Hello there, its Peter here. I cant believe how quickly the week goes! It is already Wednesday, the next thing you know it will be Monday again! How time flies!
Transplant News Now it may sound like a science fiction story but Ive been reading today that surgeons in Spain have carried out the worlds first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant, by using a windpipe made from the patients own stem cells. Claudia Castillo needed the transplant after her airways got damaged after contracting tuberculosis. Scientists from Bristol helped grow the cells for the transplant. To make the new airways, the doctors took a donor windpipe, from a patient who had recently died. Strong chemicals and enzymes were used to wash away all of the cells from the donor windpipe, which left a tissue scaffold. This meant they had a structure left to repopulate with cells from Claudia, which then could be used in an operation to repair the damaged part of her windpipe. Claudia has said I was a sick woman, now I will be able to live a normal life. It is truly an amazing story. Toilet Talk A new survey out today suggests that Britons favourite past times on the loo include reading, chatting and texting. The survey suggests that more than 14 million people in the UK read newspapers, books and magazines while on the toilet. The study even suggests that 8 million people talk on the phone and one in five people send texts. The study also suggested people thought mostly about food and men were more likely to look around for distraction than women. Well there you go, something to think about next time! The e-mailing president? Im not sure if youve heard but president-elect Barack Obama may have to give up using emails, because transparency laws would open up his correspondence to the public. This may not seem like a hard task but Mr Obama is a devoted blackberry user. During his campaign trail he took his mobile device everywhere and was even seen checking it during one of his daughters football matches. As well as the problem of the Presidential Records Act, which could open all presidential e-mails to public scrutiny, there are also security concerns. Experts say there is always a risk of digital communication being hacked into and there is also the possibility that the location of a presidential mobile telephone could be tracked. If he finds email too difficult to part with, it has been suggested he could receive e-mails but not send any. I can imagine it being rather tricky as most people communicate via emails nowadays, so I do wonder how this one will pan out! Thats all for todays Levy Letter. I do hope you will join me for Look North tonight at 6.30pm. If you cant wait until then you can join me for The Peter Levy Show on BBC Radio Humberside between 12pm and 2pm. Tune in or listen online. If you missed yesterdays show, I chatted to Christopher Biggins, the winner of last years Im a Celebrity , you can listen again online at bbc.co.uk/humberside. Enjoy the rest of your day, Peter And for the latest news and more where you live, go to: http://bbc.co.uk/humber and http://bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the BBC Look North newsletter, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/looknorthhull/newsletter/newsletter_index.shtml, enter your email address in the unsubscribe box. Your email address will be held by the BBC and kept confidential, and will only be used in relation to this newsletter. You will be given the option to unsubscribe from this newsletter each time you receive it. Please visit the BBC's Privacy & Cookies Policy (www.bbc.co.uk/privacy) for more information.
