An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board has not found any signs of external corrosion, dents, or gouges on the pipeline damaged in a deadly explosion in September. Thus far, there is no reason to believe that any external excavation caused the pipeline rupture and explode that night. The explosion killed eight people, and injured dozens of others. Several houses were damaged in the blaze.

While investigators have not found any signs of corrosion, they have found plenty of welding seams. That does stand out, because the company that operated the pipeline, Pacific Gas & Electric has insisted that its pipes were seamless. Los Angeles personal injury lawyers expect more investigations into this aspect, especially as it indicates that PG&E either withheld information, or was simply not aware of the state of its own pipelines.

The NTSB is also looking at inspections conducted by the company on the pipeline, which was built in 1956. The agency investigators are especially looking at why the company conducted less sophisticated inspections of its pipeline, without using high-tech methods, like sending a robot into the pipe.

PG&E had reason to be concerned about that particular stretch of pipeline. That pipeline had been labeled “high risk” in 2007, and PG&E had planned to raise funds for repairs of the pipeline by billing ratepayers. However, those plans were inexplicably dropped the following year.

The NTSB investigators are also looking at why it took crew members of PG&E approximately 90 minutes to shut off the gas supply to the neighborhood the night of the fire.

It’s being hailed as one of the most dramatic breakthroughs in the use of stem cell therapy to treat medical conditions. A group of Italian researchers announced this week that they have successfully used stem cell therapy to reverse blindness caused as a result of burn injuries to the eye.

The researchers treated these patients with transplants consisting of the patient’s own stem cells. In all, 107 patients were treated with stem cell therapy to treat their blindness. The treatment was found to be completely successful in 82 of the patients, and partially successful in 14 others. The researchers monitored the patients over a period of years, and found that in some patients, the benefits of the stem cell therapy lasted for up to 10 years.

These persons had become blind because of burn injuries to the eye from splashing heavy-duty cleansers and cleaning solutions at home or in the workplace. These burn injuries had caused corneal damage, and until now, the only treatment programs that these patients could hope for, were corneal transplants in which the patients received artificial corneas, or stem cell transplants from a cadaver. Both procedures are very risky. In a corneal transplant, there's always the risk of infection and glaucoma, while in a stem cell transplant from a cadaver, there is a high risk of rejection.

In this new study however, researchers used stem cells from the healthy eye, and transplanted these into the damaged eye. That means there was no chance of rejection. However, the patients who might benefit from this therapy need to have at least one healthy eye. This treatment will not work in persons who are blind in both eyes. It can also offer no benefits to persons with optic nerve damage or macular degeneration.

Stem cell therapy has been used with some degree of success in treating a number of cancers, and research into its use is ongoing in the treatment of brain injury, spinal cord injury and other debilitating injuries. However, its use in the treatment of blindness and eye injuries has been relatively low profile, at least until now. California burn injury lawyers, who follow stem cell therapy research initiatives, will be very encouraged at these new developments.