All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Hungary′s Orban criticizes Merkel′s ′moral imperialism′ | Germany | DW.COM | 23.09.2015

Deportation and genocide can be defended by the same logic presented here – 

Orban presented himself to the German public as the protector of the EU’s external borders and German borders, and of European law. He does not want “moral imperialism” from the German chancellor. He believes every country should be able to decide for itself if it wants to accept refugees. “We are Hungary. We do not see the world through German eyes,” said Orban. He does not want mass immigration to change his country and said if others wanted it, he wished them every success. But Hungary wishes to decide on the matter itself and not be forced into anything.

Source: Hungary′s Orban criticizes Merkel′s ′moral imperialism′ | Germany | DW.COM | 23.09.2015

Minister’s ‘troubling’ citizenship plan slammed – The Local

{The face of racism, bigots, and fear does not have to look evil – evil deeds speak for themselves}

Støjberg’s proposal, if approved by parliament, would retroactively apply new criteria to those who have already qualified under the old rules – a situation that Eva Ersbøll, a citizenship expert at the Institute for Human Rights, called “deeply troubling and extremely worrying”.

Source: Minister’s ‘troubling’ citizenship plan slammed – The Local

NIH/Nature: The Soft Palate As A Site For Influenza Virus Adaptation

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Credit Wikipedia

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The Journal Nature has published a new study, and the NIH has published an overview, on research that has found a fascinating (and unexpected) role of the soft palate in the adaptation, evolution and transmission of influenza viruses.  

 

Since we’ve discussed receptor binding often in the past (see here, here, here, here and here for just a few), and the NIH announcement does a good  job of describing both the background and  this research, I’ll simply provide a link to the study (much of which is behind a pay wall), and then a link and some excerpts from the detailed NIH press release.

First a link to the Abstract in Nature.

 

The soft palate is an important site of adaptation for transmissible influenza viruses

Seema S. Lakdawala, Akila Jayaraman, Rebecca A. Halpin, Elaine W. Lamirande, Angela R. Shih, Timothy B. Stockwell, Xudong Lin, Ari Simenauer, Christopher T. Hanson, Leatrice Vogel, Myeisha Paskel, Mahnaz Minai, Ian Moore, Marlene Orandle, Suman R. Das, David E. Wentworth, Ram Sasisekharan & Kanta Subbarao Affiliations

Nature  (2015) doi:10.1038/nature15379

Published online  23 September 2015

 

 

This from the NIH.  Follow the link to read the whole fascinating story.

 

Embargoed for Release: Wednesday, September 23, 2015, 1 p.m. EDT

 

NIH researchers find role for soft palate in adaptation of transmissible influenza viruses

National Institutes of Health scientists and their colleagues identified a previously unappreciated role for the soft palate during research to better understand how influenza (flu) viruses acquire the ability to move efficiently between people. In studies using ferrets, the team collected evidence that this patch of mucous-coated soft tissue separating the mouth from the nasal cavity is a key site for the emergence of flu viruses with a heightened ability to spread through the air. The finding could aid efforts to define the properties governing flu virus transmissibility and predict which viruses are most likely to spark pandemics.

Microscope image of the soft palate

Flu viruses enter cells by binding to sialic acids on surface glycoproteins. In ferrets, pigs, and people, the nasopharyngeal surface of the soft palate contains regions of densely packed long-chain a2,6 sialic acid molecules (shown in green) where influenza viruses with airborne transmissibility can outcompete less transmissible virus. Credit: NIAID

The research was led by Kanta Subbarao, M.D., of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Ram Sasisekharan, Ph.D., of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Their report is published online in the journal Nature.

Flu infection in mammals starts when an influenza virus protein called hemagglutinin binds to sialic acid (SA) molecules on the tops of chain-like proteins that thickly line tissue throughout the respiratory tract. Flu viruses adapted to humans and other mammals bind preferentially to a type of SA called alpha 2,6 SA (α2,6 SA), which is the predominant form found in the upper respiratory tract of mammals, while avian flu viruses bind best to a form, α2,3 SA, that predominates in birds.

Dr. Subbarao and her colleagues began their research by making four mutations in the hemagglutinin of the flu strain responsible for the 2009 influenza pandemic, a strain notoriously good at spreading from person to person. The intent of introducing the mutations was to make the virus preferentially bind to bird-type SA and, presumably, be less transmissible via air than the original virus. They then used the engineered virus to infect a group of ferrets, which are widely used as a model of human influenza infection. The next day, uninfected ferrets were placed in cages separated from infected ferrets by a perforated barrier. Nasal secretions were collected from all of the animals for two weeks.

“To our surprise,” said Dr. Subbarao, “the engineered flu virus was transmitted by the airborne route to uninfected ferrets just as well as the original non-mutated virus.”

To understand this unexpected result, the researchers sequenced viral genetic material obtained from the ferret nasal washes. The sequencing was done by a team at the J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, Maryland. They discovered that airborne transmission was associated with a single genetic change in the engineered virus’s hemagglutinin that gave it the ability to bind to mammalian-type α2,6 SA of a particular class (long chain) without the loss of the other introduced changes that had made it a α2,3 SA binding type. This genetic reversion, Dr. Subbarao noted, appears to have occurred within 24 hours of administering the engineered flu virus to the experimentally infected ferrets. Subsequently, they passed it on to uninfected ferrets in the adjacent cages.

