Call for Works for Congress of Curious Peoples Curiosity Vendors!

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To all makers, distributors, and artists of the arcane and the curious: this call for vendors for this year's just-posted-on Congress of Curious Peoples just in from Adam the Real Man of Coney Island USA:

Coney Island USA's Congress of Curious Peoples has a few vendor spots left!
The Congress of Curious Peoples is Coney Island USA's annual celebration of Oddity and Oddities. It begins with the Sideshow Hall of Fame induction event and continues with a 10-day series of performances and lectures on Curiosity and Curiosities, featuring notable faces from the sideshow world and talks by international scholars. The final weekend of the Congress includes a 2-day symposium and performances by some of Coney Island's most important sideshow stars.

Now in its 6th year, the Congress is meant to build a community of scholars, practitioners, vendors, and enthusiasts; centered around a field with its home in Coney Island. It is quickly expanding to become an important gathering of people who are interested in the past, present, and future of sideshows, dime museums, cabinets of curiosity, 19th and 20th century spectacular culture, and the obscure American performing arts that Coney Island USA is dedicated to preserving.

We expect between 500 and 1,000 individuals to pass through our doors in the course of events, and they are all committed aficionados of all things curious.

So if you're an artist who's work reflects the curious, the strange, the macabre, the bizarre and the wondrous and wishlike to be considered as a vendor, please contact congressvendors@gmail.com.

More on the event itself can be found here. Hope to see you there.

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The Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences Celebrates its Illustrious and Incredible Collection and History in Two New Exhibitions and a Book!

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In the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, when natural history was still called philosophy and most naturalists were amateurs, collectors would create what they called cabinets of curiosities — accumulations of animal, vegetable, mineral and anthropological specimens to amaze and amuse.

Often these collections grew large enough to occupy entire rooms, or even buildings. In some cases, they turned out to be precursors of modern museums.

In a way, that was the kind of project seven Philadelphia men embarked on in 1812, when they rented premises over a millinery shop, gathered a few preserved insects, some seashells and not much more, and created the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia...

--"Cupboards of Curiosities Spill Over," Cornelia Dean, The New York Times

The Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences has a lot going for it. It is the oldest natural science research institution and natural history museum in the New World, with a history stretching back to 1812. It boasts the Titian R. Peale Butterfly and Moth Collection, a lot of nearly 100 glass boxes containing said insects arranged in pleasingly geometric patterns by Titian Peale, son of painter and first American museologist Charles Willson Peale (see 4th image down). It boasts fossils collected by American president and Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson. It also houses an incredibly vast and utterly astounding collection of natural history artifacts, books, taxidermy, skeletons, wet specimens and more. More's the pity, then, that you would never suspect the quality and breadth of this collection by its public face, which gives one the impression that The Academy is merely a bland, second-rate natural history museum aimed at easily distractable children.

I am very pleased to report, then, that the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences has used the pretext of its 200th birthday to right this wrong, and make visible its illustrious history and mind-bogglingly gorgeous collection through 2 new exhibitions--both now on view--and a new nearly 500-page luxurious book. One exhibition--"The Academy at 200: The Nature of Discovery"--displays rarely viewed specimens and artifacts from the museum stores. "Everything Under the Sun," a second exhibition, features luminous photographs by the amazing Rosamond Purcell of a variety of the incredible artifacts and specimens hidden backstage. The associated book is entitled A Glorious Enterprise: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the Making of American Science and features Rosamond Purcell's lavish color photographs.

Above is an excerpt from The New York Times' review of the book and exhibitions; you can read the entire piece and see the photographic sideshow (from which the above images are drawn) by clicking here and here, respectively. You can find out more about the book “A Glorious Enterprise"--and purchase a copy of your very own--by clicking here. You can find out more about the exhibitions by clicking here and here.

Thanks so much to friend and Morbid Anatomy Art Academy Instructor Marie Dauhiemer for sending this along!

Images top to bottom: All by Rosamond Purcell drawn from the New York Times slide show, and presumably featured in the book and exhibition:

  1. A spider crab (Libina canaliculata), collected by Joseph Leidy in Atlantic City.
  2. Black-backed kingfishers (Ceyx erithancus), collected by the ornithologist Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee in Siam (now Thailand), 1937-38.
  3. Cone shells collected for the museum from Tanzania, Dutch New Guinea and the Palau Islands by A.J. Ostheimer III during the 1950s.
  4. A selection from the butterfly and moth collection of Titian R. Peale, a noted 19th century entomologist.
  5. A Ruby-cheeked Sunbird from Borneo, given to the Academy by Thomas B. Wilson in 1846.

