Science and Health News

Why does sex exist when organisms that clone themselves use less time and energy, and do not need a mate to produce offspring? Researchers at the University of Stirling aiming to answer this age-old question have discovered that sex can help the next generation resist infection.

Even before he lost his right hand to an industrial accident four years ago, Igor Spetic had family open his medicine bottles. Cotton balls give him goose bumps. Now, blindfolded during an experiment, he feels his arm hairs raise when a researcher brushes the back of his prosthetic hand with a cotton ball.

Injecting cells from pregnant women could have a life-changing effect on the millions who are living with osteoporosis and brittle bone disease according to researchers at the UCL GOS Institute of Child Health, the research partner of Great Ormond Street Hospital and The UCL Institute for Women’s Health. These cells could also be useful for strengthening the fragile bones of astronauts during their stay for long periods in space.  

Researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have developed a vaccine against salmonella poisoning designed to be taken by mouth. The findings are detailed in an article published in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine have been able to generate multifunctional RNA nanoparticles that could overcome treatment resistance in breast cancer, potentially making existing treatments more effective in these patients.

Bone tissue regeneration, one of the issues of tissue engineering, is a research area for Dmitri Gorin and his international colleagues, a leading research fellow at the RASA Center in Tomsk Polytechnic University. The scientists have developed a new vaterite-based coating for nanofiber material used as a scaffold to grow bone tissue cells in a shorter time.

Joint medical research became a sizable part of the latest issue of We Are Tomodachi.

A ‘living bandage’ made from stem cells, which could revolutionise the treatment and prognosis of a common sporting knee injury, has been trialled in humans for the first time by scientists at the Universities of Liverpool and Bristol.