Implanted

King's College Hospital of London reported what they dub a "world first" breakthrough in medicine. An eight-month old boy was suffering from severe liver failure, the kind of failure that puts one on a lengthy waiting list, fingers-crossed for a donation. Instead, doctors took donated healthy liver cells and injected them directly into the young patient's failing liver. These injected cells acted as a stand-in liver by processing toxins and producing essential proteins.

 

As if this were not amazing enough, the injected liver cells were coated in a chemical that typically resides in algae. This chemical acted like armor on the injected cells and protected them from attack from the boy's immune system (since they were technically foreign invaders, albeit, waving white flags of biological peace). Algae, generally "aqua botanicals", hold significant promise in a variety of advancements within the world of medicine (they play well with stem cell research) as well more disparate fields like energy (fuel derived of algae may someday be a hot-at-the-pump item). And, on a symbiotic note, the first example of mutualism between a plant and a vertebrate was observed between salamanders and algae. The algae were observed living inside the salamander eggs giving oxygen to the embryo. Go Team Algae!

Whether or not the injection technique will be successful on others remains to be tested. King's intends on running a large clinical trial, the crux of its success hindering on anti-rejection of the injected cells.

Life sometimes can be implanted.
Implanted: --verb
  put or fixed firmly

Contranymous

The International Journal of Wellbeing reported recently on the correlation of vitality and shared positive emotions via three studies. The first demonstrated a relationship between the natural sharing of positive events and vitality leading to and maintaining a sense of positivity and vitality in those part of the exchange(s); the second study showed that individuals sharing the same positive event reported higher levels of vitality; the third study, showed individuals who shared a positive event with their partner reported higher overall vitality.

Perhaps this seems obvious; perhaps you're a happy-go-lucky optimist on the brink of winning the lotto. Regardless, the implications of the IJW's findings are nothing new, per-se. Peter Barnes' 1978 play, Red Noses, takes a sardonic venture through 14th century, plague-ridden France; Barnes' main character, Father Flote, has a particularly sensitive trigger-finger on society's pulse and serves as the vestibule for the theme of morality by heading his ambling comedia dell' arte "Red Noses" mixed-bag group of deviants, miscreants and sacrosancts as a reminder that clowning may be far more productive than sniffling. So says Flote, "every jest should be a small revolution--all forms of rebellion must come together."

Be it 14th century Black Death, or 21st century [Mad/Lib], perspective, especially shared, remains a taut instrument.

Life sometimes can be contranymous.

Contranymous: --adjective

  any word or phrase that can be its own antonym

Soi-disant

There is nothing contagious about Steven Soderbergh's current "thriller" masquerading as an intellectual's version of "28 Days Later", "Contagion". The best thing about this movie was the marketing that got me into the theater (including the seriously star-studded roster of actors who must have long been stashed in Soderbergh's favor bank or who simply can't read). At its best, "Contagion" felt like a 120-minute long news reel, albeit, with headlines harkening dusty topics including:

Swine flu;
Bird flu;
The rainforest;
Katrina;
A black man in a position of power;
Santization gear a'la E.T.;
Surgical masks in public;
Chaos, looting and general public displays of animal instinct;
Cheating on your husband right before you have a foam-at-the-mouth seizure and die;
The prom;
Jude Law being unattractive;
Digital cameras whose contents tell a story, alas, too late.

The coup de grace: blame it all on the Chinese.

Yes, you will walk out of this movie feeling sick.

Life sometimes can be soi-disant.
Soi-disant: --adjective
  so-called or pretended.