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Factual: Science & Nature

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The BBC brings you all the week's science news.

Science In Action: 15/10/2010

15/10/2010

BBC World Service - Science In Action, 15/10/2010

Evaluating the safety of the first embryonic stem cell trial in humans

First embryonic stem cell trial in humans; Bilingualism is good for the brain; Brain adaptation to deafness; X PRIZE; earliest photos

First embryonic stem cell trial in humans
This week sees the world's first human trial of a therapy based on embryonic stem cells to treat severe spinal cord injury.  The company Geron Corp have carried out a Phase One safety trial on one spinally injured patient in the United States, to see if the injection of embryonic stem cells to help repair the nerve coatings in the spine will be safe.  The next step will be to assess whether the procedure actually works. But it's being seen as a new dawn in the age of embryonic stem cells being used therapeutically.


Bilingualism is good for the brain
Pulitzer prize-winning author and professor of geography, Jared Diamond, writes in the journal Science this week about a number of studies which show that speaking two or more languages can help with mental processing and even help to stave off degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.


Brain adaptation to deafness 
You may have heard anecdotal evidence that people who have lost one of their senses, have some improvement in their other senses as compensation - so if you are deaf, you have better eyesight.  But if this is the case, how does this happen, what's happening in the brain?  Research into cats that are born deaf has shown that the brain re-programmes the hearing centres and uses them for visual processing.


X PRIZE
Six years ago, a team scooped the $10million (Ansari) X Prize for successfully building and flying the world's first commercial spaceflight vehicle which is supposed to eventually herald a new era in commercial space opportunities.  The stakes in the latest space race, to send a robot to the moon, are even higher.  With a prize pot of $30 million, the Google Lunar X PRIZE is the largest international incentive prize ever to be offered. 


Very early photography
The first photographic images were created by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a French scientist who experimented in the early 1820s with various techniques, including heliographs made on pewter or copper plates.  This week, the Getty Conservation Institute in California presents research that reveals new details about how Niépce created his first photographic images.

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