Study shows dementia patients recognize ‘elderspeak’: They may not be as sharp as they once were. Their memory may be failing. But people with Alzheimer’s can still sense when someone is talking down to them.

(Via McClatchy.)

When I was a teenager, I worked at a nursing home with an Alzheimer’s care wing. Quit a lot of people talk down to the elderly, even when they aren’t suffering from a form of dementia, even many family members. It seems to me that basic respect is owed to every person in a conversation, no matter their age or mental ability. I know I didn’t like being talked down to when I was a kid, I certainly don’t like it now, and I can’t imagine I would appreciate when I’m an octogenarian.

newsobserver.com | HIV strikes fast, study finds: “HIV infects and attacks the body within days — much faster than previously thought — drastically narrowing the window of time when intervention is possible, Duke University researchers have found.”

Not good news, especially given this:

“We can narrow that window down, but we’re never going to be able to identify all of these folks,” Leone said. “We just can’t.”

The window in which action might be taken to prevent the infection taking hold is just to narrow to ever completely eliminate the risk. Oh well. More knowledge is always better in the long run, but it’s still sad to see that scientists and doctors don’t have as long as they used to think they did before significant damage occurred.

Crossing the line on Steve Jobs’ health | One More Thing – CNET News.com: “One clear sign that this is an unseemly exercise: if those who keep pushing the issue feel they have to repeatedly apologize for seeming insensitive, they’re probably being insensitive. Yes, Jobs is the CEO of a $135 billion company that has dramatically changed the world of technology and made countless people rich. And, as I wrote the last time we covered this, Apple’s board of directors has a clear duty to avoid falling into a situation resembling Woodrow Wilson’s final days in office.

However, the only responsibility that Apple’s board of directors has to its shareholders is to make sure that Steve Jobs’ health is not a liability, and disclosing anything beyond that would be a mistake.”

(Via c|net.)

Steve Jobs is not a public official, and as I see it hasn’t given up his right to privacy simply because he’s a CEO. Jobs has also done as much as one could ask to ensure that Apple has the talent in place to continue should anything happen to him, with a large stable of talented managers in every division of the business.

Seeded at Newsvine:

Obese women who carry most of their extra weight around the stomach are 70 percent more likely to develop pancreatic cancer, an international team of researchers reported.

Seeded at Newsvine:

These worms, or helminths, have a paradoxical effect on the host. Rather than induce inflammation, which is the body’s typical response to invasion, the intruders calm the host immune system.

Study Finds The Air Rich With Bacteria: “Want biodiversity? Look no further than the air around you. It could be teeming with more than 1,800 types of bacteria, according to a first-of-its-kind census of airborne microbes recently conducted by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy%u2019s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

The team used an innovative DNA test to catalog the bacteria in air samples taken from the Texas cities of San Antonio and Austin. Surprisingly, they found a widely varied bacterial population that rivals the diversity found in soil. They also found naturally occurring relatives of microbes that could be used in bioterrorist attacks – although many of these relatives are harmless. “

(Via Medical News Today.)

Stem Cells Without Embryo Loss – New York Times: Nevertheless, religious conservatives have already denounced the technique, and the President’s Council on Bioethics, in a white paper evaluating alternative ways to produce stem cells, declared this approach “ethically unacceptable.”

The technique would seem to sidestep the council’s main objection, that it is unethical to put the tiny embryo at risk for research unrelated to the welfare of the embryo. Instead of removing a cell purely for stem cell research, the company proposes to use cells already removed for diagnostic tests at fertility clinics.

The clinics routinely remove a cell from eight-cell embryos to screen them for possible genetic defects before transferring the remaining embryo into a woman. Now the company proposes to intercept these cells, allow them to divide in a laboratory dish, and then use one cell for the diagnostic test and the other to derive stem cells. The process would add no additional risk to a diagnostic procedure that already seems quite safe.

(Via mc_dork @ LiveJournal.)

So…let me get this straight. There is a process that already safely removes a stem cell from a developing embryo to perform genetic testing. The process to develop embryonic stem cells would not remove any additional cells from the embryo, but would only take the already removed cell, allow it to divide a little, and then take one of those cells to test, and use the remainder to make stem cells. Meanwhile the embryo is safe to continue growing normally.

And this is bad, and has to be opposed as a moral crusade.

Got it.

Every once in a while you run across something online that makes you come up short. I’m sure someone else has made this insight somewhere else in the past, but it was the first time I had seen it:

God hates squid: From the comments, here’s something bizarre: creationists (at least the ones at Answers in Genesis) have defined life and it excludes squid! I have yet another reason to reject the Bible, in this case for disrespecting perfectly wonderful invertebrates.

Many scientists make the distinction that vertebrates have hemoglobin [ . . . ] and invertebrates [that] do not have red blood. As far as we’ve researched at this time, all vertebrates have hemoglobin and invertebrates do not, though there may be exceptions we are not aware of.

So, animals that contain hemoglobin (vertebrates) and therefore have red blood can be considered “living” and animals that contain hemocyanin, or other proteins (invertebrates) and therefore have blue (pink/violet or brown) blood can be considered “nonliving”. This is further supported by Scripture since the Hebrew for “blood” (dawm) is derived from the Hebrew for “red” (aw-dam). [ . . . ] So the logical conclusion can be made that a “living” creature is one that contains red blood.

[. . . ] What I’d really love to see now, though, is the rhetorical squirming they’d go through when it’s pointed out that human embryos do not develop red blood cells until about the 5^th week of development, and therefore the early embryo, by their own definition, is not living. Heh.

(Via Pharyngula.)

Well, isn’t that just fascinating? I think it is, but I’m generally considered easy to amuse. Bring it up at your next party and see if you can get the fireworks going.

Technorati Tags:
religion, science, politics, abortion

Crocodile blood shows anti-HIV activity: SCIENTISTS in Australia’s tropical north are collecting blood from crocodiles in the hope of developing a powerful antibiotic for humans, after tests showed that the reptile’s immune system kills the HIV virus.

(Via mongabay.com.)

And from the same site:

Frogs may help in fight against HIV: A new weapon in the battle against HIV may come from an unusual source — a small tropical frog.

Investigators at Vanderbilt University Medical Center reported this month in the Journal of Virology that compounds secreted by frog skin are potent blockers of HIV infection.

Now all I’m saying is that I hope when the scientists splice our genome to improve our immune system, I hope we come out like:

and not like:

Reptiles are cooler than frogs.

Technorati Tags:
science, environment, AIDS, HIV, crocodiles, frogs, genetics

What’s this? Could there truly be a worldwide shift in the attitudes of clergy? Are we seeing the beginnings of a return the ethics of social gospel? Another story:

Kenya church in Aids apology: Kenya’s Anglican Church issues a public apology for previously shunning those with HIV/Aids.

(Via BBC News Front Page.)

Again, this is a nice turnaround to see. Now that the Church is willing to recognize AIDS as a disease and not a curse, perhaps new progress can be made in fighting its spread in Africa. Now if the Church would just treat homosexuals as human beings . . . Ah well, baby steps.

Technorati Tags:
justice, religion, Anglican Church, Africa, AIDS, Kenya, HIV, Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi