Light makes a comeback. “New technologies — more sophisticated imaging techniques, fluorescent molecules that act as beacons of light in the cell, and the computing power to gather and stitch together multiple images and create videos from high-powered microscopes — make it possible to harness one of light’s key advantages: gentleness. Unlike higher-resolution techniques, light microscopes can image biological structures without killing them or chemically fixing them. At Harvard, the resurgence of light microscopy is making it possible to see structures and events that have never before been seen in the context of living cells and organisms.” Also don't miss the video samples of “in vivo” imagining.
posted on Apr 19, 2008 - View this thread

Scientists have discovered that "endometrial regenerative cells" (ERC's) -- in other words, human menstrual blood -- contains stem cells. ERC-derived stem cells seem to have a number of superior traits to both bone marrow derived and umbilical cord derived stem cells, the previous gold standards: they can give rise to a variety of different cell lines without differentiation, they multiply more quickly than other stem cells, they are able to replicate more times without adversely mutating, and they apparently do not need to be closely genetically matched to the recipient. Now some women have even begun banking their menstrual blood to preserve their stem cells through a company called "C'Elle: Your Monthly Miracle" -- check out their FAQ and online video. This follows last May's announcement that menstrual blood derived cells can pretty much cure Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy in mice, a disease for which there is no current therapeutic treatment available.
posted on Apr 14, 2008 - View this thread

Interactive Features at the Children's Hospital Boston's Website. [Via Mind Hacks.]
posted on Dec 17, 2007 - View this thread

Stem Cell Research: An interesting argument on why Bush's policy on stem cell research doesn't make sense.
posted on Apr 10, 2007 - View this thread

Steath InkJet Printer Could Rock Industry I know that once your desktop printer reached a certain quality, you probably stopped caring about printing news at all. But suddenly there are a few breakthroughs to get excited about. Kodak's first inkjet printers have cut ink cartridge prices in half, Zink doesn't use ink at all and will fit in your pocket and now an Australian start-up is announcing a $200 printer that will print a page a second. And the inkjet connection to nanotechnology won't just mean cheaper printers. People are using inkjet heads to print microchips and even human cells. Fab@Home is trying to replicate the Altair phenomenon with 3D printers, and you can even get a ZPrinter 450 industrial-strength 3D printer for less than $40,000. How long before the word print means serving yourself the latest Stephen King, a pair of glasses or even a new kidney?
posted on Mar 26, 2007 - View this thread

Need a patch of skin for that burn or perhaps some new brain cells? Print them. A team of British scientists have shown that cells could survive ink-jet printing. Ink-jet technology moves beyond paper.
posted on Jan 30, 2006 - View this thread

Death as we know it will die. If you wish to be a prophet, first you must dress the part. No more silk ties or tasseled loafers. Instead, throw on a wrinkled T-shirt, frayed jeans, and dirty sneakers. You should appear somewhat unkempt, as if combs and showers were only for the unenlightened. When you encounter critics, as all prophets do, dismiss them as idiots. Make sure to pepper your conversation with grandiose predictions and remind others of your genius often, lest they forget. Oh, and if possible, grow a very long beard. By these measures, Aubrey de Grey is indeed a prophet. The 42-year-old English biogerontologist has made his name by claiming that some people alive right now could live for 1,000 years or longer. Maybe much longer. Growing old is not, in his view, an inevitable consequence of the human condition; rather, it is the result of accumulated damage at the cellular and molecular levels that medical advances will soon be able to prevent — or even reverse — allowing people to go on living pretty much indefinitely.
posted on Oct 30, 2005 - View this thread

Here are three things that can help your brain grow new cells.
It's no wonder college makes you smarter.
posted on Oct 14, 2005 - View this thread

Custom stem cells. South Korea produces a significant gain in stem cell research. Experts have suggested that the new technique may sidestep some of the ethical concerns that have hampered research in the US.
posted on May 19, 2005 - View this thread

The mitochondrion, the Krebs cycle and other cell biology animations. Flash.
posted on Apr 17, 2005 - View this thread

When you create living, self-replicating cells from scratch in your lab, please include a barcode!
posted on Feb 10, 2005 - View this thread

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.
posted on Sep 20, 2004 - View this thread

Thou shalt not make scientific progress. "Medical research is poised to make a quantum leap that will benefit sufferers from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, muscular dystrophy, diabetes and other diseases. But George W. Bush's religious convictions stand in its way."
posted on Mar 24, 2004 - View this thread

Print life! Forget this photo-realism nonsense. Scientists have modified ink-jet printers to print living cells. Like many innovations in sci-tech, I find this scary and fascinating at the same time.
posted on Jan 29, 2003 - View this thread

Henrietta Lacks, a Baltimore housewife, died in 1951. Some of her cells did not die. In fact, had they been allowed to grow unchecked, they would have taken over the world by now. As it is, even as they proved invaluable to medical researchers, their baffling ability to regenerate resulted in contamination of three decades of cellular research, costing medical researchers millions of dollars. As far as science can tell, Henrietta's cells will never die. Creepy!
posted on Oct 10, 2002 - View this thread

New Hope? Cancerous cells isolated by freezing, then killed with drugs. From the Independentco.uk (via New Scientist)
posted on May 15, 2002 - View this thread

Scientists in the USA have discovered [NYTimes] a new cell in the eye responsible for resetting the biological clock. Its being called "heretical".. Not every day, Dr. Provencio said, do scientists find a new body function.
posted on Feb 8, 2002 - View this thread