Rice University biomedical engineers have developed a new technique for growing cartilage from human embryonic stem cells, a method that could be used to grow replacement cartilage for the surgical repair of knee, jaw, hip, and other joints.
Efforts to halt underage drinking often focus on peer pressure and the prevention of risky behaviors, but the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is undertaking a new federally funded project to give middle-school children a science-based understanding of what can happen to them if they use alcohol.
Parents with bipolar disorder are taking part in a study that will give them the chance to follow a highly successful parenting skills program.
A new mouse model for myotonic dystrophy – the most common form of adult-onset muscular dystrophy – helped Baylor College of Medicine researchers show that levels of CUGBP1, a protein that binds and controls the activity of the genetic material RNA, increase early in affected cells of the animals with the disease. This means CUGBP1 plays a key role in the disorder.
A biomedical engineer at Purdue University has developed a new method to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation that promises to be more effective than standard CPR because it increases nourishing blood flow through the heart by 25 percent over the current method.
How environmental stress contributes to cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes is under study at the Medical College of Georgia. The study, which follows 523 pairs of twins, is funded by a $1.7 million continuation grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Steady increases in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages over the last several decades, as well as rates of Type 2 diabetes mellitus, led nutritional epidemiologists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University and colleagues to explore the relationship between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and insulin resistance, a precursor to Type 2 diabetes.
With the help of genetically engineered mice whose livers turned into glowing light bulbs, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have illuminated the underpinnings of an insidious and growing health concern — type 2 diabetes.
In a study published in the September 6, 2007, issue of the journal Nature, researchers showed that two key proteins join together at the precise location where energy of motion is turned into electrical impulses. These proteins, cadherin 23 and protocadherin 15, are part of a complex of proteins called ?tip links? that are on hair cells in the inner ear. The tip link is believed to have a central function in the conversion of physical cues into electrochemical signals.
Scientists at the leading Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have now disclosed the mystery how the insulin-secreting cells maintain an appropriate number of ATP sensing ion channel proteins on their surface. This mechanism, which is described in the latest issue of Cell Metabolism, explains how the human body can keep the blood glucose concentration within the normal range and thereby avoid the development of diabetes.