Morning Fluff: English Bulldog puppies take their first squeaky steps.
[cuteoverload.]
Ho-ly.Shit.
On Immunology. POW
18 points above the average in physio and a 90 in MCB. It might be a good semester.
oh my god.
EAT MY CAKE
Of my class, not bad for first semester. Let’s see if I can’t get up to top 10% in this next semester, maybe top 5 by the end!
This Is Important, You Should Watch It of the Day: To promote his effort to raise production funds for a documentary about anti-gay discrimination, filmmaker Ryan James Yezak released a seven-minute compilation of clips cataloging the conquered battlegrounds of the gay rights movement scattered amidst a war yet to be won.
“I am not a second class citizen,” Yezak says. “You are not a second class citizen. Right now, the laws in place (and lack thereof) say that we are. Let’s change that.”
[rjy.]
Sad News of the Day: Milo, the 12-year-old sea otter who gained Internet stardom after being filmed holding hands with his female companion Nyac, has passed away.
Milo was undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma at the Vancouver Aquarium, but sadly succumbed to the disease earlier this week.
“He was the very first live sea otter diagnosed with lymphoma,” said Aquarium veterinarian Dr. Martin Haulena. “He was also the very first sea otter that I’m aware of that had chemotherapy.”
Bodies of wild otters recovered after death have tested positively for lymphoma, but Milo was the first living otter to be diagnosed with it.
“He was one of our emblematic animals who was loved by staff, volunteers, members and people worldwide,” said the aquarium in a statement. “Our team—especially those who worked closely with Milo during the past months to provide specialized care while he was receiving treatment — are saddened by his death, but take solace in his peaceful departure.”
Nyac, Milo’s significant otter, arrived at the aquarium in 1989 following the Exxon Valdez oil spill. She passed away in 2008 from chronic lymphatic leukemia at age 20.
:(
Four hemophiliac patients successfully treated with gene therapy
Hemophilia, a disease whose victims can suffer serious internal bleeding and may bleed to death from injuries, has a long and eventful history. Caused by defective blood clotting factors, the disease has been with us since at least the second century, when a rabbi gave mothers whose first two sons had bled to death from circumcision wounds permission to leave the third sons uncircumcised. It also famously afflicted several members of European royal families. But a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine brings us a bit closer to a new kind of historic event: a cure.
Following up on years of preclinical trials, including the curing of hemophiliac mice earlier this year, scientists gave six patients a gene therapy treatment, injecting them with a specially built virus carrying a functioning version of the gene for the defective clotting factor. The virus inserted the gene into liver cells, which proceeded to manufacture the clotting factor, and the patients maintained elevated levels of it for over 6 months. Four of the patients were able to stop receiving injections of clotting factor (the current treatment) altogether.
(via happyproletariat)
thingsthatexciteme: Olga Fonda
(Source: libraryvixen)