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Woman Receives First Transplant Grown From Her Own Cells

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 20th 2008 at 7:49AM


Remember all the hype around stem cells? They were going to cure diseases, grow body parts, and allow us to create a race of soulless cloned underlings. Well, now that some of the controversy has died down and research has had a chance to advance, stem cells are starting to bear some fruit.

A woman from Barcelona has become the first patient to receive an organ transplant that was grown in a laboratory from her own stem cells. Claudia Castillo contracted tuberculosis, which left her wind pipe irreparably damaged and one of her lungs collapsed. She was unable to breathe on her own until the doctors replaced part of her windpipe with one grown from stem cells harvested from her own body.

Most transplant patients spend the rest of their lives taking piles of drugs to suppress their immune systems and prevent their bodies from rejecting the foreign organs. But since Castillo is 100-percent genetically compatible with the transplant, she can forego the treatment and won't face the same complications that other transplant patients do.

Continue reading Woman Receives First Transplant Grown From Her Own Cells

Astronaut Loses Tool Bag...in Space

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 19th 2008 at 10:05AM



It's got to be really embarrassing to be Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper right now. Piper is the astronaut who turned Tuesday's spacewalk to repair a solar panel on the International Space Station into a slapstick comedy.

After she and Steve Bowen, another astronaut, did some prep work, Piper reached into her tool bag only to find her grease gun had sprung a leak, coating everything inside in a slick layer of nastiness. Then, to add insult to injury, she was distracted while trying to clean up the mess and her tool bag floated away. As Bowen laughed at her misfortunes, he was hit with a satellite in the groin.

Ok, so we made up the part about the groin satellite, but you've got to admit that it completes this comedy of errors.

Thankfully, the two were able to share Bowen's tools and begin the repairs to the station's solar panels. NASA also said the tool bag does not pose a problem, and it has floated well clear of the space station. Of course, if it falls into the hands of an alien race who use their knowledge of our gear-greasing technology to enslave us all, NASA may just have to retract that evaluation. [From: CNN]

ATM-Style Card to Be Used for Disease-Testing?

by Lee Bains, posted Nov 5th 2008 at 8:53AM

Thanks to researchers at the University of Utah, undergoing a disease test could soon be as easy as looking up your account balance at an ATM, the Daily Mail tells us.

As part of the process, microscopic samples of blood, urine and saliva are placed onto a card that can be read, and analyzed, by a sort of medical swipe machine. The device uses a technology called giant magnetoresistance (GMR), which can detect the 'magnetic footprints' of bodily samples on the card.

At present, the PC-sized reader yields hundreds of test results in mere minutes, a much faster turn-around time than that of conventional methods. With animal testing projected to begin in two years, we might see human testing in the next five, the team says. By then, they hope, the reader will be the size of a credit card swipe machine and available in your neighborhood pharmacy.

It's nice to know that the truck stops of the future will be able to tell us about our impending heart disease while we wait for our McDonald's hamburger to be ready. [From: The Daily Mail]

Drilling Holes in Your Wall Could Improve Soundproofing

by Lee Bains, posted Nov 3rd 2008 at 11:33AM



Researchers at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain have found that -- remarkably -- drilling holes into a wall yields better soundproofing, Unplggd and New Scientist report.

Researchers discovered that holes with a three-millimeter diameter trapped and canceled out sound waves, which without the holes, would have penetrated the wall. Because the offending sound waves were larger than the holes, the holes effectively caught the sounds, preventing them from penetrating the wall. As a result of this sound barrage's reverberation through the holes, the wall wound up resonating so as to nullify interfering sound waves.

Unless this unusual design is full of holes (sorry, had to say it), it could be a great boon to apartment dwellers, particularly those who don't want to shell out a hundred bucks to silence their neighbors' yappy dogs. A quick cautionary note: This experiment was conducted underwater and not yet on dry land, so don't bust out your three millimeter drill bit quite yet. [From: New Scientist via Unplggd]

Time Unveils Its Best Inventions of 2008 List

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 31st 2008 at 3:01PMBreaking News

Best Inventions of 2008
Every year Time Magazine wraps up the year in science and technology with its list of the top inventions of the year. Last year it was the iPhone that topped the list, beating out host of more useful and, arguably, more important innovations.

This year, the Retail DNA Test (pictured above) beat out several electric cars (the Tesla Roadster, Chevy Volt, and Aptera Electric Car) as well as many other inventions we've cover here on this very site. Including the spy-centric social networking site, the Obama campaign, and space-based Internet.

The strangest entry however is clearly Dimitrij Ovtcharov and his odd-ball ping-pong serve on display at this year's Olympics.

You can check out the full list at Time's Web site, but we've created a little gallery below with some of our favorite tech-specific items on the list. [From: Time]

Does Too Much Time on Porn Sites Lead to Depression?

by Lee Bains, posted Oct 29th 2008 at 7:35PM




Citing a study conducted by researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, the India Times reported yesterday that heavy use of sex Web sites may lead to depression, high stress, and anxiety.

