With the help of new silicon-based compounds, scientists -- and patients -- are getting a significant new charge out of the tiny lithium batteries used in implantable devices to help treat nervous system and other disorders.

No matter how healthy a life one leads, no person has managed to live much longer than a century. Even though the advances of the modern age may have extended the average human life span, it is clear there are genetic limits to longevity. One prominent theory of aging lays the blame on the accumulation of damage done to DNA and proteins by “free radicals,” highly reactive molecules produced by the metabolic activity of mitochondria.

It's often said that the key to Bill Bradley's basketball success was summed up in the title of the 1965 book by John McPhee, "A sense of where you are." Bradley always seemed to know where all nine other players were, where Bradley himself was in relation to the basket � and where the open spot was to be found for his stylized jump shot.

For the first time, a team of investigators at Carnegie Mellon University has shown that the binding of metal ions can mediate the formation of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) duplexes from single strands of PNA that are only partly complementary. This result opens new opportunities to create functional, three-dimensional nanosize structures such as molecular-scale electronic circuits, which could reduce by thousands of times the size of today's common electronic devices. The research results will appear in the October 26 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Have you ever wondered how the myriad insect forms—beetles, flies, dragonflies, mosquitoes, grasshoppers, ants, wasps, bees, and countless others—evolved?

Adult stem cell therapy quickly and significantly improves recovery of motor function in an animal model for the ischemic brain injury that occurs in about 10 percent of babies with cerebral palsy, researchers report.

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers studying hemoglobin genes, mutations of which play a role in genetic blood disorders like sickle cell anemia and beta-thalassemia, have shown in studies with mice that the KLF2 protein is crucial for making young red blood cells.