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Comparative Anatomy: Animals and the Fundamentals of Drawing Weekend Workshop with Chris Muller, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, May 5 & 6, Observatory

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Very much hope to see you at this newly announced class, the latest addition to the Morbid Anatomy Art Academy series I am organizing at Observatory!

Comparative Anatomy: Animals and the Fundamentals of Drawing Weekend Workshop
A weekend workshop with Chris Muller, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts
Dates: Saturday May 5 & Sunday May 6
Time: 1 - 4 PM
Fee: $75 (includes museum admission)
*** Class size limited to 15; Must RSVP to morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com
This class is part of The Morbid Anatomy Art Academy

Using animal and human anatomy as a jumping off point, this course will look at the ground-level, first principles of drawing as representation. Focusing mainly on mammal anatomy, we’ll look at the basic shared forms between humans and other animals, how these forms dictate movement, and how to express those forms.

Saturday’s class will be held at Observatory, where with the aid of several skeletons we’ll look at basic structures, sprinkling our exploration with odd facts and observations. Messy investigatory drawings will ensue.

Sunday’s class will be a field trip to the American Museum of Natural History, where applying the principles of Saturday’s class we’ll create beautiful drawings of the animals on display. Then, mastery attained, we will stride forth into the world, better artists and better people.

Materials

Saturday

  • Sketchbook or sketchpad, 11 X 14 or larger
  • B and HB pencils
  • Colored pencils, in the reds and blues and browns
  • Hand pencil sharpener
  • Erasers

Sunday

  • All of the above, with perhaps a portable sketchbook in place of the larger sketchpad
  • Portable folding stool (optional)

Chris Muller is an artist and exhibit designer based in Brooklyn. He has designed exhibits for the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum for African Art, the Children's Museum of Manhattan, and many others. He has designed sets for Laurie Anderson, Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, the Atlantic Theater Company, and others. He teaches drawing and digital painting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

You can find out more here; you can RSVP by emailing me at morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com. You can find out more about the Morbid Anatomy Art Academy by clicking here.

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The Hand of Glory, from Sir James George Frazer's "The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion," 1922

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There is a fruitful branch of homoeopathic magic which works by means of the dead; for just as the dead can neither see nor hear nor speak, so you may on homoeopathic principles render people blind, deaf and dumb by the use of dead men’s bones or anything else that is tainted by the infection of death...

In Europe [such] properties were ascribed to the Hand of Glory, which was the dried and pickled hand of a man who had been hanged. If a candle made of the fat of a malefactor who had also died on the gallows was lighted and placed in the Hand of Glory as in a candlestick, it rendered motionless all persons to whom it was presented; they could not stir a finger any more than if they were dead. Sometimes the dead man’s hand is itself the candle, or rather bunch of candles, all its withered fingers being set on fire; but should any member of the household be awake, one of the fingers will not kindle. Such nefarious lights can only be extinguished with milk. Often it is prescribed that the thief’s candle should be made of the finger of a new-born or, still better, unborn child; sometimes it is thought needful that the thief should have one such candle for every person in the house, for if he has one candle too little somebody in the house will wake and catch him. Once these tapers begin to burn, there is nothing but milk that will put them out. In the seventeenth century robbers used to murder pregnant women in order thus to extract candles from their wombs...
--The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer, 1922

You can read many more such factoids in the fantastic The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by Sir James George Frazer, published in 1922; you can read it online by clicking here, or purchase a hard copy (as I have done) by clicking here.

Image sourced here.

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Need nutrition info? Try a registered dietitian

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Q: Where should I go for advice on nutrition?

A: First, a definition is needed. Nutrition has been defined as the provision to cells and organisms of the materials necessary (in the form of food) to support life. I especially like that definition because it emphasizes food, with no mention of supplements, which are greatly overused by our population.

For nutrition advice, I have always referred patients to dietitians registered by the American Dietetic Association. Dietitians are highly trained professionals who are not only capable of educating patients on nutrition but are also able to evaluate the nutritional status of critically ill patients and develop nutritional plans that might include tube or intravenous feedings. Their training makes them capable of incorporating a patients nutritional needs with their medical conditions. Their training requires a bachelor's degree or higher degree in nutrition and dietetics, a lengthy supervised internship, rigorous examinations and fulfillment of state licensure requirements before they are able to practice their specialty.

They are required to complete continuing professional educational requirements to maintain their registration. They also have a published code of ethics that specifically states that they do not engage in false or misleading practices, false or deceptive advertising of their services and do not promote or endorse specific goods or products in a manner that is false and misleading.

Countering this academic and scientific profession is a group of sham and media nutritionists who hold themselves out to the public as qualified in nutrition and dietetics but who do not practice on the basis of nutrition science or standards of conduct observed by ethical practitioners.

