AWC new’s

If you have nothing to do next Saturday and want to donate money to a good cause and see some hot men in nothing but a speedo check out the Santa Speedo Run.

This year’s run will start from Lir on Boylston at 1:00pm on Saturday, December 12th. They will be running to raise money for Crossroads for Kids and Bottom Line. Please see the Charity page or visit their website to learn more.

Started in Boston in December 2000 by five intrepid men, the Santa Speedo Run has gone on to attract thousands of runners over the last eight years.

Did you know that heart muscle damage can be reversed naturally? I am walking, talking, living proof, and this article is a case study profiling that proof.

Case History of Reversing Heart Muscle Damage

Five years ago I underwent surgery to replace a congenitally-faulty aortic valve in my heart. The valve didn’t shut properly and leaked with every heart beat, making my heart less efficient. I had lived with this valve for 67 years without realizing that it was faulty. I suffered from symptoms of this congenital defect but never realized the reason.

Cialis Professional

For instance, although I have always had great physical strength, I have never been able to perform exercise that required prolonged cardiovascular stamina. I always wondered how people could jog and talk at the same time, since I could hardly run half a mile without being totally winded.

After the surgery, I was able to do aerobic exercises that I had never been able to do before. I could easily run for 30 minutes without being winded. However, my physician informed me that my echocardiogram results indicated that my heart muscle was enlarged and somewhat damaged from a lifetime of overwork. She told me that this kind of enlargement could never be reversed, and that I would have to treat my heart with care for the rest of my life.

I appreciated her concern, but being a doctor of Chinese Medicine I did not believe that the situation could not be reversed. In Chinese Medicine it is believed that any condition can be healed.

Natural Supplement Therapy

After surgery my cardiologist prescribed coumadin to prevent any blood from clotting on the artificial aortic valve. I had serious side effects from taking coumadin so I switched to a natural blood regulator called nattokinase, which has been used by Asians for centuries to dissolve and prevent blood clots. In addition, I increased my intake of coenzyme Q10 from 30 mg to 180 mg. I had taken coenzyme Q10 for years as a natural form of support for my heart, and since I knew it had healing properties for the heart muscle, I increased my intake to therapeutic levels.

Echocardiogram Test Results

I get an echocardiogram once a year to ensure that my artificial heart valve is functioning properly and to check the general health of my heart. Three years ago, the results from my annual echocardiogram astonished my physician. She called me and asked me what I had been doing for my heart. I told her, and then asked her why. She replied that my heart muscle was no longer enlarged and that the heart wall was no longer thickened. This surprised her greatly since she had never seen a reversal of this kind in her practice.

I am pleased that my heart muscle has recovered from the stresses of a lifetime of overwork, and gratified that the Chinese Medicine point of view, where healing is always possible, has proven true in my case. I hope these results will inspire others with “chronic conditions” to realize that any condition can be healed, and that natural supplementation is always an option to consider.

There are many different kinds of flies that specialize in particular food sources such as rotting fruit, dead animals and earthworms. This document covers Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques for control of flies.

The term living statue refers to a mime artist who poses like a statue or mannequin, usually with realistic statue-like makeup, sometimes for hours at a time. It is an art that requires a great deal of patience and physical stamina.

Living statue performers have been known to pose as shop window mannequins in order to fool passersby, and a number of hidden camera shows on television have had living statues suddenly spring to life to startle people. As with all performing arts, living statue performers may perform as buskers or in commissioned shows. Some living statues are also invited to perform in fine arts exhibitions.

© Gist Croft and Mackenzie Weygandt, Columbia University and Project ALS, New York, N.Y.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease) motor neurons. The stem cells used to generate these motor neurons were induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells made from the skin cells of an 83-year-old ALS patient.

This image won tenth prize in the Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Comptition, an international competition of microscope imagery. The winners were announced November 18, 2009. This year, the competition received nearly 2,000 entries from 62 countries. All images and the names of the top winners and Honorable Mentions may be viewed online, and some of images will be part of a traveling exhibition.

A selection of winning images follows.

© Haruka Fujimaki, Bryant Pond, Maine

Atlantic salmon embryos. Ninth prize.

© Heiti Paves, Tallinn, Estonia

Flower of Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress), a popular model organism in plant biology and genetics. Image captured using confocal microscopy using a 20x objective lens. Eighth prize.

© Albert Pan, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Sensory axons (long, slender nerve fibers) covering the tail of a 3-day-old larval zebrafish. This is a “Brainbow” image made using confocal microscopy. In the Brainbow technique, cells randomly choose combinations of red, yellow and cyan fluorescent proteins, so that they each glow a particular color. This provides a way to distinguish neighboring cells of the nervous system and follow their pathways. Seventh prize.

© Alvaro Migotto, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Tentacle of Portuguese Man o’ War, Physalia physalis, magnified 30x. Notorious for its painful, powerful sting, the Portuguese Man o’ War has a gas-filled floating chamber that supports the tentacles, which bear sting cells. Shown are the pink batteries of stinging cells and a delicate muscular band responsible for the high contractibility of the tentacles. Sixth prize.

© David Domozych, Department of Biology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Unicellular alga Penium, treated with the microtubule poison oryzalin. Fifth prize.

© Charles Krebs, Issaquah, Wash.

Fresh water algae Haematococcus pluvialis, 100x. Phase contrast microscopy. Fourth prize.

(Third prize went to a time-lapse video of algae cells by Jeremy Pickett-Heaps of the University of Melbourne, Australia.)

© Chung-Ju Rachel Wang, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley

Nucleus of a plant cell showing synaptonemal complex, a ladder-like protein structure that forms between pairing chromosomes
during meiosis (the cell division required for reproduction). This may be the first-ever high-resolution 3D image of this complex
ever captured with light microscopy. The two parallel axes of this complex, which run the length of each chromosome, are seen as two threads spaced 100-200 nm apart and twisting around each other in a helix. Second prize.

© Jan Michels, Department of Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Institute of Zoology, Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, Germany.

Water flea Daphnia atkinsoni. This specimen has a “crown of thorns,” a defensive trait induced in offspring only when the parents sense chemical cues released by one of their main predators, the tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis. The water flea’s exoskeleton (exterior structure, green) and subcellular details within the organism (nuclei – tiny blue dots) are both visible. First prize.