Human articular cartilage defects can be treated with nasal septum cells because they are able to adapt to the environment of the knee joint and can thus repair articular cartilage defects. 

The nasal cartilage cells' ability to self-renew and adapt to the joint environment is associated with the expression of so-called HOX genes. The scientific journal Science Translational Medicine has published the research results together with the report of the first treated patients.

There are some massive galaxies out there, and we now know a little about their early life.Credit: Lauro Roger McAllister/Flickr, CC BY

By Edward Taylor, University of Melbourne

A piece of the galaxy formation puzzle may have fallen into place, thanks to a team of European and American astronomers peering into the depths of our early universe.

A key part of civilization? Credit: E Photos, CC BY-SA

Deforestation along roads in Rondonia, Brazil. Source: Google Earth

By Bill Laurance, James Cook University

“The best thing you could do for the Amazon is to blow up all the roads.” These might sound like the words of an eco-terrorist, but it’s actually a direct quote from Professor Eneas Salati, a forest climatologist and one of Brazil’s most respected scientists.

A Middle Bronze Age Canaanite palace at the Tel Kabri excavation in Israel has revealed an ancient wine cellar.

Not all students returning to school this month will be up to date on their vaccinations and a new paper in Gender&Society by Jennifer Reich,a professor of Sociology from the University of Colorado Denver, correlates it to the class privilege of their mothers.

It's no secret that anti-vaccination hotbeds correlate to income and other lifestyle choices. Put a pin in a Whole Foods store in California and you can find a hotbed of anti-vaccine sentiment in the parking lot and surrounding neighborhood. In America, red states have overwhelming vaccine acceptance while blue states are where the problems are occurring.

Where should we go, on Mars, to look for droplets and streaks of present day liquid water? You may have heard of the "warm seasonal flows", and the recent "swimming pools of bacteria". 

However,  there are several other promising ideas for habitats such as the "Flow like features", the advancing sand dunes bioreactor, and possibilities for life using the humidity of the night time air on Mars. It's an exciting field with many new discoveries and ideas every year, and it is hard to keep up with the developments.

Thousands of fishing traps are lost each year in U.S. waters. These derelict traps continue "ghost fishing" and catch fish, crabs, and other species such as turtles, which results in losses to habitat, fisheries, and the watermen who depend on the resources - losses that are largely preventable, according to a new NOAA paper in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. 

The paper looks at the results of seven NOAA-funded studies in different fisheries across the U.S., and compares the severity of the problem, and common management challenges across the regions. It also reports certain findings from the studies for the first time in peer-reviewed literature, such as estimates of derelict trap numbers and how long they remain in the environment. 

Epidemiologists have correlated eating over 10 portions per week of tomatoes with an 18 percent lower risk of developing prostate cancer, new research suggests.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men worldwide and diagnosed rates are higher in developed countries, which some claim means is due to a Westernized diet and lifestyle.

To assess if following dietary and lifestyle recommendations reduces risk of prostate cancer, scholars at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford looked at the diets and lifestyle of 1,806 men aged between 50 and 69 with prostate cancer and compared with 12,005 cancer-free men.