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Introducing your students to Scratch will provide your students with hands-on opportunities to think creatively, solve problems and work collaboratively.  Scratch is a visual programming platform created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab and is available to all users free of charge. This web-based tool is designed for students ages 8 to 16 but used by people of all ages.  With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations - and share your creations with others in the online community.

 A team of scientists has announced that the age of the synthetic chromosome is upon us, as a study published in Science today reveals how the group was able to construct a yeast chromosome from scratch - an experiment that allowed the team to make fully functional "designer yeast."

What is the recipe for life? If you were to build a cell from scratch, what ingredients would you need? And what kind of environment would you need to cook inanimate matter into a living cell? These are the questions that occupy biochemist Jack Szostak, as he imagines the dynamic world where life was born.

Neutrophils are our body's first line of defense against bacterial infections. After leaving nearby blood vessels, these cells recognize chemicals produced by bacteria in a cut or scratch and migrate "toward the smell". The above neutrophils were placed in a gradient of fMLP (n formyl methionine- leucine- phenylalanine), a peptide chain produced by some bacteria. The cells charge out like a "posse" after the bad guys.