Medical science is always on the breakthrough to find cures for so many life-threatening illnesses these days. A recent project headed by University of Missouri-Columbia engineers based on nanotechnology aims to develop a small but powerful device capable of effectively delivering drugs to help treat these conditions.

So far, the project is in its testing phase and will be focusing on fighting various diseases on a microscopic level, such as destroying tumors, kidney stones, ulcers as well as hopefully treating cancer and HIV. Through a fusion of microchip-based technology and nanotechnology, the device triggers a reaction resulting in super sonic shock waves which will make infected cells permeable for drug interaction.

The project is headed by Shubhra Gangopadhyay, an electrical and computer engineering professor in the College of Engineering and the head of the University's International Center for Nano/Micro Systems and Nanotechnology.

Other practical uses of the technology include the dispersal of drug-carrying nanoparticles called the nanosponge into the body. This nanosponge will then target specific cells and areas that have been infected with disease. Also, through the delivery of gold nanoparticles, doctors can also track drug movement and the spread of disease throughout the body.

Such nanoparticles contain no harmful components and will be harmless to the body. The device will, however, need as many as three more years of additional testing before it can be made available to pharmaceutical companies. Nems/Mems Works, LLC will market the device and the various nanoparticles associated with the study.

The genetically modified rice, LLRICE 601, that cropped up in in Arkansas poses no health risks, says State Agriculture Secretary Richard Bell. LLRICE 601 was genetically engineered by Bayer CropScience to be resistant to a herbicide. Although it has not received USDA approval for commercial distribution, it was discovered in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

But Bell said the reports labeling the rice as tainted, bad or contaminated were untrue. "There are no food safety or environmental issues at all...the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration of Washington have assured that they are both safe for food and there is no environmental impact."

It is still not known how LLRICE 601 got into bins of conventional commercial rice, but Bell said it could have been stolen or it got out by accident.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), like the LLRICE 601, are plants or animals whose genetic material has been altered via recombinant DNA technology. Recombinant DNA technology allows DNA molecules from different species to combine into one molecule.

Not everyone is a fan of GMOs. GMO crops and livestock have been nicknamed "Frankenfood" by its opponents because they are viewed as unnatural products of scientific meddling. Others say GMOs could produce unforeseen global side effects as a result of modified organisms proliferating in the wild. Many Western European countries and Japan have banned the entry of GMO products into their territories.

Without it, carbon-based life as we know it on Earth could not exist.

Photosynthesis - the biological ability of converting light into energy - is ultimately what keeps all of us alive. Even when  petroleum (literally, "rock oil") is burned in the form of gasoline, it's just the release of sunlight energy gathered by plants billions of years ago. In a very real way, it is the reason you and I are able to live and breathe. The question that scientists have been wondering about is - just when and where did this process begin?

Meet a humble organism called cyanobacteria. Actually, you know it by its more common name, algae. After studying 15 species of cyanobacteria, a team of scientists at  the University of Osnabrück, Germany concluded that the photosynthetic machinery they use is of a much older form than that of the four other types of  phototropic (literally "light-eating")  bacteria. The team, lead by Armen Mulkidjanian, found that only the cyanobacteria genome contains all 100 of the requisite genes. Many of these individual genes are unique to cyanobacteria. "This means that cyanobacteria have 'invented' the majority of their photosynthetic genes,"  Mulkidjanian states.

Earlier, scientists believed that cyanobacteria was descended from earlier phototrophic bacteria.  This latest research indicates that it was the opposite. The fact that so many of these genes are unique to cyanobacteria indicates that they originated with this lineage.

Additional evidence includes 3.4-billion-year-old fossils that show the oldest photosynthetic organisms as being filamentous (that is, having long, tube-like extensions). This supports the argument that pro-cyanobacteria were the first phototropic life forms.

Pro-cyanobacteria were thus the ancestor of "light-eating" plants able to store unlimited sunlight as energy. This in turn enabled the rise of the diverse biome that exists on Earth today. "This invention gave an enormous evolutionary advantage to cyanobacteria, so that they dominate in the vast majority of photosynthetic communities," Mulkidjanian says.

Not all of the scientific community agrees with Mulkidjanian, however. "I did not see any evidence that would convince me that this group of organisms shouldn't instead be called pro-phototrophs rather than pro-cyanobacteria," says Robert Blankenship of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. According to Blankenship, cyanobacteria's more complex photosynthetic apparatus compared with that of other bacteria suggests that they evolved more recently.

Seems that humans aren't the only ones to suffer ailments like stiff shoulders, easily broken limbs and dimming eyesight as they get older.

As winter descends upon Mars' Southern Hemisphere, NASA's rovers appear to be entering the winter of their lives as well, suffering from problems stemming from aging hardware. Nonetheless, they're continuing to make new discoveries about the Red Planet.

Spirit, stationed about 15° south of Mars' equator (roughly equivalent to northern Brazil and central Africa on Earth), is starting to slow down because it's receiving less sunlight. Opportunity is closer to the equator, so experiences less seasonal variation in light. Despite the age-related problems they are expecting, they have performed beyond all expectations; they were originally designed to operate for just 90 days when they landed on opposite sides of Mars two and a half years ago.

Spirit's right front wheel gave up the ghost back in March. The rover team decided  to park Spirit on a rocky slope called Low Ridge Haven for the winter. From this spot, Spirit has continued to examine the rocks and soil around it while measuring the atmosphere's temperature.

Opportunity, like some of us, is suffering from a a stiff shoulder joint - in this case, on its instrument deployment arm. The rover team is trying to avoid exacerbating the problem, using the arm as little as possible. Its anemic performance was a few weeks ago, however, when the wind blew the dust off of its solar panels, allowing them to absorb more solar energy.

Over the past weekend, Opportunity examined a 30-metre-wide crater named Beagle, and is now on its way to an area where the wind has deposited sand and dust in rippled structures. The presence of sand clods indicate the possibility of small amounts of water, according to rover team member Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.

Arvidson hopes the site will reveal something of the area's history geologic history over the past four billion years, when several small lakes apparently dried up. He'd like to know how acidic the water was farther back in time on the Red Planet. "That really tells you about habitability," he says. "Most astrobiologists think that life is easier to get started in more neutral conditions." Earlier geologic data indicates that Martian water was very acidic.

In the meantime, click on the picture below to get a better look at a recent image of the Martian surface.