The Autism Puzzle

Autism is a developmental disorder that we simply don’t yet know enough about. It puzzles both the parent and the professional. Amazingly, more productive research has been done on autism in the last twenty years than in the entire 200 years prior. What we know about autism is fairly basic. What we speculate about is far more wide-reaching. We wonder, often publicly and loudly, whether vaccines cause autism or the various foods we consume or even the air we breathe, infused as we believe it is with whole hosts of toxins and chemicals. The fact is that we know actually very little about this disorder.

Autism is called autism spectrum disorder. What that means is that, just like there are different shades in a visual spectrum, there are varying degrees of autism, from very mild to extremely non-communicative. We know that most children with the disorder are diagnosed quite young. Research will give figures of children as young as 18 months, but three years of age is more reasonable. We also know that children with autism tend to have communication issues, not speaking as their peers or even siblings do, having a tough time doing things we expect babies and toddlers to be able to do, like read and mimic facial expressions.

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Biotechnology Thrives in India

LONAVLA, India — In India, Hindu culture trumps all. And although India is a growing hub of technological and biological influence, Hinduism dominates even the sciences. India is ranked 37 among the 82 countries assessed by the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for the “state of their information technology system and its effects on economic growth and productivity.”

Roughly 300,000 engineers graduate from Indian colleges and universities each year. Multinational companies are taking advantage of the talent pool by making major high-tech investments, such as Microsoft’s plan to spend $1.7 billion and hire 3,000 employees in India over the next three to four years.

India’s biotech industry is also on the rise, with 500,000 doctors and nurses entering the workforce annually. Stem cell research in both the public and private sectors has grown considerably over the past few years in India, where politics or faith has not hindered its expansion. As a result, India is home to not one but three national stem cell research facilities.

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Common Seaweed May Provide an Important Cancer Cure

The answer for cancers of the immune system and other forms of cancer may have been found in an extract of common brown seaweed according to research presented this month at the AACR Dead Sea International Conference on Advances in Cancer Research. At the conference, which was held on March 7-10 at King Hussein Bin Talal Convention Center, Dead Sea, Jordan, researchers from the Hashemite University in Jordan reported that brown seaweed contains the compound fucoidan which kills cancer tumors.

The researchers used an extract of the seaweed on lymphoma cell lines cultivated in the laboratory and found that the extract suppressed lymphoma growth while leaving healthy cells intact. The researchers also noted a significant increase in apoptosis, or cellular death, in lymphoma cancer cells.

Lymphoma is an immune system cancer and it is divided into two classes, Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s, which are in turn further classified into B-cell and T-cell groups.

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