Thursday, November 24, 2016

Leprosy in Texas

http://keyetv.com/news/local/rare-disease-strikes-austin-man

by Walt Maciborski

Tuesday, November 22nd 2016

Many people think of leprosy as a Biblical disease or a disease that has been eradicated -- but it is alive and well in Texas. (File image)

Many people think of leprosy as a Biblical disease or a disease that has been eradicated -- but it is alive and well in Texas.

An Austin man just finished a scary journey trying fight off the bacteria that started crippling him.

"Here's my cane," Mel Riser said as he pulled it out of his car. "It became my friend for a while."

Mel could hardly walk without his cane. "My feet started going numb," Mel said.

He saw 15 different doctors and the best neurologists. "They ran a lot of neurological tests on me but they never could tell me why my feet were going numb," Mel said.

Then he says a cataract started growing in his right eye to the point where he couldn't see anymore. "At the time, I was kind of in bad shape." Mel said. "I had fallen down several times and hit my head."

Baffled, doctors couldn't tell him what was wrong until he got a red spot on his ankle.

"It was a red spot right here," Mel said as he pointed to his ankle. "That little dot that you see is where they did the biopsy. The inside started turning white and ashen gray and all the hair fell out."

So Mel went to a dermatologist for his red spot. He couldn't believe what he was about to hear.

"I was kind of floored," Mel said as he listened to his doctor. "He said the only thing this could be is leprosy. You're the second patient I've seen in my entire career here in Austin.

Leprosy, or Hansen's Disease, is a contagious airborne bacterium. 95 percent of the world's population is naturally immune to it.

But, armadillos are known carriers and the bacteria is found in the soil. Doctors think Mel somehow contracted the disease on Merritt Island in Florida while working for NASA. Armadillos are all over Merritt Island.

"They say I could have got it from a scratch," Mel said.

He was treated at the Texas Center for Infectious Disease in San Antonio.

"In the last three years, I've seen several cases," Doctor Annie Kizilbash said.

Dr. Kizilbash was one of Mel's doctors. "Leprosy is very treatable," Kizilbash said.

It is not the death sentence it used to be. "If it's caught early and the patient is started on treatment, early enough the patient can live a very normal life," Kizilbash said.

There were 19 new cases of Leprosy reported in Texas in 2014, 21 new cases in 2015 and so far, this year 17 new cases. About 180 patients in Texas are being treated for the disease right now.

If it's not caught early, the consequences are devastating.

"You can get auto amputation of your digits," Kizilbash said. "Your toes, your fingers they can potentially fall off and that's because you don't have feeling in your toes or hands."

The way Leprosy ravages the body and the creation of leper colonies have created a stigma around the disease that's hard to get past for many people.

"When you tell people you've got it they kind of step back and say maybe I shouldn't be too close to you," Mel said.

Mel just finished a year of treatments. "I'm cured," Mel said. "No more red spots. I don't have a cane."

Mel's medical treatment included three antibiotics and two nerve drugs. "The feelings come back in my feet and my hands," Mel said.

And the cataract in his right eye started shrinking. "The good news is it's curable," Mel said.

And he did not have to pay a dime for treatments. The costs of the antibiotics and nerve drugs were picked up by the National Hansen's Disease Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Mel says his journey was long and scary but he found hope and help. Now he encourages anyone with the same symptoms to see help and not give up.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

When People Laughed At The Idea Of Trump Actually Being Elected Presiden...

Saturday, November 12, 2016

New York Times publisher vows to 'rededicate' paper

POLITICS

New York Times publisher vows to 'rededicate' paper to reporting honestly

Published November 12, 2016

FoxNews.com

May 14, 2014: Pedestrians wait for cabs across the street from The New York Times in New York. (AP)

The publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would “reflect” on its coverage of this year’s election while rededicating itself to reporting on “America and the world” honestly.

Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the paper’s embattled publisher, appealed to Times readers for their continued support.

“We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers,” the letter states.

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New York Post columnist and former Times reporter Michael Goodwin wrote, "because it (The Times) demonized Trump from start to finish, it failed to realize he was onto something. And because the paper decided that Trump’s supporters were a rabble of racist rednecks and homophobes, it didn’t have a clue about what was happening in the lives of the Americans who elected the new president.

Sulzbergers letter was released after the paper’s public editor, Liz Spayd, took the paper to task for its election coverage. She pointed out how its polling feature Upshot gave Hillary Clinton an 84 percent chance as voters went to the polls.

