First Bladders Grown in Lab TransplantedResearchers said yesterday that they have grown complete urinary bladders in a laboratory and transplanted them into patients, improving their health and achieving a Holy Grail of medicine: the first cultivation of working replacements for failing solid organs in people.
The "neo-bladders," each one grown in a small laboratory container from a pinch of a patient's own cells, have been working in seven young patients for an average of almost four years, according to a report releas... (more)
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'We can rebuild him. We have the technology.' Almost.Three decades after the hit television programme The Six Million Dollar Man described how the broken body of a former astronaut was rebuilt with mechanical parts, scientists are closer than ever to creating such cyborgs.
The character Steve Austin, played by Lee Majors, became a 1970s pop culture icon after his legs, right arm and left eye were replaced in an operation that gave the world the catch phrase: "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology."
Yes... (more)
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Fingerprints reveal clues to suspects' habitsFingerprints from a crime scene are useless if the perpetrator's prints are not on file. But new forensic techniques now mean they can be used to determine whether a person is a smoker, uses drugs, and even which aftershave they wear - information that could help narrow down suspects.
Fingerprints contain a mixture of skin cells, sweat secretions and substances picked up from elsewhere. Careful analysis can show whether a person may have handled drugs or explosives, but the new to... (more)
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China Surpasses U.S. In Internet UseNew York - Chinese Internet users spend nearly two billion hours online each week, while the U.S. audience logs on for 129 million hours per week.
That's the bombshell Dr. Charles Zhang, chairman and CEO of Sohu.com (nasdaq: SOHU - news - people ), dropped last month after ringing the opening bell at the Nasdaq, a milestone for a Beijing-based company.
Zhang reported that, according to his internal research, Chinese Internet users numbered over 150 million--and poss... (more)
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Warbots to Replace Human Soldiers? Any good student of military history can tell you that technological change can make a huge difference on the battlefield. History is replete with examples: the English longbow at Crecy overmatched the Genovese crossbowmen. During WWI when Allied tanks helped break the stalemate on the Western Front and, the ultimate technological victory, the atom bomb that forced the Japanese into submission in WWII. But progress marches on, further changing the battlefield of the future and, unfortunately, d... (more)
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N.J. broadens fish advisories: Recommends eating only one a yearThe state has broadened fish consumption advisories for the Delaware River and Bay as the result of a statewide study.
For the first time, New Jersey is advising residents to limit their consumption of weakfish, a popular sport fish in the bay, and has revised recommendations for blue fish, another popular game fish. It has also extended restrictions for several species of fish caught in the river.
The biggest problem remains PCBs, a class of chlorinated compounds l... (more)
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Two champion horses clonedA Texas company said yesterday that it had cloned two champion cutting horses for $150,000 apiece, had established multiple clone pregnancies and would create as many as 30 more cloned horses over the next year, signaling the arrival of a commercial horse-cloning industry in the United States.
The plans by ViaGen Inc. of Austin represent by far the most ambitious effort yet to turn horse cloning into a paying business. There's little doubt that ViaGen, with one of the world's top ... (more)
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'Sudden External Impact' Cripples Russian SatelliteA Russian telecommunications satellite in geostationary orbit failed March 29 following what its builder says was a "sudden external impact" of undetermined origin. The satellite, Express-AM11, is being moved into a graveyard orbit before on-board temperatures render it uncontrollable, the Russian Satellite Communications Co. (RSCC) announced March 30.
RSCC's Express-AM11 telecommunications spacecraft, launched in April 2004, is stationed at 96.5 degrees east longitude. The satell... (more)
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Russia's space tourism planAt sea, in air, and in most remote deserts, tourism has long become a gold mine.
Now the farthest and the most dangerous desert of all, outer space, is poised to open its doors to tourists an inch. And the Russians are making the keys.
Space Adventures Ltd., a private U.S. company, has already sent two Americans and a South African to the International Space Station aboard a Russian spacecraft and will expand into commercial suborbital flights, which is very good fo... (more)
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Here be dragons: With luck, you may soon be able to buy a mythological petPAOLO FRIL, chairman and chief scientific officer of GeneDupe, based in San Melito, California, is a man with a dream. That dream is a dragon in every home.
GeneDupe's business is biotech pets. Not for Dr Fril, though, the mundane cloning of dead moggies and pooches. He plans a range of entirely new animals—or, rather, of really quite old animals, with the twist that even when they did exist, it was only in the imagination.
Making a mythical creature real is n... (more)
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'Mind control' over muscle powerThinking about the way your muscles work could physically boost your strength, research suggests.
A Hull University team asked 30 subjects to do biceps curls and found their muscles worked more when they focused on what the muscles were doing.
But lower rates of muscle activity were recorded when they simply visualised themselves lifting the weight.
The study is being presented at the British Psychological Society conference in Cardiff on Friday.
