The Nose is Connected to the Knee Bone…

True story, nasal cartilage is a good replacement for knee cartilage and nine people have undergone nose-to-knee cartilage transplants. This new technique could be a real game changer for folks with knee problems due to sports injuries, injuries from falls, or degeneration due to osteoarthritis. In the early trial the nine people that needed knee surgery because of acute cartilage damage volunteered some nose cells which the researchers used to grow a 3 by 4 centimeter sized piece of tissue (this took 2 weeks) that was then grafted into the volunteer’s knee. All nine have shown improvement in the use of their knees and the amount of pain. More trials are in the works and there is hope that the same cells (from the nose) might be used in facial reconstruction in the future. This is definitely a time when one might say the nose knows making knee surgery better by using your own cells to regrow cartilage is the bees’ knees!

Brain Drain

Brain drain is defined as the loss of skilled intellectual and technical labor through the movement of such labor to more favorable geographic, economic, or professional environments. The brain drain I am writing about in this post consists of the exodus of young people from islands in the Caribbean and Pacific. They are seeking higher education, opportunities, and jobs and migrating away for it. In some areas the numbers of migrators are so large that only the folks left behind are old people and children. This brain drain poses several problems. Not only have the islands lost potential doctors, researchers, and teachers, they are also losing the energy and ingenuity of their young people in helping mitigate the effects of climate change, and in turn also losing the ability to manage the impacts of hurricanes and tidal storm surges. Delegates from the islands in the Caribbean and Pacific met at the Small Island and Developing States conference to discuss the effects of climate change on small islands. Hopefully they will be able bring their countries together to project a united front and persuade bigger countries to do more in the fight to protect these beautiful, yet fragile island ecosystems from the negative effects of climate change. 

FL’s Purported Ten Most Boring Places

Since I’ll be driving through the state on my way home today, I figured I’d mention these with an extra word or two at least for the ones I’ve been to anyway, the purported ten most boring places in Florida. Counting down from number 10, I’ll start with Pinellas Park adjacent to St. Petersburg. It is pretty boring and my most memorable experience (albeit a negative one) there was when I taught half day kindergarten (private school) more than thirty years ago. I had a student that bit another student and when I reported this bit of misbehavior to his mother she punched me. Needless to say the boy got his anger issues honestly and that was the last day of kindergarten for him at that particular school. In the end there was a police report filed about the incident but no charges pursued and even though the mother wanted to take me outside and finish this, she was prevented from doing so. On the positive side, Pinellas Park has a mall with a Five Guys, so there is that.

Number 9 is Titusville. I enjoyed a stay with the grandkids at the campground there. My favorite part was when my grandkids had a séance (rhymes with Beyoncé) after dark. As they were sitting on a circle of logs my son Chris came staggering out of the woods and into the circle completely zombi-fied. A lot of screaming by the grandkids ensued alongside a lot of chuckling by my grown children, their parents, and me. All this was then followed up by the roasting of marshmallows and making of s’mores so although for many, Titusville may be boring, it holds some pretty good memories for me.

Number 8 is The Villages, an age restricted census-designated place, in Lake County, FL, near Orlando. I have traveled through central Florida but if I went through or near The Villages I have no recollection. That might be an indicator of how boring they might be but maybe now that I am restricted by age, I could always revisit.

Number 7, Deltona, I think I've seen an exit for off 95 for it but I may be confusing it with Daytona. In any case I've never been even slightly tempted to turn off at either for a restroom break or gas.

Numbers 6, Village of Wellington, 5, City of Northport, 4, Riverview, 3, City of Apopka, 2, City of Palm Bay (also off the interstate), and 1, Poinciana, might be boring too. I don’t actually know for sure but then I don’t always believe everything I read on the internet either. If ever I find myself in any of these places you can expect I’ll let you know! 

Got Glaucoma? Let me take a selfie!

A tiny implant, attached to the synthetic lens implanted during cataract surgery, and your smartphone, with an app, can be used to monitor the pressure in your eyes. This is especially important if you have glaucoma. Glaucoma, a buildup of pressure in the eye that damages the optic nerve, is the second leading cause of blindness. An app and an implant could help save your vision by providing continuous, accurate monitoring of the pressure levels and these accurate pressure readings are crucial to the successful treatment of glaucoma. Once you have the glaucoma pressure sensor implanted on the affected eye, the downloaded app, and a special optical adapter added to your phone’s camera all you need to do is take a selfie which is then analyzed to calculate the pressure and can help you and your doctor monitor your glaucoma. So yep, here’s just one more reason to, you guessed it, Let me take a selfie!

