Bioengineered kidney makes urine after transplantation
Here’s research that could take the piss out of disease — and it’s no joke — explains Kevin Jiang in the Spoonful of Medicine Blog:
If the work can be replicated in humans, patients suffering from end-stage kidney disease could one day have “an organ that’s grown on demand—a tailored organ that can be transplanted and replaces the failing organ,” says study author Harald Ott, a bioengineer at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Giant Hawaiian telescope gets go-ahead for construction
{credit}TMT PROJECT{/credit}
Alexandra Witze reveals in the News Blog, Hawaiian officials have granted a permit for the planned Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) to proceed atop the sacred mountain of Mauna Kea:
The move clears the way for construction to start, as early as April 2014, atop the 4,200-metre-high summit.Thirteen telescopes already dot the mountain, but the TMT would be the largest of them by far. The biggest optical telescopes now atop Mauna Kea are the twin 10-metre Keck telescopes.
Development on the mountain is a sensitive subject in Hawaii. In 2011, the state’s board of land and natural resources granted a conditional permit to construct the TMT. Opponents pursued a contested case hearing under a board officer. The new decision confirms the original permit granting and moves the TMT forward for good.
Hear what Ed Stone, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and vice-chairman of the TMT board, has to say about the telescope in the post.
A science culture for democracy
{credit}© MOHAMMED YAHIA{/credit}
In the House of Wisdom Blog, Mohammed Yahia reports on Bruce Alberts’ talk at the Cairo Science Festival:
Science is the only way to pave the road to a real democracy following the revolutions of the Arab Spring, said Bruce Alberts, outgoing editor-in-chief of Science, during the opening of the annual Cairo Science Festival.
Speaking to various students and science enthusiasts from across the Egyptian capital, Alberts stressed that the key to the future is creating a “science culture” to change the way people think and approach life. He defines this as a shift in the way of thinking that is influenced by science and science education, and suggests that India may be the best place for Egypt to look for a role model.
“President Nehru always talked about having a scientific temper. That is a way of thinking influenced by science where people are tolerant and make decisions based on facts, pretty much like scientists,” he explains.
Continue to Mohammed’s post to find out more.
Nature PastCast Launches Today – Q&A with Kerri Smith
This week, we have a Q&A with Nature’s Kerri Smith on the Nature PastCast – a new podcast series telling stories from Nature’s archive. Why not have a listen!
No Business Like Snow Business
SciLogs blogger Tania Browne, talks about John Snow and how he was the first person to figure out that mapping disease outbreaks might give us useful clues about where they start:
Snow’s chance came in 1854. On August 31st, several people in his neighbourhood were struck down with cholera in a single night. In the next 4 days, 127 people died of the disease in the surrounding streets, and Snow saw the opportunity for his Grand Experiment. So what did he do?
He made a map. He obtained a list of cholera deaths and addresses, and carried out door to door enquiries on September 6th. He found that 83% of victims took their water from the same source – a public pump on nearby Broad Street. Snow took his information to the local parish board meeting, the next day the pump handle was removed and the rest is…. well, a mixture of myth and history. Chances are the epidemic was already subsiding by the time the pump handle was removed, but it might have stopped the epidemic a bit faster than otherwise.
More about Snow in Tania’s post.
Cell count pun
Finally, Viktor Poór’s latest comic features some biological punning:
