BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics to Present at 3rd Annual Regen Med Investor Day on March 25 in New York

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HACKENSACK, N.J.and PETACH TIKVAH, Israel, March 18, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: BCLI), a leading developer of adult stem cell technologies for neurodegenerative diseases, announced today that CEO Tony Fiorino, MD, PhD, will present at the 3rd Annual Regen Med Investor Day to be held Wednesday, March 25, 2015 in New York City.

Organized by the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM) and co-hosted with Piper Jaffray, this one-day investor meeting provides institutional, strategic and venture investors with unique insight into the financing hypothesis for advanced therapies-based treatment and tools. The program includes clinical and commercial experts who are on-hand to address specific questions regarding the outlook for these products, as well as offer insight into how advanced therapies could impact the standard of care in key therapeutic areas. In addition to presentations by more than 30 leading companies from across the globe, the event includes dynamic, interactive panels featuring research analysts covering the space, key clinical opinion leaders and top company CEOs. These discussions will explore themes specific to cell and gene therapy such as commercialization, market access and pricing for breakthrough technologies, gene therapy delivery and upcoming milestones in the adoptive T-cell therapy space.

The following are specific details regarding BrainStorm's presentation:

Event:

ARM's Regen Med Investor Day

Date:

March 25, 2015

Time:

4:20 PM EST

Location:

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BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics to Present at 3rd Annual Regen Med Investor Day on March 25 in New York

UM stem cell research on heart may go national

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Written by Lidia Dinkova on March 18, 2015

University of Miami stem cell research on generating healthy heart tissue in heart attack survivors is on track to be tested across the US.

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, part of federal medical research arm the National Institutes of Health, is to fund the $8 million cost if the trial wins necessary approvals.

The trial, the first of this research in humans, is a step toward restoring full heart function in heart attack survivors.

The research developed at the UM Miller School of Medicines Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute is on combining two types of stem cells to generate healthy heart tissue in heart attack survivors. Scientists have in the past studied using one type of stem cell at a time, a method thats worked OK, said Dr. Joshua Hare, founding director of the UM stem cell institute.

But UM research shows that combining two types of stem cells expedites healing and regeneration of healthy heart muscle.

We could remove twice the scar tissue than with either cell alone, Dr. Hare said. We had some scientific information that they actually interacted and worked together, so we tested that. It worked.

Researchers combined mesenchymal stem cells, usually generated from human bone marrow, and cardiac stem cells, isolated from a mammals heart.

Stem cells are cells that havent matured to specialize to work in a particular part of the body, such as the heart. Because these cells are in a way nascent, they have the potential to become specialized for a particular body function.

Doctors have been using stem cells to regenerate lost tissue from bones to heart muscle. The mesenchymal and cardiac stem cells each work well in generating healthy heart tissue in heart attack survivors, Dr. Hare said. Combining them expedites the process, according to the UM research.

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UM stem cell research on heart may go national

BlazeLeeDragon – Omegle Interviews #001 – Religion, Magic, Spirituality, Jediism – Video

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BlazeLeeDragon - Omegle Interviews #001 - Religion, Magic, Spirituality, Jediism
I decided to get onto Omegle to ask random people there thoughts on religion and spirituality. This is how it went. Not to bad and big thank you for those who agreed to be interviewed.

By: BlazeLeeDragon

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On Spirituality

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Recently, the Jewish Ledger was kind enough to share the story of a special project I have been working on called The Shabbat Experience (Creating Spiritual Experiences with Music, Jewish Ledger, Feb. 6, 2015). While I appreciate the coverage, there was a segment in the article about young people and spirituality that inadvertently conveyed the wrong impression.

I am the founder, composer and music director of the New World Chorus and creator of The Shabbat Experience. My passion and all of my projects have had the common theme of bringing people together from diverse backgrounds and faiths through the power of music. In the past four years, I have been fortunate and honored to collaborate with numerous houses of worship, rabbis, cantors, ministers and diverse spiritual leaders who have inspired me, members of the choir and our wonderful community. With their support and guidance I have been able to produce many inspiring community interfaith events. They include: Temple Beth Els Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, Rev. Kate Heichler of Christ the Healer and the Interfaith Council of Southwestern CT, Rev. Dr. Frances Sink of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, and Rabbi Jay TelRav of Temple Sinai, who was the first to partner with me in launching The Shabbat Experience.

There was a misunderstanding in the article regarding my views on spirituality. To be clear, I have personally experienced a sense of deep spirituality in ALL of these welcoming and inspiring houses of worship. In creating the Shabbat Experience, it has been my intention to be additive to the sense of community and spirituality that exists. The Shabbat Experience is designed to bring people together from diverse backgrounds to experience the beauty of Shabbat through music and reflection. My hope is that when people attend they experience a profound sense of belonging to community, feel known and cared for and, through these connections, nourish their spiritual selves.