Next, the team looked at tissues from several locations in the ferrets’ upper and lower respiratory tract to more precisely define the location of the reverted, long chain α2,6 SA-binding virus. They infected groups of ferrets with the engineered virus — containing the same four mutations in hemagglutinin as in the first set of experiments — and three, five or seven days later, took tissue samples from various locations, including the soft palate.

(Continue . . . )

“I was a maître d’ at a restaurant for thirteen years. But one…

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“I was a maître d’ at a restaurant for thirteen years. But one week I got a really bad case of pneumonia that put me in the hospital. While I was lying in that hospital bed, I was thinking about how I really didn’t want to go back to work. Then that motivational speaker came on TV. You know– the one that has all those teeth in his mouth. And he said: ‘Think back to what made you happy when you were young! That’s what you should be doing!’ Well I grew up in the country, and I always had a lot of dogs, so I thought that nothing would make me happier than to be a dog walker. But I knew I needed to distinguish myself. So I decided to make a uniform. I smoked a joint and came up with this outfit. I wanted people to look at me and think: ‘If this man is walking our dog, and there’s some sort of major disaster, he’s going to survive. He’s going to fish for those dogs. He’s going to build a bunker and shelter those dogs until it’s safe to bring them home.’ After I finished the design, I got four of my friends to wear the uniform, and we borrowed all the neighbors’ dogs, and we walked them down 5th avenue while handing out business cards. I got five customers that first day.” 

The Creative Call & What It Means To Honor It.

{Photo via Pinterest}

{Photo via Pinterest}

Come, let me take you on a journey.

It’s a journey into the depths of who you are. It’s a new path, yet it is hauntingly familiar.

Come now, for we must go. The creative call is beckoning…

You ask what it means to honor the call? What it means to awaken the ardor?

Oh, but it’s a dance. A rushing, racing, high, a plummeting low… an unraveling. It’s tearing yourself apart so you can examine the individual fragments. Understand their contribution. Recognize their worth.

It’s forgetting what they told you. What they taught you. It’s the stark, bare canvas that dares you to come and make your mark.

It’s wandering and wondering and seeing layers and illusions and perceptions and shifts. Feeling textures. Tasting syllables.

To honor the call is to take drive and purpose and passion, and weave them with hurt and loss. With hope and grief. A rich melody of every emotion.

At times it hurts like a hell that’s frozen over with a blaze still burning inside. Fire and ice all at once.

It’s breaking your heart in a thousand different ways, but seeking a channel to share that pain. It’s letting the fever run high. Allowing the wound to be raw.

The creative call is the connection of everything that’s real and imagined. All the lying truths that seem to have a different story if you just change the angle, just modify the light. Slightly. Almost imperceptibly.

It’s flying through clouds, drunk with elation. Having free rein in the wild, witching sky.

It’s the moment before the crash. The frozen stillness before the explosion. Not looking away when the collision comes. Bearing witness to the point of impact and noticing.

Noticing…

What splinters?

What spills?

What survives?

The creative call is the ecstasy born of the agony. An insistent ache that gathers urgency. A glorious misery that will not tolerate being ignored.

It is the dark beauty of a night black enough to give the stars a brighter brilliance.

To answer the call is to stand at the edge without knowing if you’ll take the tumble. Yet, all the while, being quite unable to take steps back to safety because getting to this point took all you had. Every devastating drop.

It’s daring.

Dreaming.

Desiring.

The creative call is a rebellion. A revolution. A refusal to fit into a groove that isn’t the shape of your scalding soul. It’s letting all your colors fall out without restraint. It’s taking the flavor and changing the label. An arousal of a palate ready for sustenance.

It is the self-doubt that’s never a stranger and never a friend.

To honor the call is to harness what’s in between. What hangs in the balance. It’s a pause. A moment between now and next. It’s nothing and it’s everything. A sound and a feeling. Nowhere and everywhere. Free flowing. Gliding. The second the core is captured, it loses a touch of something. Its essence never fully ensnared.

To answer the creative call is to embark on an exploration of everything that is seen and unseen. A magnificent emergence of possibility and potential.

It’s the knowledge that freedom lives on the other side of fury. Riding the rage in order to release the beauty. Plunging into parts of a spectrum that you never even knew existed.

It’s the stain of everything that cannot be washed off, of everything that isn’t disposable. It’s the story that will find, that must find, a way to be told.

You can feel it, can’t you? Yes, your eyes tell me that you do.

But come now, for we must go, the creative call is beckoning…

 

*****

SkylarLibertyRoseSkylar Liberty Rose is a writer and an empowerment warrior. She is the creator of Fierce Females which she established as a way of celebrating the female spirit and to encourage women to live to their full potential, rather than playing small. Having found her own freedom by releasing limiting beliefs, Skylar seeks to provide others with tools they can use to empower themselves. She is an advocate of stripping away layers of conditioning and instead discovering the unique truth within. Creativity is her meditation. Skylar is inspired by courageous hearts and creative souls. She grew up in London and now lives in New York City with her husband. You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ and via her website.

 

Uber-Nationalism = conflict or more democracy?

Catalan secessionist success in next Sunday’s elections would give a boost to European ethnic separatisms, represented by the German Green Party’s partner organization, EFA. All major EU countries, France, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Poland would be affected – all, except Germany. In terms of power policy, Germany would profit from this development – unless an uncontrolled escalation can be prevented. This cannot be taken for granted, when looking at the various cases of national disintegration that have been taking place in Europe over the past twenty-five years.

Source: www.german-foreign-policy.com