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Stem cell therapies can be life changing, but they have only been approved for a handful of conditions. That doesn’t stop thousands of clinics around the world – including in the US, Mexico, India and China – offering treatments for conditions ranging from hair loss to Parkinson’s.
Some of these clinics touting unproven stem cell treatments have been endorsed by celebrities. Often desperate people are shelling out thousands of dollars for treatments that can do little good and can cause serous harm. Darius Widera, a stem cell biologist, reports.
Every year, lists of the most liveable cities on Earth are produced. But in whose eyes are these cities liveable? The people who do live in them, or near them, may have very different criteria to those international groups that asses them. And as parts of Europe and the US are hit by more heatwaves, what can be done to help deal with them?
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Xinhua/Alamy Stock Photo
Darius Widera, University of Reading
Over 1,500 clinics are selling unapproved and unproven stem cell therapies.
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The fungus Aspergillus fumigatus. This fungus can cause a number of disorders in people with compromised immune function or other lung diseases.
Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library/GettyImages
Rachael Dangarembizi, University of Cape Town
Africa is suffering from a silent, but costly, epidemic of fungal infections.
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Dean Lewins/AAP
David Rowe, Western Sydney University
It’s the biggest sporting event in Australia since the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
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Emma Hill, Coventry University; Ben Vivian, Coventry University
Europe is gripped by a heatwave called Cerberus - it may be a sign of things to come.
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Jesus Lizana, University of Oxford; Nicole Miranda, University of Oxford; Radhika Khosla, University of Oxford
Rising temperatures threaten the UK, Switzerland and Norway with more uncomfortably hot days – new research.
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Shreyashi Dasgupta, University of Liverpool; Annemiek Prins, Radboud University
What makes a city workable to many people is access to informal labour markets, cheap travel options, flexible housing and rental arrangements.
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Jorge Duany, Florida International University
The political status of Puerto Rico continues to be intensely contested, but measures to make the island the 51st state remain elusive.
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Victoria Gibbon, University of Cape Town
Hopefully more curators and custodians of repositories of human skeletal remains will attempt to redress some of the wrongs of the past.
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Peter Dreier, Occidental College
As actors join screenwriters in a strike that has shut down movie productions, a labor historian looks back at union action on the silver screen.
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Ian Enochs, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Water temperatures in the 90s off Florida in July are alarming, a NOAA coral scientist writes. Scientists in several North American countries have already spotted coral bleaching off their coasts.
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