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Straight ahead on "Our World" ... another step forward in stem cell research ... a Mars rover prepares for its next big adventure ... and a penguin so big, it might fit into YOUR dinner jacket.
CLARKE: "The bones of these fossils are so well preserved that when the team saw this skull, the first skull of a giant penguin, we were just taken aback.
Those stories, a radioactive threat facing some native American Indians, and more. I'm Art Chimes. Welcome to VOA's science and technology magazine, "Our World."
British and American scientists this week announced the discovery of a new kind of embryonic stem cell in mice that could help advance the research on stem cells in humans.
Embryonic stem cells, you'll recall, are unspecialized cells that have the potential to develop into any kind of cell in the body ? bone, blood, brain or other vital organs. A lot of researchers think it may one day represent a whole new way of treating a wide range of diseases.
In the meantime, however, there's a lot to learn, and two research papers published this week in the journal Nature could help. Roger Pederson, co-author of one of the papers, explained to reporters in London the importance of the newly-discovered mouse stem cell.
PEDERSON: "This is a new type of embryonic stem cell that has very strikingly similar properties to human embryonic stem cells. This is very intriguing because it can provide a model for studying and accelerating studies of human embryonic stem cells, but we think it also tells us something about the actual origin, the biological origin, of human embryonic stem cells."
Pederson, now at the University of Cambridge, previously worked at the University of California. He moved to Britain in 2001 amid concerns over U.S. restrictions on federally-funded stem cell research. If embryonic stem cells from rodents can be used in place of their human counterparts, it could speed research in a very exciting field.
The discovery was made independently by scientists at Oxford University, including Richard Gardner, co-author of the other paper published in Nature. He said that the techniques they used could be used on other animals ? primates, perhaps ? to get an even better animal model for research purposes.
GARDNER: "What this tells us is, if you use different conditions, you can get pluripotential stem cells out of the mouse, so it's going to encourage people to go back and do the same on any other mammal, and therefore there is no reason why you shouldn't find a mammal that is much closer to the human in this regard than the mouse is."
Since embryonic stem cells can potentially become virtually any type of cell, they offer hope of curing disease from Alzheimer's to diabetes to many more. But any cures that might be developed are still years away as the research remains in the laboratory stage.
At a meeting this week on avian influenza, or bird flu, U.N. officials reported some progress in slowing its spread, but said that as long as the virus is out there, the risk of a human flu pandemic remains.
Efforts to monitor and contain the disease have achieved important results, they said, including a rapid reponse in places where the deadly H5N1 virus has recently been introduced. On the other hand, the Chief Veterinary Officer of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, Joseph Domenech, told reporters Wednesday that avian flu remains a danger in many places, and he cited Nigeria, Egypt and, especially, Indonesia.
DOMENECH: "There [are] a lot of outbreaks, a lot of shed of virus in the environment, and then contacts with humans [who] can get the disease, and this is what is happening. We have human cases. So Indonesia for sure, this is where the situation is of high risk of getting a new [mutated] virus and the origin of a human pandemic."
Of the 315 human cases of avian flu identified by the World Health Organization, about one-third have been in Indonesia.
The people at greatest risk now are those in close contact with birds, especially chickens ? people who sell them, slaughter them or live near them.
So far, avian flu as been a disease that humans catch from birds. The fear is that a mutation will allow the virus to be spread easily from person to person, which could pave the way for a pandemic. That may or may not happen, but David Heyman (HAY-man) of the World Health Organization, says that in any case, preparing for a possible flu pandemic is a good idea.
HEYMAN: "There will be other pandemic threats, so the activities to prepare today for a pandemic will benefit all those other threats that are with us today and will continue with us in the future."