A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has created the world’s first material that reflects virtually no light. Reporting in the March issue of Nature Photonics, they describe an optical coating made from the material that enables vastly improved control over the basic properties of light. The research could open the door to much brighter LEDs, more efficient solar cells, and a new class of "smart" light sources that adjust to specific environments, among many other potential applications.

Researchers have long said they won't be able to understand the brain until they can put together a "wiring diagram" – a map of how billions of neurons are interconnected. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have jumped what many believe to be a major hurdle to preparing that chart: identifying all of the connections to a single neuron.

In the March 1 issue of the journal Neuron, the researchers describe how they modified the deadly rabies virus, turning it into a tool that can cross the synaptic space of a targeted nerve cell just once to identify all the neurons to which it is directly connected.

"We've wanted to do this for a very long time and finally found a way to make it possible," says the study's senior author, Edward M.

Sweat may be another way to pass on hepatitis B infection during contact sports, suggests research published ahead of print in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Hepatitis B virus attacks the liver and can cause lifelong infection, cirrhosis (scarring) of the liver, liver cancer, liver failure, and death.

The research team analysed blood and sweat samples from 70 male Olympic wrestlers for evidence of hepatitis B infection (HBV).

The wrestlers, who were all aged between 18 and 30, were all asked about injuries, as blood-borne infection is a common route of transmission.

Over a third said they had had bleeding or weeping wounds during training and competition.

Cardiff University scientists will shortly set sail (March 5) to investigate a startling discovery in the depths of the Atlantic.

Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometres in extent in the middle of the Atlantic where the Earth's crust appears to be missing. Instead, the mantle - the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometres thick - is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface.

Marine geologist Dr Chris MacLeod, School of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Sciences said: "This discovery is like an open wound on the surface of the Earth. Was the crust never there? Was it once there but then torn away on huge geological faults?

On February 28, 2007, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Jupiter on its ultimate journey to Pluto. This flyby gave scientists a unique opportunity to study Jupiter using the package of instruments available on New Horizons, while coordinating observations from both space- and ground-based telescopes including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Scientists at North Carolina State University have discovered that the fungus-like pathogen that caused the 1840s Irish potato famine originally came from the Andes of South America.

By comparing the sequences of both the nuclear and the cellular powerhouse, mitochondria, of nearly 100 pathogen samples from South America, Central America, North America and Europe, Dr.

A meditation technique promoted by the controversial Maharishi
organization of Iowa claims significant decreases the severity of congestive heart failure in a small pilot study published in Ethnicity&Disease (Winter 2007).

The authors from the University of Pennsylvania evaluated 23 African American men and women, average age 64, who were recently hospitalized with New York Heart Association class II or III congestive heart failure. Participants were randomized to either the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique or health education—in addition to usual medical care.

New research shows that a form of vitamin A used to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia induces changes in an unusual class of small molecules called microRNAs (miRNAs) in the leukemic cells.

The study also shows that three of these miRNAs inhibit the action of two genes important for cancer development, helping to explain how the drug works.

The drug is called all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) and it is considered the gold standard for treating the disease.

The study showed that ATRA raises the levels of three particular miRNAs in leukemia cells and that this rise coincides with a fall in activity of two important cancer-causing genes. The three are identified as miRNA-15b, miRNA-16-1 and let-7.

An international group of scientists has expanded the universal language for the genes of both disease-causing and beneficial microbes and their hosts. This expanded "lingua franca," called The Gene Ontology (GO), gives researchers a common set of terms to describe the interactions between a microbe and its host.

The Plant-Associated Microbe Gene Ontology (PAMGO) consortium and the GO consortium staff at the European Bioinformatics Institute approved and released more than 450 new terms for describing gene products involved in microbe-host interactions.

Oregon Health & Science University research shows how calcium regulates the recharging of high-frequency auditory nerve cells after they've fired a burst of signals, and it may have implications for neurological disorders.

The study by scientists at OHSU's Vollum Institute and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, which appears in the current issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, shows that calcium ions play a greater role in keeping in check the brain's most powerful circuits, such as those used for processing sound signals, than previously thought.