It’s unlikely anything lives on Mars today, but it may well have done so millions or billions of years past. And it may have left traces of its existence in the geology of the red planet. One such tantalising hint was discovered by the NASA Opportunity Rover, which found small spherical hematite balls, dubbed ‘blueberries,’ in the Martian soil. [ + ]

A new formula reveals if young scientists will have a brilliant future. [ + ]

A discovery at The University of Western Australia (UWA) that microbes helped shape rare spheres of iron-oxide on Earth may aid the newly landed rover Curiosity in its search for the first verifiable signs of extraterrestrial life in similar rocks on Mars. [ + ]

Australian National University (ANU) researcher Professor Kurt Lambek has won the prestigious 2012 Balzan Prize for Solid Earth Sciences for his work on climate change. [ + ]

Professor Chris Goodnow has received the $80,000 GlaxoSmithKline Award for Research Excellence which will fund his research into a controversial theory on the origin of autoimmune diseases. [ + ]

Phylogica (ASX:PYC) is continuing its push into the cosmetics market with a deal to license a phylomer peptide with skin repair potential to US-based luxury beauty product company Le Métier de Beauté. [ + ]

CSL (ASX:CSL) subsidiary CSL Biotherapies has won a flu vaccine contract with the US health department that could be worth as much as US$1.5 billion in the event of a pandemic. [ + ]

A consortium of Dutch companies and universities is going to develop a Text Analysis Tool to systematically analyse worldwide scientific literature for food-related knowledge. This gives access to known and unveils hidden links and will provide new insights and routes for innovations in food. [ + ]

Global business development (BD) ‘guru,’ Jack Anthony, will visit the AusBiotech 2012 national conference to run a not-to-be-missed professional development course for BD professionals: ‘The Secret Sauce of Deal Making’. [ + ]

US-based AmpliPhi Biosciences and Australia's Special Phage Holdings (SPH) have revealed plans to merge to create a global bacteriophage-based therapy company. [ + ]

In the beginning, there was the Human Genome Project. For all its epochal significance, it was little more than that: a beginning. It delivered the first 3.5 billion base-pair DNA sequence of a human being, along with a near-complete catalogue of 20,000-odd genes, and a map showing where each gene located on our 22 pairs of autosomes and pigeon-paired sex chromosomes. [ + ]

Patrys (ASX:PAB) has completed the share purchase plan component of a capital raising worth $2.85 million. The clinical stage biopharmaceutical company fell just shy of hitting the maximum target for the capital raising of $2.9 million. [ + ]

New approaches to cancer treatment and improved nickel mining output were the winning ideas from the Grand Final of UniQuest’s annual Trailblazer innovative ideas competition, held at The University of Queensland (UQ) on 4 September 2012. [ + ]

Australian drug developer CBio has completed its merger with US-based Inverseon and formally changed its name to Invion (ASX:IVX). [ + ]

Starpharma's (ASX:SPL) cancer drug development platform has attracted the attention of UK pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. [ + ]