Eye to I

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2007."September 2007."Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-51).This is the story of the language of eyes - what they say about our emotions, what they reveal about our intentions, how they interact with our face, and how they connect us to one another. The story follows our experience with eyes from infancy when we first learn to connect looking with knowing. This connection forms the foundation of our social understanding and has evolutionary implications. From there the story moves to gaze in love, and other social encounters. I look at the role of eye gaze in the judgments we make about others - the way in which direct eye contact may affect how likable or attractive we find another person. I then turn to these questions: how much of an eye does it take for us to feel watched? Do pictures of eyes affect us? What about the eyes of a robot - do we respond to them as we do to human eyes? I show that for those who have normally functioning eyes, attention to the eye region plays a critical role in how we learn about the social world and our place in it.by Ada Brunstein.S.M.in Science Writin

An in vivo model of double-unit cord blood transplantation that correlates with clinical engraftment

Double-unit cord blood transplantation (DCBT) appears to enhance engraftment despite sustained hematopoiesis usually being derived from a single unit. To investigate DCBT biology, in vitro and murine models were established using cells from 39 patient grafts. Mononuclear cells (MNCs) and CD34+ cells from each unit alone and in DCB combination were assessed for colony-forming cell and cobblestone area-forming cell potential, and multilineage engraftment in NOD/SCID/IL2R-γnull mice. In DCB assays, the contribution of each unit was measured by quantitative short tandem repeat region analysis. There was no correlation between colony-forming cell (n = 10) or cobblestone area-forming cell (n = 9) numbers and clinical engraftment, and both units contributed to DCB cocultures. In MNC transplantations in NOD/SCID/IL2R-γnull mice, each unit engrafted alone, but MNC DCBT demonstrated single-unit dominance that correlated with clinical engraftment in 18 of 21 cases (86%, P < .001). In contrast, unit dominance and clinical correlation were lost with CD34+ DCBT (n = 11). However, add-back of CD34− to CD34+ cells (n = 20) restored single-unit dominance with the dominant unit correlating not with clinical engraftment but also with the origin of the CD34− cells in all experiments. Thus, unit dominance is an in vivo phenomenon probably associated with a graft-versus-graft immune interaction mediated by CD34− cells