Nutritional therapy has become big business. Therapists have been known to charge considerable fees for bad advice, and often prescribe expensive, unnecessary supplements as well. Some even profit further by selling supplements directly to their clients. Some of their educational programs require knowledge of worthless evaluation techniques such as homeopathic interrogation, acupuncture meridian interrogation, kinesiology, chelation therapy, herbology, reflexology and electromagnetic frequency.

Some nutritionists use worthless tests such as hair analysis, muscle-strength testing (applied kinesiology), iridology, electronic body scanning devices, computerized dietary questionnaires, herbal crystallization analysis, live cell analysis, sublingual tests and others to convince their clients that they need dietary supplements. Working with a nutritionist who believes in any of the above or recommends any of the above evaluations should encourage one to seek a second opinion from their physician or from a registered dietitian.

The worst of these unqualified nutritionists obtain their credentials from diploma mills or from non-accredited schools. Some obtain a nutrition degree only by correspondence courses, which are inadequate for such critical work.

A recent study published in the magazine of Britains largest consumer organization involved sending undercover researchers to visit nutrition therapists. Each researcher presented the nutrition therapist with a different problem and the nutritionists recommendations were evaluated by a panel of experts. The experts noted that at least a third of the nutritionists gave bad advice, that diagnoses were made that were inaccurate and that unproven testing procedures were ordered. They also noted that two-thirds of the therapists prescribed expensive supplements and directed their clients to particular pharmacies, a move not in their clients interest.

Those in search of a registered dietitian can visit the American Dietetic Associations website, http://www.eatright.org

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Sneak some nutrition fun into your kids' Easter baskets

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Still have to fill those Easter baskets? Looking for Easter activities?

Why not sneak a bit of fun nutrition -- fun is the key here -- in there, too? Sure, offer up some traditional treats like jelly beans and chocolate eggs, lest your little ones revolt.

"One, they will not like you, and two, they will think it's not fair," said Grace Derocha, registered dietitian and certified health coach for Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan.

But with some exotic fruits and a bit of creativity, you can also sneak a valuable lesson into the festivities, she said: "It teaches balance and moderation, even on the holidays."

Golden Eggs: -- Along with the other ooey-gooey eggs, toss in some kumquats -- citrus fruit the size of a grape tomato. They can be popped into your mouth whole, peel and all. They're good naked or dipped in a bit of chocolate.

Bunny Ears: -- With a slight "pearish-grapish" taste, a persimmon can be sliced to look like bunny ears and dipped in chocolate. Or use dried mango.

Bunny poop: Combine dried raisins, cranberries and blueberries, then drizzle with chocolate. Eww for you, but fun for kids.

Rice Krispie treat eggs: Shape marshmallow Rice Krispie treats (made with melted peeps) into egg-shaped balls, but slip in some Grape Nuts, dried fruit or peanuts, too. Dip into chocolate as an added treat.

Peeps s'mores: Melt chocolate on Peeps, then squeeze between slices of apple or other fruit (rather than graham crackers). Alternatively, Peeps and fruit can be slipped on sticks like kabobs.

Cottage cheese bunnies: For Easter breakfast, shape cottage cheese and a half of a canned pear into a bunny shape. Use fruit -- star fruit, mangos, peaches -- to make its face, and decorate it. Add a carrot for its food and even some bunny poop from above.

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Sneak some nutrition fun into your kids' Easter baskets

Drama’s impact on science

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31 March 2012 Last updated at 19:30 ET By Philippa Roxby Health reporter, BBC News

Casualty, Holby City, ER, Doc Martin. It is inconceivable that we haven't all, at some point, watched a medical drama on television.

Their popularity means viewers undoubtedly know more about gory kitchen injuries than they ever wanted to.

But when it comes to complicated medical concepts, which are difficult to explain, does drama still work?

A short drama created by the Society for General Microbiology to challenge misconceptions about MRSA screening was performed at their conference in Dublin this week.

It features two hospital cleaners, Lizzy and Carla, in a dialogue about MRSA.

Their conversation centres on Carla's mother who has told she must be screened for the infection before a hip replacement operation.

The drama was first performed at the Cheltenham Science Festival in 2010 and continues to be relevant to audiences made up of the general public.

The society is now planning to take the drama into schools and perhaps even on tour around the country.

People think there is a stigma about being tested positive for MRSA but 40% of people carry the bug on their skin.

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Drama's impact on science

DNA revives 1991 mystery

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STAMFORD -- As soon as 21-year-old Marie Andree Joseph was reported missing in December 1990, her family immediately suspected the worst.

Less than a year after the woman disappeared, a bullet-riddled skull attached to three vertebrae was found next to a Glenbrook business where the father of the woman's two children worked.

