Caloplaca obamae is a species of lichen in the fungus genus Caloplaca. It is the first species to be named in honor of United States President Barack Obama.
Lichen associations may be examples of mutualism, commensalism or even parasitism, depending on the species.You just can't make this up.
...On Tuesday, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Karch [the director of the RKI's EHEC consulting laboratory at the Münster University Hospital in western Germany] had discovered that the O104:H4 bacteria responsible for the current outbreak is a so-called chimera that contains genetic materia from various E. coli bacteria. It also contains DNA sequences from plague bacteria, which makes it particularly pathogenic. There is no risk, however, that it could cause a form of plague, Karch emphasized in remarks to the newspaper....Bubonic plague has been used in biological warfare, most recently in 1941.
After World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union developed diverse means of weaponizing pneumonic plague. Experiments included various delivery methods, vacuum drying, sizing the bacteria, developing strains resistant to antibiotics, combining the bacteria with other diseases (such as diphtheria), and genetic engineering. Scientists who worked in USSR bio-weapons programs have stated that the Soviet effort was formidable and that large stocks of weaponized plague bacteria were produced. Information on many of the Soviet projects is largely unavailable. Aerosolized pneumonic plague remains the most significant threat.Is the recent outbreak of E Coli in Germany a weaponized version of the bacterium or a natural mutation? I'm certainly not qualified to answer that question, but surely Germany has scientists who are able to do so.
Contemporary cases
...There is no plague-infected animal population in Europe or Australia.
Forensic evidence emerges that European e.coli superbug was bioengineered to produce human fatalitiesWatch the video below:
...There's really only one way this happens (and only one way) -- you have to expose this strain of e.coli to all eight classes of antibiotics drugs....
...[C]reating a strain of e.coli that's resistant to eight classes of antibiotics requires repeated, sustained expose to those antibiotics. It is virtually impossible to imagine how this could happen all by itself in the natural world. For example, if this bacteria originated in the food (as we've been told), then where did it acquire all this antibiotic resistance given the fact that antibiotics are not used in vegetables?...
A new sniff-sensing device designed in Israel may help the severely paralyzed to communicate, surf the Net and steer their wheelchairs.
Sniffing is a precise motor skill that is controlled partly by the soft palate, which in turn is controlled by several nerves that connect directly through the braincase.
A stroke patient locked into her body for seven months unable to move or communicate was able to write an email to her family using a new device developed in Israel that allows severely disabled people to communicate and steer a wheelchair by sniffing.
The revolutionary new device identifies changes in air pressure inside the nostrils and translates these into electrical signals which can then be used either to write messages or to move a wheelchair.
"The most stirring tests were those we did with locked-in syndrome patients. These are people with unimpaired cognitive function who are completely paralyzed - 'locked into' their bodies," says Prof. Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute, who developed the device. "With the new system, they were able to communicate with family members, and even initiate communication with the outside. Some wrote poignant messages to their loved ones, sharing with them, for the first time in a very long time, their thoughts and feelings."
Ability to sniff is preserved
Sniffing is a precise motor skill that is controlled, in part, by the soft palate - the flexible divider that moves to direct air in or out through the mouth or nose. The soft palate is controlled by several nerves that connect to it directly through the braincase. This close link led Sobel and his scientific team to theorize that the ability to sniff - that is, to control soft palate movement - might be preserved even in the most acute cases of paralysis.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) added support to the idea, showing that a number of brain areas contribute to soft palate control. This imaging revealed a significant overlap between soft palate control and the language areas of the brain, hinting to the scientists that the use of sniffing to communicate might be learned intuitively.
To test their theory, Sobel and his team, Dr. Anton Plotkin, Aharon Weissbrod and research student Lee Sela from the Weizmann Institute's Neurobiology Department, created a device with a sensor that fits on the opening of the nostrils and measures changes in air pressure.
For patients on respirators, the team developed a passive version of the device, which diverts airflow to the patient's nostrils.
Initial tests, carried out with healthy volunteers, showed that the device compared favorably with a mouse or joystick for playing computer games. In the next stage, carried out in collaboration with Prof. Nachum Soroker of Loewenstein Hospital Rehabilitation Center in Ra'anana, quadriplegics and locked-in patients tested the device.
The team found that the method of use is easily mastered, both by healthy volunteers and the disabled. Seventy-five percent of the subjects on respirators were able to control their soft palate movement to operate the device.
Simple to learn, cheap to produce
One patient who had been locked into his body after a traffic accident 18 years ago, wrote that the new device was much easier to use than one based on blinking. Another 10 patients, all quadriplegics, succeeded in operating a computer and writing messages through sniffing.
In addition to communication, the device can function as a steering mechanism for wheelchairs: Two successive sniffs tell it to go forward, two out mean reverse, out and then in turn it left, and in and out turn it right. After 15 minutes of practice, the researchers found that a patient paralyzed from the neck down could navigate a wheelchair through a complex route - sharp turns and all - as well as a non-disabled volunteer.
Sniffs can be in or out, strong or shallow, long or short; and this gives the device's developers the opportunity to create a complex 'language' with multiple signals.
Now Yeda Research and Development Company, the Weizmann's technology transfer arm, is exploring the possibility of commercializing the technology, which is not only simple to learn, but also relatively inexpensive to produce.
In future, Sobel, who has been involved in numerous studies related to the sense of smell, believes that this invention could also be useful in other areas, for instance as a control for a 'third arm' for surgeons and pilots.
From the current edition of Newsweek:If a cure for aging became available to the rich before the poor, which is the way the world always turns, then the unfairness of life might become absolutely unsustainable. How would our world of haves and have-nots go on spinning if the haves lived for a thousand years while the children of have-nots went right on dying hungry at the age of 5? And what would happen to the rest of the living world? Would the other species on the planet, the other earthlings, have even less?Ah, the evils of wealth.
... significant breakthroughs are waiting to be made in several different areas. Just because our politicians are total idiots and psychopaths is no reason to be totally pessimistic. The new tools of the future will be extremely powerful. Those who can take them and use them constructively and imaginatively should be able to do okay.
The first junctionless transister. Shrinking electronics devices even smaller.
First magnetic monopole? The potential for opening entire new fields of materials and technology.
Nano-desalination breakthrough. If this device can be scaled up, it will change the future.
Diamond nanowire photo-quantum device. Early glimpses of the potential of quantum diamond electronics and photonics.
Nano-superconducting wires for super-efficient nanoelectronics. More advanced quantum effects on the way.
Electronically switchable adhesion device for walking on walls and ceilings. May be particularly useful in weightless environments and for robots.
Automated rainwater catchment and irrigation system. Making desert homesteading more workable.
High altitude blimps that create their own hydrogen from water using photovoltaics -- stay perpetually high! Living and working between Earth and space. Good training for long-term astronauts -- also great launching platforms for ultra high skydives!
Woven high pressure air tank "flatpacks" for firefighters and other interesting uses. These "deflatable" pressure tanks can be stored flat when empty, then inflated to high pressures in designed shapes -- to avoid getting "hung up" in tight spaces. Besides uses in firefighting, should be useful for underwater uses, possibly outer space. Also possibly useful for gaseous fuels.
"Silver bullet" antiviral that works against multiple deadly viruses. May be useful in bio-warfare situations as well as emerging epidemics of lipid enveloped viruses.
Fascinating and semi-fascinating questions about brain and mind.
(apologies, Pastorius. I tried but I couldn't stop it. It just screamed for this video. . .)