Brain Adaptability

Do you remember the Steve Martin movie The Man with Two Brains? Steve Martin plays a neurosurgeon that pioneers a new cranial screw top type of brain surgery in a pretty funny movie. I thought it was called The Man with No Brain until I later Googled it. This brings me to an article I read recently about a 24 year old woman that was admitted to a Chinese hospital complaining of dizziness and nausea. As for her prior history, she told the doctors that she’d had problems walking steadily all her life and in fact hadn't walked till age 7, nor spoke intelligibly until age 6. Now at the age of 24 a CAT scan showed that this woman was missing a pretty important part of her brain, her cerebellum. This is not the entire brain but it is the part that contains 50% of the brains neurons and is known to control voluntary movement, balance, and our ability to learn specific motor actions including speaking. This woman joins a group of only nine people who are known to have actually lived without a cerebellum and is an example of the amazing plasticity of the human brain and how it is able to compensate for a missing piece. Future brain scans in this woman’s case will give doctors more insight into just that.

iPhone Compatible Hearing Aids

Plenty of people in my age category need hearing aids but refuse to get them because of the stigma associated with them. But now there are “made for iPhone” hearing aids and the hearing aid makers hope pairing hearing aids (uncool technology) with iPhones (cool technology) changes that! The best part of this new technology combo is the smart phone apps that give the users the ability to adjust their own hearing aids without needing an appointment with an audiologist. With these cool apps hearing aid users can fine tune their audio settings for different acoustic environs and geotag them so the hearing aids automatically switch to the right program when the owner is at home, their office, or their favorite coffee shop. The smart phone can even act as a directional microphone to help pick out the voice of a friend over lunch in a busy restaurant. And unlike current Bluetooth linked hearing aid technology iPhone compatible hearing aids are wireless. So instead of asking, “What?” and expecting everything said to you to be repeated, I ask, “What’s not to love?” about iPhone compatible hearing aids.

ABL

I’m in the Bahamas, it’s storming like crazy, and nothing but football’s on TV so what do I do? Read through an old AARP magazine where I saw an ad for the Butterfly for people with ABL. I must’ve been a bit “behind” the times in phonic representations because I had no idea that it stood for

Accidental Bowel Leakage. That’s not just a “bad crack.” It is an actual condition where incontinence (of the bowel) is experienced due to a variety of maladies including but not limited to irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, or injury and it’s purported that some types of sweeteners and even caffeine can induce springing an embarrassing leak. Additionally, as you get older, you can lose muscle tone which can result in being labeled with the term “old fart.” I can only imagine going to the doctor and being told to exercise your asshole and going home and telling my husband to start doing pushups! For those with that condition, there is hope – well actually a little more than hope. There is a product for those who are losing their grip and comes complete with adhesive to make it stick or “hold it” in place. Originally, I was mystified as to why that particular name for a product butt I was able to “hash” it out – butt-er-fly, kind of let-‘er-fly. No more worries, you can feel comfortable in your “passing” and let-‘er-fly with no fear of being labeled as a stain on the underpants of society.

White Band Disease

Photo by Johnny Holland

This is not a blog post about the day the music died or anything related to music, pop, rap or otherwise. White band disease isn't a human illness though it may be caused by us. White band disease is a killer nevertheless and has been killing reef building corals in the Caribbean since the 1970s, specifically staghorn and elkhorn corals. Both of these are now critically endangered. White band disease causes the outer layers of the coral to turn white and peel away. The culprits identified by some researchers from the UK are bacteria that’s source may be from human sewage dumping. The bacteria present in the diseased coral are vibrio charcharlae, lactobacillus suebicus, and one other as yet unidentified bacillus. The corals being affected are the key architects involved in beginning and continuing building of reef ecosystems and these reef systems require some positive human impact- not sewage-saving! 

Slow Reading

When I first read about this I automatically thought, slow reading as opposed to what, speed reading? But since I love to read I just read on and discovered I love the whole slow reading concept. It’s simple, slow reading is just at a minimum, 30 minutes of uninterrupted reading with a book or E-Book. By uninterrupted, the proponents of slow reading mean disconnected from smartphones and social media. No pings or other electronic notification noises interrupt your slow reading. I do this every day! The benefits slow readers reap include improving one’s ability to concentrate, reducing stress levels and deepening one’s ability to think, listen and empathize. For the elderly regular engagement in mentally challenging activities, including reading, slows rates of memory loss in later years and since I fit in the elderly category too slow reading is even more important. So it turns out that slow reading is pretty much just a resurgence of old school reading and it’s making a comeback like other vintage hobbies that are more time consuming like crocheting (my other favorite thing to do). Slow reading is a pleasant way to offset the faster pace of life we all seem so focused on these days. Give it a try!

Drive thru Funeral Homes

No you don’t place your order at this window but drive thru windows are a big part of our culture. I heard some people talking about a different kind of drive thru, one for drive thru funeral viewings this morning while I was doing my usual Tuesday volunteering so I figured I’d Google it when I got home. I had already heard that hearses with deceased passengers are allowed to use the carpool lane so I guess drive by viewings shouldn't have seemed so surprising. So I Googled and sure enough there is a growing trend toward outfitting funeral homes with drive by viewing windows. Yep, I wrote growing trend…these drive thru windows for viewing the deceased, last respect lanes so to speak, can be found on the west coast in Los Angeles, CA, in the Midwest in Michigan, in the south in Atlanta, GA and more recently even closer to home in Ocala, FL. The idea is to give people that might not actually want to go into the funeral home for whatever reason, be it a handicap, thanatophobia, or necrophobia, an opportunity to pay their respects and view the deceased, hence the drive thru window. As your vehicle passes over a sensor, the curtains at the drive by window open allowing the visitors 3 minutes to view the deceased. Some also have a drawer that opens like the ones at the bank so you can drop off a sympathy card, just don’t expect to get fries with that. 

Can you be fat and fit?

This must have been a rhetorical question but I read the corresponding article yesterday anyway because I really wanted an answer. After reading all the way through and rereading once again in case I missed the answer, I must relate that the headline was a tease because the answer never appeared. Apparently grizzly bears have had their metabolism evaluated and they can be fat and fit. Fat and insulin (and insulin resistance and diabetes) are closely related and the grizzly can turn off the connection between them during hibernation and thus be fat and fit. Maybe researchers will figure out the triggering mechanism so I can eventually be a fat and fit couch potato (at least during football season-Go Bears!) in lieu of hibernation. The bottom line here is whether or not you can do the exercise or whatever it takes to achieve your personal definition of fit, you aren't truly fit if you’re fat. Dang it! I guess I’ll have to reevaluate those game day snacks!

Women's Colleges and Transgender Students

There are two schools of thought on this (admitting transgender students to women’s colleges) as would be expected on most issues but this one captured my interest. Apparently women's colleges are revisiting policies around enrolling transgender students as are many institutions of higher learning, single-sex, coed and those with religious affiliations, and showing varying degrees of acceptance for changing norms. Recently, Mills College in Oakland, California, recently became the first women's college in the U.S. to declare it would accept undergraduate applications from "self-identified women" and people "assigned female at birth who do not fit into the gender binary," effective the semester that starts January 2015. Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, followed with a similar announcement last week. Other prominent women's colleges also are weighing changes. At these colleges it appears like in many other places in our society that thoughts on gender are evolving. On the flip side of the issue, some Christian colleges have recently sought and received religious exemption from Title IX, the federal law banning gender-based discrimination in education so they can keep transgender students out, acceptable behavior for them in line with their ultra conservative religious beliefs.

I’m more in agreement with early feminists who argued that reducing women to their biological functions was a foundation of women's oppression (my biological functions aren't the only things that define me) and so I tend to side with the all-women’s schools with acceptance for transgender students, those allowing them to apply and attend. There isn't much privacy in the information age in which we live and yet I am still not all that interested in the details of the biological functions of others. I believe in tolerance and a good place to practice tolerance is in education. 

Defy Superstitions Day

Today is Defy Superstitions Day so I figured I’d look into a few superstitions and mostly add my take on them. Here goes…

I don’t care for any superstitions that require spitting, too nasty. I’m ok with knocking on wood and avoiding walking under ladders. I am not fond of broken mirrors or broken glass in general unless it’s sea glass (that’s my favorite). I like cats, black ones included, so I have no fear of them crossing my path. The jury (of one-that’s me) is still out on the sailor’s superstition about no women on board unless they’re naked women. I’m for a skinny dip now and then but I don’t like to think clothed women on boats are automatically bad luck.

But the newest superstition I've learned about (yep, I am adopting this one for sure) is the one where you never set your purse on the floor because if you do your money will jump out…that explains a lot of things to me about my own personal fiscal responsibility so this superstition is a perfect fit for me!

The Latest Poop

Originally I’d planned to avoid this subject all together even though…First I’d found an interesting word (coprophagy=eating poop) and then my husband sent me an interesting link about a guy (not a bear) that was doing what bears do in the woods…The third time charm was when I read about the reason the homeless in Honolulu were being shipped out (no, they have been defecating outdoors around touristy places rather than ‘shipping’ their pants) to a converted industrial/dump/internment camp area. So here goes…

First of all please forgive me for skipping coprophagy.

About the guy in the woods, not a polar bear on ice, apparently a police officer spotted him leaving a bar, running into the woods with his pants down and clutching a handful of napkins. The guy was sighted for disorderly conduct and told to return and clean up his ‘conduct’ in a sanitary manner. The charges were eventually dismissed butt now this guy is suing the police department for $15,000 in damages to his reputation and for the em-bare-ass-ment and humiliation he has suffered.

As for the homeless in Honolulu, if I had to be homeless anywhere that might be the place I’d choose because of the scent of tropical flowers that greets you as you step outside the airport and the mild weather, among other things. Butt the tourist industry and hotel representatives say visitors complain about safety and, you guessed it, defecation. Hence a couple of bills aimed at moving the homeless out of tourist areas were recently passed. The city is planning to move their homeless population to a temporary legal campsite out of the public’s eye and the scent of public defecation out of nose range.

That’s the poop. 

Curves are in!

Nope, I am not writing about my fitness goals, the curves that are in aren't mine. The concave screens coming to TVs now and smartphones soon are the curves that are in. The fledgling field of neuroasthetics, understanding the neurological basis for our appreciation of beauty, has compiled data from a bunch of MRIs and has determined that a majority of people favor curves when asked to rate beauty. Curved contours stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain (and angles activate areas that detect threats) so it is no surprise that electronics industry analysts predict sales of curved screen TVs will grow from 800,000 units this year to more than 6 million by 2017. There are some tangible benefits to having a curvy screen. The concave shape allows the screen to be dimmer and save battery life because the shape reflects less light. On a TV the curve also provides the illusion that immerses the viewer in the action. Flexibility in phone screens might put a dent in the number of cracked screens accumulated by my grandkids seem that require regular replacement. That might be the best benefit of all.

Optogenetics and Chemogenetics

These are new ideas scientists are developing to hack into the brain in order to treat epilepsy. In optogenetics brain cells are genetically engineered to fire in the presence of light. The problem with this is that fiber optic cables must be implanted in the brain in order to let the trigger (light) in so the therapy can work. Hence the next therapy developed, chemogenetics, which doesn't need fiber optics, but instead uses brain cells engineered to fire in the presence of certain drugs. It has been used with some success in tests with rats and could soon be tested in humans. The type of epilepsy researchers think chemogenetic therapy can help regulate is called focal epilepsy. In this type of epilepsy people can feel when a seizure is about to begin and that would be when they would take the clozapine N-oxide as a pill, injection, or nasal spray to trigger the genetically engineered brain cells (the ones that cause the seizures) to turn off. The chemical, the clozapine N-oxide, only stays in the body for about 7 hours so the effect would be only temporary but this chemogenetic therapy does show promise.

ISIS

Four little letters with lots of different meanings, most recently the group responsible for the reprehensible. In the past I associated Isis with the name of an Egyptian goddess, a patron of children for one thing, or the TV show (from the 70’s when I used to watch TV) called The Secret of Isis, or one of the Egyptian super heroes called Isis, created by Marvel Comics or DC comics. There’s nothing comic-al about ISIS the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. They’re not a non-governmental organization dealing with human trafficking, or a British technology transfer company, or a US pharmaceutical company, all of which share the same initials with the Al Qaida splinter terrorist group. ISIS the terrorist organization isn't an operating system on an Intel processor either, but we could use some more intel on their operations. They’re not part of Bob Dylan’s Isis song that could be considered a symbolic take off on mythological themes of a male hero separating from his wife, going on adventures and acting crazy, and then returning to the marriage, going back to the Odyssey. If this terrorist group’s kind of crazy was only temporary relief might be in sight, but it doesn't appear that way to me. The beheadings ISIS claims responsibility for are beyond disturbing along with their self-proclaimed justification for committing these acts. Complacency and desensitization of civilized societies toward these murderous, inexplicable, and unjustifiable acts is equally disturbing.

Teacher Shoots Self in Class

It’s way too early in the school year for the teacher to be feeling like this, was my first thought accompanied by a sarcastic chuckle to my retired educator self when I saw this headline on MSN. Then I clicked on it and saw that a professor’s handgun accidentally discharged in his pocket which resulted in a bullet wound to his foot. There is a lesson here about guns in schools. At first I typed -They don’t belong there. - But specifically speaking I mean this - Guns don’t belong in schools! The gun in this case was a semi-automatic, the school Idaho State University, and there is a law that allows concealed weapons to be carried on campus. The professor was treated for the gunshot wound at a local hospital and released. He may yet face charges of firing a gun within the city limits. I’m not sure that’s enough for what I consider a danger not only to his own foot but to all the others at the university, discharging a gun in a school. Guns don’t belong in schools, period.

Octopus Mom

Reproduction is the final stage of life for an octopus. During this stage all the octopus mom’s energy is directed to producing and caring for her eggs. I didn’t know that! One remarkable octopus mom brooded her eggs for four and a half years. By this I mean she kept a constant vigil over them protecting them from predators and constantly blowing water over them to bathe them in the oxygen they needed to survive. The octopus mom (with her brood of 160 eggs) that I’m writing about was first observed in 2007 by some folks from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute clinging to a rocky ledge about 1400 meters down in a submarine canyon in the middle of Monterey Bay in the Pacific Ocean. Over the following four and a half years the researchers made 18 visits to the same area and saw that this same octopus mom, with distinctive scars and markings for identification, was still on the job. This octopus mom like all others to date was never observed leaving her post to eat or anything and the researchers think the very cold temperatures in the pacific may have helped slow her metabolism enough to allow the mom to last the four and a half years. On their last trip to the ledge they only saw remnants of hatched egg capsules. The previous record for length of brooding time was held by a deep sea shrimp that carries its eggs for 20 months. The octopus mom’s dedication surpassed that record in a big way. This only adds to my perspective on the nine months and the years of childhood that follow for human moms. Moms, no matter the species, are special.

Mattress Performance Art

A Columbia University art student is carrying a mattress around everywhere she goes as a performance art project about rape, and it’s personal. She reported an alleged sexual assault on the first day of her sophomore year in August 2012, after she found out that two other students had made complaints against the same student. In each instance, he (the alleged rapist) was found "not responsible" by Columbia University administration. Later she filed a police report but the alleged rapist still attends the same school. Her mattress performance art is titled Carry that Weight because since she was raped in her dorm room she has carried the weight of the trauma with her everywhere and the mattress is her chosen symbol of the event. The twin-sized mattress is the right size to draw attention to the issue and light enough to manage, but heavy enough that the art major continues to struggle with it as she continues to struggle with rape. She plans to carry it as long as she and her alleged rapist attend the same school. I think this is an interesting way to bring attention to the issues of sexual assault on college campuses, and I hope that this art student eventually becomes strong enough as she carries that weight to someday throw it off and live free of the trauma associated with rape.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out and give greater weight to information that confirms what we think rather than what contradicts it. Apparently there is quite a bit of research in the area of confirmation bias that points toward people searching for evidence to support their preexisting viewpoints, and then interpreting that information in a way that reinforces their beliefs. This type of bias has served to polarize issues in the news recently, in particular the police shooting of the unarmed black teen, Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri. Confirmation bias creates a bigger gap between black and white by eliminating the gray area. Regardless of the evidence each side has their minds made up with the help of confirmation bias and neither side will give, instead they choose to ignore or underweigh evidence that could disconfirm their own views. The truth in my opinion is that another tragic shooting of an unarmed child has occurred. I don’t pretend to know the circumstances but as a mother my own bias makes my heart go out to the family, friends, and community who are the ones that have to endure this loss. Community law enforcement is a part of this community too. The real trouble in the aftermath is that confirmation bias distorts everyone’s active pursuit of facts.

Chirping Hardwired Smoke Detector

Yes, this is happening and it is driving me a little crazy. When I first heard it I investigated every room in the house and the garage for any scent of smoke, even the smallest whiff, but I found none. Then I checked the electrical panels and no popped circuits. There is one outlet in the kitchen that pops off regularly (when I release steam from the pressure cooker it seems the worst) but that wasn't the problem. To give you some background info, the house with the chirping hardwired smoke detector is the same house that was rebuilt after a substantial fire in 2009. All the more reason for my thorough sniffing investigation, and finding no evidence of smoke or fire, I finally realized that the detector is only chirping and not actually going off in an indication of smoke. Next I went straight to Google and found a YouTube video on chirping hardwired smoke detectors. The nice fireman on the video explained the backup battery system (in case the power goes off) that every hardwired smoke detector has. Then they showed how to change it etc. The part that got to me was the suggestion for changing the batteries twice each year when you turn the clocks forward and back. Since I didn’t know the hardwired smoke detectors had batteries I’d never changed the batteries in the ones in my house. They are 5 years old now. Guess I’ll be picking up a few 9 volt batteries today!