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By Bob Chrisman
May 2, 2009 was the twenty-fifth anniversary of my father's death. He died physically that day, but he had died to most everyone a long time before that. In March 1969 he punched the time clock as he left work. He felt a numbness speed through his left side. He stumbled to a doorway to brace himself and waited for coworkers to find him.
They brought him home because he told them to take him there, not to the hospital. They carried him from the car, up the three sets of stairs and into the front room where they sat him on the sofa. My mother called an ambulance. "I'm going with your father. You drive up later."
My world crumbled that day when God answered my prayers and struck my father down. I hated him for a variety of unclear reasons. He didn't love me. He wanted nothing to do with me. He wasn't good to my mother. Despite all these vague, but strong reasons, the guilt built inside me. I asked myself repeatedly, "What have I done?"
The doctors ran tests. They diagnosed a relatively small stroke and couldn't understand why his physical condition didn't improve. He had retained his mental faculties.
They transferred him to the university hospital in Columbia. My mother took the bus every weekend to visit him…a four-hour ride each way. He improved a little. I saw him one time there. He took his walker and accompanied me down the hall when I left.
When he came home months later, the ambulance people carried him up the stairs to the house and placed him in a wheelchair in the front room. His entire life centered on the front room and his bedroom. In three years he lost his mind.
He didn't know me anymore. His son flew an airplane for a living. One day he said, "My son doesn't come visit. I think you'd like him." Even though I hated him, I wish he had remembered me. It hurt that he created another son who he admired.
He thought my mother was his mother. His repressed anger at her burst out. She told me the first time it happened. He screamed at her. "You keep me a prisoner in this bed."
She bowed her head. "I'm embarrassed to admit that I threw back his covers. 'If you can walk, then get up and walk.' I stood where he couldn't see me and watched as he struggled to sit up. He couldn't. He couldn't even roll over." She started to cry.
"I couldn't bear it so I covered him up. He had that scared look that people get when they realize how bad things really are. I couldn't look at him. I ran to the back porch and cried my eyes out."
For several months, he visited the circus in his mind. I would sit on his bed and he would ask, "May I have some cotton candy and peanuts?" He would ramble on and on about the men on the trapeze and the elephant.
Next he moved to his paranoid phase. My mother (who he still thought was his mother) had joined a conspiracy against him. "Get the gun. Shoot her. Get the gun while she's out of the room."
"Daddy, we don't have any guns in the house. Never did."
"Yes, it's in the second drawer. Now, go get it."
I looked in the drawer. I carried the drawer to his bed and dumped its contents. "See, there isn't any gun. We never had a gun."
"The bitch hid it. They know I won't stand for her abuse."
I put the drawer away and left the room. I never told my mother about that incident.
People forgot him. He became a fixture to me like a piece of furniture that held painful memories. I avoided him, didn't talk to him for almost 10 years. Why bother?
The afternoon of May 2, 1984 he died. By the time I made it home, my mother had removed all signs of his illness…15 years boxed up and carried to the basement. The hospital bed disappeared. The commode vanished. I felt like I had entered a twilight zone. "Where is all the stuff?" I asked.
"Your uncle helped me take it all to the basement. Your father's dead. No use in keeping those things around."
People who attended the visitation the night before the funeral acted surprised. Some of them had known my mother for years. "We thought she was a widow. We didn't know that your father was still alive." In many ways she had become a widow in March of 1969.
We laid him to rest at the cemetery in Gower on a gray, cloudy day. The minister conducted a short, graveside service. I waited for someone to lower the casket into the vault. No one appeared. The mourners left for their cars.
The most profound sadness filled me. Once again he had been abandoned by the people who said they loved him. I hadn't loved him for years, but I couldn't leave him all alone. I wanted to stay with his coffin until they lowered it and covered it with dirt.
My mother yelled, "Get in the car. The ladies of the church have a lunch waiting for us."
I looked at the box that held the body of the man who had been my father. The sadness kept me from leaving.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. "What's wrong with you?" My mother pulled on my arm.
"I don't want to leave him here by himself. Can't we wait until they lower the coffin into the grave? He must be lonely." I could barely speak for the tears.
"Don't be silly. He isn't here." She pulled me to the car.
My last memory is this: his gray metal coffin rests on a shiny chrome frame, the canopy of the viewing tent flaps wildly in the wind, clouds move across the gray sky and shadows run over the green grass and tombstones. I wish I could say his death ended our troubled relationship, but it didn't. More of the story remained to be told. I must recall it now to bear witness for my father.
R.I.P, Gower, Missouri, January 2009, photo © 2009 by Bob Chrisman. All rights reserved.
About Bob: Bob Chrisman is a Kansas City, Missouri writer who frequently writes memoir about his mother, her three sisters, and their influence on his life. This is his first piece about his father, Part I of a series of three. Bob's other red Ravine posts include Aunt Annie's Scalloped Oysters, Hands, Growing Older, Goat Ranch, Stephenie Bit Me, Too, The Law Of Threes, and In Memoriam.


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One recent Saturday morning I woke up at 4 a.m. to pack up my photo equipment and head from Atlanta to Jones County to take sunrise photos at a site my Dad told me he used to ride his bike to in the mornings as a young boy to watch the sunrise. He said it was a site to behold. Well…directions and signs that aren't there anymore sabotaged me getting to the right spot, but I still got a shot or two from an other vantage point. Lesson learned…next time take my Dad with me. I'll bribe him with donuts to get up that early, lol.
"Sunrise in Jones County, GA" (2015)
My first real stop that day was at my paternal grandparents' homesite (now affectionately called "Wiley's Way" after years ago having undergone a renovation by my Dad, Mom, myself and others who helped us), I got out of my car and walked around to take shots of the homesite that holds so many memories for me….
"Mornings on Big Mama's Porch" – Wiley's Way (2015)
"Old Reliable" – Wiley's Way (2015)
Feeling a presence, I looked up to see what felt to me to be a majestic winged protector of the homesite since my Dad wasn't there that day.
"The Sentinel" (2015)
He never felt threatening to me but he did circle back and forth looking down until he seemed to realize I was family stopping by to visit. He then glided away and left me to finish my photo shoot. I was able to capture him before he left. He was breathtaking.
I headed to the third stop on my route for the day – the homesite property of my paternal great-grandfather "Big Papa" who passed away before I was born.
"Untitled" (2015)
I had heard stories about the property and land where he and his second wife Mattie called home.
My Dad, Uncles and Aunts have many fond memories of growing up living or visiting there, but I had never been there myself. I knew there was history, stories and spirits of my ancestors and I had to visit and explore if I hoped to be able to do justice to his part of my #StoriesToTell project. So I pulled up in the driveway as my Dad taught me to do when I was down home when showing up uninvited – I honked my horn twice and waited to see if someone would come to greet me. After a few minutes I kind-looking lady walked up to my car, we introduced ourselves, and as it turns out we're both professional photographers!
She said she'd be happy to walk around with me and share what she knows about the history and land they now call home that used to be Big Papa's homesite. So I wait while she changes into warmer, hiking attire, and thus begins a day and experience I'll never forget.
Maryllis Wolfgang and me out hiking the property
Maryllis allowed me to audiotape our conversations as we hiked throughout the property. Although a good portion of the over 2000 acres of Big Papa's property is still owned by family members, we covered a portion of the 120 acres that Maryllis and her husband Jim purchased. As we started our journey, she explained that unfortunately when they bought the land the buildings like the home, barns, kitchen house and others were beyond restoring for legacy purposes and they had to take them down. But she was kind enough to share photos that she'd taken before they took them down.
Post-processed image of picture Maryllis took of the Big Papa's main house
Maryllis and I walked throughout the property and hiked behind their home into the wooded areas she felt would be most meaningful to me, taking time along the way to pause and show me a lot of things that were still there from Big Papa's time and even before he owned the property.
She explained what they found as they built their home and surrounding areas for horses and cattle they maintained, much as Big Papa had done. The stories, the sounds, smells, and emotions that ran through me changed me in ways I can't do justice to in this blog.
Untitled Nature & Landscape Shots – Big Papa's Property (2015)
At one point she tells me we've reached the highest point on the property, where she's always felt if my ancestors' spirits congregated at a central point on the property, this would be where they'd gather.
I looked around, took in the beauty, silence, warm feelings, resilience and majesty of the surroundings and couldn't have agreed more. I can't wait to return and spend more time there, just in that spot….
"The Gathering Place" (2015)
The further we explored and the more photos I took, the more I felt the spirit of Big Papa and began to understand his love for and connection to the land he called home and the surrounding property he passed down to his family.
His legacy was in the flowers that still bloomed that he had planted, trees that still stood tall, weathering thunder strikes and time as a testament to his strength, wisdom and resilience.
"Weathering the Storm" (2015)
As we returned to her house, she paused and pointed to and old, beautifully rusted hoop that still dangled from one of the trees just behind the house that we feel certain Big Papa had attached for his grandchildren's enjoyment.
"Playtime at Big Papa's" (2015)
One of the highlights of the day was when Maryllis reached down out in the woods and unearthed a weathered, porous, and moss-covered piece of brick that she said was probably one of the few remaining pieces of Big Papa's homesite buildings. She let me keep it and I've since had it planted in a potted arrangement that sits on my desk at work, catching the morning sunlight as the moss and plants thrive around it, the way our family thrived around Big Papa's foundation of love, wisdom and legacy.
Big Papa
Thank you for bringing Big Papa more fully into my heart, Maryllis.
Till Next Time,

