Author: jplucas

The long-simmering embryonic stem cell debate may become moot one day due to a breakthrough that reprograms human skin cells with similar results.

Research teams at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Kyoto University in Japan reported landmark results last week.

A scientific discovery without the controversy â?? what could be better news?

Judd Aiken was pretty sure he knew what happens when prions, the misshapen proteins that cause chronic wasting disease in deer, bind to soil.

The prions must become less infectious, he figured. But an experiment he conducted found the opposite — big time: Soil-bound prions were 700 times more infectious than prions alone.

If stem cell researchers were oil prospectors, it could be said that they struck a gusher last week. But to realize the potential boundless riches they now must figure out how to build refineries, pipelines and gas stations.

Biologists were electrified on Tuesday, when scientists in Japan and Wisconsin reported that they could turn human skin cells into cells that behave like embryonic stem cells, able to grow indefinitely and to potentially turn into any type of tissue in the body.

An ambitious international project to dig deeper into the Earth’s surface than ever before has made a good start with scientists saying they have gained clues about how large earthquakes and tsunami occur.

The experiment, using the Japanese government’s 57,500-tonne, 60-billion-yen ($550-million) deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu, is probing a trench in waters off the Pacific coast of Japan where two tectonic plates meet.

A team of 16 scientists from six countries have been seeking clues about how seismic activity can shake the planet’s foundations

Advances published last week in the area of stem cell research hold great promise, particularly for those who seek to realize the potential of embryonic stem cells.

The process described in studies published in the journals Science and Cell could revolutionize the way in which such work is pursued in the future.

Because it involves the destruction of days-old human embryos, stem cell research has sadly become yet another flashpoint in Americaâ??s cultural war over abortion.

Thatâ??s exasperating, because stem cells have vast potential for treating and even curing devastating illnesses and injuries. Because they can develop into any kind of human tissue, they could conceivably be used to regenerate severed spinal cords and diseased hearts, heal Parkinsonâ??s disease, and restore insulin-secreting â??isletsâ? to diabetic pancreases.

We have long been strong supporters of embryonic stem cell research, despite the controversy that swirls around it and the presidential veto over federal funding that stunted it.

But we share the excitement about a new breakthrough in this field, one that may hold the tantalizing possibility that embryonic stem cell research will be a thing of the past. What makes it particularly satisfying is that scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who first isolated human embryonic stem cells nearly 10 years ago, including James Thomson, are prominently involved in this development as well.

Patenting officials at the University of Wisconsin at Madison are sharing in the scientific excitement over last week’s announcements by researchers there and at Kyoto University that new techniques had been found to generate versatile stem cells without destroying embryos, even though they acknowledge the discovery could eventually undermine the value of the stem-cell patents and licenses that Wisconsin holds.

“Hey, that’s what science is about,” said Carl E. Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, in an interview last week.

Two teams of scientists reported last week that they had developed lines of human stem cells almost identical to embryonic ones, using a procedure that does not involve destroying actual embryos, an advance that could accelerate research into therapies based on stem cells, they said.

It’s called nuclear reprogramming, and it may have ended an era.

But the credit goes to science, not to any interest group or politician.

The subject is stem-cell research. Two independent research teams, reporting in the journals Cell and Science, announced last week they have induced plain, old human skin cells to behave much like embryonic stem cells.

NEW YORK –Despite all the excitement, big questions remain about turning this week’s stem-cell breakthrough into new treatments for the sick, and it’s not clear when they’ll be answered.

Scientists have to learn more about the new kind of cell the research produced. They also have to find a different way to make it, to avoid a risk of cancer. Even after that, plenty of steps are needed to harness this laboratory advance for therapy.

So, when will doctors and patients see new treatments? Scientists only hedge.

“I just can’t tell you dates,” says James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the scientists in the United States and Japan who announced the breakthrough on Tuesday.

In a surprising reversal of roles, nanotechnology scientists outrival the general public in seeing a cause for concern in some aspects of their work, according to a study published Sunday.

Nanotechnology — the science of making things measured in units 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair — holds spectacular promise in virtually every sector.

Hundreds of consumer products already contain nano materials, most of which are cosmetics, sunscreens and cleaning products with microscopic particles.

The unknown human health and environmental impacts of nanotechnology are a bigger worry for scientists than for the public, according to a new report published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The new report was based on a telephone survey and a sampling of 363 leading U.S. nanotechnology scientists and engineers. It reveals that those with the most insight into a technology with enormous potential – and that is already emerging in hundreds of products – are unsure what health and environmental problems might be posed by the technology.

“Scientists aren’t saying there are problems,” says the study’s lead author Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication and journalism. “They’re saying, ‘we don’t know. The research hasn’t been done.'”