Category: techno

Adult stem cells score

Shared this story from NPR on Facebook earlier this week.

Here’s what Christianity Today had to say…

Adult Stem Cells Score Again

Windpipe transplant patient Claudia Castillo.
Windpipe transplant patient Claudia Castillo.
A trachea engineered from bone marrow stem-cells makes ethical research more appealing.

Susan Wunderink

Claudia Castillo, whose lungs had been ravaged by tuberculosis, has a new trachea. She made it herself . . . sort of.

Doctors in Spain took stem-cells from Claudia Castillo’s bone marrow and had them form a section of trachea based on the trachea of an organ donor. The scientists transplanted the 2.75-inch piece and published the results in The Lancet:

The graft immediately provided the recipient with a functional airway, improved her quality of life, and had a normal appearance and mechanical properties at 4 months. The patient had no anti-donor antibodies and was not on immunosuppressive drugs.

The results show that we can produce a cellular, tissue-engineered airway with mechanical properties that allow normal functioning, and which is free from the risks of rejection.

Castillo is the first person to have an engineered trachea transplant, The Guardian says. She has had her new windpipe for several months without immunosuppressants—a breakthrough in surgery.

Besides giving hope to those who need transplants, Castillo’s case is also important to the debate over whether to allow stem-cell research which destroys embryos.

“Engineering new tissues and organs from stem cells has long been a goal of researchers, because it would help overcome a chronic shortage of donor organs.” NPR says. “But controversies over the source of stem cells have slowed research in the United States.”

However the transplant, rather than highlighting limitations, is another victory for ethical (and legal) stem-cell research. In its Q&A on stem-cells, CNN says “In the past, because adult stem cells were considered stuck in their ways, the focus had been on embryonic cells but now scientists and doctors will be wanting to see if adult cells can be used to treat a wider range of conditions.”

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I’m hoping the Obama-Biden team sees more and more stories like these and works to provide more funding for adult stem cell research. They’ve already pledged to increase funding for embryonic stem cell research – let’s keep adult stem cell research on the table as well as stem cells from umbilical cords — as we’re doing here in Texas.

Question of the day :: church

Posed this question via Twitter (and Facebook) today.

Q of the day :: (140 characters or less) what would your ideal church/community of faith look like?

Here are the responses thus far…

Jess_Hays @jdblundell a gathering together of christ-followers accepting of each others brokeness united to worship our savior. Small and intimate.

darrinreeves @jdblundell it would look like a festival I was at this summer…no one batted an eyelid about what you looked like etc…it had all sorts

truckerfrank @jdblundell A Scottish pub

truckerfrank @Jess_Hays Drat your answer is better than mine. I’m going to pout.

robgt2 @jdblundell re qotd – church would be in/own a community center and serve the community. Or in St. Arbucks! And like @truckerfrank’s.

What would you add?

Things I’ve learned from Twitter (in the last 24 hours)

What we do

I was sharing with my life, Laurie, the other night that it’s amazing how intentional folks are on Twitter (and many on Facebook) about relationships.

I can send a txt message to 30 people and I don’t typically get any responses. I can share one message on Twitter – and within minutes 10 people from literally around the world let me know they’re praying for me. (UPDATE: I don’t mean that to say that folks who get my txt messages don’t care — see comments — but to hear or see someone actually say it does me good. I guess that’s why one of my big love languages is verbal/encouragement 🙂 ).

You really do have to be intentional about building relationships on Twitter. Otherwise it probably seems really pointless and a waste of time.

If you’re not into building relationships – you probably wouldn’t care that Jonny Baker is planning to live blog from an emerging worship conference in Oklahoma City.

Olly says girls have skills when it comes to putting on make-up in all sorts of situations.

Tripp Fuller and Chad Crawford scored an interview with Phyllis Tickle to discuss The Great Emergence. I’m looking forward to hearing the interview on their Homebrewed Christianity Podcast.

Mark Batterson is working on a new book – and likes to do it early in the morning.

Many people are still super buzzed about Obama’s election. However I think things are a little different for my friends over on Facebook. Does that make Facebook more conservative and Twitter more liberal? Or is just my friends?

Kevin Hendricks has written over 12,000 words in the novel he’s writing for nanowrimo.

Bruce Wagner has created a network at unitysocial.com. Looking forward to checking it out in a few minutes.

Sara Jane is going to UMHB’s homecoming this weekend.

Thomas went to see Sigur Ros last night while his wife stayed at home making Christmas cards and many of us on Twitter gave him a hard time about it. Today he found out he’s hosting a quiz for his team at work.

Trucker Frank is loading his truck in Shakopee MN, where it’s snowing a bit and then he’s heading to KC.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! If you’re still reading this, you should probably be on Twitter. If you’re not – well then I’m talking to myself – and my friends already on Twitter ;-).

re: How M. Scott Peck saved my life

Finished Not the Religious Type last week.

My friends are going to hate hearing the stuff that I too to heart from this book. 🙂

Stage 1,2,3,4…

Bounded sets and centered sets…

Living a life where we daily listen to God…

Great stuff!

If you’ve got time today, the author of Not the Religious Type Dave Schmelzer will be chatting online at Abunga.com about his book and views on religion both as a pastor and former atheist today, Oct. 29, from 2-3 p.m. EDT for anyone who wants to join in.

The chat will be held at Abunga.com/AuthorsAtAbunga. More details are available in our news release at: http://alrcnewskitchen.com/abunga/docs/flash/081023_dave_schmelzer.htm.

I also understand that the chat will be archived so folks like me who have to work during that time can check it out at a later point. And… I’m hoping to chat with David in the next week or so for an upcoming episode of the something beautiful podcast.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

The beauty of Twitter

Here’s one of those great articles I wish I had written. From @jontangerine… (HT to @stealingsand)

I like Twitter because…

It reminds me is that human beings are still tribal. As an example, if you check your own address book, or think about your family and friends, they probably number no more than two hundred people. We may have more in the book, but it’s rare for our intimates to be greater than two hundred people. Our networks are geographically dispersed these days. Even if your network is mostly in one location, people are so busy living that it can be difficult to stay in touch. Twitter is a facsimile of living and working in proximity for me, and provides something unique, too

Jon touches on a few things he’d like to see on twitter. I’d ditto those as well and add that I’d like to see easy ways to track physical locations as well. There are other social networks that will track your location. BrightKite will even alert you when other users or friends are in your area. A very cool feature indeed. But there’s not a good BrightKite app for Blackberry yet, so that’s a bit of a bummer for me and will probably keep me from switching anytime soon.

I also find this line from Jon’s article interesting, “but it’s rare for our intimates to be greater than two hundred people.”

I think that’s true in so many arenas of life. I only follow 66 people on twitter (and leave the SMS/txt message updates off for all but maybe 5 people) and while I have over 300 “friends” on facebook I really only keep up with/track half of them (if that). But of course it is nice when something catches my eye from those other 150ers and I can get updates on them as well.

I also see the 200 people limit playing out in churches/workplaces and more. It’s really hard to get to know more than 200 people or so in any regular setting. Even if there are 15,000 people in a room, do you really know more than 200 of them? Can you know more than 200 and build real relationships with them?

I think that’s what I love about online communities like Twitter. I know 10xs more about folks like @Jess_Hays and @sgalloway since they joined Twitter than I ever learned about them just seeing them for a couple hours on Sunday morning. The same goes for folks who constantly fill out surveys on Myspace. I learned tons of things about folks in my tribe thanks to them taking some time to be intentionally open.

What about you? What makes Twitter beautiful for you? Do you agree that it’s rare to have intimate relationships with more than 200 people? Do you think that number is much higher or less?