She compared stories that the paper ran about President-elect Donald Trump and Clinton, where the paper made Clinton look functional and organized and the Trump discombobulated.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Satanism in United States

http://time.com/3973573/satanism-american-history/

Photo appears to give Hillary horns

Freedom of speech?

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/3/5678782/satanic-group-reveals-crowdfunded-monument-for-oklahoma-state-capitol

Satanic group reveals crowdfunded monument for Oklahoma State Capitol

1285

by Dante D'Orazio May 3, 2014, 5:21pm EDT

A Satanist statue cast in bronze is just months away from completion, and activists hope that it will find a home on the lawn of the Oklahoma State Capitol. Ultimately, the statue — which features the seven-foot tall, horned figure of Baphomet fawned upon by two exultant children — is intended to stand directly next to a highly controversial monument of the ten commandments that was donated by a state legislator in 2012 and subsequently placed on the grounds of the Capitol.

The Baphomet figure, complete with a goat head, angel wings, and a beard, comes from a recently-formed New York group identifying as The Satanic Temple, which raised over $28,000 on Indiegogo earlier this year to commission a sculptor and create the piece. Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucian Greaves tells ABC News that the statue is a symbol to "celebrate our progress as a pluralistic nation founded on secular law."

We're just now getting our first look at the what the statue will look like, thanks to images of the mold released by The Satanic Temple this week. Unfortunately for the group's activist aims, there hasn't been much progress on securing a spot for the statue at the Capitol in Oklahoma, one of the most Christian states in the US. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is currently challenging the ten commandments statue in court on grounds that it violates the Constitution's "establishment clause" against a national religion, and Oklahoma has prohibited applications for additional statues pending the completion of that case.

Greaves has made it clear that the group would no longer petition to have the statue installed should the ten commandments monument be removed, but he isn't concerned about finding somewhere else to place the statue should they fail to get permission in Oklahoma. "There are no shortage of public locations across the US where religious monuments await a contrasting voice," he tells Vice, which first published photos of the statue. And they're prepared should demonstrators destroy the statue: they're holding onto the cast and plan to take out an insurance policy on the statue.

SOURCE: ABC News, Vice, Al Jazeera America
VIA: Poor Mojo's Newswire

Kitchen Remodeling Fantasy

If I could remodel a kitchen however I liked, what would I do?

Mother's kitchen cries out to heaven for remodeling. It's an old house, maybe from the 1940s, and a lot of it is original. Like the cabinets. Well, they suffice I guess except that they don't really have as much room for things as one needs to have. At least half of the space is completely out of reach up at ceiling height. As I have said many times, "Kitchens are built by very tall people...with beards." Let's discuss the cabinets first.

So often when one visits the home improvement store to select cabinets, they want to sell you things that aren't cabinets, but cabinet looking things. The shelves are at most 12" deep. Oh yeah, the plates are more than 12" wide. They won't go on the shelf. Neither will the pots and pans. What are those cabinets going to be for? Oh, put cans on them! OK, so then you have a shelf at the only level you can reach that is about 14" high, and all the space is taken up with a 3" can.

Well, I could go on. My dear husband and a carpenter were planning my new kitchen once, and, oh, it wasn't going to be very large. They showed me the plans. See? Plenty of space to squeeze in and get to the sink. The stove here, the refrigerator here. In between the stove on one side and the refrigerator on the other was about 2'. "How do you open the stove or refrigerator?" I asked. Good question. So many kitchen plans look like nice places to pop in a TV dinner or have toast. That's about it.

So, if ever one needs to live large, I'd say it's in the kitchen. The kitchen should be about half the house. With a big kitchen you can even have a space for shelves to have a garden. Herbs, sprouts, all sorts of things. Why, the kitchen would pay for itself!

OK, maybe not, but this is the heart and soul of the house and the more wonderful the better. It's not the place to skimp.

So, what's the plan? Well, I guess the appliances could stay. There would be a dishwasher, that's for sure. There would also be an exhaust fan over the stove.

Fine. What's my biggest complaint about this particular kitchen? Number one, the ceiling. It's a fright. I want to have a nice new ceiling, with recessed lights and a few other lights, all that have ordinary light switches on the wall that can easily be turned on coming in the kitchen door or out the back door. And this ceiling will be a dark green. Dark green?! You heard me. The door will also be dark green.

Now, the walls. Currently, they are adorned with the wood panelling one sees sometimes in mobile homes. I really don't like this. Too dark. Just regular sheetrock painted white, or powder blue, or maybe peach. Peach would be nice with the dark green ceiling and door. No, I think light blue. You don't know what you're doing! Blue doesn't go with green! Well, I like it.

The floors will be dark green tile. Right now Mother has a wood stove built on a rock hearth. It's OK I guess. I think the idea in someone's mind was that in the event of disaster the kitchen could be warmed with wood, which is abundant. OK. But then it takes up a third of the kitchen, and really more since there's also a woodpile in the kitchen. Hmmm. Be that as it may. Oh, and the stove has two places on top where one can "cook." Problem. In the winter. In the summer no can cook. It's just used to keep a pan of water on to humidify the room. My suggestion is to have a campfire outside in the event of disaster.

The stove is also bad to cause little fires on the floor, which you could clearly see this place is a fire hazard already. Light one match and it's poof. The solution at the present time is to put a big plate on the floor in the winter, which is then a fall hazard. So the tiles would at least keep the fire and fall hazards down if the wood stove must stay. Oh, this will be the place to be in event of disaster.

I don't like the way all the firewood around the house has attracted termites either.

So that takes care of the appliances, the ceiling, lighting, walls, floor and door. Now the fun part, the windows and cabinets.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Paralyzed people could walk again instantly after scientists prove brain implant works in primates

Grégoire Courtine holds a silicon model of a primate’s brain and a brain implant. CREDIT:ALAIN HERZOG / EPFL

Paralysed people could walk again instantly after scientists developed a brain implant which turns thought into electrical signals in the spine so that lost feeling can be restored after injury.

Currently people who break their backs or suffer a spinal trauma are unable to stand or move even though their legs still work, because the signal which connects their brains to their muscles is disconnected.

But an international team of scientists have shown it is possible to bypass the injury and reconnect the brain signals to electrodes at an undamaged part of the spine.

Two monkeys who were temporarily paralysed in one leg were able to walk again instantly using the technique, which could be available for humans within a decade.

"For the first time, I can imagine a completely paralysed patient able to move their legs through this brain-spine interface, said neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch of the Lausanne University Hospital.

The implant works wirelessly to connect to a healthy part of the spine CREDIT: NATURE

Neuroscientist Dr Erwan Bezard of Bordeaux University who oversaw the experiments added: "The primates were able to walk immediately once the brain-spine interface was activated. No physiotherapy or training was necessary.”

Humans are able to move because electrical signals originating in the brain's motor cortex travel down to the lumbar region in the lower spinal cord, where they activate motor neurons that coordinate the movement of muscles responsible for extending and flexing the leg.

But injury to the upper spine can cut off communication between the brain and lower spinal cord.

To create a device which mimicked the natural communication of the brain and muscles, scientists needed to decode signals from the motor cortex and turn them into electronic signals which could fire electrodes and stimulate nerves in the spine.

The monkeys limped until the device was switched on then could walk

The device works wirelessly so only two small implants are needed, one in the brain and one in the spine.

It was tested on two macaque monkeys with lesions that spanned half the spinal cord and who could not walk on one leg. When turned on, the animals began spontaneously moving their legs while walking on a treadmill.

“With the system turned on, the animals in our study had nearly normal locomotion," said Dr David Borton, assistant professor of engineering at Brown and one of the study's co-lead authors.

Previous studies have shown that it is possible to use signals decoded from the brain to control movement of a robotic or prosthetic hands but it has never been shown to help stimulate muscles directly.

The researchers say not only could it help paralysed people to walk again, but in the long term may even encourage the regrowth of damaged circuits.

"There's an adage in neuroscience that circuits that fire together wire together," added Dr Borton.

"The idea here is that by engaging the brain and the spinal cord together, we may be able to enhance the growth of circuits during rehabilitation. That's one of the major goals of this work and a goal of this field in general."

The tiny device shown next to a silicone monkey brain

The researchers say the device still has several limitations. Presently the signalling only works one way so sensations do not pass back to the brain and it is also unclear how much weight the legs can bear.

However British experts said the experiment was ‘very promising and exciting.’

“It is an important step forward in our understanding of how we could improve motor recovery in patients affected by spinal cord injury by using brain-spinal interface approaches,” said Prof Simone Di Giovanni, Chair in Restorative Neuroscience, Imperial College London.

“In principle this is reproducible in human patients. The issue will be how much this approach will contribute to functional recovery that impacts on the quality of life. This is still very uncertain.”

Dr Andrew Jackson, of the Movement Laboratory at the Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, added: "The idea of using electronic implants to bypass damaged neural pathways dates back to the 1970s but the twenty-first century has seen remarkable progress in this field.

"It is not unreasonable to speculate that we could see the first clinical demonstrations of interfaces between the brain and spinal cord by the end of the decade."

The research was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.