For the second of our two-part series examining Australia's new laws on embryonic stem cell research and human cloning, Pete Young asked medical researchers, IVF clinics and companies developing stem cell-related products for their views on the impact of the legislation. [ + ]

Genomics is experiencing its own manifestation of computing technology's Moore's law of cost and efficiency, says Prof Richard Gibbs: the volume of sequence data is increasing by around 10-fold every year as sequencing costs continue to plummet. [ + ]

In the first part of a two-part series about Australia's new stem cell laws, Pete Young looks at the NHMRC's role and who will need to apply for a licence to do the research. [ + ]

As the new year begins, market analysts are sounding the same warnings that they did in 2002 -- that Australian biotechnology companies must consider strategies like mergers and acquisitions and alliances to survive. [ + ]

The burgeoning area of drug delivery research could some day produce insulin pills for diabetics, laboratory-grown organs for transplants and plastic surgery, and an under-skin pharmacy on a microchip

Small, irregularly shaped samples can present difficulties for the established methods of metal analysis. Laser-ablation ICP-MS offers accuracy and precision independent of sample form

Roland Scollay has been an academic scientist, a commercial scientist, has held managerial positions in US biotechnology companies and most recently has been the CEO for a biotechnology start-up in the US. So it's a natural progression for him to return to the academic environment, this time to look for opportunities to commercialise academic research. [ + ]

Are your vacuum pumps mysteriously breaking impellers, breaking or flogging keys, twisting shafts or prematurely trashing bearings? If so, the culprits could well be 'invisible' slugs of liquid and sludge

Australian bioindustry has a sweeping wish list of tax reform measures it desperately wants to see implemented. The trouble is, forcing through significant changes to the national tax structure has the same torturously long gestation period as developing a major new drug. [ + ]

The biotech shake-up will intensify in 2003 but the horizon looks inviting on the far side of the wave of mergers expected to roll through the sector over the next 12 to 24 months. That's the view of Prof Peter Andrews, a leading member of the generation which has dramatically reshaped Australian bioscience in the last 15 years and a man who boasts a good track record in sculpting positive environments for young biotechs. [ + ]

The growing sophistication of data visualisation applications has been a boon for pharmaceutical and biotech researchers across the life and chemical sciences spectrum. Visualisation platforms help computational chemists to model molecules in drug discovery environments and genomic researchers to stitch useable information together from a confusing tangle of data held in different gene sequence databases. [ + ]

Advances in techniques for growing neurons, stem cell research, genetics, proteomics and massively improved capabilities in imaging are opening up previously undreamed-of avenues to treat sufferers of everything from epilepsy, stroke, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, paralysis and psychosis. [ + ]

Much to the chagrin of those actually at the coalface, the technical achievements of our leading scientific institutions and successful partnering with industry to bring them to market have long been tainted by the myth that not enough is being done and other countries are doing it better. [ + ]

A team of researchers at the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed new instrumentation and a unique approach to obtain the most complete protein analysis of any organism to date

The land of the red 'roo is a long hop from just about everywhere else in the world, so travel costs loomed large in Dr Phil Batterham's analysis of the cost of staging the world's largest genefest in Melbourne next year. [ + ]