The general rule to assign a name to novel plant species is to publish the name self on printed journal, in order to guarantee the immutability of the publication. In the modern era, electronic journals make possible a faster data sharing between scientists and also botanic must use these systems. Thus, for the first time four novel plants have been named and described in an article appeared in the Plos One journal, available only on-line.

Chemistry is an amazing and interesting subject, but a lot of students have big problem to learn it. In particular, some difficulties arise from abstract concepts that hardly can be applied to all days life. Scientists from the University of Pittsburg set up a digital library of virtual activities in order to teach general chemistry and engage students in problem solving.

Thalidomide is an antiemetic drug sadly famous for its dangerous effects during pregnancy. This drug was not tested on right animal model and generated a long series of congenital malformations in babies born from mother that had used it. For several years thalidomide has been forgotten, up to date when it has been studied to treat leprosy and cancer. This month Nature Medicine publishes an interesting paper concerning thalidomide effects on vessel maturation.

An Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) is a software program designed to substitute paper lab books. Scientists and technicians to note their experimental results, protocols, observations and so on use such tool. What is the advantage despite using paper notebooks, currently broadly diffused in research labs?

Commercially available brain trainings are computerized tests, developed and marketed with the aim to improve cognitive functions in children and adults. Basically, the use of this software may improve memory, problem solving, measure of reasoning and verbal short-term memory.

Water is an essential element for life and an important nutrient for human. It is a building material because the large majority of cellular cytoplasm is composed on water: t is a solvent in which nutrients and wasting substances are solved; it is also a key regulator of thermal balance of our body and it contributes to absorb shock.

PCR has become the most used technique in several field of molecular biology and diagnostic within few years since its invention. The majority of DNA fragment can be amplified without any problem; nevertheless, some regions into the genome are not so easily replicated, such as many regulatory domains, promoters, enhancers or other control elements. The main reason for all these difficulties is the high GC content that causes the formation of intramolecular stem loops during the initial cycles resulting in lack of amplification.

Protein macroarrays are chips of gold or silver where proteins are bound and
analyzed. Several methods have been developed to attach the proteins on chip surface without interfering with their folding or functionality. In some cases, it has been useful to use particular tags at the N or C terminal of proteins of interest to facilitate the binding. The SNAP tag is one of common tag used for this purpose.

Ununseptium is the 117 element in the periodic table. Chemistry give us another heavy atom, produced in laboratory. The first 92 elements are naturally present on earth and are stable for more than 4,5 billion of years. Since uranium, the 93rd element, other elements have been manufactured and have a shorter half-life.

Several questions arise about genetically modified organisms and the possibility of gene transfer. Of course, everyone works in science knows that is not possible that gene containing in OGM can move into our genome or modify it in whatever manner. Otherwise, a recent article published in Nature journal shows a transfer of carbohydrate active enzyme from marine bacteria to gut bacteria.