Tales From Hoffman

Mitral valve prolapse: the Merchant of Venice or the Tales of Hoffman?

0195-668X/02/010087+07 $35.00/0 especially its title. Whether MVP claimed the life of Shylock in the Merchant of Venice who claimed the heart of Portia’s lover or Antonia in the Tales of Hoffman who sang herself to death, there is no question that, though generally a benign condition, MVP may be a deadly disease at times. Up to 1989, 106 cases of sudden death have been reported as a complicatio...

Tales from the crypt

Tales from the crypt ow many stem cells reside in a human colonic crypt and how do they divide and regenerate? According to the deterministic theory, a small number of " immortal " stem cells haunt a crypt, and when they divide, each generates a single replacement stem cell. The stochastic model, in contrast, contends that a crypt niche harbors many stem cells, and each cell division randomly g...

Tales From a Pod

In this Science-Fiction Prototyping article, I present an imaginative forward look at how artificial intelligence and virtual environments might change the nature of future education. The discussion is intended to be a somewhat speculative and thought provoking journey into what may be possible. At its root, it imagines a future time when the technological singularity has been reached, and mach...

Tales from the Crypt

Mathematical modeling is being increasingly recognized within the biomedical sciences as an important tool that can aid the understanding of biological systems. The heavily regulated cell renewal cycle in the colonic crypt provides a good example of how modeling can be used to find out key features of the system kinetics, and help to explain both the breakdown of homeostasis and the initiation ...

Tales From Taiwan: Mourning