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When she was arrested in Afghanistan last month, Aafia Siddique allegedly had in her possession maps of New York, a list of potential targets that included the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the subway system and the animal disease center on Plum Island, detailed chemical, biological and radiological weapon information that has been seen only in a handful of terrorist cases, as well as a thumb drive packed with emails, ABC News has learned.

Cells that scientists have largely ignored when studying multiple sclerosis are actually key contributors to MS development, new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine shows. The discovery suggests new avenues for devising treatments and is a vital step toward finding a cure. Cells that scientists have largely ignored when studying multiple sclerosis are actually key contributors to MS development, new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine shows. The discovery suggests new avenues for devising treatments and is a vital step toward finding a cure. In MS, the body's immune system begins to attack the...

MIT researchers say that lobsters could offer a solution to the problem plaguing most modern body armors: the more mobility an armor offers, the less it protects the wearer’s body. Guo told MIT News that the idea for developing body armor inspired by lobsters arrived while he was eating one and noticed that the transparent membrane on the animal’s belly was difficult to chew. Unlike the crustacean’s bone-like outer shell, the animal’s softer tissues remained a mystery, he said. Once researchers began to dissect those tissues, they made a surprising discovery. Making significant cuts into the membrane didn’t affect the...

Baboons can stand in for humans during cross-species transplantation studies. Now, for the first time, researchers have kept baboons alive and healthy for up to six months on transplanted pig hearts. Credit: Paul A. Sounders ========================================================================= In four adjacent enclosures transplantation researcher Bruno Reichart kept four happy baboons. “They can hop around, eat, drink and they are enjoying life,” he says. “They watch TV—their favorite is the cartoon with the chipmunk.” Most importantly, he says, they were healthy and normal—which is astonishing, given the fact that the hearts beating life in their chests were anything but normal for a baboon....

Officials at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute say the fourth baboon who escaped from their facility Saturday has been captured. All four baboons have been checked by veterinary staff and are well, a news release reports. No details were given on where the baboon was caught... Officials did not say how the animals escaped, only that the four were able to get past perimeter fencing at the institute. Witnesses quickly took to to social media to report baboons on the loose after catching sight of the runaways near Northwest Loop 410 and West Military Drive. Jannell Bouton, 26, snapped photos...

In this artwork, hair follicles grow radially out of spherical skin organoids, which contain concentric epidermal and dermal layers (central structure). Skin organoids self-assemble and spontaneously generate many of the progenitor cells observed during normal development, including cells expressing the protein GATA3 in the hair follicles and epidermis (red). Credit: Jiyoon Lee and Karl R. Koehler =========================================================================================================================== Indiana University School of Medicine researchers have cultured the first lab-grown skin tissue complete with hair follicles. This skin model, developed using stem cells from mice, more closely resembles natural hair than existing models and may prove useful for testing drugs, understanding hair...

Stanford University bioethicist says as the lab rats become more human-like they may one day be 'entitled to some kind of respect' TINY human brains injected into rats have sparked a major ethical debate among scientists worried it may give the rodents some type of human consciousness. Esteemed science ethicists claim the experiments might reach a point where the test lab rats will be "entitled to some kind of respect". Advances in science have allowed experts to connect tiny human brains with that of a rat. To do this, they created clumps of cells that behave similarly to human brains...

A loss in court and increased public outrage over fetal parts trafficking has prompted StemExpress, to sever its ties with Planned Parenthood and recalibrate its public profile to one that is “predominately” focused — at least outwardly — on adult blood and tissue procurement. This news came in the same week that Operation Rescue obtained purchase orders that show the University of Massachusetts Medical School paid StemExpress a total of $29,000 for human fetal cadaverous tissue, (presumably harvested from Planned Parenthood abortions), for the purpose of creating “humanized” mice. StemExpress is a biotech company in Placerville, California, that has been...

A team of University of British Columbia researchers has identified fat-producing cells that possess "dual-personalities" and may further the development of treatments for muscle diseases such as muscular dystrophy and fibrosis. The team found a new type of fibro/adipogenic progenitors, or FAPs, that generate fatty fibrous tissues when transplanted into damaged muscles in mice. Progenitors are similar to stem cells in their capacity to differentiate, but are limited in the number of times they can divide. The findings are published in the current issue of Nature Cell Biology. "These cells are typically dormant in muscle tissues," says lead author Fabio...

