Stem Cells For Beauty?

Stem Cells For Beauty? - The prospect is a tantalizing one. To erase wrinkles and fine lines, or to get bigger breasts, without cosmetic surgery. Forget silicone, forget collagen. All you would need is stem-cell therapy.

Realistically speaking, though, such applications remain a pipe dream.

Of course, it wouldn't be the first time a medical therapy had been bent in the direction of aesthetics. Take a look at Botox -- the deadly botulinum toxin initially used to treat spasms is now used to improve the appearance of frown lines.

And while stem-cell applications for the vanity market may have to wait, some researchers have begun to research the possibilities of stem cells in plastic and reconstructive medicine.

"Stem-cell research appears promising for medicine and particularly for plastic surgery," said Dr. Ronald Friedman, director of the West Plano Plastic Surgery Center and a board-certified plastic surgeon practicing in Plano, Tex.

"Hair follicular stem cells, tooth stem cells and skin stem cells all show therapeutic promise," said Denis English, editor in chief of the journal Stem Cells and Development and director of cell biology at the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Fla. "These can restore hair to a bald man, teeth to those in need and skin to scarred patients."

The use of stem cells to regenerate tissue is believed to hold promise because stem cells can be nudged to develop into specialized cell types. And some researchers have turned an eye toward stem cells for this very purpose.

In October, a University of Pittsburgh team led by Dr. Peter Rubin received a three-year grant from the National Cancer Institute to explore the possibility of using stem cells derived from a patient's own fat. Rubin, assistant professor of plastic surgery and co-director of the university's Adipose Stem Cell Center, used those stem cells to create a durable, shaped piece of replacement tissue.

The research may one day allow breast cancer survivors to take advantage of a natural replacement after a mastectomy.

But with these possible applications in reconstruction, could cosmetic applications be far behind?

"Naturally, the public shows more interest in applications like breast augmentation," said Dr. Peter Costantino, director of the Center for Facial Reconstruction and Restoration at Roosevelt Hospital in New York.

"In our society, there is such a huge demand for these rejuvenation surgeries, despite their significant risks, that the pragmatist in me cannot deny the likelihood that it will not be long before someone offers a two-stage procedure starting with liposuction followed by injection of these autologous stem cells for breast augmentation or into the face to rejuvenate," said Dr. Daniel Salomon of the department of molecular and experimental medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

Real-World Applications Still Far Off

Though initial research into the potential of stem cells in reconstructive surgery is promising, actual applications -- particularly those of a purely cosmetic nature -- are still distant.

"This is still very far in the future, except for tabloid speculation," said Dr. Garry Brody, professor emeritus of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles. "By the time it becomes practical -- and affordable -- I suspect it will be beyond our lifetimes."

"Stem cells do have the potential to revolutionize things, but it is not "just around the corner,'" said Costantino. "You can't just inject 'fat' stem cells into a breast and just assume that it's going to make a nice-looking breast. You could just end up with something fairly lumpy and unappealing."

The cosmetic applications of stem cells are "25 to 30 years away, at the earliest," said Thoru Pederson of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass.

Yet some studies are already under way.

"We are starting to see clinical trials with stem cells for reconstructive surgery," Rubin said. "A group from Japan reported on enriching liposuctioned fat with fat-derived stem cells and using the material successfully for breast enlargement."

Cosmetic Uses of Stem Cells a Low Priority

Most experts agree, however, that many other potentially curative and life-saving applications of stem cells take precedence over cosmetic uses.

"Applications to rejuvenation or enhanced personal appearance are much harder to justify at this point and will be driven more by market forces in affluent countries -- not just the U.S. certainly -- rather than by science," Salomon said.

"In my opinion, use of any cells for cosmetic surgery is still problematic," said Dr. Darwin Prockop, director of the Center for Gene Therapy at Tulane University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. "The trials that can be justified are in patients with terminal diseases in which the potential risks and benefits are carefully evaluated."

"In all honesty, the more promising (and more quickly realized) aspects of stem cell use in plastic and reconstructive surgery will probably be in producing skin replacement grafts on a large scale," Costantino said. "This could help many, many burn and chronic wound patients."

