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Transplants
CBS Interactive Special
A
presentation on Organ Procurement Organizations (by state),
charts and figures on organ waiting lists, organ transplant
history, and a potential future source for human organ transplants
- pigs:
(click for
CBS Interactive Special)
Nigeria
Blasts Toll Reaches 1,000
Saturday, February
2, 2002
Excerpts
from article
updating the death toll from an explosion in Lagos, Nigeria:
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The
death toll from last weekend's disaster at an army weapons dump
in Lagos has risen to more than 1,000, officials have said.
Most
of the dead and missing are children who drowned in a canal
during a stampede from the scene of a series of huge explosions
on Sunday.
Nigeria's
Home Affairs Commissioner Musiliu Obanikoro, speaking on the
private Lagos radio station Rhythm on Saturday, said: "From
everything I have seen, as more bodies have been found over
the days, the number of people who are deceased is now over
1,000 people."
...
The Nigerian Red Cross, which has reunited 1,800 children with
their parents and is feeding 11,500 people displaced by the
blasts, says 460 people remain unaccounted for.
The
disaster is believed to have started when a fire erupted triggering
a series of explosions that lasted for hours.
The
blasts spread shells and flaming debris for kilometers around
the army depot in the northern Ikeja neighborhood of Nigeria's
crowded commercial capital. ...
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Source:
DNA
Downloads Alone
Tuesday, February 5,
2002
Excerpts
from article
describing a key aspect of the manner in which precursors to
life (as we know it) may have gotten their start around four
billion years ago:
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Chemists
have reproduced the basic process of information transfer central
to all life without the catalysts that facilitate it in living
cells.
Two
million years ago life looked
like this. Four billion years ago
it was a different story.
They
show that DNA alone can pass its message on to subsequent generations.
Many researchers believe that DNA-like molecules acted thus
to get life started about four billion years ago - before catalytic
proteins existed to help DNA to replicate.
The
experiment ... might create a new basis for the precise synthesis
of useful polymer materials. It may even hasten the advent of
synthetic biology: the creation of life from scratch. ...
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Source:
Myth
Versus Miracle
Tuesday, February 5,
2002
The
following article addresses the fundamental core nature of religion
and a key question which all of faith would be well-served to
tackle head on ...
"Does
the truth matter and how can one distinguish faith from delusion,
empty claims from manifested realities, over-zealous devotion
(what many want to be true) from the actual nature of being
(revelation of a world constrained and comprehensible solely
within the boundaries of physics, not make believe)?" ...
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Was
Juan Diego an Aztec to whom the Virgin Mary appeared almost
500 years ago? Or is he simply the leading character in a feel-good
fairy tale?
Millions
of Mexican Catholics and Pope John Paul II believe that Juan
Diego was real, and pilgrims come from all over this country
to visit, built near the site where the Virgin is believed to
have appeared.
Hanging
over the altar is Juan Diego's cloak, bearing an image of Mary
said to have appeared miraculously. Thousands of people a day
ride a moving walkway that passes below the cloak, the nation's
most sacred religious relic.
Devotion
to the Virgin, and to Juan Diego, is so fervent here that many
pilgrims make the last part of the journey on their knees.
The
basilica is the second most visited Catholic shrine in the world,
with 20 million visitors last year, behind only St. Peter's
Basilica in Rome.
...
A vocal minority of priests and church historians, including
the former head priest of the Basilica of Guadalupe, has opened
an emotional national debate here by publicly stating what some
scholars have long believed: that there is no convincing historical
record that Juan Diego ever existed.
They
say he was probably fabricated by Spanish conquerors as a means
of converting the country's native tribes to Catholicism.
"It's
a story, like Cinderella was a story," said the Rev. Manuel
Olimon Nolasco, one of seven men who signed four letters sent
to the Vatican recently, asking John Paul to reconsider the
decision to grant sainthood.
Olimon
and the others argue that adding Juan Diego's name to the church's
hallowed roster of saints might make millions of Catholics feel
good, but that his candidacy does not meet the church's rigorous
standard of documentation for those it canonizes.
...
[Olimon says] Mexico's 90 million Catholics, and millions more
Mexicans in the United States, are a powerful political force
that the church wants to please.
