A report by scientists from The Netherlands published in The FASEB Journal identifies a compound in human saliva that greatly speeds wound healing. This research may offer hope to people suffering from chronic wounds related to diabetes and other disorders, as well as traumatic injuries and burns.

In addition, because the compounds can be mass produced, they have the potential to become as common as antibiotic creams and rubbing alcohol.

Specifically, scientists found that histatin, a small protein in saliva previously only believed to kill bacteria was responsible for the healing.

Mark Mulac was once an avid lover of iced tea, downing up to six glasses a day. Unfortunately, he was forced to go cold turkey. Iced tea helped to bring on an excruciating bout of kidney stones that led to surgery at Loyola University Hospital in Maywood, Ill.

Iced tea contains high concentrations of oxalate, one of the key chemicals that lead to the formation of kidney stones, a common disorder of the urinary tract that affects about 10 percent of the population in the United States.

Kidney stones are crystals that form in the kidneys or ureters, the small tubes that drain the urine from the kidney to the bladder. Men are four times more likely to develop kidney stones than women, and their risk rises dramatically once they reach their 40s.

This DelFly Micro, made by Delft University of Technology, is a 'Micro Air Vehicle' (MAV), an exceptionally small remote-controlled aircraft with camera and image recognition software. The Micro, weighing just 3 grams and measuring 10 centimeters (wingtip to wingtip) has a minuscule battery weighing just 1 gram, can fly for approximately three minutes and has a maximum speed of 5 meters per second.

This kind of ultra-small, remote-controlled, camera-equipped aircraft is of great interest because they could eventually be used for observation flights in difficult-to-reach or dangerous areas.

Nicholas Wade has an outstanding piece in today's Times Science section about the "hope" for Resverotrol and other sirtuin-activating compounds that may activate the lifespan extending pathway controlled by caloric restriction, although, like several stories on the subject lately, it left me wondering about a few things. Comment and answers appreciated, they are: 1. The reason for these stories--a Cell Metabolism article that appeared July 3 was actually quite negative about resverotrol's lifespan-extending effects. The Cell piece was about an experiment on normal, rather than high fat fed mice, raising the questions that resverotrol's previous success with high fat mice actually had more to do with energy partitioning than with the stress resistance touted by Sinclair and Guerente. Southern Illinois University School of Medicine

Adding just the right dash of nanoparticles to standard mixes of lubricants and refrigerants could yield the equivalent of an energy-saving chill pill for factories, hospitals, ships, and others with large cooling systems, suggest the latest results from National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) research that is pursuing promising formulations.

NIST experiments with varying concentrations of nanoparticle additives indicate a major opportunity to improve the energy efficiency of large industrial, commercial, and institutional cooling systems known as chillers. These systems account for about 13 percent of the power consumed by the nation’s buildings, and about 9 percent of the overall demand for electric power, according to the Department of Energy.

A new fossil discovery, the first of its kind from the whole of the Antarctic continent, provides scientists with new evidence to support the theory that the polar region was once much warmer.

The discovery by an international team of scientists was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B and involved researchers from the University of Leicester, North Dakota State University, the British Geological Survey, Queen Mary University of London, and Boston University.

The team made a new fossil discovery in the Dry Valleys of the East Antarctic region. The fossils (ostracods) come from an ancient lake - 14 million years old - and are exceptionally well preserved, with all of their soft anatomy in 3-dimensions.

In any country, some place has to be the deadliest. In the United Kingdom, that place is Scotland. The key reason is drug abuse, accounts for a third of the deaths behind Scotland's higher mortality rate, according to a study published on bmj.com today.

Traditionally, higher death rates compared to England and Wales have been blamed on the higher levels of deprivation in Scotland. Yet over half the difference between Scottish and English deaths cannot be accounted for by higher levels of deprivation. This puzzling "excess" of Scottish deaths has become referred to as the "Scottish effect."

Professor Bloor and colleagues from the University of Glasgow, analysed how many of these unaccounted-for deaths were the result of drug abuse.

Researchers have discovered that a frog that lives near noisy springs in central China can tune its ears to different sound frequencies, much like the tuner on a radio can shift from one frequency to another. It is the only known example of an animal that can actively select what frequencies it hears, the researchers say.

The findings, from a collaborative effort led by the University of Illinois and the University of California at Los Angeles, appear this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research team also included scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (at Harvard Medical School).

Environmental factors can transform the ratio of females to males in plant populations according to new research out of the University of Toronto.

The study conducted by Ivana Stehlik, a lecturer, Jannice Friedman, a PhD candidate, and Spencer Barrett, a professor, involved a novel approach using genetic markers (known DNA sequences) to identify the sex of seeds. The team investigated six natural populations of the wind-pollinated herb Rumex nivalis in the Swiss Alps and mapped the distance between females and neighbouring males. They then measured the amount of pollen captured by female flowers and collected seeds from the plants when they were mature.