SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — It may be possible to use "stem cell shielding" to protect the body from the damaging effects of chemotherapy, early results from a US trial suggest. Chemotherapy drugs try to kill rapidly dividing cancer cells, but they can also affect other healthy tissues such as bone marrow. A study, in Science Translational Medicine, used genetically modified stem cells to protect the bone marrow. Cancer Research UK said it was a "completely new approach". The…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — I was in the middle of a normal clinic day, seeing candidates for surgery, when a nurse told me that one of them had arrived with a diagnostic video. When I had a free moment, I walked over to a computer and put the CD into the drive. As the program booted up, I noticed that the video was a cardiac MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) study. I clicked through the images, and what I…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — What makes an entrepreneur? The BBC's Thomas Hubert and Tom Santorelli spoke to Gabriel Osombo, a diamond trader in an open-air diamond market in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. When Gabriel Osombo realised he would never make ends meet as a civil servant in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he decided to take destiny into his own hands. It was 2004, and the country was barely emerging from a decade of war.…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Canadian artist Allan Harding MacKay says he's destroying five pieces of his own artwork to protest the federal government's treatment of veterans and aboriginals. MacKay, known for his videos, paintings, other works depicting the wars in Somalia and Afghanistan, ripped up a Kandahar Air Field scene while on CBC TV's Power and Politics on Tuesday. MacKay told host Evan Solomon he plans to destroy four more pieces on Parliament Hill on Thursday. MacKay told…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Canada's credit card system is a "perverse" place where shoppers who pay with cash or debit subsidize purchases made with credit cards, the Competition Bureau argued Tuesday in its opening salvo against Visa and MasterCard. That's because Canadian merchants pay among the highest fees in the world for accepting credit cards and pass on the costs consumers, the bureau's lead counsel said in his opening to a tribunal charged with ruling on credit card…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — As I noted in last week’s column, the connection between poverty and obesity cannot be denied. Studies show that low-income children are much more likely to be overweight than their wealthier counterparts and that more than one-third of adults who earn less than $15,000 a year are obese, while fewer than 25 percent of those who earn more than $50,000 a year are significantly overweight. That’s partly because folks living in poor communities face…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — There's nothing exciting about the standard-issue college dorm. Peek inside freshman Derek Low's room at the University of California at Berkeley, for example, and you'll find the usual mix of harsh overhead lighting and furniture so bland it'd make you beg for IKEA. But Low, a self-proclaimed "computer fanatic" and tinkerer, has turned his room into a laboratory for automated living, replete with motion sensors, remote light switches, and mobile and tablet apps to…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — A dentist will tell you to floss everyday, but an archeologist might, well, have different priorities. Turns out the nitrogen and carbon isotopes in dental plaque can give archeologists a look at 1,000-year-old diets. The buildup of plaque on this set of teeth is, um, impressive. (Cut the skull some slack though, this was before we had dentists to chide us about daily flossing.) Without the benefit of modern dental hygiene, the plaque built…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — A chemical found in curry is to be tested for its ability to kill bowel cancer tumours in patients. Curcumin, which is found in the spice turmeric, has been linked to a range of health benefits. Studies have already shown that it can beat cancer cells grown in a laboratory and benefits have been suggested in stroke and dementia patients as well. Now a trial at hospitals in Leicester will investigating giving curcumin alongside…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Magnet-making bacteria may be building biological computers of the future, researchers have said. A team from the UK's University of Leeds and Japan's Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have used microbes that eat iron. As they ingest the iron, the microbes create tiny magnets inside themselves, similar to those in PC hard drives. The research may lead to the creation of much faster hard drives, the team of scientists say. The study appears…