Stem cells can be extracted from baby teeth

I found the following article by browsing back issues of Scientific American. The discovery significantly alleviates the stem cell controversy. However, I do not see it recieve enough news coverage. On April 23, 2003, the magazine reported that a seven-year-old's baby tooth may be worth a lot more than the quarter the tooth fairy left under the pillow. Scientists have discovered that the pulp inside deciduous teeth is a treasure trove of fast-growing stem cells. Naturally-shed choppers could thus provide an easily accessible new source of these sought-after cells for clinical studies of stem-cell transplantation and tissue engineering. When his six-year-old daughter pulled out her baby tooth, Songtao Shi of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Bethesda, Md., washed it off to prepare it for the tooth fairy. Holding his daughter's partial tooth, the stem cell researcher noticed living tissue inside and wondered whether it might contain relatively young stem cells. Shi took the tooth to his lab and found that he was indeed able to isolate such cells from the tooth pulp left in the crown. Extracting more stem cells from the lost baby teeth of seven- and eight-year-olds, Shi called the new group of cells SHED (stem cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth). In the lab, the cultured cells grew quickly, forming sphere-like clusters indicative of a fast rate of proliferation not observed in stem cells isolated from bone marrow or adult teeth. Not only did they grow rapidly, but when implanted under the skin of immunocompromised mice, SHED induced bone formation -- a feat that stem cells extracted from adult wisdom teeth could not accomplish. SHED cells also triggered neural cell formation in the brain and fat cell growth; stem cells from adult teeth, on the other hand, are not as good at neural cell generation and cannot trigger fat cell growth at all. A report describing these findings was published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. One of the challenges of stem cell research is that nobody quite knows the extent to which they can be used to induce growth in tissues other than that from which they were extracted. In that regard, SHED cells could potentially work better than other types of stem cells because of their youth (and thus fast proliferation) and their demonstrated ability to induce the growth of several types of cells. "When kids' teeth fall out we can save them," Shi remarks. "If they need [the stem cells from] them in 20 years, there will be no immunorejection." Just what those needs might be, Shi cannot say. But considering that other researchers are already freezing stem cells from umbilical cords, he muses, "Why don't we save this one?"

vacation: a drive up from Florida

Once again I hear interesting vacation stories. This time I decided to try the drive across the country myself as a vacation idea, and I turned to the Advantage Rent A Car, after a colleague recommended it as a straightforward, no-complication rental service. I am going to drive up from Miami to Chicago, check out the Chi Town, and meet up with my friends who know the famous jazz bars. I did find the Florida-to-Chicago car rental opportunity on their home page. I liked the simplicity and down-to-business layout: very easy-to-use, side-by-side menus helped me arrange the pickup, the car and the drop off. What's interesting, the drive from Florida to Chicago cost only $1 a day. On the same page there are many interesting deals and programs, like frequent rental, state of Texas and Colorado rentals (where I always have dinner at the El Rancho restaurant). There is also the Starlink Rental management system, which is great for extremely busy executives. The company news is found on the same home page, where the corporate headquarters offers the latest info on franchise opportunities. At Advantage they are also running an offer of up to a 50% discount on Luxury and Convertible car rentals. That's another reason I got interested in driving up from Florida in style and comfort. I also found these great offers, wherein I can also visit my friends and relatives in Texas.

Who is watching Motorola's threat to the music industry?

What seems to be a long time ago (Computer Shopper, January 2003) this interesting article educated us about a new set of chips from Motorola call the Symphony Digital Radio Chipset. The radio industry is supposed to be shifting to a digital format, but can't agree on standards. Digital radio should lead to higher quality signals and reception. Sensing an opportunity, Motorola developed the SDRC chip set, which takes in the current analog radio signals and digitizes the signal at the radio wave level. Nothing big in doing this (except maybe for doing so and having a reasonably priced chip set), but the chip set also has circuitry to clean up the signal (for example, interference noise you get with all radio signals, and reliably boosting weak signals, etc.). Thus much of the benefits of digital radio can be achieved with the current radio system. The article predicts two effects. First, sales of radios using Motorola's chip set could negatively impact the satellite radio industry, for which signal quality was an important selling feature. Second, there will be people selling plug-in boards to personal computers which make use of the Motorola chip set, so you can turn your PC into an ever better radio receiver. And of course, it will be easy to capture, store and burn songs being broadcasted by the radio stations. No need for P2P for the popular songs that the music industry really cares about (and for which the P2P advocates are really interested in stealing). Some interesting technology, and a host of legal implications to track.