Women in Africa are ready to go : Investing in African Women Makes Good Business Sense.

Investing in African Women Makes Good Business Sense. There is little doubt that Africa will witness rapid yet uneven economic and demographic growth in the next 20 years. The continent’s rise can positively affect the global economy by introducing a decisive regional economic force that must be reckoned with. The very steps that will enable this progress — such as the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, widespread investments in communications, transportation and distribution infrastructures, a greater emphasis on advancing agro-industry, and broad changes in education systems to prepare market-ready graduates to fuel the continent’s rise — are lagging. This is not new. Since the last century, Africans from diverse communities as well as thought leaders have lamented the lack of coherent strategies in individual countries, regional groupings and Africa at large that address shortcomings identified by governments and multilateral organizations.

Cells from cow knee joints used to grow new cartilage tissue in laboratory.

An effort to develop a method for cartilage tissue engineering, researchers have successfully used cartilage cells from cow knee joints. By creating a successful method with conditions conducive to growing healthy cartilage tissue, the findings could help lead to a new treatment cure for osteoarthritis using stem cell-based tissue engineering, a new report suggests. In an effort to develop a method for cartilage tissue engineering, researchers at Umeå University in Sweden successfully used cartilage cells from cow knee joints. By creating a successful method with conditions conducive to growing healthy cartilage tissue, the findings could help lead to a new treatment cure for osteoarthritis using stem cell-based tissue engineering. This is according to a doctoral dissertation at Umeå University. Tissue engineering provides a possible solution to osteoarthritis. In their experiments, the researchers at Umeå University made findings that provided useful information for efforts to develop new methods to produce cartilage-like "neotissues" in a laboratory environment. In the engineering process, the cells, the signaling molecules and the scaffold, i.e. artificial support material, are combined to regenerate tissue at the damaged site in the joint. The process is difficult and much of what constitutes suitable growth factors and a mechanical loading environment is still unknown. Today, there is a huge variety of available synthetic and natural scaffolds. It is also unclear whether stem cells or primary cells are best suited. Using primary bovine chondrocytes, i.e. cartilage cells from cows, the researchers improved methods to grow cartilage tissue in a laboratory environment, producing tissue similar to tissue normally present in the human joints. In future, these results may help the development of neocartilage production for actual cartilage repair. For this, stem cells could be grown to provide unlimited amount of material for tissue engineering. However, more research is needed to improve the tissue quality and make it more structurally similar to the hyaline cartilage found in the human body. source; science daily.