Again, are ye a man or mouse?

Scientists Grow Human Kidneys in Mice

Israeli scientists said on Monday they had successfully grown human kidneys in mice, in a breakthrough that might one day help save thousands of patients waiting for transplants.

The researchers, led by Dr. Yair Reisner of the Weizmann Institute of Science, said they had transplanted stem cells from human and pig fetuses into mice.

The kidneys grew into functional mouse-sized organs, filtering the blood and producing urine, they reported in Nature Medicine journal.

Donating organs from one species to another, a field known as xenotransplantation, has long been held back because the human immune system often recognizes the animal organ as foreign and rejects it.

In this case there was no dangerous immune reaction, possibly because the transplanted cells had not yet developed their own identity badge.

What's on the other side of this universe...?

Black Crunch jams Universal Cycle

The Universe is not as bouncy as some think, say two physicists. If a Big Crunch follows the Big Bang, it may get stuck that way for ever.

A fluid of black holes would bung up space. There would be nothing to drive another Big Bang, and nowhere else to go. The Universe would be, you might say, stuffed.

Thomas Banks of Rutgers University, New Jersey, and Willy Fischler of the University of Texas at Austin have considered a flat, infinite space in which particles get ever closer and ever denser.

In a space with such features, the smallest kinks in density are amplified into black holes, the densest objects in the Universe. So the whole of space-time would congeal into a very lumpy soup - a black crunch.

"We don't really know what this fluid is made out of," Fischler admits. But he and Banks argue that it may reach a pressure at which it cannot become any denser. At this point, the speed of sound equals the speed of light. Deadlock results.

[Aha! I have found the answer to my inarticulated question of the ultimate relationship between light and sound. Thank you, physics!]

Hey....

How does one post a word or phrase here, where it looks as if a line has been struck through it?

It's okay to eat fish, 'cause they don't have any feelings

Eating Fish Cuts Stroke Risk

Eating fish as infrequently as once or twice a month reduces the risk of the most common type of stroke by almost half, researchers said on Tuesday.

Fish contains Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids that enhance blood flow and help prevent formation of the blood clots and blockages that cause most ischemic strokes.

"Men who consumed fish two times a month or more had almost half the risk of stroke as compared with men who never ate fish," said study author Dr. Alberto Ascherio of the Harvard School of Public Health.

"There seemed to be no benefit in eating fish very frequently, so eating fish just a few times per month was just as good as eating fish almost every day," he said.

"Our study didn't look at the specific type of fish. We can only conclude that eating fish in general is likely to be beneficial to prevent stroke," Ascherio said.