Fantastic news for amputees from British company Touch Bionics this week, with the unveiling of their new i-LIMB bionic hand, which took 14th place in Time Magazine's 50 top inventions. the hand has 5 separately articulated fingers (which can be detached from the main hand for ease of maintenance, instead of the user being denied use of their entire hand while waiting for replacement parts) and has a range of grip setting, from credit card to 'power hold' (which I think is for stuff like coffee mugs, not crushing shotgun barrels with your fingers).
In cancer research, a team at Washington University's School of Medicine have decoded the entire gene sequence of a cancer patient and traced the development of her disease (acute myeloid leukaemia).
Researcher Dr. Richard K. Wilson is quoted as saying: "This suggests that there is a tremendous amount of genetic diversity in cancer, even in this one disease.
"There are probably many, many ways to mutate a small number of genes to get the same result, and we're only looking at the tip of the iceberg in terms of identifying the combinations of genetic mutations that can lead to AML."
It's still far too early to start popping champagne corks and declaring that we've beaten cancer; this breakthrough is mainly valuable to the development of treatments for various blood cancers, which tend to have simpler chromosome changes than solid tumor cancers. However, the significance of this feat should not be underestimated.
Read the full story here.
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