Washington, March 17 : A Purdue University claims to have developed probes that can help pinpoint the location of tumours, and may some day be used to directly attack cancer cells.

Joseph Irudayaraj, an associate professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, describes his breakthrough as nanoscale, multifunctional probes that have antibodies on board, to search out and attach to cancer cells.

"If we have a tumour, these probes should have the ability to latch on to it. The probe could carry drugs to target, treat as well as reveal cancer cells," Irudayaraj said.

While previously developed probes use gold nanorods or magnetic particles, Irudayaraj''s nanoprobes use both.

Washington, March 17 : Brigham Young University researchers say that a new study conducted by them may help explain how and where the virus behind about half of all cold infections evolve in the rhinovirus genome, and what this means for possible vaccines.

"There are a lot of different approaches to treating the cold, none of which seem to be effective. This is partly because we haven''''t spent a lot of time studying the virus and its history to see how it''''s responding to the human immune system and drugs," said Keith Crandall, professor of biology and co-author of the study.

Washington, Mar 17: Scientists have uncovered where exactly lies the origin of consciousness in the brain.

While some neuroscientists have argued that consciousness may arise from a single "seat" in the brain, the new study has suggested that four specific, separate processes combine as a "signature" of conscious activity.

For the study, researchers analysed the neural activity of people who were presented with two different types of stimuli – one that could be perceived consciously, and the other that could not.

By using the above information, Dr. Gaillard of INSERM and colleagues showed that the four processes occurred only in the former, conscious perception task.

Washington, March 17 : New analysis of the fossil of a dinosaur that was found in 1982 in Canada has suggested that it was smaller than a modern day housecat, which indicates that there might have been many `mini dinosaurs' prowling the continent of North America.

The analysis was done by Nick Longrich, a paleontology research associate in the University of Calgary's Department of Biological Sciences and University of Alberta paleontologist Philip Currie.

They describe a new genus of carnivorous dinosaur that was smaller than a modern housecat and likely hunted insects, small mammals and other prey through the swamps and forests of the late Cretaceous period in southeastern Alberta, Canada.

London, March 17: A new study has suggested that watery asteroids hurtling through the solar system gave a boost to left-handed proteins on Earth, which explains why life on our planet is `left-handed'.

Curiously, almost every living organism on Earth uses left-handed amino acids instead of their right-handed counterparts.

According to a report in New Scientist, the new research suggests that water on asteroids amplified left-handed amino acid molecules, making them dominate over their right-handed mirror images.

In the 1990s, scientists found that meteorites contain up to 15 percent more of the left version too.

Indian researchers have found three new bacteria species in the upper stratosphere.

According to researchers, the newly found species are highly resistant to UV radiation.

Among three new species of bacteria, ‘Bacillus Isronensis’ is the name given to the first bacteria that recognizes the ISRO contribution in balloon experiments that led to its discovery.

The second has been named ‘Bacillus Aryabhata’ after India's far-famed ancient astronomer Aryabhata and also the first satellite of ‘ISRO’.