Matthew Nagle only lived 27 years, but his example of encouraging disabled people to strive for a better way of life by participating in experimental treatments for quadriplegia lives on.

Matthew died of a blood infection on July 23 at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton. He had been in a coma for nearly a week prior to his death.

“I can’t imagine how he got through each day, but he had empathy for other people in need,” his father Patrick, a retired Cambridge police sergeant, said while standing on a patio deck built by his son Michael for Matthew’s convenience.

Acute spinal cord injury can damage spinal cord tissue and result in loss of functions such as mobility or feeling.

In a study appearing online on July 26 in advance of publication in the August print issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, J. Marc Simard and colleagues from the University of Maryland at Baltimore show that calcium-activated cation channels in capillaries surrounding spinal cord tissue are critical to the process that causes spinal cord tissue loss after acute cord injury, and as such are a potential target in the therapy of spinal cord injuries.

An Irvine professor studies stem cells to look for a treatment for spinal cord injuries.

The motorcycle roars to life.

From his wheelchair David Bailey watches it take off.

Someday, the motocross and Supercross legend thinks. Someday soon – maybe.

Billauer hasn't slowed down since surfing accident

Jesse Billauer rolls into the Beverly Hills Hotel with a blonde bombshell by his side and immediately attracts everyone's attention as soon as he opens his mouth. The tanned surfer is telling his friends to hold on to their girlfriends tight or he just might nab them up before the night is done. His friends laugh but quickly tighten their grip on their significant others. They know Billauer too well.

This is a man after all who got Paris Hilton to take off a couple of her sequined dresses for the night, stole kisses from Molly Sims and Brooke Burns and was photographed on the red carpet with Stefanie Sherk, his model girlfriend, sitting seductively on his lap. And that was just the beginning of his night.

Announcement of this gift to The Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis was made today by the victim, Allan Navarro, his family, and the trial team of Steve Yerrid, Rich Gilbert and David Dickey.