But for now?

"Though there is an enormous amount of promise with stem cells in plastic and reconstructive surgery, the devil is in some pretty important details," Costantino said. ( abcnews.go.com )

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Bride gets married while wearing £200,000 of solid gold jewellery

Bride gets married while wearing £200,000 of solid gold jewellery - Dazzling bird Liu Cheng spent an hour putting on more than five kilos of necklaces, bracelets, gems, and rings

Dazzling bride Liu Cheng made sure she would not be shown up on her big day by donning £200,000 of solid gold jewellery to walk down the aisle.

The one-woman Bling Dynasty, from Quanzhou in southern China's Fujian province, staggered to her groom with more than five kilos of necklaces, bracelets, gems, and rings dangling from her body.

Proud mum Lin Hu, who spent more than an hour helping her 26-year-old daughter get into her jewellery, explained: 'I wanted to make the day as special as I could for my girl.

Blinging: It took bride Liu Cheng, 26, more than an hour to get into her jewellery

Lucky charms: Gold is seen as a sign of good luck and good fortune at a wedding in China

'I've been collecting these pieces for years, and I got my relatives to do so as well because its important to show her new relatives that she comes from a good family.

'We would save money and when the gold price was low we would buy - and sometimes when it was high we would sell to have cash to buy more gold later - it worked really well.'

Dazzling: The bride was wearing more than five kilos of solid gold necklaces, bracelets, gems, and rings

Family values: The bride's mum Lin Hu said she and relatives have been collecting the gold pieces for years

Dynasty: Liu Cheng was married in Quanzhou in southern China's Fujian province

One local wedding planner explained: 'Gold is seen as a sign of good luck and good fortune at a wedding and a sign that the family of the bride is a good one - but this is right off the scale.'

Liu who gets to keep the gold said she might sell some of it - but would in any case in future only wear a few pieces at a time.

Going for gold: Liu Cheng's mum insisted they wanted her groom to know she was from a 'good' family'

Bargain: The family would sometimes sell the gold when the price was high so they could to buy more gold later

Small fortune: Liu gets to keep the gold that her family had bought but said she might sell some of it

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Generation XXX

Generation XXX - Three young women from disparate backgrounds have one thing in common: They are bombarded daily by a culture that is saturated with sex -- from rap lyrics to the fashion industry to cyberporn.

Winnifred, 12, a precocious New York City girl on the cusp of adulthood, wears fish-net stockings and low-cut tops, striving to emulate her musical idol, Lady Gaga.

Laura, a 22-year-old kindergarten teacher from Alexandria, Va., saves her money for vaginal plastic surgery, convinced reducing the size of her labia will change her life.

 

New York City middle schooler Winnifred, 13, left, searches the internet with her friend, in the new film Sexy Baby.

Nichole, 32, of Clearwater, Fla., was once Nikita Kash, a stripper and pole dancer, but now, all she wants is to have a baby with the husband she met in the porn business.

Perhaps they do not represent typical American youth, but they all feel the pressure to be beautiful and to be sexy.

All three stories are intertwined in "Sexy Baby," an award-winning documentary about how technology and pornography are shaping the sexual identity of young girls.

With Facebook, smart phones and instant access to the Internet, a generation of children is getting their sex education from online porn.

The film, a first from former Miami Herald journalists Ronna Gradus and Jill Bauer, opens Oct. 19 in both New York City and Los Angeles before being released on VOD in November. It had its world premiere earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival.

"Porn isn't video anymore, it's on the Internet," Bauer, a former feature writer, told ABCNews.com. "It's one or two quick mouse taps away. And it's very different porn than it used to be. It's really, really angry and not for a woman's pleasure."

"We created the film for one thing -- to be a conversation starter," she said.

The directors avoid preachy judgment. Filming for three years, they heard from tweens, college students and parents who feel a sense of confusion in a world where sex means power.

The idea for the film began when Gradus, a photographer, was shooting a story on college bars and she noticed even the mainstream ones had stripper poles.

"All the girls were pole-dancing and their guy friends were treating them like strippers, putting dollar bills in their shorts," she said. "It was weird. No one was having fun -- it was autopilot behavior."

