Jellyfish Age Backwards: Nature's Secrets to Longevity

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The hydrozoan Turritopsis dohrnii, an animal about 4.5 millimetres wide and tall (likely making it smaller than the nail on your little finger), can actually reverse its life cycle. It has been dubbed the immortal jellyfish. If you want a book to feel uplifted and inspired ... this is a terrific choice... written by very bright talented author!'

I liked the narrative voice, and at first I was intrigued by the connections drawn to jellyfish. But there were a LOT of jellyfishy facts, and I kept wondering why I didn't feel anything for this story of a girl who's so traumatized by her former best friend's death that she will no longer speak.Whenever I think about those two days—about the space between you ending and me knowing—I think about the stars. Did you know that the light from our nearest star takes four years to reach us? Which means when we see it—when we see any star—we are really seeing what it looked like in the past. All those twinkling lights, every star in the sky, could have burned out years ago—the entire night sky could be empty this very minute, and we wouldn’t even know it. Sometimes you want things to change so badly, you can't even stand to be in the same room with the way things actually are.

Suzy postulates that Franny's death was the result of Irukandji syndrome after Suzy learns about jellyfish on a field trip to an unnamed aquarium, which Benjamin states is the New England Aquarium in the end notes. [3] While researching the subject, Suzy identifies the following real-life jellyfish experts she thinks could ask for help: The theme is said to be grief but the way the split narrative bonded us to Suzy and Franny's friendship, I really think the real theme is friendship. What do we do when we lose our only friend? ANYONE can relate to losing a friend... not necessarily to death but to time, to other friends and interests. The only problem is that the friends Suzy could have become friends with weren't shown becoming friends! They just suddenly were in the end, as a salve to grief.In the end, Suzanne," [she] continued, "it's a gift to spend time with people we care about. Even if it's imperfect. Even if the time doesn't end when, or how, we expected. Even when that person leaves us." In the end, not-talking means the same thing, more or less, as small talk. Nothing. Besides, I’ll bet so-called small talk has ended more friendships than silence ever did. What my dad wanted, I suspect, was the thing everybody seems to want: small talk. I don't understand small talk. I don't even understand why it's called that - small talk - when it fills up so much space. I never know where my stories are going to take me. Sometimes I have ideas that brew and simmer for weeks, even years but frustratingly I can never find the right ending! However, Bloom was one of those ‘fast’ stories that I initially scribbled down within minutes. We need to create our happy ending Ali Benjamin (2015). "Interview With Ali Benjamin - 2015 National Book Award Finalist, Young People's Literature" (Interview). Interviewed by Tim Manley. National Book Foundation . Retrieved 10 June 2018.

Medusa cells and polyp cells are different - some cells and organs only occur in the polyp, others only in the adult jellyfish. Transdifferentiation reprogrammes the medusa's specialised cells to become specialised polyp cells, allowing the jellyfish to regrow themselves in an entirely different body plan to the free-swimming jellyfish they had recently been. They can then mature again from there as normal, producing new, genetically identical medusae.There seemed to be very little structure. As this was Berwald's journey to learning about jellyfish, there is a chronological nature to the events described, but it still jumped around rather oddly and with no context about why a certain section was relevant at times.