Wandering Wombat - Slashdot User

Submission + - Triggering Super-Rapid Healing (bbc.co.uk)

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Wandering Wombat

on Friday January 09, 2009 @02:40PM

Wandering Wombat writes: "A combination of drugs could trick the body into sending its repair mechanisms into overdrive, say scientists. The technique could be used to speed the healing of heart or bone damage. The bone marrow of treated mice released 100 times as many stem cells, which help to regenerate tissue. The mice were given firstly a "growth factor" drug — substances that already occur naturally in the bone marrow, then a new drug called Mozobil. Both endothelial and mesenchymal cells were released at a much greater rate. "It now seems increasingly likely that the bone marrow also contains cells that have the capacity to repair damaged internal organs, such as the heart and blood vessels, but that too few of them are released to be effective." Their hope is that clinical trials in humans may be possible within the next 10 years."

Submission + - Giant Sheets Of Dark Matter Detected (discovery.com) 2

Submitted by

Wandering Wombat

on Monday February 25, 2008 @07:11PM

Wandering Wombat writes: "The largest structures in the universe have been, if not directly found, then at least detected and pounced upon by scientists. FTA:

The most colossal structures in the universe have been detected by astronomers who tuned into how the structures subtly bend galactic light. The newfound filaments and sheets of dark matter form a gigantic features stretching across more than 270 million light-years of space — three times larger than any other known structure and 2,000 times the size of our own galaxy. Because the dark matter, by definition, is invisible to telescopes, the only way to detect it on such grand scales is by surveying huge numbers of distant galaxies and working out how their images, as seen from telescopes, are being weakly tweaked and distorted by any dark matter structures in intervening space.

By figuring how to spot the GIGANTIC masses of dark matter, hopefully we can get a better understanding of it and find smaller and smaller structures."

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