Humans have long been trying to make the dream of nanoscopic robots come true. It's getting closer each time nanoscience produces components for molecular-scale machines.

One such device is a rotor; a movable component that rotates around an axis. Trying to observe such rotational motion on the molecular scale is an extremely difficult undertaking but Japanese researchers at the Universities of Osaka and Kyoto have met this challenge. As Akira Harada and his team report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, they were able to get "snapshots" of individual molecular rotors caught in motion.

As the subject of their study the researchers chose a rotaxane. This is a two-part molecular system: A rod-shaped molecule is threaded by a second, ring-shaped molecule like a cuff while a stopper at the end of the rod prevents the ring from coming off. The researchers attached one end of the rod to a glass support. To observe the rotational motions of the cuff around the sleeve, the scientists attached a fluorescing side chain to the cuff as a probe.

Researchers from China, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, have created a model that shows exactly how, when a baby suckles at a mother's breast, it starts a chain of events that leads to a surge of the "trust" hormone oxytocin in their mother's brain.

Research at the University of Liverpool has found how Saharan dust storms help sustain life over extensive regions of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Working aboard research vessels in the Atlantic, scientists mapped the distribution of nutrients including phosphorous and nitrogen and investigated how organisms such as phytoplankton are sustained in areas with low nutrient levels.

They found that plants are able to grow in these regions because they are able to take advantage of iron minerals in Saharan dust storms. This allows them to use organic or 'recycled' material from dead or decaying plants when nutrients such as phosphorous – an essential component of DNA – in the ocean are low.

Viruses achieve their definition of success when they can thrive without killing their host. Now, biologists Pamela Bjorkman and Zhiru Yang of the California Institute of Technology have uncovered how one such virus, prevalent in humans, evolved over time to hide from the immune system.

The human immune system and the viruses hosted by our bodies are in a continual dance for survival--viruses ever seek new ways to evade detection, and our immune system devises new methods to hunt them down. Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV), says Bjorkman, Caltech's Delbrück Professor of Biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator, "is the definition of a successful virus--it thrives but it doesn't affect the host."

A super-resolution X-ray microscope developed by a team of researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) and EPFL in Switzerland combines the high penetration power of x-rays with high spatial resolution, making it possible for the first time to shed light on the detailed interior composition of semiconductor devices and cellular structures.

The new instrument uses a Megapixel Pilatus detector (whose big brother will be detecting collisions from CERN's Large Hadron Collider), which has excited the synchrotron community for its ability to count millions of single x-ray photons over a large area. This key feature makes it possible to record detailed diffraction patterns while the sample is raster-scanned through the focal spot of the beam. In contrast, conventional x-ray (or electron) scanning microscopes measure only the total transmitted intensity.

NEW YORK, July 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- Largest electricity investment in Togo's history will double the Country's generating capacity

ContourGlobal Togo, a subsidiary of international power company ContourGlobal, received approval today for US$209 million in financing and political risk insurance from the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) for the construction and operation of a power plant in Lome, Togo.

LONDON, July 18 /PRNewswire/ --

Unite members across the NHS will today (Friday 18th July) send a strong message to government to say: "Cut my pay - No Way!" In a national day of protest NHS staff will be making clear their anger against the derisory three year pay offer of 7.99 per cent. This action will mark the start of the Unite campaign against the imposition of the pay deal, this includes the possibility of Unite balloting its members on industrial action.

Union members are angry that the proposed three year award, worth 2.75 per cent in year one, 2.54 per cent in year two and 2.5 per cent in the third year, represents a significant pay cut in the current economic climate.

LONDON, July 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- Exhibition Opens at The O2 This Autumn

LONDON, July 18 /PRNewswire/ --

Tickets to the next blockbuster exhibition to premiere at The O2, Body Worlds & The Mirror of Time from physician, scientist and anatomist Dr. Gunther von Hagens, go on sale today.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080718/313865-a )

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080718/313865-b )

In partnership with the producers of the sensation Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, AEG and Arts and Exhibitions International (AEI), this all-new Body Worlds exhibition will make its world premiere at The O2 bubble on 24 October, 2008.

Hypochondriacs beware. The Rocky Mountain spotted fever and lyme disease caused by ticks is nothing to take lightly—especially in the dry season when ticks are most prominent, even more so due to global warming.

Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which was first identified in the Rocky Mountains, is caused by the bacteria Rickettsia rickettsii, when an infected tick comes in contact with humans. The ticks affected by the bacteria include the American dog tick, the lone-star tick, and the wood tick, all of which like to live in wooded areas and tall, grassy fields.

Similarly, Lyme disease is named after the place it was discovered in Lyme, Connecticut in 1975. It is caused by a cork-screw like bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi. The black-legged ticks are usually the ones that spread the disease. Like its progressive corkscrew shaped bacterium, ticks are affected by feeding off small animals with the disease. These animals usually include mice, chipmunks, and other wild rodents. When the infected tick attaches to a person or animal and stays attached long enough (usually more than 36 hours) to take a “blood meal” it has further passed on the infection.