Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men

By John Steinbeck

Read in 9th grade

George and Lennie have traveled to a ranch in the countryside. George is a small, intelligent man, while Lennie is massive, but has the brains of a child. Lennie got them in trouble by trying to touch a girl. Just liked the dress, he says. When she panicked, he wouldn't let go because he didn't know what to do, and he hid with George in a ditch until they could get away. They have decided to work on the ranch and make enough money to buy their own place, with rabbits for Lennie. When they get there, they meet the owner, who is nice enough, but his son is the problem. His son is a fighter with a flighty wife, always afraid the men on the ranch are after her. He is especially wary of Lennie because of his size.

TedEd: How bones make blood

A TedEd by Melody Smith

Your body has trillions of blood cells circulating inside you. All of these originate in your bones. Bones may seem hard, but they're actually porous inside, allowing blood vessels to enter. Most of the bone is filled with soft bone marrow. The most important part of this is blood stem cells. These multiply many times, turning into red and white blood cells, and platelets. They go out into the blood stream through capillaries. This is why many blood cancers occur in bone marrow. If the stem cells have a mutation, they could produce malignant blood cells, which are bad for the body. For patients with diseases like leukemia and lymphoma, their best bet at survival is a bone marrow transplant. To do this, stem cells are taken from a donor in one of two days. The first is by extracting blood and then separating stem cells, the second by direct extraction from bone. Chemotherapy or radiation are used to kill existing bone marrow, then the donor's is transplanted in the patient. This can also cause graft-vs-tumor activity. This is when the transplanted immune cells from the donor wipe out cancer cells that the patient's immune system couldn't. However, there could also be adverse effects. Graft-vs-host disease occurs when the donor's immune cells begin attacking the patient's organs, causing life-threatening conditions. This occurs in about 30-50% of people whose donor isn't an identical twin. To prevent this, patients can take immunosuppressants, or immune cells can be removed from the donor's cells. But if they overcome this obstacle, they face the possibility of their own immune system denying entry for the new stem cells. In order to find the best donor, genetic samples are taken and key strands that control the immune system are matched. For this reason, siblings and close relatives are often the best donors, as these genes are passed down. If you want to donate, go to join.bethematch.org to enter yourself in the registry. The donating process is just giving some blood.