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The Human Cell

Rejuvenated

Stem cell research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health has produced a way of rejuvenating the human cell. Embryonic stem cells cultivated from adding hair or skin cells to various elements repairs genomes and induces them into hematopoietic stem cells that are injected into the patients body. This represents a potential breakthrough in the treatment of Mediterranean anemia. As the cells used to rebuild the organ are actually the patients own, the procedure carries none of the risks of rejection associated with organ transplant surgery, according to a leading expert.

Plonk to Vintage

The best wines are those that have aged the longest. Chemist Zeng Xinan from South China University of Technology has formulated a technique using electric currents that cuts out the decades-long wait for a vintage tipple. He has discovered that pouring young wine through two charged titanium electrodes creates an inter-reaction of alcohol and organic acid that emits abundant aromatic compounds which, after just six minutes, produces a clear glass of wine of a flavor pleasing to the most discerning of palates, as attested by 12 expert wine tasters.

Obama Names

Steven Chu Secretary of Energy

US President Barack Obama has nominated Nobel laureate physicist Steven Chu, professor of physics and head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be secretary of energy. Chu was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his bachelors degree in 1970 from the University of Rochester and his doctorate from University of California (UC), Berkeley in 1976. He joined Bell Labs in 1978, and was appointed Professor of Physics at Stanford University in 1987. Chus research on methods using laser light to cool and trap atoms earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.

Chu was appointed director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in August 2004. He is also a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and honorary professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Phase I Clinical Trials of AIDS Vaccine “Safe and Effective”

Phase I clinical trials of DNA-Tiantan AIDS vaccine, launched on December 1, 2007, has finished recently with satisfactory results, according to Shao Yiming of the National Center for AIDS Control and Prevention. The vaccine was jointly developed by the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Vaccine and Serum Institute, which holds the intellectual property rights to the serum. Trials have now entered phase II, and differ from those of the conventional design concept and technique of producing AIDS vaccine by virtue of the vaccine in question being a live serum in the form of a replicative vaccinia virus carrier.

Healthy bodily fluids and cell immunoreactions were observed to have been induced in rats and apes injected with the serum.

China to Build Third

Antarctic Base

China is to build the Kunlun Research Station, the countrys first inland Antarctic station since establishment of the Changcheng and Zhongshan stations, in the 4,083 meter-high Dome Argus (Dome A) zone – the tallest icecap on the South Pole.