"We
are not asking that people stop their devotion," he said.
"But we think the process should be made with history in
mind. The truth is very important."
In
Mexico, few are listening to those arguments. Many find the
debate irrelevant: To them, Juan Diego exists not because historians
say he does, but because generations of their families have
been devoted to him. That is unlikely to change. ...
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Source:
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Safer
/ More Productive Pregnancy?
Wednesday,
February 6, 2002
Excerpts
from
articles describing data which indicates sexual intimacy (of
various kinds) between partners enhances the chances of a successful
pregnancy:
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Oral
sex makes pregnancies safer and more successful - study
New
research suggests oral sex may not only help a woman conceive
but may make her pregnancy safer and more successful.
The
Australian study found that semen contains a growth factor which
helps persuade a mother's immune system to accept sperm.
It
claims to have found evidence that regular exposure before pregnancy,
especially by mouth, helps her immune system get used to her
partner's sperm.
Disorders
during pregnancy often stem from the battle between the immune
system and the foetus as a 'foreign body'.
Many
of its 'foreign' proteins come courtesy of the father's genes
so if the mother is regularly exposed to them her body is more
likely to accept them.
Professor
Gustaaf Dekker, from the University of Adelaide, said: "If
there's repeated exposure to that signal then eventually when
the woman conceives, her cells will say, 'we know that guy,
he's been around a long time, we'll allow the pregnancy to continue."
...
Sex 'primes woman for sperm'
Regular
sex with the same man may prime a woman's immune system not
to reject his sperm when they try to conceive, scientists suggest.
The theory could partly explain why humans have sex even when
they aren't trying for a baby.
Even
a year before conception, exposure to sperm, either through
intercourse or other sex acts, can have protective effects against
problems ranging from infertility to miscarriages and high blood
pressure during pregnancy.
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Sources:
When
Mind Meets Machines
Thursday, February
7, 2002
Excerpts
from article
describing the current and future state of human-machine interaction
known as bionics:
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Once
the stuff of science fiction and 1970s television, the idea
of engineering replacement parts for the human body is making
its way toward reality. Scientists around the world are working
on all kinds of bionic spare parts, including groundbreaking
technologies that communicate in near-real time with the brain.
...
While the next-generation techniques to restore vision, hearing,
and mobility are at different stages of development, they all
involve the same principle. If there is a defect in a part of
the nervous system that converts outside information into electrical
messages for the brain, or vice versa, then it should be possible
to bypass the defect with technology that can do the translation.
...
Research is under way to develop “brain-computer interfaces”
that would allow individuals to control artificial or paralyzed
limbs by thinking about moving them.
...
Scientists have already demonstrated that it is possible to
use electrodes to detect certain patterns of brain activity.
A computer then recognizes these patterns as movement commands
and directs a robotic arm to make simple movements, such as
grasping.
It
may be possible to produce more complex movements by decoding
neural signals arriving at the limb, instead of those emerging
from the brain.
...
Certain preliminary technologies may someday lead to implants
in the retina that provide partial vision to people with retinal
disease.
...
Results may come somewhat sooner in the field of auditory brain-stem
implants, microelectrode arrays that directly stimulate an auditory
processing center in the brain. ...
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Source:
Genetic
Evidence: How Evolution Redesigns Bodies
Friday, February 8,
2002
Excerpts
from articles
describing the discovery of genetic evidence for significant
alterations in body design:
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Biologists
have uncovered important genetic evidence about how evolution
redesigns animals.
It
explains how large-scale changes to body plans can arise from
very simple genetic mutations, or errors.
The
scientists say these mutations occur in regulatory genes that
control embryonic development.
They
believe such "mistakes" would have caused crustaceans
with limbs on every segment of their bodies to evolve 400 million
years ago into a radically different shape: six-legged insects,
and then into other types of animals.
...
"How can evolution introduce big changes in an animal's
body shape and still generate a living animal?
...
"Until now, no one's been able to demonstrate how you could
do that at the genetic level with specific instructions in the
genome."
Writing
in the journal Nature, the researchers show that this could
be accomplished with relatively simple mutations in a class
of regulatory genes, known as Hox. These act as master switches
by turning on and off other genes during embryonic development.
...
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Sources:
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