Health Meaning

Alien? Subhuman primate? deformed child? Mummified fetus? The Internet is buzzing about the nature of "Ata", a weird 6 inches long skeleton featured in a new documentary on UFOs. A scientist from Stanford University, who boldly into the fray now put to rest doubts about what species belongs Ata. But the mystery is not over.

The story began 10 years ago, when the tiny remains were reportedly found in a pocket in a ghost town in the Atacama Desert, Chile. Ata ended up in a private collection in Barcelona; Producers of the film Sirius locked on the strange mummy as evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Last fall, immunologist Garry Nolan, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Proteomics Center for Immunology systems at Stanford in California, Ata heard from a friend and contacted the filmmakers, offering to give them a scientific reading on the specimen. They asked him to give it a shot.

Among the apparent anomalies, Ata sports 10 ribs instead of the usual 12 and a severely deformed skull. "I asked our unit neonatal care how you analyze it would take. They had seen this kind of syndrome before? "Nolan said. He was taken to the pediatric radiologist Ralph Lachman, co-director of the International Registry Skeletal dysplasia at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California." He literally wrote the book on pediatric bone disorders, "says Nolan. Lachman was blown, Nolan recalls. "He said, 'Wow, this is like nothing I've ever seen before" "

To study the specimen, Nolan looked for evidence in the Ata genome. He first assumed the specimen was tens or hundreds of thousands of years old Atacama Desert may be the place driest in the world, while Ata could have been preserved for eons. He has consulted experts who extract DNA from bones denisovan, a European Asian parent Stone Age Neanderthals. There is evidence that their protocols are not required. "The DNA was modern, abundant, and high quality," he said, indicating that the specimen is probably a few decades.

To the dismay of UFO hunters, this is decidedly Ata world. having mapped over 500 million readings to a reference human genome, which is equivalent to 17.7 times coverage of the genome, Nolan concluded that Ata "is human, there is no doubt about it subject. "in addition, B2 haplotype-a sample class of mitochondrial-DNA reveals that his mother was from the west coast of South America. Chile, which is

Meanwhile, after examining X-rays, Lachman found that skeleton Aka development, based on the density of the epiphyseal plates knees (growth plates at the ends of long bones found only in children) appears surprisingly equivalent to a 6 to 8 years. If this holds up, there are two possibilities, says Nolan. One, a long shot, is that Ata had a severe form of dwarfism, was born as a little man, and lived up to that calendar age. To test this hypothesis, it will try to extract hemoglobin from the sample of bone marrow and compare the relative amounts of fetal hemoglobin proteins against adults. The second possibility is that Ata, the size of a fetus of 22 weeks of age, suffered from a severe form of a rare rapid aging disease, progeria, and died in the womb or after birth premature.

Nolan hasn 't yet turned up results for genes known to be associated with progeria or dwarfism. It is intensifying for mutations by sequencing and further casting a wider net. Another possibility is a teratogen: a toxic defect inducing birth along the lines of thalidomide. Nolan plans to analyze tissue using mass spectrometry in search of toxic substances or metabolites. But reports of a handful of other Tom Thumb size skeletons Russia and elsewhere Nolan leaning towards a genetic explanation.

At least one expert has taken, but more prosaic allow the human specimen. "This seems to me a human fetus badly dried and mummified or stillborn premature," says William Jungers, a paleoanthropologist and anatomist at the Medical Center Stony Brook University in New York. He notes that "barely ossified and immature elements" of hands and feet, and the suture metopic wide open, where the two frontal bones of the skull meets the forehead. "genetic abnormalities are not obvious, probably because there is not one," he said . Nolan said that the number of ribs and densities of epiphyseal plates remain a mystery; while it is open to the hypothesis of the fetus, he thinks the jury is still

the analysis is Nolan went viral this week. besieged as he was by the media circus, he does not regret getting involved in debunking a claim of alien life. "I am delighted with the result," he said. Once the testing is complete, he said, he will present his findings in peer review. The other application Nolan debunks is that Ata is a hoax. X-rays clearly show they are real bone, complete with arterial shadows, he said. "You could not just pretend," he says, adding with a laugh, "unless you were a stranger."

As expected, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today that the agency plans to retire, but 50 of its search 360 chimpanzees and eliminate much of the research it supports on these animals.

NIH Director Francis Collins, who called the decision an important step, explained that "chimpanzees are our closest relatives" and "deserve special respect." Of new scientific advances "have helped replace experiments in the past on chimpanzees with other strategies, which now makes it possible to greatly reduce our support for research on these special animals."

