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CONVERGENCE:

A Bionic Eye

Researchers are racing to perfect an artificial retina that could restore limited sight to the blind.


No one would ever confuse William Boyd with Steve Austin, the iconic—and bionic—hero of the ‘70s TV series The Six Million Dollar Man. Austin was a top astronaut for NASA whose crash-related injuries led to substantial reengineering of various body parts by way of high-tech implants. Boyd spent his career at the considerably less glamorous Nabisco Bakery in Houston, Texas, mixing the dough that yields Ritz Crackers. In order to regain his fading vision, however, Boyd now hopes to become something of a bionic man himself, or at least a man with a bionic eye.

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TJOLS TV The Life Sciences in the News

Doctors Use Stem Cells To Treat Heart Failure

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Podcast A 20/20 Vision
to 2020


Steve Burrill, co-publisher of TJOLS, speaks about his vision for the changing world of healthcare in the year 2020. He talks about how we are moving from a world of treatment to one of prediction and prevention, how technology will be harnessed to invisibly monitor patients as they go about their everyday activities, and how 12 years from now when people need medical treatment, they will go to Wal-Mart.

TJOLS WEBCAST Epigenetics: Playing the Genetic Score



Epigenetics is challenging long-held notions that our genes are our destiny and radically changing the way researchers think about the development of certain illnesses. As science come to understand the way epigenetic processes silence genes, it is given rise to promising new therapies for diseases such as MDS. Watch The Journal of Life Sciences webcast.

By the numbers Enough To Make You Sick

Coping with medical bills ranks among the top personal finance concerns of Americans, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released at the end of April. The researchers found that 28 percent of those surveyed reported they or their families had a serious problem paying for healthcare and health insurance as a result of recent changes in the economy. Though many people think of the economy and healthcare as being separate issues, the researchers note that the survey highlights how healthcare has become a key dimension of the public's economic concerns. See the numbers.