Totally blind mice have had their sight restored by injections of light-sensing cells into the eye, UK researchers report.
The team in Oxford said their studies closely resemble the treatments that would be needed in people with degenerative eye disease. Similar results have already been achieved with night-blind mice.
Totally blind mice get sight back
Noam Chomsky: The Gravest Threat to World Peace
Reporting on the final U.S. presidential campaign debate, on foreign policy, The Wall Street Journal observed that "the only country mentioned more (than Israel) was Iran, which is seen by most nations in the Middle East as the gravest security threat to the region."
The two candidates agreed that a nuclear Iran is the gravest threat to the region, if not the world, as Romney explicitly maintained, reiterating a conventional view.
Immune system 'booster' may hit cancer
Vast numbers of cells that can attack cancer and HIV have been grown in the lab, and could potentially be used to fight disease.
The cells naturally occur in small numbers, but it is hoped injecting huge quantities back into a patient could turbo-charge the immune system. The Japanese research is published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
Experts said the results had exciting potential, but any therapy would need to be shown to be safe.
Abbas: Palestine now a state
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says future official documents will use the term "State of Palestine."
Abbas said his order applies to all government institutions, including missions in other countries, the official Wafa news agency reported Friday. He said missions in countries that voted against granting the authority the status of a non-member observer state at the United Nations should consult the Palestinian Foreign Ministry.
Bob Alexander: A Modest Proposal … Take Two
The key word here is unrelentingly. Conservatives are like the movie monsters from the Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th movies. You can’t stop them. You can stab them in the neck, set them on fire, or whack them in the head with a machete, but after a few seconds of getting their movie-monster-mojo together … they rise up again and again and again … and their murderous rampage continues until the closing credits.
Unlike their victims, the movie monsters don’t need to stop to sleep, eat, or even catch their breath. But when their hapless quarry takes a breather … Watch Out … that’s when The Monsters Get You.
JPMorgan ordered to comply with probe of Madoff
The Treasury Department watchdog ordered JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) to work with U.S. regulators seeking documents in connection with a probe into the bank's relationship with convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, in a warning letter dated December 21.
The letter from Treasury Inspector General Eric Thorson to JPMorgan's general counsel, Stephen Cutler, which was reviewed by Reuters on Friday, revealed that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has been unable to get documents it requested.
Leaked, useless report suggests fracking is fine for New Yorkers
The New York Times got its ink-stained hands on a report from the New York Health Department assessing the risks associated with fracking, the primary issue at play as the state considers whether or not to lift a ban on the practice. While the report suggests that fracking doesn’t pose risks, there are at least two gigantic caveats. From the Times:
The state’s Health Department found in an analysis it prepared early last year that the much-debated drilling technology known as hydrofracking could be conducted safely in New York, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times from an expert who did not believe it should be kept secret. …
BP tells Halliburton to come clean
British energy company BP accused oil services company Halliburton of skirting its responsibilities in the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Transocean Deepwater Inc., owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased to BP, agreed to pay more than $1 billion in fines and penalties for the BP oil spill, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday. The company agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges, paying $400 million in fines, as well as another $1 billion in civil penalties for violations of the Clean Water Act.
Should More Bankers Be in Prison?
For the past four years, the nation’s political leaders and bankers have made enormous—in some cases unprecedented—efforts to save the financial industry, clean up the banks, and reform regulation in order to restore trust and confidence in the American financial system. This hasn’t worked. Banks today are bigger and more opaque than ever, and they continue to behave in many of the same ways they did before the crash.
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