The Humane Society of the United States, which supports the phasing out all invasive research on chimpanzees, welcomed the decision. "This is a historic and major turning point for chimpanzees in laboratories, some of which have been languishing in the housing concrete for over 50 years, "said President and CEO Wayne Pacelle the company in a statement.

today's decision follows an Institute of medicine (IOM) report December 2011 which found that most research on chimpanzees is unnecessary the report states that projects should be continued if they would advance public health. the work could not be done in humans or another animal model ; and chimpanzees were maintained in a suitable environment ethologically. Collins immediately accepted the recommendations, put a hold on new chimpanzee research grants, and asked a working group of the Council of tips for advice on how to implement the IOM recommendations.

The Working Group concluded in January 2013 that many NIH 30 projects involving research or support should end chimpanzee. This includes six of nine invasive biomedical research projects, leaving only three studies of immunology and infectious agents such as hepatitis C. Eight of the 13 genomic and behavioral projects that do not involve invasive studies were approved to continue. The report also recommended that NIH maintain a colony of up to 50 animals to meet the needs of future research. And agreed that research chimpanzees should be kept in appropriate conditions, for example in groups of at least seven animals in large outdoor areas with room to climb.

The agency has received more than 12,500 comments by the end of March on the 28 recommendations of the working group. Whoever NIH sets aside is that animals have at least 93 square meters of primary living space chimp. (Current guidelines require a minimum size of about 2 square meters cage.) "There is not enough data" support this recommendation, Collins said, and "obviously this has implications in terms of cost of keeping chimpanzees. "NIH plans to continue to examine the scientific evidence of how chimpanzees of much needed space.

in a teleconference with reporters today, leaders of NIH declined to identify the 22 research grants considered by the working group, but said that they began to warn the principal investigators how their projects will be affected. projects that do not meet the criteria of IOM " wind down in a way that preserves the research, "said Collins.

NIH officials said that 310 research chimps will move to the national shrine at Chimp Haven in Keithville, Louisiana, or other sanctuaries in the coming years. (About 100 have moved recently or are planned to be transferred later this year the Research Center New Iberia, Louisiana.) NIH is also working with Congress to raise a $ 30 million cap imposed in 00 spending on the national sanctuary that the agency will reach in the coming months.

NIH officials said they will probably support one colony of 50 animals for future research, but has not decided which animals to include and where it will be located. Following the recommendation of the working group, the NIH breed animals, but review this policy in 5 years.

Lisa Newbern, head of public affairs at the Research Center Yerkes National Primate in Atlanta, said his center has not yet learned the fate of his behavioral research project supported five NIH involving chimpanzees, some funded 2016. Although the center is worried that the new housing standards could cost tens of millions of dollars, the NIH decision to hold off on the requirement of 93 square meters "facilitates our concerns."

The Institute for Biomedical Research in Texas, which leads the biomedical research using chimpanzees, issued a statement saying is "disappointed in most of the answers" NIH has made the recommendations of the working group. The institute calls the 50-animal colony "a number chosen arbitrarily" will limit the pace of research on hepatitis, immunotherapies and diseases affecting chimpanzees in the wild.

Researchers will also have to comply with a new rule proposed by the Fish and Wildlife US Service (FWS) this month that changes the status of captive chimpanzees from "threatened" to "under way disappearance. "scientists will now need a permit to study chimpanzees, and if the research does not directly benefit the species, they must do something to improve his survival, for example, by making a donation to a fund chimpanzee conservation.

Kathy Hudson, NIH deputy director of science, education and politics, noted that the FWS rule is final for about a year. "We are very confident that we will be able to find an arrangement in which the important biomedical research under the new rules will be allowed, "she said.

NEW Delhi- In another tweak for researchers hoping to conduct trials clinics in India, a parliamentary group has excoriated a nonprofit US and its Indian partner for alleged ethical violations in a trial of a vaccine to protect against cervical cancer caused by human papillomavirus (HPV). The panel report "will have a chilling effect on the entire clinical research," predicts epidemiologist Ramanan Laxminarayan, vice president for research at the Public Health Foundation of India in New Delhi.

