March 21, 2016

Pa. dairy’s raw milk is linked to listeriosis death

Source: The Detroit News

A Pennsylvania dairy that supplies raw milk around the country has been linked to two cases of listeriosis, one of them fatal, according to health authorities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said one person in California and one in Florida became infected from raw milk in 2014. The Florida victim died.

Officials say the source is believed to be milk from Miller’s Organic Farm located in Bird-in-Hand in Lancaster County. Miller’s Organic Farm, which isn’t licensed by or inspected by the state agriculture department, doesn’t do retail sales but does business via mail order to a membership club.

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Health officials said the source of the illnesses wasn’t known until January, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration informed the CDC that whole genome sequencing of Listeria bacteria from raw chocolate milk produced by the farm in November 2015 was genetically related to samples taken from two affected individuals. State and federal health officials said they were concerned that there might be further contamination of raw milk and raw dairy products distributed by the company.

Read more: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2016/03/21/raw-milk-listeriosis/82080282/

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March 21, 2016

Help, not isolation, for mental illness

Erasing the stigma of mental disorders is half the battle
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/mar/21/erasing-stigma-of-mental-illness/

"If you have a loved one who’s having heart problems, you’ll probably encourage that person to see a doctor and talk about it with friends and other family members. But if you are worried someone close to you may have a mental disorder, the common reaction is to keep it to yourself.

“Many people still see mental illness as a weakness in character,” said Shannon Jaccard, CEO of National Alliance of Mental Illness San Diego (NAMI San Diego). “The brain is an important organ. If your heart has issues, why wouldn’t the brain be susceptible?”

Americans are slowly starting to consider mental disorders as true illnesses, Jaccard said. She added that, because the Affordable Care Act has made mental health care more accessible, more people are seeking help for mental-health issues. Yet, despite these signs of progress, biases have persisted for decades.

“Answers to recent survey questions like: ‘Would you live next door to a person with a mental illness?’ or ‘Would you let your child marry someone with a mental illness?’ are still ‘no,’” Jaccard said. “Those stigmas haven’t shifted.”

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A good read, indeed.

March 21, 2016

The FDA, for only the second time ever, wants to ban a medical device. Here’s why.

Source: Washington Post

Powdered medical gloves — the kind used in surgery or to examine patients — would be ordered off the market under a new proposal by the Food and Drug Administration. That would put the gloves in an exclusive club — only one other device has been banned by the agency: prosthetic hair fibers in 1983.

When an already approved device turns out to pose higher-than-expected risks, the agency usually tries to correct the problem by adding a warning to the label or changing how the device is used. But in the case of the gloves — and the hair fibers — the FDA concluded that no labeling fixes would do the trick. The hair fibers, intended for implantation into the scalp, did not stimulate hair growth or conceal baldness and could cause infections, the agency concluded at the time.

The use of powdered medical gloves has been declining in recent years, and the agency doesn't expect any disruption in clinical care if they are banned. The powder is designed to make it easier to pull the gloves on and off, but it also poses "an unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury to health-care providers, patients and other individuals who are exposed to them," the agency said.

The FDA said the aerosolized powder on latex gloves can spark respiratory allergic reactions. Powdered synthetic gloves don't pose that risk, but may result in airway and wound inflammation and post-surgical adhesions — fibrous scar tissue, the agency said.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/03/21/what-do-powdered-surgical-gloves-and-prosthetic-hair-fibers-have-in-common-the-fda-doesnt-like-them/

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Luckily, I haven't had to wear these for years.

March 21, 2016

Getting to know Pluto

After last summer’s Pluto flyby, the New Horizons spacecraft started sending data to Earth – at 2 kilobits per second. What scientists have learned so far from that rich, slow cache.
https://earthsky.org/space/getting-to-know-pluto

"When the New Horizons spacecraft made its flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015, there was worldwide celebration that we’d finally gotten our first detailed look at this completely new type of planet in the outer reaches of our solar system.

But for those of us on the New Horizons science team, that day and those first images were only the beginning. Since then, I’ve been watching with amazement as the New Horizons spacecraft has transmitted spectacular images back that reveal surprises all over the place. We’ve been making discovery after discovery about the dwarf ice planet Pluto and its moon Charon, and this is likely to continue as we get more data back from the spacecraft. Here’s a summary of just a few of our scientific results to date.

