The University of Queensland (UQ) and global pharmaceutical company LEO Pharma have entered a strategic research collaboration to deliver new treatment options to skin cancer patients. [ + ]

For hundreds of years, optical devices like microscopes and telescopes have relied on solid lenses that slide up and down to magnify and to focus. In pursuit of ever-smaller imaging systems, researchers are now working to create entirely unconventional ways of focusing light. [ + ]

Take too much fertiliser, an inefficient crop, not enough land into the future to feed the world and more than a pinch of economics - and you have a recipe for disaster. Thankfully, Brent Kaiser is quietly confident that scientists like him can contribute to a more sustainable future. [ + ]

A technique developed several years ago at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for improving optical microscopes has now been applied to monitoring the next generation of computer chip circuit components, potentially providing the semiconductor industry with a crucial tool for improving chips for the next decade or more. [ + ]

Clinical Genomics recently acquired the US-based cancer screening company Enterix. [ + ]

Prima BioMed (ASX:PRR) is re-evaluating using PFS as a primary objective of an upcoming trial of its CVac cancer immunotherapy candidate, based on results to date of an earlier study. [ + ]

Researchers from the University of São Paulo have found that insects modify their mating behaviour in response to the changes in air pressure which precede a storm. By reducing mating during wind and rain, it is suggested that the insects are also reducing their risk of injury or death. [ + ]

Divesting business in China will allow Agenix to focus on its diagnostics projects. [ + ]

Deep Lake, located 5 km from Davis Station in Antarctica, is 3500 years old, 36 m deep and so salty that it remains in liquid form down to a temperature of -20°C. Researchers have now uncovered the secrets of the lake's dominant inhabitants - extremophile microbes from the haloarchaea group. [ + ]

The planet is warming, but Dr Marilyn Ball’s research group has found that rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes cold-tolerant plants more susceptible to frost. [ + ]

The sensitivity of next-generation sequencing can be fantastic and also problematic as the system can easily pick up contaminants and lead researchers into false conclusions. [ + ]

The first Parkinson's patient has been implanted with Living Cell Technologies' (ASX:LCT) NTCELL regenerative treatment during a phase I trial. [ + ]

Each year the American Chemical Society surveys its members to gain a snapshot of their employment and salaries. This year's survey has found that 2013 is looking much better for chemists and chemical engineers in the US as both employment and salaries are increasing. [ + ]

Allied Healthcare (ASX:AHZ) said paediatric heart defect patients treated using its CardioCel tissue patch have shown no sign of calcification at the site of repair after up to five years of monitoring. [ + ]

Natasha Harvey will head to ComBio this year with a few years’ worth of results and an exciting new story of a protein called Nedd4 and how it could hold a key to vascular networks and their problems. [ + ]