ROME -- Rome's mayor says biologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, who conducted underground research in defiance of Fascist persecution, and went on to win a Nobel Prize for helping unlock the mysteries of the cell, has died at her home in the city. She was 103.
Italy's so-called "Lady of the Cells," who died on Sunday, lived through anti-Semitic discrimination and Nazi invasion, becoming one of her country's leading scientists and sharing the medicine prize for her groundbreaking research in the United States.
Her research increased the understanding of many conditions, including tumors, developmental malformations, and senile dementia.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/30/3161275/nobel-scientist-levi-montalcini.html
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By Julia Gumm
The year that I was quietly dropping dress sizes was spent working full time in a little cafe which specialized in an orgasmic array of homemade desserts?none of which escaped my fork. White chocolate mousse pie, Key Lime pie, bread pudding, chocolate layer cake, homemade ice cream, hot fudge, real whipped cream. I ate it all in excess. We also served sandwiches, and I always ordered mine on a buttery croissant, with extra cheese, please. It was a veritable nightmare to behold for health minded folks everywhere, but I was getting slimmer and more energetic every day. I was pretty surprised by my shrinking waistline, as I was coming out of an adolescence marked by eating disorders and a dubious flirtation with various unsavory and addictive substances.This was the first time in many years that I was sober and eating at will. After an initial period of weight gain, the excess began to melt away as I became happier, healthier and more of a satisfied, confident person.
I believed in the value of what I was doing. If you?re gonna eat, you oughta eat good, and good food was what I was serving up. I believe, with all my soul that people should indulge in wholesome simple pleasures like hot fudge sundaes.? I relished every opportunity to talk unhappy women who were wistfully eyeing the dessert case into just going for it and forgetting about ?being good.??Good for what? They looked pretty miserable to me. What I was selling was self-acceptance and the freedom to let yourself go. I was selling it to my customers and I was selling it to myself, too.? And I got paid to do it! Not very much of course, but who cares? I didn?t. It was enough, and I was thoroughly enjoying myself.
So that?s how I became ecstatically happy and lost a bunch of weight. I got a low wage job at a sweet cafe, ate a bunch of cake, took a class and worked my ass off to pay for a road trip taken for no other reason than the hell of it. Pretty easy stuff. Now hold on, don?t rush out and get a crappy food service job. This isn?t the panacea, the universal key I stumbled upon that unlocks the secrets of contentedness. Waitressing for peanuts isn?t going to satisfy everyone- hell, it wouldn?t satisfy me at this point.
Beyond my daily dose of dessert, I was just having fun with life. I had goals that I was meeting, was forming lasting friendships, performing a function I was good at and felt good about?simple stuff. Simple stuff, but so often elusive. Study after study shows the health benefits from being happy and that happiness is tied up in having basic needs met, feeling a part of something larger and more meaningful than oneself,? and somewhat surprisingly, cooperation and altruism. It?s no surprise then that our culture of self-promotion, over-work, consumption and forever keeping up with those damned Joneses can leave us feeling less than satisfied. When I was 19 years old, I experienced a moment in my life where I freely shed narrow beliefs about who I should be like, what I should look like and how good I could ever be. I embraced what was around me, ate what was around me, and chased my dreams, however humble they were. I worked in a cooperative environment. I was kinder, more creative, more confident, and by all counts, very very happy. And svelte to boot! Yep, that bridesmaid?s dress was positively swimming on me. Not that I cared. As delighted as I was to wear the thing for the wedding, I had no designs on EVER wearing it again. I mean really, periwinkle? C?mon.