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Human Behavior

Climbing to Positivity – HuffPost

Louise Stanger is a speaker, educator, licensed clinician, social worker, certified daring way facilitator and interventionist who uses an invitational intervention approach to work with complicated mental health, substance abuse, chronic pain and process addiction clients.

Weve all heard the expression view the world as a glass half-full, rather than half-empty. This is one of the most favorite and common phrases to describe a positive outlook. The study of psychology, research and findings, however, over the years has portrayed a glass half empty. In fact, Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, maintained that behavioral health was built on the disease model, with a focus on uncovering what was wrong with the person. As a result, he posed the following question:

What happens when we look at human behavior with a positive spin?

Thats exactly what Seligman did. As such, his research on human psychology flipped the script and began to take a closer look at healthy states such as happiness, strength of character and optimism.

In short, one can take a look at their personality, hobbies, traits, skills, character, etc. from a strength-based perspective. Clinicians, interventionists, and social workers like myself look for goodness to help the clients develop and implement in their daily lives - behaviors that foster personal growth, healthy relationships and meaningful engagement.

Lets begin with strengths. Since anyone can brainstorm an endless list of those qualities we draw power from, we decided to highlight the Positive Psychology Program, a website dedicated to providing education and resources for positive psychology. Researchers assembled human behavioral data and collapsed the data into the following six categories:

If you answered yes to some or many of these questions, you may identify with that particular strength of character. The truth is we probably draw from all of them. The key is to sow the seeds of positivity, nurture and grow the strengths you see in yourself for achieving healthier relationships - with your mother, father, sister, brother, grandparent, husband, wife, etc. These attributes will also equip you with the ability to start a business, ask for a promotion, negotiate with your boss, land the big account, or treat yourself to something special. Finally, youll see your life grow toward the sunlight because you put in the hard work.

Keeping your strengths in mind, another essential ingredient to nurture a positive outlook is your own well-being. Well-being is like happiness, a feeling of contentment and peace about oneself. Its the emotional response that the world is okay, that the future is bright or your own creation, and theres room for possibility.

Building well-being is not easy. This demands attention, detail, perseverance, routine, and daily practice. In collaboration with Pyramid Healthcare, a program that adapted Seligmans work to create a framework for clients to harness positivity, the following are our ideas on how you practice well-being each day:

As with finding happiness, our thoughts and ideas and the ways in which we view the world helps shape our physical and emotional health. Optimists think about misfortune the opposite way. They tend to believe that defeat is just a temporary setback or a challenge, that its causes are just confined to this one case, says Seligman.

That being said, it is inevitable that we will at times experience negative feelings. That is part of being human. Here are ways we have discovered to build resiliency.

Positivity begins with unleashing your strengths, using them to foster healthy well-being, working these behavioral practices in daily living, and constructing a defense against negative emotions. Remember that positive and negative emotions, good days and bad, ups and downs are the lifeblood of being human. You have a choice each morning to seize the day. What positive emotion will you pick?

To learn more about Louise Stanger and her interventions and other resources, visit her website.

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Climbing to Positivity - HuffPost

Anatomy

Popular to Contrary Opinion: The anatomy of a bar – Colorado Daily

Freeman

Bars are wonderful places, and they're staffed by more than just a Sam Malone from "Cheers" or whoever worked the taps at the Mos Eisley Cantina in "Star Wars."

I put myself through school working in a bar, and I'm still working in a few. It's a lot more than just pouring beers, flirting or cracking skulls. Today, we're talking about service industry workers that don't survive on tips. Certain employees make more money, work more and meet more, um, partners.

First off, owners foot the bills and in my experiences may be the most worthless person in the bar. Their opinion of what may or may not work usually doesn't. Owners change the dcor to from the dingy old music posters and Magic Markered dollar bills that everybody loved to clean-cut Jimmy Buffet-looking crap that looks like it was designed by your cat lady aunt who's trying really hard to impress her imaginary knitting club. Owners sometimes raise drink prices by a quarter which means a lot more math for bartenders, which means bartenders spend more time doing something besides making money.

