Standing in the way of control!

Vials of human blood have been grown from embryonic stem cells for the first time, in research that promises to provide an almost limitless supply suitable for transfusion into any patient.

The achievement by American scientists could lead to clinical trials of the artificially produced blood within two years, and ultimately to an alternative to donations that would transform medicine.

If such blood were made from stem cells of the O- blood type, which is compatible with every blood group but is often in short supply, it could be given safely to anybody who needs a transfusion.

Supplies of synthetically made O- blood could be kept for emergency situations in which there is insufficient time to check a person’s blood group, such as following a train crash or terrorist attack. It would be particularly useful to military doctors treating battlefield trauma injuries.

Stem-cell derived blood would also eliminate the risk of transmitting the pathogens that cause HIV and Creutzfeld Jakob Disease (CJD) through transfusions, as it could not originate from people who carry these infectious agents.

Scientists behind the advance said that it had huge therapeutic potential, and could easily become the first application of embryonic stem cell research to enter widespread clinical use.

“Limitations in the supply of blood can have potentially life-threatening consequences for patients with massive blood loss,” said Robert Lanza, of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Massachusetts, who led the experiments.

“Embryonic stem cells represent a new source of cells that can be propegated and expanded indefinitely, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of red blood cells for human therapy. The identification of a stem cell line with O- blood type would permit the production of compatible ‘universal donor’ blood.”

The work also has more immediate clinical promise that efforts to turn embryonic stem cells into other types of tissue, for treating conditions such as diabetes and Parkinson’s.

One of the biggest safety hurdles that must be cleared before stem cell therapies enter clinical trials is the risk of uncontrolled cell growth causing cancer. Red blood cells, however, do not have nuclei that carry the genetic material that goes wrong in cancer, and thus should not present this danger.

“This could be one of the biggest breaks for the early clinical application of embryonic stem cells,” Dr Lanza said. “There is still work to be done, but we could certainly be studying these cells clinically within the next year or two.”

While a few red blood cells have been created from embryonic stem cells before, the ACT team is the first to mass-produce them on the scale that would be required for medical use. The scientists grew between 10 billion and 100 billion red cells from just six wells of stem cells…

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Academics at the University of Padua, Italy, claim that bisexual men may have inherited their attraction to men through “hyper-heterosexual” female family members.

Dr Andrea Camperio Ciani and colleagues showed that the female relatives of homosexual men tend to have more children, which they believe suggests that genes on the X chromosome are responsible.

The team now believes that the same is true for bisexuality.

The researchers carried out a survey of 239 men, asking about their families and sexual experiences.

The results showed that gay and bisexual men’s female relatives on the maternal side had more children than those of straight men.

Dr Camperio Ciani stressed that this does not prove the existence of a “gay gene”, but that an unidentified genetic factor promotes sexual attraction to men in both men and women.

This in turn would influence a woman’s sexual attitude (but not increase her fertility), making her likely to have more children.

California Neuroscientist Dr Simon LeVay describes this genetic factor as “hyper-heterosexuality”, and claims that it would help pass homosexuality on through the generations.

Dr Camperio Ciani and colleagues say that the genetic factor appearing in both bisexual and gay men supports the heory that sexuality is determined by a mixture of genes and experience.

Dr Camperio Ciani told The New Scientist: ‘We understand that the genetic component has to interact with something to produce different phenotypes.

“Genetics is not determining the sexual orientation, it’s only influencing it.”

Dr Camperio Ciani studys sexual behaviour and sexual strategies in primates and humans, and victims of sexual crimes.

[Pinknews]

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A woman who has never shown symptoms of infection with the AIDS virus may hold the secret to defeating the virus, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Infected at least 10 years ago by her husband, the woman is able somehow to naturally control the deadly and incurable virus — even though her husband must take cocktails of strong HIV drugs to control his.

She is a so-called “elite suppressor,” and studies of her immune cells have begun to offer clues to how her body does it, the team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said.

“This is the best evidence to date that elite suppressors can have fully pathogenic virus,” said Dr. Joel Blankson, who led the study.

