Here we go again... From the AFP:
BEIJING — A floating expanse of green algae floating off China's eastern seaboard is growing and spreading further along the coast, state-run media has reported. * * * * * Algae blooms are typically caused by pollution in China and suck up huge amounts of oxygen needed by marine wildlife to survive and leave a foul stench when they wash up on beaches. * * * * * According to a 2008 State Oceanic Administration report, raw sewage and pollution from agricultural run-off has polluted 83 percent of China's coastal waters, leading to algae and other problems.

When a person’s cornea is burned it’s not necessarily the splashed chemicals or hot liquids that causes blindness, but the eye’s recovery. Scar tissue, formed from cells in the white part of the eye, can cover the cornea in a cloudy haze. But researchers have found that cells drawn from another part of the body can correct the problem.

A paper published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine brings news of a regenerative stem cell treatment that has had striking success: It restored sight to 82 of 117 eyes with burnt corneas, and worked partially on 14 others. The treatment also seems to have a long-lasting impact; in one patient, the beneficial effect has lasted for ten years and counting.

The treatment offers hope to those who received little benefit from existing therapies–such as artificial cornea replacements, which can also be overpowered and clouded by white-colored cells, or stem cell or cornea transplants from cadavers, which patients can reject.

“[The patients] were incredibly happy. Some said it was a miracle,” said one of the study leaders, Graziella Pellegrini of the University of Modena’s Center for Regenerative Medicine in Italy. “It was not a miracle. It was simply a technique.” [AP]

That technique, first performed in 1995, requires harvesting healthy “limbal stem cells” from the cornea’s border. Stefano Ferrari in Italy then grew these cells into a sheet and grafted them onto the cornea. Since the cells come from the patient and not from a donor, the procedure does not have the risk of rejection present with transplants.

The treatment “is like putting on a biological contact lens,” said Dr. Stephen Pflugfelder, a practicing corneal specialist and professor of ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who says the technique works well. A clear cornea–essential to good vision–”is the clear window on the eye,” like a watchglass on a watch, added Pflugfelder, who was not involved with the Italian study but is familiar with its findings. [HealthDay]

For successfully treated patients, vision improved within months, and of those that did not fully regain their sight the treatment still often helped.

Even when not completely effective, the treatment usually alleviated a patient’s sensitivity to light and eye pain, Pellegrini said in a telephone interview. “In any case, the patient has improvement in symptoms,” she said. The researchers were also able to pinpoint which types of cells were more likely to work well. [ABC]

Unfortunately, the technique requires a healthy population of “donor” stem cells from the patient, so it will not work for those who have severely burnt both their corneas (leaving few healthy limbal stem cells). A benefit of the technique is that it requires fewer total stem cells than previous procedures (as ABC reports, about .002 square inches of tissue) since researchers cultivate these sample cells in the lab to make the graft.

Related content:
80beats: Gene Therapy Cures Color Blindness in Monkeys
80beats: The Part of the Brain That Lets the Blind See Without Seeing
80beats: Can Sight Be Restored With Stem Cells Grown on Contact Lenses?
80beats: Brain Reconstruction: Stem-Cell Scaffolding Can Repair Stroke Damage
80beats: Stem Cells Could Regenerate Inner Ear Hairs—and Hearing

Image: New England Journal of Medicine

An image from Opportunity's NavCam taken on May 8, 2010 showing the tracks from a recent drive just before the Winter Solstice. Click for larger. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A comment in yesterday’s post asked what was going on with the Mars Exploration Rovers — good question.  The rover site isn’t updated very often due to it being the Martian winter.  The winter Solstice was on May 12 so spring is approaching Mars even if very slowly.

On May 20th the rover Opportunity surpassed the Viking Lander’s longevity record of 6 years 116 days.  As the daylight increases Opportunity will beginning to drive more.  At the moment drives are worked out so the solar panels are in a favorable position to catch sunlight.  The eventual destination for Oppy is the  Endeavour crater.

The situation with Spirit isn’t quite so good.  You probably know Spirit got stuck on what looks to be a rock, kind of hung up, well, it’s stuck and is now immobile.  Being immobile placing the rover in a position to best collect the feeble Martian sunlight was impossible.  Spirit is in a hibernation mode.  Will it awaken?  A question everybody involved is waiting to be answered.  If it does and resumes communication, it will get the longevity record since it arrived three weeks before Oppy.  Keep your fingers crossed!

The newest rover named Curiosity is well on its way to a late 2011 launch, the robotic arm and associated tools are being tested, two cameras built by Malin Space Science Systems Inc has been delivered.  The cameras will be used on the Mast Camera Instrument which will be a workhorse.  Finally, the radar system to be used in landing is undergoing rigorous testing.  The actual launch date is driven by geometry and communications it’s quite a balancing act between the shortest route and optimal communications.  The launch date will be between November 25 and December 18, 2011 for a August 2012 Landing.  To learn more about Curiosity, click here.

I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I’m not one for arbitrary milestones. I’m OK with birthdays and such, but when it comes to celebrating attaining some certain number of things just because it’s a round number, it seems a bit silly.

Of course, that’s just my rational mind. My emotional mind still squees a little when that nice, round number is achieved.

And here I am, at my 5000^th post. This very post, in fact, if you excuse me getting a little meta.

I know that if we evolved to have 8 fingers, or 12, this post wouldn’t be quite the same milestone. But contingent, stochastic processes are what they are, and so here I am, 4999 posts from the first one. That one, published on March 13, 2005, was just a "Welcome to the blog!" kind of thing. But it was the start of a long series of posts about science, astronomy, Doctor Who, skepticism, religion, LOL cats, politics, and just about everything else that’s caught my attention.

Along the way the blog moved to its new home at Discover Magazine (that anniversary is pretty soon, too). And what news has unfolded over this period! Direct pictures of planets orbiting other stars were first taken. Methane was found cycling on Mars. Water on the Moon. Two moons of Pluto discovered. The first private company launched a rocket. MESSENGER headed for Mercury. Two impacts on Jupiter. Lakes on Titan. An asteroid seen before it impacted the Earth. Just to randomly pick out a very few.

And, of course, the fight against antireality, pseudoscience, nonsense: that continues as well. The title of this blog is Bad Astronomy, but that doesn’t limit the content. The forces of darkness will always be with us, and you can count on me to always fight them.

And as for the future, I will always write about what interests me, what makes me happy, and what angers me. But I can’t do it without you. Well, OK, sure, I can, but it’s not as much fun. Since that first post in 2005, nearly a quarter of a million comments have been left here, too. People praising me, insulting me, leaving non sequiturs, links to related material, corrections, stories, discussions, and so much more. It may be my name on the blog, but it’s the community here that keeps it alive.

So, after 5000 posts, consider this one a simple thanks.

Thanks.

[Update (a few hours after posting): I've read all the comments, and, and... I think I have something in my eye. Thanks again everyone.]

The Washington Post’s blogger-journalist Dave Weigel has a post up where he preemptively apologizes for stuff he posted on an “off-the-record” e-list,. Extracts are going to be published by a gossip site. Journalists are the tip of the iceberg; privacy is fast becoming a total fiction, remember that. We’re slowly drifting toward David Brin’s model of a “transparent society”, but it’s happening so fluidly that people aren’t even noticing. And yet as I have noted before, people are resisting the push to merge all their personas into one. Interesting times.