Month: January 2014

By Victoria Cavaliere BAYONNE, New Jersey (Reuters) – Cheers erupted aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship reeking of vomit and diarrhea as it pulled into its home port in New Jersey on Wednesday, ending a trip cut short because illness felled more than 600 people. Passengers disembarking the "Explorer of the Seas" recalled the nightmare of getting sick during the Caribbean cruise, being quarantined in their rooms, and putting everything they touched into bio-hazard bags. "I had three days of sickness and quarantine," recalled Susan Rogutski of Catawissa, Pennsylvania, who came down with gastrointestinal symptoms so severe the first day of the trip that she had to be physically dragged to the sick bay. Carl Kern of Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, said the ship's hallways smelled of diarrhea and vomit.

NEW YORK (AP) — Following the death of an autistic teenager who walked away from his New York City school last year, the U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday it will fund voluntary tracking devices for children with autism or other conditions that put them at risk for fleeing their caregivers.

Althletes aren’t the only ones that get hurt during the big game.        

(Reuters) – The piglet killing Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus has spread to a fourth farm in the Canadian province of Ontario, the provincial government said on Wednesday, despite the hog industry’s efforts to stop it by disinfecting delivery trucks and clothing used on farms. The virus has killed more than 1 million piglets in the United States but it has so far been contained within Canada to southern Ontario farms. The fourth case has been confirmed in Norfolk County along the north shore of Lake Erie, said Mark Cripps, a spokesman for Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. Ontario confirmed the first Canadian case last week.

By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent LONDON (Reuters) – In experiments that could open a new era in stem cell biology, scientists have found a simple way to reprogram mature animal cells back into an embryonic-like state that allows them to generate many types of tissue. Chris Mason, chair of regenerative medicine bioprocessing at University College London, who was not involved in the work, said its approach in mice was “the most simple, lowest-cost and quickest method” to generate so-called pluripotent cells – able to develop into many different cell types – from mature cells. The researchers took skin and blood cells, let them multiply, then subjected them to stress “almost to the point of death”, they explained, by exposing them to various events including trauma, low oxygen levels and acidic environments. Within days, the scientists found that the cells had not only survived but had also recovered by naturally reverting into a state similar to that of an embryonic stem cell.