This month, Journal of Applied Microbiology publishes a ground-breaking study demonstrating that bacteria which are physically separated can transmit information through the air. It is well documented that bacteria can exchange messages by releasing substances into a surrounding liquid culture medium, but this new study is the first to demonstrate signalling between physically separated bacterial cells.

Professor Alan Parsons and Dr Richard Heal of QinetiQ ltd, have shown that physically sep

A plastic “energy flower” that collects solar and wind energy that can then be used to power appliances in the home for free has won a Northumbria University student a top award.

Paul Richardson, a third year design student, won a £1,750 Design International Attachment Award from the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).

Paul’s award will give him the chance to work with DCA International to research and develop his interest in design.

It has often been claimed that psychological stress is an important cause of heart disease, but a study in this week’s BMJ shows that previous research may have been misleading.

Researchers measured self-assessed stress amongst middle-aged Scottish men working in and around Glasgow in the early 1970s. These men were then followed for more than twenty years to see whether or not they developed heart disease. Several different measures of heart disease were used.

Men who thought they

In a joint project with the STW Technology Foundation, medical information technologists from Leiden have developed a virtual robot which meticulously scans the heart muscle using images of the heart. The contours detector reduces the work of specialists and does not affect the patients. The research group will present the results in the middle of May at a congress in Honolulu.

To map the condition of a patient’s heart, physicians have until now used a series of MRI images (magnetic resonanc

An international team of scientists from Cambridge, Manchester and Tenerife has released the first results of new high-precision observations of the relic radiation from the Big Bang, often called the cosmic microwave background or CMB.

These observations have been made with a novel radio telescope called the Very Small Array (VSA) situated on Mount Teide in Tenerife. The images show the beginnings of the formation of structure in the early Universe.

From the properties of the image

A signature of arts and crafts sessions, the Möbius strip–a seemingly endless ribbon with only one side and one edge that can be made from construction paper and sticky tape–has been given a new look. According to a report published today in the journal Nature, scientists have succeeded in growing crystals in the form of Möbius structures.

A piece of ribbon or paper can be twisted and turned easily, so a regular Möbius strip itself is no great feat of engineering. Crystals, in contrast,