Daniel Hopkins was told six weeks ago that he has advanced lung cancer.
The 85-year-old from Leeds knows his time left is limited, but he has also had to cope with terrible pain from the cancer, which had spread to his spine.
You know the feeling when you watch something and your jaw drops? That happened when I saw the footage of Cathy Hutchinson use a robotic arm to lift a flask of coffee to her mouth.
It was the first time since her stroke nearly 15 years previously that she had served herself a drink. She is one of two patients who took part in a trial of a neural interface system. A sensor containing a grid of 96 tiny electrodes is fixed to the brain and this picks up neural activity from the motor cortex and sends it to a computer which converts it to commands.
It may not look very exciting, but the photograph above has an important place in history. Known as Photo 51, it's an X-ray diffraction image of DNA and has at least a claim to be the most important image ever taken.
It's one of about a million artefacts being put online by the Wellcome Trust as part of an ambitious project to tell the story of genetics, from Mendel to the Human Genome Project.
Should I be taking aspirin every day? It's a question that I hear frequently and I guess will hear even more often after the latest research from scientists at the University of Oxford.
In a series of papers in the Lancet, the team, led by Professor Peter Rothwell found that a daily low dose of the cheap drug cut the risk of a range of cancers, and could even treat the disease.
News that all ferry companies and all but two airlines have stopped importing animals destined for research laboratories has led to warnings that it could setback the search for new medicines. But how important are animals in medical research and what are they used for?
There were 3.7 million "scientific procedures" on animals in 2010 according to figures from the Home Office. This total includes the breeding of genetically modified animals which nearly half that total. Excluding breeding, the number of procedures was 2.1 million.
Taking a sample from one part of a tumour may not reveal its full genetic identity, according to research by scientists from Cancer Research UK (CRUK).
They carried out the first genome-wide analysis of the genetic variation between different regions of the same tumour using samples of kidney cancer.
A huge amount of media attention in recent months has focussed on PIP breast implants, but far less on another potentially faulty device - hip replacements.
Around 70,000 people a year get a new hip and they are among the most successful operations in modern medicine.
India has been officially removed from the list of polio endemic countries. The announcement was made in Delhi at a polio summit. It was a decision that was widely trailed in my coverage of polio from India last week and confirms the remarkable achievement the country has had in tackling the disease.
The Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh said "It is a matter of satisfaction that we have completed one year without any single new case of polio being reported from anywhere in the country. This gives us hope that we can finally eradicate polio not only from India but from the face of the entire mother earth. The success of our efforts shows that teamwork pays".
You might well ask what a retired dentist from Berkshire, a businessman from Derbyshire who makes shovels, and a nurse practioner from Lancashire are all doing in the backstreets of Delhi.
A group which advises the US government on biosecurity has explained why it wants two research papers on H5N1 bird flu to be censored.
Two scientific research teams have modified influenza strains to create mutant avian influenza viruses that can be transmitted efficiently between mammals. In one case, the virus remained highly pathogenic.
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