Our modern age has become accustomed to regular improvements in information technology, says Slava Rotkin, but these advances do not come without a cost.

Take the laptop, for example. Its components, especially its billions of semiconductor electronic circuits, are growing ever tinier while the instrument's power and capacity increase. But heat generated by electric current can cause the circuits to melt and the laptop hardware to fail.

Indeed, says Rotkin, an assistant professor of physics, a laptop in use can generate heat faster than an everyday hotplate and almost as fast as a small nuclear reactor.

A team of UCSF researchers has used microRNAs to help turn adult mouse cells back to their embryonic state. These reprogrammed cells are pluripotent, meaning that, like embryonic stem cells, they have the capacity to become any cell type in the body.

A drop of blood or a chunk of tissue smaller than the period at the end of this sentence may one day be all that is necessary to diagnose cancers and assess their response to treatment, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

In a Nature Medicine study, the scientists used a specialized machine capable of analyzing whether individual cancer-associated proteins were present in the tiny samples and even whether modifications of the proteins varied in response to cancer treatments. Although the study focuses on blood cancers, the hope is that the technique might also provide a faster, less invasive way to track solid tumors.

In parallel human and mouse studies, two groups of researchers have come to the same conclusion: that a new kind of gene is associated with progressive hearing loss. The new gene, a microRNA, is a tiny fragment of RNA that affects the production of hundreds of other molecules within sensory hair cells of the inner ear.   The research provides important new genetic understanding of a condition that is common in humans but remains poorly understood.

Universities, with a young  constituency and an employee base of academics interested in new discoveries and ways of communication, should have embraced social media early - but they have not and if they don't embrace new techniques in pedagogy they risk becoming seen as anachronisms in today’s hyper-connected world where information is available freely, says a University of Illinois expert who studies the knowledge economy’s effect on higher education.

Earthstock, Stony Brook University’s 8th annual week long awareness-raising celebration of Earth Day, kicks off at 10 am on Friday, April 17 with a full day of entertainment, food, refreshments, environmentally-oriented activities and visual displays situated all around the Academic Mall.