"We are all so desensitized," said Gradus. "To get any sort of attention, they have to put it all out there and one person works so hard outdoing the next."

In the film, viewers watch the maturation of Winnifred, the oldest of the three girls of Jeni and Ken. At 12, she is an agile gymnast and social justice advocate.

"We know more about Lindsay Lohan than Susan B. Anthony and Ruth Bader Ginsberg," she says confidently, acting out her own play in a middle-school theater group.

"We are the first generation to have what we have and no one to guide us," says Winnifred, a sassy tween. "We are pioneers."

Winnifred's 4-year-old sister Myrtle follows in her older sister's footsteps, lip syncing to Britney Spears and writhing her little body on the floor.

Their mother Jeni is part-amused, part-horrified raising her old-beyond-their-years daughters. "It scares the bejesus out of me," she says in the film.

Winnifred insists she is too scared to look at pornography, but her 12-year-old friend Danielle says she "bawled her eyes out" when she got a glimpse online of two men and a woman "ferociously banging each other."

By 13, Winnifred is consumed with her looks. The skirts get shorter and tighter. She primps for a seductive photo shoot with her girlfriend Olivia, later posting the images online.

"Every girl wants to feel sexy -- like Megan Fox," says Olivia, but after seeing a photo of herself in a bra go viral online, confesses, "I felt dirty afterwards."

Winnifred admits to spending "30 percent my life" on Facebook. Her parents, who are separated, ground Winnifred eight times in six months for abusing her computer privileges.

"Your Facebook photo isn't who you are, it's who you want to be," says Winnifred. "We make ourselves seem like we are up for anything, and in a way, all of this Internet stuff kind of traps you. You started an alter ego that has to be maintained and in a real way, it does kind of shape how you end up and how you actually are in real life."

"Sexy Baby" also follows Laura, a teacher who has been told by a former boyfriend that her labia looks like "roast beef -- a meat curtain."

She preps for a labiaplasty with Virginia plastic surgeon Dr. Bernard Stern, who says he performs five procedures a week.

"I have dreamt about this for two years," she tells him, hoping that the surgery to cut back her labia will make her more attractive to men. "I know I am doing the right thing."

Her mother comes along to support Laura, but is ambivalent. "You are perfect the way you are," she tells Laura, crying about her daughter's loss of innocence.

Pornography Confuses Young People

The young men who influence women like Laura have an unrealistic picture of what is normal, according to the film makers. "Some tell us they have never seen a bush (pubic hair)," said Bauer.

Laura never hesitated to participate in the film, even allowing them to film vaginal surgery, according to the directors.

"One would think it's so bizarre that someone would give you access to something like that, but it's emblematic of the day and age of reality TV we live in," said Bauer. "She didn't even think twice -- really."

Gradus said college men interviewed in the film were "seriously confused" and reported they often have "drunk sex" because they are "so afraid of it."

Because of their own age differences, Bauer and Gradus say their own lives are witness to the culture change.

"Both of us date, so we have a pretty good barometer," said Bauer, 49. "Our experience when we tell guys about the film is vastly different."

"You inevitably say it's about three women and one has surgery called labiaplasty," said Gradus, 34. "When Jill reports that to her dates, they ask, 'What's that?' and 'Why would anyone want that?' When I explain it to them, it ranges from "Oh, yeah, I know exactly what that is,' to 'My ex-girlfriend had that.'"

Even Nichole, the jaded stripper, who with her husband recruits talent for the industry, laments the prevalence of Internet porn.

"The adult entertainment world is infiltrating everything," she says in the film. "Billboards look like pornography and regular guys pull porn moves in bed. By high school they are stripping."

Teaching pole dancing to college students and young mothers, Nichole says her students, "want to be like Nikita Cash, but Nichole wants to be just like them."

Porn is "sport" sex, according to Nichole. "It's not making love, where you want to cry afterwards, it's so powerful."

And she has clear ideas about raising the child she delivers by the end of the film. "Porn is for adults, not for kids to learn about sex," she says. "It can't be their first experiences."