Police at the time figured vermin -- possibly a raccoon -- dragged the skull from a shallow grave and was stopped by a chain-link fence from moving it into a heap of 1,000 wooden loading pallets in a neighboring property. Police commissioned a nationally recognized forensic scientist to create a clay reconstruction of the skull -- presenting a best guess of what the face of the victim would have looked like -- and detectives presented it to stunned members of Joseph's family in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Using new DNA analysis technology, police determined last year that it was Joseph's skull and for the first time since the discovery, police are now publicly identifying Joseph as a murder victim and have closed her missing person's case.

The investigation into Joseph's murder remains active and police are asking for the public's help in solving the case. Police say they have a "person of interest" in the case, but since it's an ongoing investigation, they will not release their identity.

"The investigation is ongoing and has been resuscitated as a cold case," said Wayne "Mac" Macuirzynski, a detective with the Stamford Police Department's Special Victiim's Unit. "We are proceeding with it and we are finding additional information."

Following the discovery of the skull in August 1991, police focused their investigation on the father of Joseph's two children, Andre Lubin. Lubin, who was 40 at the time of Joseph's disappearance, adamantly denies any involvement with Joseph's murder and has never been charged.

The skull was found by workers near what was then Interprocess Inc., at 45 Research Drive, after brush was cleared from the area. At the time, Lubin worked in the shipping department and performed light building maintenance at Interprocess.

During an interview this week with The Advocate, the Haitian born Lubin, now 61, of Bridgeport, said after the skull was discovered his apartment was searched and police were following him all over town.

Lubin, who currently works as a Greenwich school bus driver, denied any involvement in Joseph's disappearance and has consistently told police and her family that she abandoned him and his two daughters and ran off to Canada.

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New discovery may lead to effective prevention and treatment of graft-versus-host dsease

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Public release date: 1-Apr-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Cody Mooneyhan cmooneyhan@faseb.org 301-634-7104 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

Bethesda, MD -- A new discovery in mice may lead to new treatments that could make bone marrow transplants more likely to succeed and to be significantly less dangerous. According to new research findings published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (https://www.jleukbio.org) Brazilian scientists may have found a way to prevent the immune system from attacking transplant grafts and damaging the host's own cells after a bone marrow transplant.

Specifically, they found that a receptor for a mediator of the inflammatory process, known as platelet activating factor plays a crucial role in the development of graft-versus-host disease. Platelet activating factor receptor appears to contribute to the attraction of immune cells that lead to graft-versus-host disease. When this mechanism was blocked, there was reduced tissue damage and mortality.

"Platelet activating factor receptor antagonists may decrease suffering caused by graft-versus-host disease in patients undergoing bone marrow transplant," said Vanessa Pinho, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Departamento de Morfologia, Instituto de Ciencias Biologicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil. "As graft-versus-host disease also may decrease quality of life, patients treated with platelet activating factor receptor antagonists may live longer and with better quality of life."

To make this discovery, scientists induced graft-versus-host disease by transferring cells between mice which were genetically incompatible. In mice subjected to graft-versus-host disease, there was significant injury to target organs, especially the liver and the intestine. In mice that received cells from genetically modified mice bred to not have platelet activating factor receptors, or in mice treated with platelet activating factor receptor antagonist, there was reduced tissue injury and reduced lethality.

"Immune rejection is one of the biggest risks of any transplant procedure, and this study sheds a new light on a receptor and pathway amenable to therapeutic intervention to reduce the serious complication of graft-versus-host disease," said John Wherry, Ph.D., Deputy Editor of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology. "The next step is to take these observations from the lab and see if the potential suggested by studies in mice hold true in humans with disease."

###

The Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org) publishes peer-reviewed manuscripts on original investigations focusing on the cellular and molecular biology of leukocytes and on the origins, the developmental biology, biochemistry and functions of granulocytes, lymphocytes, mononuclear phagocytes and other cells involved in host defense and inflammation. The Journal of Leukocyte Biology is published by the Society for Leukocyte Biology.

Details: Marina G. M. Castor, Brbara M. Rezende, Carolina B. Resende, Priscila T. T. Bernardes, Daniel isalpino, Anglica T. Vieira, Danielle G. Souza, Tarclia A. Silva, Mauro M. Teixeira, and Vanessa Pinho. Platelet-activating factor receptor plays a role in the pathogenesis of graft-versus-host disease by regulating leukocyte recruitment, tissue injury, and lethality. J Leukoc Biol. April 2012 91: 629-639; doi:10.1189/jlb.1111561 ; http://www.jleukbio.org/content/91/4/629.abstract

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Editorial: Reduce health care costs by cutting administrative overhead

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Things are certainly looking up for top executives of the not-for-profit Westchester Medical Center. During the height of the Great Recession, when so many were losing jobs, raises and benefits our collective economic bearings these officials were taking home non-recession-like raises totaling tens of thousands of dollars. President and CEO Michael Israel certainly lost no ground: While the hospital poor-mouthed and laid off workers, a 6 percent raise pushed his salary to $1.31 million.