“The feeling was initially that they had defective virus,” Blankson added in a telephone interview.

But the couple has been monogamous for at least 17 years, Blankson said, and tests show they are infected with the same strain of virus. What is different is the immune system of the wife, who cannot be named for privacy reasons.

“That’s a good sign in terms of developing a therapeutic vaccine,” Blankson said. Such a vaccine would not prevent infection but might be used to treat patients.

The AIDS virus infects at least 33 million people globally and more than a million in the United States. It has killed 25 million people since it was identified in the early 1980s.

New figures show 56,000 people are infected every year in the United states, mostly gay and bisexual men but also injecting drug users and their sexual partners, both male and female, as well as newborns and recipients of contaminated blood transfusions.

STALLING REPLICATION

Both the man and the woman, who are from Baltimore, were diagnosed 10 years ago, Blankson said. The husband is a former injecting drug user.

Tests showed that immune cells known as CD8 T-cells from the wife stalled HIV replication by as much as 90 percent, while the husband’s T-cells stopped it by only 30 percent, Blankson’s team reported in the Journal of Virology.

Her virus has also mutated in apparent response to this immune attack, becoming weaker, while her husband’s virus has remained strong.

“Elite suppression offers clues to vaccine researchers on many fronts: how CD8 killer T-cells can attack HIV and how a stronger immune response can force HIV into a permanent defensive state,” Blankson said.

“We are trying to figure out exactly how the T-cells work in her to inhibit viral replication,” he added. “We are just trying to see what kind of cytokines they make.”

Cytokines are immune system signaling proteins. One thing the researchers have noticed is that while the husband’s T-cells make just one, called gamma interferon, hers made both that one and another called TNF, or tumor necrosis factor.

That cannot be the whole story, though, because AIDS researchers have tried using such immune system proteins in patients and they did not work well.

And her immune cells seem to make the response only when they encounter the virus.

Another clue: the woman may have unusual activity in her human leukocyte antigen system, or HLA, Blankson said. This important component of the immune system helps recognize antigens — protein identifiers — of enemies such as bacteria and viruses.

REUTERS

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Bottled water is a joke, one of the biggest consumer and taxpayer ripoffs ever. I applaud California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown who said recently that he will sue to block a proposed water-bottling operation in Northern California by Nestle.

Next, Attorneys General everywhere should require recycling of all plastic bottles and containers by requiring deposits to be paid to encourage returns, as is the case with aluminum cans. Not only do society and the environment pay an unfair price for this consumer hoax, but consumers are being hoodwinked. They are paying from 300 to 3,000 times more than the cost of tap water without any benefit.
Here’s an estimate by a University of Toronto geology professor Andrew Miall who took a picture of a grocery store skid of bottled water and calculated the extent of the ripoff.

“>

The scam
The water is usually not superior to “city” water or tap water, and is merely a big branding hoax by soda makers. In some cases, this “designer” water is drawn from tap water and labeled for suckers to buy as though it is a superior product.

Dasani in Britain was caught doing this. There are not regulations or proper labeling requirements governing bottled water as there is involving tap water. Some water may be contaminated.

Bottles of water are not fluoridated which has been created tooth decay problems among youngsters and adults who avoid tap water.

There are indications that the plastic may contain harmful carcinogens.

Bottles of water are mini gas guzzlers
One expert estimated that the amount of petroleum — used to make the bottles, transport, refrigerate, collect and bury them — would fill one-third of each bottle.

These plastic bottles are creating landfill problems worldwide, and are washing up on beautiful beaches around the planet.

What’s wrong with using filters, if people are concerned about local water supplies, and refillable bottles?

Another stupidity
A real estate developer explained the idiocy of ordering bottled water in restaurants. He said bylaws require special water filtration systems be installed so that their “tap water” is safer than any.

Of course, there’s always those who want fancy sparkling or soda water, but that’s another issue.
About the only justification for bottled water is in developing countries where water supplies are decidedly unsafe or untrustworthy.

The Huffington Post

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Cars in a parking lot could soon keep track of each other and, like sheep, complain if one of their numbers is stolen or meets a bad end.