subset: commoncrawl


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October 2, 2015
Aeration is forcing air and wine to mix together for the purpose of bringing out the flavor of the wine. It also increases the aroma. Usually, the unwanted compound will evaporate quicker than the flavorful and aromatic compounds. Aeration can decrease sulfites. Sulfites are added to wine to prevent oxidation. However, sulfites can have a… read more »


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Analyzing Your Competition
Online Course
Most businesses understand the principle of trying to offer something better than what their competitors are offering. However, before you can gain an advantage over your competitors, you need to know who they are and what they offer. This free online business workshop will show you how to gather competitive intelligence, provide case studies, and help you set yourself apart from the competition.
Download the transcript.


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The World Heritage Committee,
1. Having examined Documents WHC-09/33.COM/8B and WHC-09/33.COM/INF.8B2,
2. Inscribes The Dolomites, Italy, on the World Heritage List on the basis of natural criteria (vii) and (viii);
3. Adopts the following Statement of Outstanding Universal Value:
Brief Synthesis
The nine components of The Dolomites World Heritage property protect a series of highly distinctive mountain landscapes that are of exceptional natural beauty. Their dramatic vertical and pale coloured peaks in a variety of distinctive sculptural forms is extraordinary in a global context. This property also contains an internationally important combination of earth science values. The quantity and concentration of highly varied limestone formations is extraordinary in a global context, whilst the superbly exposed geology provides an insight into the recovery of marine life in the Triassic period, after the greatest extinction event recorded in the history of life on Earth. The sublime, monumental and colourful landscapes of the Dolomites have also long attracted hosts of travellers and a history of scientific and artistic interpretations of its values.
Criterion (vii): The Dolomites are widely regarded as being among the most attractive mountain landscapes in the world. Their intrinsic beauty derives from a variety of spectacular vertical forms such as pinnacles, spires and towers, with contrasting horizontal surfaces including ledges, crags and plateaux, all of which rise abruptly above extensive talus deposits and more gentle foothills. A great diversity of colours is provided by the contrasts between the bare pale-coloured rock surfaces and the forests and meadows below. The mountains rise as peaks with intervening ravines, in some places standing isolated but in others forming sweeping panoramas. Some of the rock cliffs here rise more than 1,500 m and are among the highest limestone walls found anywhere in the world. The distinctive scenery of the Dolomites has become the archetype of a "dolomitic landscape". Geologist pioneers were the first to be captured by the beauty of the mountains, and their writing and subsequent painting and photography further underline the aesthetic appeal of the property.
Criterion (viii): The Dolomites are of international significance for geomorphology, as the classic site for the development of mountains in dolomitic limestone. The area presents a wide range of landforms related to erosion, tectonism and glaciation. The quantity and concentration of extremely varied limestone formations is extraordinary in a global context, including peaks, towers, pinnacles and some of the highest vertical rock walls in the world. The geological values are also of international significance, notably the evidence of Mesozoic carbonate platforms, or "fossilized atolls", particularly in terms of the evidence they provide of the evolution of the bio-constructors after the Permian/Triassic boundary, and the preservation of the relationships between the reefs they constructed and their surrounding basins. The Dolomites also include several internationally important type sections for the stratigraphy of the Triassic Period. The scientific values of the property are also supported by the evidence of a long history of study and recognition at the international level. Taken together, the combination of geomorphological and geological values creates a property of global significance.
The nine component parts that make up the property include all areas that are essential for maintaining the beauty of the property and all or most of the key interrelated and interdependent earth science elements in their natural relationships. The property comprises parts of a national park, several provincial nature parks and Natura 2000 sites, and a natural monument. Buffer zones have been defined for each component part to help to protect it from threats from outside its boundaries. The natural landscapes and processes that are essential to maintaining the property's values and integrity are in a good state of conservation and largely unaffected by development.
Management and protection requirements
As a serial property, the Dolomites require an adequately resourced, inter-provincial governance arrangement that ensures all five provinces with territory in the property are bound together within a common management system, and with an agreed joint management strategy and a monitoring and reporting framework for the property as a whole. Common policies and programmes for the management of public use and the presentation of the property are also required for the property and its buffer zones. The property requires protection from tourism pressures and related infrastructure.
Each of the component parts of the serial property requires its own individual management plan, providing not only for the protection and management of land use, but also the regulation and management of human activities to maintain its values, and in particular to preserve the qualities of its natural landscapes and processes, including extensive areas which still have wilderness character. Areas that are subject to more intensive visitation need to be managed to ensure visitor numbers and activities are within the capacity of the property in relation to the protection of both its values and the experience of visitors to the property. Adequate resources and staffing, and coordination between the staff teams in the different components of the property are also essential.
4. Notes that the decision to inscribe the property is made on the understanding that the State Party is in agreement with the following requests of the Committee, which should be implemented prior to the 35th session of the Committee in 2011 in order to address fully the requirements of the Operational Guidelines:
a) That the anticipated inter-provincial foundation: "Dolomiti - Dolomiten - Dolomitis - Dolomites UNESCO" is established following the inscription of the property and provided with the budget indicated by the State Party;
b) That an action-oriented overall management strategy for the whole of the serial property is developed, in consultation with the full range of relevant stakeholders, to establish:
(i) governance arrangements for the effective management of the property;
(ii) operational management actions, in relation to key themes specific to the nominated World Heritage property and the criteria for which it is inscribed;
(iii) monitoring and reporting on the State of Conservation of the property as a whole and the management effectiveness of the property and,
(iv) practical options to achieve the financial sustainability for conserving and managing the property;
c) That complete individual management plans for each one of the component parts of the serial property are completed, to ensure consistent and effective delivery of the overall framework, as well as effective local management of conservation and use appropriate to the component part in question;
d) That a comprehensive strategy for sustainable tourism and visitor use covering the property, its buffer zones and considering appropriate links to the wider region is developed, in order to fully consider the requirements for maintaining the Outstanding Universal Value and conditions of integrity of the property under the scenario of expected increase in visitation after the inscription. This strategy should aim to manage visitor levels in areas already at or over capacity, to prohibit intensification of infrastructure or inappropriate uses that could impact the values of the property, and to ensure effective presentation and tourism benefits compatible with the long-term conservation of the property;
5. Commends the State Party for the considerable efforts in implementing previous recommendations regarding the establishment of an appropriate serial property and for the measures taken to establish overall management arrangements for the property, and also takes note of the presentation of the different component parts in relation to the values of the property as a whole as an example of good practice;
6. Requests the State Party to invite a mission to the property in 2011 to assess progress with the implementation of the overall management framework and governance for the property, the establishment of management plans for the different component parts of the property, and the establishment of a tourism strategy, in order to allow the World Heritage Committee to assess the progress that has been made in relation to its requests noted above.