Israel was hardly alone, as a cadre of medical center vice presidents saw raises from 2009 to 2010, most between 5 percent and 8 percent, on 2009 incomes generally ranging from roughly $313,000 to $738,000. Compensation for one post increased 18 percent, to $298,000; compensation for another was trimmed 3 percent, to $305,000, according to the report by staff reporters Cathey ODonnell and Theresa Juva, who reviewed documents secured under the Freedom of Information Act.

Market forces, competitive imperatives and changing duties partly explain the changes, which come to light as Gov. Andrew Cuomo has moved to rein in high pay in the nonprofit sector, or at least the amount of public dollars going to such compensation. Moreover, health care has long been regarded as recession-proof, at least for those holding choice positions, the choicest being those at the top. We have to deal with competition, said hospital board Chairman Mark Tulis. We cant pay [Israel] less than competitors.

The medical center in 2010 laid off 130 workers, instituted a hiring freeze and announced an $18 million budget cut for the following year. Amid such belt-tightening, there is no requirement that top executives forgo raises or bonuses; indeed, many boards, public and private, richly reward executives who turn profits or otherwise stay on track in the midst of economic upheaval. Nonetheless, the combination of raises for execs and job cuts for others presents optical challenges. There is no shared sacrifice, there is no appearance of a shared sacrifice, said Jayne Cammisa, a union representative and a registered nurse. Its awful what they are doing to the bottom-line workers. Weve been asked to sacrifice more and more.

(Page 2 of 2)

Reducing administrative overhead in health care is key to solving our crisis in health care one that could grow worse in short order. The Supreme Court last week heard argument on the Affordable Care Act, the health care reform law challenged by 26 states as unconstitutional. In jeopardy are a host of provisions not just a controversial insurance mandate aimed at slowing the unsustainable trajectory of medical spending. How important is that? A study in the March-April Annals of Family Medicine concluded that the cost of a family health insurance premium would equal the median household income by 2033; provisions in the challenged health care law may push the threshold back to 2037.

Drs. Richard Young and Jennifer DeVoe write: Continuing to make incremental changes in U.S. health policy will likely not bend the cost curve, which has eluded policy makers for the past 50 years. Private health insurance will become increasingly unaffordable to low-to-middle-income Americans unless major changes are made in the the U.S. health care system adding more strain on health care, families and our economy.

Their report goes into no detail about all of the reforms required to improve affordability just as well in an age were ideological differences and indifference doom even modest fixes. But they note that reduced administrative overhead could yield cost savings without compromising quality. (Therein, no doubt, is a hint for the medical center and such facilities nationwide.)

Young and DeVoe note that removing certain profit mechanisms from the equation would move the United States closer to a sustainable system. Likewise, demonstration projects aimed at boosting primary care, through a patient-centered medical home concept, have reduced cost and improved quality. The tipping point may come when patients and physicians realize that we cannot provide all possible services to all people; they illustrate this concern by pointing to Medicare approval of a $93,000 drug regimen they say increases the life expectancy of a prostate cancer patient by four months.

Their report concludes with this, which seems like so much fantasy after the Supreme Court arguments, and the ceaseless rancor over health care, including on the presidential campaign stump: For the sake of our children and grandchildren, lets hope that we find the courage to have the difficult discussions now and make the right choices to achieve sustainability.

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Your child’s milk tooth can save her life

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Is your child about to lose her milk tooth? Instead of throwing it away, you can now opt to use it to harvest stem cells in a dental stem cell bank for future use in the face of serious ailments. Now thats a tooth fairy story coming to life.

Still relatively new in India, dental stem cell banking is fast gaining popularity as a more viable option over umbilical cord blood banking.

Stem cell therapy involves a kind of intervention strategy in which healthy, new cells are introduced into a damaged tissue to treat a disease or an injury.

The umbilical cord is a good source for blood-related cells, or hemaotopoietic cells, which can be used for blood-related diseases, like leukaemia (blood cancer). Having said that, blood-related disorders constitute only four percent of all diseases, Shailesh Gadre, founder and managing director of the company Stemade Biotech, said.

For the rest of the 96 percent tissue-related diseases, the tooth is a good source of mesenchymal (tissue-related) stem cells. These cells have potential application in all other tissues of the body, for instance, the brain, in case of diseases like Alzheimers and Parkinsons; the eye (corneal reconstruction), liver (cirrhosis), pancreas (diabetes), bone (fractures, reconstruction), skin and the like, he said.