Managers, duh, manage the bar. They do just about everything: order booze, run social media, fix computers, hire, fire, re-hire, make schedules and try to figure out how to keep the place afloat. There are "fun managers" that might let you drink on the job, and there are "dickhead managers" that treat the staff like personal slaves and may charge you for the half a Red Bull you chugged because you worked a double.

Owners and managers will tell you when to close or how late to stay open, even if there's nobody coming in for drinks or their leechlike friends aren't leaving after closing time.

Depending on your bar's size or style, you might have a chef, who's generally everybody's favorite. He's the dude that will add extra everything to your employee meal. Most important, the chef will probably be your drug connection.

Next are most people's least favorite workers: security. Bouncers are the smashed bugs underneath the totem pole. Movies make this job seem a lot cooler than it actually is. Nearly 99 percent is doing absolutely nothing, unless you're allowed to get drunk and screw off with your bouncer friends then the job can be really fun.

As a bouncer, you're standing, stopping fights, preventing fights, hoping that fights happen, getting into fights, talking to girls, checking IDs, charging covers (even when there isn't one) and other types of manual labor such as taking out garbage. Mostly just standing. Sitting if you're lucky.

Like I said, I've done most jobs, but there's one I never have and never will do: deejay. A deejay basically has the best job in the place. They don't deal with customers except for taking requests. (Here's a hint: If you want your song to get played, be a hot chick.) As long as the laptop, spinny things and electricity is working, deejays make their money because they don't work for tips. Pretty awesome. Even better, nobody gets hit on more than a deejay.

It's closing time for today. Tune in next week for bartenders, servers and a secret worker.

Read more Freeman: coloradodaily.com/columns. Stalk him: comfyconfines.wordpress.com

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Popular to Contrary Opinion: The anatomy of a bar - Colorado Daily

Human Behavior

Part II Beauty, Cooperation, and the Hadza Hunter-Gatherers – HuffPost

In The Evolution of Beauty, Yale ornithologist Richard Prum elaborates on Darwins theory of the effect of sexual selection on evolution. Beyond survival of the fittest, the sexes have asymmetric interests. Males, with their cheap sperm, seek to sire as many offspring as possible. Females with their expensive eggs and limited lifetime reproductive opportunity, seek to pick the best mates. Males compete with one another for control of females. Females seek to avoid male control and to choose their mates freely. In many species, male competition results in bigger, stronger, and more weaponized males, as in huge sea lion males with long tusks. Prum focuses on female choice.

Female choice, given free rein, can lead to arbitrary standards of beauty and behavior in a species. Among neotropical manakins, females do all the work of raising chicks while males contribute only sperm. Males dance, sing, and flash their colors on communal display grounds known as leks; the females arrive, watch, pick a male for a quickie, and leave. The females favor only a few of the males; the rest may never get to mate. Blue manakins have even evolved a cooperative dance among a group of five or six males; females choose between groups of dancers, mating with the alpha male.

Prum moves from birds to humans. Humans, he points out, are far more cooperative than our African ape relatives, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. Men and women dont differ as dramatically in size as male and female apes. Unlike apes, humans tend to monogamy, he says, because females need help raising the kids. Prum also cites surveys showing that women do not prefer big, square-jawed macho males; rather, they go for men with moderate physiques and gentle behavior. Prum goes on from here to many interesting observations on possible effects of female choice, such as why do men, unlike apes, have long, dangling penises?

Yet in offering a generalized account of human behavior, Prum misses a human society that supports the female choice theory especially well. That society is the Hadza, as described in Nicholas Blurton-Jones new book: Demography and Evolutionary Ecology of Hadza Hunter-Gatherers (2016).

The Hadza are an ancient hunter-gatherer tribe living in northern Tanzania near Lake Eyasi. Traces of their culture in the area date back at least 130,000 years. The area is too dry for agriculture and the tsetse fly makes it unsuitable for livestock. But theres an abundance of seeds, nuts, berries, honey, and especially, underground tubers. The Hadza live in small groups, moving every few weeks depending on seasonal availability of foods. While all other group-living animals, including apes, consist of close kin, Hadza groups are quite fluid, with unrelated individuals continually coming and going. Like all hunter-gatherers, the Hadza are extremely egalitarian and cooperative.

