What Happens After a Python Gorges May Help Human Hearts

BOULDER, Colo. — Pythons are known for their enormous appetites. In a single meal they can devour animals at least as big as they are — deer, alligators pigs and house pets, for example.

Equally remarkable is what happens inside the python as it digests its prey. Within a day, its heart and other organs can double in size. The metabolic rate and production of insulin and lipids soar.

Then, like an accordion, the python’s organs return to normal size in just a few days. Metabolism slows. Then the snake can fast for months, even a year, without losing muscle mass or showing any ill effects, ready to ambush new prey.

How this process happens so rapidly is a biological mystery with important implications for human health, particularly when it comes to heart failure. Now scientists at the University of Colorado here are reporting that they have partly solved it.

Link

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Understanding such exaggerated variations, the researchers say, could help them develop novel ways to delay, prevent, treat or even reverse various hereditary and acquired human diseases.

Pharmaceutical companies have scientifically manipulated substances from other reptiles to develop marketed drugs. For example, Byetta, a diabetes drug, is derived from a hormone found in Gila monster saliva.

Can Romance Be Reduced to Pronouns?

In the speed-dating study, Pennebaker and his colleague Molly Ireland found that couples who used similar levels of personal pronouns, prepositions and even articles were three times as likely to want to date each other compared with those whose language styles didn’t match.() The metric, called language style matching (L.S.M.), was also better at predicting who didn’t make a love connection than the individuals themselves, several of whom showed interest in a partner who did not reciprocate.() “It does better than humans themselves who are in the interaction,” said Pennebaker, author of the new book “The Secret Life of Pronouns.” “Some of the most revealing words we use are the shortest and most forgettable.”
Link

The Doctor’s Remedy: Turmeric for Joint Pain

Yet another reason to go eat some more curry!
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What the Science Shows: A study published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2009 compared the active ingredient in turmeric, curcumin, with ibuprofen for pain relief in 107 people with knee osteoarthritis. The curcumin eased pain and improved function about as well as the ibuprofen. Another study, by researchers at Baylor University Medical Center in 2008, reported that taking curcumin daily in moderate doses for up to three months was safe.
The Caveats
Because the active compound in turmeric can sometimes slow blood clotting, avoid taking it at least two weeks before any scheduled surgery, and do not mix with blood thinners like warfarin and Plavix. It may also worsen gallbladder problems, so avoid it if you have gallstones. Check with your doctor before trying it.
Link

First Results of Phase 3 Trial of RTS,S/AS01 Malaria Vaccine in African Children

Exciting news in the latest journal of New England Journal of Medicine regarding a vaccine for Malaria:
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Link
As the accompanying editorial notes this could be available in some African countries in 2015!

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What does this vaccine mean for the future of the control and elimination of malaria? The considerable increase in global funding is paying dividends. In places where effective interventions (insecticide-treated bed nets, insecticides, and artemisinin-combination treatments) are being intensively deployed, malaria morbidity and mortality are falling. Several new, simple, affordable interventions, such as seasonal chemoprevention among young children in areas of seasonally high malaria transmission and the use of artesunate in patients with severe malaria, can also provide substantial reductions in mortality. The very low rate of death from malaria in this large trial (only 10 deaths directly attributed to malaria) testifies to the benefits of providing early diagnosis and effective antimalarial treatment. But there are real dangers ahead. How will the necessary funding be sustained in the face of a global economic downturn, along with a reduction in political pressure associated with declining mortality from malaria? In addition, artemisinin resistance in malaria parasites and pyrethroid resistance in anopheline mosquito vectors pose very serious threats.

The only Task is to Love

This is a profound essay on what it is like to raise a child with a terminal illness...

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Notes From a Dragon Mom: Link

Senegal Curbs a Bloody Rite for Girls and Women

Across the continent, an estimated 92 million girls and women have undergone it. But like more than 5,000 other Senegalese villages, Sare Harouna has joined a growing movement to end the practice.
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In my many discussions with people in Africa, I learned that female genital cutting is such a long standing natural tradition which makes it hard to gain ground. However, the strategy outlined in this piece from Ms. Dugger at the New York Times shows that succss is indeed achievable!
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The movement to end genital cutting is spreading in Senegal at a quickening pace through the very ties of family and ethnicity that used to entrench it. And a practice once seen as an immutable part of a girl’s life in many ethnic groups and African nations is ebbing, though rarely at the pace or with the organized drive found in Senegal.
The change is happening without the billions of dollars that have poured into other global health priorities throughout the developing world in recent years. Even after campaigning against genital cutting for years, the United Nations has raised less than half the $44 million it set as the goal.
But here in Senegal, Tostan, a group whose name means “breakthrough” in Wolof, Senegal’s dominant language, has had a major impact with an education program that seeks to build consensus, African-style, on the dangers of the practice, while being careful not to denounce it as barbaric as Western activists have been prone to do.
Link to article: here
Link to accompanying video here:

Sprinter, 100, sets record and aims for marathon

Fauja Singh, a 100-year-old British man, has run his way to eight sprinting world records and is aiming to set another, when he takes part in the Toronto Marathon.
Mr Singh broke the records for 100-year-old men in all eight sprinting distances on Thursday. The Guinness Book of World Records will be on hand on Sunday to document his attempt at completing a full marathon distance.
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In Some Chinese Hospitals, Violence Is Out of Control and It's Doctors Who Are at Risk

On a recent Monday afternoon, doctors at Beijing Tongren Hospital stopped working. Their hour-long protest aimed to raise awareness about what they say is a rising problem in Chinese hospitals: attacks on medical personnel. "Punish the attacker severely and give dignity back to doctors," read a digital sign set up by the staff, according to state media.
Days earlier, Xu Wen, a 43-year-old otolaryngologist at the hospital, had been brutally attacked by a dissatisfied patient.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2096630,00.html#ixzz1aZozluEO

Uncovering the business of child sacrifice in Uganda

A BBC investigation has discovered that many cases of child sacrifice in Uganda are not being followed up by the police and little is being done to protect potential victims.
According to a major report released by the charity Jubilee Campaign, around 900 Ugandan children have fallen victim to the practice.
The ritual, which some believe brings wealth and good health, was almost unheard of in the country until around three years ago, but it has re-emerged, seemingly alongside a boom in the country's economy.
Link (to a disturbing video)

Apple logo commemorating Steve Jobs a cyber hit

HONG KONG - A Hong Kong design student's poignant tribute to Apple founder Steve Jobs became an internet hit today with its minimalist, touching symbolism and brought a job offer and a flood of commemorative merchandise using his design.
Link

The Limits of Empathy

David Brooks has had a series of excellent editorials on empathy and social justice. This is the latest. 
But if you subscribe to the New York Times it is worth reviewing his past month or two of columns on this subject.
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The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.

n the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards sometimes wept as they mowed down Jewish women and children, but they still did it. Subjects in the famous Milgram experiments felt anguish as they appeared to administer electric shocks to other research subjects, but they pressed on because some guy in a lab coat told them to.

Empathy orients you toward moral action, but it doesn’t seem to help much when that action comes at a personal cost. You may feel a pang for the homeless guy on the other side of the street, but the odds are that you are not going to cross the street to give him a dollar.

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Moreover, Prinz argues, empathy often leads people astray. It influences people to care more about cute victims than ugly victims. It leads to nepotism. It subverts justice; juries give lighter sentences to defendants that show sadness. It leads us to react to shocking incidents, like a hurricane, but not longstanding conditions, like global hunger or preventable diseases.

Nobody is against empathy. Nonetheless, it’s insufficient. These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them.

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People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.

Twitter Study Tracks When We Are :)

Drawing on messages posted by more than two million people in 84 countries, researchers discovered that the emotional tone of people’s messages followed a similar pattern not only through the day but also through the week and the changing seasons. The new analysis suggests that our moods are driven in part by a shared underlying biological rhythm that transcends culture and environment.

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The pair found that about 7 percent of the users qualified as “night owls,” showing peaks in upbeat-sounding messages around midnight and beyond, and about 16 percent were morning people, who showed such peaks very early in the day.

After accounting for these differences, the researchers determined that for the average user in each country, positive posts crested around breakfast time, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.; they fell off gradually until hitting a trough between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., then drifted upward, rising more sharply after dinner.

To no one’s surprise, people’s overall moods were lowest at the beginning of the workweek, and rose later, peaking on the weekend. (The pattern of peak moods on days off held for countries where Saturday and Sunday are not the weekend.)

The pattern on weekend days was shifted about two hours later — the morning peak closer to 9 a.m. and the evening one past 9 p.m., most likely because people sleep in and stay up later — but the shape of the curve was the same.

Making Change Happen, on a Deadline

I like the concept of a 100 days goal!

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Like many companies in AIDS-wracked Ethiopia, PreFabricated had an AIDS policy, which included extra pay for its H.I.V. positive workers so they could buy more food.  In March, 2008, the company decided to do more.  It set a goal of persuading 70 percent of its employees — 700 people — to get tested for H.I.V. in 100 days.

This was a startling idea.  “Employees do not like to get tested at work because of privacy concerns,” said Seife Mergia, the company’s head of planning and information.  Most of the employees did not work at headquarters, but were scattered around various construction sites.  They were mostly contract day laborers — a workforce few companies invest in.  Yet by day 40 the company had built a clinic. It set up a lab and hired a technician.  It gave people credible evidence that their H.I.V. status would be confidential.  At the 120-day mark, 900 people had been tested for H.I.V.