At least, that’s the intention of the Sensor Vehicle Anti-Theft System (SVATS) proposed by Sencun Zhu, an assistant professor at Penn State University. As he explained to LiveScience.com, each car would be given a sensor — smaller than a coin — that would wirelessly call roll with other, similarly equipped cars in the parking lot within range, and pass on the results. If any car stopped responding to the roll call without issuing a goodbye signal when it was unlocked, the car herd would decide that the non-responsive car had been stolen and alert the lot’s base station.

Parking lot monitoring could be accomplished without inter-car networking, but the use of networking allows for short-range, low-power transmitters, with longer battery life, Zhu said. The range of the sensor signal between cars will be about TK to TK feet (2 to 10 meters.

He anticipates that each car would have a master sensor drawing power from the car, and battery-powered slave sensors hidden through the vehicle. The slave sensors would take over if the master is defeated by hot-wiring. Mass-produced, the sensors should cost less than a dollar, and Zhu anticipates they could be handed out by commercial parking lots as a competitive measure.

Prevention, anyone?

The not-so-subtle drawback with all such theft-alert devices is that when the alert arrives the car has already been stolen. Experts on car theft avoidance, on the other hand, preach prevention, which, by Ben Franklin’s calculations, is 16 times better than anything you can do after the fact.

Rather than rely on technology, pundits (such as Auto-Theft.info) urge the use of something called common sense. For instance: Lock the car door. Take the keys. Park in well-lit areas with a lot of foot traffic. Keep valuables out of sight. Do not hide spare keys in the car. Do not leave registration or insurance documents in the car.

If further measures seem warranted, get a steering wheel lock of some kind. The simple, visible presence of such a device will likely deter a potential thief.

Owners of particularly vulnerable or valuable vehicles might then want to escalate to an electronic immobilizing device that would prevent thieves from bypassing the ignition and hot-wiring the car. After that, there’s theft-alert and tracking devices, like Zhu’s.

Grim fate

But deciding how much protection is merited is dicey. While expensive luxury cars would logically seem to be prime targets for thieves, the bad guys are actually more likely to grab the junker in the next parking space. That’s because their prime targets are ordinary models of a certain age whose owners are getting desperate for parts — which the thieves supply by stripping stolen cars of the same model.

In 2006, the most commonly stolen vehicles were the 1995 Honda Civic, the 1991 Honda Accord, and the 1989 Toyota Camry, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. There were no luxury cars in the top 10.

Since the cars are stolen to be stripped, the recovery rate is only 63 percent, reports the NICB

From: Livescience.com

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As citizen of Africa I am yet to experience the phenomenon of northern lights. By this time next year I hope to have experienced it…

Meanwhile Time reports:

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Scientists have exposed some of the mystery behind the northern lights. On Thursday, NASA released findings that indicate magnetic explosions about one-third of the way to the moon cause the northern lights, or aurora borealis, to burst in spectacular shapes and colors, and dance across the sky.

The findings should help scientists better understand the more powerful but less common geomagnetic storms that can knock out satellites, harm astronauts in orbit and disrupt power and communications on Earth, scientists said.

A fleet of five small satellites, called Themis, observed the beginning of a geomagnetic storm in February, while ground observatories in Canada and Alaska recorded the brightening of the northern lights. The southern lights — aurora australis — also brightened and darted across the sky at the same time.

These auroral flare-ups occur every two or three days, on average.

A team led by University of California, Los Angeles, scientist Vassilis Angelopoulos confirmed that the observed storm about 80,000 miles from Earth was triggered by a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection. Every so often, the Earth’s magnetic field lines are stretched like rubber bands by solar energy, snap, are thrown back to Earth and reconnect, in effect creating a short circuit.

It’s this stored-up energy that powers the northern and southern lights or, in other words, causes them to dance, according to Angelopoulos.

An opposing theory has these geomagnetic events occurring much closer to Earth, about one-sixth of the way to the moon. More Themis observations are needed to resolve the debate, said David Sibeck, NASA’s project scientist.