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This Titans Putting Green Mat is manufactured here in USA out of high quality components. The mat is constructed with 100% nylon carpet fibers which are chromojet printed in true team colors. This Sports Putting Green Mat is printed with the Titans and the teams' name at both ends of the mat.
The Titans Putting Green mat also Features:
This Titans Putting Green is 18" x 72" and Features a realistic simulation putting surface that has a Stimpmeter rating of 11.


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Top Items:
Mark Cuban / Blog Maverick:
Gootube Terrorizes Copyright Owners by Withholding Filters — Gootube gets take down notices for 100k videos from Viacom. Unfair ? Nope. Gootube gets off easy. Google only responds to takedown notices they receive. Thats nothing. — Simply put, EVERY content owner that is concerned …
Discussion: PaidContent
Staci D. Kramer / PaidContent: Report: Zucker Will Be Announced AS NBCU CEO This Week, Succeeding Vet Wright
Ellen Lee / San Francisco Chronicle:
YouTube removing Viacom TV shows Media firm says 'Daily Show,' MTV snippets must go — YouTube, the popular online video site, has begun removing more than 100,000 unauthorized clips belonging to Viacom — everything from snippets of Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" to Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants."
Discussion: The Utube Blog
Google Blogoscoped:
YouTube Takes Down Viacom Content — Search for "Colbert Report" at Google-owned YouTube, and clicking on the individual videos results in a bold red message: "This video has been removed due to copyright infringement." That's because, as San Francisco Chronicle writes:
Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
Viacom terrorizes YouTube with bulls**t DMCA notices
Viacom terrorizes YouTube with bulls**t DMCA notices
Discussion: mathewingram.com/work, Don Dodge on The Next …, Joe Duck, PaidContent and John Palfrey
Staci D. Kramer / PaidContent: Viacom-YouTube: Execs Duel In The Press; Cuban Calls For Action
Ionut Alex. Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google Prepares a Presentation Tool — I'm sure many people wondered if Google will release a presentation tool, after building Google Docs&Spreadsheets. Well, the answer is yes, and the code-name of the tool is Presently (a play on Writely, the name of the online word processor bought by Google).
Discussion: Google Blogoscoped, UNEASYsilence, Googlified and digg
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google PowerPoint Clone Coming — Somebody took what appears to be a header file from an existing Google application and posted it as a document on Google Docs & Spreadsheets. — Based on some of the text in the document, the current code name of the presentation application is "Presently …
Garett Rogers / Googling Google:
Google Docs to support Power Point presentations soon
Google Docs to support Power Point presentations soon
Discussion: Paul Kedrosky's …
Tom Evslin / Fractals of Change:
Voice 2.0 - Fuggetaboutit! — There isn't gonna be a new killer voice application! Old friends from my VoIP days aren't gonna believe it's me saying that but (with lots of hindsight) it's the truth. New phones? Yes! Different pricing? Yes! New features? Sure. Major new capability?
Discussion: Alec Saunders .LOG and The Jeff Pulver Blog
Andy Abramson / VoIP Watch:
Why Some Innovate And Die — The Purple Wonder himself, Mr. VON, has a very good post about innovation. But Jeff, please don't think you are alone in this battle. Others of us like David Beckemeyer (PhoneGnome), Alec Saunders (iotum), Jeff Bonforte (Yahoo), Craig Walker (GrandCentral) …
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Jim Courtney / Skype Journal: Note to (VoIP) Innovators: Market Thyself
Pat Phelan / Roam4free: What came first? the innovators or the users
Programmers Don't Like to Code — Andrew Leonard interviewing Scott Rosenberg: … cough — Wow. If Rosenberg isn't butchering Constantine's quote, it lends credence that even software's great practitioners lack the ability to introspect and cogently report on their own profession.
Discussion: Smalltalk Tidbits … and digg
James A. Robertson / Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants: You say tomato... I find this fascinating. In a Salon interview …
Mobile giants plot secret rival to Google — Europe's biggest telecoms groups are aiming to create a mobile phone search engine that could challenge Yahoo! and Google, the US giants. — Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and one American network …
Daniel Raffel / O'Reilly Emerging Telephony: Network operators want to challenge the internet search giants
Warner Crocker / Life On the Wicked Stage: Sunday Morning Reading: Super Bowl Version
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman steps aside as CEO — SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Silicon Valley entrepreneur Reid Hoffman said on Sunday he is turning over the role of chief executive of the pioneering online business networking site LinkedIn Corp. to software executive Dan Nye.
Discussion: GigaOM and PaidContent
Om Malik / GigaOM: LinkedIn gets a new CEO, Hoffman LinksOut
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Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Meraki raises $5M to "connect the next billion people" — Want a dirt cheap Internet connection for everyone in your apartment building? Meraki Networks offers a way. — The Mountain View start-up provides cheap Wireless Internet connections to people by selling $49-a-piece "mesh" …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Online Photo Editing Overview — The launch of Picnik a couple of days ago brought us yet another online photo editing tool. Like Fauxto, Picnik uses Flash, whereas most of the earlier editing tools all use Ajax for in-browser editing. — Since all computers come with basic software that rotates …
Discussion: CenterNetworks, franticindustries and digg
Jake Dahn / CenterNetworks: Picnik Review - Online Photo Editor
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
SuperBowl Ads (Not Really) From Startups — Today's the day - SuperBowl XLI. Hundreds of millions of people around the world will eat junk food, drink beer, and watch the best television advertising all year interrupted periodically with a football game. — Six startups (Meebo, Meez …
Discussion: michael parekh on IT, Digital Alchemy, GigaOM, Between the Lines and Web Strategy
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Connecting the dots on Windows 7 — What will Windows 7, the next full version of the Windows client operating system, bring to the table? — Even though Windows Vista just made it out the door, it doesn't seem to early for the speculation on its successor to begin.
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Steven / StevenLevy.com: A Vista Kind of Week
Michael Coates / OpsanBlog: Now that Vista is launched, what's next?


