November 30, 2006, 4:22 AM CT

First-Ever Stem Cell Transplant In Human Brain

Neurosurgeons and physicians at Doernbecher Children's Hospital, Oregon Health & Science University, Nov. 14, performed the first transplant of purified human fetal neural stem cells into the brain of a study participant with neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL), also known as Batten disease. NCL is a rare and fatal neurodegenerative disorder that affects infants and children.

The transplant is the focus of a Phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and preliminary efficacy of HuCNS-SC(TM) - a proprietary human central nervous stem cell product developed by StemCells, Inc., Palo Alto, Calif. This one-year trial will involve up to six children with NCL.

"Doernbecher's specialists are privileged to care for this child and family and to push forward groundbreaking work in degenerative brain diseases," said co-principal investigator Nathan Selden, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.S., F.A.A.P., who performed the surgery. "Our team is pleased that our patient's recovery thus far has been as expected".

The research team will continue to concentrate their efforts on the health and well-being of the study participant and family and will, along with Stem Cells, Inc., provide periodic updates as appropriate until the trial is completed.

In the interest of confidentiality, the research team requests that all parties avoid interfering with the study participant and family during recovery from surgery.........

Posted by: Beverly      Permalink         Source

November 30, 2006, 4:20 AM CT

New Drug Will Help Smokers

Researchers in the Oregon Health & Science University Smoking Cessation Center are studying whether the newly FDA-approved drug varenicline (Chantix) - a drug they recently showed to be more effective than the smoking cessation drug bupropion (Zyban) in helping generally healthy smokers quit - also can help smokers with the devastating lung disease known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. It is a disease that leads to progressive loss of lung function and is primarily a smoker's disease because very few nonsmokers are at risk for COPD. Once it has taken a firm hold, COPD has a debilitating effect on patients' lives, lifestyles and their families. They develop chronic cough, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing with exertion. Over time, as breathing becomes more and more difficult, the disease limits their ability to be active, and reduced activity further limits their quality of life. While both men and women smokers are at risk for these devastating effects, women smokers are more vulnerable than men.

Gail Cary, 73, Beaverton, Ore., has COPD. She smoked two packs a day for decades before quitting seven months ago with the support of OHSU Smoking Cessation Center staff.

"I always had an ill feeling, felt uncomfortable about smoking. I was careful to hide it, but I coughed a lot and my clothes smelled of smoke," Carey said. "Seven months ago I had a very irregular heartbeat and went to the hospital in am ambulance. I told myself if I get home, the cigarettes are gone. I felt so guilty. Since I've quit, I've felt a lot better emotionally. I'm thinking positively and I don't cough. I'm not going to go back".........

Posted by: Beverly      Permalink         Source

November 29, 2006, 4:42 AM CT

Night Of The Living Enzyme

Inactive enzymes entombed in tiny honeycomb-shaped holes in silica can spring to life, scientists at the Department of Energys Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found.

The discovery came after salvaging enzymes that had been in a refrigerator long past their expiration date. Enzymes are proteins that are not actually alive but come from living cells and perform chemical conversions.

To the research teams surprise, enzymes that should have fizzled months before perked right up when entrapped in a nanomaterial called functionalized mesoporous silica, or FMS. The result points the way for exploiting these enzyme traps in food processing, decontamination, biosensor design and any other pursuit that requires controlling catalysts and sustaining their activity.

Theres a school of thought that the reason enzymes work better in cells than in solution is because the concentration of enzymes surrounded by other biomolecules in cells is about 1,000 to 10,000 time more than in standard biochemistry lab conditions, said Eric Ackerman, PNNL chief scientist and senior author of a related study that appears today in the journal Nanotechnology. This crowding is thought to stabilize and keep enzymes active.

The silica-spun FMS pores, hexagons about 30 nanometers in diameter spread across a sliver of material, mimic the crowding of cells. Ackerman, lead author Chenghong Lei and colleagues said crowding induces an unfolded, free-floating protein to refold; upon refolding, it reactivates and becomes capable of catalyzing thousands of reactions a second.........

