Scientists have developed a chemical microchip which could help nerve cells communicate.

It could work much more like the brain's normal signalling system than existing chips which are stimulated via electricity, say researchers.

The ultimate aim is to create implants which could interact with the body's nervous system.

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Most stardust is made of tiny silicate grains, much like dust from rocks on earth. Away from city lights, you can see the dust as a dark band across the Milky Way. This dust comes from dying and exploded stars. Scientists think stars form when these dust clouds collapse and that some of this dust became trapped inside asteroids and comets when our own sun formed.

But Washington University (St. Louis) researchers have found stardust in tiny fragments of asteroids and comets--interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) --collected 20 km (12 miles) above the earth by NASA planes. A typical IDP is a mishmash of more than 100,000 grains gleaned from different parts of space. Until recently, ion probes had to analyze dozens of grains at one time and so were able to deduce only the average properties of a sample.

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