HPV infection is a major cause of cervical cancer each year, about 73,000 women in India die from the disease, about a quarter of the global burden of disease a vaccine against the virus was available. the United States since 06. in an effort to expand the use of the vaccine in the developing world, the Program for appropriate technology for health (PATH), a non-profit based in Seattle, in 09 launched a HPV test $ 3.6 million, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in 24.777 teenagers in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat states. PATH conducted what it calls "post similar approval for demonstration projects" in Uganda, Peru and Vietnam. But several months in the Indian case, the government pulled the plug after retakes reported the death of seven girls.

investigations absolved state-PATH managers of the trial and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi responsibility -to death. Five were obviously unrelated to the vaccine: A girl drowned in a quarry; another died of a snake bite; two committed suicide by ingesting pesticides; and one died of complications of malaria. The causes of death for the other two girls were less certain: one may pyrexia, or high fever, and a second of a suspected brain haemorrhage. . "Improbable" government investigators concluded that pyrexia was "very unlikely" to be linked to the vaccine, and they even considered a link between stroke and the vaccine as CEO of ICMR, Vishwa Mohan Katoch microbiologist, rejects a connection: "based on the investigation, it is certain that the causality of seven deaths was not at all related to the vaccine against HPV," he insists other experts. say, in the absence of autopsies, it is impossible to determine the actual cause of death.

Probing deeper, a panel appointed by the Ministry of Indian health in 2010 found a number of deficiencies and alleged breaches of ethics in vaccine trial. His report in 2011 noted that the trial repeatedly failed to obtain appropriate informed consent of participants. He also revealed that trial managers did not put in place a mechanism to report adverse reactions, and criticized the lack of a control group and the inclusion of the test daughters protected tribal communities of India without obtaining individual consent. "The trial of HPV has not been well managed. The trial did not respect and comply with good clinical practice standards," said Maharaj Kishan Bhan, an immunologist who led a large clinical trial of a vaccine against rotavirus approved earlier this year in which PATH was also a partner.

now a multi-party parliamentary group fell even harder on PATH and ICMR and drug controller General of India. His report of August 30 explosions PATH and ICMR for not having carried out the post-mortem examinations of the girls who died during the trial and this level astonishing claim. Rather than seeking to protect the health, PATH women, he charged, was a voluntary tool Foreign pharmaceutical companies hope to convince the Indian government to include the vaccine against HPV as a universal vaccine program, a list of vaccinations required that the government has to pay. (vaccine against HPV is still available in the Indian private sector .) ICMR, the panel report says, has "completely failed to execute [its] role and responsibility of the umbrella organization for medical research in the country mandated. ... On the contrary, in [its] over-enthusiasm to act as a volunteer facilitator PATH machinations [it has] even rebelled in the field of other organizations that deserves the strongest condemnation and strict action against [it]. "

Some commentators see the merit of this argument. the series of HPV in three doses cost approximately $ 150 in India. the fact that Merck, which makes Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline, Cervarix manufacturer donated a $ value of nearly 6 million of their vaccines to the PATH test "was not philanthropy," says Chandra M. Gulhati, editor of Monthly Index of Medical specialties , an influential magazine in India. "It is shocking to see how an American organization has used underhanded methods to set up in India," he charges. "This is a clear case where the Indians were used as guinea pigs," says Samiran Nundy, a gastrointestinal expert intestinal at Sir Ganga Ram hospital in New Delhi and editor emeritus of National Medical Journal of India.

in a statement, PATH said "we strongly disagree with the conclusions the conclusions and tone of the published report and disregard of evidence and facts. "Contacted by science Insider, Vivien Davis Tsu, director of cancer prevention project cervical PATH has not commented on the allegations of the report. "We remain true to our heritage of ethics, work on the basis of evidence on transformative innovations that save lives," she said. The Gates Foundation noted in a statement that the World Health Organization, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and the Federation of obstetrical and gynecological societies of India have all recommended vaccinations "as a preventive measure proven and very effective for cervical cancer. "

Katoch acknowledges shortcomings in the management of the trial. "Our conduct the study tracking material could have been better," he said. New regulations on clinical trials being developed by Parliament will strengthen procedures for testing, he said. "India will emerge stronger after this episode."

Yet the impact of the report of the parliamentary panel could be severe. "After this episode, it will be difficult to do clinical trials in India," predicts geneticist VijayRaghavan Krishnaswamy, secretary of the Department of Biotechnology. Laxminarayan concerned that researchers will abandon clinical trials in India rather than navigate a maze of complex regulations that he believes are bound to be introduced as a result of HPV testing. All eyes are now on the Supreme Court, which on September 26 will resume hearings on a case looking globally for clinical trials in India. Biomedical scientists better reinforcement of trouble: In July, two judges of the court bench observed that although foreign companies "treat India as a paradise for clinical trials, it appears hell for. India "

ROME- The controversy surrounding unproven stem cell therapy in Italy may be ending. Minister of Health Beatrice Lorenzin Italy announced yesterday that the Endurance, the non-profit foundation based in Turin who developed the treatment, will not be permitted to test it on humans, at least not in Italy.

