The current condition and future prospects of Australia's coral reefs will be in the spotlight at a gathering of leading marine scientists in Townsville on October 10-11, 2013

This image shows a male Chaco costai. The two new species described from Uruguay, Chaco castanea and Chaco costai, are middle sized spiders that range between 1 and 2 cm in body size. Like all Nemesiids they have elongated body and robust legs with predominantly black-brownish coloration. A recent study in the open access journal Zookeys provides a detailed description of the two news species and a rare glimpse into their living habits.

Wyss Institute scientists have begun programming DNA to help make specific targets in the cell blink. A team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has been awarded a special $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop an inexpensive and easy-to-use new microscopy method to simultaneously spot many tiny components of cells.

University of South Florida researchers have suggested a new view of how stem cells may help repair the brain following trauma. In a series of preclinical experiments, they report that transplanted cells appear to build a "biobridge" that links an uninjured brain site where new neural stem cells are born with the damaged region of the brain.