“Finally, we have the right instruments in the right place at the right time, and it’s allowed scientists to be able to make the necessary observations to settle this heated debate once and for all,” said Nicola Fox, a Johns Hopkins University scientist who was not involved in the study.

At present, about 20 of these geomagnetic storms are being analyzed. Scientists hope to eventually learn, via this project, more about the bigger solar storms that occur about 10 times a year and can lead to far more expansive and prolonged northern and southern lights.

The five Themis spacecraft — a NASA acronym standing for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interations during Substorms — were launched aboard a single rocket last year.

I am in awe….

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Time reveals that scientists may have found a cure for shyness:

Known as oxytocin (not to be confused with the painkiller OxyContin), the naturally occurring hormone is best known for controlling contractions during labor, but it also plays a key role in other fundamental human urges — including the desire to connect with others.
Without oxytocin people would be far less inclined to seek social interaction, let alone fall in love and mate for life (or, as scientists call it, “pair bond”). Conversely, researchers are beginning to discover that low levels of the hormone — or the body’s faulty response to it — may contribute to severe social dysfunctions like depression and autism.
Early studies of oxytocin’s role in social interaction have yielded some interesting results… In studies by Paul Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies in Claremont, Calif., small doses of inhaled oxytocin spray reduced anxiety and wariness of strangers in healthy volunteers; in one trial, the hormone made people feel more generous and trusting with their money.

This is good news. No need to pull out the bottle of gin to cure those effected by shyness. But, what is the potential of it being abused?

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From NASA:

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft has created a video of the moon transiting (passing in front of) Earth as seen from the spacecraft’s point of view 31 million miles away. Scientists are using the video to develop techniques to study alien worlds.

“Making a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the Universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would appear to us,” said University of Maryland astronomer Michael A’Hearn, principal investigator for the Deep Impact extended mission, called EPOXI

More info here.

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Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) researchers at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston believe they have uncovered the Achilles heel in the armor of the virus that continues to kill millions.From ScienceDaily:

[A group led by Sudhir Paul, Ph.D., pathology professor in the UT Medical School] has engineered antibodies with enzymatic activity, also known as abzymes, which can attack the Achilles heel of the virus in a precise way. “The abzymes recognize essentially all of the diverse HIV forms found across the world. This solves the problem of HIV changeability. The next step is to confirm our theory in human clinical trials,” Paul said. Unlike regular antibodies, abzymes degrade the virus permanently. A single abzyme molecule inactivates thousands of virus particles. Regular antibodies inactivate only one virus particle, and their anti-viral HIV effect is weaker. ‘The work of Dr. Paul’s group is highly innovative. They have identified antibodies that, instead of passively binding to the target molecule, are able to fragment it and destroy its function. Their recent work indicates that naturally occurring catalytic antibodies, particularly those of the IgA subtype, may be useful in the treatment and prevention of HIV infection,’ said Steven J. Norris, Ph.D., holder of the Robert Greer Professorship in the Biomedical Sciences and vice chair for research in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the UT Medical School at Houston.”More at Science Daily.

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From the Gawker blog:

We’ve heard all about the negative effects of blogging: there was the NYT-induced blogger-death panic, in which blogging created an unhealthy lifestyle, resulting in two heart attacks that would have happened anyway. And there are the people who have had relationships destroyed by compulsive blogging. Blogging also exacerbates narcissistic tendencies! But expressing your feelings might actually be good for your health, Scientific American finds: “Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery.” Whoa. Four reasons why blogging is good for your health:

1. Bitching and moaning alleviates stress! “As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a ‘placebo for getting satisfied.’”

2. It gets you high. “Blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.” (Meta-blogger Emily Gould said as much in the NYT Magazine.)

3. If nothing else, there’s the placebo effect: “Cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.”

4. Instant feedback, unlike your diary: “Unlike a bedside journal, blogging offers the added benefit of receptive readers in similar situations.” Sharing is caring!

Blogging—It’s Good for You! [Scientific American]

I knew that there had to be health perks…..

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