A gene therapy in the form of a thick gel is about to revolutionize wound treatment. The gel is called Nexagon, and when you apply it to a wound, it reprograms the cells to heal more quickly and efficiently.

Unlike an antibiotic cream, which promotes healing by preventing infection, Nexagon is actually speeding up your body’s healing process. Or, in the case of ulcers, it’s jumpstarting a healing process that’s failed to start. Doctors have been testing Nexagon on people with chronic ulcers on their legs, which are wounds that essentially never heal or take at least six months to do so. After just four weeks, some patients reported they were completely healed up.

According to the Associated Press:

The gel, named Nexagon, works by interrupting how cells communicate and prevents the production of a protein that blocks healing. That allows cells to move faster to the wound to begin healing it.

Though it has only been tested on about 100 people so far, experts say if it proves successful, the gel could have a major impact on treating chronic wounds, like leg or diabetes ulcers, and even common scrapes or injuries from accidents.

In most chronic wounds, Becker said there is an abnormal amount of a protein involved in inflammation.

To reduce its amount, [cell biologist David] Becker and colleagues made Nexagon from bits of DNA that can block the protein’s production. “As that protein is turned off, cells move in to close the wound,” Becker said. The gel is clear and has the consistency of toothpaste.

In an early study on leg ulcers, scientists at the company Becker co-founded to develop the gel found that after four weeks, the number of people with completely healed ulcers was five times higher in patients who got the gel versus those who didn’t. The average leg ulcer takes up to six months to heal and 60 percent of patients get repeated ulcers . . . The gel has also been used on a handful of people who have suffered serious chemical burns to their eyes, including a 25-year-old workman in New Zealand who accidentally squirted liquid cement into one of his eyes. In that case and five others, after Nexagon was applied, the outer lining of the patients’ eyes and the blood vessels within them regrew, saving their vision. In the U.S., the gel has been granted approval by the Food and Drug Administration for serious eye injuries.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkOZeG3oaGofzj4JtXFnqOUHB-gQD9HHSB7O4

The New Rupee Sign, Download here

So India’s Rupee has a new symbol!!!!! But how do you use on your computer??

Well, it will take some time to officially include in the Unicode Character set to be able to use it everywhere: computers, mobile phones, internet etc. Because it has to be included in  the character set by Unicode Consortium, which will take at least 3-4 months.

So, here is a font that can be used in the meantime.

Download Link1 Link2

About the Font:

Some other people have also made font for Rupee sign, all of them are mapped to normal characters available on the keyboard. It makes it easy to insert the symbol, just type the relevant key, change the font, done. Sounds simple, but there’s a catch. Every time you need to insert the symbol, you need to change the font for the symbol, then change the font back for the rest your text. Moreover, if you select the whole text and change the font, the symbol font will change to actual the character that it was mapped to, like if it mapped to # sign, # will appear in the text instead of the new Rupee sign.

Hence I have mapped the sign to the Rupee (Rs) sign available in Unicode character set, which is embedded to Unicode character U+20A8. So, if you send a file containing the symbol to someone else, and if that person does not have this font installed, the old Rs. symbol will be shown in that person’s computer instead of the new symbol. This is much better then showing some other character.

How to use?

First, download the font and install on your computer.

To use in MS-Word, do as follows:

Goto Insert > Symbol

For Office 2007 or 2010, select More Symbol

This will bring up the Symbol Dialogue Box.

Select Indian Rupees font in the font drop down list.

Now, select the symbol, and click Insert. (There is one more character in the font, surprise!)

That’s it………

There are few other ways you can insert the sign.

• Insert from Character Map in Windows. Click Start button, then run, then type charmap and Enter. Then do as above.
• Hold alt key and type 8360 in your numeric key pad. If you see Rs instead of the new symbol, then select it and change the font to Indian Rupee.
• You can also set a shortcut key in MS-Word. Go to Insert Symbol as above, select the Indian Rupee font, then click on the Shortcut Key button. Now press & hold alt key and then any that you would like to assign.  Like, you can assign it to alt+R. Then, whenever you press alt+R, the symbol will be inserted. This is the easiest method.

The above procedures can be used any Office application.

Download Link1 Link2