The method known as Endurance is a treatment based on stem cells from bone marrow that allegations President Davide VANNONI Stamina can grow new neurons in specific conditions and thus cure several neurodegenerative diseases. However, while thousands of patients still maintain stamina and treatment, scientists believe the method has no scientific basis. In May, the government passed a law providing € 3 million for the treatment to undergo a clinical trial. But in July, Endurance Lorenzin ordered to release its scientific dossiers for consideration for treatment by a committee of scientific experts to assess whether the method is safe and effective enough to enter human trials.

On September 12, the media reported that experts had unanimously rejected the method, although the reasons for rejection are not disclosed. Now a decree of the Ministry of Health states that the rejection by the Committee was based on the following:

• An "inadequate description of method, "because of the absence of a description of how cells should give rise to new neurons

• on" the lack of quality controls on cells " , which makes treatment difficult to reproduce, so not guarantee the safety and efficacy of the product

• on the "potential risks, due to the lack of a clear plan selection, screening and testing donors of cells, causing the lack of exclusion of risks from communicable diseases, such as HIV-1 and HIV-2. "

• d other risks of serious awareness. ie encephalomyelitis, and the risk of injection of bone material in the nervous system

At a press conference yesterday, Lorenzin said, "I ' wish the story to have a different ending, but Endurance method are not eligible for the trial. "Vannoni Stamina says science Insider that" the grounds for refusal are totally unfounded. "The stem cell community

Italian, which opposed the method from the beginning, gave a sigh relief. "After the scientific world arose, the right decision was ultimately made," said Michele de Luca, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine "Stefano Ferrari" in Modena., Italy "method does not exist. It has no scientific basis and could be dangerous. "

But the story does not end there dozens of patients still receive Endurance method in a hospital in Brescia and hundreds more are on a waiting list of their appeal to the Italian courts for the right to be treated by Stamina.

it is now unlikely that a formal clinical trial will ever take place, it remains unclear whether patients will continue to receive treatment. Lorenzin said Science Insider that the matter rests with the Minister of Justice, not health. "I wonder how the judges will continue to impose access treatment after the strong position taken by the Ministry of Health, "says de Luca.

Vannoni said the Endurance biologists are preparing to submit a paper to a peer-reviewed journal. He added that "the health minister of an African country has already given the green light to human experiences for treatment in this country."

Where, exactly, is the sand flea have sex? On the dusty ground, where he spent the first half of his life? Or already nestled comfortably in his host, like a foot, where the man, he can suck the blood it needs to feed its eggs? The answer to this question that has long puzzled entomologists and experts of tropical health, seems to be the latter. A new study in which a researcher leaves a sand flea grow inside of his skin, concludes that the parasites copulate more likely when the females are already inside their hosts.

Tunga penetrans , also known as chigger flea, sand fleas, classy, ​​jigger, nigua, picnic or pe of bicho, is widespread in the Caribbean, South America and Sub-Saharan Africa. The immature female digs permanently into the skin of a warm-blooded host, it also attacks dogs, rats, cattle and other mammals, where more than 2 weeks, it swells to many times its size original, reaching a diameter up to 10 mm. Through a small opening at the end of its abdominal cone, the insect breathes, defecates and expels eggs. The female usually dies after 4 to 6 weeks, always embedded in the skin.

Originally crew Caribbean, infected sand fleas sailing with Columbus on Santa Maria after they were shipwrecked on Haiti. They and others have brought the parasite to the Old World, where he eventually became endemic across sub-Saharan Africa. Even today, there is an occasional rider, showing in European and North American clinical journey in the feet of tourists who went barefoot on tropical beaches.

For people living in infested areas, however, the chip is a serious public health problem. What begins as a pale circle in the skin becomes red, then black, become painful, itchy and often infected, a condition called tungiasis. A chip seems to attract others, and people can be infested with dozens of both . The infection makes it difficult for people to walk and can lead to permanently deformed feet. There is no drug treatment; the only way to get rid of pests is to dig them. People often use unsterilised instruments to do this, which causes other infections, including tetanus. Tungiasis affects the poorest of the poor, says Jörg Heukelbach who studies the disease at the Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil, and is neglected and often misunderstood, even by health officials in endemic areas.