You shouldn't stay up all night worrying about it, but a new study has found a connection between a lack of sleep and a biomolecule thought to be important in the development of Alzheimer's disease. In both humans and mice, levels of a peptide called amyloid-β rise during waking hours and decline during sleep, researchers have found. They also report that sleep-deprived mice are more prone to developing deposits of amyloid-β, called plaques, like those found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Although far from proven, the finding suggests that sleep disorders could be a risk factor for Alzheimer's. On...

Scientists have now levitated mice using magnetic fields. Other researchers have made live frogs and grasshoppers float in mid-air before, but such research with mice, being closer biologically to humans, could help in studies to counteract bone loss due to reduced gravity over long spans of time, as might be expected in deep space missions or on the surfaces of other planets. Scientists working on behalf of NASA built a device to simulate variable levels of gravity. It consists of a superconducting magnet that generates a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside living animals, with a space inside...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – In new animal research done by investigators at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, scientists have discovered a treatment effective in mice at blocking the growth and shrinking the size of lung cancer tumors, one of the leading causes of cancer death in the world. The study, recently published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, is the first to show that treatment with a specific peptide, angiotensin-(1-7), reduces lung tumor growth by inhibiting blood vessel formation. "If you're diagnosed with lung cancer today, you've got a 15 percent chance of...

PETA planning protest at Camp Pendleton gate this weekUsing live animals to train combat medics and others in how to deal with traumatic injuries is no longer necessary because of sophisticated medical mannequins and other training options, people opposed to the practice argue. A group of doctors aligned under the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington contends it's not only unnecessary to use live animals, it's illegal, too. The group recently petitioned the Department of Defense to stop using animals, citing Army and Navy regulations. "The use of vervet monkeys by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical...

To most people, vaccines sound medically harmless. "They're good for you!" say the doctors and drug companies, but they never really talk about what's in those vaccines. There's a good reason for that: If people knew what was really in those vaccines, they would never allow themselves to be injected with them. Aside from the dangerous ingredients many people already know about (like squalene or thimerosal), one of the key ingredients used in flu vaccines (including the vaccines being prepared for the swine flu pandemic) is the diseased flesh of African Green Monkeys. This is revealed in U.S. patent No....

Some chimps in Gombe National Park have been succumbing to an AIDS-like disease.Michael L. Wilson Researchers have overturned a decade-old consensus that chimpanzees cannot fall ill as a result of infection with a virus similar to HIV.Previously, scientists had thought that chimpanzees were like other non-human primates that can become infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) — which is closely related to HIV — but do not go on to be seriously sickened by the virus.The results suggest that it will not be possible to find the key to HIV immunity in the chimpanzee genome, as scientists had hoped. However,...

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* Study finds hair loss gene in mice * Gene shared by both mice and humans * Could lead to cure of baldness in humans EXPERIMENTS on mice have revealed a gene that is linked to early hair loss, a Japanese researcher said today, sparking hopes for a treatment to prevent thinning and baldness in humans. The research team found that the absence of a gene known as Sox21 -- which it said is shared by humans and mice -- can lead to early hair loss. The scientists biologically engineered mice by blocking the gene and found that the rodents...

House-hunting habits Researchers at the University of Bristol fitted radio-frequency identification tags to the backs of the rock ants which measure up to 3mm in length. Two thousand of the tiny transponders would fit on to a postage stamp. The scientists then watched the way the ants chose between two nest sites to make their home. The ants chose the superior nest even though it was nine times further away than the alternative, which was not as well built. When a colony of rock ants needs to emigrate to a new nest, scouting ants first discover new nests and assess...

Los Angeles, CA (AP) -- Anti-animal research activists are claiming responsibility for torching two vehicles they thought belonged to a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles. Activists connected to the Animal Liberation Front say they destroyed the vehicles on Nov. 20 to protest the work of Goran Lacan, a researcher who used animals while investigating treatments for morbid obesity and eating disorders. The group accidentally targeted the wrong address, . . .

SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA: The FBI is investigating two bombings that targeted university scientists, the latest in a rash of attacks against biomedical researchers who experiment on animals, authorities say. Both scientists work at the University of California, Santa Cruz. One of them and his family were forced to escape from a second-story window early on Saturday when a firebomb was lit on the home's porch, Santa Cruz police said. An adult was treated at a hospital and released. Police Capt. Steve Clark called the bombing "an attempted homicide." Also that morning, a firebomb destroyed a car belonging to another researcher....