This 2-part series on “Regenerative Medicine” shows how it is possible to replace lost or damaged body parts by using human cells. Surviving a disease such as cancer can leave scars, both physical and emotional. Whether it’s due to a mastectomy or radiation therapy, scars are hard to avoid. Fat-derived stem cells can help patients return close to their original state, providing peace of mind. We also look at the benefits of using oil to balance the amount of fat in a body.
If you’ve been a grunt, then you probably have a love-hate relationship with body armor. You love having it in a firefight — it can save your life by stopping or slowing bullets and fragments — but you hate how heavy it is — it’s often around 25 pounds for the armor and outer tactical vest (more if you add the plate inserts to stop up to 7.62 mm rounds).
It’s bulky — and you really can’t move as well in it. In fact, in one firefight, a medic removed his body armor to reach wounded allies, earning a Distinguished Service Cross.
Imagine if the body armor were just another part of your clothes, like a light jacket. Imagine not having to haul around those extra 30 pounds. Well, troops may not have to imagine much longer. According to a release from the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York, body armor could soon have the thickness of just two atoms. This is due to how graphene acts under certain conditions.
Physicists in the US have discovered a material that could qualify as the first known three-dimensional example of a quantum spin liquid — an exotic theoretical phase of matter.
Quantum spin liquids were first predicted by scientists back in the 1970s. While researchers have studied them for decades, these phases largely remain a theoretical concept, although that’s not the same as saying they don’t exist.
To confuse you further, quantum spin liquids aren’t actually liquids, but a kind of solid, magnetic matter that exhibits a strange form of behaviour at the subatomic particle level, specifically in terms of its electrons.
Electrical muscle stimulation can speed up human reflexes. But can we use it without giving up control of our bodies?
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), the major stem cells for cell therapy, have been used in the clinic for approximately 10 years. From animal models to clinical trials, MSCs have afforded promise in the treatment of numerous diseases, mainly tissue injury and immune disorders. In this review, we summarize the recent opinions on methods, timing and cell sources for MSC administration in clinical applications, and provide an overview of mechanisms that are significant in MSC-mediated therapies. Although MSCs for cell therapy have been shown to be safe and effective, there are still challenges that need to be tackled before their wide application in the clinic.
Keywords: mesenchymal stem cell, cell therapy, tissue injury, degenerative disease, immune disorder, graft-versus-host disease, immunomodulation, trophic factor.
Stem cells are unspecialized cells with the ability to renew themselves for long periods without significant changes in their general properties. They can differentiate into various specialized cell types under certain physiological or experimental conditions. Cell therapy is a sub-type of regenerative medicine. Cell therapy based on stem cells describes the process of introducing stem cells into tissue to treat a disease with or without the addition of gene therapy. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) have been widely used for allogeneic cell therapy. The successful isolation of pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cells from the inner cell mass of early embryos has provided a powerful tool for biological research. ES cells can give rise to almost all cell lineages and are the most promising cells for regenerative medicine.
50 years ago today, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. It took 4 days and an incredible mid-flight rotation to accomplish.
Across the U.S., there appears to be a rise in cases of people contracting ‘flesh-eating’ bacteria. Experts weigh in on the cause of the bacteria and what families can do to stay safe while enjoying the rest of summer vacation.
Detailed earthquake information — overview map, magnitude, time, depth, information source, shake map, list of reports. Feature interactive map: submit / read I-felt-an-earthquake reports and links to further info.
Visualizing a half century of data helps us understand why people make the choice to leave and where they go.
The government has called a state of emergency in 12 districts across southern Peru as eruptions continue at Mt. Ubinas. Local governments are being overwhelmed particularly by health emergencies.
The eruptions of dense ash began before dawn on Friday, darkening nearby villages and spreading across four regions of Moquegua, Arequipa and Tacna. The Peruvian Geophysical Insitute, IGP, first issued a yellow alert but raised this to orange by noon as the eruptions increased. The ash will affect the health of inhabitants and also crops and grazing land, as winds spread the ash across the south and southeast of the region.
Emergency measures include immediate intervention of most government ministries, including Health, Agriculture, Transport and Environment. In earlier eruptions —most recently in 2013 and 2014— people from the villages close to the volcano had to be housed further away until the eruptions subsided.