Hadza men spend their days hunting with poison arrows. But they dont hunt the small game they learned to capture as boys. Rather, they hunt for big game, like baboons, antelope, zebra, or buffalowhich they very rarely catch. Some men never catch anything. But when a man does nail a big animal, the meat is equally shared among the whole group, gaining him prestige. One anthropologist has called this a show-off strategy.

Hadza women do almost all the work, including caring for children and gathering and preparing food. They get little contribution from their husbandsmaybe an occasional piece of honeycomb or a small bird, which the men expect their wives to prepare. In compensation, however, its the women who chose their husbands (often for only a few years). What sort of men do Hadza women prefer? Successful huntersnot good providers!

When the men are not hunting, they sit around in the mens place chatting, smoking, eating tubers prepared by their wives, and fiddling with their bows and arrows. Theres almost no violence among the men. Disputes are resolved by long discussions, or at the worst, one of the men will leave and join another group. If you look at pictures of Hadza, both sexes are small, thin and wiryno great differences in size or appearance. Both sexes go for bead necklaces.

Like the blue manakins, the Hadza seem to fit Prums model of extreme female choice. The women dont depend on their husbands for much besides sperm. Theyre free to choose the show-off hunters, who sire more children, but may actually contribute less to their childrens nutrition. Judging by the peacefulness of the men, female choice seems to have tamed male-male competition.

While all hunter-gatherer societies are highly egalitarian, not all allow as much freedom to women. In the Amazon rain forest, Ache men supply some 80% of the food by hunting. These men may ritually sacrifice children over womens objections, and engage in lethal quarrels. Hadza women seem to derive their independence from the terrain, where it takes no more than a sharp digging stick and knife, a leather sling and water gourd, plus long hours working in the hot sun, for women to fully provision themselves and their childrenand grandchildren. Another unrelated African hunter-gatherer society, the !Kung, lead a very similar life.

The latest evidence from Africa shows hominids manufactured flint tools as long as 3.3 million years ago. Once there were stone knives, female hominids must have used slings to carry themalong with food and infants. A Hadza life style could date back millions of years. Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding (2009), attributes human cooperativeness to womens shared mothering of childrena trait quite absent in apes. She draws examples from the Hadza. Blaffer Hrdys female cooperativeness together with Prums female preference for cooperative males might explain the evolution of the most cooperative species on earth: humans.

In Aristophanes comedy, Lysistrata (411 BCE), Lysistrata persuades all the women of Athens and Sparta to withhold sex until their men agree to end the long-running Peloponnesian war. Was Aristophanes onto something?

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Part II Beauty, Cooperation, and the Hadza Hunter-Gatherers - HuffPost

Genetics

Counterclockwise: Nokia genetics and the features it evolved – GSMArena.com

Nokia is one of the oldest mobile technology companies and has an amazing portfolio of phone-related tech. The networking equipment arm dates back almost to the company's inception, but the phone division was disbanded. A new company, HMD, recently took up the mantle and it just launched its first flagship, the Nokia 8. This brought back a lot of memories, so we decided to put pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard and share some of them.

We most fondly remember PureView, which debuted with the eponymous Nokia 808 PureView. There's no clear definition of what "PureView" means, though. It started with a huge, high-resolution sensor with on-chip image processing. 808's measly single-core processor would never have handled the torrent of data, but PureView made zooming into 38MP photos feel all so smooth.

Later, PureView added Optical Image Stabilization to its repertoire - the Lumia 920 introduced this concept to the mobile world. Carl Zeiss was by Nokia's side the entire time and it's back again. Of course, the Nokia 8 lacks the PureView brand (that is owned by Microsoft), but we care more about results than name.

Nokia 808 PureView Nokia Lumia 920

Another tech we loved was ClearBlack - the brand name for a polarization filter on the display. It debuted a year earlier with the Nokia C6-01 and Nokia E7. It has been used on both LCD and AMOLED screens with spectacular effect - just like polarized glasses reduce glare, so does ClearBlack.

These screens were effortlessly legible even at high noon in the summer. ClearBlack stayed at Microsoft too, but the Nokia 8 has an unbranded polarization filter. And while we haven't completed our dedicated test to give you an exact number yet, we can already tell it's pretty amazing.

