Ripped from the headlines

Amazing research!

I had  no idea that monkeys were capable of conducting such complex research. We need for these monkeys to replace the ones we have in pubic office.


Note: Yeah, that was a typo. It should have read "pubic orifice". I ran out of White-out.

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Is marijuana a potential cure for cancer?

An extraordinary discovery may someday give the controversial notion of “medical marijuana” a potent new meaning. Turns out that the recreationally popular cannabis plant contains compounds that could stop and even reverse the growth of various aggressive forms of cancer.

After a series of lab tests using a non-psychoactive chemical extract called Cannabidiol to treat malignant human breast cells in mice, the researchers hope to develop a pill that can demonstrate efficacy in human clinical trials. "It took us about 20 years of research to figure this out, but we are very excited,” Desprez, told the Huffington Post.

20 years!? What the heck!? I can see them now, "hard at work"...

In case you’re wondering, it won’t leave the door open for those who want to inhale it.
“We used injections in the animal testing and are also testing pills,” Desprez said. “But you could never get enough Cannabidiol for it to be effective just from smoking.”

That's what you think...

Link to full story.



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Way to grow hair on bald skin found

It's hair-raising news for millions of men - scientists have revealed they have found a way to grow hair on bald skin.

The breakthrough came after researchers discovered a gene in stem cells which can re-grow hair follicles on mice. The new stem cells also have all the same identities as an original hair follicle. The remarkable work overturns previous scientific views about the identity of follicle stem cells. The researchers discovered that mice hair follicles contain a chemical compound called Lgr5 which was previously thought to only live in the intestine and colon. By transplanting the protein Lgr5 on to the backs of dead eight-week-old mice, the scientists found they could re-grow hair.

Furthermore, the 'new' hair follicle would stay healthy and continue to grow for as long as 14 months.

Story

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But, it was not all good news, today. In Washington, bureaucrats are scrambling to try and figure out a solution to what is viewed as an inevitable problem arising from the experiments and expected to become evident in the coming weeks and months: What to do about the (heretofore) majestic symbol of the United States, the bald eagle.

Magpies are no bird-brains

LONDON (Reuters) – Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror, highlighting the mental skills of some birds and confounding the notion that self-awareness is the exclusive preserve of humans and a few higher mammals.

It had been thought only chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants shared the human ability to recognize their own bodies in a mirror.

But German scientists reported on Tuesday that magpies -- a species with a brain structure very different from mammals -- could also identify themselves.

Full Story

What an utter waste of research money. It's been well-known by many of us who were around in the 60's that magpies are very intelligent, industrious birds.

Scientists closer to developing invisibility cloak

WASHINGTON – Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible. Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects.

Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.

The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye. Cloaking uses materials, known as metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

The research was funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation's Nano-Scale Science and Engineering Center.

Below is Xinag Zhang and his research team working in their lab.