Posted by: Beverly      Permalink         Source

November 28, 2006, 8:22 PM CT

First ever Gamma Ray Clock

Astronomers using the H.E.S.S. telescopes have discovered the first ever modulated signal from space in Very High Energy Gamma Rays - the most energetic such signal ever observed. Regular signals from space have been known since the 1960s, when the first radio pulsar (nicknamed Little Green Men-1 for its regular nature) was discovered. This is the first time a signal has been seen at such high energies - 100,000 times higher than previously known - and is reported today (24th November) in the Journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The signal comes from a system called LS 5039 which was discovered by the H.E.S.S. team in 2005. LS5039 is a binary system formed of a massive blue star (20 times the mass of the Sun) and an unknown object, possibly a black hole. The two objects orbit each other at very short distance, varying between only 1/5 and 2/5 of the separation of the Earth from the Sun, with one orbit completed every four days.

"The way in which the gamma ray signal varies makes LS5039 a unique laboratory for studying particle acceleration near compact objects such as black holes." Explained Dr Paula Chadwick from the University of Durham, a British team member of H.E.S.S.

Different mechanisms can affect the gamma-ray signal that reaches Earth and by seeing how the signal varies, astronomers can learn a great deal about binary systems such as LS 5039 and also the effects that take place near black holes.........

Posted by: Beverly      Permalink         Source

November 28, 2006, 8:13 PM CT

Big Magnet Ready To Face The Big Questions

The largest superconducting magnet ever built has successfully been powered up to its operating conditions at the first attempt. Called the Barrel Toroid because of its shape, this magnet is a vital part of ATLAS, one of the major particle detectors being prepared to take data at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator scheduled to turn on in November 2007. ATLAS will help researchers probe the big questions of the Universe - what happened in the moments after the Big Bang? Why does the material in the Universe behave the way it does? Why is the Universe we can see made of matter rather than anti-matter?

UK researchers are a key part of the ATLAS collaboration and Dr Richard Nickerson, UK ATLAS project leader, who is from the University of Oxford welcomed this important milestone "The toroidal magnets are critical to enabling us to measure the muons (a type of particle) produced in interactions. These are vital to a lot of the physics we want to study, so the successful test of the magnets is a great step forward".

The ATLAS Barrel Toroid consists of eight superconducting coils, each in the shape of a round-cornered rectangle, 5m wide, 25m long and weighing 100 tonnes, all aligned to millimetre precision. It will work together with other magnets in ATLAS to bend the paths of charged particles produced in collisions at the LHC, enabling important properties to be measured. Unlike most particle detectors, the ATLAS detector does not need large quantities of metal to contain the field because the field is contained within a doughnut shape defined by the coils. This allows the ATLAS detector to be very large, which in turn increases the precision of the measurements it can make.........

Posted by: Beverly      Permalink         Source

November 28, 2006, 8:02 PM CT

How Old Is Too Old?

Average paternal age is increasing in the UK (and USA) Growing evidence shows that the offspring of older fathers have an increased risk of some birth defects, some cancers, including breast , prostate and nervous system and schizophrenia. The public health implications have not been widely anticipated or debated. In October, in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health , a paper was published, "Advanced Paternal age: How old is too old?', led by epidemiologist Dr. Isabelle Bray.calling for a discussion of this issue.

It is thought that there is an increased risk of certain conditions due to an accumulation of mutations etc. in the sperm of older men. It was cited that the "accumulation of damage to DNA in sperm of men age 36-57 is three times that of men <35.", They include studies of childhood cancers, childhood brain cancer, retinoblastoma, acute lymphoblastic leukemia all having increased incidence with advanced paternal age. The epidemiologists state in the article that as our appreciation of the genetic contribution to disease develops it seems probable that if the current trends in the timing of fatherhood continues, the consequences at a population level may be worth considering. To illustrate the possible scale of the effects, results from a Swedish population based cohort study have been used to estimate that the increase in paternal age since 1980 could account for 10% of new cases of schizophrenia diagnosed in the UK in 2002. Adverse health outcomes should be weighed up against potential social advantages and disadvantages for children born to older parents, mindful that these societal effects are likely to change over time. Possible interventions they imagine might include health promotions advising people about the risk of delaying childbearing or changes at a societal level (family benefits, etc.) that encourage couples to have children earlier rather than later.........

Posted by: Dorje      Permalink         Source

November 28, 2006, 7:46 PM CT

World's Smallest Piano Wire

Researchers from Delft University of Technology and FOM Foundation have successfully made and 'tuned' the world's smallest piano wire. The wires are made of carbon nanotubes that measure approximately 2 nanometers in diameter. The researchers have published an article on the subject this week in the scientific journal Nano Letters.

