HELSINKI — Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient’s upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen. Researchers said on Friday the breakthrough opened up new ways to treat severe tissue damage and made the prospect of custom-made living spares parts for humans a step closer to reality. ‘There have been a couple of similar-sounding procedures before, but these didn’t use the patient’s own stem cells that were first cultured and expanded in laboratory and differentiated into bone tissue,’ said Riitta Suuronen of the Regea Institute of Regenerative Medicine, part of the University of Tampere. She told a news conference the patient was recovering more quickly than he would have if he had received a bone graft from his leg. ‘From the outside nobody would be able to tell he has been through such a procedure,’ she said. She added, the team used no materials from animals — preventing the risk of transmitting viruses than can be hidden in an animal’s DNA, and followed European Union guidelines. Stem cells are the body’s master cells and they can be […]
DUBAI — Qatar is considering building one of the world’s largest solar power complexes to help meet demand, which could increase four-fold over the next 30 years, the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) reported. Gulf Arab states have about 30 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 8 percent of its gas, but an economic boom spurred by record crude prices is driving demand for power and water so rapidly that many are considering turning to alternative energies including nuclear. Qatar expects to add 16,260 megawatts of power to the national grid between 2011 to 2036, almost four times current capacity of 4,200 megawatts, the magazine said, citing Salah Hamza, senior business development planner at Qatar General Electricity & Water Corp (Kahramaa). The solar complex would have capacity of 3,500 megawatts by 2013, Hamza said. ‘You can have up to 500 MW in one place,’ he said. ‘Then you will need about seven sites because the total capacity needed at that time is 3,500 MW,’ he said adding that solar capacity could increase to 4,500 megawatts by 2036. The government of Abu Dhabi is also planning to build a solar power plant as part of […]
When 1,800 workers lost their jobs after a Maytag appliance factory and headquarters closed last year in the small town of Newton, Iowa, a wind turbine blade company saw opportunity – an available, skilled workforce in the middle of one of America’s hardiest wind energy production regions. TPI Composites Inc. is building a new plant there as the energy industry aims for a cleaner, more sustainable future. With proper incentives, thousands of ‘green-collar jobs’ could be created, from ethanol production to wind turbines and solar panels, and all the maintenance and construction to support them, industry officials said. TPI used to build boats, but switched to turbines in 2001 for the ‘major growth opportunity,’ said Steve Lockard, CEO of the Phoenix, Ariz.-based company. The idea, he said, is to ‘transform the workforce away from the Maytag-type jobs of the past into jobs that can withstand the test of time going forward.’ However, advocates and executives say training is key to making sure the industry has enough skilled workers to make it into a real economic engine, and are pushing for more lucrative tax breaks, much like oil companies already receive, to make it profitable. With the […]
WASHINGTON — Islamic insurgents are expanding their numbers and reach in Afghanistan and Pakistan, spreading violence and disarray over a vast cross-border zone where al Qaida has rebuilt the sanctuary it lost when the United States invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. There is little in the short term that the Bush administration or its allies can do to halt the bloodshed, which is spreading toward Pakistan’s heartland and threatening to destabilize the U.S.-backed governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO forces are facing ‘a classic growing insurgency,’ Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday. But the U.S. military, stretched thin by the war in Iraq, is hard-pressed to send more than the 3,200 additional Marines the Bush administration is dispatching to Afghanistan. The growing insurgency there is fueling rifts within the NATO alliance as Germany and other nations refuse to allow their troops to participate in offensive operations in Afghanistan. The Afghan army is making progress but still cannot operate independently. ‘Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan,’ warned an Atlantic Council of the United States report last week. The report was directed by […]
Sustaining and enhancing altered ecosystems has become the new mantra for conservation and restoration managers as ecosystems continue to change in response to global warming and other environmental changes, says a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. Professor Timothy Seastedt of CU-Boulder’s ecology and evolutionary biology department said atmospheric pollution, climate change, exotic species invasions, extinctions and land fragmentation have altered virtually every ecosystem on the planet. Managers and biologists should be nurturing so-called ‘novel ecosystems’ — thriving combinations of plants, animals and habitat that have never occurred together before — and developing new conservation strategies for them, he said. ‘The reality is that enormous environmental changes are happening very rapidly, and in many cases, there is very little we can do about them,’ said Seastedt. ‘We think the trick now is to accept, preserve and enhance these novel ecosystems and do what we can to shield them from further changes.’ A paper on the subject was published online Jan. 31 in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, published by the Ecological Society of America. The paper was authored by Seastedt, Richard Hobbs of Murdoch University in Australia and Katharine N. Suding of […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
