Brain Cells

What puzzles Harry Gaines is that we typically plan our vacations with more care than we plan the rest of our lives, especially when it comes to health and fitness. Too often we neglect to make the investment in exercise that will pay rich dividends in well-being in our 70s, 80s, and beyond. Gaines, 74, a retired textbook-publishing executive who lives half the year in Newtown, Bucks County, and the other half in Florida, keeps a "bucket list" — goals and experiences he hopes to accomplish before he kicks the proverbial bucket.

I spend a lot of time at Philadelphia International Airport. I give friends rides when they go on business trips or vacations. When long-distance pals have layovers in Philly, I show up with Tastycakes, bottled water and aspirin. As a result, I know as much about airport parking as a Colombian drug lord. Until my last visit, however, I had no idea the airport was booby-trapped. I had spent an hour with an ex-boyfriend who was en route from Paris to L.A. I hadn't seen Jean Claude for years, and an hour was just enough time to reminisce without tiptoeing into conversational land mines.

Brain cells from an aborted fetus have been implanted into two Britons suffering from Parkinson's disease in a surgical procedure banned in the United States, according to doctors. The procedure was condemned by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children in Britain, which said it amounted to the deliberate killing of unborn children for spare parts. The operations, performed on two men in March and April, were the first of their kind in Britain, said neurologist Edward Hitchcock, of the Midland Center for Neurosurgery and Neurology.

For the first time ever, doctors have implanted artificial brain cells into a human, a 62-year-old stroke patient in Pittsburgh, opening the possibility of eventually treating people with brain disorders ranging from Parkinson's disease to Alzheimer's. The experimental procedure was fueled by research at the University of Pennsylvania, where neuroscientists John Trojanowski and Virginia Lee figured out a way to take certain cancer cells and turn them into brain cells. Scientists don't know yet whether transplanting brain cells - neurons - can reverse damage caused by stroke or any other brain disease.

For the millions of Americans who take drugs to treat mental illness, about the only way psychiatrists can tell whether the medications are working is through observation and asking patients how they feel. And even when doctors do find the right drugs, they can't explain exactly why the meds are effective. It's the glaring void at the heart of mental health treatment. No one, from the scientists developing drugs to those who prescribe them, is able to examine the diseased tissue: the cells of the human brain.

BOSTON Inflammation linked to heart attacks Inflammation that smolders for years inside the arteries, perhaps as a result of an infection, appears to be a powerful trigger of heart attacks and strokes and may even be as bad as too much cholesterol, a study has found. Researchers found that after several years of this low-level inflammation, men are three times as likely to suffer heart attacks and twice as likely to have strokes. The inflammation is so subtle that it shows up only on blood tests, and seemingly normal levels may be hazardous.

Neo-Nazism is alive and well in America. We can anticipate that the Clinton administration will initiate a renewed attack on the pre-born. Thousands of babies will be sacrificed as researchers pursue the quest of a "final solution" to the problems of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and several other diseases. With the justification that well, abortion is legal anyway, scientists will soon march in lockstep to the federal government to obtain funds for human fetal research and experimentation.

The nicotine a smoker gets from one cigarette sets off a burst of activity in brain cells, according to a report today in the journal Science. Neuroscientists say the finding is a major step in understanding what happens in the brain that makes nicotine so powerfully addictive. "We are beginning to get at the molecular mechanism of addiction," said neuroscientist Lorna Role, part of the team at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center that made the discovery. Eventually, an understanding of how nicotine acts on the brain could lead to a new way to kick the habit.

It doesn't take a brain scan to show that solvent-sniffers aren't as swift as they once were. You can see it in their behavior. Sniffers, known on the street as "huffers," have thinking problems. It shows up in increasing confusion and memory loss, experts say. But it can do worse things than that. It can lead to coma. And once in a while, it causes heart attacks. A 17-year-old Philadelphia huffer died last year. Experts on toxic substances say huffers of "tywol," short for the solvent toluene, like those who haunt the streets of Kensington, lose chunks of their brains with every whiff.

Dirty air may be taking over the job of the earth's damaged ozone layer. As you know, the ozone layer, which protects earth from the sun's damaging ultraviolet rays, has a big hole in it somewhere over the Antarctic. The protective layer is also shrinking over the United States and other temperate- zone nations - a trend that could mean more skin cancer and crop damage. But a recent survey by a team of University of Chicago researchers shows the situation isn't as bad as expected.

What puzzles Harry Gaines is that we typically plan our vacations with more care than we plan the rest of our lives, especially when it comes to health and fitness. Too often we neglect to make the investment in exercise that will pay rich dividends in well-being in our 70s, 80s, and beyond. Gaines, 74, a retired textbook-publishing executive who lives half the year in Newtown, Bucks County, and the other half in Florida, keeps a "bucket list" — goals and experiences he hopes to accomplish before he kicks the proverbial bucket.

