Mask-off outbursts by Maga insiders and most strikingly, the destruction and reconstruction of the presidential seat, with a huge new $300m ballroom, means Trump isn’t planning to leave the White House when his term ends, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
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Realising potential - the story of the stem cell
A small Japanese trial has reported some positive results for stem cell therapy to treat spinal-cord injuries
(Left) Human embryonic stem cells; (right) A patient after incomplete paraplegia with a knee-ankle-foot orthosis with an integrated stance phase control knee joint
[(L to R) Nissim Benvenisty/CC - Orthokin/CC]
BEN CHACKO speaks with Knesset member OFER CASSIF about rising political violence, the prospects for peace and his continuous ‘silencing by suspension’
The City is leaning on Rachel Reeves to cut welfare spending — when what’s needed is cuts to all the benefits given to the mega rich, corporations and banks to help them not pay or blatantly dodge their fair share of tax, explains BERNIE EVANS
The choice between two Blairites to revamp the tepid centrism of our ruling party doesn’t even come as cold comfort as we wander the city streets suffering from their third decade of austerity and the fifth of wage stagnation, writes MATT KERR
ANN HENDERSON looks at the trailblazers of the Women’s Trade Union League and their successful fight for female factory inspectors — a battle that echoes in today’s workplace campaigns
HENRY FOWLER puts the strike of public-sector workers in New Zealand in the wider context of deteriorating employment conditions throughout the world’s major economies
MAT COWARD looks back at a protest 105 years ago this month, whose reporting by the media bears uncomfortable similarities with demos today
IN 1697, John Dryden, translating the Roman poet Virgil, wrote that “From one root the rising stem bestows a wood of leaves, and vi’let-purple boughs.” More than 150 years later, the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel used the green stem of a plant that rises into unfolding complexity as an analogy for the diversification of life from single-celled ancestors, which he called Stammzellen: stem cells.
Haeckel believed that the development of a foetus followed a sequence corresponding to life’s historical evolution — from a single cell through a series of progressively more complex forms — often summarised in the phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” The single cell at the root of this sequence, and thus analogous to the single-celled organisms, was the fertilised egg. This Stammzell gave rise through repeated divisions to the approximately two hundred different cell types that make up a human body: from muscle cells to red blood cells, neurons to the liver. This definition of stem cell indicated that potential. Others later extended the definition again, to cover any cell capable of differentiating into different types.
A stem cell is a bundle of potential: scientists call it “pluripotent.” The genome inside all human cells is the same, or very close to it.
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