The AP is reporting (via MSNBC) that two men who lost their fingertips in accidents, have regrown their fingertips using a pig bladder extract from ACell Inc. This sort of technique raises a lot of eyebrows, but something in the article I did not know is that young children can naturally regenerate a lost fingertip.

If Spievack, now 68, had been a toddler, things might have been different. Up to about age 2, people can consistently regrow fingertips, says Dr. Stephen Badylak, a regeneration expert at the University of Pittsburgh. But that’s rare in adults, he said.

An interesting article that gives some insight where some scientists are forcasting for the future.

A recent study shows that 42% of children ages 10 to 14 have viewed adult material online.

More children and teens are being exposed to online pornography, mostly by accidentally viewing sexually explicit Web sites while surfing the Internet, researchers say.

Forty-two percent of Internet users aged 10 to 17 surveyed said they had seen online pornography in the past year. Of those, 66 percent said they did not want to view the images and had not sought them out, University of New Hampshire researchers found. Their conclusions appear in February’s Pediatrics, due out Monday.

 Sadly, these statistics are not very suprising. It is unimaginable that children this young are seeing this filth, yet extremely scary that 1 out of 3 of these children are intentionally seeking this content out. This is one, among many, reasons that we decided before we had children that they would not be allowed online without immediate adult supervision. Every time I read a news article like this (or one about preditors using IM/Email/Blogs to prey on children and so on) I am reminded that this is a good policy. It is a wonderful tool; unfortunately temptation is at every corner.

As widely reported across the news last week, Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) has mandated that all 6th grade girls in Texas receive the controversial and expensive STD vaccine Gardasil that immunizes against a number of strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) that can cause cervical cancer and genital warts.

Bypassing the Legislature, Republican Gov. Rick Perry signed an order Friday making Texas the first state to require that schoolgirls get vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

By issuing an executive order, Perry apparently sidesteps opposition in the Legislature from conservatives and parents' rights groups who fear such a requirement would condone premarital sex and interfere with the way parents raise their children.

Beginning in September 2008, girls entering the sixth grade meaning, generally, girls ages 11 and 12 will have to get Gardasil, Merck & Co.'s new vaccine against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV.

 Not surpisingly it has also turned up that Perry has quite a few connections with Merck, the maker of Gardasil.