Stealthy Nanoparticles Attack Cancer Cells

Cancer killers: Drug-laden nanoparticles (shown in pink) developed by BIND Biosciences have accumulated in a prostate-cancer cell (shown in green; cell nucleus in blue). The particles were designed to target prostate cancer cells. Scientists hope such particles will reduce side effects associated with chemotherapy.

BPA in canned food: Consumer Reports Tests

In the lab With the Food and Drug Administration poised to review rules on the plastic chemical Bisphenol A, we tested samples of a number of packaged foods to check levels of the compound and in some cases to see whether the type of packaging made a difference

Chased by their church: When you try to leave Scientology, they hunt you down to bring you back

An antiviral leash for HIV — Innate immune ‘Velcro’ fights off viruses

Retrovirus Linked to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Could Aid in Diagnosis: Scientific American

OVERTAKING CHRONIC FATIGUE: An electron micrograph shows the XMRV retrovrius in the blood of a patient with chronic fatigue syndrome.
WHITTENMORE PETERSON INSTITUT

Dr. Nancy Klimas, an immunologist at the University of Miami School of Medicine who treats AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome, remarked in The Times last week that if given the choice she would prefer to have AIDS: “My H.I.V. patients for the most part are hale and hearty,” she said, noting that billions of dollars have been spent on AIDS research. “Many of my C.F.S. patients, on the other hand, are terribly ill and unable to work or participate in the care of their families.

- A Case of Chronic Denial - NYTimes.com

London-based surgeons and vets, working with medical teams in New York and Budapest, have performed the first long-term transplants of a uterus with a reliable blood supply in rabbits. If trials on larger animals are successful, the first woman could receive a viable uterus transplant from a deceased human donor within two years, the researchers say. (via First womb transplant could take place in 2 years - Times Online )

When it comes to the extremes we’ll go to achieve someone’s arbitrary ideal of beauty, at least these light-up eyelashes aren’t permanent. We’re not sure if they’re meant to be facetious or an earnest effort to pander to Asian women who desire to make their eyes appear bigger and/or look like a refugee from a sci-fi Cosplay convention. We’ll admit to one cool touch, however: The LED lashes are equipped with inclination sensors that track movement, so you can turn the lashes on or off by tilting your head. Click below the fold for an…um…illuminating video. (via Crazy LED Eyelashes Designed to Brighten, Enlarge Eyes | Ecouterre)

We think NASA would be better served to spend its money and its abili

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Found: first ‘skylight’ on the moon

This 65-metre-wide hole in the lunar surface extends at least 80 metres down and could be an opening into a larger lunar cave (Image: ISAS/JAXA/Junichi Haruyama et al.)

(via bt)

The best-selling author of Outbreak has an exclusive tale for FP about a catastrophe of global proportions. And by the way, it’s not fiction. (via Robin Cook, author of Outbreak on a catastrophe of global proportions — the flu you never saw coming | Foreign Policy)

Iran’s supply of low-enriched uranium — the potential feedstock for nuclear bombs — appears to have certain “impurities” that “could cause centrifuges to fail” if the Iranians try to boost it to weapons grade.

Viral cause for chronic fatigue?

“Either [the virus] is a causative factor or it’s a marker of patients who cannot clear the virus,” Eugene Kandel, a molecular biologist at Roswell Park Cancer Center who was not involved in the study, told The Scientist. The study doesn’t distinguish between the two possibilities, he said. The virus, awkwardly named xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV), may simply be a passenger, more prevalent in patients with underlying disease.

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Here, the researchers found XMRV in 67% of samples from patients with chronic fatigue syndrome out of 101 samples analyzed, compared to approximately 4% of 218 control samples. Researchers also found antibodies to XMRV in the serum of the infected patients, suggesting that patients mounted a specific immune response to the virus.

XMRV, a retrovirus with close homology to the cancer-causing mouse virus, murine leukemia virus (MLV), was first discovered in 2006 by researchers tracking down an enzyme that was mutated in prostate cancer patients. The enzyme had both tumor suppressor and antiviral properties, which suggested the possibility that prostate cancer had an infectious cause. When researchers scanned tissue from prostate cancer patients for viral infection using a specially-designed virus chip, they pinpointed XMRV.

The Army’s LEMV Concept – Up-to a Month on Station Performing Surveillance