7/29/2011 PERMALINK
Technology that may let you edit the DNA of your own living cells. MIT and Harvard researchers have developed technologies that could be used to rewrite the genetic code of a living cell, allowing them to make large-scale edits to the cell’s genome. Such technology could enable scientists to design cells that build proteins not found in nature, or engineer bacteria that are resistant to any type of viral infection. The technology can overwrite specific DNA sequences throughout the genome, similar to the find-and-replace function in word-processing programs. Using this technology, researchers can make hundreds of targeted edits to the genome of a cell without disrupting the cells’ function.

7/27/2011 PERMALINK
Age-related memory loss reversed in monkeys. New research from Yale University uncovers cellular changes that seem to underlie age-related memory loss in monkeys, and shows that it can be reversed with drugs. By delivering a certain chemical to the brain, researchers could make neurons in old monkeys behave like those in young monkeys. Clinical trials of a generic drug that mimics this effect are already underway.

7/27/2011 PERMALINK
The parasitic kleptocracy is reaching the point where the hosts can no longer survive. The world's problems are entirely political and can be fixed by a return to a rational world of solid money, free and open markets, work, savings and investment. But look at where things stand in the nation that prints the world's reserve currency today.
1. The decision of the courts a decade ago to allow software to be patented has come home to roost big time in the last year or two. Software start ups, which have been the main source of productivity-increasing innovation for the last 20 years. Are now set upon by newly organized patent cartels that have become like jackals descending on newly born gazelles.
2. The speed of our internet service is in the hands of a cartel of cable companies that have every incentive to keep the net in the USA as slow as possible for as long as possible. So they can continue milking you for their ridiculously overpriced and totally primitive channel-based cable TV offerings.
3. The USA in 1971 changed from money backed by gold, which enforces frugality on politicos, to fiat money, where politicos can spend any amount and hide it by debasing the currency. A kid born in 1911 could buy a Hershey bar at the neighborhood store for 5 cents. So could a kid born in 1931 or 1951, but then in 1971 we went off the gold standard. And the price of a Hershey bar has rocketed up ever since. Kids born in 2011 will pay over a dollar by the time they are old enough to buy their first Hershey bar, probably, with the amount of money printing we've seen recently, a lot more than a dollar. Watch this video for a full explanation.
4. Our medical system is so heavily subsidized and monopolistic, thanks to their control of Congress, that we pay more than double the cost per capita that most developed countries pay. And for all we spend we get worse results. They live longer and are kept healthier by their systems than we are by ours. Inflation is worse in medicine than any area except...
5. ...education, where government subsidies and loan programs have created a truly incredible explosion in costs. Total student loan debt just exceeded all credit card debt for the first time recently. We have saddle our kids with over a trillion dollars in debt, against which they are never permitted to bankrupt. It is with them for life. The USA has become a society that is eating its children.
The list could go on, but I think the point has been made. The USA has become a kleptocracy. No longer does the system promote, as it always must for a successful civilization, the creation of new utility. What the system is rigged to do now is to allow a wealth elite to control Congress and get them to regulate out of existence the possibility of any new completion. So they can bleed us all dry until the whole corrupt edifice they have put in place collapses under its own internal contradictions, as happened with communism. Free and open markets have morphed into corporate cartel controlled kleptocratic markets.
The elites utilize the 12 years of brainwashing calling 'public education' and all the distractions and distorted coverage of the economic realities found on corporate media. To keep the public uninformed enough to allow the exploitation to continue.
We all need to stop playing their game and start using the net to work with others to create a more rational game of our own. It's the only way to escape the economic gulag the corpolitical elites are busily creating for us.

7/22/2011 PERMALINK
RNA-based cholesterol drug is readied for human tests. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals has filed a clinical trial application to test a new RNA-based treatment on 32 U.K. volunteers. The RNA targets an enzyme involved in clearing cholesterol from the blood. A single dose has already been shown to reduce LDL, or 'bad,' cholesterol, in nonhuman primates by as much as 50 percent. The technique co-opts a method of gene silencing employed by our own cells. Using short lengths of small interfering RNA (siRNA) to interrupt gene transcription and prevent the production of proteins produced by the gene. The process promises to allow the regulation of troublesome genes that cause diseases and cellular dysfunction due to aging.

