A Christmas tree stands in the front room; wrapped presents wait to be opened and lights decorate the eaves outside. Several neighboring houses are draped with icicle lights and holiday trim, showing Christmas colors in the late June heat.

Taylor missed Christmas last December, laid up at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, after an accident in Chico injured her spinal cord.

The advance suggests that someday, a woman who wants a transplant to treat a condition like diabetes or a spinal cord injury could provide eggs to a lab, which in turn could create tissue that her body wouldn't reject.

Ethicists disagreed on whether the strategy would avoid the long-standing ethical objections to creating embryonic stem cells by other means.

The discovery of a mouse embryonic stem cell that is a near-perfect match to human cells will speed research in regenerative medicine and treatments for conditions such as Parkinson's and diabetes, researchers say.

Embryonic stem cells from mice are usually taken from very early stage embryos, called blastocysts (see Instant Expert: Stem Cells). These cells are significantly different from human cells and so have limited value.

Roger Pedersen at Cambridge University, UK, and colleagues took cells from the mouse embryo at a later stage in its development, when it is an epiblast. They found that epiblast stem cells, taken from the innermost layer of week-old rodent embryos, shared many of the same properties of human embryonic stem cells.

Now that he has regained the gift of music, Ryan Nelson wants to use his talent to help others.

The 21-year-old Pilesgrove resident, who was paralyzed in a car accident three years ago, will be playing with his band Thursday at Rowan University for the Adam Taliaferro Foundation All Star Football Classic.

Proceeds will go toward athletes with spinal injuries.

Nelson, a quadriplegic, remembers going through months of therapy and not being angry about losing the use of his legs and some of the use of his arms.

Rather, he was upset he couldn't play guitar.

NSW parliament's approval of the legislation was met Wednesday with disappointment by the Catholic and Anglican churches.

The bill passed the Legislative Council late Tuesday, 27 votes to 13, following a rare conscience vote in the lower and upper houses.

The discovery of a mouse embryonic stem cell startlingly similar to its human counterpart will likely speed progress toward the regeneration of healthy cells and organ tissue in people, two studies reported Wednesday.

The newly-found "epiblast" stem cells, taken from the inner-most layer of week-old rodent embryos, will provide a better model in testing potential therapies for human diseases and injuries, the researchers said.

"They are a missing link between mouse and human embryonic stem cells," Roger Pedersen, who headed a research team at Cambridge University, told AFP.

PrimeCell(TM) Therapeutics LLC today announced that it provided research support and pre-clinical studies for a clinical trial to assess the safety, feasibility and efficacy of implanting autologous bone marrow stem cells into spinal cord injury (SCI) patients.

Dr. Luis Geffner presented a preliminary report at the 13th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Cellular Therapy, held here June 24-27. From May 2006 to January 2007, 25 patients with SCI were treated at Luis Vernaza Hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador. They were treated with autologous bone marrow stem cells - meaning the cells were extracted from the patients' own bone marrow.