tingilinde

anxious r$y

Why is Mitt so socially in-equiped - so clueless?

The one known is that he does screw up.  Salon suggests perhaps his own anxiety? I''m sure lots of people will have a deeper look into what makes him tick. 

perhaps he is just trying to preserve his olympic story and his fundamental belief in his own greatness

A more chilling explanation is that it is his worldview...(via Slate)

a path to curing food allergies

From KQED's forum podcast, caught during today's rowing session ..  interesting work that might lead to lowered food allergy rates and maybe better tolerance or even cures in those with allergies...

 

an abstract of the NEJM paper

Oral Immunotherapy for Treatment of Egg Allergy in Children

A. Wesley Burks, M.D., Stacie M. Jones, M.D., Robert A. Wood, M.D., David M. Fleischer, M.D., Scott H. Sicherer, M.D., Robert W. Lindblad, M.D., Donald Stablein, Ph.D., Alice K. Henning, M.S., Brian P. Vickery, M.D., Andrew H. Liu, M.D., Amy M. Scurlock, M.D., Wayne G. Shreffler, M.D., Ph.D., Marshall Plaut, M.D., and Hugh A. Sampson, M.D. forthe Consortium of Food Allergy Research (CoFAR)

N Engl J Med 2012; 367:233-243July 19, 2012

BACKGROUND

For egg allergy, dietary avoidance is the only currently approved treatment. We evaluated oral immunotherapy using egg-white powder for the treatment of children with egg allergy.

METHODS

In this double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study, 55 children, 5 to 11 years of age, with egg allergy received oral immunotherapy (40 children) or placebo (15). Initial dose-escalation, build-up, and maintenance phases were followed by an oral food challenge with egg-white powder at 10 months and at 22 months. Children who successfully passed the challenge at 22 months discontinued oral immunotherapy and avoided all egg consumption for 4 to 6 weeks. At 24 months, these children underwent an oral food challenge with egg-white powder and a cooked egg to test for sustained unresponsiveness. Children who passed this challenge at 24 months were placed on a diet with ad libitum egg consumption and were evaluated for continuation of sustained unresponsiveness at 30 months and 36 months.

RESULTS

After 10 months of therapy, none of the children who received placebo and 55% of those who received oral immunotherapy passed the oral food challenge and were considered to be desensitized; after 22 months, 75% of children in the oral-immunotherapy group were desensitized. In the oral-immunotherapy group, 28% (11 of 40 children) passed the oral food challenge at 24 months and were considered to have sustained unresponsiveness. At 30 months and 36 months, all children who had passed the oral food challenge at 24 months were consuming egg. Of the immune markers measured, small wheal diameters on skin-prick testing and increases in egg-specific IgG4 antibody levels were associated with passing the oral food challenge at 24 months.

CONCLUSIONS

These results show that oral immunotherapy can desensitize a high proportion of children with egg allergy and induce sustained unresponsiveness in a clinically significant subset. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health; ClinicalTrials.gov number,NCT00461097.)

Supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) (U19AI066738 and U01AI066560) and the National Institutes of Health–National Center for Research Resources Clinical Translational Science Awards and Clinical Research Centers (RR-024128, to Duke University Medical Center; RR-025005, to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; RR-025780, to National Jewish Health; RR-029887, to Mount Sinai School of Medicine; and RR-029884, to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences).

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org.

Drs. Burks and Jones contributed equally to this article.

We thank D. Brown, M. Mishoe, J. Gau, S. Noone, M. Beksinska, J. Grabowska, K. Mudd, S. Driggers, P. Steele, J. Kamilaris, S. Carlisle, T. Hubbart, A. Hiegel, L. Christie, J. Straw, M. Groetch, J. Slinkard, J. Stone, S. Leung, K. Morgan, and K. Brown-Engelhardt for study coordination and support; the staff of the clinical research unit at each institution and the Statistical and Clinical Coordinating Center, without whose participation the study could not have been done; J. Poyser, for managing the project for CoFAR (NIAID); and the families who kindly participated.

SOURCE INFORMATION

From the Department of Pediatrics, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC (A.W.B., B.P.V.); the Department of Pediatrics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children's Hospital, Little Rock (S.M.J., A.M.S.); the Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University Medical Center, Baltimore (R.A.W.); the Department of Pediatrics, National Jewish Health, Denver (D.M.F., A.H.L.); the Department of Pediatrics, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York (S.H.S., H.A.S.); EMMES, Rockville (R.W.L., D.S., A.K.H.), and the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda (M.P.) — both in Maryland; and the Department of Pediatrics, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston (W.G.S.).