Nokia C6-01 Nokia E7

The Nokia N86 had an impressive camera and screen of its own, but we want to talk audio recording. It featured MEMS digital microphones that promised CD-quality audio. The 808 PureView improved on that with high dynamic range microphones, "Nokia Rich Recording", which scaled to an impressive 140dB.

Nokia (not HMD) is building professional VR cameras through its OZO division and, as any movie maker will tell you, sound is just as important as visuals. So the Nokia 8 has HDR mics as well, three of them, plus the same advanced algorithms behind the OZO camera's sound capture.

Nokia N86 8MP

Speaking of audio, we can't help but think back to XpressMusic. It was Nokia's answer to the Sony Ericsson Walkman phones and Apple's iTunes (which was a day-one feature of the iPhone). Then there was Comes With Music, a year of free music downloads for Nokia 5800 owners. This later morphed into MixRadio which Microsoft shut down last year (it already has Groove, not need for two music services).

HMD made no mention of special music playing prowess, so we don't quite know what to expect from the Nokia 8 on this front. Well, we could guess - the Nokia 6 was pretty impressive, the 8 should be better.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Nokia had used the "Xpress" name earlier for Xpress-On Covers - a collection of phone covers (front and back) that could be changed quickly and easily. Those date back to at least 1998's Nokia 5110. (GSMArena trivia: this is the second phone that entered our database)

Back then, all phones had their own personality (i.e. not a screen-covered rectangle) and the best ones let you customize them. Of course, these days we have cases, not covers. In fact, most phones (Nokia 8 included) are sealed tight - no panels open, no batteries can be changed.

Nokia 5110

In 2007, Nokia bought NAVTEQ, the biggest supplier of electronic maps at the time, and Smart2Go by Gate 5, a smart and feature phone navigation app (which was later renamed Nokia Maps). Nokia quickly released it as a free download, but initially kept voice-guided navigation as a paid feature. That is until it made it completely free on all its Symbian phones in 2010.

Of course, Maps (later renamed Here) was sold off to a German automotive consortium in 2015, so the Nokia 8 just uses Google Maps. Nothing new, the Nokia 6110 Navigator used Route66, a competing app, instead of the in-house solution. The next version, 6210 Navigator did use Nokia Maps 2.0, though.

Nokia 6110 Navigator Nokia 6210 Navigator

Despite the name, the Nokia 8 is a product of HMD - a relatively new company. Still, it has a close partnership with Nokia and as you can see, the Finnish juggernaut has plenty of knowledge that it accumulated over the years.

Let's get it straight - we don't care about the brand names. But if the functionality of PureView and other old Nokia tech can be included in these new phones, we'd be more than happy. It seems that ClearBlack is back already, in spirit if not in name. That's a good start!

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Counterclockwise: Nokia genetics and the features it evolved - GSMArena.com

Genetics

New era of beef genetics at Genus ABS – Farming Life

A decline in the Northern Ireland suckler herd numbers and more emphasis on beef from the dairy herd has highlighted the need for specialised and targeted breeding programs to ensure success in both areas.

In addition, the importance of differentiated and tailored genetics for Northern Ireland livestock has been highlighted as one of the aims of the AgriFood Strategy Boards recommendations to government, while current research work by AFBI, in conjunction with commercial partners is investigating the use of synchronised breeding in the suckler herd in order to improve calving interval and quality of calves.

Always in the lead when it comes to new breeding initiatives, Genus ABS has introduced a new era (NuEra) of beef genetics that encompasses all available beef breeding programs, evaluations and indexes which will open up a whole new breeding concept for beef farmers. This new era of genetic improvement will produce more value for the entire chain including producers, processors and retailers according to Ervin McKinstry, Ireland Manager for Genus ABS.

He said: NuEra Genetics will improve the genetic gene pool, improve production efficiencies and increase sustainability thus benefitting the entire beef production and retailing chain. While this is a world wide program it is particularly relevant to Northern Ireland in that the number of suckler cows has declined over recent years and a considerable number of beef animals are derived from the dairy herd.

