Bacteria prefer milk chocolate to dark chocolate and will swim towards it on an agar plate, so teachers have found out this week (15-19 July) at a summer school run by the Society for General Microbiology at the University of Reading. The experiment is one of a series of A-level practicals currently being produced for teachers by the Society.
“We have developed the chocolate experiment to show that bacteria can detect a food source and swim towards it – a process called chemotaxis. But we’ve see

In a groundbreaking telemedicine development, doctors in Massachusetts earlier this month helped a physician at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to surgically repair the damaged knee of a meteorologist spending the winter in Antarctica. Using a “telemedicine” connection operated by Raytheon Polar Services Co. (RPSC) of Centennial, Colo., orthopedic surgeon Bertram Zarins and anesthesiologist Vicki Modest, both of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, helped South Pole physician Dr. Timothy Polla

MIT engineers are excited about a new technique for repairing cartilage that could have significant advantages over the procedure now commonly used. This could affect people disabled by osteoarthritis, which slowly destroys the tissue that cushions joints. Hundreds of thousands others damage cartilage through sports-related injuries and other accidents. The new technique involves growing cartilage cells within a novel “designer” gel outside the body, then ultimately delivering the cell-seede

As Congress considers legislative proposals aimed at saving Medicare+Choice, a new study published today on the Health Affairs Web site shows that under the best-case scenario, enrollment in the troubled managed care program would stabilize at about 5 million beneficiaries. Under the worst case of the four policy proposals to boost sluggish M+C reimbursement, enrollment would shrink to just 3.3 million by 2005, according to the article by health care scholars Kenneth E. Thorpe and Adam Ather

Two seemingly unrelated Native American children have one painful thing in common: juvenile Paget’s disease (JPD), an extremely rare, bone metabolism disorder. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Shriners Hospitals for Children, St. Louis, have discovered that the two patients also share an unusual genetic defect. The research team found that both patients are completely missing the gene for a recently discovered protein called osteoprotegerin, known to

Satellites can help the EU monitor climate change, address international crises and contain natural disasters. Today in Brussels EU Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin and Mr Antonio Rodotà, the Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), officially opened a large stakeholder consultation forum aiming at the definition of European needs to enhance global monitoring for environment and security (GMES). 250 participants, representing users, suppliers and researchers, addressed poli