Study: 'Chemo brain' may not go away for cancer patients Chemotherapy patients have long complained of the mental fog that tends to accompany treatment. Now, a new study suggests that certain combinations of chemo drugs may have long-term effects on cognition. Researchers looked at 196 women who had been treated for early-stage breast cancer with a three-drug chemotherapy regimen. The women underwent cognition testing an average of 21 years after they had received chemo.

BACHMANN???? I am puzzled. What is up with the Republican Party's enthusiasm for Michele Bachmann? Are they for real out there in the Midwest, or are they just plain ignorant? Do they want to hand Obama another four years in the White House so he can push forth his failing policies of being a reactionary president, a follower of the tides? I want a proactive president, a true leader, and a person who has a spine. After Bachmann's triumphant victory in the straw poll, I have to say that I am no longer a member of the Republican Party.

Four Eagles games, four concussions - the latest two suffered by wide receiver Riley Cooper and cornerback Asante Samuel on Sunday. Coach Andy Reid said Monday that their injuries "seem to be mild," but that word seem is telling. From a scientific perspective, no one really knows. Physicians can see when someone's outward symptoms have returned to normal, as most do within a few weeks. But there is no lab test to measure internal damage from a concussion and no medicine to treat it. "Absolutely nobody knows when it's safe to go back in," said Douglas H. Smith, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Brain Injury and Repair.

AS BABIES, kids engage in an ongoing terror campaign that is designed to drive their parents insane. They employ an ingenious array of weapons that includes bed-wetting, regurgitation and, in the case of boys, projectile urination. It's all very disgusting, but they are so cute that we love them anyway. As kids grow older, their techniques change, but their goal is the same: They are intent on diminishing their parents' mental capacity. By doing so, they set up a dynamic that will someday allow them to go buck wild as their parents sit drooling in a corner.

Watching Natalie Bauder skip through her garden, hair flying, light as a sprite, one thing comes to mind: Alice. She's Alice in her own little Wonderland. Her Wonderland's in Wyndmoor, but it could be anywhere. Natalie loses herself in it with intensity, as 6-year-olds do, playing with her imaginary friends, Buzzy and Rudy, putting on one-girl shows about nothing at all, and tearing around the spiral path as if she's Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. "The White Rabbit says, 'I'm late, I'm late, I'm late for a date,' " Natalie confides in a sing-song, "and if they're really late, the Queen of Hearts will chop their heads off!

At 31, keyboardist Marco Benevento has cut a wide swath through the jazz world, starting in 2002 with his recorded debut with drummer and partner Joe Russo. Along with a rich acoustic-piano tone, the Livingston, N.J.-born Benevento has a Hammond-organ groove as deep as Jimmy Smith's, and a Wurlitzer electric-piano grumble as subtle as '70s-era Ray Charles' - all of which can be heard on solo efforts like his three-CD Live at Tonic (2007) and the just-released Marco Benevento Trio album Me Not Me. Plus, Marco likes his effects - Casio-sampling keyboards and circuit-bending toys.

Brian Forsyth is a lifelong Phillies fan who lives in Havertown The Phillies saved my life. Well, technically, a bicycle helmet saved my life. (Wear a helmet, everyone.) But the Phillies have helped heal the traumatic brain injury I suffered in a traffic accident in August 2007. The physical and emotional scars of that accident have required massive amounts of therapy. A lot of it has taken place at Citizens Bank Park. I attended the clinching 2007 season finale in a wheelchair, and I had to leave the game early due to overstimulation.

Tiger Woods is not backing down. Ever since he proclaimed on his Web site in January that winning all four major championships in a season - the Grand Slam - was "easily within reason," Woods has been peppered with questions about whether the seemingly undoable is, in fact, doable. Now, with the first major of the year, the Masters, about to get under way tomorrow at Augusta National Golf Club, millions of sports fans figure it's time for Woods to put up or shut up. Yesterday, at his much-awaited pretournament press conference, the four-time Masters champion didn't pound his chest and go all Hulk Hogan, but he also didn't shut up. "No," said Woods, when asked if he had changed his mind about the possibility of pulling off the Grand Slam.

'Enemy combatant' must be charged or freed, court rules RICHMOND, Va. - A divided panel from a conservative federal appeals court delivered a harsh rebuke to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism strategy yesterday, ruling that U.S. residents cannot be locked up indefinitely as "enemy combatants" without being charged. The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government should charge Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident and the only suspected enemy combatant on American soil, or release him from military custody.