PreFabricated surpassed its goal using a strategy called Rapid Results, in which a group of people choose a project and carry it out in 100 days.  Companies in Addis that used Rapid Results got their H.I.V. testing rates up to about 75 percent — triple the norm.   The same method has been used in Nicaragua to help pig farmers raise fatter pigs and to improve dairy farms’ milk quality.

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Rapid Results is an eccentric idea.  Nadim Matta, a management consultant who is president of the Rapid Results Institute in Stamford, Conn., likes to say that what’s missing to turn poor places into rich places isn’t more information, money, technology, workshops, programs, evaluation or any of the other things that development organizations normally provide.  What’s missing are motivation and confidence.

At first glance, this seems crazy —  can we cheerlead our way into the middle class?

What Matta means is that usually the obstacle to development is not that we don’t have the tools, but that we don’t use the tools we have. People drag their feet. The next step is someone else’s problem.  

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The deadline creates an ethos of doing whatever it takes.  

Malaria: Epidemic On the Run

Emer also wants me to understand that contracting malaria is often just the beginning of one's troubles. Malaria might kill you. But if it doesn't, it may be the start of an endless cycle of illness and poverty. "Because kids get malaria, there is a lot of absence from school," he says. "So our kids don't do well. So they don't get good jobs, and they don't earn money. Then they have children, who also get sick, and the parents have to spend their little money on them instead of spending it on schools or other things — and they have to stay home to look after them, so they lose more money. Malaria keeps us poor."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2093361,00.html#ixzz1Z7crqnbl

Dalai Lama Will Name Succesor at 90 (he is 76)

All will be clear when the Dalai Lama is around 90 years old. That was the message from the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader over the weekend, as he convened a conference of various Tibetan Buddhist sects in the Indian hill station of Dharamsala. Although the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 76, is in good health, the issue of what will happen to the Tibetan struggle once he dies looms in many minds. Tibetans believe that he will be reincarnated; after all, the current Dalai Lama is considered the 14^th incarnation of the Tibetan god of compassion. But how—and if—this will happen will only be revealed in “clear written instructions” that the Tibetan leader promises to release when he reaches his ninth decade.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/26/the-dalai-lama-promises-to-clarify-his-succession%e2%80%94when-hes-around-90/#ixzz1Z7bqoEl9

Saudi Women Get the Vote but Real Power is Elusive

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and run in the next set of municipal elections, scheduled for 2015. That's good news. But not as good as you might think.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/26/saudi-women-get-the-vote-but-real-power-is-elusive/#ixzz1Z7bPBvNf

Researchers Announce a Breakthrough on HIV/AIDS Treatment

A technique that alters T cells has been shown to reduce the amount of virus in infected people.

Sangamo's approach is based on the observation that some people have a naturally occurring mutation in the CCR5 gene that protects them against HIV. Ordinarily, humans have two copies of every gene. It turns out that individuals with a mutation in both copies of the CCR5 gene cannot be infected by the most common HIV strains. In people with the so-called Delta-32 mutation in just one copy of the gene, infection rarely progresses to AIDS. In the U.S., about 1 percent of the population is thought to carry the helpful mutation, which some researchers believe arose as protection against the Black Death.

Previous evidence existed showing that CCR5-negative cells could help AIDS patients. In 2007, an American man with AIDS and lymphoma received, as treatment for the cancer, a bone-marrow transplant from a person with the CCR5 mutation. The marrow recipient has been free of both AIDS and cancer since then. Sangamo's method treats a patient's own cells, with less risk than a marrow transplant.

For The Dying, A Chance To Rewrite Life

The idea that we all tell ourselves about ourselves and our lives is a concept that has resonated. I ...the idea of using narrative as a way to create a denoument to one's life at the end seems to be a good one..
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NPR explores this here.

Reno Air Races

Reno is still recovering from the devastating crash of the 51 Mustang airplane into the crowd at the Reno Air Races yesterday...
Reno Gazette Journal link here.
New York Times link here.
I would like to commend REMSA,my fellow ophthalmologists, trauma surgeons and ER physicians, as well as ancilliary personnel who responded professionally and are continuing to care for the many patients.

My heart goes out to those who died and were injured along with their families.

Good News About Malaria

Good News About Malaria via Doc Gurley

A report by the RBM (Roll Back Malaria) agency in Geneva, Switzerland says that globally deaths from malaria have fallen by 20% in the past decade, from 984,000 in the year 2000 to 781,000 in 2009. In addition, three countries have been added to the list of those certified as malaria-free; Morocco, United Arab Emirates and Turkmenistan. The agency credits the steep ride in funding for the fight against malaria, particularly from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Funding to fight malaria has increased by 15 times since 2003 and is credited with the progress that has been made.

The increase in funding has led to a huge increase in the distribution of insecticide treated malaria nets in dub-Saharan Africa where 80% of global malaria cases arise.