Britain has granted permission to scientists to create a human embryo with genetic material from two mothers, officials said.
According to AP, scientists from Britain’s Newcastle University plan to transfer the pro-nuclei--the components of a nucleus of a human embryo--by a man and woman into an unfertilized egg from another woman to prevent mothers passing certain genetic diseases to their unborn babies.
The application was initially rejected because of legislation prohibiting the alteration of the genetic structure of a cell while it is forming part of an embryo, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority said. The authority is a government body that regulates fertility treatment and research.
The scientists eventually were given permission after reviewing the legislation.
The research could eventually lead to techniques that might prevent the transmission of genetic defects, researchers say.
“While the proposed technique has been found to be safe in animal embryos, it will be very important to determine whether it can safely be used in human eggs,’’ university spokesman Mick Warwicker said.
No treatment exists for mitochondrial diseases, which arise from DNA outside the nucleus and are inherited separately from DNA in the nucleus.
The research does not involve human cloning. It would use normal IVF procedures, but before the sperm and egg fused, components would be implanted into a healthy female egg.

The "Suspended-load" back-pack. The pack frame is fixed to the body, but the load compartment is suspended with springs from the frame.

Researchers in the US have invented a back-pack that converts the up and down motion of walking into electricity. The device can generate 7.4 watts and could be used by field scientists, aid workers and soldiers to power mobile phones, GPS instruments and other devices without having to carry heavy replacement batteries.
“We have for the first time generated significant levels of electricity from normal human movement,“ Lawrence Rome of the University of Pennsylvania and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, told the PhysicsWeb.
Previous attempts to generate electricity from walking relied on devices built into shoes but this only produced about 20 milliwatts of power. Although high forces are exerted when the shoe touches the ground, little or no mechanical work--which is given by the product of force and distance - is done because of the short distances involved.
To overcome this problem, Rome and colleagues exploit the up and down movement of the hips that occurs during walking, which can be as high as 5--7 centimeters.
“If you are carrying a load in the back-pack, it has to go up and down the same vertical distance on each step as your hip,“ explains Rome. The team calculated that it takes considerable mechanical work--about 18 Joules per step - to lift a backpack weighing 36 kilograms through a distance of 5 centimeters. This mechanical work can then be converted into electricity.
The new back-pack is based on a rigid-frame pack similar to those used by hikers.
However, the compartment carrying the load is suspended from the frame by vertical springs. As the hips drive the frame of back-pack upwards, the load lags behind it, which causes a differential movement between the two. Mechanical energy is extracted by attaching a toothed rack to the load plate, which meshes with a toothed gear on the frame.
This gear is attached to a generator that can produce electricity. This electricity can be used as it is generated or it can be stored in a lightweight rechargeable battery.
Test performed on six male volunteers who used the back-pack while walking on a treadmill showed that they used less energy to generate electricity than expected. Moreover, the volunteers could generate more electricity by simply walking faster or carrying a heavier load.
The team now plans to improve the rechargeable batteries that go with the back-pack and Rome has set up a company called Lightning Packs LLC to develop the device further.

A new treatment for patients with a type of bile duct cancer promises a greater chance at survival by combining radiation, chemotherapy and liver transplantation, Mayo Clinic physicians reported.
According to Eurekalert, the five-year survival rate for patients who received a liver transplant after radiation and chemotherapy was 82 percent, significantly higher than for those who had a conventional operation.
“With the combined benefits of radiation, chemotherapy and liver transplantation, our patients with bile duct cancer now have a much better chance to live longer and enjoy a good quality of life,“ says Charles Rosen, M.D., a Mayo Clinic transplant surgeon and co-author of the study.
Conventional therapy for hilar cholangiocarcinoma, a type of bile duct cancer, is to remove (resect) the tumor, which may require removing part of the liver. Survival for patients with this type of operation is only 25 to 35 percent, and many patients cannot be treated this way because the tumors can involve both sides of the liver.
Combination therapy with liver transplantation is possible for more patients. Transplantation enables surgeons to remove the entire liver and obtain better tumor clearance. Patients treated with transplantation have enjoyed a higher likelihood of prolonged survival than those treated with the conventional operation.
To improve results of liver transplantation for unresectable hilar cholangiocarcinoma, Mayo Clinic physicians developed a treatment protocol combining radiation therapy, chemotherapy and liver transplantation. Patients receive high dose external beam radiation therapy, followed by high dose irradiation with iridium administered through a catheter passing through the bile duct and tumor.
Chemotherapy starts during radiation treatment and continues until transplantation. Prior to transplantation, patients undergo a staging abdominal operation so surgeons can look for any spread of the tumor to lymph nodes or the abdomen that would prevent complete tumor removal.
Mayo Clinic’s liver transplant team has treated over 90 patients with hilar cholangiocarcinoma. Approximately one-third of the patients have findings at the staging operation that preclude subsequent transplantation, but this number may be decreasing with earlier diagnosis and referral for treatment. Sixty patients have undergone liver transplantation--many recently with living donors--and results remain superb, says Dr. Rosen.
Cholangiocarcinoma is a relatively uncommon malignant tumor that is often found in the lining of the bile duct.

