No more dyes?????

Researchers are in hot pursuit of a "cure" for gray hair—and they're getting closer.

 A study published last year showed that gray is caused by hydrogen peroxide and other cell-damaging molecules that build up as we age, bleaching color from the hair. The absence of an enzyme called catalase allows these molecules to accumulate, but EXT Life Sciences, a Michigan-based biotechnology company, believes it has found a chemical compound that can restore catalase and thus return hair to its original color.

 The company is working to incorporate the ingredient into leave-in conditioners and serums, says cofounder Stanley Terlecky, PhD, professor of pharmacology at Wayne State University School of Medicine.

 And across the Atlantic, L'Oréal's Paris-based hair biology research group recently identified a pair of genes that may determine the longevity of the cells that give hair its color. L'Oréal scientists are hard at work developing a treatment (either a pill or a topical formula) to block the progressive decline in these color-giving cells and stop—or at least slow—the graying process, says group director Bruno Bernard, PhD. Lets hope they make it!!!!

Christmas Shopping!!!!!

Went shopping today. Time to buy Christmas gifts for family & friends.

I'm lazy, so for the girls I'll get them perfume this year. Why? Because that cant go wrong. Just go for the most beautiful bottles & there are lots to choose from. Even if the scent is wrong or they hated it, no one can say no to a beautiful bottle....lol..... it's all about packageing!!!!

For guys ...hmm..... that's hard but I'll go with perfume also.....lol..... Come on, I've got not much time & dont particularly like shopping so....? Not very creative???? What you expect? They'll understand!!!

Sea horses & dragons

Prior to these recent intersex discoveries in male frogs , only a few other male animal species demonstrated pregnancy. Probably most famous among these species is the male seahorse, which takes on a reproductive role that is opposite to what is most commonly seen in nature. Male seahorses compete with each other not to impregnate female seahorses but to be impregnated. During sea horse mating the female deposits unfertilized eggs into the male’s brood pouch. The male seahorse then fertilizes the eggs with his own sperm, thus initiating a three-week pregnancy that is marked by an inability to move around and search for food. After 3 days of labor, the male seahorse will give birth to 200 baby sea horses.

A member of the same Syngnathidae family as seahorses, male pipe fish also carry eggs in a protective pouch before giving birth. A few years back, researchers discovered a specific gene that supports the protective pouches and allows male pipefish pregnancies to occur. Called patristacin, this gene sustains male pipe fish pouches, which help regulate the amount of saline in the womb. Interesting but not surprising, the patristacin gene is also found in seahorses and even in the kidneys and livers of other bony fish.

There is more to the eye when it comes to the leafy sea dragon another relative to the seahorse. Not only looking like a piece of floating seaweed, the male leafy sea dragon cares for roughly 250 bright pink eggs that are attached to its tail via a long tube stemming from the female leafy sea dragon partner. After attaching to the male’s brood pouch, the eggs take nine weeks to hatch, changing in color to either purple or orange during this time period. When ready to give birth, the male leafy sea dragon shoots the baby sea dragons out of its tail during a 24-48 hour period. Only 5% of the leafy sea dragons survive, and those that do are pretty much independent from birth.

Beautiful Leafy Sea Dragon

Fascinating isnt it????

GreenCast: econ friendly walls

Never heard of this? Well you soon will... it's an invention -very local- born out of adversity!!!

Remember years back when neighboring countries  impose bans on sand exports to spore which drove up sand prices & construction cost. Well that lead to 2 outcomes, one:  developers switched to using glass as walls, not only it gives buildings & condos a more beautiful facade, it's cheaper!

The other was the Building & Construction Authority awarded a 1.2 million dollar R&D grant to NUS 's department of Civil engineering to  encourage development of technology that would make construction cheaper, greener & possibly faster.  Professor Wee Tiong Huan's team stood up for the challenge & GC ecoWall was born!!!!!! Together with a Realtor, Mr  Patrick Tan, they incorporated GreenCast 2 years ago in 2010.

So what's all the fuss about? Well to begin with, it's developed in Singapore....yay.....!!!!! Kudos to Professor Wee- That should be encouraged right?????  Not only is this new product more Eco-friendly, it is also more efficient! It's stronger than brick. Great for soundproofing. Installation is also simpler & faster leading to cost cutting verses the traditional cumbersome way of brick laying which is time consuming & costly.

So what's the future for GreenCast? Very Bright I hope.... as of this moment, they are targeting a turnover of 10 million dollars by the 2013 financial year. Good Luck guys.... very proud of the effort!!!

Adult cells into Stem Cells

There's lots of excitement when UK John Gurdon of Gurdon Institute in Cambridge & Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University  won the Nobel prize in Medicine recently!!! They share the US $1.2 million .

Their research........... They found that adult cells can be turned back into stem cells! which can turn into any kind of tissue & may one day repair damaged organs!!!!!!! The big hope is for stem cells to be able to be used to replaced damaged tissue in EVERYTHING from spinal cord injuries to Parkinsons.

In the past scientist once thought it was impossible to turn adult tissue back to stem cells & stem cells could only be created by  harvesting embryos. Thanks to these 2 brilliant men, we know now that development is not strictly a one-way street. Can you imagine the possibilities now?????

Interested in looking at Einstein's Brain?

Oh Boy..... did you know that they have recently launched an exclusive iPad application of Einstein's brain!!!!! I'm serious! This will allow researchers & kapos like us to peer into his brain like looking through a microscope. Now I was wondering what would I do that for? hmm....

Apparently a medical museum had obtained funding to scan & digitize nearly 350 fragile & priceless slides made from slides of Einstein's brain after his death in 1955. A pathologist removed E's brain hoping that someone in the future could discover the secrets behind his genius.

Research showed that E's parietal lobe was 15 % wider than normal. This is the area that's impt to the understanding of maths, language & spatial relationships.

Congrats to Professor Zhan Baile

Ok for those of you who are not within our community, he's  NTU's assistant prof & he's recently named one of the world's top 35 young innovators under the age of 35, receiving the accolade from the MIT based Technology Review magazine.

He invented the "invisibility cloak".... haha... not the Harry Porter kind but this is real science/technology!!! The Technology Review Citation called Dr Zhang's technique a "'simple, promising solution.... while it has serious limitations... it does suggest a possible path to making practical invisibility cloaks,..." E.g. it could shrink cellphones & other electronics. Currently some elemnets in such devices must be separated becos of electromagnetic interference. but if you can make them " invisible to each other" , you can put them closer to each other!