Astronomy

Stem cell transplants could reverse diabetesIan SampleHalf a billion people worldwide live with diabetes. There are different types with different causes, but all lead people to have too much sugar in their blood. If not well controlled, this excess glucose can inflict damage throughout the body, putting people at risk of gum disease, nerve damage, kidney disease, blindness, amputations, heart attack, stroke and cancer.For now, patients manage the condition with medicines, insulin and lifestyle changes, but a new generation of treatments could reverse the disease. Details of the first woman treated for type 1 diabetes with stem cells taken from her own body were announced last month. Beforehand, the 25-year-old needed substantial amounts of insulin. Now she produces her own.In April, a sim...

The supermoon to rise into the Thursday night sky will be the brightest of the year, experts say, rivalled only by a comet dubbed “the best of the decade” so far.The October full moon, also known as the hunter’s moon, will be the third of four back-to-back supermoons, preceded by September’s harvest moon and August’s blue supermoon. November’s beaver moon is still to come.Dr Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist from the Australian National University, explains the full moon names often come from those given to them in North America by the Farmer’s Almanac and Native Americans because, like many cultures, they regulated themselves through the lunar cycle.In the case of the hunter’s moon, it coincides with the time of year approaching winter since “your last chance at going out and hunting for foo...