This poor fellow (Oscar) was in an accident with a combine, losing his legs. An ambitious veterinarian took him to a neuro-orthopedic surgeon, who crafted little peg-legs for Oscar and embedded them directly into the bone. The skin and bone, led by injected cells, have grown right over the cat side of the pegs, sealing against infection, and Oscar can now walk almost normally. The cost was enormous ($3000 not counting the surgery), but the little guy is mobile again.
Sand mandalas have been in practice for thousands of years, according to Tsepak Rigzin, assistant program director for Drepung Loseling and an adjunct Tibetan language instructor at Emory. Monks use a grated metal rod and a traditional metal funnel called a chak-pur to carefully place millions of grains of colored sand on a table.
There are hundreds of colorful mandala designs to choose from, Rigzin said, but they all share a basic format of geometric shapes and spiritual symbols.
“Normally the monks who do this, they have to go through a lot of training programs and they have to be authenticated by their masters,” Rigzin said. “They have to memorize the oral texts and learn the ritual.”
Following their traditions, the monks wiped away the sand painting within an hour of its completion.
Howard Engel is an accomplished Canadian novelist. One day, he had a stroke and lost the ability to read — that is, his brain could no longer process text as a fixed reference. But Engel found that he could still write, even though, shortly after writing a piece of text, he was unable to read it. So Engel devised a way to use this remaining ability to regain his literacy. Cartoonist and animator Levni Yilmaz produced this video for National Public Radio explaining how Engel was able to do it.
Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span. Scientists say the hydrozoan jellyfish is the only known animal that can repeatedly turn back the hands of time and revert to its polyp state (its first stage of life).
