Thursday, May 07, 2009

you need worms...,

Live Science | For instance, many fewer people are infected with worms than before.

"If you look back at the human race in the 20th century, every child and adult had worms in their gastrointestinal tracts," Weinstock said. "They were part of the ecosystem of the gut. As it turns out, worms are very potent at controlling immune reactions, in order to live happily ever after in the gut. Our theory is that when we started deworming the population, that is one factor that led to the rise in immunological diseases."

As part of this "hygiene hypothesis," Weinstock also notes that dirt roads, horses and cattle used to be far more prevalent in life than they are now.

"Our theory is that when we moved to this super-hygiene environment, which only occurred in the last 50 to 100 years, this led to immune disregulation," he said. "We're not saying that sanitation is not a good thing — we don't want people to jog up to river banks and get indiscriminately contaminated. But we might want to better understand what factors in hygiene are healthy and what are probably detrimental, to establish a new balance and hopefully have the best of both worlds."

fundaligion and drugs

Synchronium | The idea of a victimless crime is nothing more than a judicial reprise of the Christian notion of sin.

It is no accident that people of faith often want to curtail the private freedoms of others. This impulse has less to do with the history of religion and more to do with its logic, because the very idea of privacy is incompatible with the existence of God. If God sees and knows all things, and remains so provincial a creature as to be scandalized by certain sexual behaviors or states of the brain, then what people do in the privacy of their own homes, though it may not have the slightest implication for their behavior in public, will still be a matter of public concern for people of faith.

A variety of religious notions of wrongdoing can be seen converging here—concerns over nonprocreative sexuality and idolatry especially—and these seem to have given many of us the sense that it is ethical to punish people, often severely, for engaging in private behavior that harms no one. Like most costly examples of irrationality, in which human happiness has been blindly subverted for generations, the role of religion here is both explicit and foundational. To see that our laws against “vice” have actually nothing to do with keeping people from coming to physical or psychological harm, and everything to do with not angering God, we need only consider that oral or anal sex between consenting adults remains a criminal offence in thirteen states. Four of the states (Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri) prohibit these acts between same-sex couples and, therefore, effectively prohibit homosexuality. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone (these places of equity are Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia). One does not have to be a demographer to grasp that the impulse to prosecute consenting adults for nonprocreative sexual behavior will correlate rather strongly with religious faith.

The influence of faith on our criminal laws comes at a remarkable price. Consider the case of drugs. As it happens, there are many substances—many of them naturally occurring—the consumption of which leads to transient states of inordinate pleasure. Occasionally, it is true, they lead to transient states of misery as well, but there is no doubt that pleasure is the norm, otherwise human beings would not have felt the continual desire to take such substances for millennia. Of course, pleasure is precisely the problem with these substances, since pleasure and piety have always had an uneasy relationship.

When one looks at our drug laws—indeed, at our vice laws altogether—the only organizing principle that appears to make sense of them is that anything which might radically eclipse prayer or procreative sexuality as a source of pleasure has been outlawed. In particular, any drug (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, marijuana, etc.) to which spiritual or religious significance has been ascribed by its users has been prohibited. Concerns about the health of our citizens, or about their productivity, are red herrings in this debate, as the legality of alcohol and cigarettes attests.

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

the bottom






why inequality is fatal

Nature | The idea that income inequality within a society is more unsettling to health and welfare than income differences between societies has been hotly debated for more than two decades. In the past year alone, six academic analyses have been published in peer-reviewed journals, four of which contradict the hypothesis on statistical grounds. Yet Wilkinson and Pickett do not address these criticisms in their book. They might also have explained the occasional notable deviation from their theory, such as the unexpectedly high murder rates in egalitarian Finland and the unexpectedly low rates in very unequal Singapore.

How can inequality affect such a diverse set of social problems so profoundly? The authors make a compelling case that the key is neuroendocrinological stress, provoked by a perception that others enjoy a higher status than oneself, undermining self-esteem. This triggers the release of the hormone cortisol, which raises blood pressure and blood sugar levels, from which myriad health and social problems unfold. This seemingly hard-wired response has been well studied in social hierarchies of monkeys; low-status animals become predisposed to atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Humans experiencing chronic stress exhibit similar symptoms, accumulating abdominal fat under the influence of a part of the brain associated with addiction.