The directors were happily surprised by the positive reaction to their documentary, especially from Winnifred's mother Jeni, who exposed her family to intrusive cameras.

Jeni, 42, told ABCNews.com that parts of the film were hard to watch, but she thought it was "honest" and a good message for other parents struggling to raise children in the Internet age.

"It's naive as a parent to think you can completely protect them from the messages they receive, whether from Facebook, TV or advertising," she said. "You want to protect them because you know better and you don't want it to shape them and their viewpoints. But I have taken the opposite approach. If you can't beat them, join them in the discussion."

"When you have a 15 or 16-year-old, you can't always be looking over their shoulder," Jeni said. "It may be harder to do it that way than sticking your head in the sand." ( ABCNews.go.com )

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Debate body language: A testy and tense exchange

Debate body language: A testy and tense exchange — Maybe it's a cliché to say the gloves came off in Tuesday's presidential debate. But then again, maybe not, since the candidates sometimes looked like they were actually about to start boxing.

It was a tense and testy exchange at New York's Hofstra University, featuring a newly energized and forceful President Barack Obama squaring off against a vigorous, stand-your-ground Mitt Romney. But the evening will also be remembered for giving the distinct impression that these candidates were liking each other less and less.

• "I thought they were going to come to blows at one point," said Jonathan Paul, director of debate at Georgetown University.
• "It looked like they were circling a boxing ring," said Lillian Glass, a body language coach in Los Angeles.
• "I started thinking, here comes the Secret Service," quipped Jerry Shuster of the University of Pittsburgh.

One thing was clear: It was a distinctly different Obama than the one who gave a largely listless performance in the first debate. And there were differences, too, between Tuesday night's Romney and the more obviously confident one from the Denver debate.

Some impressions and assessments from analysts of political communication:

___

THE PRESIDENT LEARNED HIS LESSON

First, the obvious: This time around, Obama was unquestionably more forceful, aggressive and effective than before — all words that were used to describe challenger Romney in the first debate.

Want more adjectives? "He was more direct, detailed, engaged and focused," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of political communication at the University of Pennsylvania. "Stylistically, there are cues that suggest leadership. Obama had them."

For Glass, the body language coach in Los Angeles, it was a simple result of Obama having learned his lesson. "He really learned well from his mistakes," she said.

___

A FREEING FORMAT

Another reason for the president's vastly improved performance was the format, some said. Obama appeared more comfortable with the town hall model — one that allowed him to engage with his questioners in the audience and roam around the stage, something he's good at. The lack of a desk or podium freed him, said Shuster: "He was very smooth in his ability to move around the floor."

As for Romney, though he gave as good as he got for much of the debate, "He seemed overanxious, ready to jump off his chair," Shuster said. "He seemed overanxious to make an argument."

___

HOW AGGRESSIVE IS TOO AGGRESSIVE?

There's a fine line between aggressive and rude, and it was approached at times.

"You'll get your chance in a moment. I'm still speaking," Romney said crisply when Obama was in mid-sentence at one point, evoking some gasps in the audience.

"This was on the line — it was the president of the United States," said veteran Hollywood publicist Michael Levine. "I mean, WHOA. It was very forceful, on the other hand." Levine felt the debate was a draw, between "two men, both very bright, very articulate, very earnest."

___

THE LIBYA MOMENT

Romney seemed to be waiting for the Libya question. And he was ready to pounce when an audience member asked about the terror attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya in Benghazi.

Romney said it took Obama a long time to admit the episode had been a terrorist attack, but Obama said he had said so the day after in an appearance in the Rose Garden. Moderator Candy Crowley of CNN agreed, saying the president had in fact done so. Obama replied, "Say that a little louder, Candy."

Romney had a point in that while Obama did refer to terrorism the day after, some in his administration repeatedly linked it to protests over an anti-Islamic video and took almost a month to acknowledge those protests never occurred. And the administration hasn't explained why it took so long for that correction to be made or how it came to believe that the attack evolved from an angry demonstration.

Still, the exchange about it appeared to hurt Romney going forward. "He seemed rattled after that," said Paul, the Georgetown coach.

