Additionally, it is estimated that this year China will produce as many engineering and natural science papers as the US.

Full article at New Scientist

The cells used in the 3D bio-printer originate from the recipient’s body and are printed onto a scaffold shaped specifically for the desired organ. To date, arteries have been successfully constructed, with the creators (Australian engineering company Invitech and San-Diego based Organovo) saying that complex organs such as hearts, teeth and bone should be possible within ten years.

From GizMag

The Guardian reports that a paper identified as “the Danish text” proposes that climate change funds be controlled by the World Bank. It apparently ties in access to climate change funds with obligations to “perform certain actions”.

Additionally, the paper sidelines the role of the UN, and allows developed countries to emit twice the amount of greenhouse gases, than developing countries.

“It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process,” said an anonymous diplomat.

Methods already exist to convert heat to electricity, however they suffer from two drawbacks – either they’re only able to convert a minute amount of heat to electricity at high efficiency, or they are able to work with large amounts but inefficiently. This new method can scale to large amounts of thermal energy, while also retaining efficiency. In fact, the paper’s author claims that conversion rates can approach 90% of the theoretical limit – the Carnot Limit.

This development would instantly improve energy efficiency in any system which produced heat – laptops, cell phones and cars are prime examples.

One technique which is rapidly taking off is using DNA as the construction material. It can potentially lead to self-assembling or even replicating structures, highly sought-after characteristics in the world of nanotech.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers has used DNA to construct tiny boxes big enough to hold a ribosome, an integral part of the DNA replicating machinery. Additionally, these boxes can be sealed with one sequence of DNA acting as a lock, and opened again with another gene sequence acting as a key.

An obvious potential use for this is in the field of pharmaceuticals, as boxes could be programmed to release a dose of a drug when in the presence of a particular gene sequence.

From Nature

Both emit greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, and are produced using land and crops which could otherwise be used for food – a partial reason why the global cost of food is skyrocketing.

Converting sugar and carbohydrates to usable fuel is a fairly simple process – fermentation takes care of that – however most plant material consists of cellulose, which is tricker to digest into a useable form. Most processes involve a step in which cellulose is broken down into carbohydrates or sugars before it can be utilised, an energy-intense process.

Enter Gliocladium roseum, a fungus discovered in the Patagonian rainforest. In a paper published in Microbiology, plant scientist Gary Strobel describes the ability of G. roseum to produce an oil which remarkably resembles diesel, while being fed on a diet of cellulose:

“A step in the production process could be skipped” says Strobel.

The genome of G. roseum is now being analysed, by Strobel’s son Scott Strobel, a Yale molecular biologist. As a result, the genes responsible for celloluse metabolism may be isolated and used in biodiesel production applications.