The researchers at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft and the FOM Foundation (Fundamental Research on Matter) made the small wires from carbon nanotubes, measuring approximately 1 micrometer long and approximately 2 nanometres in diameter. The tubes were attached to electrodes and initially placed above a layer of silicon oxide. This layer of silicon oxide was then partially etched away with acid, which caused the tubes to detach and hang.

A layer of silicon is contained beneath the silicon oxide. A strong and frequently variable alternating current is applied to this layer, which causes the hanging nanotubes to vibrate. The suspended tube is alternately attracted and repelled. The largest measured deviation for one tube was 8 nanometres. The distance of the nanotubes to the layer of silicon influences the electrical capacity to the layer of silicon. The movement of the nanowires is derived from these changes in capacity.

When the frequency of the applied current approaches the level of the suspended tube's eigenfrequency, it begins to vibrate more powerfully. The order of magnitude of these frequencies amounts to a few tens of MHz. By varying the strength and frequency of the applied current, the research group led by Professor Herre van der Zant succeeded in transposing the wire from a freely suspended state, to a state in which it is taut and vibrates. Van der Zant: "And as such it is like tightening a piano wire or guitar string. You can, as it were, tune the wire".........

Posted by: Beverly      Permalink         Source

November 28, 2006, 5:09 AM CT

Boy Or Girl: How Brain Processes Words

Boys and girls tend to use different parts of their brains to process some basic aspects of grammar, according to the first study of its kind, suggesting that sex is an important factor in the acquisition and use of language.

Two neuroscientists from Georgetown University Medical Center discovered that boys and girls use different brain systems when they make mistakes like "Yesterday I holded the bunny". Girls mainly use a system that is for memorizing words and associations between them, whereas boys rely primarily on a system that governs the rules of language.

"Sex has been virtually ignored in studies of the learning, representation, processing and neural bases of language. This study shows that differences between males and females may be an important factor in these cognitive processes," said the lead author, Michael Ullman, PhD, professor of neuroscience, psychology, neurology and linguistics.

He added that since the brain systems tested in this study are responsible for more than just language use, the study supports the notion that "men and women may tend to process various skills differently from one another." One potential underlying reason, suggested by other research, is that the hormone estrogen, found primarily in females, affects brain processing, Ullman said.........

Posted by: Beverly      Permalink         Source

November 28, 2006, 4:45 AM CT

Perennial wheat research

Annual wheat, which is traditionally grown in the Great Plains, is planted in the fall and dies after harvest in mid-summer. But Dr. Charlie Rush, Experiment Station plant pathologist, is testing some perennial lines of wheat bred in Washington state.

These perennial lines regrow after harvest and may survive for up to five years, Rush said. And eastern Washington is climatically similar to the Texas Panhandle, except it has harsher winters.

"This wheat, if it works here, will start growing back as soon it rains or is irrigated after harvest," he said. "Right now, we don't know if it will work in our area or not. But there definitely could be some applications for it if it does".

The perennial wheat could be used as a ground cover for highly erodible lands, wildlife habitat and an alternative crop for Conservation Reserve Program lands, Rush said. However, primarily he is interested in evaluating use of perennial wheats in dual purpose grain-grazing cropping systems that are prevalent in the southwestern Great Plains.

Over the years, different breeders have crossed bread wheat with wild wheat grass in order to acquire a variety of desirable traits, such as drought tolerance and resistance to diseases and insects, Rush said. In making these crosses, some of the resulting lines inherited the perennial trait.........

Posted by: Beverly      Permalink         Source

November 28, 2006, 4:36 AM CT

Brains Respond Better To Name Brands

Your brain may be determining what car you buy before you've even taken a test drive. A new study gauging the brain's response to product branding has observed that strong brands elicit strong activity in our brains. The findings were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

"This is the first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) test examining the power of brands," said Christine Born, M.D., radiologist at University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Gera number of. "We observed that strong brands activate certain areas of the brain independent of product categories".

"Brain branding" is a novel, interdisciplinary approach to improve the understanding of how the mind perceives and processes brands. Using modern imaging methods, scientists are now able to go beyond marketing surveys and gather information on how the brain responds to a particular brand at the most basic level.

"Brain imaging technologies may complement methods normally used in the developing area of neuroeconomics," Dr. Born said.

Dr. Born and his colleagues used fMRI to study 20 adult men and women. The volunteers were all right-handed, had a mean age of 28 years and possessed a high level of education.........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source