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.

Amid the many messages you will hear about screening for prostate cancer in the coming days, I hope these stand out: There is at best a small potential benefit from prostate cancer screening, and there are substantial known harms. We need a better test, and we need better treatment options. The panel I chair, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, has just issued a recommendation against screening men of any age for prostate cancer using the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, blood test.

For a quarter of a century, gene therapy has been stymied, largely because the patient's immune system attacks the treatment as a suspected rogue - or because it actually does turn rogue. Now, University of Pennsylvania researchers have convincingly shown that they can overcome these formidable obstacles. Cells that were genetically modified to fight HIV have persisted for up to 11 years - and counting - without bad side effects in 41 patients. In two other patients, the modified cells were safe but not as durable, according to the Penn study, published last week in Science Translational Medicine.

When the Lower Gwynedd Township Police Department began using its two new holding cells one month ago, acting police Chief Ken Bright thought the department would save time and money. No longer would patrol officers have to transport prisoners to holding cells in Lansdale - at a cost of $25 a night - because Lower Gwynedd did not have its own jail. But the cells have turned out to be a constant headache for Bright and the department's 16 officers in the month that has followed their completion.

TO PARAPHRASE Churchill, never has something so small promised so much and yielded so little. That "something" is the most rudimentary form of life, the embryo. Scientists are adamant that stem cells extracted from embryos hold the promise for curing debilitating diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes. But after years of research and unrealistic expectations, the results are still disappointing - and likely to be so for quite some time. As Maureen Condic, a neurobiologist at the University of Utah observed, "The promised miraculous cures have not materialized even for mice, much less for men. " Particularly troubling is the fact that embryonic stem cells tend to form tumors when transplanted into adult tissue, a fact that many proponents seek to play down.

The holding cells in City Hall look like Dante's Inferno under Plexiglas. Hundreds of prisoners are crowded into trash-filled pens with transparent walls and few urinals. There isn't enough room for everybody to sit down, so some of them have to stand for hours, waiting to appear in court. Yesterday about 200 men shouted and gestured as reporters and photographers toured their cells at the invitation of Sheriff John Green and Allen Hornblum, newly appointed sheriff's office chief of staff, who are trying to get more cell space.

IWAS DISAPPOINTED to read Ben Burrows' tangent-riddled response to my letter on the success of adult stem cells. Astute readers will notice, of course, that Burrows didn't even try to refute anything that I originally wrote, but rather smeared the Web site I referenced and made a fallacious analogy to Galileo. (I'm fairly certain that Galileo Galilei didn't destroy embryonic human beings while demonstrating that our planet revolves around the sun.) The site, stemcellresearch.

Norwood Borough Councilman Gary Schubert has expressed concern that the borough might be held liable if harm befalls Norwood prisoners while they are in holding cells at the Darby Borough Jail. Speaking at Monday's Borough Council meeting, he suggested that Norwood consider building its own holding cells at the Norwood police station. His comment follows the suicide earlier this month of a Darby teenager, Octavis Long, in the Darby jail. "We may not save any money on a day-to-day basis by building cells and holding people here, but if we're litigated against just once, because someone is harmed in another jail, that would cost us a lot," Schubert said.

Next By Michael Crichton HarperCollins. 448 pp. $27.95 Michael Crichton has made a career out of taking hot-button scientific or political topics and spinning them into fast-moving, high-concept adventure novels. He did it with cloned dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, global warming in State of Fear, and time travel in Timeline. Now Crichton has given us Next, a blockbuster science thriller that tackles the subject of genetic manipulation. With stem cells, embryonic research, and predicted miracle cures so much in the news, the topic is great fodder for headlines.

It looked like a miracle, or at the very least a breakthrough. A pit bull stranded on a searing rooftop until his paw pads were burned off is now doing well, mostly healed after being injected with stem cells as part of a new treatment. However, the story is not as it first appeared when it received widespread coverage last summer. Some experts say the dog's new skin is probably his own. The stem cells might have created a protective barrier during healing, but they probably did not graft onto the dog's paws.