There is no one recipe for spirituality. It abounds within us and around us. How and when we plug into that spirituality is part of each individuals spiritual journey. The Shabbat Experience is my contribution to the rich array of spiritual options we are all so blessed to have available to us.

Beth Styles, Stamford

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On Spirituality

Can Indie Filmmakers Save Religious Cinema?

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Christian movies have a reputation as being subpar and agenda-driven, but directors are increasingly telling rich stories about spirituality, theology, and the meaning of life.

As faith-based films flooded into theaters last year, writers fell over themselves to declare 2014 the year of the Bible movie. It seemed as if the marketmeaning Christian audiences to manyhad finally come into its own, a decade after the runaway box-office success of The Passion of the Christ.

Certainly, movies that reinforce beliefs their target audience already hold can make a lot of money, from political documentaries directed by Michael Moore or Dinesh DSouza to films titled with declarations of religious certainty. Gods Not Dead, a drama about an evangelical student who clashes with a philosophy professor, earned $62.6 million on a $2 million budget. Heaven Is for Real, starring Greg Kinnear, cost $12 million and made $101.3 million. Son of God, which cut down the television miniseries The Bible to feature-film length, made $67.8 million, or three times its budget. And even Biblical epics that religious audiences found questionable, such as Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings, did respectable business abroad.

Noah vs. Son of God: The Twin Pitfalls of Biblical Films

But those numbers only tell part of the story. Left Behind, a remake of the bestselling apocalyptic novels, starred Nicolas Cage and had a $16 million budget but opened to dismal reviews and grossed only $14 million domestically. Kirk Camerons Saving Christmas, universally panned, made $2.8 million, as did The Identical, with a cast including Ashley Judd and Ray Liotta. Grace Unplugged, a family drama, made about $2.5 million; The Song, which most critics ranked a notch above its peers, pulled in barely $1 million at the box office, as did Persecuted, a thriller that grossed $1.5 million.

I watched the year of the Bible film happen from the inside, as the chief film critic at one of the oldest and most widely read evangelical publications in the world, Christianity Today. Ive come to realize there is both widespread category confusion in the industry about what constitutes a faith-based audience and ignorance about a burgeoning religious movement in independent cinemasomething that was especially apparent earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival.

In the movie business, Christian or religious usually gets conflated with the faith-and-family audience, sidestepping a wide swath of people of faith who arent looking for safe stories. One publicist informed me ahead of Sundance that the film she was representing wasn't appropriate for Christians. Another told me it would never have occurred to her to pitch me. Marketers, publicists, and distributors tend to view Christian moviegoers as a monolithically single-minded group staunchly opposed to any film that might garner more than a PG rating, and only interested in movies that depict Biblical stories, tell inspirational biographical tales (mostly about athletes, brave children, or war heroes), or explicitly reinforce their own beliefs.

If you ask me, the most Christian film released in 2014 was Calvary, which premiered at Sundance in 2014. The movie starred Brendan Gleeson as a tough but loving priest facing his death in a remote fishing village. Rife with religious imagery and resonances, the films message about forgiveness and redemption is thoroughly consistent with Christian theology and features a bracing view of the havoc wreaked on generations of children by abusive ministers (by no means a problem exclusive to Catholics). Though it got left out of many faith-based discussions because it garnered an R rating from the MPAA for sexual references, language, brief strong content, and some drug use, it earned raves from secular and religious critics alike, garnering a Rotten Tomatoes score of 89 percent.

Calvary, along with movies like the Oscar nominees Ida and Selma, is an explicitly religious exploration of widely asked questions that doesnt point to easy answers. Several Christian critics writing for religious outlets (including myself) put all three of these films in our top ten lists for the yearwhile also facing significant backlash from some readers who were horrified that wed praise, let alone watch, a blasphemous film like Noah.

But I noticed something interesting. For every angry reader who contacted meand there were many, and they were causticanother expressed gratitude. Many were Christians; some had grown up in church and left it behind; a few were indifferent to religion altogether. All, however, were looking for carefully crafted films that took the religious experience seriously.

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Can Indie Filmmakers Save Religious Cinema?

Spiritual Enlightenment with The Very Rev. Archimandrite Vasilios Bassakyros_Ep2 – Video

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Spiritual Enlightenment with The Very Rev. Archimandrite Vasilios Bassakyros_Ep2
The Very Rev. Archimandrite Vasilios Bassakyros on the show #39;Spiritual Enlightenment #39; discusses the Lord #39;s teachings on temptation and how to find the strength to overcome it.