Solar systems may continue to exist around stars that have reached the end of their lifetimes, flared up and collapsed, according to New Scientist.
New evidence shows that asteroids and dust discs, and perhaps even planets, may circle white dwarf stars, the burned-out remnants of stars that have already undergone their all-consuming red-giant phase.
This suggests that, for our solar system too, there is a possibility of life after the presumed death of the inner planets--when the Sun expands to such a bloated size that it envelops the orbit of the Earth and beyond. But it may be a grinding sort of life.
The new findings, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, are based on high-resolution spectroscopic imaging of the white dwarf GD 362, made with the Gemini North, IRTF and Magellan telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
These observations showed an unexpected excess of infrared in the light of the star, as well as a huge abundance of calcium--the second-highest ever seen from a white dwarf.
The calcium could only be explained by an influx of dust onto the white dwarf, and the infrared excess is best explained by a very thin, flat and highly opaque disc circling the star out to a radius of perhaps 1 million kilometers.
The disc must be composed of dust that is continually being drawn onto the star’s surface, producing its abundance of calcium, and other metals.
But there is a problem: Such a dust disc could only survive for a few centuries, yet this white dwarf has probably been cooling for five billion years, following its red giant phase. So there must be some process that is continually replenishing it.
After careful modeling, Eric Becklin at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), US, and his co-authors concluded that “an asteroid, or possibly even a planet“ strayed too deeply into the white dwarf’s powerful gravitational field and was torn apart.
Now, the remnants of that body are continually colliding, raining dust onto the star’s surface. “Our best guess is that something is being ground up and pulverized to feed the star,“ Becklin says.
And it may not be a rare process. If excess metals are a sign of dust accretion, “it would mean that metal-rich white dwarfs Ð and this is fully 25% of all white dwarfs Ð may have debris discs, and therefore planetary systems, around them“, says Mukremin Kilic, a graduate student at the University of Texas, US, who led the IRTF observing team. “Planetary systems may be more numerous than we thought.“
“We now have a window into how planetary systems like our own might behave billions of years from now,“ Says Ben Zuckerman, an astronomer at UCLA. “The parallel to our own solar system’s eventual demise is chilling,“ Becklin adds.

A crystal diagram shows the triangle-shaped atomic structure of nickel gallium sulfide, which may have an unusual "liquid" magnetic state at low temperatures.

A novel material that may demonstrate a highly unusual “liquid“ magnetic state at extremely low temperatures has been discovered by a team of Japanese and US researchers, according to Science Daily.
The material, nickel gallium sulfide (NiGa2S4), was synthesized by scientists at Kyoto University. Its properties were studied by both the Japanese team and by researchers from The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and the University of Maryland (UM) at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The scientists studied the polycrystalline sample using both X-rays and neutrons as probes to understand its structure and properties. The neutron experiments were conducted at the NIST Center for Neutron Research.
The team found that the triangular arrangement of the material’s atoms appears to prevent alignment of magnetic “spins,“ the characteristic of electrons that produces magnetism. A “liquid“ magnetic state occurs when magnetic spins fluctuate in a disorderedly, fluid-like arrangement that does not produce an overall magnetic force. The state was first proposed as theoretically possible about 30 years ago. A liquid magnetic state may be related to the similarly fluid way that electrons flow without resistance in superconducting materials.
According to Collin Broholm, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, “the current work shows that at an instant in time the material looks like a magnetic liquid, but whether there are fluctuations in time, as in a liquid, remains to be seen.“
Each electron can be thought of as a tiny bar magnet. The direction of its “north“ pole is its spin. “An ordered pattern of spins generally uses less energy,“ says Broholm, “but the triangular crystal structure prevents this from happening in this material.“
The team conducted their neutron experiments with an instrument called a “disk chopper spectrometer.“ The only one of its kind in North America, the instrument sends bursts of neutrons of the same wavelength through a sample. Then, more than 900 detectors arranged in a large semicircle determine exactly where and when the neutrons emerge, providing information key to mapping electron spins.
“The energy range and resolution we can achieve with this instrument is ideal for studying magnetic systems,“ adds Yiming Qiu, a NIST guest researcher from UM.
The wavelength of the slowed-down (cold) neutrons available at the NIST facility--less than 1 nanometer (billionth of meter)--also allows the researchers to study nanoscale magnetic properties too small to be measured with other methods.

Experts have produced evidence that the eating disorder anorexia nervosa is linked to disrupted brain chemistry, BBC News website reported.
They have shown a form of the disorder is associated with an alteration of the activity of serotonin--a chemical linked to mood and anxiety. The University of Pittsburgh team hope their work could lead to the development of new drugs and psychological treatments.
The main symptom of anorexia nervosa is the relentless pursuit of thinness through self-starvation, driven by an obsessive fear of being fat.
There are two sub-types. One simply involves restricting food intake, the other involves periods of restrictive eating alternated with episodes of binge eating and /or purging, rather like bulimia. The Pittsburgh team compared serotonin activity in women who had recovered from both sub-types of the disorder, with that in women who had never developed an eating disorder.
Using sophisticated brain scans, they showed significantly higher serotonin activity in several parts of the brains of women who had recovered from the bulimia-type form of the disorder.
Serotonin levels were also heightened in the group who had recovered from restricting-type anorexia, but not significantly so.
However, the highest levels in this group were found among those women who showed most signs of anxiety. The research suggests that persistent disruption of serotonin levels may lead to increased anxiety, which may trigger anorexia.

Telephone-administered psychotherapy may help relieve the depression of patients battling multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a new study.
According to HealthDay, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found that 16 weeks of therapy by phone helped ease feelings of depression, particularly sessions focusing on what psychologists call cognitive-behavioral therapy. In this type of therapy, patients are taught to manage the thoughts and behaviors that contribute to depression. Therapy delivered by telephone could prove a key way to combat depression, the researchers said in an article in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.
Although two-thirds of depressed patients prefer psychotherapy to antidepressants, just 10 percent to 45 percent ever make a first appointment, and half will drop out by the end of treatment. Reasons driving this poor turnout include physical impairments, transportation problems, proximity of services and lack of time or financial resources.