Category Archives: medical

medical, personal, pleasures, science

And Not a Holiday in Sight

I’ve not been blogging as much as I would have liked over recent weeks. I blame the day job which has been manic especially as I’ve spent a chunk of July and most of August covering for colleagues who are on holiday.

And now summer has gone and, yet again this year, I’ve not had a holiday. Every plan we’ve made to get a break away this year (excepting our 5 days in February) has turned to dust for one reason or another. We had 2 weeks off in early June, but couldn’t get away as we couldn’t get either a cat feeder or get the little buggers into the local cattery. We were planning a trip to Sweden in late-October/early November but our work has scuppered that with important meetings etc. and the friends we were going to see are moving then.

So we’ve had to compromise and are taking a week in mid-September – though having decided where we wanted to go we’ve been unable to book anywhere, so it’s going to be another stay at home break. Still we already have a couple of away-days planned, including a trip to see my favourite aunt who has just come out of hospital after a stroke. The only problem is that if we stay at home we don’t relax properly and you always that never-ending list of jobs round your neck like an albatross.

All of which means we’ve had one 5 day break away in the last two years, mostly because of clashes caused by my work and Noreen’s – at any time one or the other of us has been tied to immovable project dates and schedules. And the medics seriously wonder why I get depressed. It’s enough to drive you mad!

Maybe we can get that Swedish break in next Spring. And plans are already afoot for Autumn 2009. By then I might have won the lottery and be retired. Well at least I can dream!

medical, science

Sputnik Virus, A Viral Parasite

The following is from ProMED, an officially run mailing list for those interested in emerging infectious diseases. I’m posting it here because it is an interesting and unexpected piece of science — and because it arrived as an email I can’t add it to the “shared” list on the right.

A ProMED-mail post <http://www.promedmail.org>
ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases <http://www.isid.org>

Date: Wed 6 Aug 2008
Source: The Scientist, NewsBlog [edited] <>

A virus’s virus
Researchers have discovered the 1st virus to infect another virus, according to a study appearing tomorrow in Nature. The new virus was found living inside a new strain of the viral giant, mimivirus. “This is one parasite living on another parasite, which is really fascinating,” Michael Rossman, microbiologist at Purdue University, who was not involved in the study, told The Scientist.

Didier Raoult and colleagues at the Universitee de la Mediterranee in Marseilles, France, discovered mimivirus in 2003 from a water-cooling tower in the UK [see ProMED-mail reference below]. It primarily infects amoeba, although antibodies have been found to the virus in some human pneumonia cases. It measures in diameter about 400 nanometers (nm), while medium-sized viruses such as adenovirus and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) measure closer to 100-200 nm.

In this study, Raoult’s team found a new strain of mimivirus in water from a cooling tower in Paris. This new strain was even larger than [the UK] mimivirus, so the researchers named it mamavirus. To their surprise, while examining the new strain by electron microscopy they saw a smaller virus attached to mamavirus. This small virus comprises only 20 genes (mimivirus has more than 900 protein-coding genes) and the researchers named it Sputnik.

The team quickly set to work to see what effect Sputnik was having on the mamavirus. They found that Sputnik infects the replication machinery in mamavirus and causes it to produce deformed viral structures and abnormal capsids, where viral genetic information is stored. It had a similar effect on mimivirus. Because Sputnik’s behavior so closely resembles what bacteriophage do to bacteria, the researchers called the new type of virus a virophage, and suspect it may represent a new virus family.

The researchers found that Sputnik’s genes shared homology with genes from all 3 domains of life: archaea, bacteria, and eukarya. Some of the genes were homologous to novel sequences that scientists previously detected in a metagenomic study of ocean water. This supports the idea that Sputnik is part of a larger family of viruses, Bernard La Scola, researcher at the Universite de la Mediterranee (University of the Mediterranean) and 1st author on the paper, told The Scientist.

The size of a virus may dictate whether it can be infected by smaller viruses such as Sputnik, he added. For this reason, viruses that affect humans — like HIV and influenza — are likely too small to be infected by Sputnik-like viruses, said Rossman.

