A group of scientist from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and CellThera regenerated functional tissue in mice by using a novel protocol to turn mature human muscle cells into a stem cell state. They grew those reprogrammed cells on biopolymer microtheads which were placed in a wound created by removing a huge section of leg muscle from a mouse. After awhile the threads and cells restored almost normal function to the muscle.

This is huge for people who have suffered from major muscle trauma! I think it’s amazing that a muscle can just regrow itself. This discovery can help thousands of people around the world, and changes some of the things we thought we knew about the human body.

Date: October 10th, 2011

Before whales, the oceans were filled with a different kind of air-breathing creature. These were Snaggle-toothed Ichthyosaurs’. They were the top of the ocean food chain in the Triassic period. Most  were larger than school buses!

Mark McMenamin is a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College. He studied some of their remains in that were in Nevada. He believes that an even larger predator fed on them, this would be the Kraken. In the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada there are remains of nine 45ft Ichthyosaurs! Oddly, the bodies looked like they had been killed then purposely placed in certain areas. Scientist know that modern Octopus do this to their prey now. The arranged remains resembled a sucker which gives more evidence to this theory. If this theory is true, Krakens would have been the smartest invertebrate of the Triassic period.

I think this very interesting because Kraken’s seem like something you could only find in stories that involve Jack Sparrow or Captain Nemo. Now they’re finding evidence that these creatures fed on the Ichthyosaurs, which were thought to be the top of the Oceanic food chain back then! Ichthyosaurs were longer than school buses! But yet, the Krakens could eat them. How big were Krakens!?