Science and Health News

Keck Medical Center of USC announced that a team of doctors became the first in California to inject an experimental treatment made from stem cells, AST-OPC1, into the damaged cervical spine of a recently paralyzed 21-year-old man as part of a multi-center clinical trial. On March 6, just shy of his 21st birthday, Kristopher (Kris) Boesen of Bakersfield suffered a traumatic injury to his cervical spine when his car fishtailed on a wet road, hit a tree and slammed into a telephone pole.

A University of Adelaide-led project has overturned the theory that the evolution of human intelligence was simply related to the size of the brain ─ but rather linked more closely to the supply of blood to the brain.

It was already known that genes inherited from ancient retroviruses1 are essential to the placenta in mammals, a finding to which scientists in the Laboratoire Physiologie et Pathologie Moléculaires des Rétrovirus Endogènes et Infectieux (CNRS/Université Paris-Sud) contributed. Today, the same scientists2 have revealed a new chapter in this astonishing story: these genes of viral origin may also be responsible for the more developed muscle mass seen in males! Their findings are published on 2 September 2016 in PLOS Genetics.

Researchers at St. Petersburg-based ITMO University have put together an optically active nanodimensional super-crystal with unusual architecture that is believed to enable the separation of organic molecules.

A new blood test has been developed that could detect cancer earlier than ever before. Researchers at Swansea University, who created the test, say it will change the way cancer is diagnosed, and in turn potentially save millions of lives.

To treat or not to treat? That is the question researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) hope to answer with a new advance that could help doctors and their cancer patients decide if a particular therapy would be worth pursuing.

For (probably) the first time ever, plants modified with the “genetic scissors” CRISPR-Cas9 has been cultivated, harvested and cooked. Stefan Jansson, professor in Plant Cell and Molecular Biology at Umeå University, served pasta with “CRISPRy” vegetable fry to a radio reporter. Although the meal only fed two people, it was still the first step towards a future where science can better provide farmers and consumers across the world with healthy, beautiful and hardy plants.

An international study coordinated by Spanish research institutes has found that gut bacteria also play their role in the immune recovery of HIV patients.