Jamieson agreed. "Romney had trouble getting his footing back for a while."

Even worse for him, though, Jamieson said, will be the inevitable fallout from the exchange being played again and again on TV.

"There's the debate, and then there's the battle of control for the news agenda afterwards," she said. "This is the sound bite likely to be played, and every time it is, it will disadvantage Romney."

___

THE POLITICS OF FASHION

Some would say the candidates switched roles in terms of their debate performance; what's objectively true is that they switched tie colors, with Obama wearing red this time and Romney wearing blue. Is red warmer? Is blue cooler? Michelle Obama and Ann Romney, meanwhile, ignored both of those colors and turned heads by wearing the same shade of hot pink (likely a nod to October being breast cancer awareness month).

___

THE COMEDY QUOTIENT (OR IS 'BINDER' THE NEW BIG BIRD?)

There were a few amusing exchanges in the earlier debates, but the extremely tense nature of this one seemed to preclude that possibility. There wasn't really a "Big Bird" or a "malarkey" moment, and even Joe Biden would have found little to chuckle about.

But Big Bird may have ceded way in our pop-culture consciousness to a brand new expression: "Binders full of women."

It came when Romney was answering a question about fair pay for women. While Obama mentioned the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which he signed into law, Romney spoke of his efforts to hire women into his cabinet when he was Massachusetts governor. He said he asked women's groups to help and, he said, "They brought us whole binders full of women."

Within moments, of course, social media pounced with multiple Twitter hashtags and a meme that featured a widely circulated image of women in a loose-leaf binder.

As for Obama, his best comedy moment may have come, fittingly for the night, in the form of a dig.

Romney asked him if he had looked at his pension lately. Obama parried: "I don't look at my pension. It's not as big as yours, so it doesn't take as long."

The crowd broke the rules and laughed. Score one for the president. And look for a rematch on pensions, binders and maybe even a return of Big Bird when the two meet again next Monday. If the feisty, aggressive versions of both candidates turn up again, it'll be fun to watch. ( Associated Press )

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21-Years: Ian McLeod, Dad, Makes Time Lapse Video from Son's Portraits Taken Every Day

21-Years: Ian McLeod, Dad, Makes Time Lapse Video from Son's Portraits Taken Every Day - The video sequence opens gradually — frame after frame captures a tiny baby from the first day he entered the world at Harrogate General Hospital in Yorkshire, England. Then it races forward and literally becomes a life flashing before our eyes through pictures that Ian McCleod took of his son, Cory, essentially every day of his 21 years. He compiled the more than 7,500 images into a six-minute time-lapse sequence he posted on YouTube in late September. Cory's life, from birth to becoming a young man, has now been witnessed by more than 800,000 people around the world, and received 300,000 hits on one day alone in Japan.

McLeod tells the Yorkshire Post the project started as a "daft" idea conceived over a couple of drinks. "I was thinking I could do it for one or two years at most…But then you get to the point where you wonder if you'll regret it if you stop." He says it became like brushing his teeth.

Cory McLeod admits he didn't always love it when his dad tracked him down for their daily snap. "My dad has had to drive to a friend's house before. I got a bit of a stick [teased] for that," he told the Post. Eventually he came to see the project's significance. "I used to find it awkward, I didn't realize the value of it. It was only when I got to 16 or 17 that I started to appreciate it and realized what it could be." Even though he's now away from home studying at Leeds Metropolitan University, he says he plans on continuing to collaborate with his dad. "When do you stop? I don't think I can. We've come this far, we may as well carry on."

Although a few days are missing here and there (Ian McLeod slots in a sketch instead of inserting a photo from the wrong day to maintain the integrity of the concept) and a month was lost when the camera wouldn't wind, the chronicle is remarkably complete. McLeod started scanning the images a year ago—his son was born before the days of digital cameras—and he says it took him three months to digitize them all. "It's never been straightforward," he says. "We weren't organized. It's always been chaotic." For those of us whose photo albums contain gaps of more than a year, "21 Years" seems magnificently pulled together.

What's your favorite moment from the video? Please let us know in the comments below. ( Parenting ) 

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