|  Bluebird Bio's sickle cell gene therapy working for French boy By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - A pioneering gene therapy for sickle cell disease is working well so far for a 13-year-old French boy with the hereditary blood disorder, researchers said on Saturday, in a boost for the technology to fix faulty genes. SCD is caused by a mutated gene, resulting in abnormal red blood cell function. Patients suffer anemia, painful obstruction of blood vessels and, in some cases, early death. Read More » New Photo Book Presents Rare 'Snapshots' from NASA's Early 'Spaceshots'  | J.L. Pickering usually doesn't take kindly to books claiming "never before seen" NASA photographs. A space historian and one half of the team behind the new title, "Spaceshots and Snapshots of Projects Mercury and Gemini: A Rare Photographic History," now available from University of New Mexico Press, he has almost assuredly already seen the photos. "When we would go into any bookstore, we would naturally check out the space books," John Bisney, Pickering's co-author, said about the catalyst that led to their new book, which presents some of the truly seldom reproduced shots from NASA's first piloted space programs.
| Read More » These Astronaut Photos of the Great Pyramids & Earth Are Simply Breathtaking  | Astronaut Terry Virts knows how to spend his last day in space: gazing at planet Earth from afar and posting photos of that jaw-dropping view online for all to see. Before a Soyuz space capsule returned Virts to Earth Thursday (June 11), the NASA astronaut took time out in space to photograph the Earth below, capturing spectacular vistas of the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, our home planet at night and what looked to be a stunning sunrise. "It took me to until my last day in space to get a good picture of these," Virts wrote on Twitter, where he posted photos, Vine videos and mission updates as @AstroTerry.
| Read More » Robots Face Off in $1.5 Million NASA Sample Return Challenge  | Robot-toting teams faced off in a NASA contest this week to see which automaton has the right stuff for working on Mars or other locations in the solar system.
| Read More » How Dangerous Was 'High 5' With Great White Shark?  | "Coming out of the cage like that is not as risky as it might seem," Carl Meyer of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology told Live Science. In the video, Joel Ibarra, a dive master on an expedition filmed for the Discovery Channel, appears to exit a shark cage and touch the pectoral fin of a female great white nicknamed Deep Blue. Ibarra was not really purposely slapping the female great white shark on the fin.
| Read More » Nobel Scientist's Claim Examined: Do Women Actually Cry More? Although the general consensus is that Hunt was completely out of line, studies show that overall, women do cry more than men — though not, as Hunt claimed, because they can't take criticism, but because of various biological, social and environmental factors. Hunt, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, shared his sentiments on Monday (June 8) at the World Conferences of Science Journalists in South Korea. And Steve Diggle, a microbiologist at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, created a yellow caution sign that said, "Mixed gender lab! No falling in love or crying permitted," and posted it on Twitter. Read More » | |
