On 30 April 2012, the Australian Red Cross Blood Service opened the Melbourne Processing Centre - the largest blood processing facility in the Southern Hemisphere. Redesigned from a one-time car factory, the centre now processes all of Victoria’s and Tasmania’s blood; about 1500 blood donations, or 30% of the nation’s blood supply, per day. [ + ]

Double ionisation events can now be observed in the time scale of attoseconds (one billionth of a billionth of a second). Physicists have also shown that these ionisation events occur earlier than thought - a key factor to improving knowledge of correlated electron dynamics, which involve two electrons and their interactions with each other. [ + ]

“The atmosphere feels very heavy, so you will have to wonder if the new ball will swing.” These are the words of former English cricket captain Michael Atherton, stating the commonly-held belief that high humidity equals high swing. But as researchers from the UK and NZ recently discovered, this is not the case - in fact it’s rather the opposite. [ + ]

Apparently humans can identify the age of other humans based on differences in body odour. Much of this ability is based on the capacity to identify odours of elderly individuals and, contrary to popular supposition, the so-called ‘old-person smell’ is rated as less intense and less unpleasant than body odours of middle-aged and young individuals. [ + ]

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have uncovered a series of biological events that implicate the stem cells’ surroundings, known as their ‘niche’, as the culprit in loss of stem cells due to ageing. Their findings have implications for treatment of age-related diseases and for the effectiveness of regenerative medicine. [ + ]

A new technique allows precise mapping of all 5-hydroxymethylcytosine and 5-methylcytosine sites in a mammalian genome using well-established, next-generation DNA sequencing methods. These modified cytosines have been found to play major roles in fundamental life processes. [ + ]

Researchers have found genetic evidence that turtles are more closely related to birds than lizards and snakes. [ + ]

GenoLogics, a provider of laboratory information management system (LIMS) software specifically designed for next-generation omics labs, has announced that the Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF) has implemented the GenoLogics Preconfigured Package for Illumina NGS and is now in full production, using the system. [ + ]

At Duke University, Professor Tuan Vo-Dinh and his research group have been characterising metal nanoparticle construct materials for use in biosensing, imaging and cancer therapy. This has been made possible through particle charcterisation technology manufacturer NanoSight and the company’s Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA). [ + ]

The speed of hydrogenation and hydrogenolysis reactions has been found to increase in the presence of water. Researchers found that the presence of even the most minute amounts of water - on the order of those in an outer-space vacuum - can accelerate the diffusion of hydrogen atoms on iron oxide by 16 orders of magnitude at room temperature. [ + ]

A recently developed molecular rotational spectrometer has been used to investigate the three-dimensional geometry that a water molecule takes on as a likely precursor structure for forming liquid water and ice. [ + ]

Photovoltaic panels made from plant material could become a cheap, easy alternative to traditional solar cells, according to MIT researcher Andreas Mershin. [ + ]

The world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), generates hundreds of millions of particle collisions each second. Recording, storing and analysing these vast numbers of collisions presents a massive data challenge: the LHC produces roughly 20 million GB of data each year. [ + ]

Recently, Compugen, an Israel-based biopharmaceutical company with over 17 years of research experience, released animal model data from the company’s proprietary Protein Family Members Discovery Platform. This in-house, in silico bioinformatics system provides a predictive view of protein characteristics leading to gene and protein discovery. [ + ]

Genomics organisation BGI has announced that a Roche GS FLX+ System has been successfully installed at its facility in Shenzhen, China. The goal is to complement the existing array of short read sequencing technologies and enhance BGI’s long read sequencing capability. [ + ]