Mesenchymal cells can also be used to regenerate cardiac cells.

Dental stem cell banking also has an advantage when it comes to the process of obtaining stem cells.

Obtaining stem cells from the tooth is a non-invasive procedure that requires no surgery, with little or no pain. A child, in the age group of 5-12, is any way going to lose his milk tooth. So when its a little shaky, it can be collected with hardly any discomfort, Savita Menon, a pedodontist, said.

Moreover, in a number of cases, when an adolescent needs braces, the doctor recommends that his pre-molars be removed. These can also be used as a source for stem cells. And over and above that, an adults wisdom tooth can also be used for the same purpose, Gadre added.

Therefore, unlike umbilical cord blood banking which gives one just one chance - during birth - the window of opportunity in dental stem cell banking is much bigger.

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Your child’s milk tooth can save her life

Destruction Anniversary Tour Features Warbringer, Vital Remains, and Pathology Recap

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The trek will run from May 8th to June 3rd, and after that, Warbringer will appear at various high-profile Summer festival appearances in Europe.

Vocalist John Kevill checked in to comment about these upcoming shows: "Hey all! Checking in at the end of the Iced Earth and Symphony X tour. We had a great time with those guys, there was a slew of incredible shows with awesome heavy metal fans in abundance, and a bunch of good times with both of those fine bands! Shame to say goodbye to them, but we're on our way home now to recuperate Before beginning out next tour with German thrash metal legends Destruction, on their 30th anniversary tour! We never rest long, the war rages on! We'll see you guys out on the road again in May, prepare to be annihilated! - more on this story

antiMUSIC News featured on RockNews.info and Yahoo News

...end

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Destruction Anniversary Tour Features Warbringer, Vital Remains, and Pathology Recap

Kilgore College nutrition students hosting event

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Posted: Saturday, March 31, 2012 4:00 am | Updated: 6:02 am, Sat Mar 31, 2012.

Several students studying nutrition at Kilgore College will take their expertise on the road today, hosting a family fun day for residents at Longview nursing home The Clairmont.

The event runs from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The students will serve picnic-type lunches and host activities during the event.

The students are members of Deborah Elliotts nutrition class.

This is a great way for KC students to give back to the community, said Patty Bell, service learning irector at Kilgore College. We are always looking for ways to give our students opportunities to create valuable learning experiences outside of the classroom.

Bell said the Kilgore College Service Learning Program is a teaching and learning strategy in which students perform public services to benefit the community in order to achieve the course learning objectives and fulfill personal goals.

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Kilgore College nutrition students hosting event

Ghana to scale up interventions to improve nutrition

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Health News of Friday, 30 March 2012

Source: GNA

Ms Wilhelmina Okwabi, Deputy Director, Nutrition Department of Ghana Health Service, on Friday noted that Ghana has not done well in terms of scaling up interventions to improve upon the nutritional status of the citizenry.

She however admitted that, there have been pockets of success in various areas of interventions.

Ms Okwabi said, there are evidence of the increasing rate of malnutrition and obesity particularly among children as well as other nutritional related illnesses such as diabetes among the younger population.

Ms Okwabi, who was addressing a West African Health Organisation (WAHO) Peer Reviewing Meeting in Accra on Strengthening National Nutrition in West Africa, called for stakeholder support and political commitment towards the implementation of nutritional policies and programmes, to reduce malnutrition rates among the populace.

She said, challenges such as effective implementation and sustained impact backed by political commitment and fair share of the national budget remained elusive.

Ms Okwabi noted that, although nutrition was a critical item in the development status of a country, it had remained trapped in a low priority cycle in most sub Saharan African countries including Ghana.

She emphasised that, malnutritions complex determinants and its low visibility, as well as lack of political commitment and weak institutional and operational capacities at all levels of government were some of the biggest constraints.

Ms Okwabi explained that, the South-South Peer Review initiative which was sponsored by the World Bank and led by the WAHO of ECOWAS is aimed at enhancing policies and programmes through South-South exchange and learning.

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Ghana to scale up interventions to improve nutrition

WCCC professor develops smart phone app for classroom education

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WASHINGTON A Warren County Community College adjunct Microbioliology faculty member has developed a powerful new smart phone application that integrates the college's microbiology course into a handy, downloadable "app."

Pauletta Ader, who developed the application, is helping pioneer this innovative approach to integrating technology in ways that make learning convenient and effective for WCCC students. This brand new WCCC Microbiology App is now available for download on iTunes.

Once they have downloaded the app, WCCC students can use their smart phones to gain access to all the necessary course materials right in the palm of their hand. "It's really an idea whose time has come," said Ader. "The WCCC Microbiology App is the latest innovation for a school that has been the go to for the science student or busy professional who wants to further their education."