Who would want a 25-foot cell pole fronting their yard? Not Ed Bendzlowicz, Beth-Ann Wolfson, Janet Swenson, or several other Bucks County residents who are surprised and shocked that the black metal poles are about to be erected along their plush, green lawns. They are demanding answers and warning unsuspecting homeowners that they could be next. Not just in Northampton Township, but around the Philadelphia area and across the state. "This should concern everyone in Pennsylvania," says Bendzlowicz, one of the leaders of hundreds of Northampton residents opposing the poles.

For a quarter of a century, gene therapy has been stymied, largely because the patient's immune system attacks the treatment as a suspected rogue - or because it actually does turn rogue. Now, University of Pennsylvania researchers have convincingly shown that they can overcome these formidable obstacles. Cells that were genetically modified to fight HIV have persisted for up to 11 years - and counting - without bad side effects in 41 patients. In two other patients, the modified cells were safe but not as durable, according to the Penn study, published last week in Science Translational Medicine.

COLWYN BOROUGH in Delaware County is less than a mile wide, but its police department is in deep trouble after its acting chief was suspended Wednesday while officials investigate the possible cover-up of an incident involving a juvenile who was shot by a Taser while handcuffed in a holding cell. Deputy Chief Wendell Reed is the second officer to be suspended for the April 24 incident. The officer who allegedly administered the shock, Cpl. Trevor Parham, was suspended earlier this week, and a third officer who was there when it occurred is expected to be suspended, Colwyn Mayor Daniel Rutland said.

Delaware gets it, says KR Sridhar, space-engineering professor-turned-Silicon Valley energy missionary, and boss of Bloom Energy (formerly Ion America), which plans to build what he says are efficient electricity-generating fuel cells — a Holy Grail of energy engineering — in Newark, Del., on the rubble of an old Chrysler plant. With state support, of course: $16 million in grants, a new state law that allows Delmarva Power to use fuel cells instead of solar or wind power for green-energy credits, and a consumer surcharge that will boost the cost of electricity to Delaware homeowners by more than $1 a month, for up to 21 years, with the money going to Bloom.

Several large studies have shown that people with diabetes are at especially high risk for Alzheimer's disease. Steven Arnold, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Memory Center, said diabetics are 50 to 100 percent more likely to get the fatal, memory-destroying disease. This has made researchers increasingly interested in the role that insulin, the hormone that's out of whack in diabetes, might play in Alzheimer's. In the brain, Arnold said, insulin is important for cell growth and releasing neurotransmitters that allow cells to communicate.

Get an introduction to the science of small on Saturday at NanoDay, sponsored by the Delaware Museum of Natural History. The event, part of a national effort to educate about nanotechnology, will show families the world of atoms, molecules, and nanoscale forces. NanoDay's hands-on activities will include exploring electrostatic forces using small balls in a tube to demonstrate how size affects material behavior; observing thin films by creating colorful bookmarks with nail polish and water; and learning how some butterfly wings get their color from nanostructures instead of pigment.

SANFORD, FLA. - Minutes before an unarmed black teenager was shot to death last month, he told his girlfriend that he was being followed, a lawyer said yesterday as federal and state prosecutors announced investigations. " 'Oh he's right behind me; he's right behind me again,' " Trayvon Martin, 17, told his girlfriend on his cellphone, the Martin family's attorney said. The girl later heard Martin say, "Why are you following me?" Another man asked, "What are you doing around here?

If you don't want to join the hundreds of SEPTA riders screaming "iYiYi! My iPhone!" as their smart handhelds disappear into the smarter hands of quick-grab thieves, you better heed the urgent warnings blasting over public address systems on subway and El trains these days. To save your Droid from the void, keep your smartphone hidden while riding, SEPTA Transit Police Chief Richard Evans told the Daily News. Most of last year's 415 thefts and robberies committed on the Broad Street Line and the Market Frankford El last year involved smart phones, e-readers and laptops, he said.

LAST WEEK, I left my cellphone in North Carolina. It was the fourth time in 18 months that I had lost it. A good soul mailed it to me, but I abandoned it at my local coffee shop this morning. I didn't realize it was gone until the finder tracked me down. I'm not a forgetful person. I've just been ignoring my own inconvenient truth: I don't want to have a cellphone anymore. Here's my problem with cellphones: More than any social networking site, they represent society's expectation that I need to be available to anybody at any time.

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.