A new micro-tool allows researchers to measure and manipulate cellular forces as assemblies of living cells reorganize themselves into tissues.  The new technique allows researchers to gauge how cells' minute mechanical forces affect cellular behavior and cell differentiation in a 3-D, in vivo-like environment.  It mimics how tissue actually forms in a living organism.

The push-and-pull of cellular forces drives the deformation, extension and contraction of cells that occur during tissue development and these processes ultimately shape the architecture of tissues so how it is done plays an important role in coordinating cell signaling, gene expression and behavior, and they are essential for wound healing and tissue homeostasis in adult organisms.

Labyrinthulomycetes, single-celled marine decomposers that eat non-living plant, algal, and animal matter, are ubiquitous and abundant, particularly on dead vegetation and in salt marshes and mangrove swamps.

Although most labyrinthulomycetes species are not pathogens, the organisms responsible for eelgrass wasting disease and QPX disease in hard clams are part of this group. 

Over 60 percent of the nearly 5,000 genome projects reported in the Genomes OnLine Database involve microbes.   It's no surprise.   Microbes are important in everything from bioenergy to agriculture and medicine and are involved in Earth’s biogeochemical cycles.

A lot could be done with microbial genomics, says DOE JGI Genome Biology head Nikos Kyrpides writing in Nature Biotechnology, if researchers go beyond the present anthropocentric focus and institute shared standards for genomic data collection and analysis.

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), expected to power Air Force unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the future because they are an optimum energy harvesting source that may lead to longer flight times without refueling, have gotten a boost  by using a flexible film and a thin glass coating with transparent conductive electrodes.

The University of Washington's Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) project team, with lead researcher Dr. Minoru Taya is working on the airborne solar cells and found that DSSCs made from organic materials, which use (dyes) and moth-eye film, are able to catch photons and convert them into synthesized electrons that can harvest high photon energy. 

This topic requires many considerations that may be more political than economic, but to try and retain focus, the point is primarily to examine how economic principles (like supply and demand) are dealt with in this arena.

There are two ways in which multi-national businesses may manifest. In one case, a company maintains operations to provide goods and services in another country and is completely self-contained. In other words, the goods/services provided are provided by individuals in that country for individuals in that country. This is simply another closed system(1), albeit with a company that originated elsewhere.

In case you've been living under a rock, you probably know that Monday is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.   I don't remember seeing it on TV when I was a lad, though I am told I did (I do remember watching the live liftoff of Apollo 17, since Kennedy is about an hour drive from my boyhood home in Florida and we went to that one) but most everyone middle aged and older will - it remains the most watched program in history(1).

Georgia State University researchers are manipulating individual atoms in DNA and forming unique molecules in hopes of understanding the mechanisms of DNA replication and transcription, and perhaps leading to new treatments for diseases.

Chemistry and chemical biology Professor Zhen Huang and his lab were able, for the first time, to manipulate groups of molecules called methyl and phosphate groups in DNA that have been altered to contain selenium in order to bring them close enough together to form hydrogen bonds.