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Be Still . . .
Devotionals for Daily Living
Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.
(2 Timothy 2:10 (NIV))
Have you ever stopped to think about the Body of Believers who came before you? Have you ever stopped to think about what they went through in order to let you have the opportunity to hear the Gospel? Today, we are afraid to let it be known that we follow Jesus if the crowd is not the ideal mix of people. We fear being called out and identified as a follower of Jesus. We fear the unknown, the uncertainty, of what this label will mean at work and with our friends
In the grand scheme of things, this is nothing in comparison to what has come before. Recent years have not been such a trying time, but if you look all the way back to the first century church, they faced persecution, rejection and even death for their profession of faith in Jesus. They knew of the power of the cross. They knew of the wages of sin and the death, both physical and spiritual, that comes as a result of sin. They were not so engrossed in their own lives that they failed to recognize the importance of every life that would ever live. They recognized the fact that what God had planned and what Jesus had suffered through was a gift of grace for everyone and not just for themselves. They knew that God wanted them to share this gift of grace with all who would hear no matter what the cost may be to themselves.
Recent years has seen the emergence of the "ME" philosophy. It basically states that "I have mine. You are on your own!" What if previous generations had expressed this sentiment when it came to sharing the Gospel? Let's bring this a little closer to home with the following. What if the person who is supposed to witness to one of your grandchildren is someone that you are supposed to witness to and lead to Jesus? Are you willing to let your grandchild suffer for all eternity because you didn't witness to the person who witnesses to them? Are you willing to let someone else's grandchild suffer because you didn't witness, because you were afraid to endure something so that others could live?
What are you doing in order to pass on the legacy that was willingly passed to you?
What are you willing to endure for the Gospel?
Copyright 1998 – 2018 Dennis J. Smock
Daily Living Ministries, Inc.
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Many of the parasites that plague humans have life cycles that are positively baroque, hopping between species and hiding out in tissues for years before setting off a damaging infection. These habits can make them extremely difficult to study, since it can be hard to tell what tissues and cells the parasites pass through on their way to causing disease. But a clever bit of genetic engineering has now forced one parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, to leave telltale signs of its progress.
The work took advantage of some basic understanding of Toxoplasma biology. Upon infecting a cell and taking up residence, proteins in a specific organelle get exported into its hosts' cells. The researchers took the gene for one of the proteins that is known to be shipped into hosts, toxifilin, fused it to a site-specific DNA recombinase called cre, and injected the fusion gene into Toxoplasma cells. The resulting cells were called secreted Cre, epitope-tagged, presumably so that the authors could use the abbreviation SeCreEt to refer to them.
When a SeCreEt expressing parasite infects a mouse cell, the recombinase will catalyze DNA rearrangements at any sites that match a specific sequence. So, for example, the researchers used a DNA construct that normally expresses a red fluorescent protein, but switches to green following cre-based rearrangement. When mouse cells carrying this construct were infected with SeCreEt parasites, 95 percent of them switched from glowing red to glowing green. Mice that expressed a cre-dependent luciferase gene (the protein that helps fireflies glow) could be infected, and the progress of the infection tracked over the course of a week.
The authors suggest that SeCreEt cells will be useful for eliminating various host genes during infection, so that we can test whether different mouse proteins are essential for Toxoplasma to grow. But the general approach could potentially be used simply to follow the parasite during infection, since it could be used to create a trail of glowing green cells behind it. It might also be possible to engineer systems that don't actually require the parasite to enter cells.
In any case, the CDC calls Toxoplasma "the third leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness in the United States," so knowing more about it can't be a bad thing.
Nature Methods, 2010. DOI: 10.1038/Nmeth.1438 (About DOIs).


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The Expats: A Novel by Chris Pavone (Broadway, $15.00, 352 pages)
The Expats by editor-turned-novelist Chris Pavone has all the twists and turns of a Robert Ludlum or Clive Cussler action-thriller, plus a domestic element that sets it apart from the pack: it plays the layers of duplicity in Kate and Dexter Moore's professional lives against the secrets they guard from each other in their marriage.
Kate is a spy and a young mom – a smart, self-consciously attractive, nominally maternal, thirty-something who leaves a CIA career to stay home with the kids when Dexter lands a lucrative banking security job in Luxembourg. But nothing and no one in The Expats is as advertised. Kate's nagging questions about her husband's fundamental character spur her to investigate when she senses threatening intentions in a friendly American couple they meet in the ex-pat community in Luxembourg.
Don't read it for shimmering imagery or deeply conflicted characters. It isn't that kind of book. Kate is Jason Bourne in a skirt. She can remove herself from the Company, but she can't squash the instincts that made her a hired gun. The Expats is a set of spiraling secrets, the exposition of which is played out in lushly detailed European cities.
In a Publishers Weekly interview in 2012, Chris Pavone said, "A detailed map of the story line was what made it possible to write such a labyrinthe book…" – in addition to a numbered list of twists and turns. Action thriller fans will love this one. Well recommended.
Kimberly Caldwell
A review copy was provided by the publisher. The Expats was released in a trade paper version on January 22, 2013. "Brilliant, insanely clever, and delectably readable." Library Journal


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…….are artichokes the most daunting thing ever? Where did they come from anyway? It's like some little green martian accidentally dropped one out of his backpack whilst here scoping the earth as a potential new colony for his martian people (meople?).
And actually, the martians use them as war missiles but us crazy humans saw them growing everywhere and thought eating them would be a great idea. Meanwhile, the little green people are looking down at this funny little planet with its strange inhabitants that are inexplicably making dip out of their weapons.
And I'm surely not the only one who collapses into fits of giggles every-time that meerkat ad airs. Seriously? I barely even know what they are advertising since I'm usually rolling on the floor by the time they get to the point.
Oh and I can't be alone in thinking that celebrity is no excuse to try out ludicrous names on your children. Is anyone else waiting for poor little North West's parents to announce that it was all just a silly joke and that they actually named her Jane?
Please tell me it's not just me….
Also, is anyone else completely in awe that if you whip egg whites long enough and fast enough, they transform into snowy peaks? The science geek in me is secretly excited every time this happens…..the denaturing of proteins to turn slimy egg whites into glorious edible snow.
And furthermore, you can sweeten and flavour this almost solid white froth and bake it to crispy-chewy mounds. Mounds that you can top with cream, syrup, fruit or whatever you fancy and call it dessert!
Oh yes, the theme of this month's Sweet Adventures Blog Hop, hosted by Claire K Creations, was Meringue Madness so I just had to try my hand at fructose-free meringues. I replaced caster sugar with dextrose and although they bled a bit, this didn't seem to affect them in the end and they were pretty darn good. You could flavour these with whatever essence takes your fancy (I intend to try rosewater next time) and top them just about anything. I went with this fructose-free lemon curd, some cream and some lovely fresh blueberries.
Fructose-free Meringues
Makes 6
Modified from Donna Hay Magazine
4 egg whites
1 cup dextrose powder
1 tsp white vinegar
Preheat the oven to 120 C.
Beat egg whites initially on low speed, then on high speed until stiff peaks form.
Drizzle in vinegar and any flavouring, and sprinkle in dextrose bit by bit, beating briefly with each addition. Beat until sugar is completely incorporated.
Line a baking tray with baking paper or a silicone mat and grease lightly. Dollop large scoops of the mixture onto the tray and flatten out slightly. Bake on the middle shelf for 40 minutes, then turn off the oven and leave them in there to cool for an hour or so.
Top with whatever you like and serve.