In an effort spearheaded by Ader, the college plans to expand its offerings of smart phone apps in the coming months.

"This is an important step for Warren County Community College as we forge into the future," said Dr. Will Austin, president of the school. "We all realize that with the times changing rapidly, particularly in technology, and it is key that we stay one step ahead of the curve."

To find out more information about the new WCCC app, contact Ader at pader@warren.edu. The WCCC Microbiology App uses the Study By App platform. To learn more, visit their website at http://www.studybyapp.com. For more information about WCCC and its degree and non-degree programs, go to http://www.warren.edu

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WCCC professor develops smart phone app for classroom education

The Kind of Stress That Doesn't Kill You, but Makes You Stronger

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Digging into an eight-decade landmark study on longevity, the author finds that stress brought on by hard work can keep you happy and healthy.

Phatic-Photography/Shutterstock

More than a half century after Dr. Terman collected his data on work and occupational success, we looked into the long-term consequences on health and longevity. Would Paul's easygoing, free-flowing approach to his career as a bookstore manager be a benefit or a curse? Would John's dedication to physics lead to a stressful but long life like that of fellow physicist Norris Bradbury, or was Bradbury's very long life an anomaly -- an exception to the rule?

We gathered together our research assistants, filling our computer programs with a whole host of relevant information, including the personality indexes we had constructed and validated earlier. We recorded how much alcohol they drank, the participants' reports of their ambition, and even their parents' reports. Most importantly, we used the death certificates to see how long they lived.

The results were very clear: Those with the most career success were the least likely to die young. In fact, on average the most successful men lived five years longer than the least successful.

Especially convincing about this finding is that the men who were independently rated by Dr. Terman as most successful more than a half century ago were the ones least likely to die at any given age in the decades that followed. Some studies in this field of research might be inadvertently biased by the classifications or judgments used by the epidemiologists, but in this case, we did not have to do any job classifications or make any judgments -- we simply relied on those careful categorizations Terman and his associates had made decades ago.

WHY THE SUCCESSFUL LIVE LONGER

Conscientiousness, as we have established, is a strong predictor of longevity, and it turns out that the professionally successful Terman subjects were indeed more conscientious than their peers. But conscientiousness didn't explain everything: those with a successful career lived much longer even after taking their conscientiousness into account.

Unsurprisingly, ambition predicted career success. More to the point, ambition, coupled with perseverance, impulse control, and high motivation, was not only good for achievement but was part of the package of a resilient work life. It is not a coincidence that Edward Dmytryk was a prominent director and lived a long life or that Norris Bradbury headed a powerful agency and lived a long life. Symphony conductors, company presidents, and bosses of all sorts tend to live longer than their subordinates.

Complementing our own analyses, the sociologist Glen Elder and his colleagues looked at career changes between 1940 and 1960 and found evidence that the Terman participants who moved among various jobs without a clear progression were less likely to live long lives than those with steadily increasing responsibilities in their field. Usually this increasing responsibility brings more challenges and a heavier workload, but paradoxically this is helpful to long-term health.

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The Kind of Stress That Doesn't Kill You, but Makes You Stronger

DNA Matches Close Sexual Assault Cases

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WASHINGTON - Six years after D.C. police began looking for DNA in hundreds of backlogged sexual assault cases, the work is paying off.

Suspects have been identified through matches in the national DNA databank and arrests have been made.

Just this week police arrested a D.C. man for the 2006 rape of a teenage girl.

Without the DNA, the cases would likely have gone unsolved.

For much of the last decade, evidence in sexual assault cases sat untouched in storage in part because the district didn't have its own crime lab and the FBI was overwhelmed with cases related to terror.

A dilemma eventually solved with the help of grant money and several different labs.

Case in point.

Michael Anthony Davies, 31, was arrested Wednesday and charged with first degree sexual abuse--accused of raping a young girl inside a southwest Washington apartment building in April of 2006.

According to the charging document, detectives were unable to identify a suspect until Davies DNA profile matched the evidence in a "cold hit."

According to the charging document the 17-year-old said she had just returned from the store, it was just after eight o'clock at night and she was riding the elevator to the fifth floor in the apartment complex where she lived. She says as she got out of the elevator, a man who was in the elevator with her followed, he grabbed her by the arm said I want to get to know you better. She resisted, but he grabbed her by the waist and dragged her into a stairwell where she was raped.

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DNA Matches Close Sexual Assault Cases

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Foods in the Year 2000

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A lot of proposed synthetic biology applications can seem pretty out there, but some are really out there. NASA is currently advertising open postdoctoral positions in synthetic biology, with particular emphasis on food production in space. Engineered organisms have the potential to do lots of things that would be useful for space colonists, from producing food and fuel to treating wastewater. Because organisms replicate themselves, future astronauts would only have to bring some spores and seeds and empty bioreactors, the organisms would do the rest of the work.