...

As an atmospheric scientist, I found the most amazing discovery to be the brilliant, light blue, globally extensive haze that we can see because large numbers of small atmospheric particles scatter sunlight. This haze extends hundreds of kilometers into space, and embedded within it are over 20 very thin, but far brighter, layers. We suspect the thin layers are produced by some type of atmospheric wave that causes localized regions of condensation of some as-yet-unknown gas. The largest moon of Saturn, Titan, shows similar layering of haze in its upper atmosphere. So there may be some interesting comparative planetary studies that come out of the analysis of the Pluto data.

...

These are just a few of the many exciting, and unexpected, results from the New Horizons flyby of Pluto and Charon. The discoveries we’ve already made will mean that textbooks on planetary science must be rewritten. And yet this sampling of the New Horizons results is just from the tip of an ice mountain of data that we’ll be analyzing and writing papers about for many years, perhaps decades. The data are so rich in things we’ve never seen before that I’m sure there are many more surprises yet to come."

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A fun, all-too brief overview!

March 21, 2016

What does the future hold for NASA? Depends on the next president.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0321/What-does-the-future-hold-for-NASA-Depends-on-the-next-president

"Space is having a resurgence. Private companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation are flying supplies to the International Space Station on their own rockets.

SpaceX and Boeing are working on capabilities to ferry astronauts to the space station in the next year or so. SpaceX has even set its sights on getting humans to Mars in the next decade.

NASA just sent an astronaut to space for an uninterrupted year for the first time ever, gathering unprecedented learnings about long-term exposure to microgravity to prepare for a future, manned mission to Mars. Space exploration has generated so much excitement among the public, upwards of 18,300 people applied for just eight to 14 astronaut spots last month, an amount nearly three times the number of applications NASA received in 2012 for the most recent astronaut class, and one that shatters the previous record of 8,000 in 1978.

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As the piece makes very clear, this is another reason we have to work to keep the GOP out of the White House.

March 21, 2016

Is Everything You Think You Know Wrong?

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/is-everything-you-think-you-know-wrong/

"Does sugar make kids hyper? Has science proven bumble bees can’t fly? Does the average person only use 10% of their brain capacity? Are routine multivitamins good for you? Were the dinosaurs killed off by an asteroid impact?

It is often observed that when a fact is accepted uncritically because, “everyone knows it to be true,” it is probably false. The answers to the above questions are no, no, no, probably not, and it’s more complicated than you think.

The best way to drive this home for many people is this – think of the one area of knowledge in which you have the greatest expertise. This does not have to be your job, it can be just a hobby. Now, how accurate are news reports that deal with your area of extensive knowledge? How much does the average person know? Does anyone other than a fellow enthusiast or expert ever get it quite right?

The universal experience (according to my informal survey over many years) is that the general public is full of misinformation and oversimplifications about your area of knowledge. Now extrapolate that experience to all other areas of knowledge. This means that you are full of misinformation and oversimplifications about every area in which you are not an expert.

..."

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A truly worthy piece for every person on the planet. I plan to read it every day for a while.

March 21, 2016

Is Everything You Think You Know Wrong?

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/is-everything-you-think-you-know-wrong/

"Does sugar make kids hyper? Has science proven bumble bees can’t fly? Does the average person only use 10% of their brain capacity? Are routine multivitamins good for you? Were the dinosaurs killed off by an asteroid impact?

It is often observed that when a fact is accepted uncritically because, “everyone knows it to be true,” it is probably false. The answers to the above questions are no, no, no, probably not, and it’s more complicated than you think.

The best way to drive this home for many people is this – think of the one area of knowledge in which you have the greatest expertise. This does not have to be your job, it can be just a hobby. Now, how accurate are news reports that deal with your area of extensive knowledge? How much does the average person know? Does anyone other than a fellow enthusiast or expert ever get it quite right?

The universal experience (according to my informal survey over many years) is that the general public is full of misinformation and oversimplifications about your area of knowledge. Now extrapolate that experience to all other areas of knowledge. This means that you are full of misinformation and oversimplifications about every area in which you are not an expert.

..."

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A really worthy piece for every person on the planet. I plan to read it every day for a while.

March 21, 2016

In Praise of Lab-Grown Meat

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/in-praise-of-lab-grown-meat/

"...

