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New Research On Spinal Cord Injury Funded By Speeding Fines
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More than a dozen Rochester scientists seeking ways to reverse or lessen the effects of paralysis and other effects of spinal cord injury will begin new projects and continue promising research, thanks to motorists in New York State who push the gas pedal a little too far.
Three research projects at the University of Rochester Medical Center are among the programs funded this year through the Spinal Cord Injury Research Program run by the New York State Department of Health. The program, created in 1998, uses fines paid by speeding motorists to fund research into spinal cord injury, whose number-one cause nationwide is motor vehicle accidents. In Rochester this year the grants are going to Roman Giger, Ph.D.; Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., Ph.D.; and Mark Noble, Ph.D.
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Boca quadriplegic fights to walk again
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Kevin Mullin's life changed forever October 6, 2003.
At 24, Mullin of Boca Raton was an athletic swimmer and scuba diver who landed a job at a pharmaceutical staffing company two months prior to that fateful day.
But everything changed when a trip to a Boca beach with his sister and niece ended in a near death experience and a diagnosis of quadriplegia.
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CU enters stem cell big league
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06b.jpg) Gates research gift, Baylor biologist will boost current efforts
The University of Colorado has scored a $6 million gift from Denver's Gates family and gained a top Texas researcher, two major steps toward transforming CU into one of the country's premier stem cell research centers, medical school officials said Wednesday.
CU officials announced the Gates donation - the largest research gift in the School of Medicine's history - Wednesday afternoon at the university's Fitzsimons campus.
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'Ethical' stem cell lines created
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 Human embryonic stem cell lines have been generated without embryos being destroyed, according to researchers.
A US team created the lines by removing single cells from embryos, a process that left them intact, they report in the journal Nature.
At present, growing this type of stem cell results in embryo destruction.
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Right under our noses
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AM writing from the perspective of a neurobiologist, who has been working in the area of neural regeneration for over 20 years.
This has led to a concerted research program in the past five years investigating an adult stem cell. I am writing, therefore, in the context of technological developments in adult stem cell biology.
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Two decades later, Hansen is still a man in motion
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With muscular shoulders dominating his powerful athletic frame and not a trace of age on his still-boyish face, Rick Hansen looks young and fit enough to head out on another marathon wheelchair odyssey right now.
Perish the thought. Mr. Hansen is a mere 12 months away from turning 50; it's 20 years, tomorrow, since he began a memorable wheel across Canada to cap an unprecedented 40,000-kilometre tour around the world, and more than 30 years since the tragic accident that cost him the use of his legs.
Even the perpetual man in motion is getting older.
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NASA Technology Helping Injured U.S. Troops
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Patented NASA technology that originally enhanced robotics and sounding rockets is now aiding U.S. soldiers returning from overseas duty with spinal cord or traumatic brain injuries, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., The revolutionary new physical therapy device named SAM, for the Secure Ambulation Mode, is based on technology originally developed and honed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
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Regeneration study could offer hope to humans
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The genes and proteins in salamanders and frog tadpoles hold secrets that IUPUI researchers hope will lead them to discover how to regenerate limbs and tissues in humans.
Scientists with the Indiana University Center for Regenerative Biology and Medicine will use a three-year, $1.6 million gift from the W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles to study amphibians' regenerative powers.
"We are trying to find out how this is done in animals that already know how to do it," said David L. Stocum, center director and biology professor at IU-Purdue Indianapolis.
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Learning a new routine
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 Injured Tucson gymnast endures rehabilitation in Colorado, where he begins to heal and adapts to life as a quadriplegic
Drew Donnellan reaches his lips to the plastic straw sticking out of his motorized wheelchair.
He puffs hard once, and his chair edges forward. A soft puff turns right, a soft sip left. A hard sip jolts him backward. This "sip and puff" system is Drew's link to the independence ripped from him on May 12, when he landed on his head during a flip at gymnastics practice.
One month after the accident, during rehab at Craig Hospital near Denver, the 16-year-old is living on what feels like a whole new planet.
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Heat a danger for disabled
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Those paralyzed can't detect effects of high temperatures
Paraplegics are paralyzed in the lower part of the body, while quadriplegics have lost the use of all four limbs.
It is difficult for them to feel any sensation below their spinal injury, which means that they are unable to feel the effects of extreme temperatures in the paralyzed parts of their body. There are also "incomplete" paraplegics and quadriplegics such as Chmielewski, who retain feeling in their limbs. However, like most of those with spinal injuries, he is no longer able to sweat.
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August 2006
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