Abstract: A system for teaching reading to very young children and first-time English students provides and uses one or more sets of instructional alphabetic letters, double-consonant phonemes, a relatively larger group of three-letter words of only short-vowel sounds, a relatively smaller group of three- and four-letter words with long-vowel sounds, and specifically designed subsets and/or combinations thereof, where the separate letters and words in the set is fewer than 100. The words in the instructional set are particularly selected to avoid phonetic confusion, ease pronunciation, engage student interest, provide teaching leverage based on each subset, and accelerate learning. In one embodiment, a particular 48-word instructional word set is distributed onto eight, 3-D, instructional blocks in a manner that preserves the subset-based teaching method.

Abstract: An online business method and system enables donors or parents or guardians of donors to order and purchase stem-cells from biological tissue sampled from the donor, such as, for example, cord-blood stem cells of a newborn baby, wherein the ordering process interfaces directly with the attending medical services, and the service steps include collection, extraction, preservation, containment, packaging, delivery and storage of the stem cells in a storage medium that can be cost-effectively maintained by the donor, parent or guardian at home or in a custodial location. In one embodiment, preservation is by freeze-drying, containment is in a vacuum vial, and storage is at room temperature.