Marlene Thielecke, a Ph.D. student at the University of Medicine Berlin Charité, studying ways to prevent infection of tungiasis to Madagascar when she noticed that she was hosting a chip itself. As part of his job was to assess and record sand flea stages of development in the feet of the local villagers, she said, "I thought it might be interesting" to observe in its own foot. So she started taking photos and video regularly to keep track of what happened.

initially, the chip does not bother Thielecke and noted that he seemed to grow . But normally she soon realized he was not lying all unusual eggs for an integrated and mature otherwise apparently chip he also lived much longer than usual. after 2 months it was still regularly expels the fluid from his abdomen, a sign that he was still alive, but still no eggs. at this time, Thielecke said, the place was itchy, painful, and prevented him from walking normally. "I was getting uncomfortable" about leaving it in so long, she said, she extracted it.

A few months later, back in Berlin, she spoke with her supervisor comments to Charity tungiasis expert Hermann Feldmeier. Lack of eggs and exceptionally long life chip Thielecke was probably because he was never fertilized , said the researchers in a paper published this month in Medicine travel and infectious diseases . As soon as she found the chip, Thielecke started to wear socks and shoes to prevent other chip penetrate closed. ( "We were pretty," she said.) She and Feldmeier think maybe the chip has lived so long because he was in a sort of development "wait state," expect a male to find and fertilize its mature eggs.

that the chip was apparently virgin suggests an answer to the longstanding puzzle if the chips are fertilized before or after they incorporate. More than a century, researchers have reported observing the male coupling chips with disembodied female; others have argued that it is more likely than women to first integrate and are fertilized by males that find an infected mammal and mate with females integrated through its abdominal opening. (Males do not bite into the skin.) It would be logical evolution, says Feldmeier. Because women tend to integrate in clusters, everyone who comes will have a chance to mate with several females and a group of females will have a greater chance of being found by a man one.

overview of the sexual life of the chip has no immediate consequences for the fight against tungiasis in areas where it is endemic. But it could help doctors recognize the parasite in travelers returning home with a chip. Physicians should be aware that the individual chips "may not develop normally" and can live longer than manual predict, says Feldmeier.

And although one observation does not prove that women are still fertile after embedding, "it is very interesting," says Ingela Krantz, emeritus professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Umeå Sweden. "this is the kind of knowledge that you usually go because you say sand fleas, they are a nuisance, we treat them." But to start from the beginning and try to understand these strange noise is important. "

For another icky tale of a scientist infected with the organism, he studies, see" Invasion of ticks nostril ".

Ranges The host some of the most contaminated soils of the planet. toxic lead and copper lost balls can leach into the ground, threatening the ground water, killing germs and poison plants. Cleaning the soil is often too expensive for operators of military and private channels. Now Korean scientists have created a natural blend that sops up almost all metals: pulverized oyster shells and fly ash, soot particles spewed by burning. Korea dumps accumulate over 250,000 tons of oyster shells per year, while coal power plants churn as much fly ash. By combining the two waste products creates a rich concoction of minerals that hinder the metal ions in tight molecular bonds, the reports of the team this month in Environmental geochemistry and health . By mixing different ratios of ingredients firing range of highly contaminated soil now nearly seven times the amount of lead considered hazardous by the US Environmental Protection Agency researchers identified a unique blend that encloses 98% of lead contamination leachable and 96% copper. Other floor-scrubbing techniques exist, but the approach shells and-ash is much cheaper and more sustainable, the scientists say.

See Science Shots.

men and women do not respond the same way to stress, at least when it comes to hit the bottle. In a new study, researchers have turned their laboratory in a bar where students could drink beer or wine at leisure. They asked half the students to perform a stressful task, crossing the letter "e" in a series of texts that have been subject to rules increasingly complex and required a lot of self control. The other half performed the most basic version of the crossing-out letter-task where they had to cross any case "e" they saw in the texts. The men drank four times more alcohol than women have after making the stressful task, the team reports in December 11 Addiction . Moreover, the stressed women still drink less alcohol than women who have made it easy. Scientists believe that glucose provides the energy needed to maintain self-control in stressful situations, but once the resources of men stressed depleted glucose, they could not maintain their self-control and drank more. Regarding women, the team poses they are naturally less tempted by alcohol than men, making their attitude towards integrated drinking alcohol deterrent. All is not lost however for stressed men ,. The scientists found that when male volunteers were kept track of how many drinks they drank, they more than halved their alcohol consumption.

