Gizmorama
February 16, 2011
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OH Yeah...Well, Take THAT Martha Stewart
http://pd.gophercentral.com/u/2047/c/186/a/474
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Good Morning,
Scientists have developed what they intend to be the
"perfect" process of replacing human arteries that have
been damaged by disease. The process involves using muscle
cells from baboons to grow new arteries. Check out all the
details on this miraculous development in the first article.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Baboon cells used to grow arteries
PITTSBURGH - U.S. researchers say muscle cells from baboon
could be used to grow human arteries to treat people whose
arteries have been damaged by disease. Scientists at the
University of Pittsburgh say the arteries, presently being
tested in small animals, could help patients with arteries
affected by coronary disease or obesity, the Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review reported Monday. Currently, patients with
damaged arteries rely on transplants of small arteries from
other parts of the body, a procedure with drawbacks that
could be avoided if arteries can be grown successfully,
researchers said. "There is a large demand for arteries,"
Yadong Wang, a bioengineering professor at the university,
said. Scientists can harvest millions of cells for the
research from a tiny sample of baboon tissue, so animals
need not be sacrificed, Wang said. The goal, he said, is
to perfect the process and product with baboon cells and
then replicate it with cells from a human donor so that a
patient could provide the cells to grow an artery that could
be transplanted.
Study: Phosphorous overused, running out
MADISON, Wis. - U.S. researchers say world stocks of phos-
phorous, a fertilizer vital to agriculture, are low but its
overuse has become a leading cause of water pollution. Sci-
entists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison report the
human use of dwindling supplies of phosphorous, primarily
in the industrialized world, is causing widespread eutro-
phication, or algae "blooms" in fresh surface water, a uni-
versity release said Monday. Excess phosphorous from fert-
ilizer that washes from farm fields and suburban lawns into
lakes and streams is the primary cause of the blooms that
throw freshwater ecosystems out of kilter and degrade water
quality, Stephen Carpenter, a UW-Madison professor of limn-
ology, says. "Phosphorous stimulates the growth of algae and
weeds near shore and some of the algae can contain cyano-
bacteria, which are toxic, Carpenter says. "You lose fish.
You lose water quality for drinking." Agricultural practices
to conserve phosphate more effectively within agricultural
ecosystems are necessary to avert the widespread pollution
of surface waters, he argues. This is especially important,
Carpenter says, as minable global stocks of phosphorous are
concentrated in just a few countries and are in decline,
posing the risk of global shortages within the next 20 years.
"There is a finite amount of phosphorous in the world," says.
"This is a material that's becoming more rare and we need to
use it more efficiently."
Study: Satellites can predict disease risk
SALT LAKE CITY - Satellites can give warnings ahead of out-
breaks of deadly hantavirus by recording surges in vegetation
that increase mouse populations, U.S. researchers say. "It's
a way to remotely track a disease without having to go out
and trap animals all the time," said Denise Dearing, profes-
sor of biology at the University of Utah. "The satellite
measures the greenness of the Earth, and we found that green-
ness predicts deer mouse population density." While the study
focused on hantavirus in deer mice, its findings could help
health officials fight other rodent-borne diseases such as
rat-bite fever, Lyme disease, bubonic plague, Lassa fever,
salmonella infection and various hemorrhagic fevers, a Uni-
versity of Utah release said Tuesday. The satellite method
was tested on deer mice that proliferate when their food
supply is abundant, "but it potentially could be applied to
any animal that responds to vegetation," Dearing says. "It
would have to be calibrated against each specific species of
rodent and the disease, but it's really powerful when it's
done." "The point of this whole exercise is to develop
disease-risk maps, which would show the distribution of in-
fected hosts -- in this case, deer mice -- overlaid with
human population density," says study co-author Thomas Cova,
Utah associate professor of geology.
Galaxy's 'bulge' offers creation clues
LOS ANGELES - A U.S. astronomer studying the Andromeda gal-
axy says a thick stellar disk of older stars offers clues to
how large spiral galaxies like the Milky Way form. UCLA re-
search astronomer Michael Rich and colleagues from Europe
and Australia, using the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, say about
70 percent of stars in the Andromeda galaxy are contained
within a thin, flat disk surrounding a central bulge of older
stars at the center of the galaxy, a UCLA release said Tues-
day. Stars in the central "bulge" have orbits that comprise a
"thicker" disk -- one that extends both above and below the
galaxy's thin disc, the researchers say. "Our initial study
of this component already suggests that it is likely older
than the thin disc, with a different chemical composition,"
Rich says. The formation process of thick discs is not yet
well understood, so the discovery of such a disc in Andromeda
presents a much clearer view of spiral structure. "The clas-
sical thin stellar discs that we typically see in Hubble
imaging result from the accretion of gas towards the end of
a galaxy's formation, whereas thick discs are produced in a
much earlier phase of the galaxy's life, making them ideal
tracers of the processes involved in galactic evolution,"
said Michelle Collins, a doctoral student at the University
of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy who led the study.
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