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QUEENSLAND researchers believe they have found a way to to control the spread of dengue fever, which afflicts more than 50 million people worldwide every year. The team at the University of Queensland's (UQ) School of Biological Sciences, led by Professor Scott O'Neill, is investigating infecting mosquitoes that transmit dengue fever with a bacterium that shortens their lifespan, limiting their ability to infect humans with the dengue virus. Professor O'Neill said this approach may be even more effective than first thought. "In a surprising development we have found that mosquitoes carrying this bacterium - known as Wolbachia - are resistant...

Segway Inventor Builds Bionic Arm Tuesday , December 09, 2008 FOX NEWS The man behind the Segway scooter has a new invention: bionic arms for wounded soldiers. Called the "Luke Arm" after the prosthetic hand sported by Luke Skywalker in the "Star Wars" movies, Dean Kamen's device is lightweight, self-contained and fully capable of picking up grapes, baby bottles, even electric drills. ... snip The Luke Arm has four fingers and an opposable thumb, and was designed to be controlled by muscular movement in the wearer's remaining limbs. But thanks to neurological advances in "targeted renervation" by Dr. Todd Kuiken...

In 1980, a man from a small town called Limone Sul Garda in northern Italy went to a doctor for some problem, not heart related. Testing of his blood showed very high levels of triglycerides, and very low levels of HDL, the good form of cholesterol. By all rights, the man should have either been dead from, or in imminent danger of a heart attack. But his arteries were clear. Analysis of his blood showed he had a very special form of Lipoprotein, a type of HDL. And further work with this particular type of Lipoprotein revealed astounding results. In...

A breakthrough in using donor pancreas cells in patients' livers means an end to several injections a day. For the first time, a diabetic patient in Britain has been completely cured by a revolutionary transplant operation. Richard Lane, 61, has been able to abandon the daily insulin injections he has endured for the past 28 years thanks to transplants of pancreas cells from three donors. He is the third patient to be treated at King’s College Hospital in London using a technique developed at the University of Alberta in Canada by a Leeds-born specialist, James Shapiro. The two earlier cases...