Today the Commission adopted a proposal for guidelines on EU-funded human embryonic stem cell research. The EU 6th Research Framework Programme (FP6 2003-2006), as adopted by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament in 2002, allows for the funding of human embryonic stem cell research in relation to the fight against major diseases.

Such research, in particular when it involves the derivation of stem cells from human supernumerary embryos, can only take place within a fra

Scientists investigating the rise in asthma among Britain’s children have turned to the tooth fairy to help them in their research.

Over the last six years staff at the Children of the 90s project based at the University of Bristol have collected almost 12 thousand milk teeth.

Instead of putting them under the pillow – the children were asked to donate the teeth to the study. Inside the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), real-life tooth fairy K

Magnetic memory-based information storage systems are getting smaller and smaller, while their capacities are getting larger. However, there is a limit to how small they can get. If the tiny magnets used to store information are smaller than around five nanometres (millionths of a millimetre), vibrations caused by temperature can erase their orientation and, therefore, the information they contain. This is known as the superparamagnetic limit, which physically limits the capacity of magnetic storage

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have discovered a prime regulator of the mechanism by which human cells migrate in health and in illness, a process crucial to sustaining life.

Their work helps explain how cells can stick to a surface long enough to pull themselves and move forward and then release that grip so that they can continue and not be anchored to one spot.

Cai Huang, a graduate student about to complete his doctorate in cell and developmental biolo

Monkeys and toads define priority areas for conservation on a fine geographic scale

Scientific determinations of 25 global “hotspots” – habitats with high concentrations of unique species vulnerable to human activity – are too large to be effectively managed by local conservation authorities, much less put aside as protected areas. Researchers from the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) are making even finer geographic distinctions within these ’hotspots&#1

A non-invasive test which allows faster, cheaper, and less risky prenatal genetic screening was announced by Australian researchers at the International Genetics Congress in Melbourne today.

The new test can also be performed much earlier in pregnancy, say its developers Dr Ian Findlay and Mr Darryl Irwin of the Australian Genome Research Facility in Brisbane. It should open the opportunity of prenatal genetic testing to a wider group of women. “This test will focus conventional prenatal te