Archive for July, 2010

Mark Twain

Friday, July 16th, 2010

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“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
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Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called “the Great American Novel”, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He is extensively quoted. Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty…

Read on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

Scientists use pig embryo to create stem cells

Friday, July 16th, 2010

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CNN  health news May 4, 2010

Scientists appear to have broken another barrier in stem cell research by creating a better research model to study human illnesses – a pig – actually 34 pigs.
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It’s an important advance for research because pigs are much more like humans than other lab animals are.
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The scientists did not clone the pigs – instead they adapted a procedure used in mice and human stem cell research and were able to grow a specific kind of cell, induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPS cells.
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Pluripotent stem cells have the ability to turn into any cell in the body. IPS cells were first developed about five years ago by Shinya Yamanaka, who used four genes to coax a regular mouse cell into acting like an embryo. Creating stem cells with this method is less controversial than harvesting them from an embryo, which destroys the fertilized egg in the process.
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According to Dr. Steve Stice, director of the University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center, his team took a bone marrow cell from a pig and injected six new genes, which caused it turn into an embryo-like cell.  Pluripotent stem cells were harvested from this embryo-like cell and injected in another pig embryo.
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The first piglets carrying these new stem cells were born September 3, 2009.
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So far human embryonic stem cell research has not actually found its way into the human body.  Most of the research is still in mice.  But mice aren’t the best animal models to get more accurate data on how a treatment may affect a person.  For example, mice hearts beat four times faster than a human heart and mice don’t get atherosclerosis (clogged arteries) – but pigs do.  That’s why pigs are much better animal models says Stice. “Physiologically, pigs are much closer to a human,” he says.
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The researchers also found that unlike mouse embryonic stem cells, which can turn into cancer cells, none of the pigs developed any signs of tumors.
But it has been very difficult to harvest embryonic pluripotent stem cells from pigs. Stice credits his research assistant Franklin West with finding a way to make the existing IPS technology work in pigs.
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Now researchers hope to find many different applications for these new pig stem cells and the pigs they can produce.  They are already working with scientists at Emory University to develop insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells, which might be transplanted into people with diabetes.
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Stice thinks this new method can also be used to genetically engineer healthier livestock for other tissue transplants and food consumption. He suggests these stem cells may someday be used to make “artificial bacon,” which would eliminate the need to slaughter pigs.
The research will be published in the online journal “Stem Cell and Development.”
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http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/04/scientists-use-pig-embryo-to-create-stem-cells/

The Cure

Friday, July 16th, 2010


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Friday I’m in Love
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I don’t care if Monday’s blue
Tuesday’s gray and Wednesday too
Thursday I don’t care about you
It’s Friday, I’m in love
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Monday you can fall apart
Tuesday, Wednesday break my heart
Oh, Thursday doesn’t even start
It’s Friday I’m in love
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Saturday, wait
And Sunday always comes too late
But Friday, never hesitate…
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I don’t care if Mondays black
Tuesday, Wednesday - heart attack
Thursday, never looking back
It’s Friday, I’m in love
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Monday, you can hold your head
Tuesday, Wednesday stay in bed
Or Thursday - watch the walls instead
It’s Friday, I’m in love
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Saturday, wait
And Sunday always comes too late
But Friday, never hesitate…
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Dressed up to the eyes
It’s a wonderful surprise
To see your shoes and your spirits rise
Throwing out your frown
And just smiling at the sound
And as sleek as a sheik
Spinning round and round
Always take a big bite
It’s such a gorgeous sight
To see you eat in the middle of the night
You can never get enough
Enough of this stuff
It’s Friday, I’m in love
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I don’t care if Monday’s blue
Tuesday’s gray and Wednesday too
Thursday I don’t care about you
It’s Friday, I’m in love
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Monday you can fall apart
Tuesday, Wednesday break my heart
Thursday doesn’t even start
It’s Friday I’m in love
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