Cortisol overrides 'feel-good hormones' such as oxytocin, involved in establishing trust, and dopamine, the reward signal that reinforces memory, attention and problem-solving ability. Cortisol-induced stress predisposes some individuals to mental illness or violent behaviour. It can hasten the arrival of puberty, which may prompt premature sexual adventures, providing a plausible explanation of the high prevalence of teenage pregnancies in the most unequal societies. Cortisol also transmits stress to a fetus, with lasting consequences for physical and emotional development.

The stress response could even exacerbate illiteracy and unwillingness to engage with education. Wilkinson and Pickett argue that these are more common in less equal societies, not because of poverty but because school-age students may lose self-esteem when they realize that some of their peers are better equipped than themselves for educational challenges. The stress response may also lead to illicit drug use. Monkey social hierarchies provide a clue: dominant animals secrete dopamine and feel good about their place in the world, whereas monkeys at the other end of the status scale are more inclined to self-medicate — with cocaine if given the opportunity.

The Spirit Level is a brave and imaginative effort to understand the intractable social problems that face rich democratic countries. For Wilkinson and Pickett, economic equality is the best way to improve the quality of life for all. Governments can get there by using redistributive taxation and an extensive welfare state, as in Sweden, or by restraining income disparities and minimizing public spending, as in Japan. The book ends optimistically: whatever route is chosen, the authors argue, the current economic slump may be a providential opportunity to start righting the balance.


genius; the modern view






Tuesday, May 05, 2009

wireless remains....,


It was the inventor’s biggest project, and his most audacious.






WaPo | Toward the start of Mexico's swine flu outbreak on April 24, Ángel Flores Maldonado had so many patients at his office that when he finally escaped at 10:15 that night, the line still stretched into the street.

The doctor does not work at a hospital, or a clinic, or the government respiratory center, but on the evening shift at a pharmacy in the poor, crowded neighborhood of Iztapalapa, in eastern Mexico City. "The same but cheaper," reads the sign at this popular pharmacy chain, Similares, and that is the calculation many Mexicans seem to have made while the virus spread through the capital.

"In Mexico, we are very unaccustomed to going to the hospital. Here, if someone has a cold or anything else, they buy something in the pharmacy, or they leave it be," Flores said. "This is why Mexicans are dying. Because we are very indecisive about going to a hospital until it's too late."

Several theories have emerged as to why all but one of the confirmed deaths from swine flu have occurred in Mexico. Much of it is speculation -- that Mexico City's 7,300-foot elevation exacerbates respiratory illnesses, that there may be a slight variation between the viral strain prevalent in Mexico and swine flu elsewhere, that Mexico is further along in disease transmission and other countries will eventually see severe cases.

But a critical factor, according to specialists here, is that flu victims have delayed checking into hospitals until their condition has deteriorated so much they cannot be saved. While medicines are plentiful and cheap at Mexican pharmacies, swine flu antiviral medication was often not available or prohibitively expensive.

"Some patients arrive late at the hospitals, and to a certain degree this is a problem of education," José Sifuentes-Osorio, an infectious-disease specialist at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition, said in a radio interview Monday. "Many of our people, independent of their socioeconomic situation, self-medicate for three or four days, and they lose precious time."

Has Oil and Gas Collapse Sealed Fate of Peak Oil?

This is an interactive slide show. Click the image above to access the popup window link.

Monday, May 04, 2009

"peak oil" or "limits to growth"








what makes us human?

Scientific American | Language Clues - Whole-genome comparisons in other species have also provided another crucial insight into why humans and chimps can be so different despite being much alike in their genomes. In recent years the genomes of thousands of species (mostly microbes) have been sequenced. It turns out that where DNA substitutions occur in the genome—rather than how many changes arise overall—can matter a great deal. In other words, you do not need to change very much of the genome to make a new species. The way to evolve a human from a chimp-human ancestor is not to speed the ticking of the molecular clock as a whole. Rather the secret is to have rapid change occur in sites where those changes make an important difference in an organism’s functioning.

