Free Republic

There are two reasons, according to Jim Adovasio, we don’t think of baskets or textiles when we think of the Stone Age. One is that stones and bones, being far more durable, are far more common at archeological sites than artifacts made of fiber... And yet it has been around a long time, as four small pieces of clay described by Adovasio this past year make clear. Found at a site called Pavlov in the Czech Republic, they are 27,000 years old--and impressed with patterns that could only have been created by woven fibers. These artifacts push back the date...

A long-awaited government study on a mysterious skin condition known as Morgellons disease concludes that it isn’t infectious or caused by something in the environment. It also is very rare, affecting fewer than 4 in 100,000 people surveyed. (The study appears in PLoS ONE.) However, it isn’t possible to say from the data whether the mysterious skin condition — “unexplained dermopathy,” as the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention calls it — is a new ailment or part of an existing condition like delusional infestation, according to the researchers from the CDC, Kaiser Permanente Northern California and several academic institutions....

In a feat once as unlikely as the miller's daughter of fairytale fame spinning straw into gold, scientists in the United Kingdom have spun fine threads of biocompatible silicone that contain living human brain cells. The cells remained alive and capable of growth afterward, they say. "This has far-reaching implications and will enable significant advances to be made in technologies ranging from tissue engineering to regenerative medicine," Suwan N. Jayasinghe and Andrea Townsend-Nicholson state in their report. It appeared Nov. 13 in ACS' Biomacromolecules, a bimonthly journal. "The ability to electrospin biologically active threads and scaffolds of living organisms will...

SAUSALITO -- Is an unknown disease hitting the Bay Area or is it just a case of mass delusion? If you ask intensive care nurse Cindy Casey she'll tell you that the mystery disease is very real and very painful.

TALE OF TWO LAWYERS...... DEFEATED and DECIETFUL