»BREAKING NEWS» Maui jury awards $54 million in civil lawsuit
03.03.10
I spent an hour Saturday training a pair of oversized binoculars down onto Kahului Harbor, watching for The Big One.
Luckily, it never came.
What came instead was a 3-foot surge that rocked in and out of the harbor like water in a foot bath. If you blinked, you missed it.
While the tsunami fell short of expectations, it did give me a chance to break out the "old binocs" again.
I'm not sure how old the glasses actually are. I've had them for 45 years now, and the prior owner had them for 20 years before that.
He was a second mate in the Merchant Marine during and after World War II, so the binoculars have seen more of the planet than I ever will.
Lifting them to my face, I can almost picture the vivid battle scenes, menacing storm fronts and exotic ports of call they once brought into focus.
I also get a whiff of exotic mildew.
This seems a byproduct of the glasses' crumbling rawhide neck strap. It would be easy to snap that off and replace it with a stronger cord. But the mildewed strap is part of the ambience, so I stubbornly re-knot it each time it breaks.
Source: Maui News
Author details history, ethics of immortal human cell line
01.03.10
“How many of you have used HeLa cells in your research?” The soft-spoken voice of Rebecca Skloot fell upon the audience as professionals and students rustled to get a look at those in the audience who responded to the question.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a biographical, bioethical account of both writer Rebecca Skloot and the family of Henrietta Lacks, or HeLa. Together they search for answers, answers that concern science and humanity alike. Lacks’ story opens a discussion about the rights of patients and their consent for tissue donation to research.
With these issues in mind, Lacks’ children followed the author into the realm of science for questions left unanswered about their mother and her cells.
“I remember when Deborah [Lacks’ daughter] visited Dr. Christoph Lengauer’s laboratory to see her mother’s cells for the first time,” said the author. Chapter 32 reads, “Christoph reached into the freezer behind him, grabbed another vial of HeLa cells, and held it out to Deborah.... ‘She’s cold,’ Deborah said.... She raised the vial and touched it to her lips. ‘You’re famous,’ she whispered. ‘Just nobody knows it.’ ”
Source: CMU The Tartan Online