Word: organism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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According to a recent BBC undercover investigation, Oct. 1 has many interesting meanings in the People’s Republic of China. It is, of course, the country’s National Day. It is also, the BBC reports, the peak of organ season in China’s rapidly growing organ transplant centers (frequented by many a rich Westerner in need of a liver or two). The reason for this October surge in organ supply is simple, the BBC reports: Prisoner executions in China always go up before the national holiday...
...Most wild birds have some parasites, but these birds were overwhelmed," said Lev G. Gayle, executive director of A&M's veterinary diagnostic lab. Autopsies revealed that the birds had parasites in every organ in their body, even in skeletal muscle and their brains, in a few cases. All wild birds have some level of parasites in their bodies, Gayle said. It was likely these 60, which appeared not to have eaten recently, were the most vulnerable and weakened of a large flock numbering in the hundreds. Increasing parasite levels made them weaker and more susceptible to sudden temperature change...
Cech’s words sound strikingly similar to those of a June 2006 statement from Harvard describing the first science building in Allston as a place “where scientists can work side by side sharing findings and approaches that may apply to different organ systems...
Trying to map the brain has always been cartography for fools. Most of the other parts of the body reveal their workings with little more than a glance. The heart is self-evidently a pump; the lungs are clearly bellows. But the brain, which does more than any organ, reveals least of all. The 3-lb. lump of wrinkled tissue--with no moving parts, no joints or valves--not only serves as the motherboard for all the body's other systems but also is the seat of your mind, your thoughts, your sense that you exist at all. You have...
Slowly, that is changing. As 21st century science and technology open the brain to us as never before, accepted truths are becoming less true. The brain, we're finding, is indeed a bordered organ, subdivided into zones and functions. But the lines are blurrier than we ever imagined. Lose your vision, and the lobe that processed light may repurpose itself for other senses. Suffer a stroke in the area that controls your right arm, and another area may take over at least some...