... (more)
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Drug-test victim's 'hell'SHATTERED Nav Modi last night told of the searing pain in his head as a disastrous drug trial left him like an “Elephant Man”.
The 24-year-old student said it felt like “a truck had been parked on my head” as it ballooned to twice its normal size.
Speaking for the first time about the nightmare test that left him and five other men fighting for life, he told The Sun how he was in pain soon after being injected with an anti-inflammatory chemic... (more)
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Google's Billions: Is 8 Enough?The search engine giant has nearly $8 billion in cash reserves, but on Wednesday it announced plans to sell more than 5 million shares of stock to raise $2 billion more.
This is the second time in a year it has gone to the stock market to raise cash. So what is Google planning to do with all that money?
Will it buy another company? Will it hold on to the cash to earn interest? Will it challenge Microsoft or rival Yahoo? The chat boards are humming and it's become a ... (more)
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Giant cloud of space alcohol foundAstronomers hope that observations of this gas cloud - taken with the UK's MERLIN radio telescopes - could help our understanding of how the most massive stars in our galaxy are formed. However, all those hoping for a taste of the interstellar tipple will be disappointed.
Dr Harvey-Smith, principal investigator for the study, said: “Although it is exciting to discover a cloud of alcohol almost 300 billion miles across, unfortunately methanol, unlike its chemical cousin ethan... (more)
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Scientists make water run uphillToss water on a hot pan and it sizzles and evaporates. Toss water on a really hot pan, and the water beads up and starts roaming around.
Now, turn your hot pan into a hot small staircase and watch the water climb the stairs.
Researchers did just that, taking an everyday sighting in the kitchen to a new level in the lab.
If a pan's really hot, the water starts to evaporate before it even touches the surface. The evaporating water, in the airy form of a... (more)
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Google patents free Wi-FiSAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - More evidence has emerged that Google is getting ready to blanket the U.S. with free Wi-Fi, as Business 2.0 senior writer Om Malik reported last year. Now, the company has filed for three patents related to offering wireless Internet access. Search Engine Roundtable points out that the patents all have to do with serving up advertising through a wireless Internet connection maintained by a third party, whose brand Google would include in the presentation o... (more)
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A world of computers with one mind Toshiba and MIT’s Media Lab plan to launch the “GlobalMind” project, a large-scale knowledge database designed to promote advancements in the field of AI technology. Toshiba hopes to bring to computers an understanding of situations and feelings as experienced by their human users so that they can recognize, understand and respond to information in a real-life environment as people do.
GlobalMind will be an extension of the OpenMind database project, which the M... (more)
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Will consumers have a beef with test-tube meat?Scientists can grow frog and mouse meat in the lab, and are now working on pork, beef and chicken. Their goal is to develop an industrial version of the process in five years.
If they succeed, cultured or in vitro meat could be coming to a supermarket near you. Consumers could buy hamburger patties and chicken nuggets made from meat cultivated from muscle cells in a giant incubator rather than cut from a farm animal.
Home chefs could make meat in a countertop device... (more)
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Brain Cells Fused with Computer ChipThe line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.
The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.
To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 e... (more)
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Fairfax Co. Takes Part in Unusual Wastewater Experiment FAIRFAX, Va. - Fairfax County is taking part in an unusual White House drug study.
Wastewater from communities throughout the Potomac River Basin is being tested for the urinary byproducts of cocaine.
"Apparently, they're able to ascertain how many people may be using illicit drugs, in this case cocaine, with such studies," Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerry Connolly tells WTOP.
Earlier this month, county workers collected five days worth of water ... (more)
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Earthworm gene makes pork healthierIF A new kind of pork makes it to the dinner table, healthy eaters worried about fat and heart disease might finally be free to, well, pig out.
Scientists using genetic engineering techniques have produced pigs rich in omega-3 fatty acids — a kind of healthy fat abundant in fish but not naturally found in meat. Omega-3 fatty acids are believed to offer some protection against heart attacks.
But "some people are not going to eat fish no matter what", said Penny... (more)
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Pentagon stays the course with laser weaponThe threat of cancellation no longer looms over the Pentagon's Airborne Laser effort, but senior program officials say they are taking nothing for granted as they prepare for a missile-intercept demonstration in 2008.
Several clear test milestones have been laid out for the Airborne Laser in 2006 so that senior Missile Defense Agency officials will be able to measure its progress, according to Air Force Col. John Daniels, the effort's program director.
The Airborne ... (more)
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The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blameGlobal warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.
A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.
Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The... (more)
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Nano circuit offers big promiseThe size of the chip becomes apparent alongside a human hair
The first computer circuit to be built on a single molecule has been unveiled by researchers in the US.
It was assembled on a single carbon nanotube, a standard component of any nanotechnologist's toolkit.
The circuit is less than a fifth of the width of a human hair and can only be seen through an electron microscope.
The researchers, from IBM and two US universities i... (more)
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