Washington, November 25 : Researchers at the University of Utah have created a synthetic version of the superglue that sandcastle worms combine with sand and shell to build their sturdy tube-shaped homes, and believe that it may one day be used to repair shattered bones in knees, other joints and the face.

"You would glue some of the small pieces together," says Russell Stewart, associate professor of bioengineering, and senior author of the study to be published online within a week in the journal Macromolecular Biosciences.

Washington, Nov 25 : A new study has found that telephone counselling may be as effective as face-to-face counselling when it comes to weight loss maintenance.

According to researchers, face-to-face and telephone follow-up sessions appear to be more effective in the maintenance of weight loss for women from rural communities compared with weight loss education alone.

Washington, November 24 : University of Liverpool researchers reckon that the modern human foot might have first appeared about 1.8 million years ago, but their ape-like ancestors probably took to walking several million years earlier.

Researcher Evie Vereecke believes the feet of the ancestors at the time would have been more “floppy” and ape like than humans’.

She joined forces with University of Antwerp researcher Peter Aerts to look at the flexible feet of modern gibbons to find out more about how they walk.

Since it is very difficult to work with gibbons in the lab, the researchers sought access to a troop of the semi-wild apes just down the road at Belgium''s Wild Animal Park of Planckendael.

London, Nov 24 : In a collaborative study, researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Vaccine Center, Emory University, have developed a new strategy to predict the immunity of a vaccine without having to expose individuals to infection.

The multidisciplinary approach, which involves immunology, genomics and bioinformatics, is a breakthrough in the development of vaccines.

London, November 24: The computer technology shown in science fictions like Minority Report and James Bond flicks are drawing closer to reality, with a Los Angeles-based company designing a system that can consign the mouse to history.

John Underkoffler, chief scientist at Oblong Industries that has created the technology, says that the new technology called G-Speak may fundamentally change the way we interact with computers.

London, Nov 22 : A new generation of ultra-low-power computers may soon be a reality, courtesy microchips that process information without moving electrons.

The conventional computer chips process information in the form of electric charges and transmitted by physically moving electrons from one place to another.

Using this technique, engineers were able to pack numerous transistors onto a single chip.

However, as transistors become smaller, tiny variations in the structure of the materials they are made from can affect the smooth electron flow, which makes it difficult to guarantee that neighbouring transistors are alike.