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I worked for one company for 26 years. Over those years the business changed, moved offices several times, portions were sold off, divisions moved out of state and finally all that was left in my state was an executive office in a high-rise in a very high-rent part of town, occupied by my boss (the elderly business owner) and me. He spent a lot of time at his second home several states away, so much of the time I was working alone in the office. In order to justify staying in this upscale building and keeping his ocean-view office, he sub-leased half of the office to a friend, another semi-retired business owner, who occupied it with his part-time assistant. Since his assistant, Karina, and I were in the office alone together much of the time over the next several years, we became friendly and usually ate lunch together in the office kitchenette, but we didn't really socialize outside of the office.
The time finally came when my boss decided to fully retire and he sold what remained of his business to a partner in the midwest, who decided to close down our expensive office and move everything to his state. I was not offered a job in that state, nor was I interested in moving there, so after 26 years I was laid off (albeit with a pretty decent severance package). I was assigned a final day, but then asked to stay several weeks longer to shut down our part of the office and have everything shipped to the new owner's location. The other executive who was sub-leasing from us was able to take over the lease of the high-rise office for the final six months so they wouldn't have to find a new office and move immediately.
As it turned out, the day that would be my last day working for the company fell while my boss was out of the country. Karina offered to take me out to lunch on my last day, and her boss suggested the two of us try an upscale restaurant nearby that was out of our price range. He couldn't join us as he wouldn't be in that day but he offered to foot the bill as his farewell gift to me. Having a nice lunch as a send off sounded great, working alone so much I had been worried that I'd just be locking the empty office door behind me on my last day and just walking away after so many years.
Every day during my final week Karina reminded me that the two of us were going out for our fancy lunch on my last day. We were both excited about the restaurant, had looked at the menu on-line in advance and found an article about the celebrities often seen there. When the day came, our lunch reservations were at noon, Karina started acting strange. Remember, her boss had authorized the lunch and was even paying for it, but she mentioned several times how busy she was. She said she'd try to take a quick break for lunch, IF I still wanted to. Of course I wanted to, I'd been looking forward to it all week! After we walked down the street to the restaurant, she told the host that we wouldn't be needing our table, we'd just find a spot in the bar (neither of planned to drink). For lunch, she ordered only a cup of soup. Once she gulped down her soup, she sat and watched me eat my salad and made no effort at conversation. Once I'd taken my last bite, she said "are you done?" jumped up, slapped down cash and headed for the door. I don't think we were out of the office for more than 35 minutes in total.
For the rest of the day Karina stayed at her desk and didn't speak to me. Since she was part-time, she left several hours before I did. Strangely enough, she left while I was in the restroom down the hall, so I came back to an empty office and no good-bye.
Nothing odd had happened between us that week and we really weren't close enough that she would be all broken up about me leaving and wasn't dealing with it well. I'm still puzzled about what happened that day… 0828-14
We could fruitlessly speculate about the causes of Karina's change of attitude until the cows come home and still be no smarter. I would bid her and the office "Good riddance" and mentally flush the entire episode down the drain. Karina has made it pretty easy for you to cut your losses and move forward with no regrets.


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In a statement to market regulator CMVM on November 3, EDPR said gross operating profit was up 28% to €473.1 million, the respective margin reached 71%, operative costs increased 49% to €189 million, while capex dropped 25% to €1.120 million.
Over the past 12 months, EDPR installed 1.3GW of capacity (+27%) and aims to add 400MW of new capacity in 2010, to reach its growth target for the year of 1.1GW.
At the end of September, EDPR managed a portfolio of assets of 6.2GW in seven countries. Electricity production was 35% higher than in the same period last year, totalling 9,818GWh.
The company has 895 MW under construction (703MW in Europe, 122MW in the US and 70MW in Brazil).
Gross installed wind capacity stood at 6,917 MW (3,567MW in Europe, 3,337MW in the US and 14MW in Brazil).


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I've reached my last stop on my five month adventure: shortly I will by flying out of San José, Costa Rica back to life in London. However the sadness at coming to the end of my personal odyssey has been offset by the chance to spend time with a very good, longstanding friend of Fairtrade, Gerardo Arías Camacho, and enjoy the wonderful hospitality of his family too.
We've travelled through steep mountain passes from San José into Costa Rica's prime coffee zone, Tarrrazú, where the hillsides glisten a deep olive green with coffee bushes, flecked with shade trees and fruits such as avocado, mango, plantain and banana palms. Climbing up to the hillside community of Llano Bonito, we pass the primary school that Gerardo was pulled out of as a child after just four years before Continue reading


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Flooring America by Carpet Galleria
We are excited and eager at Flooring America by Flooring Galleria to get to know you and help you with all of your floor covering needs. We offer in-home service and are very experienced in the commercial area. We look forward to meeting you at our
As part of America's leading flooring retail group, our 500-store nationwide buying power guarantees you low prices on thousands of carpet types and other flooring options backed by the most solid warranties in the floor covering industry.


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What's FR for "Abbott & Costello"?Monday, May 22nd, 2017
As you may be aware – especially if you are French – the legislative elections are coming up there, once again in two rounds, on Sunday, June 11 and then just one week later, on June 18. There might be a slight problem coming up, namely in the Normandy constituency/département known as L'Eure.
One the one hand we have the mayor of Évreux, a city within that district – or le maire of Évreux in French, addressed as Monsieur Le Maire. On the other we have his opponent – no, not another mayor within that département but rather no less than President Macron's brand-new Economy Minister, Bruno Le Maire. Naturally, he is politely addressed as Monsieur Le Maire.
So you see the problem, right? Particularly if the two gentleman happen to arrange a pre-election debate:
The next question goes to M. Le Maire . . .
Sorry – which one?
Wait: Who's on first?
M. Le Maire
But which one?
And so on . . .


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Former Butte Valley VB standout Porterfield earns all-conference honors
Former Butte Valley High volleyball standout Kady Porterfield has received all-conference honors in volleyball.
Porterfield, a junior middle hitter at SUNY Cobleskill in New York state has been named to the 2013 North Eastern Athletic Conference 3rd team by the league's coaches, it was announced today.
Kady, from Macedoel, posted a team high 240 kills on the year averaging 2.22 kills per set while compiling a .249 hitting percentage on the season. Porterfield also posted a team high of 76 total blocks to average .70 blocks per set to go with averages of .44 digs and .34 services aces per set during the year as Cobleskill posted a 12-18 overall mark, including a 2-8 record in NEAC action.
In a press release, Fighting Tiger Head Coach Scott Hill had this to say about Porterfield.
"I am pleased that Kady was recognized for her efforts this season. Over the last three years she has worked extremely hard to improve her game. Beyond that she is an outstanding student who is heavily involved in our campus community. This is an extremely well rounded young women with a big future ahead of her."


text: You may not know or know of Peter Blecha, but I do. Peter and I have been acquaintances if not friends for a number of years and I have watched his growth as a writer and music historian with great interest. We share an intense interest in the Pacific Northwest music scene, past and present, and we both revered the music and the bands which inhabited the various periods in the Pac NW music saga. We know that the rest of the world, if not for The Sonics and Paul Revere & The Raiders, would consider the music scene minor league at best, but have always considered the rest of the world ignorant of the music and artists who seemingly have and have had to struggle for respect beyond the borders of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.


