Rats Blamed For Bubonic Plague, But Gerbils May Be The Real Villains

Rats have a bad rap. They have for centuries. Ever since the middle of the 14th century when the Black Plague descended over Europe.

Rats took the rap for spreading the bubonic plague, which killed millions of people over the next 400 years. It has long been believed that swarms of rats spread the disease when fleas flew from their feverish, infected, furry little bodies and bit into thin-skinned humans.

Rat has been an epithet ever since. Snitches, squealers, back-stabbers, and double-crossers are called rats. Think of Jimmy Cagney sneering, "You dirty rat!" (Though — to spare a lot of emails — what he actually said onscreen was, "You dirty yellow-bellied rat.")

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Deaf animals hear with human stem cells

LONDON: Scientists have restored hearing to deaf gerbils using human embryonic stem cells in an advance that could eventually help people with an intractable form of deafness caused by nerve damage.

The procedure needs further animal research to assess safety and long-term effectiveness but researchers said on Wednesday the experiment was an important proof of concept, marking a further advance in the growing field of regenerative medicine.

Marcelo Rivolta from Britain's University of Sheffield, who led the research, said the first patients could receive cell therapy for hearing loss in clinical trials in "a few years".

After treating 18 gerbils with complete deafness in one ear, his team reported in the journal Nature that stem cells produced an average 46 percent recovery in hearing function, as measured by electrical signals in the animals' brains.

"If this was a human patient, it would mean going from being so deaf as to be unable to hear a lorry or truck on the street to being able to maintain a conversation," Rivolta told reporters.

"What we have shown here is functional recovery using human stem cells, which is unique."

Continued:  http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-67829-Deaf-animals-hear-with-human-stem-cells

Nuisance gerbils are being put on the pill

metro.co.uk