By Daily Mail Reporter A blind British pensioner who flew to China for pioneering treatment has got her eyesight back – and has arrived home to see her great grandson for the first time. Dorothy Leach, 76 from Hardwicke, can make out faces, shapes and colours for the first time in more than a year after receiving stem-cell treatment in China. She raised £16,000 in fundraising for the operation and travelled to China in September. ‘When I got back to Heathrow Airport last Wednesday I could see such a lot. It was unbelievable,’ said Dorothy. ‘The other day I saw a crow on...

Why swallow your vitamins when you can huff them? That’s the general thinking behind the world’s first breathable vitamin, called LeWhif Vitamin, which launched in the UK earlier this month and is expected to hit the US market this week. The creation of Harvard biomedical engineer David Edwards, inventor of inhalable insulin, inhalable chocolate and inhalable coffee, LeWhif Vitamin is a lipstick-like delivery device that works a lot like a miniature pipe, only instead of inhaling smoke with each toke, you inhale a fine powder of healing supplements (a sort of anti-smoke) that dissolves in...

By Rebecca Boyle A new robotic exoskeleton based on a military design will help paraplegics walk once again on their own two legs. The eLegs system can remove the persistent presence of the word “no” — a word with which paraplegics have become all too familiar, according to the Berkeley Bionics project’s CEO, a man named Eythor Bender. “I think we are demonstrating here that there is no such word,” he says, in a particularly dramatic press video. His heavily accented English lends an air of X-Men-esque mystique to the project. The exoskeleton, unveiled Thursday, will be offered to rehabilitation...

Skin cells can be easily converted, report says By Valerie Richardson A major breakthrough in stem cell development could help resolve the ongoing debate over the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research. A team of scientists led by Derrick J. Rossi of the Immune Disease Institute at Children’s Hospital Boston published a paper Thursday showing that they can quickly and efficiently transform skin cells into cells with all the properties of embryonic stem cells. Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, called the report, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell,...

A cheap and quick drugs test which allows parents to check whether their children have been using cocaine or cannabis has been developed by British scientists. Researchers have unveiled the £1.50 test, which takes five minutes and detects other illegal substances. The disposable drugs test analyses a droplet of saliva for any trace of drugs in a person’s system. Scientists say it has been proven to highlight the smallest amount of a drug such as a metabolite (small molecules) of cocaine. Suspicious parents can screen their children for the drugs by taking a swab of their saliva and placing...

Company seeks approval to sell farmed fish that grows twice as fast as Atlantic salmon Using a gene from a Chinook salmon and DNA from a pout fish, a U.S.-based firm has engineered an Atlantic salmon that grows twice as fast as farmed salmon, and it’s headed to your dinner plate. The Center for Veterinary Medicine of the Food and Drug Administration has agreed to discuss and decide whether to approve the fish, which has been in development by Aqua Bounty Technologies Inc. for nearly 15 years. If it is approved, it will be the first genetically altered animal sold as food to people. Ron Stotish,...

(Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book. In “The Grand Design,” co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts Thursday. “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something...

You will be able to “grow your own transplant liver in a lab within just five years,” says the Daily Mail. This news story is based on research that demonstrated a method to develop skin cells into stem cells, which were then matured into liver cells. The researchers used this technique to develop lab-grown liver cells from patients with inherited liver diseases, which they hope might aid future research into diseases. They found that the new liver cells shared a number of characteristics with the patients’ liver cells. The method developed in this research looks likely to be an invaluable...

The success of scientists in the US in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA has led to a call for a ban on the research. The scientists constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species “dictated” by the synthetic DNA. Experts agree that the technology could radically change the world but some are objecting to its use on saftey and ethical grounds. Pallab Ghosh reports.

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell. The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species “dictated” by the synthetic DNA. The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms. The researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb...