天津市龙济泌尿科电话(天津武清区龙济医院来院路线) (今日更新中)

WASHINGTON, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Human neural stem cells are capable of helping people regain learning and memory abilities lost due to radiation treatment for brain tumors, a University of California, Irvine (UCI) study suggests.Research with rats found that stem cells transplanted two days after cranial irradiation restored cognitive function, as measured in one- and four-month assessments. In contrast, irradiated rats not treated with stem cells showed no cognitive improvement."Our findings provide solid evidence that such cells can be used to reverse radiation-induced damage of healthy tissue in the brain," said Charles Limoli, a UCI radiation oncology professor.Study results will appear Friday in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.Radiotherapy for brain tumors is limited by how well the surrounding tissue tolerates it. Patients receiving radiation at effective levels suffer varying degrees of learning and memory loss that can adversely affect their quality of life."In almost every instance, people experience severe cognitive impairment that's progressive and debilitating," Limoli said. " Pediatric cancer patients can experience a drop of up to three IQ points per year."For the UCI study, multipotent human neural stem cells were transplanted into the brains of rats that had undergone radiation treatment. They migrated throughout the hippocampus -- a region known for the growth of new neurons -- and developed into brain cells.Researchers assessed the rats one month and four months after transplantation, noting enhanced learning and memory abilities at both intervals.Additionally, they found that transplanting as few as 100,000 human neural stem cells was sufficient to improve cognition after cranial irradiation. Of cells surviving the process, about 15 percent turned into new neurons, while another 45 percent became astrocytes and oligodendrocytes -- cells that support cerebral neurons.Most notably, Limoli said, he and his colleagues discovered that about 11 percent of the engrafted cells expressed a behaviorally induced marker of learning, indicating the functional integration of those cells into memory circuits in the hippocampus."This research suggests that stem cell therapies may one day be implemented in the clinic to provide relief to patients suffering from cognitive impairments incurred as a result of their cancer treatments," Limoli said.

BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The provinces of Guizhou and Hunan reported their lowest levels of precipitation since 1951 in July, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said on Monday.Precipitation levels across the country saw a decrease of 8.7 percent from the average level of 115.9 mm in July, the lowest levels seen in 11 years, said Chen Zhenlin, an expert with the CMA.The average temperature recorded across the country in July was 22.1 degrees Celsius, up 0.7 degrees Celsius from the average level.

BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Lifestyle changes such as exercise, eating healthily and not smoking could reduce the chances of having Alzheimer’s disease by half, researchers said in a study quoted by news reports Tuesday.Hundreds of thousands of patients could potentially avoid the devastating illness by simply changing bad habits, according to the study published in the journal Lancet NeurologyFor the first time, scientists have calculated the extent to which certain lifestyle traits -- including lack of exercise, smoking and obesity -- all contributed to the disease.Researchers found that in the Western world, an inactive “couch potato” lifestyle was the most important possible cause.Smoking, obesity in middle-age, high blood pressure and diabetes all increased the risk as they cause damage to blood vessels in the brain, leading to death of brain cells. Together, the modifiable risk factors contributed to 50 percent of Alzheimer’s cases worldwide.The researchers want to carry out more work to find out how many people can prevent the disease by making small changes to their lifestyle.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- A team of researchers has discovered a planet that orbits around a pair of stars, the U.S. space agency NASA announced Thursday.This is the first instance of astronomers finding direct evidence of a so-called circumbinary planet. A few other planets have been suspected of orbiting around both members of a dual-star system, but the transits of the circumbinary planet have never been detected previously.The team, led by Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute in California, used photometric data from the NASA Kepler space telescope, which monitors the brightness of 155,000 stars.NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a world where two suns set over the horizon instead of just one. The planet, called Kepler-16b, is the most "Tatooine-like" planet yet found in our galaxy. Tatooine is the name of Luke Skywalker's home world in the science fiction movie Star Wars. In this case, the planet it not thought to be habitable. It is a cold world, with a gaseous surface, but like Tatooine, it circles two stars.They found the binary star system by detecting a system where the stars eclipsed each other from the perspective of the Kepler spacecraft. These stars have two eclipses: A primary eclipse when the larger star is partially blocked by the smaller star and a secondary eclipse where the smaller star is fully blocked by the larger star.But the researchers also noticed other times when the brightness of the two stars dropped, even when they were not in an eclipse position. This pattern suggested that there was likely a third object involved. The fact that these so-called tertiary and quaternary eclipses recurred after varying intervals of time, and were of different depths, indicated that the stars were in different positions in their orbit at each instance. This result showed that the tertiary and quaternary eclipses were being caused by something circling both stars, and not an object circling one or the other star.Measurements of the variations in the timing of all four types of eclipses, resulting from the mutual gravitational interactions of the two stars and the third body, demonstrated that the third object was, indeed, a planet. Their work indicates that the planet is less massive than Jupiter, possibly comparable in mass to Saturn, and that the larger of the two binary stars is smaller than our Sun.Their findings will be published Friday in Science."This discovery confirms a new class of planetary systems that could harbor life," Kepler principal investigator William Borucki said in a statement. "Given that most stars in our galaxy are part of a binary system, this means the opportunities for life are much broader than if planets form only around single stars. This milestone discovery confirms a theory that scientists have had for decades but could not prove until now."

SINGAPORE, July 3 (Xinhua) -- The over 60 nursing homes in Singapore, especially those run by voluntary welfare organizations, are facing a bed crunch, local daily Straits Times reported on Sunday.The newspaper found in a check with 20 homes that more than half of the nursing homes were running at full or almost full capacity. Homes run by voluntary welfare organizations, where there are subsidized beds, have long waiting lists.The average waiting time for a bed in nursing homes run by voluntary welfare organizations rose from 50 days in 2008 to about 60 days early last year, the newspaper said.It is easier to get a bed in a privately run home, though only slightly and if you can afford it. Econ Healthcare Group, which runs eight nursing homes in Singapore, said the occupancy rate is 99 percent and it has waiting lists of up to 20 people at some branches.Demand for nursing homes in the city state can only grow given the aging population. By 2030, the number of people aged 65 or above is projected to reach 900,000, or one in every five residents.

来源：资阳报