Ervin added: We need to have genetic programs that are specifically tailored for the dairy herd to produce the type of animal that will meet the needs of the retailer and consumer. In addition, using targeted beef genetics on lower ranking dairy cows adds a significant revenue stream to the dairy business. We also need to have more targeted genetics in the suckler herd to suit the environment, farming systems and the specific market that the farmer is supplying.

According to Ervin, NuEra Genetics symbolizes the next chapter in the history of Genus ABS beef genetics. A chapter that is focused on providing robust improvement and delivering value to customers throughout the beef supply chain. They will benefit through increased efficiency leading to greater profitability and ultimately a more sustainable system.

The Genus ABS Beef Calving Survey and Beef Advantage will be marketed under NuEra Genetics going forward, as both are proprietary to Genus ABS. Customers should look for new products to be released under the NuEra Genetics brand in the coming months. Such products include proprietary indexes tailored to specific customer needs, making it easier for customers to select the most efficient and profitable genetics.

For further information on NuEra Genetics contact your Genus ABS representative or phone the office on 028 3833 4426.

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New era of beef genetics at Genus ABS - Farming Life

Genetics

When White Nationalists Get DNA Tests Revealing African Ancestry … – The Atlantic

The white-nationalist forum Stormfront hosts discussions on a wide range of topics, from politics to guns to The Lord of the Rings. And of particular and enduring interest: genetic ancestry tests. For white nationalists, DNA tests are a way to prove their racial purity. Of course, their results dont always come back that way. And how white nationalists try to explain away non-European ancestry is rather illuminating of their beliefs.

Will the Alt-Right Promote a New Kind of Racist Genetics?

Two years agobefore Donald Trump was elected president, before white nationalism had become central to the political conversationAaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan, sociologists then at the University of California, Los Angeles, set out to study Stormfront forum posts about genetic ancestry tests. They presented their study at the American Sociological Association meeting this Monday. (A preprint of the paper is now online.)After the events in Charlottesville this week, their research struck a particular chord with the audience.

For academics, there was some uneasiness around hearing that science is being used in this way and that some of the critiques that white nationalists are making of genetics are the same critiques social scientists make of genetics, says Donovan, who recently took up a position at the Data and Society Research Institute. On Stormfront, the researchers did encounter conspiracy theories and racist rants, but some white-nationalist interpretations of genetic ancestry tests were in fact quite sophisticatedand their views cannot all be easily dismissed as ignorance.

If we believe their politics comes from lack of sophistication because theyre unintelligent or uneducated, says Panofsky, I think were liable to make a lot of mistakes in how we cope with them.

Panofsky, Donovan, and their team of researchers analyzed 3,070 Stormfront posts spanning more than a decadeall from forum threads in which at least one user revealed the results of a DNA test. Some of the results were 100 percent European, as users expected. But oftensurprisingly often, says Panofskyusers disclosed tests results showing non-European ancestry. And despite revealing non-European ancestry on a forum full of white nationalists, they were not run off the site.

While some commenters reacted with anger, many reacted by offering up arguments to explain away the test results. These arguments largely fell into two camps.

First, they could simply reject all genetic ancestry testing. Genealogy or the so-called mirror test (When you look in the mirror, do you see a Jew? If not, youre good) were better tests of racial purity, some suggested. Others offered up conspiracies about DNA testing companies led by Jews: I think 23andMe might be a covert operation to get DNA the Jews could then use to create bio-weapons for use against us.

The second category of explanation was a lot more nuancedand echoed in many ways legitimate critiques of the tests. When companies like 23andMe or AncestryDNA return a result like 23 percent Iberian, for example, theyre noting similarities between the customers DNA and people currently living in that region. But people migrate; populations change. It doesnt pinpoint where ones ancestors actually lived. One Stormfront user wrote:

See, THIS is why I dont recommend these tests to people. Did they bother to tell you that there were whites in what is now Senegal all that time ago? No? So they led you to believe that youre mixed even though in all probability, you are simply related to some white fool who left some of his DNA with the locals in what is now Senegal.

Panofsky notes that legitimate scientific critiques are often distorted by a white-nationalist interpretation of history. For example, the mixing of DNA in a region would be explained by the heroic conquest of Vikings. Or a white female ancestor was raped by an African man.

