selfish brutes who need civilization to rein in our base impulses, as the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued?

After exploring the areas of the brain that fuel our empathetic impulses -- and temporarily disabling other regions that oppose those impulses -- two UCLA neuroscientists are coming down on the optimistic side of human nature.

"Our altruism may be more hard-wired than previously thought," said Leonardo Christov-Moore, a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA's Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior.