French scientists have reported that an investigational drug with the inauspicious name SRT 1720 helped mice stay thin even while consuming a high calorie, high fat diet.

The report appears in last week’s Cell Metabolism. During a 10-week course of SRT 1720, mice fed a gluttonous diet gained no weight and did not develop signs of insulin resistance (which suggests diabetes or the risk of developing diabetes). The treated mice had lower amounts of fat stores at the end of the study, and their fat cells were smaller than those of controls.

A bonus effect was that exercise endurance increased in the treated mice, suggesting the synthetic drug helped mice burn available fat more completely than usual.

SRT 1720 achieves these wondrous results by activating the so-called SIRT 1 metabolic pathway, a sequence of cellular biochemical reactions normally activated by prolonged food deprivation, according to Dr. Johan Auwerx of the Ecole Polytechnique Fedarale de Lausanne.

SIRT 1 activation causes the body to rely on fat rather than glucose as a source of energy. It also increases the body’s sensitivity to insulin.

This SIRT 1 pathway is the same one that is believed to mediate the process by which the antioxidant resveratrol—contained in red wine—exerts its anti-aging and cancer-fighting effects.

“Our results further validate SIRT 1 as a bona fide target to combat metabolic disorders and establish SRT 1720 as a prime candidate to explore the potential of SIRT1 as a therapeutic target,” the authors wrote.

The Great Economic Crisis of 2008 affects companies capriciously, just as a tornado might flatten one home while leaving the neighbor’s untouched. The Crisis has decimated cash-starved small biotech companies for example, while their larger counterparts have sufficient revenues to weather the storm and Big Pharma—flush with cash as always—is hunting for bargains.

The same phenomenon is unfolding in tech. Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco, HP and the other technology behemoths know the Crisis threatens smaller firms in the Valley, so they’re getting ready for a shopping spree the likes of which no one has seen in that sector since the dot com bubble burst in 2001.

“We are better positioned than our peers to do well in tough times,” Oracle’s Larry Ellison is reported to have said at his company’s October annual meeting.  “Acquisitions we have been looking at for some time are more attractive.”

But actions speak louder than words, so on a day the market tumbled 750 points, Oracle dropped $300 million cash to buy Primavera Software, a project-management company. HP followed suit by acquiring Lefthand Networks, a storage company for $360 million and Intel snapped up NetEffect for $8 million.

Many small tech companies are cash-strapped and don’t have a choice. “In this environment, it turns into a fire sale,” Emergence Capital’s Jason Green told Fortune magazine.

So what companies are most likely to be sold? It’s the ones with little or no revenue that are heading for a financing round just to survive, as well as later-stage companies that had planned for an IPO only to see activity in that space grind to a complete halt amid the credit squeeze.

Or, as Network Appliance CEO Dan Warmenhoven told Fortune, “Technology that would have cost me $100 million a year ago but might go for $11 million today. Deals like that.”

People who are old enough will remember the 1966 flick Fantastic Voyage, in which scientists are miniaturized and sent into the body of a man dying of a brain clot. The scientists run a gauntlet of biological obstacles before saving the man’s life.

It may not be long before we’re doing that for real and in one sense, we already are. Given Imaging for example markets Pillcam, a 1.1 cm by 2.6 cm capsule that contains a camera. Once Pillcam has been swallowed, the camera transmits images that can identify causes of GI bleeding, abdominal pain and diarrhea.

Pillcam relies on peristaltic contractions to whisk it along, but what if we could design one that moves on its own or rejigger it to perform biopsies?

Paolo Dario and his group in Pisa have already designed prototype robots that have retractable legs which allow the capsule to go where no capsule has gone before (sorry). His and other European teams are also designing modular robots in which individual pieces assemble themselves inside the stomach and the resulting devices can perform surgery “inside-out.”

The big hurdle is powering the devices. While they wait for battery technology to improve, scientists believe the most effective work-around is to build the robots using magnetic material which can be manipulated with magnetic fields produced by MRI machines.