The Agriculture Department confirmed the first case of mad cow disease in America on December 23, 2003, in a cow born in Alberta, Canada, in April 1997, only four months before the United States and Canada began banning the use of brain and spinal cord tissue in cattle feed.

CNN: USDA quarantines 2 farms in mad cow investigation

She says surgery for vocal-cord nodules left scar tissue that prevents her from singing.

CNN: Showbuzz

Tissue from the cord of new born babies is being recycled by doctors to help patients who need a bone marrow transplant, but who cannot find a match.

BBC: Foetus

It is not yet known whether it is possible to generate extensive neuroplasticity in a system that has been injured for a long time and now contains many more complications such as abundant scar tissue, large holes in the spinal cord and where many spinal nerve cells and long range nerve fibres have died or degenerated.

BBC: 'Hope' for the paralysed?

Meninges are the thin layers of tissue that protect the brain and the spinal cord under the skull.

CNN: Sheryl Crow: Brain tumor is a 'bump in the road'

Very few human spinal cord injuries occur as a result of a direct cut through spinal tissue (as was the injury model in the Courtine study).

BBC: 'Hope' for the paralysed?

The evidence suggests that umbilical cord stem cells may be even better than embryonic stem cells when it comes to replacing damaged tissue.

FORBES: Navel Gazing

For her pioneering approach to biomaterial development to regenerate damaged nerve tissue and for her development of a new method to deliver drugs to the spinal cord and brain.

UNESCO: UK National Commission for UNESCO - UK scientist receives global award at the 17th Annual L��Or��al-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards

If the spinal cord is damaged in a way that cuts the bladder off from the brain, the nervous tissue below the break will often remodel itself to create a new bladder-emptying reflex.

ECONOMIST: We can rebuild him. We have the technology