Texas Health Workers Use Tabasco to Help Train for Ebola

As Texas health workers prepare two new biocontainment units to help treat any future Ebola patients the state might have, they're are using one piece of training equipment from a neighboring state that may surprise you: Tabasco sauce.

At the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where one of the units is being established, the staff has been practicing treating fake patients who have been sprayed at random with the peppery sauce as a stand-in for Ebola virus-laden fluids. Doctors and nurses practice dressing and undressing in their protective gear to avoid contamination, but if they feel the tingle of Tabasco on their skin, they know they've been contaminated.

"In a way, it gives feedback immediately," said Dr. Bruce Meyer, an executive vice president at the hospital, giving credit to the hospital's director of infection prevention, Doramarie Arocha, for the idea.

Tabasco sauce is made by Louisiana-based McIlhenny Co. from red peppers called Capsicum frutescens, which are made spicy by the chemical capsaicin. When skin comes in contact with this chemical, the brain's pain and temperature receptors get activated at the same time, causing that tingly, hot feeling. The hot pepper chemical has also been used in other medical settings, including dermatology and neurology for pain and itch relief.

more

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/texas-health-workers-tabasco-train-ebola/story?id=26385702

Armed police called in - to be confronted by Klingons at superhero-themed party

Armed police were called in after reports of a man in camoflage gear carrying a rifle.

But after responding to the call they were met with assorted stormtroopers, Klingons and Captain America lookalikes - attending a superheroes-themed party.

That was one of a series of fancy dress-related call-outs reported in the Cleveland Police area since January 2013.

Elsewhere, a man wearing a horse’s head and carrying a rifle was just one of 30 surreal fancy-dress related incidents reported over the period.

That mysterious occurrence was logged in July this year after a witness took fright at the sinister sight.

However, it transpired that the person in question was on his way to a fancy dress party and was not, in fact, a nightmarish criminal.

more

http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/armed-police-called---confronted-7992241

Darrell Issa's latest issue: Ebola

As the Obama administration works to calm public anxiety over Ebola, congressional Republicans will take fresh aim Friday at its missteps in responding to the disease and its strategy for containing the virus.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee inquiry comes after lawmakers have already berated the administration, registering their outrage at its refusal to ban travel from African nations afflicted by Ebola and its failure to stop a nurse infected with Ebola from boarding a commercial airline in Texas.

The hearing also will begin one day after a new case of Ebola was diagnosed in a New York City doctor who had recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea, one of the three countries hit hardest by the outbreak in West Africa.

The proceeding is expected to get particularly heated. And the chairman of the oversight committee is San Diego-area Republican Darrell Issa, an unyielding critic of the administration. Issa has used the chairmanship to take the lead, sometimes to the dismay of his GOP colleagues, on some of the most politically incendiary investigations of the last few years. His inquiries into the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the targeting of conservative nonprofits by the IRS loom large in the bitter partisan divide that paralyzes Congress.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-issa-ebola-hearing-20141023-story.html
The Ebola hearing will be among Issa’s last as chairman of the committee. As is custom in the House, he is soon relinquishing the gavel after three years in the high-profile post.

Friday TOON Roundup 3 - The Rest

Ebola





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Palins




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Economy





USA




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Football

Friday TOON Roundup 2 - Election Season

Friday TOON Roundup 1 - Northern Terror

Joan Quigley, astrologer who advised Reagans, dies

Source: SF Gate

Joan Quigley, a San Francisco socialite and writer who became famous as the astrologer who advised President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan in the 1980s, has died. She was 87.

Mrs. Quigley, who was fashionable and social but had a flinty stare, spent seven years as the White House astrologer, advising the Reagans on everything from when to schedule Air Force One takeoffs to the best time for summit meetings and surgeries. She also took credit for reshaping the president’s views on the Soviet Union, recommending a conciliatory rather than confrontational tone. It was Mrs. Quigley who urged President Reagan to stop using the term “Evil Empire.”

“Sometimes I would talk with Nancy for three hours a day,” Mrs. Quigley said in 1995, living at the time on Nob Hill with her sister, Ruth Quigley. She added, “I was hired in May of 1981 to protect the president. This was after he had been shot. I really timed everything the Reagans did. For seven years I worked with them, sometimes 10 hours a day.

“Reagan was the only Aquarian president who didn’t die in office,” she added.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Joan-Quigley-astrologer-who-advised-the-Reagans-5843140.php

Gov. Brownback’s folly: How Dan Doyle’s business and 191,000 others don’t pay Kansas income taxes

BY BARBARA SHELLY

Dan Doyle is so amazed by his new status as a tax-exempt Kansan that sometimes he’ll bring it up to complete strangers.

Like at a store or the bank. He says the conversations go something like this:

“Do you pay income tax to the state of Kansas?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t.”

“Oh yes you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Sam Brownback says I don’t have to.”

Doyle is a partner in an Overland Park law firm, one of about 191,000 “pass-through” businesses that are the luckiest recipients of the radical tax overhaul that Brownback and his GOP-dominated Legislature engineered three years ago.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/barbara-shelly/article3326556.html

Nikon Small World 2014

Now celebrating its 40th year, Nikon Small World is widely regarded as the leading forum to recognize proficiency and photographic excellence of photography taken under the microscope. To select the winners, competition judges analyzed entries from all over the world covering subjects ranging from chemical compounds to up-close-and-personal looks at biological specimens.

The 2014 winners will be revealed on October 30th. In 2014, the competition received over 1,200 entries from more than 79 countries around the world.

The competition continues to grow, with international submissions more than doubled over the past few years. Small World is widely regarded as the leading forum for recognizing the art, proficiency and photographic excellence involved in photomicrography. The submissions are evaluated on originality, informational content, technical proficiency and visual impact. (Nikon)


Mr. Charles Krebs
Charles Krebs Photography
Issaquah, Washington, USA
Chrysochroa buqueti (jewel beetle) carapace, near eye
Diffused, Reflected Illumination
450X


Noah Fram-Schwartz
Greenwich, Connecticut, USA
Jumping Spider Eyes Reflected Light
20X


Dr. Sabrina Kaul University of Vienna Vienna, Austria Larval stage of the acorn worm Balanoglossus misaki ensis, dorsal view, showing cell borders, muscles and apical eye spots Confocal 10X

more

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/nikon-small-world-2014-unranked-entries-1413410871-slideshow/

Alabama man gets $1,000 in police settlement, his lawyers get $459,000

By Sherrel Wheeler Stewart

BIRMINGHAM Ala. (Reuters) - An Alabama man who sued over being hit and kicked by police after leading them on a high-speed chase will get $1,000 in a settlement with the city of Birmingham, while his attorneys will take in $459,000, officials said Wednesday.

The incident gained public attention with the release of a 2008 video of police officers punching and kicking Anthony Warren as he lay on the ground after leading them on a roughly 20-minute high-speed chase.

Warren is serving a 20-year sentence for attempted murder stemming from his running over a police officer during the chase, in which he also hit a school bus and a patrol car before crashing and being ejected from his vehicle.

Under the terms of the settlement of Warren's 2009 federal suit, in which he accused five Birmingham police officers of excessive force, his attorneys will receive $100,000 for expenses and $359,000 in fees, said Michael Choy, an attorney representing the officers on behalf of the city.

more

http://news.yahoo.com/alabama-man-gets-1-000-police-settlement-lawyers-015424640.html