Lab grown meat involves taking muscle stem cells from animals, like pigs, chickens, or cows, and then growing them, well, in a lab. They can be grown in a large vat of nutrients.

What you end up with is not fully formed muscle, as if it were taken from an animal, but simply a mass of muscle cells. Animal muscles also contain fat, vessels, and connective tissue, which help give it its texture. For taste the fat marbling is probably the most important.

...

In any case, lab-grown meat solves some of these problems. There is no issue of the ethical treatment of animals. There is still an issue of where the nutrients come from to grow the cells, so the ultimate environmental impact will depend on this, but it seems we will have many more options for feeding cells in a vat than feeding live animals.

I am intrigued by the new possibilities raised by lab-grown meat. Once we get beyond the basics of creating tasty and properly textured meat, we can start exploring other possibilities, like genetically tweaking the stem cells to produce a healthier profile of fat.

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I suspect Novella might be a bit optimistic on the time frame, and it does seem like this will start out as something few will be able to afford, but it has definite possibilities.

March 18, 2016

Roald Dahl lands first ever UK No 1 with World Book Day release

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/16/roald-dahl-world-book-day-great-mouse-plot

"Roald Dahl, the author of some of the best-loved children’s books from Matilda to The BFG, has reached No 1 in the UK book charts for the first time.

The Great Mouse Plot, in which a young Dahl and his friends play a trick on the “loathsome” Mrs Pratchett, a “small, skinny old hag” who runs the sweet shop in his hometown of Llandaff, Cardiff, sold 32,096 copies this week, according to the official book sales monitor, Nielsen BookScan.

Published for World Book Day, the story – itself an extract from Dahl’s childhood memoir, Boy – tells of the author and his friends deciding to teach Mrs Pratchett a lesson when they find a dead mouse under a floorboard at school. “It was I and I alone who had the idea for the great and daring Mouse Plot,” recounts Dahl. “We all have our moments of brilliance and glory, and this was mine”.

The Great Mouse Plot beat another World Book Day title, Star Wars story The Escape, to the top spot, also coming in ahead of bestselling titles by Mary Berry, Jeffrey Archer and Philippa Gregory.

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Seems strange, but I guess nothing is all that strange in Dahl's world.

March 18, 2016

Nano-balls filled with poison wipe out metastatic cancer in mice

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/nano-balls-filled-poison-wipe-out-metastatic-cancer-mice

"For most cancer patients, it’s not the original tumor that poses the greatest risk. It’s the metastases that invade the lung, liver, and other tissues. Now, researchers have come up with an approach that tricks these spinoff tumors into swallowing poison. So far the strategy has only been tested in mice, where it proved highly effective. But the results are promising enough that the researchers are planning to launch clinical trials in cancer patients within a year.

The new work is “very innovative stuff,” says Steven Libutti, a geneticist and cancer surgeon at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, who was not involved in the study. The treatment, he explains, works in three steps to place a conventional chemotherapeutic agent near the nucleus (or nuclei) of a metastatic cancer cell where the drug molecules are most lethal. “It’s almost like a multistage rocket” that lifts astronauts off Earth, sends them to the moon, and returns them safely, he says.

At the heart of the new therapy is a chemotherapeutic agent called doxorubicin (dox). The drug has been a mainstay of cancer treatment for years, as it jams up DNA in the cell nucleus and prevents tumor cells from dividing. But when it’s injected into the bloodstream, the drug can also kill heart muscle cells and cause heart failure, which often forces oncologists to either dial back the dose or discontinue it altogether. Delivering dox only to tumor cells is therefore highly desirable, but it has been a major challenge.

Hoping to provide such cell specificity, researchers led by Mauro Ferrari, a nanomedicine expert, as well as president and CEO of the Houston Methodist Research Institute in Texas, have spent years developing porous silicon particles as drug carriers. The particles’ micrometer-scale size and disklike shape allows them travel unimpeded through normal blood vessels. But when they hit blood vessels around tumors, which are typically malformed and leaky, the particles fall out of the circulation and pool near the tumor. That was step one in delivering chemotherapeutic drugs to their target. But just filling such particles with dox doesn’t do much good, Ferrari says. Even if a small amount of the drug finds its way inside tumor cells, those cells often have membrane proteins that act as tiny pumps to push the drug back outside the cell before it can do any damage.

..."

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We'll see where it goes from here, but it's another start.