Hundreds of curious followers flock to Reji Kumar’s home every day to pray and ask for miracles.

Now one of the country’s top zoologists plans to study the rainbow frog. But Reji, 35, who keeps the creature in a glass bottle after finding it while out watering plants, is afraid it might CROAK first.

He said: “My one problem is that this frog does not appear to eat. I keep trying to feed it but it doesn’t eat anything. I don’t know what else to give it.”

The frog was a dazzling white color when Reji, from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, first spotted it.

HT: Slice

Abortion survivor Gianna Jessen states,

Seen this ad? In it, Senator Obama personally attacks me. I've dealt with worse; I survived an abortion. State Senator Barack Obama voted 4 times against laws to protect babies who survive abortions. Meanwhile, U.S. Senators voted 98-0 for Born Alive Infant Protections. Senator Obama says deciding when babies get human rights is above his pay grade. Tell him abortion survivors deserve legal protections too.

Isn't about time someone told the truth about Barack Obama: BornAliveTruth

Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a variety of illnesses and sidestep the political and ethical quagmires associated with embryonic stem cell research.

[snip]

The experiments, detailed online yesterday in the journal Nature, raise the prospect that patients suffering from not only diabetes but also heart disease, strokes and many other ailments could eventually have some of their cells reprogrammed to cure their afflictions without the need for drugs, transplants or other therapies.

Earlier this year, ESCR received (another) fatal blow by published research which concluded that human embryonic stem cells are rapidly rejected by the immune system. Of course, the FDA has yet to approve any clinical trial with embryonic stem cells because these cells (whether growing or even pre-differentiated) have a nasty tendency to form cancerous tumors (FRC Blog).

Unfortunately, the technological failures and identification of a replacement for ESCR doesn't resolve the clash of worldviews and moral standards that remain at the heart of the issue.

Individuals and societies who are involved in and support ESCR view themselves as moral because their actions follow from an ethical standard that both justifies and motivates their decisions. In fact, the humanistic ethic that enables the murder of the unborn or the diseased, when pressed, will find little support in the absolute sense for the sanctity of human life that is not unborn or diseased because such sacredness can only be persuasive when derived from a transcended source (God).

Rejection of God means the acceptance of something else, some other ultimate authority or purpose from which standards for right and wrong are derived. This active replacement of Christian ethics with principles upon which ESCR is justified has practical consequences and will lead nations to progressively adopt increasingly oppressive practices that target the weak and defenseless based upon their utilitarian value to others.

The low power grayscale screen provides highly readable text and wireless connectivity, without a monthly service charge, enables readers to access the Kindle store from most locations.
With over 100,000 electronic books available, the innovative device is likely to achieve significant market penetration for mainstream book readers. In my estimation, the current offering will fail to capture many of the classic texts of interest to Christians, instead emphasizing books likely to generate significant sales. Even so, the Kindle represents the coming change to fully electronic media, in which vast libraries are at the command of the reader. An incredible amount of content is “just there”, wherever you go, in a highly readable format.

Because the electronic books are of little value once reader, I would prefer a subscription service that charged a monthly fee for unlimited books, a rental rather than purchase. This would truly place a mobile library at my fingertips without significant (initial) investment.

A webcast will be available for those who can't make it to D.C..

Speakers to include:

• Hadley P. Arkes


• Michael Illions


• Eric Schiedler


• Jill Stanek


• Star Parker

Despite all of this and much more, President Robert G. Mugabe's party nominated him as its candidate in the presidential election in March.

But this British adventurer is now the subject of an investigation by U.K.'s Channel 4, which already has confirmed that Grylls checked into motels on a few occasions when he was depicted on TV having slept under the stars. Other allegations have been made suggesting that the crew that records Grylls in action isn't as hands-off as it might appear to viewers.

[snip]

For all its self-professed realism, "Man" always required some suspension of disbelief. Grylls often commented on the painful loneliness of being alone in the wild, but unless his camera crew was staffed by bears, he did have some company out there.

In retrospect, Grylls' preternatural unflappability in even the most dire of circumstances always seemed a bit too good to be true. In one episode, he made an interminable slog through hip-deep snow drifts in the French Alps. Braving the frigid conditions, his frustration was evident only in the following comment: "I'd really murder for a cup of tea."

For all we know now, perhaps he was sipping English Breakfast on fine china between takes.

