Sunday, January 9, 2011 Stem Cell Transplant Helps Athletic Student See Again  Taylor Binns was nearly blind by the time he met Allan Slomovic this fall at Toronto Western Hospital. A rare, extremely painful disorder that damages stem cells in the cornea had blurred his vision. Sometimes it felt as if he was being stabbed in the eyes with a knife. But the fourth-year Queen's University student is celebrating the gift of sight thanks to his kid sister, Tori, and a new stem cell transplant program started by Dr. Slomovic and his colleagues. Read More >>
back to top  Saturday, January 8, 2011 Giant Water Lily: Nature's Hidden Designs  In still or slowly-moving waters there is one easy way to collect light: a plant can float its leaves upon the surface. No plant does this on a more spectacular scale than the giant Amazon water-lily. First surfacing as a simple bud, within a few hours, it bursts open and starts to spread. Expanding at the rate of half a square yard in a single day, the leaf grows until it is six feet across and stays afloat with special air-spaces within. On the underside, it glows a rich purple color. Read More >>
back to top Friday, January 7, 2011 Can Science Create Heroes?  Can modern science help us to create heroes? That's the lofty question behind the Heroic Imagination Project, a new nonprofit started by Phil Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University. Heroism isn't supposed to be a teachable trait. We assume that people like Gandhi or Rosa Parks or the 9/11 hero Todd Beamer have some intangible quality that the rest of us lack. When we get scared and selfish, these brave souls find a way to act, to speak out, to help others in need. That's why they're heroes. Zimbardo rejects this view. "We've been saddled for too long with this mystical view of heroism," he says. "A hero is just an ordinary person who does something extraordinary. I believe we can use science to teach people how to do that." Read More >>
back to top Thursday, January 6, 2011 Homeless Man with 'Golden Voice'  Ted Williams was homeless, but with a golden voice. A chance YouTube video changed everything. Williams story became a viral sensation on January 4, with the original YouTube clip reaching more than four million views in 24 hours. He was found by a dispatch reporter on the side of the road, using his incredible voice to collect money on the street, holding a cardboard sign that asks motorists for help and says, "I'm an ex-radio announcer who has fallen on hard times." Read More >>
back to top Wednesday, January 5, 2011 Importance of Kindgergarten  An experienced teacher and a small class in kindergarten can set a person up for life. At least according to a large-scale study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The bureau study, conducted by a team of economists, draws on data from Project STAR, one of the most widely studied education experiments in the United States. The project spans 11,600 students and their teachers in kindergarten through third grade across 79 schools. What's unique is that, while numerous studies have shown the benefits of intensive preschool programs, this study is the first to link a better classroom environment in the earliest grades to success in adulthood. The study shows compelling proof of how kindergarten affects your salary, your chances of going to college and owning a home, and even your retirement savings. Read More >>
back to top Tuesday, January 4, 2011 A Missed Flight & A Connection Found  On a plane bound for O'Hare International Airport, Elsie Clark felt weak, scared and utterly alone -- until she spotted a pair of shiny leather shoes across the aisle. What happened to the 79-year-old Canadian over the next 12 hours-- being embraced by a good Samaritan, escorted through O'Hare in a wheelchair and welcomed to a swanky high-rise for dinner overlooking Lake Michigan-- saved her from a traumatic stranding in Chicago. It also proved that, even in tough times, people can surprise each other with kindness. Read More >>
back to top Monday, January 3, 2011 Matching Kids and Mentors  To the beat of Aretha Franklin, and with pizza-laden paper plates poised precariously on their laps, families sit in the crowd at the assembly hall of Horace Mann Middle School. They are waiting. They look slightly anxious. It's not graduation day- though it is something akin. The seventh and eighth graders here are at a pivotal time in their young lives, when school dropout problems can begin, experts say. Recognizing the threat, these families are participating in Spark, a program that aims to boost graduation rates of at-risk youth through one-on-one job apprenticeships. Earlier this school year, the students met their apprentices in what co-founder Chris Balme calls "a beautiful and amazingly awkward moment." Read More >>
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One act of kindness that befell British writer Bernard Hare in 1982 changed him profoundly. Then a student living just north of London, he spins the story of himself during a young, troubled, and disrupted time in life. "... my mother was in hospital and not expected to survive the night. "Get home, son," my dad said. I got to the railway station to find I'd missed the last train. A train was going as far as Peterborough, but I would miss the connecting Leeds train by twenty minutes. I bought a ticket and got on anyway. I was so desperate that I planned to nick a car in Peterborough, hitchhike, steal some money, something, anything. I just knew from my dad's tone of voice that my mother was going to die that night..." [ 
These days, it's not uncommon to skype a friend overseas, or videochat with family over the holidays. But how about using videoconferencing to provide health care to rural villages? That's what E Health Point Services is up to. By opening clinics up in rural India, the program allows patients to video chat with a doctor, and then run necessary tests and get the appropriate medicine from the clinic's pharmacy. They also gives out clean drinking water to help reduce sickness. [ 
Daniel Simonton has been sending $5 bills to strangers in the mail. And in return, he wants nothing. The idea came while he was walking down Broadway Avenue in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. He "distinctly noticed how a lot of people seemed really cranky." "I started to wonder when the last time it was someone did anything nice for these people," Simonton said. And so the experiment began... [ 
A Reakirt's blue butterfly egg (Hemiargus isola) nestles on a powderpuff bud (Mimosa strigillosa) in this six times magnified image taken by David Millard, recognized in Nikon's 2010 Small World competition. [ 
For years, Dr. Val Curtis has been persuading people in the developing world to wash their hands habitually with soap. Meanwhile, researchers at Duke and Cornell universities were examining how often smokers quit while vacationing and how much people eat when their plates are deceptively large or small. Those and other studies revealed that as much as 45 percent of what we do every day is habitual- that is, performed almost without thinking in the same location or at the same time each day, usually because of subtle cues. Today, public health campaigns are being revamped to employ habit-formation characteristics, according to people involved in those efforts. [ 
Shyam Narayan Sharma is a bedraggled man noticeable for his garland of old shoes and for wearing sandals and clothes made out of torn jute bags. He has served time in jail after turning himself in for capital crimes. While in jail, Sharma had a personal transformation and "made 600 inmates literate." Upon his release on bail, Dayasagar sold his double-story home to set up a tin shed private school for the poor called Nai Subah (New Morning) where some 60 children of the neighborhood now come for free education. [ 