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This is the end…my only friend…the end. The Doors' words could not be more applicable to this post as it is the final chapter in the Florida food saga on Mastication Monologues. I'll be finishing with a sweet flourish in the form of Kilwin's Chocolates and Ice Cream in Delray Beach, Florida.
My parents and I had taken many constitutionals up and down Delray Beach's ever popular Atlantic Avenue, but Kilwin's always seemed to be doing a booming business no matter what time of the day. In fact, I could liken it almost to a Willy Wonka-esque level of excitement as lines perpetually streamed out the door. I had never heard of this company before, but I vowed to see what all of the hubbub was. I wasn't that hungry after a very messy lunch, so it was a perfect time to check out the mysterious candy and ice cream shop. As we moved through the clumps of old timers and kids wacked out on sugar, we finally stepped foot in this hallowed institution of addictive foodstuffs. Everywhere we turned there were decadent delights in every shade of caramel yellow, coco-butter brown, and devilishly dark chocolate. Kilwin's provides the public with handmade caramel-coated apples and a few varieties of popcorn. I personally came for some of the brown stuff, ze chocolate. While I was tempted to sample their ice cream, none of the flavors really grabbed me by the taste buds. What was on display in the cases as we filed past the line for the ice cream left me slipping on my own slobber. I'll just let the pictures do the talking. After looking about, the pecan turtle krispie was my date for the night ($5.50). She was all gussied up with pecans, dark chocolate drizzles, and a caramel dress over a Rice Krispie body that just wouldn't quit. After I paid for it, we sat down on a bench outside to soak up the atmosphere our home away from home for a week had to offer. As I took a longing glance towards my companion in my hand, I knew that we were meant to be when I subsequently took that first bite. While you would think that a dessert item like this would be diabetes-inducingly sweet, it was quite balanced. The crunchy pecans provided a buttery richness to the bittersweet dark chocolate and sticky caramel. People were watching with a mix of curiosity and possible disgust as I shoveled this over-the-top snack into my food hole. No regrets whatsoever. It was a delicious end to a wonderful vacation.
So if you're looking for a sweet local piece of Delray Beach, Florida that will stick in your mind and possibly your teeth forever, roll on down to Kilwin's Chocolates and Ice Cream.


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UPDATED: Streetscape options for Slauson Avenue
Click here to download a status report from September 2012.
Since we launched the Slauson Avenue survey, hundreds of you have responded. You have made a difference by voting for your preferred improvement to the corridor. Your opinion has mattered – as have your questions. In response to your feedback, the Department of Public Works is moving forward with an environmental impact report to analyze five streetscape options. They are currently analyzing the environmental impacts of each of the alternatives. These updated proposals reflect your feedback.
Before a final option is selected, there will be additional opportunities for your input. Below are the updated options:[tabbed_box tab1="A-1″ tab2="A-2″ tab3="B-1″ tab4="B-2″ tab5="C"] [tab1_content]
Two travel lanes with a Class II bike route, 12 foot sidewalk, and dedicated parking.[/tab1_content] [tab2_content]
Two travel lanes, 16-foot sidewalk, and dedicated parking. [/tab2_content] [tab3_content]
Three travel lanes with a Class III bike route, 8-foot sidewalk (same as existing), and parking during off-peak hours. [/tab3_content] [tab4_content]
Three travel lanes, 12-foot sidewalk, and parking during off-peak hours.
[/tab4_content] [tab5_content]
One travel lane with a Class II bike lane, 20-foot sidewalk, and dedicated parking.
[/tab5_content] [/tabbed_box]
On November 28th, 2011, representatives of the View Park, Windsor Hills and Ladera Heights communities joined forces at the Public Improvements Taskforce meeting to discuss strategies to improve the livability, accessibility and walkability of the Slauson Ave corridor. Strategies discussed included widening side walks, adding bike lanes, increasing landscaping within the medians and the pedestrian right of way, as well as reducing traffic lanes.
Also, view this community survey that seeks to identify what future uses along Slauson are most supported by the surrounding residents. Click here to take the community survey.
Click here to see the survey results.


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Luxin Malande says he does the only thing he can do while in his tent city. Wait.
He sits outside his shanty in Port-au-Prince not far from the historic national palace, its collapsed dome-shaped roof still visible among the rubble.
People lie nearby on the ground, muddy-faced and in tattered clothes. Others hide behind broken pillars of a collapsed cathedral as they gather runoff water from the streets for showering, cooking and cleaning. They bathe as cars, buses and people pass through the formerly grand Champs De Mars Square, where native Haitians can hardly recognize their home.
Malande, who is unemployed, reminisces with his neighbors about the years before the earthquake, when the downtown area, now home to thousands of displaced Haitians, was the center for culture, festivals and Sunday drag races for thrill seekers. They hope that recently elected President Michel Martelly will help Haiti return to normalcy. "I'm waiting for the government," Malande says.
But there is no government. Four months have passed since Martelly, a celebrity musician, won a landslide victory for the presidency and exchanged his outrageous stage acts and skirts for suits and diplomacy. While traveling around the world galvanizing support for international aid and investors, he operates without a prime minister, making him unable to form his administration.
People are protesting the delay with graffiti around the city calling for the removal of politicians and with posters at Parliament demanding a speedy resolution.
After debates, delays and failed negotiations, this week Martelly selected his third nominee for prime minister, Garry Conille, a former aide to President Bill Clinton. "Martelly falls behind every day that passes without a government," says Burnice Robertson, a senior analyst and researcher with the International Crisis Group. "This political uncertainty harms the population."
Haitian Sen. Steven Benoit, who pledged to give Martelly six months of full support, also says fellow politicians must focus on the country and not politics. He is encouraging more senators to be more supportive. "I'll give him anything he needs," Benoit says about the president.
Robertson, who is currently conducting research on governance in Haiti, says the most critical needs for the government's response are health and the vast spread of cholera, justice reform and better public services. And one of the greatest challenges Martelly will face is housing for residents like Malande. "The government needs a strategy to close camps and move people into communities," she says. "Focus on infrastructure."
Martelly had focused on developing a solution for housing before he was elected president, says Patrick Rouzier, an adviser to the president. While Martelly campaigned, a team of staff drafted ideas for recovery.
It became evident that his administration would need to address a series of social issues to solve the housing crisis. "The main problem isn't housing," says Rouzier. "It's poverty. If you create jobs and education, people would leave the slums and go to a better place."
Rouzier, who has a background in economics, says the administration is focused on creating better economic conditions outside of camps to help facilitate a return to communities. Martelly found some success in August when the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission approved and partially funded his $70 million housing plan to return nearly 30,000 people from six tent cities to their original neighborhoods.
The IHRC, a committee that approves and allocates relief funds, also said the project will create more than 4,000 jobs. The project is only a small percentage of recovery initiatives, Martelly said after he and former President Clinton, a co-chair of IHRC, unveiled the plan.
Robertson says that she spoke with camp residents who met with Martelly and filled out information surveys. It was the only strong grassroots campaign she witnessed since the earthquake that actively included all Haitians in the recovery plans. "That needs to be kept up by the president himself," Robertson says. "Some mechanism to make sure the people in tent cities and slums have a voice."
Martelly has also made strides on campaign pledges to create a nationwide system for free education while also becoming a strong advocate for economic growth through foreign investments. During his term, he has also advocated for agricultural preservation, human rights and Haitian independence.
But investors, government officials and activists must wait for a prime minister to be approved before any change can occur. "He can't pass legislation without a ministry," says Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "And he can't have a ministry without ministers."
Weisbrot says that nobody can fully assess Martelly's administration or tenure now because his Cabinet does not yet exist. But he says that Martelly made an error with his second prime minister nominee, Bernard Gousse, a former justice minister who imprisoned legislators after a coup d' état in 1984. "That was a wrong move," he says. "You can't have a prime minister who wrongly incarcerated legislators."
Gousse's nomination faced immediate criticism from the 30 senators in Parliament who vote to approve the prime minister, who will also help Martelly appoint ministers to his Cabinet. "The priority at this moment is to enter into sustainable negotiations with parliamentarians so that a prime minister can be successfully appointed," says Chantalle Verna, a Haiti expert at Florida International University. "In order for President Martelly to establish his own credibility as a leader and faith in his administration, he must identify a way to overcome this political impasse."
As Parliament prepares to question Martelly's third nominee, the country waits. Malande remains in his shanty awaiting aid from the government, more than 20 months after the earthquake, as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) slowly leave. A large hose that once provided fresh water to the tent-city residents lies dry on the ground near his dwelling as he walks around with his children and his neighbors, drawing on strength as a community.
"We stay connected," he says. "That's how we stay strong."
Marvin Anderson is a freelance reporter based in Port-au-Prince.