HAR1 is certainly such a place. So, too, is the FOXP2 gene, which contains another of the fast-changing sequences I identified and is known to be involved in speech. Its role in speech was discovered by researchers at the University of Oxford in England, who reported in 2001 that people with mutations in the gene are unable to make certain subtle, high-speed facial movements needed for normal human speech, even though they possess the cognitive ability to process language. The typical human sequence displays several differences from the chimp’s: two base substitutions that altered its protein product and many other substitutions that may have led to shifts affecting how, when and where the protein is used in the human body.

A recent finding has shed some light on when the speech-enabling version of FOXP2 appeared in hominids: in 2007 scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, sequenced FOXP2 extracted from a Neandertal fossil and found that these extinct humans had the modern human version of the gene, perhaps permitting them to enunciate as we do. Current estimates for when the Neandertal and modern human lineages split suggest that the new form of FOXP2 must have emerged at least half a million years ago. Most of what distinguishes human language from vocal communication in other species, however, comes not from physical means but cognitive ability, which is often correlated with brain size. Primates generally have a larger brain than would be expected from their body size. But human brain volume has more than tripled since the chimp-human ancestor—a growth spurt that genetics researchers have only begun to unravel.

One of the best-studied examples of a gene linked to brain size in humans and other animals is ASPM. Genetic studies of people with a condition known as microcephaly, in which the brain is reduced by up to 70 percent, uncovered the role of ASPM and three other genes—MCPH1, CDK5RAP2 and CENPJ—in controlling brain size. More recently, researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor have shown that ASPM experienced several bursts of change over the course of primate evolution, a pattern indicative of positive selection. At least one of these bursts occurred in the human lineage since it diverged from that of chimps and thus was potentially instrumental in the evolution of our large brains.

Other parts of the genome may have influenced the metamorphosis of the human brain less directly. The computer scan that identified HAR1 also found 201 other human accelerated regions, most of which do not encode proteins or even RNA. (A related study conducted at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England, detected many of the same HARs.) Instead they appear to be regulatory sequences that tell nearby genes when to turn on and off. Amazingly, more than half of the genes located near HARs are involved in brain development and function. And, as is true of FOXP2, the products of many of these genes go on to regulate other genes. Thus, even though HARs make up a minute portion of the genome, changes in these regions could have profoundly altered the human brain by influencing the activity of whole networks of genes.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

humans are responsible for swine flu | Our demand for meat means pigs, turkeys, chickens, cows and other animals must be mass produced in crowded, feces-ridden factory farms like the one in Mexico that is suspected of starting the current swine flu outbreak. These farms are incubators for disease.

While it's easy to point fingers at Granjas Carroll and Mexico, disease-ridden animal factories can be found all over the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studies have shown that 30 to 50 percent of pigs raised for food in the U.S. have been infected with some strain of swine flu. Hans-Gerhard Wagner, a senior officer with the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, has called the "intensive industrial farming of livestock" an "opportunity for emerging disease."

Other harmful organisms, including salmonella, campylobacter, listeria and E. coli, also spread from animals to people. E. coli is found in the feces of farmed animals and often sprays in every direction when animals are eviscerated at slaughterhouses. A study published in the journal Nature revealed that not only are U.S. meat and dairy products more commonly contaminated with E. coli than other foods are, they also contain a substance that can raise the risk of E. coli infection.

Although health officials have been quick to point out people can't get swine flu from eating pork, they have failed to hammer home one significant detail: Raising pigs for pork is what puts us at risk for swine flu in the first place.

The fewer pigs, chickens and other animals we raise for food, the fewer animal-borne diseases there will be. It's that simple. And since meat is high in saturated fat and cholesterol and can cause heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and a host of other health problems. We would all be better off if we stopped eating it today.

h1n1 systematization

Northwestern ROCS | In our simulations for the spread in the United States we take Mexico City to be the starting point of the infection. The initial conditions of the model are chosen to match the available information on confirmed cases in the United States and Mexico, and we permit for a bracket of unconfirmed cases. We take into account the travel of individuals between counties in the United States and the incoming flux of airline passengers from Mexico City. We consider a worst-case scenario based on assumptions made from the information we have gathered thus far. The key factors in our modeling approach are very accurate human mobility datasets on scales from a few to a few thousand kilometers. We obtained the underlying multi-scale human mobility network indirectly by our recent investigation on the geographic circulation of dollar bills in the United States, which is an excellent proxy for human mobility and includes small scale daily commuting traffic, intermediate traffic, and long distance travel by air. Our simulations consist of multiple layers, each layer possessing and increasing degree of accuracy and complexity. Our final projections are done with a fully stochastic model that incorporates the inherent randomness in disease dynamics that is particularly important at the onset of an epidemic when the number of infected individuals is small compared to the whole population.


