Lungs and Penguins; But Not Penguins' Lungs

I have returned to the wonderful town of Columbia after a successful trip to Ft. Leonard Wood and back yesterday. My plenary talk went quite well. And although I didn't see any earth-shattering presentations or hear of any bewilderingly awesome research, I did meet some really nice people. I had hoped to at least have a few nuggets from my day at Leonard Wood to discuss on this blog, but alas, I returned with very little noteworthy nerd-stuff.

I will say this: Ft. Leonard Wood is a strange place. Everyone wears the same outfit. They travel in large groups, often singing monotonous chants in unison. And perhaps I'm the only one who finds this odd, but despite the fact that the fort does not cover an overtly large area, everyone drives everywhere they go. Even though the early summer weather yesterday was seasonably mild, I did not see a single person walking or riding a bike.

With the understanding that my previous post was fairly scant and lacking any real substance, I am unfortunately going to have to leave this post in the same state. My day of travel was quite tiring and I'm having a hard time focusing, or for even functioning for that matter, today. Maybe my next post should be on the science of sleep; perhaps I'll learn a thing or two and will be able to stay alert enough to keep this blog going. I will, however, leave you with two items of interest before I fall asleep at my desk. The first item (actually, two items combined into one) is an article on creating lungs in a laboratory. The two studies that are featured in the article were both published in Science, and describe two methods for engineering a lung, or at least a device that performs a similar function. The first study is actually a biologically engineered lung, in which lung tissue was decullularized, and then the decelled platform was subsequently reseeded with lung cells. The cells, using the extracellular matrix of the decellularized platform as a guide, grew into the correct positions so that the lung was effectively recreated. The second study was a microfluidic device, wherein the fluidic channel was lined with lung cells. Outside of the channel were blood capillaries, which gave each device the function of a single alveolus of the lung. Both studies were pretty cool and I'm constantly amazed at the advances in tissue engineering. And generally speaking, both of these were pretty big advances.

The second item that I would like to leave you with is a video of a penguin that I took while at the Shedd Aquarium last month. Why? Because penguins are totally awesome!

Enjoy!