One looks like little more than a stethoscope head attached to a wire; the other seems to be an oven mitt with three metal disks sewn on. Simple, yes, but these prototype medical devices—developed by young Caltech researchers working on a SURF project—could one day save lives.

Zcube Srl, a research venture of the Italian pharmaceutical company Zambon, and Caltech have signed an exclusive research and option agreement to develop and commercialize skin patches that contain embedded carbon nanotubes for delivering drugs.

Figuring a virus's host is can be difficult, especially when you're talking about bacteriophages, a group of bacteria-infecting viruses. The problem lies in identifying which bacteriophages are infecting which bacteria, without having to culture either the viruses or their hosts in the lab. Now, a Caltech-led team has created a technique that can "physically link single bacterial cells harvested from a natural environment with a viral marker genes," the scientists report in the July 1 issue of the journal Science.

There's a wealth of health information hiding in the human immune system. Accessing it, however, can be very challenging, as the many and complex roles that the immune system plays can mask the critical information that is relevant to addressing specific health issues. Now, research led by scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has shown that a new generation of microchips developed by the team can quickly and inexpensively assess immune function.