Scientists have discovered a new source of stems cells and have used them to create muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, nerve and liver cells in the laboratory. The first report showing the isolation of broad potential stem cells from the amniotic fluid that surrounds developing embryos was published today in Nature Biotechnology.
The US HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt announced that the Department has awarded a $102.6 million, four-year contract to BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for advanced development of their influenza antiviral drug, peramivir.
For the first time ever, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have developed a material with a negative refractive index for visible light. Ames Laboratory senior physicist Costas Soukoulis, working with colleagues in Karlsruhe, Germany, designed a silver-based, mesh-like material that marks the latest advance in the rapidly evolving field of metamaterials, materials that could lead to a wide range of new applications as varied as ultrahigh-resolution imaging systems and cloaking devices.
Neuroscientists at Duke University have mapped the timing and sequence of neural activations that unfold in the brain when people focus their attention on specific locations in their visual fields.
Uric acid is commonly associated with the excruciatingly painful joint disease known as gout, but it can also play a crucial role in the treatment of spinal cord injury and other central nervous system disorders, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, according to Rutgers’ Bonnie Firestein.
A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has been helping the Department of Energy analyze the genome of a “paper-eating” bacterium that could have uses in producing ethanol, but also shed light on how “gliding” bacteria move. The two functions could be related.
Regular use of cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins is not associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer, according to a population-based case-control study.
A set of guidelines have been developed that can help predict the risk of bacterial meningitis for children with cerebrospinal fluid pleocytosis (presence of greater number of white blood cells than normal), reducing unnecessary hospitalizations and antibiotics, according to a study in the January 3 issue of JAMA.
Scientists have genetically engineered a dozen cows to be free from the proteins that cause Mad Cow Disease. The research published in the online journal Nature Biotechnology could be used as a tool that would help researchers better understand similar brain-wasting diseases in humans.
Children and adolescents who are obese or overweight have higher health care utilization and a significantly higher average of health care charges than their healthy-weight peers, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.