Word: brained
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...difficulties. A study by Oxford University's department of physiology published in this month's issue of the U.S. journal Pediatrics found that underachieving British children's reading and spelling abilities were dramatically improved when their diets were supplemented with fish oils containing omega-3 fatty acids - essential for brain development but missing from modern processed foods. Schools and parents are finally waking up to the notion that poor diet is making kids fatter, angrier and less able to learn. The health-and-nutrition class at St. Joan of Arc, for instance, is part of a government-sponsored effort...
Politicians are no strangers to hot air, which may explain why so many are rushing to condemn a new gadget that enables users to inhale vaporized alcohol. The contraption, known as AWOL (short for Alcohol Without Liquid), looks like an asthma inhaler and reputedly gets booze to the brain faster. Eighteen states have introduced legislation banning the device, and last week Kansas became the second state (after Colorado) to sign its bill into law. "This is the equivalent of putting a funnel at bars, inviting people to get drunker quicker," says Florida state senator Mike Haridopolos, who cosponsored that state...
...Patients like Willie face a terrible fate. Relentless and always fatal, MND kills motor neurones, the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that activate muscles. As muscles stop working, sufferers lose the ability to speak, walk and even cough, but their minds remain alert, horribly aware of the spreading paralysis. No one knows what causes the disease, and most patients die when their breathing fails. By late last year, with Willie unable to speak and finding it so hard to swallow she could barely eat, the couple were willing to try anything...
...March, after friends organized a fund-raiser, the Terpstras traveled to Chaoyang hospital in Beijing. There, under local anesthetic, Willie had two holes drilled into the front of her head and about two million cells injected into her brain tissue. Performing the 50-min. operation was neurosurgeon Huang Hongyun, who believes the cells he uses - often wrongly described as stem cells but actually olfactory ensheathing glial cells (oegs) taken from the noses of aborted second-trimester fetuses - can help restore some of the functions stolen by MND and spinal-cord damage. That same day, surrounded by her ecstatic family, Willie...
...awful, says Professor Perry Bartlett, director of the Queensland Brain Institute, "that the desire to do something in this area is stupendous. But there are lots of people willing to satisfy that demand in a way that doesn't fit with the rigor of clinical trials or experimental data." Given the number of people being operated on by Huang, "the real tragedy," says Bartlett, "is that there may be something in it but you would never be able to decipher it. And if there isn't, then we should be able to put it to bed." Huang wasn't available...