An interesting study have reported a way that may potential help people who suffer from spinal cord injury. From the New York Times, “In Rat Experiment, New Hope for Spine Injuries“: Rats with a spinal cord injury that left their hind legs completely paralyzed learned to walk again on their own after an intensive training […]
Dr. Winston Hide decides to resigns from his associate editor position of Genomics because of the expensive subscription rate of the journal precludes many in accessing important articles that are important for public health. From The Guardian: Today I resigned from the editorial board of a well respected journal in my field – Genomics. No […]
Neuroimaging/ Connectomics Wedeen VJ, Rosene DL, Wang R, Dai G, Mortazavi F, Hagmann P, Kaas JH, Tseng WY. The geometric structure of the brain fiber pathways. Science. 2012 Mar 30;335(6076):1628-34. PubMed PMID: 22461612. Neuroscience Rogulja D, Young MW. Control of sleep by cyclin A and its regulator. Science. 2012 Mar 30;335(6076):1617-21. PubMed PMID: 22461610. Koch […]
There are budget cuts and layoff everywhere. We have already heard before that Florida State dissolved academic departments to fight the financial crisis. And now the University of Florida is going to eliminate Computer Science Department, a really disturbing move. From Steven Salzberg’s blog: The University of Florida announced this past week that it was […]
In my last post, I provided several links to general introductions of stem cells. In this post, I will share several documentaries that show how bad people are taking advantage of desperate patients who have heard stem cells therapy may give them a last hope. II. Desperate patients and people who take advantage of their […]
I am so envious of these people who can build a useful machine by LEGO which can save money. The building part itself must be a lot of fun! From boingboing.net: LEGO robots in the laboratory
There is an interesting news article “Printing Muscle” from Technology Review about using 3-D printers to print muscle cells so that they may assume a 3-D shape that resembles muscle fiber. The idea sounds interesting, because one can potentially print tissues or even organs that have complicated cellular composition in 3-D for regenerative medicine.
Over the years, I have been leading a discussion about the ethical and social issues of stem cells research in my class and have used a few useful videos on various aspects. You may find them useful too. I. Introduction to the topic “A Stem Cell Story” – a great introduction of human embryonic stem […]
I was invited and supported by the Purdue Research Foundation (PRF) International Travel Grant to give a Plenary Lecture at the Symposium on Biology of Ophthalmology 2011 which took place in the Hong Kong Eye Hospital from 11-13th December 2011. The event was organized by the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the Chinese […]
From Washington Post: For the first time, an experimental treatment made from human embryonic stem cells has shown evidence of helping someone, partially restoring sight to two people suffering from slowly progressing forms of blindness. In short, the authors of this study that is just published in Lancet differentiated human embryonic stem cells (hESC) into […]