Bodily fluids contain lots of information about the health of people, that is why medical doctors routinely have blood and urine analyzed.

But bodily fluids can do more than mark infectious diseases or cancer and organ failure, researchers at ETH Zurich and at the University Hospital Zurich have shown they can take advantage of modern high-resolution analytical methods to provide real-time information on the chemical composition of exhaled breath.

Yes, your breath has an identifiable individual chemical pattern. Call it a a 'breathprint'? 

The first published results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) physics experiment on the International Space Station were announced today and though the result is the most precise measurement to date of the ratio of positrons to electrons in cosmic rays, we still have not caught our first glimpse into dark matter.

The AMS experiment, constructed at universities around the world and assembled at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), is the world's most precise detector of cosmic rays.  It was installed on the Space Station May 19th, 2011 after having been brought into orbit on the last flight of NASA's space shuttle Endeavour. To date it has measured over 30 billion cosmic ray events.   

Food so cheap that poor people can be fat is a miracle only dreamed about by philosophers ad economists throughout history. It was previously believed that the labor force needed to produce enough food would outstrip the food they could produce, something like how trying to exceed the speed of light adds too much mass.

Amyloids
are the quintessential bad boys of neurobiology.
These clumps of misfolded proteins found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders muck up the seamless workings of the neurons responsible for memory and movement, and researchers around the world have devoted themselves to devising ways of blocking their production or accumulation in humans.

Understanding how amyloids form requires an understanding of the biology of proteins, which are essentially strings of smaller components called amino acids attached end to end. Once they're made, these protein strings twist and fold into specific three-dimensional shapes that fit together like keys and locks to do the work of the cell.

PubMed Central is costing biomedical journal sites readership and that effect is increasing over time.

The bulk of modern biomedical studies are controlled by the government, which means taxpayer-funding, so it makes sense that the results would be available to the public, but Phillip M. Davis writing in The FASEB Journal says that PubMed draws readership away from the scientific journal even when journals themselves are providing free access to the articles.

Male and female blue tits look a lot alike to us but in the UV-range, visible to birds, the male is much more colorful.

Two new symbionts living in the gut of termites have been discovered.   These single-cell protists, Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque, help termites digest wood. And now they have a name inspired by science fiction. 

The current situation and future prospects for biosimilars is similar to that of small molecule drugs, according to an analysis by Research and Markets: they get to benefit from patent expiry. On this basis, prospects for biosimilars might look good, with the vast majority of leading originator brands in the global biologics market expected to lose some degree of protection by 2019. 

There has been much activity in the news by those who have been promoting various ideas on paths to a manned presence on Mars. In some ways the approaches are all similar, except for one where volunteers are sought for a one-way trip to Mars with enough supplies for a sufficient amount of time to become self-sufficient ... or, well, that's too bad, but it was a good try.

The initiative is by a Dutch firm and is called Mars One, with the goal of people to Mars by 2022.

Health care is shifting to be more like traditional service industries and that means more value will (and must be) delivered through technology and lesser-trained clinical personnel. 

With increased government control of health care, a predicted shortage of 65,000 primary care physicians (PCPs) by 2025 will mean a greater need for leveraging technology solutions. The role of the primary care physician, though not eliminated, will certainly change.