Word: organic
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...mixed-race, people of Beaufort West in an area of scrubland that is South Africa's version of Arizona. That's where I was born, and now the house where I was born is a museum. Next door is the church where my father preached, my mother played the organ and I pumped the bellows for it. Maybe that's where, subconsciously, I started getting interested in the pump, which is all the heart is, after all. I can remember as a boy when they rang a big bell in Beaufort West at 9 o'clock, and all the colored...
...with Harvard's Joseph Vacanti, Langer is using tailor-made polymers to build tiny scaffolds that can then be seeded with skin, cartilage, liver or other cells. The idea is to provide a temporary structure that cells can colonize and upon which they can eventually grow into a functioning organ--at which point the scaffold dissolves away. Langer foresees the day when scientists will be able to grow a new liver or pancreas for patients waiting for scarce donor organs. Skin grown using Langer's principles has been approved by the FDA, and cartilage for rib cages is in clinical...
...great irony of human intelligence is that the only species on Earth capable of reason, complex-problem solving, long-term planning and consciousness understands so little about the organ that makes it all possible--the brain. Scientists' knowledge of how and why the brain works is patchy at best compared with their awareness of other vital body parts--heart, lungs, kidneys, skin...
...great period of Atlantic concluded in the mid-?60s, after Charles and Darin and Leiber and Stoller left the label. I acknowledge that later ?60s Atlantic music can get to me: I still do choke up at the church-organ screaming solemnity of "When a Man Loves a Woman." I have a sneaking fondness for early BeeGees, and not only sneaking: that first album has a half-dozen Beatles-worthy tunes on it, and "To Love Somebody" has stood the test of time as a magnificent Australo-American R&B wailer. But the late ?60s can?t compete...
Meanwhile, doctors have had growing success with a different kind of mechanical pump, called a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), that is also implanted in the body but helps boost the heart's output without replacing the organ. In some cases the ailing heart gets enough rest on the LVAD that it no longer needs artificial support. Researchers are trying to figure out if they can nudge that process along, perhaps by using stem cells to stimulate healing...