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A layer cake? No, not interactive enough. A spinning wheel? Too mechanistic. What about a film strip? No, that’s not quite right either.

ӳ����ý researcher Nir Yosef and scientific illustrator Sigrid Knemeyer were in search of the perfect metaphor to communicate the complex scientific concepts encapsulated in a paper by Yosef and his colleagues. The two spoke by phone and over email, exchanging ideas about how to capture the paper’s main messages

Five scientists from the ӳ����ý and its partners have won federal grants to pursue projects with the potential to transform scientific research and more rapidly bring biomedical advances to patients.

The National Institutes of Health is awarding approximately $155 million to 81 researchers across the country who are pursuing visionary science through its High Risk High Reward program, supported by the NIH Common Fund.

RNA interference, a gene-silencing phenomenon discovered in the late 1990s, was hailed for its potential as a treatment in cancer and other diseases. But finding a way to deliver short stretches of RNA to tumors  safely and effectively has been challenging. By themselves, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) break down quickly and invade tumors poorly, so they need a delivery vehicle.

Now one exciting technology is enabling another. Scientists have successfully targeted cancer cells in mice by creating tumor-penetrating nanoparticles to carry siRNAs as their cargo.

Malaria isn’t simply one disease caused by one organism. Malaria, which the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates affected over 200 million people in 2010, can actually be caused by five different species of parasite, and depending in part upon which one has made its home inside a host, symptoms of the disease can range from relatively mild to fatal.