 

curious poster

noted by Neil deGrasse Tyson

just ride

The majority of bike riding around here seems to be on $4,000+ carbon fiber bikes pedaled by guys in their thirties who are wearing spandex uniforms and traveling in club packs ...  There is very little commuting, traveling for errands or just plain pedaling for fun.  Apart from the fact that biking is very rare here as a result, there is something odd about cycling only as a serious sport activity. I'm sure it sends the wrong message about cycling to the rest of us.

There is something odd about these guys - there are probably about a hundred in the area - and their high end kit.  While the bikes are beautiful, they also are complete overkill for this sort of activity.  These would have been world class road bikes only a few years ago.  The cycling clothing is equally overkill.  Most of these guys, athough in good physical shape, would be laughably out of shape and training for even modest racing events.  There is a bit of Walter Mitty in this....

If cycling is to become popular, people need to recognize its practical side.  The New York Times has a review of a book by Grant Peterson on the subject - Just Ride.

snip

... with this book, he’s trying to bring biking back to a state of moderation and rationality. If you like the gear, he’s fine with that, and if you don’t agree with all his advice, no problem. But he makes the case that at its core, biking should be a simple, democratic, sometimes ludicrously enjoyable means of getting around. “No matter how much your bike costs,” he says, “unless you use it to make a living, it is a toy, and it should be fun.” Amen.

(Dave is probably smiling along with me)

rmoney goes a-traveling pt2

His lack of social clue continues to amaze and the Brits are pissed.

The last time a US politican slammed the Brits like this may have been Seward during the Civil War - but of course it was a calculation for him (wrong as it happens, but...)

 

If R$y is calculating here I suspect he's dog whistling to his gang back home, knowing he can pivot again if he is elected.

 

Then again he just may be as socially clueless and morally lacking as he seems..

The Brits have been responding with some snipes against him and his religion - as long as they fixate on him rather than the country...

Or ... From Anonymous ;)

Maybe he's banking on his red-neck base known the English only as the bad guys from their primary-school history of the American revolution and "Braveheart."

Maybe he feels that he has to swagger and demonstrate US supremacy at every turn - that's best done by pointing out the inferiority of aliens at every point.

"of course he may also be completely clueless "

 

 

 

 

 

what our ancestors really ate

the real paleo diet - and does it matter? (sci am)

 

 

 

 

on food

(hat tip George)

why urban greenery makes sense

Berlin is famous for this - better yet you want cars off the street like Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Aarhus are working towards…

A press release on a new paper that says city tree pollution scrubbing is better than had been thought (sadly behind a paywall as most journal articles are)

Public release date: 18-Jul-2012

Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
202-872-6042
American Chemical Society 

Green plants reduce city street pollution up to 8 times more than previously believed

Trees, bushes and other greenery growing in the concrete-and-glass canyons of cities can reduce levels of two of the most worrisome air pollutants by eight times more than previously believed, a new study has found. A report on the research appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Thomas Pugh and colleagues explain that concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and microscopic particulate matter (PM) — both of which can be harmful to human health — exceed safe levels on the streets of many cities. Past research suggested that trees and other green plants can improve urban air quality by removing those pollutants from the air. However, the improvement seemed to be small, a reduction of less than 5 percent. The new study sought a better understanding of the effects of green plants in the sometimes stagnant air of city streets, which the authors term "urban street canyons."

The study concluded that judicious placement of grass, climbing ivy and other plants in urban canyons can reduce the concentration at street level of NO₂ by as much as 40 percent and PM by 60 percent, much more than previously believed. The authors even suggest building plant-covered "green billboards" in these urban canyons to increase the amount of foliage. Trees were also shown to be effective, but only if care is taken to avoid trapping pollutants beneath their crowns.

###

The authors acknowledge funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Sustainable Urban Environment program.

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 164,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

 

two religions and responses to sexual predation...

remarkable similarities and very different responses

 

(hat tip to Sara)

 

rmoney goes a-traveling...

Romney is the gift that keeps on giving to political cartoonists and humorists...

Maybe he had have more fruitful sessions with his wife's horse

In the meantime some small business in Tampa prepares to rake in the bucks on supplying the sort of services that some of the GOP faithful love to have away from home...