Chinook was developed by scientists at the University of Alberta who used an average of 50 computers for two years (876,000 computational hours) to determine the best move to play in every situation of a game.

The leader of the team described the feat this way:

"We've taken the knowledge used in artificial intelligence applications to the extreme by replacing human-understandable heuristics [rules of thumb] with perfect knowledge. It's an exciting demonstration of the possibilities that software and hardware are now capable of achieving."

"Doing the Lord's work is a thread that's run through our politics since the very beginning," Obama told church members. "And it puts the lie to the notion that the separation of church and state in America -- a principle we all must uphold and that I have embraced as a constitutional lawyer and most importantly as a Christian -- means faith should have no role in public life."

The first step, a trip to Moscow, Russia. For a procedure not available in the u-s - adult stem cell therapy at the Neurovita Clinic.
 
"The give you shots for four days on the 5th day what those shots have done is make your bone marrow create an abundance of stem cells."
 
The stem cells are drawn from Rummelt's own blood and separated in a special machine. Then they are injected into her spinal fluid. Three trips and six injections later Rummelt can use her hip-flexers to crawl. A considerable feat, after not being able to move the lower half of her body for years.


"I had no feeling, no sensation, if my leg fell I had no idea at all," said Rummelt. With therapy Rummelt grows stronger everyday she can even stand. And she can actually feel pain in her foot, five years post injury.
 
Rummelt credits the stem cell injections and her intense physical therapy.

 The potential is quite amazing.  So is this video.

It is disappointing that this story is not found anywhere else. Any treatment that gives feeling and movement back to a patient with a complete spinal cord injury 5 years later is truly a medical breakthrough. This simply does not happen.

Research and applications involving adult stem cells simply do not get the same attention that is given to mere speculation concerning the potential of embryo destroying stem cell research.  Why?

No matter what we say we believe about Christ's person and work, if we aren't constantly bathed in it, the end result will lead to H. Richard Niebuhr's description of Protestant liberalism: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross." According to University of North Carolina sociologist Christian Smith, the working religion of America's teens-whether evangelical or liberal, churched or unchurched-is "moralistic, therapeutic deism." And the answer to that, according to many megachurches and emerging churches is "do more; be more authentic; live more transparently." This is the good news that will change the world?

Christless Christianity can be promoted in contexts where either the sermon is a lecture on timeless doctrine and ethics or Christ gets lost in all the word studies and applications. Christ gets lost in churches where activity, self-expression, the hype of "worship experiences" and programs replace the ordinary ministry of hearing and receiving Christ as he is given to us in the means of grace. Christ gets lost when he is promoted as the answer to everything but our condemnation, death, and the tyranny of sin, or as the means to the end of more excitement, amusement, better living, or a better world-as if we already knew what these would look like before God addressed us in his law and gospel.

Here are seven recent reports from the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics (stemcellresearch.org):

1. "Stem cells may help Bergen boy fight diabetes," NorthJersey.com (North Jersey Media Group Inc.), August 18, 2006


2. "International Trial of the Edmonton Protocol for Islet Transplantation," New England Journal of Medicine, September 28, 2006


3. "Insulin Stem Cells Hold Hope for Diabetes Treatment," Forbes, November 7, 2006


4. "Multipotent stromal cells from human marrow home to and promote repair of pancreatic islets andrenal glomeruli in diabetic NOD scid mice," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS), November 14, 2006


5. "AmCyte Presents Promising Adult Stem Cell Data at 7th Annual Rachmiel Levine Diabetes and Obesity Symposium," Genetic Engineering News, November 9, 2006


6. "Researchers Make Stem Cell Breakthrough," The Korea Times, January 23, 2007


7. "Diabetes repair 'occurs in womb'," BBC News, January 23, 2007

The article above describes the case of Joe Gasser, a heart attack victim that was left with a poor prognosis. As one of 23 patients who had stem cells injected into his ailing heart he is back on the treadmill.

The stem cells originated from Gasser's legs and were grown in a laboratory before being injected into his heart.

This is not the first application of adult stem cells for the treatment of heart disease but it represents a novel methodology in a domestic clinical study.

One of the reasons I chose to point out this latest study is that the continued demonstrated performance of adult stem cells for treatment of medical conditions obliterates the argument that embryonic stem cell research is the needed. However, the argument really should not be necessary. The fact that ESC research destroys human beings is sufficient to invalidate it as an ethical endeavor.