CDC | CDC continues to take aggressive action to respond to an expanding outbreak caused by H1N1 (swine flu).

CDC’s response goals are to:

1. Reduce transmission and illness severity, and

CDC continues to issue and update interim guidance daily in response to the rapidly evolving situation. This includes guidance on when to close schools and how to care for someone who is sick at home. Supplies from CDC’s Division of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) are being sent to all 50 states and U.S. territories to help them respond to the outbreak. In addition, the Federal Government and manufacturers have begun the process of developing a vaccine against this new virus.


Saturday, May 02, 2009

history and possible future of american coal

Uppsala University | Future coal production will not be entirely determined by what is geologically available, but rather by the fraction of that amount that is practically recoverable. Society demands energy, not energy from coal. This means if this energy can be obtained less costly and more practically from other energy sources, potentially nuclear power or wind, those will be favored.

Increased coal prices do not necessarily lead to increased production, increased reserves, and the transformation of resources into reserves. The price development and feasibility of other energy sources must also be considered, since it is the energy that is demanded. Increased coal prices might therefore also be a burden for the industry as investors may move towards cheaper energy sources. Increased concern around CO2 emissions from coal is likely to decrease coal’s price competitiveness, because of the potential from CO2-taxes and increased costs of carbon-capture and storage (CCS). A closer discussion of this is beyond the scope of this study, but has been performed by others (Kavouridis and Koukouzas, 2008).

There is a common belief in some form of self-regulating coal supply cycle (Thielemann et al., 2007), where increased prices and human ingenuity will automatically lead to reserve growth and higher production. Our results suggest that this theory should be reevaluated. The historical evolution of U.S. coal reserves shows a trend towards reduced recoverable reserves. There are a number of different factors causing this, ranging from land-use restrictions to changes in definitions. The historical trend towards reduced recoverable amounts is clear and likely to continue in to the future, with even stricter regulations imposed by increased environmental concern.

A steady decline in the heating value of U.S. coal has also been observed and this can be seen as a sign of the increased depletion and the movement to less optimal seams. This trend is likely to continue in to the future, justified by increased depletion of high energy coals in Appalachia and an overall increased dependence on subbituminous western coals. By 2030 the average calorific value could be slightly above 20 MJ/kg. This also implies that the coal production forecast in the International Energy Outlook (2007) would require the production volumes in 2030 be 70% higher than today. Whether this can be achieved is very questionable as shown by the historical production trends and the depleting reserves in many key producing states.

Using the recoverable reserves as an estimate of what is realistically available for production will yield a coal output of around 1400 Mt by 2030 through the rest of the century. This would require a massive development of the coal reserves in Montana, as they are the largest undeveloped reserves remaining for future exploitation. Unless this happens, US coal production could reach a peak around 2030. The demonstrated reserve base allows a significantly higher production volume to be reached but this should be regarded as unrealistic, as it completely ignores regulations and restrictions. The restrictions have proved to be a key factor for the amount of coal available for production and ignoring restrictions when creating possible future scenarios is a fundamentally flawed approach.

To summarize the geologic amounts of coal are of much less importance to future production than the practically recoverable volumes. The geological coal supply might be vast, but the important question is how large the share that can be extracted under present restrictions are and how those restrictions will develop in the future. Production limitations might therefore appear much sooner than previously expected.

from bust to boom?





The discoveries have spurred energy experts and policy makers to start looking to natural gas in their pursuit of a wide range of goals: easing the impact of energy-price spikes, reducing dependence on foreign oil, lowering "greenhouse gas" emissions and speeding the transition to renewable fuels.

A climate-change bill being pushed by President Barack Obama could boost reliance on natural gas. The bill, which could emerge from the House Energy and Commerce Committee in May, is expected to set aggressive targets for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent man-made greenhouse gas.

Friday, May 01, 2009

the nafta flu | La Jornada columnist Julio Hernández López connects the corporate dots to explain how the Virginia-based Smithfield Farms came to Mexico:








here go the stupid....,








flu prompts shutdowns in mexico, texas

NYTime | The swine flu continues to spread slowly but surely, with 114 confirmed cases in 12 states on Thursday, up from 91 in 10 states on Wednesday. Many more states have suspected cases, and 11 countries have been affected so far.

