Life Sciences and Chemistry

Developing electronic paper that can be written on and then erased with the touch of a button is a challenge. Sometimes the ink must adhere to the paper and other times bead up.

Getting it just right requires knowing how, on a molecular level, the liquid ink interacts with the solid paper.

Now Jeanne E. Pemberton has clarified why changing the electrical charge on electronic paper affects how well ink will stick.

The finding will further efforts to make a reusable tablet

The blood-sucking ticks that spread microbes, causing disease in livestock and people, are very sensitive to the weather. So different sorts of microbes cycle between ticks and their hosts in the UK and in other parts of Europe where the summers are warmer and drier. This has obvious implications for the possible effects of global warming on the spread of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, Oxford University scientists said today, Monday 29 March 2004, at the Society for General Microbiology’s meet

Yet another extraordinary ability of the active ingredient in aspirin, salicylic acid, has just been identified by plant scientists working at the University of Cambridge, researchers heard today, Monday 29 March 2004, at the Society for General Microbiology’s meeting in Bath.

“We all recognise its bitter taste and pain-killing abilities, but the importance of the active ingredient of aspirin, called salicylic acid, is even greater”, says Dr John Carr of the Department of Plant Sciences

Viruses, often able to outsmart many of the drugs designed to defeat them, may have met their match, according to new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The findings show that the introduction of a harmless molecule that uses the same machinery a virus needs to grow may be a potent way to shut down the virus before it infects other cells or becomes resistant to drugs. The results are published in the March issue of the journal, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

A group of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute, at the University of California in San Diego, and at the Oregon Hearing Research Center and Vollum Institute at Oregon Health & Science University have discovered a key molecule that is part of the machinery that mediates the sense of hearing.

In a paper that will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Nature, the team reports that a protein called cadherin 23 is part of a complex of proteins called “tip links” that are on hair ce

Protein hydrogels can be genetically engineered to promote the growth of specific cells

Johns Hopkins University researchers have created a new class of artificial proteins that can assemble themselves into a gel and encourage the growth of selected cell types. This biomaterial, which can be tailored to send different biological signals to cells, is expected to help scientists who are developing new ways to repair injured or diseased body parts.

“We’re trying to give an