Optiscan announces 30-hospital-wide roll out of microendoscope. [ + ]

US company Thermo Fisher Scientific has achieved a number of breakthroughs in RNAi technology in the last couple of years and says it has come up with another - a method for delivering siRNAs to all cells, even the tough ones. [ + ]

Rightly or wrongly, concerns over GM crops contaminating their non-GM kin have led to a stalemate in progress towards acceptance of GM crops and foods. We look at a new approach using gene silencing and gene imprinting. [ + ]

Deciphering vertebrate development, sorting out the roosters from the hens and taking on bird flu - dare we say, all in one fowl swoop - that is the job of CSIRO's Dr Mark Tizard, who has created a new microRNA catalogue for the humble chook. [ + ]

Australian and New Zealand researchers are part of an international project of mutual interest (and age-old bad jokes) - the sequencing of the sheep genome. The difference for the International Sheep Genomics Consortium is the availability of short-read sequencing technology. [ + ]

The ongoing drama that is debate over the hobbit fossils of Flores has been reignited by a recent paper suggesting H. floresiensis is actually H. sapiens suffering from cretinism. An interesting theory or a 'travesty'? [ + ]

Strange beasts evolve on islands: flightless bats and birds, amphibious or monstrous lizards, huge tortoises, giant rodents, dwarf elephants and even humans, such as the famous 'hobbit', H. floresiensis. [ + ]

Optiscan recruiting distributors in US, Europe and Asia for microscopes [ + ]

Australian scientists to study iPS cells from Thompson lab. [ + ]

A single organ may contain more than one type of adult stem cell — a discovery that complicates prospects for using stem cells as a treatment for disease, according to a study by Nobel Laureate Prof Mario Capecchi.

Stem Cell Sciences adds mouse Nanog methods to IP portfolio [ + ]

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Projects scheme, Round 2, for funding in 2008 has resulted in funding for 208 of the 487 proposals. A hair examination protocol for forensic scientists is just one of the successful projects.

US researchers have uncovered critical molecular events that undermine the reprogramming of somatic human cells back to a pluripotent state.

The Sydney Project aims to have human embryonic stem cells in clinical trials to treat type 1 diabetes in four years. [ + ]

Changes are afoot in the US to reform its patent law, from ‘first to invent’ to ‘first to patent’. [ + ]