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The weekly reports summarize weekly volume, average pricing and market trends from various beef cattle sectors. The report features Ontario railgrade cattle trade (as supplied by Ontario packers), Ontario live cattle trade (as supplied by Ontario auction markets), Alberta trade, U.S. trade, Canadian and U.S. boxed beef summary and slaughter statistics, closing CME futures and a weekly commentary.
Prices are reported on a "per one hundred pound" basis, unless otherwise stated.
These PDF files require Acrobat Reader. Download it for free.


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Today's horoscopes: Thursday, March 21
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Let your natural state overtake you. If your body feels relaxed and comfortable and free, there's nothing more you need to do for physical health at the moment.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You may feel the warmth of love inside you, though that is useless to the object of your affection unless you also express the feeling with your actions. Love is a verb.
GEMINI (May 21-June 21): Today brings lessons about enjoying the ordinary. Chores are pleasant exercises. Errands are a chance to connect with the people in your neighborhood who help the community run smoothly.
CANCER (June 22-July 22): Your magnanimous actions will surprise those around you because they are not the norm for the situation, though they should be. Keep it up, and you'll start a trend.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): You'll find the strategies that work for you by mentally trying things on to see what feels right. One size does not fit all, and one method does not work for everyone. Do it your way.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Sometimes, in order to inject a sense of purpose into your routine, you have to remind yourself that what you're doing is important. People depend on you. Your energy and efforts make a difference.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23): The levity of spring will surround you wherever you go. It's almost as though you're the one making the trees bud and the birds sing. There are highlights to this day that will stay with you forever.
SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21): Maybe time will prove that you indulged in unreasonable fantasies today. But it is better to have expectations and live up to them than to have doubts and live down to them.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): If your mojo seems to have slipped out the back when you weren't looking, no worries. You'll get it back today after you take a nice, long, unstructured, carefree break.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You'll feel more in control if you record what's going on with you now. Take a picture of what you're doing, write down an idea, or chronicle your day in some other interesting way.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You are a riddle. Just by being who you are and doing what comes naturally, you give others the idea that they must figure you out. Of course, they won't be able to — at least not today.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): You'll put yourself out there. Start with a sure thing. Try to get helpful, warm, loving people to lend you a hand. This is no day to try to win over the difficult, prickly ones.


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(Health.com) -- People who have low levels of the so-called good cholesterol have long been known to be at higher risk of heart attacks and heart disease. Now, a new study suggests they may have a higher risk of cancer, too.
Each 10-point increase in good cholesterol--known as high-density lipoprotein (HDL)--corresponds to a 36 percent decrease in a person's risk of developing cancer, the study found.
Guidelines say that men and women should keep their HDL over 40 and 50 mg/dL, respectively, though everyone should shoot to maintain levels above 60 mg/dL.
The study doesn't prove that low HDL actually causes cancer. Nor does it prove that boosting your HDL--exercise and healthy eating are two ways to do it--will reduce the risk of cancer, as it has been shown to do with heart disease.
Cholesterol levels--both good and bad--tend to plummet in people with cancer, so low HDL "might just be a marker of people who are about to die from cancer" rather than a contributing factor, says the lead author of the study, Dr. Richard Karas, M.D., executive director of the Molecular Cardiology Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center, in Boston, Massachusetts.
Health.com: 20 meals that won't kill your cholesterol
Low HDL might also simply be a sign of an unhealthy lifestyle that may itself up cancer risk, since people who exercise regularly, have a healthy diet, and don't smoke tend to have higher levels of HDL. Although the researchers controlled for health factors such as age, body mass index, and smoking in order to zero in on the effect of cholesterol, other unidentified lifestyle factors may have shaped the results.
Health.com: Easy food swaps that cut cholesterol, not taste
In the study, which appears in the June 22 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Karas and his colleagues re-analyzed data from 24 clinical trials that included nearly 150,000 generally healthy people. The trials were originally designed to test the effectiveness of statin medications, which lower bad cholesterol (known as LDL).
How HDL may affect cancer risk is still a mystery. HDL may boost the immune system's ability to fight precancerous lesions and cancerous tumors lurking in the body, Karas says.
Health.com: Supplements for cholesterol -- what works?
Another possibility is that HDL has antioxidant properties that neutralize chemical compounds in the body that contribute to cancer by damaging cells. A third explanation is that HDL may reduce inflammation, which is associated with both heart disease and cancer.
The study should bring some long overdue attention to HDL, which has been unjustly overshadowed by its evil twin, LDL, says Dr. Peter Alagona Jr., M.D.., the director of general cardiology at the Penn State Heart and Vascular Institute, in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Health.com: America's healthiest superfoods for women
Part of the reason is that blockbuster statin medications can lower bad cholesterol, but can't do much to raise HDL, says Alagona, who was not involved in the new research.
Raising HDL with medication is indeed trickier, says Dr. Jennifer Robinson, M.D., program director of the Lipid Research Clinic at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City. Prescription niacin pills can help raise HDL slightly, she says, but there are few effective prescription drugs available.
Health.com: 10 surprising facts about cholesterol
"We don't know that giving someone a drug to raise HDL will prevent cancer, or even heart disease," says Robinson, who wrote an editorial accompanying Dr. Karas's study.
For now, the best prescription for raising HDL is an old-fashioned one: Eat right, stay fit, and quit smoking.
"Do everything you can in terms of weight control [and] quitting smoking," says Dr. Jay Brooks, M.D., chairman of the hematology and oncology department at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "We don't have any good pharmacologic means of raising HDL really well at this point, so concentrate on the things you can do the best."
Copyright Health Magazine 2011


