Bladders engineered in the laboratory from patients’ own cells and then implanted into the body have succeeded in their first clinical trial. It is the first time a discrete, complex organ has been grown and transplanted into people — the researchers are now working on hearts and pancreases
The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed neuro-chips in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together
Scientists have developed artificial, super-strength muscles which are powered by alcohol and hydrogen. And they could eventually be used to make more advanced prosthetic limbs, say researchers at University of Texas
The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed (by the signing into law of HB 1215, effectively banning all abortions in the state, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli). A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women. To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,
she said… I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction
— via Warren Ellis
Booster jabs could soon become obsolete following the discovery by a British scientist of the world’s first effective way to control the speed at which vaccines are released in the body
US and Japanese researchers have announced results of a study showing that capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers hot, can cause prostate cancer cells to kill themselves
Nanotechnology has restored the sight of blind rodents, a new study shows. After injecting the hamsters with a solution containing nanoparticles, the nerves re-grew and sight returned — via BBC News
Rosuvastatin, a drug that reduces cholesterol, has been found to turn the clock back
in narrowed arteries, a discovery that could prevent heart attacks and strokes in thousands of people
A US state has signed into law a bill banning most abortions, in a move aimed to force the US Supreme Court to reconsider its key ruling on the issue. The South Dakota law — approved by the governor on Monday — makes it a crime for doctors to perform terminations. Exceptions will be made if a woman’s life is at risk, but not in cases of rape or incest. Harking back to the era of Jane, an organisation providing illegal abortions in the Chicago area in the 1960s and early 1970s, Molly has published a manual for setting up an abortion clinic
A blind UC Berkeley student is suing Target, saying the retailer is violating the civil rights of those who cannot see because its web site is inaccessible to them — via digg
Several companies are developing electronically controlled lenses to provide enhanced vision. Thanks to technologies created for astronomical telescopes and spy satellites, aberrometers can map a person’s eye with extreme accuracy. Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball, and structures in the eye scatter the resulting beam of light
Two antibodies that enabled the severed spinal nerves of rats to be regenerated are to be tested in humans. The antibodies have helped rats with damaged spinal cords to walk again, by blocking the action of Nogo, a protein that stops nerve cells sprouting new connections. But there were concerns about whether blocking Nogo would lead to uncontrolled neuronal rewiring in the brain or spinal cord and it was also unclear how such a therapy could be given to humans
A team of British scientists investigating whether a tiny tropical hookworm could provide a cure for asthma and hay fever have committed the ultimate act of bravery by infecting themselves with the parasite to observe the effects. It was fairly itchy when they first go through the skin,
he admitted — via digg
Fluorinex Active has developed a new technology that can protect the tooth from cavities for five years with one simple electrical treatment. The company is currently working on a small device which, together with a gel, will impose an efficient ion exchange process through an electro-chemical reaction in which fluor ions displace the Hydroxide ions at the outer layer of the tooth. This is intended to produce a new mineral layer with significantly improved chemical and physical resistance to the aggressive bacteria and the resulting acidic environment in the mouth
Alon Bodner has developed an underwater breathing system, called LikeAFish, that literally squeezes oxygen directly from seawater, doing away with the need for compressed air tanks — via digg
Minnesotans buying mail-order prescription drugs from Canada are having medications confiscated by US Customs in escalating numbers, a step that has some worried that life-saving supplies may not reach customers on time
Suwan Jayasinghe of University College London and colleagues at Kings College London has used a form of ink-jet printing to create
jets
of living cells. The biophysicists say their technique, which does not destroy the cells, could be used to grow biological tissue or even human organs — via digg
Hundreds of thousand of people could die in a nuclear attack, but hundreds of thousands of others could be saved. That’s because the Pentagon — after decades of searching — believes it has found a drug to treat radiation exposure. Why isn’t that drug available? Because bureaucratic red tape is blocking the availability of Neumune, a drug developed by San Diego biotech firm Hollis Eden to treat Acute Radiation Syndrome — via Boing Boing
A study was done where people put on glasses which inverted the image. They saw everything upside-down, but after wearing them constantly for a few days, their brains were retrained to flip the image right-side-up again. When they took the glasses off, the image was upside-down again — via digg
Bioengineers at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York City are starting to engineer living heart tissues to fix these damaged hearts. Their patches for broken hearts are made of heart tissue grown in the lab. Right now, animal trials are just starting and it will take at least a decade before human trials begin
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