UC Berkeley researchers are partnering with the Venice Museum of Natural History to build an unprecedented DNA database of its vast fungi collection. More than 6,000 species will be sequenced and analyzed, and then made available to the scientific community.
Making an impassioned appeal for eradicating illiteracy and ignorance among the children of the world, Britain’s Chancellor of Exchequer Gordon Brown has said an estimated 10 billion dollars were needed for this.
Science may be one step closer to understanding how a limb can be grown or a spinal cord can be repaired. Scientists at The Forsyth Institute have discovered that some cells have to die for regeneration to occur.
Microneedle-based vaccination with the current anthrax vaccine produced an equally effective immune response to intramuscular injection in rabbits using smaller dosage say researcher from Maryland and North Carolina. They report their findings in the December 2006 issue of the journal Infection and Immunity.
A team from the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee has applied for a patent on their work to isolate, grow and identify a new and readily-available type of adult stem cell that is found in the bulge of hair follicles, and appears to have a potential for diversification similar to that of embryonic stem cells.
At the American Society for Cell Biology’s 2006 conference, researchers will report that applying insulin directly to skin wounds significantly enhanced the healing process. Chronic or nonhealing wounds take an immense toll on American health and on health-care systems.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning five firms, Triangle Compounding Pharmacy, University Pharmacy, Custom Scripts Pharmacy, Hal?s Compounding Pharmacy, and New England Compounding Center, to stop compounding and distributing standardized versions of topical anesthetic creams, which are marketed for general distribution rather than responding to the unique medical needs of individual patients.
While investigating a fungus known to cause an infection in people with AIDS, two grantees of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), unexpectedly discovered a potential strategy for treating metastatic melanoma, one of the deadliest forms of skin cancer.
Different reactions in the brain to two common allergy triggers — allergens (pollen and dust) and histamine (allergy cells within the body caused by foods, drugs or infection) — may shed some light on the itch-scratch cycle. Allergen-induced itch intensity ratings were higher compared to histamine and perception of itch and changes in blood flow were significantly greater when allergen induced. Itch intensity and changes in blood flow were perceived to exist for significantly longer periods.
A key enzyme that cuts short our cellular lifespan in an effort to thwart cancer has now been linked to body mass.Until now, scientists believed that our relatively long lifespans controlled the expression of telomerase — an enzyme that can lengthen the lives of cells, but can also increase the rate of cancer.