In a mixing of pasta metaphors, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists have used electrostatic attraction to layer reactive biological molecules lasagna-like around spaghetti-like carbon nanotubes.

Research investigating attention in infancy has revealed that, at just four months old, babies are able to organise visual information in at least three different ways, according to brightness, shape, and how close the visual elements are together (proximity). These new findings mean that very young infants are much more capable of organising their visual world than psychologists had previously thought. The study also has implications for understanding certain developmental disorders such as Williams syndrome.

With hormonal male contraception likely to be available in the near future, results of a study in this week's issue of THE LANCET highlight how such contraception is reversible within a few months.

A fast, high-resolution, 3D mouse embryo visualization technique developed by collaborators at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the University of Utah will revolutionize the way birth defects and cancer genes are studied in animal models. That's the prediction of the researchers in an article to be published online in PLoS Genetics on April 28, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal from the Public Library of Science.

For some microbes, the transformation from a benign lifestyle in the soil to that of a potentially deadly human pathogen is just a breath away.

Susan Brown, an associate professor of biology at Kansas State University, is interested in how evolution generates so much diversity in insects shapes and forms.

By stripping the E. coli genome of vast tracts of its genetic material - hundreds of apparently inconsequential genes - a team of Wisconsin researchers has created a leaner and meaner version of the bacterium that is a workhorse of modern biology and industry.