According to the study, which surveyed 1,325 men in the United States and Australia, men that regularly view porn and Web swinging sites have a 27-percent chance of having moderate to severe depression, a 30-percent chance of anxiety and a 35-percent chance of moderate to severe stress. A spokesperson for the study added that the more a subject was involved in these types of sites, the more intense his depression and anxiety would be.

Although we don't take argument with the study's statistics, we do think that the causal relationship they posit is a tad simplistic. Isn't it likely that a man who looks for intimacy on his bedroom computer, instead of out in the real world, is at least a little anxious to begin with? After all, Facebook sex-hunters aren't exactly beacons of emotional health, and those folks are at least looking for the real thing. [From: The India Times]

Surfing the Internet Alters Development of the Brain

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 29th 2008 at 12:05PMBreaking News


New research from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) shows that the Internet and technology is already changing the development of the human mind. Gary Small, the director of the Memory & Aging Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior and the Center on Aging at UCLA (phew...), has found that activities such as text messaging and Internet searching improves a person's ability to filter information, perform complex reasoning, and make quick decisions.

Small warns, however, that these evolutionary advancements are coming at the expense of face-to-face social skills and he warns of the danger of Internet addiction. "The brain is very specialized in its circuitry, and if you repeat mental tasks over and over, it will strengthen certain neural circuits and ignore others," he says. He also told Reuters in an interview that those who are able to combine both the new technologically developed skills and traditional social abilities will be the most successful in years to come. [From: Reuters]

World's First Fully Artificial Heart Only a Couple of Years Away

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 29th 2008 at 7:02AM

World's First Artificial Heart Only a Few Years AwayAlain Carpentier, head of a European research team that developed the first artificial heart, believes his team's implantable artificial heart will be able to enter clinical trials by 2011. "After 15 years of work, we are handing over to industry to produce an artificial heart," he told the Daily Mail.

The prototype is shaped like a real heart and made from chemically treated animal tissue to avoid rejection by the recipient's body. Waiting lists for heart transplants are long, and the number of actual donors is incredibly small. This could give heart attack victims and older heart failure patients a viable option if they've been turned down for a transplant, or if one is simply unavailable.

Until now, the artificial heart has only been tested on animals and in computer simulations. Soon, however, it may finally get its test run inside a human body, and bring us one step closer to becoming the Six Million Dollar Man. [From: Daily Mail]

Human Brain Could Be Capable of 'Downloading,' Research Suggests

by Lee Bains, posted Oct 28th 2008 at 8:32AM



In this month's issue of Scientific American, writer Gary Stix reports that recent bio-tech developments could lead to 'Matrix'-style technologies that would allow the human brain to interact with information and robotics just as a computer would interact with a keyboard and flash drive.

Among these developments is Niel Birbaumer's research at Germany's University of Tubingen which suggests that, by magnetically stimulating the cortex and then mapping neuron activity, experts could activate particular memories in a subject (a potential boon for those with Alzheimer's). In addition, researchers at U.S.C. and Wake Forest are developing an artificial hippocampus that could, theoretically, one day enable Alzheimer's patients to create new memories. And while neuroscientists have already engineered prosthetics that are controlled by brain signals, research indicates that soon those prostheses may be able to send signals back to the brain. Not only would you be able to reach out and pet a kitten with your prosthetic hand, but you would also be able to actually feel the softness of its fur.

While researchers have already introduced bionic eyes and hands, and neural implants capable of learning, these more recent developments are particularly intriguing. It could very well be that, in the coming decades, more and more people -- particularly those who have lost brain or limb function -- could come to integrate machines into their bodies and into their very psyches. Let's just hope they don't speak with an Austrian accent and have an obsession with somebody named "John Connor." [From: Scientific American]

Scientists Erase Memories in Mice

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 24th 2008 at 9:16AM

Scientists Erase Memories in MiceMovies have long had an obsession with erasing memories. 'Total Recall,' 'Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind,' and 'Men in Black' all feature the intentional manipulation of memory as a central plot point. Until now, the concept of selectively erasing memories has dwelt in the realm of science fiction, but scientists believe they have made a major step towards making such a procedure a reality.

American and Chinese researchers have identified a protein, present in both mice and humans, called CaMKII that they refer to as the "memory molecule." CaMKII is key to the development and retention of information, and researchers have developed a method to turn its production on and off in mice.

Scientists exposed mice to potentially traumatic stimuli, such as light shocks to the paws. When the production of CaMKII was overproduced (during an attempt to force the mice to retrieve the memory of the stimuli), it appeared that the memory was not only blocked, but completely erased, without affecting other memories.

Of course, how exactly they can tell if it affected other memories isn't clear. They could simply mean that the mice still remembered how to walk and breathe, which isn't really terribly impressive. The research is interesting, but we'll keep our memories, even the painful ones, thank you very much. [From: Yahoo! News]

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