But little else seems sure about the disease, including how bad it will turn out to be and even its name, now officially influenza A(H1N1), according to the World Health Organization.

“This is a rapidly evolving situation,” said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It is a situation filled with uncertainty.”

Dr. Besser praised a decision by the W.H.O. on Wednesday to raise the global alert level to Phase 5, one step below a pandemic. He said the move would not affect the United States, which is already taking measures against the outbreak, but would alert other countries to get pandemic plans in order. On Thursday, officials of the health organization said Phase 5, which means a pandemic is highly likely, was still the appropriate level.

In this country, hundreds of schools have closed, including Fort Worth’s entire school district of about 80,000 students. Texas has 26 confirmed cases.

On Thursday, the White House disclosed that a member of the Obama administration delegation that traveled to Mexico in mid-April probably contracted the disease. The man had flu symptoms when he returned to Washington, and spread the illness to his wife and son, but he and his family have recovered and he is back at work. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said the man did not work closely with the president and never posed any risk to him.

In Canada, the confirmation of 15 additional cases on Thursday brought the total number of cases there to 34.

Mexico now has 312 confirmed cases and 12 confirmed fatalities. More than 2,500 cases are suspected, and at least 150 people are believed to have died of the disease.

emergency medicine backchannel scoop...,

After I returned from a public health meeting yesterday with community leaders and school officials in Comal County and Hays County, Heather suggested I send an update to my patients in the area, because what we are hearing privately from the CDC and Health Department is different from what you are hearing in the media. Some of you know some of this, but I will just list what facts I know.


- Virus spreads more than 7 days after symptom onset (possibly as long as 9 days) (this is more unusual than ordinary flu)

- Since it is such a novel (new) virus, th ere is no "herd immunity," so the "attack rate" is very high. This is the percentage of people who come down with a virus if exposed. Almost everyone who is exposed to this virus will become infected, though not all will be symptomatic. That is much higher than seasonal flu, which averages 10-15%. The "clinical attack rate" estimation from CDC and WHO may be around 40-50%. This is the number of people who show symptoms. This is a huge number. It is hard to convey the seriousness of this to those outside of the medical fields.


- Some of the kids with positive cases in Comal County have had more than 70 contacts before diagnosis as a minimum figure.



- They are advising President Obama to declare an emergency sometime in the next 72-96 hours. This may not happen, but if it doesn't, I will be surprised. When this happens, all public gathering will be cancelled for 10 days minimum.


- Tamiflu is running out. There is a national stockpile, but it will have to be carefully managed for law enforcement and first responders as it is not enough to treat the likely number of infections when this is full-blown. I don't think there is a big supply of Relenza, but I do not know those numbers. If I had to choose, I would take Relenza, as I think it gets more drug to the affected tissue than Tamiflu.

- You should avoid going to the ER if you think you have been exposed or are symptomatic. ER's south of here are becoming overwhelmed today-- and I mean that -- already. It is coming in waves, but the waves are getting bigger.

- It appears that this flu produces a distinctive "hoarseness" in many victims. The symptoms, in general, match other flu's; namely, sore throat, body aches, headache, cough, and fever. What is not too common in regular flu cycles is vomiting and diarrhea which seems to be associated with this, further dehydrating victims. Some have all these symptoms, while others may have only one or two.



I will try to keep everyone posted if I have any new information. Meanwhile, don't be afraid, stay informed and try to avoid infection. The fewer people infected the easier it will be for our public officials to manage it.

If any of my patients become ill, or suspect infection, call the office, do not come without calling and DO NOT go to the ER. If one member in a family is identified all would be given the Tamiflu or Relenza (that is normal course of action) if there is enough distributed to fill prescriptions. Public health stated that one family member identified or suspected to have contracted the flu it will require the whole family to be ‘quarantined’ in their own home until enough time has passed for the remaining household to have contracted it or be considered infection free ( 7 to 10 days per person). As another suggestion, if any member of the family is on routine medication- fill those prescriptions now. Have plenty fluids, Motrin, soups, etc available and make contingency plans in case your family is affected.