All Stories by Nathan Seppa
- Health & Medicine
A hint at a healthful effect of beer
Beer consumption seems to boost concentrations of vitamin B6 in blood and coincides with lower concentrations of homocysteine, a risk factor for heart disease.
- Health & Medicine
Bats may spread new Malaysian virus
A Nipah virus outbreak in Malaysia may have started when bats spread disease to pigs.
- Health & Medicine
New gene-therapy techniques show potential
Two technologies for transferring genes, one that uses mobile DNA called transposons and another that uses a weak virus, have proved successful in overcoming genetic disorders in mice.
- Health & Medicine
Blood Booster: Growth signal shifts cord stem cells into high gear
A protein called Delta-1 stimulates stem cells in umbilical cord blood to proliferate in a lab dish, attach well to bone marrow when implanted into mice, and even proceed to the animal's thymus to become T cells.
- Health & Medicine
Drug Eases Bone Cancer Pain in Mice
Pain caused by bone cancer in mice can be alleviated somewhat by osteoprotegerin, a drug being tested for osteoporosis, suggesting a possible new treatment for people with this cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Final Word? Breast surgeries yield same survival rate
Women with breast cancer who undergo partial-breast removal are just as likely to survive for at least 20 years as are women who have their entire breast removed.
- Health & Medicine
Making Bone: Novel form of vitamin D builds up rat skeleton
A newly synthesized form of Vitamin D induces bone-making cells to capture calcium and fortify bone mass in rats, suggesting it might work against osteoporosis in people.
- Health & Medicine
‘Bubble’ babies thrive on gene therapy
Gene therapy to repair mutations that thwart development of essential immune cells has helped three babies to overcome severe combined immunodeficiency, in which a child is born without a functional immune system.
- Health & Medicine
Inducing eye-tumor cells to self-destruct
By restarting the subdued self-destruct signal in cancer cells, researchers studying eye cancers have found a way to stop these cancers in cell cultures and in a rabbit model.
- Health & Medicine
Move your head, hurt your golf game
Right-handed golfers using a conventional grip move their head and eyes more during putts than they do when using a cross-handed or one-handed grip, suggesting these alternative grips might work better.
- Health & Medicine
Making the optic nerve sprout anew
A compound made during inflammation, a natural reaction to injury, can induce optic nerve regeneration in a lab-dish concoction including rat retinal ganglion cells.
- Health & Medicine
Catching macular degeneration early
Scientists have developed a test that uses the eye's ability to adapt to darkness as a test for age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in elderly people.