The team also identified a third group of reactions: acceptance of the genetic ancestry test results. Some users did start to rethink white nationalism. Not the basic ideologyStormfronts forums are not exactly the place you would do thatbut the criteria for whiteness. For example, one user suggested a white-nationalist confederation, where different nations would have slightly different criteria for inclusion:

So in one nation having Ghengis Khan as your ancestor wont disqualify you, while in others it might. Hypothetically, I might take a DNA test and find that I dont qualify for every nation and every nations standards, though I'm sure that at least one of those nations (and probably many of them) will have standards that would include me

Another user dug deep into the technical details of genetic ancestry testing. The tests can rely on three different lines of evidence: the Y chromosome that comes from your fathers fathers father and so on, the mitochondrial DNA that comes from your mothers mothers mother and so on, and autosomal DNA that can come from either side. One user suggested that a purity in the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA were more important than in the autosomal DNA. But others disagreed.

Sociologists have long pointed out the categories of race are socially constructed. The criteria for who gets to be whiteItalians? Arabs? Mexicans?are determined by social rather than biological forces. And DNA is the newest way for white nationalists to look for differences between the races.

In these years of posts on Stormfront, you can see users attempting to make sense of DNA, figuring out in real time how genetics can be used to circumscribe and preserve whiteness. The test results are always open to interpretation.

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When White Nationalists Get DNA Tests Revealing African Ancestry ... - The Atlantic

Embryology

Scots man fathers twins 27 years after freezing sperm – The Scotsman

A man has fathered twins using sperm frozen almost 27 years earlier and earned himself a world record.

He now holds the Guinness World Record for the oldest sperm ever successfully used for in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

The father, a musician from Glasgow who holds the record anonymously, said he had a message for other cancer patients.

People going through chemotherapy should keep hope, he said.

When we finally saw on a scan we were having twins I was in shock. I kept looking for a third heartbeat, thinking we might even be having triplets.

He had his sperm frozen when he was diagnosed with cancer aged 21, and became a father to twins when he was 47. Doctors told him chemotherapy treatment would make him infertile so his sperm was frozen for 26 years and 243 days.

When he met his partner he had to explain that she would need IVF if they were to have children.

The couple, who live in Glasgow, did not use the sperm until 2010, when he was 47 and she was 37.

She became pregnant with twins and the boy and girl were born in 2011.

The father said he knew he held the record for the oldest sperm used in successful IVF but did not want publicity.

However, when he realised he could be listed anonymously by Guinness World Records he came forward and has now had his record accepted.

According to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority the standard storage period for sperm is normally ten years, although in certain circumstances it can be kept for up to 55 years.

The father has now spoken out to highlight how long sperm can be frozen to create healthy children. The case raises the prospect of sperm being frozen with no time limit.

The mans sperm was stored at an NHS lab in Edinburgh before his chemotherapy and, more than two decades later, used in the landmark treatment carried out at the GCRM fertility clinic in Glasgow by medical director Dr Marco Gaudoin.

Dr Gaudoin said: Theoretically, it could be stored indefinitely.

It is another world first for the fertility specialist who helped a same-sex couple become the first in Scotland to father twins by IVF. Last week it was revealed that cancer survivor Ryan Walker and his partner Chris Watson, from Falkirk, are expecting in the next few weeks, thanks to a surrogate mother who is also in a same-sex relationship.

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Scots man fathers twins 27 years after freezing sperm - The Scotsman

Anatomy

Style Anatomy: Hamza Bokhari – The Express Tribune

From his favourite silhouettes to his evolving style over the years, he tells us all

Hamza Bokhari, Creative Head at JEEM, fashion, beauty and travel enthusiast shares his style quotient with us. Known for his brilliant designs, he has also gone through his own style transformations. From his favourite silhouettes to his evolving style over the years, he tells us all

Understanding your body is the key to looking good and a trait found amongst all impeccably dressed fashionistas. While people shy away from talking about their bodies, these brave souls explain how they work their anatomies to their advantage

How would you describe your body type?

I would like to believe I am lean.

Has your body type changed over the last five years?

From flab to fab.

How has your style changed over the years?

I was always into style, but I believe since the past five years I am much more comfortable in my skin.