Matt Mansell--Synthetic Biology in Space

I am fascinated by these proposals, and other proposals large and small for how biological engineering might someday impact the way that we produce, process, and prepare our food. The way we eat and the way we imagine the food of the future is really complicated, and has a long and interesting history tied not only to our culinary cultures and the science of nutrition, but often to the hot new science and technology of the day.

In the 1890s, that technology was synthetic chemistry, making it possible to generate organic chemicals from inorganic starting materials. New industries were springing up that replaced old agricultural methods with chemical ones, in particular the production of synthetic dyes and flavors. This led some chemists to speculate on how this technology would be used a hundred years in the future, extrapolating the current industrial transformations into nearly every organic arena. This speculative application of synthetic chemistry to food production is detailed in an 1894 article in McClures Magazine by Henry J.W. Dam titled Foods in the Year 2000: Professor Berthelots Theory that Chemistry Will Displace Agriculture. By 2000, Marcellin Berthelot, considered to be one of the greatest chemists of all time, believed that we would no longer have agriculture, that instead:

The epicure of the future is to dine upon artificial meat, artificial flour, and artificial vegetablesWheat fields and corn fields are to disappear from the face of the earth, because flour and meal will no longer be grown, but madeCoal will no longer be dug, except perhaps with the object of transforming it into bread or meat. The engines of the great food factories will be driven, not by artificial combustion, but by the underlying heat of the globe.

What would this food synthesized from coal with geothermal power look like? What would it taste like?

We shall give you the same identical food, however, chemically, digestively, and nutritively speaking. Its form will differ, because it will probably be a tablet. But it will be a tablet of any color and shape that is desired, and will, I think, entirely satisfy the epicurean senses of the future.

Food pills are a common theme in science fiction, especially for space travel where astronauts have to travel light, and its interesting to see how that has transformed, with NASA now thinking beyond synthetic chemistry to synthetic biology. But its the scientific language of Professor Berthelot thats particularly interesting to me:

In order to clearly conceive these impending changes, it must be remembered that milk, eggs, flour, meat, and indeed, all edibles, consist almost entirely (the percentage of other elements is very small) of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogenThese four elements, universally existing, are destined to furnish all the food now grown by nature, through the rapid and steady advance of synthetic chemistry.

Synthetic chemistry is the special science which takes the elements of a given compound, and induces them to combine and form that compound. It is the reverse of analytic chemistry, which takes a given compound, and dissociates and isolates its elements. Analytic chemistry would separate water into oxygen and hydrogen, and synthetic chemistry would take oxygen and hydrogen, mix them, put a match to the mixture, and thus form water. For many years past synthetic chemistry has had an eager eye upon food-making.

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Foods in the Year 2000

CMS Delays Point-of-Service Change Until October

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CMS is delaying implementation of Transmittal 2407 containing “revised and clarified” point-of-service (POS) coding instructions from April 1 to Oct. 1, 2012. The delay will be announced in Transmittal 2435, which the agency is planning on posting on its Web site. (The agency’s Web site is apparently experiencing technical difficulties, and the Transmittal is not yet posted. The CAP will post a link to the Transmittal on the Advocacy Web site when it is live.)

 

 

As outlined in the March 15 issue of Statline, the CAP extensively engaged with CMS officials, explaining to them that if implemented, the transmittal would result in significant confusion regarding anatomic pathology services, particularly for Medicare carriers processing claims subject to the technical component “grandfather” provision in light of its scheduled July 1st expiration date.
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Heart attacks without chest pain more common than thought, especially among women

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by: PF Louis

The CDC reports that approximately 800,000 first time heart attacks occur annually. Ignoring iatrogenic deaths (death by medicine), heart disease is still the number one killer for both men and women.

However, the common perception of chest pain or discomfort as a signal that a heart attack is occurring are less than one normally thinks, especially among younger women under 45.

A study led by Dr. John Canto at the Watson Clinic in Lakeland, Florida, used medical records in a national database of heart attack patients from 1994 to 2006, covering around 1.1 million people treated at close to 2,000 hospitals.

Dr. Canto and his team reported their study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on February 21, 2012.

What was revealed is that chest pain is not necessarily the only indication of a heart attack. Dr. Canto used the term "atypical symptoms" to describe possible indications of a heart attack other than chest pain.

Atypical symptoms of a heart attack include numbness, unprovoked arm, jaw or back pain, sudden shortness of breath, weakness or fatigue, or unusual feelings of indigestion or nausea. Read more...

AyurGold for Healthy Blood

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