See Science Shots.

The parasites not only cause unpleasant infections; they can also take over the minds of their hosts. The fungus Ophiocordyceps , for example, require the ants to mount stems of plants, where they die and release of fungal spores in the air to infect other ants. Similarly, it would be logical for sexually transmitted parasites to force their guests to have more sex. But biologists have found very few examples of this kind. A new study may explain why.

To understand why there is not more "mind control sexual" in nature, theoretical ecologist Ludek Berec of the Biology Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and biological mathematician Daniel Maxin from Valparaiso University in Indiana, turned to mathematical modeling They created two strains of a species of parasitic hypothetical. an "ancestor" who has not made his guests have more sex, and a mutant who did. Then they both turned loose stem in a hypothetical host population and watched the parasites compete until the mutant strain died on or replaced their ancestor.

If the mutant strain has replaced its ancestor, the researchers introduced a new mutant had even more power over the sex of its host life. They then watched the two strains compete again, yet another introduced strongest mutant when former surpassed its predecessor, and so on. In this way, the species as a whole could "evolve" to exert more or less control of sexual spirit of its host.

In most simulations, the mutants did not evolve toward making their guests have more sex, the team reports in the February 7 issue of Journal of Theoretical Biology . Instead, they have either lost the ability to influence mating behavior of their host or are dead on. Researchers believe that control of the mind is too sexual energy to the parasite, causes too much harm to the host, or both. For example, the host might become so focused on sex it does not spend enough time searching for food and water. In addition, for a parasite to change the libido of its host, it might have to pay a large portion of its energy in pumping powerful hormones, which could weaken in the long term.

The results will help epidemiologists understand how sexually transmitted diseases are spread not only parasites visible to the naked eye, but also bacteria, viruses and other microscopic invaders, says evolutionary biologist Patrick Abbot, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, which has not participated. Describe the characteristics of coupling noise and improving their host populations can also help field biologists find more of these parasites in the real world, he noted.

The world of research on stem cells has been set on its ear 29 January when Japanese and American scientists reported a surprisingly simple way to generate stem cells that can theoretically develop in all cells of a body. But the anonymous bloggers and some experts have spotted possible manipulation of images in newspapers. The establishment of the principal researcher studies.

Haruko Obokata Developmental Biology of RIKEN Center (CDB) in Kobe, Japan, and colleagues from other institutions in Japan and Harvard Medical School in Boston reported that simply submit blood cells from newborn mice to a moderately acidic environment for 25 minutes and then refine culture conditions could generate pluripotent stem cells capable of developing into almost all types of cells of an organism. They described what they called the acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells stimulus triggered in a research paper and a research letter published online in Nature on 29 January.

Just a week later, anonymous bloggers on PubPeer website postpublication a discussion forum of scientific results, began to notice anomalies in the picture 1i in the research article. In some eyes, it appears that the central channel of a blot image was spliced ​​into. On February 13, contributors PubPeer zeroed in the letter of research, arguing that a portion of Figure 1b, showing the placenta of a chimera STAP, may have been rotated and reused in Figure 2g.

in the emails that responded to questions posed by science Insider, the public relations office at the headquarters of RIKEN in Wako, near Tokyo, wrote that they were the site of the current but launched its investigation on February 13 in response to a notification received from an outside expert. The investigation team includes both RIKEN and outside scientists. RIKEN could not say when the investigation is complete, leads, or if it only focuses on the images reported on PubPeer.

A public relations officer at the CBD said Obokata and colleagues directed all queries to RIKEN seat.

On February 13, a Japanese blog pointed to possible manipulation of images in a 2011 document tissue engineering by Obokata and others. Furthermore, on 14 February, a Japanese blogger published a note stating that "the problems of some images of the research article could be the result of image compression noise."

the RIKEN responsible for public relations wrote that their investigation only covers two Nature papers.

Both documents were revolutionary because they have put forward a method for generating stem cells much simpler than any previously reported, a development that could advance regenerative medicine, in which scientists try develop replacement tissues as a treatment for diseases and injuries.

The image problems could not say the reported results are not valid.

"for the moment, we think the research results published in Nature are sound," the public relations office wrote.

other laboratories already trying to reproduce the work, and some have posted their experiences on a blog stem cells. Nobody has said they have successfully reprogrammed cells, but most have not used the same cells used Obokata

* updated February 17, 15 hours :. a sentence referring to a second blog post in Japan can image compression discussion has been revised following a clarification of its English translation.