How do you dress your body according to your body type?

I dress however I like, I have never let my height or weight decide my fashion choices.

In your opinion what is your most troublesome area?

Well like most Pakistani men, it has to be my lower belly.

In your opinion what is the biggest mistake a person can make while dressing here?

Matching! Matching! Matching!

Which silhouettes suit your body the most?

I love experimenting with the kimono silhouette and I like to believe I ace the look.

What is the one piece of clothing that you shy away from wearing and why?

Tank tops and mini shorts.

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Style Anatomy: Hamza Bokhari - The Express Tribune

Anatomy

Anatomy of an epidemic – Times of India (blog)

It is just right, that the Health Ministry has chosen the IMA (Indian Medical Association), Indias largest voluntary autonomous body of doctors from all fields. The key features that make it suitable for the Gorakhpur enquiry, is that this body would be looking into the matter medically, and not with an eye of punishment. I am quite sure, with a vast, mostly non-government aided practicing experience, many must already be knowing what in all probability would mainly be a viral epidemic. Surely there would be areas of suggestions for improvement of overall care and preparedness.

Another advantage, it is not answerable and should not lean to any political entity, nor can itbesqueezed around by protocol, as it is not a Constitutional body, unlike the MCI. That it shall use true scientific principles, is understood.

If you look from the point of advantages of adversity, it is just as well that awareness has finally spread, systems are upgraded, and if this turns out to be a viral epidemic, the best standards of epidemic control, and prevention shall have to be put in place.Gorakhpur is a city that has had many trysts with epidemics.

To put it lightly, sometime back I happened to open the topic with a gentleman from the place. A citys description is best stated in its own language. This is what that gentleman said, Aap bas yoon samajhiye ki Baman (brahmin), Bimaari (disease), aur Bihari (no offence, every community has a sore point) sey Gorakhpur trust (infested, soft T) hai! Never had a better summary, which the IMA team may keep in mind!

The first reported viral epidemic in Gorakhpur was in 1978 (Japanese, JE), where 1022 cases were reported, with 297 deaths. After that the road has been rather bumpy.

The year 2005 was rather tragic. The outbreak reported was 5,737, mostly JE. 1344 children died.

But to get the full view, the Directorate of National Vector Borne Disease Control Program (NVBDCP), has reported 26,668 between 2010-2017. The break up was 24,668 of Acute encephalitis syndromes (AES), an all-encompassing terminology WHO, though it settles down to a condition of fulminant encephalitis, as against the known virus JE. There were 4,093 deaths in the same period for AES, and 307 in the JE cases.

Gorakhpur has the dubious reputation of being the world capital of JE, though the total worldwide population at exposure, and that which may suffer is close to 3 billion, which would include South-East Asia prominently.

This years epidemic was unfortunate, but such is the story of all vagaries of nature. The BRD Medical College, may have expanded a bit, but that it should be epidemic ready, is difficult to imagine. For that matter, which medical facility shall have 2,000 extra ICU beds ready where the disease does not accept anything as a cure, and supportive care is all that can be given.

One may overstock antibiotics, saline drips, ventilators, even rooftops with oxygen, but the real process that takes down the patient is the inflammation inside the brain that causes increase in the respiratory rate-a central process, but not a lung pathology that would be amenable to oxygen.

However, medicine has a place for palliation and one can understand the emotions of those who felt that oxygen was in shortage. Ventilators, oxygen are what can be done as a palliation, and as a physician I would go a step further in what soothes the patients relatives. But the fact is that the gasping stage many patients reach due to disrupted central ventilatory centre, is not because of loss of oxygen, and even ventilatory support is less likely to change course.

However, I cannot say that such prop-ups facilities should not be ready. The outcome of the disease may not change though. I suppose this is a key question the IMA enquiry committee may like to take. Till we have vaccines that ensure protection, and till we have medicines that are curative, some actions can be initiated to change or dampen the incidence of the disease.

It is widely stated that Gorakhpur, a densely populated town, close to the Himalayan foothills of Nepal, has many water-bodies, and water pooling after the rains start, which is the period between May and November. Being a vector-borne disease, regular fogging in such areas should start to keep the population of vectors down.