7/21/2011 PERMALINK
Gene therapy delivered once to blood vessel wall could protect you against plaque clogging your arteries. A one-dose method for delivering gene therapy into an arterial wall effectively protects the artery from developing atherosclerosis despite ongoing high blood cholesterol. The promising results came from research in rabbits. In atherosclerosis, fatty lesions called plaques form on the inner lining of blood vessels. Plaque growth narrows arteries, thereby restricting blood flow and causing chest pains and other symptoms. Plaques sometimes rupture. The resulting blood clots can spur heart attacks or strokes. Medicine has been at an impasse in the search for therapies that prevent plaque growth and rupture. Statin drugs that lower bad cholesterol work, but they have not eliminated heart attacks and strokes, must be taken daily for life, and some patients do not tolerate statins. Trials of newer interventions such as niacin have been disappointing, according to Dr. David A. Dichek, the study's senior author and the John Locke Professor of Cardiovascular Research at the University of Washington. "Introducing into the blood vessel wall genes that protect against atherosclerosis is potentially an effective means of preventing or reversing plaque formation and inflammation," Dichek said. "As applied in our study, the introduced genes can produce proteins that counteract the fundamental processes that drive atherosclerosis, including preventing lipid accumulation inside the artery wall and decreasing recruitment of inflammatory cells. We found both of these effects.

7/20/2011 PERMALINK
New gene therapy that can reverse heart failure ready for clinical trials. After years of proving itself highly effective in the lab and a large animal study, a promising gene therapy to prevent and reverse congestive heart failure is on the verge of clinical trials Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University’s Center for Translational Medicine have already demonstrated feasibility, the long-term therapeutic effectiveness and the safety of S100A1 gene therapy in a large animal model of heart failure under conditions approximating a clinical setting. 'The therapeutic profile of S100A1 is a unique one as it targets and reverses the underlying causes of heart failure: progressive deterioration of contractile performance, electrical instability and energy deprivation,' explained Patrick Most, M.D., adjunct assistant professor of medicine at TJU.

7/18/2011 PERMALINK
Scientists fab new nano material that solves a major difficulty in stem cell replication. Scientists at the Universities of Glasgow and Southampton have discovered a new method for culturing adult stem cells that promises to speed the use of stem cell for reversing the effects of aging and disease. The research found a new nanoscale plastic that can cheaply and easily solve a problem that has hindered stem cells therapy development. Currently, when adult stem cells are harvested from a patient, they are cultured in the lab to increase the initial yield of cells and create a batch of sufficient volume to kick-start the process of cellular regeneration when they are reintroduced back into the patient. The process of culturing is made more difficult by spontaneous stem cell differentiation, where stem cells grown on standard plastic tissue culture surfaces do not expand to create new stem cells but instead create other cells which are of no use in therapy. Currently, stem cell must be immersed in chemical solutions to increase the overall yield of stem cells but these are limited in their effectiveness. The new nanopatterned surface is designed to offer a method of stem cell expansion which is much easier to manufacture and use than anything currently available. Created by an injection-moulding process similar to that which is used to manufacture Blu-ray discs, the surface is covered with 120-nanometre pits which the researchers have found is much more effective in allowing stem cells to grow and spread whilst retaining their stem cell characteristics.

7/15/2011 PERMALINK
Soft memory device opens door to brain implantable computers. Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a memory device that is soft and functions well in wet environments like your brain. "We've created a memory device with the physical properties of Jell-O," says Dr. Michael Dickey, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research. Conventional electronics are typically made of rigid, brittle materials and don’t function well in a wet environment. "Our memory device is soft and pliable, and functions extremely well in wet environments similar to the human brain," said Dickey. The device's ability to function in wet environments and the biocompatibility of the gels make this new technology ideal for brain augmentation with a direct computer interface. Extremely sophisticated implants for monitoring and controlling your biochemistry also are made possible.

