The Family Aizoaceae (fig-marigold family or ice plant family) is a taxon of dicotyledonous flowering plants containing some 126 genera and between 1100-2000 species. They are commonly known as stone plants or carpet weeds.

The family is widely recognised by taxonomists, although once it went by the botanical name "Ficoideae", now disallowed. The APG II system of 2003 (unchanged from the APG system of 1998) also recognises the family, and assigns it to the order Caryophyllales in the clade core eudicots.

Most species in this family come from southern Africa, but a few are from Australia and the Central Pacific.

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UCSB center helps land $24M national center to study environmental impacts of nanotechnology
Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400
(University of California - Santa Barbara) The Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California at Santa Barbara helped to win the new University of California Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology, a five-year, $24 million center co-funded by the National Science Foundation and the US Environmental Protection Agency to study the environmental impacts of nanotechnology.
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Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400
(Cell Press) Researchers have identified stem cells with the capacity to build fat. Although they have yet to show that the cells can renew themselves, transplants of the progenitor cells isolated from the fat tissue of normal mice can restore normal fat tissue in animals that are otherwise lacking it.The findings may yield insight into the causes of obesity, a condition characterized by an increase in both the size and number of fat cells.
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Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400
(Florida State University) In a groundbreaking study led by an eminent molecular biologist at Florida State University, researchers have discovered that as embryonic stem cells turn into different cell types, there are dramatic corresponding changes to the order in which DNA is replicated and reorganized.

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