Generic sprays and mosquito repellent ointments should be for free distribution (much like free condoms as disease prevention).

Health workers may be doubled to keep appropriate control over the still waters. Mosquito sprays and creams should be checked and supplied at every house. Expenses need not be high, and would also create extra rural jobs.

Surely, the enquiry shall bring better facilities to the BRD Medical College that may reduce fatalities in other diseases. Should doctors be suspended or dismissed? There may be specific cases, but I fail to understand any direct action or omission that would throw the blame directly on them.

Transferring doctors? That would be the best gift!

The inspection by IMA pending, the remedial aspects are technical, mostly regarding the methods of mitigating the vector population, and giving a first shield to the population.

A few years ago, Rotary International and IMA, made India Polio-free.

Innovative epidemiologic techniques need to be put in place. May I add to the vocabulary, Technical mosquito nets You got me wrong The ones that keep the mosquitoes trapped in, the way they do in Punjab!

To make the tragedy bearable, may I be spared this one:

Badaltey zamaaney, mein khayaal kuchh aisa aaya, Parwaana bhesh badalkar, kahin Qaatil bankey to na aaya(In a changing world, a thought just came to mind,Was a killer vector, impersonating the romantic drone?)

PS: One of the theories regarding King Tut is that he suffered malaria shortly before he occupied his Grand tom.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Read this article:
Anatomy of an epidemic - Times of India (blog)

Cell Biology

Scientists Show How Bacteria Use Micro-Daggers to Fend Off Amoebae And Stay Alive – ScienceAlert

After years of research, scientists have worked out how some bacteria are able to survive inside amoebae by stabbing them with microscopic daggers to prevent digestion.

This miniature game of biological swordplay was discovered through a new method where amoebae are frozen to minus 180C (minus 292F) and then gradually chiselled with a focussed ion beam, revealing the bacteria like a fossil buried in the earth.

According to the team from the University of Vienna in Austria and ETH Zurich in Switzerland, it's a look at a biological process in the sort of detail we don't usually get to see: as well as the micro-daggers, the scientists discovered sheaths, a baseplate, and an anchoring platform.

"The sheath is spring-loaded and the micro-dagger lies inside it," says one of the researchers, Joo Medeiros from ETH Zurich. "When the sheath contracts, the dagger is shot outwards extremely quickly through the bacterial membrane."

Credit: Leo Popovich/ETH Zurich

"Our results suggest that the bacteria are able to shoot the dagger into the membrane of the amoeba's digestive compartment," adds another of the team, Dsire Bck from ETH Zurich.

The research builds on previous work into the way hungry amoebae hunt down and digest bacteria, making the two microorganisms deadly enemies.

However, some bacteria including the Amoebophilus type studied here can defend themselves against an amoeba attack, and the purpose of this new research was to work out how.

Thanks to the "nano-chisel" approach of the focussed ion beam, the researchers were able to close the gap between cell biology (studying how cells work) and structural biology (figuring out how the individual parts fit together).

Through the micro-dagger mechanism that's been discovered, the bacteria can break the amoeba's special digestive compartment and carry on thriving while still inside the amoeba, though it's still not quite clear how the digestive membrane disintegrates.

It's possible that the daggers are tipped with a kind of poison, the researchers say with membrane-degrading enzymes perhaps, the blueprints for which are written in the bacteria's genome.

These micro-daggers have been spotted elsewhere in biology before, including in bacteriophages, viruses that specialise in infecting bacteria. However, in this case, researchers found clusters of up to 30 micro-daggers together, like "multi-barrel guns" something that hasn't been seen before.

Based on comparisons of genomes, the scientists think these micro-daggers could be found in at least nine of the most important bacterial groups, though whether they would also be used to prevent death-by-digestion remains to be seen.

Meanwhile the cryo-focussed ion beam milling technique is set to be used in more and more studies of microorganisms like these.

"The technique could help to address many other questions in cell, infection and structural biology, says Medeiros. "We are already working with other research groups and offering them our expertise."

The findings have been published in Science.

See more here:
Scientists Show How Bacteria Use Micro-Daggers to Fend Off Amoebae And Stay Alive - ScienceAlert