Using a beam of light shunted through a tiny silicon channel, researchers have created a nanoscale trap that can stop free floating DNA molecules and nanoparticles in their tracks. By holding the nanoscale material steady while the fluid around it flows freely, the trap may allow researchers to boost the accuracy of biological sensors and create a range of new 'lab on a chip' diagnostic tools.

Light has been used to manipulate cells and even nanoscale objects before, but the new technique allows researchers to manipulate the particles more precisely and over longer distances.

Did you make a resolution?   Most people do, consciously or not.   The end of one year and the beginning of a new one is a built-in time for reflection.   You may resolve to go to the gym or learn a musical instrument but often something will come up that interrupts the routine, progress is lost and the resolution loses its ... resolve.   

John O’Neill, LCSW, LCDC, CSAT, director of Addiction Services for The Menninger Clinic in Houston, says all is not lost if you plan your resolution, including planning for setbacks.   And his 5-step program is not just for New Years, you can resolve to make positive changes at any time.

New computer visualization technology developed by the Harvard Initiative in Innovative Computing has helped astrophysicists understand that gravity plays a larger role than previously thought in deep space's vast, star-forming molecular clouds.

The insight is being illustrated in Nature's online version through new three-dimensional Portable Document Format (PDF) technology that will allow readers to view the article's key graphics using free PDF software already commonly found on computers.

An extract from grape seeds forces laboratory leukemia cells to commit cell suicide, according to researchers from the University of Kentucky. They found that within 24 hours, 76 percent of leukemia cells had died after being exposed to the extract.



The investigators, who report their findings in the January 1, 2009, issue of Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, also teased apart the cell signaling pathway associated with use of grape seed extract that led to cell death, or apoptosis. They found that the extract activates JNK, a protein that regulates the apoptotic pathway.

Antibiotics may be overprescribed in kids because of concern by helicopter parents and worries about malpractice lawsuits, but in at least one instance they are saving a lot of lives - as a preventive measure to patients in intensive care units (ICUs).

This from a study involving nearly sixthousand Dutch patients in thirteen hospitals. Researchers at University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht have published their findings in an article in The New England Journal of Medicine. 

Researchers in Great Britain and the United States have imaged the first high definition imprints that dolphin sounds make in water.   They consider it a real breakthrough in deciphering dolphin language.

Certain sounds made by dolphins have long been suspected to represent language but the complexity of the sounds has made their analysis difficult. Previous techniques, using the spectrograph, display cetacean (dolphins, whales and porpoises) sounds only as graphs of frequency and amplitude.