Sold...my home for almost 16 years was sold...it sounds plain and even it is a happy news,we will be receiving the money and it will be invested and spent in things we still need to do to my current home,besides buying a new van for me...
I know I should be happy,yes,I am,I can't say it doesn't make me happy knowing all of the above besides that the house won't be abandoned anymore...but I can't avoid feeling this pain in my heart,a pain caused by all those memories for all those years I lived there in that pink house in Tijuana,B.C.,in the Altabrisa neighborhood,with the number 14450...

If you could...If you were...

"You could be very pretty if you tried."...A dear friend of mine was talking in my favorite forum IS about this phrase that 'a good friend of her' told for her,this phrase was said not really with good intention,actually what person in the world who can be called friend can go and tell it to a very sweet and innocent girl who is younger than 20 and still in the process of developing her personality and her life?

I must say that as soon as I read those words and the way she was wounded,it came to my mind 'a collection' of bad memories from the past,in which that phrase and many other similar ones were said to me,not only from friends but from my own family...

Stem cells help mice with muscular dystrophy: Study

From: Yahoo News.

By Julie Steenhuysen
Sun Jan 20, 1:22 PM ET

A therapy using embryonic stem cells helped restore muscle function in mice with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common form of muscular dystrophy in children, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

They said the study is the first to show that transplanted embryonic stem cells can restore muscle in genetically engineered mice with the disease.

Stem cells are the body's master cells, acting as a source for the various cells and tissues in the body. Those taken from days-old embryos, called embryonic stem cells, can produce all of the body's cell types.

Nervous System Can Reorganize Itself and Use New Pathways to Restore Walking after Spinal Cord Injury

Newswise and UCLA-Health care

A UCLA study demonstrates that the nervous system can reorganize itself after spinal cord injury and use new pathways to restore the cellular communication required for walking. Published in the January edition of Nature Medicine, the discovery could lead to new therapies for the estimated 250,000 Americans who suffer from paralysis following traumatic spinal cord injuries.

Stem cell breakthrough uses no embryos

By Malcolm Ritter, AP Science Writer

Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.

Laboratory teams on two continents report success in a pair of landmark papers released Tuesday. It's a neck-and-neck finish to a race that made headlines five months ago, when scientists announced that the feat had been accomplished in mice.

The "direct reprogramming" technique avoids the swarm of ethical, political and practical obstacles that have stymied attempts to produce human stem cells by cloning embryos.

Scientists familiar with the work said scientific questions remain and that it's still important to pursue the cloning strategy, but that the new work is a major coup.

"This work represents a tremendous scientific milestone -- the biological equivalent of the Wright Brothers' first airplane," said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief science officer of Advanced Cell Technology, which has been trying to extract stem cells from cloned human embryos.

For people who suffer Spinal Cord Injury,the news about the possibility for finding/developing a cure to SCI,will always give us new hopes...a hope we live for and we won't stop the fight about Stem Cells Research...we wait and won't hesitate on the fight!

Sandra Villanueva

ScienceDaily (Originally published on November 9th, 2007)

New experimental therapies are being -- or soon may be -- tested in clinical trials that could open the doors to a "golden era" for research to improve the treatments of people with spinal cord injuries, brain injuries, stroke, and other severe movement disorders, scientists say.

"The studies highlighted here reflect decades of basic science research that have led to some measure of understanding the events taking place in traumatic neural injury and disease, and how these events can be modulated to improve function," says Aileen Anderson, PhD, of the University of California, Irvine.

"As a result of this work, we have the exciting opportunity to begin testing these pathways in the clinical setting in an attempt to minimize the progression of damage and, in some cases, perhaps repair it," says Anderson.

The new therapies include an experimental, custom-made antibody to NOGO-A, one of several inhibitory proteins for nerve fiber growth that are produced naturally in the human spinal cord and brain. It soon will be evaluated as a therapy for patients who are newly paralyzed from spinal cord injury.

Generosity...kindness are really amazing...I always feel admiration and respect for those human beings who help people with disadvantages,because helping them,gives the people with less options to enter a world of better possibilities and freedom.

Last year I was one of those people who got a great benefit/help by a very kind human being when a former student of mine,donated me a new electric wheelchair...I knew/learned the great difference of a standard wheelchair to a motorized one,I got more freedom and my hands stopped of being hurt by 'driving' the standard wheelchair by myself (I used to have my hands with lots of calluses and wounds,besides a severe dry skin and my hands were in real pain,now they have healed),in the same way I'm able to go out by myself/alone in the neighborhood I live at.

I still don't know how to pay my former student for her gift,I just know I'll always thank Mrs. Emma Martir from San Diego,CA for her kindness.

Sandra Villanueva~ Salimacatwoman.

Donated electric wheelchair gives San Jose woman independence.
`I kept thinking it was a dream'
By Linda Goldston
From: San Jose Mercury News
July 24th,2007- 01:38:28 AM PDT

It was her first time in a new $16,000 electric wheelchair, and Gail Rennetty was a little nervous.

"Are you sure it won't tip over?" she asked.

"I have this really strong safety siren that goes off in my head, and right now it's saying, `danger, danger.' "

But the 300-pound black Quickie Rhythm wheelchair did not tip over and within an hour, on a test run in the parking lot outside her home, Rennetty had a big smile on her face as she zoomed across the pavement.

I was born on December 26th,1970 in Mexico,City (my loved hometown). I suffered an automobile accident when I was 1 year and 3 months old, due to the accident I am a wheelchair user...since very young I have learnt that nothing is easy for a disabled person and things are even more difficult when you live in a country where there is a great lack of information about the different kind of disabilities.

I am very thankful to my parents,my brothers and friends who have always helped me when I have needed them,especially in those years when I was a student and my friends helped me to "jump" the stairs. People might think I was a spoiled child because of my situation,but no,on the opposite,my parents never allowed me to be lazy,not even to miss classes when I was in the school (the only time I was allowed to stay at home was when I got sick), I had a normal school activity despite my disability and despite all the architectonical barriers we have in Mexico.

When Smell Cells Fail They Call in Stem Cell Reserves

Newswise --

Hopkins researchers have identified a backup supply of stem cells that can repair the most severe damage to the nerves responsible for our sense of smell. These reservists normally lie around and do nothing, but when neighboring cells die, the scientists say, the stem cells jump into action. A report on the discovery will appear online next week in Nature Neuroscience.

"These stem cells act like the Army Reserves of our nose," explains lead author Randall Reed, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins, "supporting a class of active-duty stem cells that help repair normal wear and tear. They don't come in until things are really bad."

Sexy...what's it?, I have seen that there is a little misunderstanding on this word, at the Merriam-Webster's dictionary, sexy has 2 meanings,yes one of them is related with "Erotic" another misunderstood word sometimes,but the other meaning just say "Appealing":

sexy

Main Entry: sexy
Pronunciation: 'sek-sE
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): sex-i-er; -est
1 : sexually suggestive or stimulating : EROTIC
2 : generally attractive or interesting : APPEALING

The other day I was asked What's Sexy for you? and I answered with an example: Sexy can be an attitude, a soft smile, the way someone acts, walks and even speaks... for me sexy is not at all charged with the idea of eroticism...the way the word has been misused sometimes creates more confusion and we believe that using the word in a simple question or topic can be harmful or go beyond the allowed limit...but actually if we focus on the meaning of the word appealing we see that the word sexy can be used so freely that it's the reason why we are bombarded with this word everywhere and even teenagers use it...