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A miracle? Doctors say that a very unusual blood cell transplant appears to have cured an American man living in Berlin of infection with the AIDS virus, according to an Associated Press story.

The man had a blood stem cell transplant in 2007 to treat leukemia. His donor had a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to HIV. Three years later, he shows no sign of cancer or HIV, according to a piece publshed in a medical journal. While these transplants are currently used on some cancer patients, doctors say in the piece that the procedure is too risky and impractical to be used widely.

Still, the promise is alluring. A Huffington Post writer described the case as paving "a path for constructing a permanent cure for HIV through genetically-engineered stem cells."

Is there any way this new treatment won't create the same demand that the current controversial MS vein treatment has since it first emerged?

Facebooker of the year: Those of us who were sure Wikileaks troublemaker Julian Assange was going to be TIME's 2010 Person of the Year for his sheer dominance of the media this year were wrong. Time has chosen Mark Zuckerberg, the man who has us addicted to reading about the minutiae of our friends' - and "friends'" - lives. Time's Richard Stengel explained the choice in a letter from the editor:

"Like two of our runners-up this year, Julian Assange and the Tea Party, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have a whole lot of veneration for traditional authority. In a sense, Zuckerberg and Assange are two sides of the same coin.

"...While Assange attacks big institutions and governments through involuntary transparency with the goal of disempowering them, Zuckerberg enables individuals to voluntarily share information with the idea of empowering them. Assange sees the world as filled with real and imagined enemies; Zuckerberg sees the world as filled with potential friends..."

What do you think of the choice? Does the Facebook founder deserve more than your ire over having to tinker with your privacy settings, again?

Sweet dreams: Beauty sleep isn't just the stuff of fairy tales. A Swedish study has found that people deprived of sleep for long periods appear less attractive and more unhealthy than those who are well rested, according to this piece by the BBC.

Volunteers were photographed after eight hours sleep and again after being kept awake for 31 hours.

Study participants then scored the sleep-deprived participants as less healthy and less attractive, reports the BBC. One scientist who did not work on the study suggested that the effects may be even stronger if the sleep-deprived photos weren't taken in daylight. Apparently, evening light reminds us how sleepy we really are.

Think about that as you embark on your fifth holiday party in a row.



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