By: New Greek TV Inc. NGTV

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Spiritual Enlightenment with The Very Rev. Archimandrite Vasilios Bassakyros_Ep2 - Video

What happens in the future with the International Space Station? | Tomorrow Today – Interview – Video

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What happens in the future with the International Space Station? | Tomorrow Today - Interview
Jrgen Herholz speaks about Russia #39;s plan to remain on board until 2024 and what that means for the future of the ISS. The complete Interview at: http://www.dw.de/program/tomorrow-today.

By: DW (English)

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What happens in the future with the International Space Station? | Tomorrow Today - Interview - Video

Russian-American team returns from half-year Space Station duty – Video

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Russian-American team returns from half-year Space Station duty
Russian-American team returns from half-year Space Station duty Next crew to arrive scheduled to spend 1 year at ISS. A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts landed safely in a snow-covered ...

By: Mubashir Naeem

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Russian-American team returns from half-year Space Station duty - Video

50 Years of Walking in Space: Spacewalkings Greatest Hits

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Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of the worlds first spacewalk, by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. Since then, astronauts have accomplished many milestones beyond the confines of a spacecraft

Credit: NASA

Today marks 50 years since Alexei Leonov of the former Soviet Union floated beyond the bounds of his Voskhod 2 space capsule in the worlds first spacewalk. During his 10-minute extravehicular activity (EVA), Leonov changed the way humans exist in the universe. No longer were we bound to the ground of our home planet, or even the manmade grounds of our space vehicleswe could be in the universe on our own, with only the thin protection of a spacesuit between our skin and the raw expanse of the cosmos. The ability to fly outside a spacecraft was also critical for many of humankinds greatest achievements in space, such as walking on the moon, repairing the Hubble Space Telescope and other satellites in orbit, and assembling the International Space Station.

These days NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency and even the China National Space Administration, are old pros at managing spacewalkssometimes complicated maneuvers that last hours and feature multiple astronauts. But back on March 18, 1965, Leonov was flying, literally, into unknown territory. As he told The Smithsonians Air and Space Magazine in 2005, even his family did not know he would be making the spacewalk until it happened, prompting his four-year-old daughter, watching him on TV, to wail, Please tell Daddy to get back inside. w. And the lack of atmospheric pressure out in space caused Leonovs suit to deform in unexpected ways, making it difficult for him to reenter his spacecraft and putting his life at risk. He managed, however, and racked up an important success in the space race, beating the Americans by less than three months (Ed White made the first U.S. spacewalk on June 3, 1965, from Gemini 4).

We have come a long way since then, and still have a long way to go, in our quest to live and work seamlessly in space. Below are the greatest hits of spacewalking historyyou can see a slideshow of these feats here: 50 Years of Walking Through Space [Slideshow]

The Greatest Spacewalking Feats of All Time

The First Spacewalk March 18, 1965 Soviet cosmonaut Alexi Leonov became the first person to float outside a spacecraft during a 10-minute excursion on the Voskhod 2 mission. His spacesuit deformed in the vacuum of space, forcing Leonov to vent oxygen out of his suit to squeeze himself back inside.

The First American Spacewalk June 3, 1965 NASA astronaut Edward H. White, II, doubled Leonovs time when he made the U.S.s first spacewalk less than three months later. White floated outside his Gemini 4 capsule for 21 minutes, using a zip gun that ejected pressurized oxygen to maneuver himself around in space. White enjoyed using the gun, but subsequent spacewalkers reported that it was difficult to operate, so it was rarely used after the Gemini program.

The First Untethered Spacewalk February 7, 1984 Until the space shuttle Challengers STS-41B mission, spacewalkers were tethered to their spaceships by a long cord. These tethers also limited their movements, however, and sometimes made maneuvering difficult. Astronaut Bruce McCandless II was the first to test out the Manned Maneuvering Unita type of jetpack that he wore on his back to steer himself around. Unchecked by a tether, McCandless flew 100 meters out from the shuttles cargo baythe farthest a spacewalker had ever been before.

Hubble Repair Spacewalks December 5-9, 1993 The Hubble Space Telescope was launched to much fanfare in April 1990, but soon after it became apparent that the observatorys optics were flawed. To save the $2.5 billion telescope, NASA sent seven astronauts on a rescue mission onboard the shuttle Endeavour. Four of the STS-61 crew F. Story Musgrave, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, Kathryn C. Thornton and Thomas D. Akerscompleted five spacewalks in five days to install a new primary camera and corrective optics package for the telescope. Their efforts paid offthe telescope delivered on its promise to reveal the cosmos in brand new waysand four more servicing missions followed in the coming years to upgrade the observatory, which could operate through 2020.

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50 Years of Walking in Space: Spacewalkings Greatest Hits