What is art therapy?

Art therapy 

Art therapy integrates psychotherapeutic techniques with the creative process to improve mental health and well-being. The American Art Therapy Association describes art therapy as "a mental health profession that uses the creative process of art making to improve and enhance the physical, mental and emotional well-being of individuals of all ages. It is based on the belief that the creative process involved in artistic self-expression helps people to resolve conflicts and problems, develop interpersonal skills, manage behavior, reduce stress, increase self-esteem and self-awareness, and achieve insight."

new words
integrate
connect or combine two or more things in order to form a single unit or system
resolve
to solve a problem
behavior
the manner of conducting oneself
self-esteem
the feeling that you are as important as other people and you deserve to be treated well
self-awareness
understanding what your own true thoughts, feelings,and abilities are 

Scientists make 'lab-grown' kidney

                    Lab-grown organ breakthrough

Today there is hope for many who need a transplant..

In a Boston laboratory, a rat kidney  had been  stripped of  its cells, leaving just this white scaffold.

Then the organ was reseeded with fresh cells and put into another rat. It  filtered the animal's blood 

and produced urine.

The results are promising but human trials are still a long way off.

 

new words         

transplant   

a new organ put into someone's body when the old organ fails

kidney

organ that takes away waste from the blood and produces 

urine

stripped of 

had its parts removed

scaffold

structure that helps something to keep its shape 

reseeded

here, had new cells added which multiply to fill the whole organ

Worth its weight in gold

Datta Phuge's shirt contains more than 3kg of gold. Photo: BBC.

Today's Phrase

If something is worth its weight in gold it is very valuable or useful.

Examples:

Mark's travel advice about visiting Venice really was worth its weight in gold. He recommended some fabulous restaurants and a brilliant cheap hotel.

Jill, you're a star. Thanks for all your help. You're worth your weight in gold!

Take note

All that glitters is not gold. This proverb is used to describe things that are attractive on the surface but not as wonderful in reality.

Example:

Listen, Frankie. All that glitters is not gold. I know you think a job in fashion will be glamorous and fun, full of exciting parties and photo shoots; but there will also be a lot of competition and you will have to work really hard to succeed.

Interesting fact

Indians are the world's largest consumers of gold, where it is often seen as an investment. Nicknamed "the gold man", Datta Phuge spent $250,000 on a shirt made of the precious metal. He said: "People have different aspirations. Some elite people want to own an Audi or Mercedes, and have big cars. I chose gold."

Obama's brain project

Summary
5 April 2013

US President Barack Obama has launched a $100m project to map the "enormous mystery" of the human brain. He hopes the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) project will help us understand how the brain works and learn more about diseases such as Alzheimer's.

The president's advisors call the BRAIN project ambitious, even audacious. It aims to produce dynamic pictures of the brain that show, in the words of a White House statement, how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact at the speed of thought. Announcing the programme, Barack Obama said humans could identify distant galaxies and study subatomic particles, but still had a limited understanding of the brain. 

Barack Obama:

"There's this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked. The BRAIN Initiative will change that by giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and how we learn and how we remember."

That knowledge, he said, would be transformative: families no longer helpless at the onset of Parkinson's, and war veterans able to reverse the effects of traumatic brain injury. The administration reckons it costs around $500bn a year to treat the various conditions this project hopes to address. It believes that technological advances, in data processing and revolutionary new techniques like optogenetics mean that, for the first time, this hugely ambitious research is actually possible.

New words

audacious
showing extreme confidence and willingness to take risks and offend people
neural circuits
a system of connected neurons: cells that send and receive messages to and from the brain
subatomic particles
extremely small pieces of matter that are smaller than atoms or forming part of atoms
initiative
a project designed to achieve something or solve a problem
transformative
causing significant changes or improvement in a situation
onset
the beginning of something, especially something unpleasant or bad
war veterans
people who fought in the armed forces during a war
traumatic
causing severe shock, upset, or emotional distress
address
deal with
optogenetics
the use of optics (the study of light) and genetics (the study of how features and behaviour of living things are passed on through genes) to control things that happen in cells

Healthy chocolate

The first Happy  English lesson!


Here's the problem with chocolate - what makes it velvety and smooth in the mouth is exactly what ends up elsewhere - fat. 

Low-fat versions disappoint because it's difficult to replace the tiny globules of fat with anything else that disperses within the chocolate and maintains its texture. 

The trick, it seems, is to use agar - a widely available gelling agent. Thoroughly blended bits of it, the researchers say, act as tiny sponges that soak up any liquid - fruit juice, plain water, even alcohol. 

Stefan Bon, who led the research, said that the method opens up whole new markets for chocolate, and that additives such as fruit juice could further increase chocolate's health credentials. 

Stefan Bon:
"It would both lower fat content and sugar content, so for people who have a craving and want to just down a bar of 200g, you take half the amount of fat in, so it's great."

But for the less health-conscious, students in the group have made a chocolate bar containing four shots of vodka.