Science Sunday: Wrap-up of recent advancements in science from EurekAlert!

Honey helps problem wounds:

Honey helps the treatment of some wounds better than the most modern antibiotics. For several years now medical experts from the University of Bonn have been clocking up largely positive experience with what is known as "Medihoney." Even chronic wounds infected with multi-resistant bacteria often healed within a few weeks. In conjunction with colleagues from Düsseldorf, Homburg and Berlin they now want to test the experience gained in a large-scale study.

Nanotechnology enables low-dose treatment of atherosclerotic plaques:

In laboratory tests, one very low dose of a drug was enough to show an effect on notoriously tenacious artery-clogging plaques. What kind of drug is that potent?

Scientists build 'magnetic semiconductors' one atom at a time:

In a stride that could hasten the development of computer chips that both calculate and store data, a team of Princeton scientists has turned semiconductors into magnets by the precise placement of metal atoms within a material from which chips are made.

Purdue creates new low-cost system to detect bacteria:

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a new low-cost system that analyzes scattered laser light to quickly identify bacteria for applications in medicine, food processing and homeland security at one-tenth the cost of conventional technologies.

Plenty of nothing: A hole new quantum spin:

Scientists have created a tiny quantum wire that carries an electric current by exploiting the gaps -- or holes -- between electrons. The holes can be thought of as real quantum particles that have an electrical charge and a spin. They exhibit remarkable quantum properties and could lead to a new world of super-fast, low-powered transistors and powerful quantum computers.

Google-like process for mammogram images speeds up computer's second opinions:

To help computers provide faster "second opinions" on mammogramimages showing suspicious-looking breast masses, medical physicists atDuke University are employing a Google-like approach that retrieves useful information from an existing mammogram database more quickly than before while maintaining the quality of the computer-aided analysis. The results will be reported at the 48th annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine in Orlando, Fla.

How can identical twins be genetically different?:

U-M researchers have discovered three genes that are over-expressed in rheumatoid arthritis, or RA, that were not known to be associated with the disease before. They also found that non-genetic factors influenced the expression of these genes and that the expression patterns varied between identical twins where only one twin had RA.