Technology & Society
From the LA Times: Italian researchers have used a defanged version of HIV to replace faulty genes — and eliminate devastating symptoms — in children suffering two rare and fatal genetic diseases. Improved gene therapy techniques prevented the onset of
That’s the hope of Dr. Irving Weissman of Stanford University. According to Science Magazine: A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found.
This is an incredibly sad piece of news, since things originally seemed to be going so well. It is important to note, however, that Hannah did not die due to her new windpipe failing — the new organ worked well.
It’s well known that there are great disparities in life expectancy around the world and within the US, but how many people know the numbers for their neighborhoods? Today I dug into the data for San Mateo County and found
Another beautiful case of the ‘old’ not really being quite so old. 80-year-old Yuichiro Miura reached the top of Everest and called his daughter, saying that “This is the best feeling in the world.” Gotta love it. Here’s the WSJ
From Singularity Hub: When we age, all parts of our body deteriorate over time. But while aging as a whole might be an accumulation of disparate processes, scientists have long wondered if it might be controlled by some central location
Cross-Posted from Singularityweblog.com: Just last month, regenerative medicine scored another solid victory by saving a toddler’s life. Yet, disappointingly, the news came and went without much follow-on thought. Hannah Warren, a Korean-Canadian girl who is now two years old, was
Attorney Michelle Crosby has written a thoughtful piece at the Huffington Post about family structure and the issues we will face once people are living radically longer and healthier lives. She writes that, “Someday, your child or grandchild may live
Here’s a nice summary of the research from the WSJ: Dr. de Peppo and his colleagues used a method known as reprogramming to transform human skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells, which can become all other cells in the body.
“A 2-year-old girl born without a windpipe now has a new one grown from her own stem cells, the youngest patient in the world to benefit from the experimental treatment.” Read more here from AP. And here’s a quote from
This MIT Tech Review article outlines work on a ‘memory prosthesis,’ which could help restore brain function for those with Alzheimer’s, stroke, or other types of brain injury.
“On this day (25 April) in 1953 Nature published three papers describing the structure of DNA: one from James Watson and Francis Crick of Cambridge University that proposed the now famous double helix, and two accompanying papers from Rosalind Franklin
Here’s the link to the paperback at Amazon.
In honor of Earth Day, I thought I’d re-post this news story about Sweden using trash to create energy. Such innovative solutions to environmental problems should be celebrated. Sweden wound up using all of its trash and then had to
A similar treatment for humans has been curtailed by the FDA. If you’re a dog, this is fantastic news.
“A research team from Mass. discovered a way to take organs that have already died, wash them clean of their past life, and use the building blocks left behind to grow new, vital organs. Today, the team announced that they
From the WSJ: Surgeons at a hospital in Japan recently faced a dilemma before transplanting a parent’s liver into a child: How exactly to trim the organ to fit the space in the child’s smaller cavity while preserving its functions.
Here’s the link. I think this could have been a longer list, but maybe the writers didn’t have time. Here’s an article I wrote in a similar theme called “Science Fiction Gets Funding.”
Can be found here. And here is an info-graphic. This initiative is an important step, since the brain is the least understood of all our body parts. As the population ages, and people are able to remain healthy in other
Another article on organ growing from the WSJ: Inside a warren of rooms buried in the basement of Gregorio Marañón hospital here, Dr. Aviles and his team are at the sharpest edge of the bioengineering revolution that has turned the