Clean drinking water and basic sanitation are human rights. Yet almost 780 million of the world's population still have no access to drinking water and some 2.6 billion people live without sanitary facilities. Water, though, is also an important economic factor: Today, agricultural and manufacturing businesses already use up more ...

Three-dimensional clusters of pancreatic beta-cells that live much longer and secrete more insulin than single cells grown in the laboratory are valuable new tools for studying pancreatic diseases such as diabetes and for testing novel therapies. This cutting-edge advance is described in an article in Tissue Engineering, Part C, Methods, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- With the support of a $3.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, researchers will take the first steps toward engineering two new oil-rich crops. They aim to boost the natural, oil-producing capabilities of sugarcane and sorghum, increase the crops' photosynthetic power and in the ...

It was known till now that women were born with all the eggs they'll ever have. But now Harvard scientists have found that ovaries of young women harbor very rare stem cells capable of producing new eggs. The researchers feel that harnessing those stem cells might one day lead to ...

For the first time, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have isolated egg-producing stem cells from the ovaries of reproductive age women and shown these cells can produce what appear to be normal egg cells or oocytes. In the March issue of Nature Medicine, the team from the Vincent Center for ...

(Massachusetts General Hospital) For the first time, Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have isolated egg-producing stem cells from the ovaries of reproductive age women and shown these cells can produce what appear to be normal egg cells or oocytes.

The Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA) today praised the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for acting to limit certain extra label uses of cephalosporins in major animal species – cattle, swine, chickens and turkeys – where misuse and overuse are cause for great concern. Extra label ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued an order that prohibits certain uses of the cephalosporin class of antimicrobial drugs in cattle, swine, chickens and turkeys effective April 5, 2012.

In a bid to protect an important class of antibiotics for treating humans and reduce the development of drug resistance, the US Food and Drug Administration has banned certain uses of cephalosporins in food-producing animals. The federal agency announced on Wednesday that the prohibition order comes into ...

In efforts to find new treatments for Parkinson's Disease (PD), researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have directly reprogrammed astrocytes, the most plentiful cell type in the central nervous system, into dopamine-producing neurons.

In principle, stem cells offer scientists the opportunity to create specific cell types - such as nerve or heart cells - to replace tissues damaged by age or disease. In reality, coaxing stem cells to become the desired cell type can be challenging, to say the least...

In principle, stem cells offer scientists the opportunity to create specific cell types—such as nerve or heart cells—to replace tissues damaged by age or disease. In reality, coaxing stem cells to become the desired cell type can be challenging, to say the last.