infectious

She chokes back a series of increasingly petty insults and rolls her sleeve up without antagonistic commentary until it slips neatly over the joint of skin-to-carbon and she can pull a pen out of a slot. Handing it over to him is the hardest effort she’s made yet, but he’s looking seriously at their scavenged leaks and there’s no need to keep her fingers fixed around the matching china blue of her pen when he can actually use it for something.

[ it amuses him greatly how she’s forced to swallow her pride just to give him a pen, and that old feeling of schadenfreude bubbles up in him, same as it always used to. sour, nostalgic, giddy. a smile creeps onto his face the longer she deliberates. ]

Thank you very much. Sad you don’t have a green one, though. I like those best.

[ he sets to work, scribbling on the papers all over, making edits and spelling corrections and revisions in the margins when he stops suddenly and lifts his head to look back up at her. ]

[text] There’s a sort of block between us, I feel-- you’re not ready to share with me, whereas I can’t share with you under penalty of law.

The Evolution of Medicine

A new gel helps wounds heal

Researchers from UCLA have developed an injectable hydrogel that helps skin wounds heal faster. 

The new synthetic polymer material creates an instant scaffold, sort of like stacked gumballs, that allows new tissue to latch on and grow within the cavities formed between linked spheres of gel.

Conventionally, ointments and other hydrogel dressings have been used to fill in wounds to keep the areas moist and accelerate healing. But none of the materials used now provide a scaffold to allow new tissue to grow while the dressing itself degrades. As a result, the new tissue growth is relatively slow and fragile.

So bringing about an injectable biomaterial that promotes rapid regeneration of tissue has been a “holy grail” in the field of tissue engineering, said co-principal investigator Dino Di Carlo.

They envision the material being useful for a wide variety of wound application, including lacerations to large-area burns.

UC Berkeley researchers have also been developing new approaches to tissue engineering. Last March, their advancement in “herding cells” marked a new direction for smart bandages.

Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi. ; By McIlvaine, Charles, 1840-1909 Macadam, Robert K. on Flickr.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Iced Coffee Float Source: The Sweetest Occasion

Coffee Ice Cream Hot Fudge Sundae Pie with a Macaroon Crust Source: How Sweet Eats

Chocolate Red Wine Chiffon Cake Source: Sprinkle Bakes