La Scola added he is sure that there are other giant viruses yet to be identified in the world, but they won’t necessarily be infected by smaller viruses. “We need to be lucky to find another Sputnik.”

[Byline: Andrea Gawrylewski]
—
Communicated by: ProMED-mail <promed@promedmail.org>

amusements, medical, memes, personal, photography, pleasures, science, thoughts

Getting to Know You Meme

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Getting to Know You Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

1. A perfect weekend watching Tom & Jerry on tv and laughing…, 2. Amur Leopard, 3. A TRIBUTE TO A DEAR FRIEND. (KILKENNY, IRELAND), 4. Untitled, 5. ₪ Rhizomatic in-between typewriter ₪, 6. “Timemachines”, 7. 14th August 2007 / Day 226, 8. The cake i Made for my mother’s birthday, 9. Embracing the sun … {}, 10. day 151 Caught with crabs in my merkin! , 11. Walking in the rain 1_2499, 12. Smiles of Tibet in Exile

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste the html into your blog or Flickr stream (the easiest way is to copy the URLs and then head over to the fd’s flickr toys link above and use the mosaic maker).

The Questions & Answers:
1. What makes you laugh? Cats
2. What makes you cry? Animal suffering
3. Who is the one person you trust the most in the world? My Mother
4. Who broke your heart? Jill (no, not you Mistress Weekes; long before that!)
5. Where was your first kiss? I really don’t remember
6. What body part do you love most (your body)? My mind
7. What body part do you love least (your body)? My fat
8. What candy fits your personality? Coffee creme chocolate
9. What color would you paint your room if you could pick any color? Magnolia
10. A word that makes you laugh? Merkin
11. What emotion do you express most often? Depression
12. Who inspires you? The Dalai Lama

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys. for the Flickr My Meme group.

beliefs, medical, science, thoughts

Quote: Decency

Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.

[Pablo Casals]

medical, science, thoughts

Measles Endemic in UK

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Apparently Measles is now endemic in the UK. Well now there’s a surprise — I thought it always had been! But according to an item the other day on ProMED Mail (the mailing list of the International Society for Infectious Diseases) which is interested mostly in emerging diseases, Measles had become a rarity but is once again endemic. To quote from the item …

Measles once again endemic in the United Kingdom

A total of 14 years after the local transmission of measles was halted in the United Kingdom (UK),the disease has once again become endemic, according to the Health Protection Agency (HPA), the public health body of England and Wales. In an update on measles cases in its weekly bulletin last week, the agency stated that, as a result of almost a decade of low mumps-measles-rubella(MMR) vaccination coverage across the UK, ‘the number of children susceptible to measles is now sufficient to support the continuous spread of measles’.

In an earlier update, the HPA reported that all recent indigenously-acquired cases with a genotype in England and Wales had been found to have the same D4 sequence …

In May [2008], a 17-year-old with underlying congenital immunodeficiency died of acute measles infection, the first such fatality in the UK since 2006 … The total number of confirmed measles cases in England and Wales so far this year [2008] is 461. In Scotland, there have been 68 cases of measles reported in 2008, of which 51 have been laboratory-confirmed. All of the cases in Scotland were either not immunised or of unknown immunisation status. Only 2 of the cases were imported from abroad …

The HPA has recommended that health services exploit ‘all possible opportunities’ to offer MMR vaccine to children who have not received 2 doses … Europe is facing a measles epidemic, with large ongoing outbreaks for instance in Switzerland, Austria and Italy.

Why am I not surprised? Moreover I don’t understand this fuss; we’ve always had Measles. Yes, I know it can be nasty, but so can ‘flu. Why do we have this fetish that we must always rid ourselves so permanently of all diseases. Are we not beginning to get evidence that the population as a whole is healthier for being exposed to all these things?

medical, natural history, personal, photography, pleasures, science, thoughts, topographical

What I Done on My Holidays

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At the beginning of June Noreen and I had two weeks holiday (well time off work anyway). For a variety of reasons, not least that we couldn’t get anyone to feed the cats, not even our local cattery, we didn’t go away. As always we intended to have lots of days out but due to basic knackeration and idleness we failed. So here is what I did done on my holidays …

  • Took lots of photographs of the garden and especially the roses
  • Supervised the gardener reconstructing the compost heaps
  • Got a boot-load of old stuff (dead printers, garden shredder) taken to the tip
  • Proofread Anthony Powell Society quarterly Newsletter and sent it to printer
  • Paid loads of bills
  • Turned out the toot from our wardrobes and threw out a load of old shoes, underwear, etc.
  • Reviewed the draft new Anthony Powell Society website (still under development at the time of writing)
  • Got a haircut
  • Tidied up my PC hard disk
  • Photoshopped lots of photos and posted them to Flickr
  • Caught up on the pile of magazines to read by the bed
  • Had some extra sleep
  • Cooked lamb curry, vegetable curry and trout & pasta
  • Decided not to buy a new bike (‘cos I know I’ll end up not using it, like I didn’t use the last one)
  • Attended a charity trustees meeting, and unexpectedly had to chair it
  • Went to London Zoo
  • Went to the garden centre and bought loads of plants (some acers, a rose, a passion flower, lots of small things) and some terracotta pots for the patio
  • Had a major tidy-up and repotted lots of plants on the patio
  • Stayed up late but still got up fairly early (at least on some days)
  • Had several siestas
  • Went to Kew Gardens
  • Spent lots of time pottering in the garden
  • Got slightly sunburnt
  • Wrote several weblog posts
  • Had sex, several times
  • Totally buggered my sleep pattern and failed to get up early on the days I wanted to (which is why we didn’t have as many away-days as planned)
  • Processed a raft of literary society membership renewals and other admin; three afternoons worth!
  • Tried to agree what we should do for an autumn holiday – and failed!

Such is the stuff of doing nothing.

freedom of speech, medical, memes, nudism, photography, science, thoughts

Full Frontal Mirror Tiles


Full Frontal Mirror Tiles, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s self-portrait: 52 Weeks 16/52 (2008 week 24).

Yes it’s horrible, and I’m seriously over-weight … but not as much as I was; I’ve lost 28kg (almost 4.5 stone) since October. That’s not fast, but it is fast enough considering I am diabetic and while controlling calories also have to be careful to keep my blood glucose stable. Actually losing the weight has helped a lot with my blood sugar levels and my blood pressure, so although it isn’t easy it is worth doing; I do feel lots better for it. But I really need to get rid of at least that much again if I possibly can.

Oh and yes, the tile effect is a shameless abuse of Photoshop – just to save the worst of the blushes of the innocent. Being nude, anywhere, anytime, bothers me not at all ‘cos I was brought up as a nudist! But I know it does bother others, so out of respect for them there is nothing here that you wouldn’t see in a swimming pool.

beliefs, current affairs, medical, science, sexuality, thoughts

Sex Education

There’s an interesting article in last week’s issue of New Scientist in which Hazel Muir questions why it is that governments (indeed whole societies) ignore scientific evidence when making policy. Of particular interest to me was the comments on federal funding of sex education programmes for teenagers. As the full article isn’t available to non-subscribers, I give you a couple of telling paragraphs …

Among other requirements, the [abstinence-only sex education] programmes must teach “that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects”. A 2004 report commissioned by a Democratic congressman concluded that four-fifths of the curricula contained false or misleading information, such as hugely exaggerating the risk of pregnancy or HIV transmission when condoms are used.

“The origin of this programme was not in science or research by any means, but in an ultra-conservative, ultra-religious ideology,” says James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a non-profit organisation in Washington DC that champions informed decision-making about sexual behaviour. “You could almost see the abstinence-only movement as the sexual health equivalent of creationism.”

Several studies, including a Congress-funded randomised controlled trial involving more than 2000 teenagers, showed the abstinence-only programmes were no more likely than conventional sex education to prevent or delay teenagers having sex, or reduce their number of sexual partners. Yet Congress continues to fund the programmes. Peer-reviewed studies of more than a dozen well-considered programmes for scientific sex education show these programmes can both make teenagers delay having sex and increase contraceptive use if they do have sex: “But how many of these would be eligible for federal funding? Zero,” Wagoner says.

Now why does the US have the highest rate of unplanned teenage pregnancy in the western world? Makes you think, doesn’t it!?