One more day to get through...
Another night of not as much sleep as I'd have liked. Still, another ten rows onto my navy blue kneesock as well.
Link picked up from unanon, probably via Facebook: 6 Ways Nature Cleans Up Our Messes Better Than We Do -- "In 1995, a biochemist named William Chatham noticed something strange in the pit. A green slime that, upon closer inspection, proved to be a living organism. It was wallowing happily in the bull blood-colored poison that is the pit's 'water.' The slime turned out to be a protozoan called Euglena mutabilis that can not only survive the toxic metals and acid, but is thriving. It works by way of photosynthesis, the same process plants use to make oxygen. Only, Euglena mutabilis uses it to oxidize the metals in the water by increasing the general oxygen level of the pit. This, in turn, causes the metals to harmlessly precipitate away. What's more, this protozoan badass eats the iron in the water. And what does it crap? Why, a potential cure for cancer of course. Also, it's not battling alone. Scientists have found a whole host of different bacteria and fungi in the pit as well, all fighting the good fight. So what we're saying is if you give Mother Nature a pool of acid, she'll turn it into a goddamned ecosystem."
Tumblr and the LJ friends list both are all over with Lis Sladen/Sarah Jane Smith tributes -- I'm not sure whether I found this via Twitter or on Tumblr, but it's the one I liked the best -- "Sarah Jane dead? No, impossible! Impossible. Only last week I agreed to do six new audio adventures with her for Big Finish Productions."
From my Yahoo! page:
US aims at its deadliest drug problem: painkillers -- "The White House drug czar wants doctors, states and law enforcement working harder to stop America's deadliest drug-abuse problem: highly addictive prescription painkillers. They are killing more people than heroin and cocaine combined as they foster a slew of illegal 'pill mill' clinics centered in Florida. The federal government on Tuesday announced its first-ever comprehensive strategy to combat the abuse of oxycodone and other opioids, aiming to cut misuse by 15 percent in five years. That goal may sound modest, but it would represent a dramatic turnaround: Emergency room visits from prescription drug overdoses doubled from 2004 to 2009, when they topped 1.2 million, according to federal health officials." No mention, of course, is made of the chronic pain sufferers all over the country who have a hell of a time finding a doctor willing to prescribe them the drugs they need in the amounts that are necessary because of the DEA's tendency to assume large narcotics prescriptions are an automatic sign of abuse... But, hey, the DEA has a budget they need to justify with lots of arrests, and doctors are less prone to shooting at the agents when raids are conducted on their premises.
Genome Scans May Reveal Life-Saving Alternatives for Cancer Patients -- "Full-genome sequencing involves scanning all the thousand of genes on the human genome to try to find a mistake. It's different from the more common gene testing these days, which looks only for specific DNA that might or might not be responsible for a particular problem. In the St. Louis case, the more in-depth sequencing, done in only seven weeks, uncovered a new genetic 'mistake' that showed the woman could be treated with ATRA and not the more-complicated, risky stem cell transplantation. 'A small portion of chromosome 15 had popped into chromosome 17,' explained Richard K. Wilson, co-author of two case studies on full-genome sequencing in the journal. The woman in this case study is now in remission and researchers have actually used the new information to assess other atypical cases of the leukemia, added Wilson, who is director of The Genome Institute at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis."
Oh, the time.
This entry was originally posted at http://fyrdrakken.dreamwidth.org/755563.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Link picked up from unanon, probably via Facebook: 6 Ways Nature Cleans Up Our Messes Better Than We Do -- "In 1995, a biochemist named William Chatham noticed something strange in the pit. A green slime that, upon closer inspection, proved to be a living organism. It was wallowing happily in the bull blood-colored poison that is the pit's 'water.' The slime turned out to be a protozoan called Euglena mutabilis that can not only survive the toxic metals and acid, but is thriving. It works by way of photosynthesis, the same process plants use to make oxygen. Only, Euglena mutabilis uses it to oxidize the metals in the water by increasing the general oxygen level of the pit. This, in turn, causes the metals to harmlessly precipitate away. What's more, this protozoan badass eats the iron in the water. And what does it crap? Why, a potential cure for cancer of course. Also, it's not battling alone. Scientists have found a whole host of different bacteria and fungi in the pit as well, all fighting the good fight. So what we're saying is if you give Mother Nature a pool of acid, she'll turn it into a goddamned ecosystem."
Tumblr and the LJ friends list both are all over with Lis Sladen/Sarah Jane Smith tributes -- I'm not sure whether I found this via Twitter or on Tumblr, but it's the one I liked the best -- "Sarah Jane dead? No, impossible! Impossible. Only last week I agreed to do six new audio adventures with her for Big Finish Productions."
From my Yahoo! page:
US aims at its deadliest drug problem: painkillers -- "The White House drug czar wants doctors, states and law enforcement working harder to stop America's deadliest drug-abuse problem: highly addictive prescription painkillers. They are killing more people than heroin and cocaine combined as they foster a slew of illegal 'pill mill' clinics centered in Florida. The federal government on Tuesday announced its first-ever comprehensive strategy to combat the abuse of oxycodone and other opioids, aiming to cut misuse by 15 percent in five years. That goal may sound modest, but it would represent a dramatic turnaround: Emergency room visits from prescription drug overdoses doubled from 2004 to 2009, when they topped 1.2 million, according to federal health officials." No mention, of course, is made of the chronic pain sufferers all over the country who have a hell of a time finding a doctor willing to prescribe them the drugs they need in the amounts that are necessary because of the DEA's tendency to assume large narcotics prescriptions are an automatic sign of abuse... But, hey, the DEA has a budget they need to justify with lots of arrests, and doctors are less prone to shooting at the agents when raids are conducted on their premises.
Genome Scans May Reveal Life-Saving Alternatives for Cancer Patients -- "Full-genome sequencing involves scanning all the thousand of genes on the human genome to try to find a mistake. It's different from the more common gene testing these days, which looks only for specific DNA that might or might not be responsible for a particular problem. In the St. Louis case, the more in-depth sequencing, done in only seven weeks, uncovered a new genetic 'mistake' that showed the woman could be treated with ATRA and not the more-complicated, risky stem cell transplantation. 'A small portion of chromosome 15 had popped into chromosome 17,' explained Richard K. Wilson, co-author of two case studies on full-genome sequencing in the journal. The woman in this case study is now in remission and researchers have actually used the new information to assess other atypical cases of the leukemia, added Wilson, who is director of The Genome Institute at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis."
Oh, the time.
This entry was originally posted at http://fyrdrakken.dreamwidth.org/755563.html. Please comment there using OpenID.