Instabilities that have hindered the continued progress in the development of nuclear fusion, have been overcome according to physicists at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne).

From the article:

Nuclear fusion is an attempt to reproduce the energy of the Sun in an Earth-based reactor system. When gas is heated to several million degrees, it becomes plasma. Sometimes in the plasma, an instability will appear and grow large enough to perturb the plasma, making it vibrate despite the presence of the magnetic field in which it is contained. If the plasma touches the walls of the reactor, it will cool rapidly and create large electromagnetic forces within the structure of the machine. By adjusting an antenna that emits electromagnetic radiation, Jonathan Graves and his colleagues from EPFL’s Center for Research in Plasma Physics were able to quench the instabilities when they appear, in the precise region where they are forming, and without perturbing the rest of the installation.

As promising as these developments are, more research needs to be done to develop the ability to overcome and sustain these instabilities in real time. That being said, its exhilarating to know we’re one step closer the the holy grail of energy.

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch have found through experimentation, that implanted Neural Stem Cells can substantially aid recovery after a traumatic brain injury.

“Axons and dendrites are the basis of neuron-to-neuron communication, and when they are lost, neuron function is lost,” said UTMB professor Ping Wu, lead author of a paper on the research appearing in the Journal of Neurotrauma. “In this study, we found that our stem cell transplantation both prevents further axonal injury and promotes axonal regrowth, through a number of previously unknown molecular mechanisms.”

The research thus far has only be preformed on laboratory rats, and computer simulations, but is seen as promising. You can read the full article here, on the UTMB website.