7/14/2011 PERMALINK
Two patients undergo stem-cell blindness treatments. In a bid to harness the potential of embryonic stem cells for eyesight regeneration, Steven Schwartz, chief of the retina division at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles implanted lab-grown retinal cells into the eyes of two patients going blind from macular degeneration. They were financed by Advanced Cell Technology, a biotech company that recently won approval from the U.S. FDA gestapo to test the treatment in 24 patients suffering from advanced macular degeneration.
Never forget that FDA's obsolete regulator process is the largest road-block preventing the arrival of a new golden age of personalized medicine, where each cure can be tailored to each patient unique genetic makeup. The holocaust from this regulator-created delay already numbers in the millions of needless deaths annually. Politicos and the mainstream media never notice this, but they will scream loudly if any new medical technology goes to market and causes any harm to even a few patients. Our politicos have given us a perfectly designed feedback loop for producing a slowing of medical innovation into an eventual stagnation. Future practitioners of genetic personalized medicine will one-day exceed the capabilities of our current doctors by more than they exceed the capabilities of witch doctors. Yet the way medical regulation is currently being practiced, especially in the USA. The arrival of this far more humane new era of medicine is likely to be delayed for decades.

7/14/2011 PERMALINK
Researchers extract stem cells and grow fully functional new replacement teeth. Takashi Tsuji from Tokyo University of Science and his team removed two different stem cells from the molar teeth of mice and placed them in a tooth-shaped mold in their lab. Once the cells grew into full tooth units, the researchers then transplanted their stem-cell created teeth into the jaws of one-month-old mice. These transplanted teeth fused with the jaw bones and tissues in an average of around 40 days and nerve fibers were detected growing in the lab engineered teeth. There were no complications. Mice receiving the lab-grown teeth were able to chew normally.

7/12/2011 PERMALINK
An unlimited number of regenerations appear to be possible, once we discover the genes that allow other animals to regenerate. Scientists at the Research Institute for Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science, Noda, Chiba, Japan have determined that newts can regenerate without genetic errors over and over again, even into old age. The extent to which adult newts retain regenerative capability remains one of the greatest unanswered questions in the regeneration field. Here we report a long-term lens regeneration project spanning 16 years that was undertaken to address this question. Over that time, the lens was removed 18 times from the same animals, and by the time of the last tissue collection, specimens were at least 30 years old. Regenerated lens tissues number 18 and number 17, from the last and the second to the last extraction, respectively, were analysed structurally and in terms of gene expression. Both exhibited structural properties identical to lenses from younger animals that had never experienced lens regeneration. Expression of mRNAs encoding key lens structural proteins or transcription factors was very similar to that of controls. Thus, contrary to the belief that regeneration becomes less efficient with time or repetition, repeated regeneration, even at old age, does not alter newt regenerative capacity.

7/11/2011 PERMALINK
Injecting stem cells into the heart heals blood vessels Research by Douglas Losordo of Northwestern University suggests that stem cells have the power to restore damaged blood vessels in your heart including those too small to be helped by stents or angioplasty. Patients with chest pain from aging hearts reported relief from the pain and were able to exercise longer after doctors injected stem cells taken from their bone marrow into their heart.

7/10/2011 PERMALINK
Researchers use mRNAs to change both an astrocyte (brain cell) and a fibroblast (skin cell) into a heart cell. Working on the idea that the signature of a cell is defined by molecules called messenger RNAs (mRNAs), which contain the chemical blueprint for how to make a protein. Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the direct conversion of a non-heart cell type into a heart cell by RNA transfer.

7/08/2011 PERMALINK
Discovery of a 'pure' human blood stem-cell makes possible the regeneration of the entire human blood system. Researcher John Dick, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Stem Cell Biology and is a Senior Scientist at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine and the Ontario Cancer Institute, University Health Network has announce the discovery of a human blood stem cell in its purest form. A single stem cell that is capable of regenerating all parts of the entire human blood system. This breakthrough opens the door to harnessing the power of these life-producing cells to damage due to aging or debilitating diseases.

7/08/2011 PERMALINK
First fully Synthetic Organ Transplant replaces disease-damaged organ. Surgeons in Sweden have successfully transplantedA fully synthetic, tissue-engineered organ, a trachea, built by a team led by Alexander Seifalian, professor of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London, has been transplanted into a man with late-stage tracheal cancer. The synthetic trachea was created entirely in the lab, using a scaffold built out of a porous polymer, and tissue grown from the patient's own stem cells inside a bioreactor designed to protect the organ and promote cell growth.