In the latest phase of the nanotechnology revolution, scientists have built a collection of minuscule objects from DNA, including toothed gears, curved tubes, and a wireframe beach ball five millionths of a centimetre in diameter.

As well as being able to hold vast amounts of information, DNA is tough and flexible, making it an attractive candidate for use as a nanomaterial. Advances in molecular biology in recent decades have meant that scientists are well equipped to work with DNA and program it to do whatever they want.

"The main advantage of DNA is that we understand it," said Hendrik Dietz, now head of the Laboratory for Biomolecular Nanotechnology at München Technical University in Germany. "DNA is the only material that we can program at the nanoscale."

The building blocks of DNA can be made to assemble themselves, piece by piece, into a structure designed by the researcher.

-Article continues off site, courtesy Guardian (UK)

The ubiquitous periodic table will soon have a new addition - the "super-heavy" element 112.

More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of the element, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery.

The team, led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Centre for Heavy Ion Research, must propose a name for their find, before it can be formally added to the table.

Scientists continue the race to discover more super-heavy elements.

Professor Hofmann began his quest to add to the periodic table in 1976.

-Article continues off site, courtesy BBC News.

Scientists yesterday announced a breakthrough that could transform research into a range of incurable diseases but spark a dramatic increase in the number of monkeys used in experiments. Researchers have developed a technique to create genetically modified monkeys that suffer from human illnesses.

Experimenting on these monkeys, they believe, will advance our understanding and treatment of incurable conditions such as Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis. However, the scientific breakthrough has caused consternation among groups opposed to animal experiments because the development will almost certainly lead to a sudden increase in the number of primates used in medical research at a time when there are calls for fewer monkeys to be used in experiments.

The development also raises the prospect that we will be able to apply the technique to humans – another primate. This could help families affected by inherited disorders such Huntington's disease and cystic fibrosis by permenantly eradicating their defective genes from future generations.

-Article continues off site, courtesy The Independent (UK)

Of all the scientific mysteries, this is probably the greatest one of all – how did life on Earth begin? We are not talking about how it evolved into the diversity of lifeforms we see today. We are talking about how it originated in the first place.

For all his immense insight into evolution, Charles Darwin himself was stumped. He suggested that whatever the mechanism was that had led to the first replicating lifeforms, it most probably arose in some "warm little pond", a primordial soup of pre-biotic ingredients where the seed of life first germinated on the early Earth.

Now scientists have developed an experiment demonstrating how the very first self-replicating molecules may have formed about 4 billion years ago when the Earth was like any other lifeless planet that had yet to experience the radical transformation of living, breathing creatures.

-Article continues off site, courtesy The Independent (UK).

This is the face of the first anatomically-modern human to live in Europe. It belonged to a man – or woman – who inhabited the ancient forests of the Carpathian Mountains in what is now Romania about 35,000 years ago.

The artist's reconstruction – a face that could be male or female – is based on the partial skull and jawbone found in a cave where bears were known to hibernate. The facial features indicate the close affinity of these early Europeans to their immediate African ancestors, although it was still not possible to determine the person's sex.

Richard Neave, the forensic artist who reconstructed the facial features in this clay model, based his assessment on a careful measurement of the bone fragments and his long experience of how the soft tissues of the face are built around the bones of the skull.

-Article continues off site, courtesy The Independent (UK)