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My SXSW suckup was not in vain, even if it wasn't efficient either. After a prolonged round of back-and-forth with the conference's management, including one outright swap of topics, my panel on "Why Doesn't Congress Grok the Internet?" is scheduled for 3:30-4:30 this Saturday afternoon in Austin.
The theme is pretty straightforward: Sixteen years after the Communications Decency Act, Congress still comes damn close to passing tech-policy legislation almost as boneheaded as that bill; what gives?
I'll be discussing that topic with two staffers for Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.): Jayme White, staff director of the Senate Committee on Finance's Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness subcommittee and senior tech advisor to Wyden; and Jennifer Hoelzer, deputy chief of staff and communications director for the senator. Both worked on Wyden's successful opposition to the Stop Online Piracy and Protect IP Acts.
I don't intend for this panel to be a "Congress sucks" beatdown, as fun as that might be. I want to get into the institutional, political and economic factors that lead to tech-ignorant bills appearing as often as they do. Here are some of the questions I have in mind:
- The stereotype of Congressional knowledge of the Internet is Ted Stevens' "series of tubes" monologue. Is that a fair perception these days?
- Looking at the relative influences of the entertainment and tech industries in Washington, how much of a difference can that make on a relatively obscure tech-policy bill? What about one that's become a headline item?
- Describe the feedback your boss's constituents typically provide about tech-policy issues. How often do they bring up the subject at all?
- How much does the need to raise campaign funds from people who may have intense interests in these matters tilt the legislative process?
- How would you grade the traditional media's coverage of recent tech-policy disputes? Has it been part of the problem or part of the solution?
- What sort of input did your office get from entertainment and tech-industry types, respectively, in the run-up to SOPA?
- The revolving door is a reality on Capitol Hill (and, I should note, in many newsrooms). How much can the prospect of more profitable employment in private industry weigh on a staffer's conduct? Among your former colleagues who worked on tech policy on the Hill, where did most of them end up?
- Did the way Hollywood got rolled on SOPA and PIPA represent a fundamental change in these debates, or was it the product of good timing and good luck?
Now it's your turn: What questions would you add to that list? Would you strike any of those above?


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Sections 100-121 address the needs of various liturgical rites in a church building. Speaking for the people of the Church, the primary focus is always on the assembly–those for whom public rites are celebrated:
§ 100 § The church building is the space for the celebration of the other sacraments, in addition to the Eucharist. While preserving the primary focus upon the eucharistic assembly and the unity and integrity of the building as a whole, the design of the church must also accommodate the needs of these rites.
The roadmap on BLS for the next week or so includes a very briefly discussion of initiation (BLS 101), followed by Orders (102), Penance (103-105), Marriage (106-108), Anointing of the Sick (109), Funerals (110-114), the Liturgy of the Hours (115), Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest (116), the ambry (117), and the Rite of Dedication of a Church and Altar (118-121).
All texts from Built of Living Stones are copyright © 2000, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.


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You may have noticed that we at the 'Rag have been conspicuously silent on the biggest local news story of the last week, the shooting and murder that took place in Midtown this last weekend. You may or may not know that we here writers don't work in concert, don't get together and discuss these things much. We're all pretty much independent in what we choose to write about about. Which is to say, I don't speak for all at the 'Rag when I say that I haven't been able to write anything about last weekend's shooting because I honestly don't know what to say.
One thing I do know is that this type of killing is horrible and crushing to loved ones and friends of those involved. My heart goes out to all those affected. I don't, however, agree with those who think that discussing this as a civic issue is somehow callous given the gravity of the taking of a human life. This is a civic issue that we need to discuss.
All that being said, however, I don't know what to say or do to make Midtown (my neighborhood by the way) any safer. I also don't know what type of programs, preventative or otherwise, we can undertake to keep 2nd Saturdays a vibrant and exciting community festival.
I've learned little from reading the Bee's coverage of the events other than that local officials are "working on it," which is good, and makes me feel a little lax for not being able to supply my own two cents to my government on how this entire situation has affected me as a resident and as a worker in the area. Worse, however, is the lack of instructive feedback given by the Bee's usual cadre of sniping, narrow-minded commenters who, as always, appear more interested in insulting each other than offering critical feedback.
I spend most of my weekends performing at the Sacramento Comedy Spot (20th & J), and can say that 2nd Saturdays have been both a blessing and a curse for us as artists and performers. A blessing in that it brings people from all over the region right to our front door; a curse because the insanity that typically surrounds 2nd Saturday keeps many of our frequent customers away.
I'm well aware that our commenters here have a pretty unique and usually smart vision of what's going on around town, and I guess I wanted to put this issue out there after nearly a week-long silence to see if anyone has anything constructive to say on how we move forward and how we make our city a better city for everyone.


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July 3, 2008 -- Two years ago, Patrick Geryl, then 51, quit his job as a laboratory worker for a French oil company. He'd saved up just enough money to last him until December 2012. After that, he thought, he wouldn't need it anyway.
Instead, Geryl, a soft-spoken man who had studied chemistry in his younger years, started preparing for the apocalypse. He founded a "survival group" for likeminded men and women, aimed at living through the catastrophe he knew was coming.
He started gathering materials necessary to survive — water purifiers, wheelbarrows (with spare tires), dust masks and vegetable seeds. His list of survival goods runs 11 pages long.
"You have to understand, there will be nothing, nothing left," Geryl told ABC News from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. "We will have to start an entire civilization from scratch."
That's because Geryl believes the world as we know it will end in 2012. He points to the ancient Maya cyclical calendars, the longest of which last renewed itself approximately 5,125 years ago and is set to end again, supposedly with catastrophic consequences, in 2012. He speaks of the ancient Egyptians, who, he claims, saw 2012 as a year of great change too. And he points to science: NASA predicts a sharp increase in the number of sunspots and sun flares for 2012, he said, sure to cause electrical failures and satellite disruptions.
All this adds up, Geryl said, to unprecedented catastrophe. First, a polar reversal will cause the north to become the south and the sun to rise in the west. Shattering earthquakes, massive tidal waves and simultaneous volcanic eruptions will follow. Nuclear reactors will melt, buildings will crumble, and a cloud of volcanic dust will block out the sun for 40 years. Only the prepared will survive, Geryl said, and not even all of them.
These may sound like the ravings of a madman, or perhaps the head of a small apocalyptic sect. But Geryl is not the only one who believes in the apocalypse. Thousands of people worldwide seem to be preparing, in one way or another, for the end of days in 2012. Survival groups exist in Europe, Canada and the United States. A simple Google search for "2012" and "the end of the world" brings up nearly 300,000 hits. And the video-sharing Web site YouTube hosts more than 65,000 clips informing and warning viewers about their fate in 2012.
"It's bigger than Y2K," said Mark van Stone, a specialist of Maya hieroglyphic writings and author of a forthcoming book on 2012. "The year is like a pop song or a popular movie. You type in 2012, and you get hundreds of thousands of hits."
Dennis McClung, 28, a project manager for Home Depot from Phoenix, Ariz., runs one of the Web sites dedicated to 2012, an online survival supply store, which sells gas masks, knife kits, bullet-proof vests and more.
"I'm not a firm believer in one specific prophecy," said McClung, who runs his site with his wife, Danielle. "But I think we ought to be prepared for anything."
Even with December 2012 still 4½ years away, McClung said business is booming. His Web site, which features an "official 2012 countdown" clock and exhorts customers to "be smart, be ready," averages several thousand visitors a week. McClung's best-sellers, he said, are emergency medical supplies and water purifiers.
"I get a lot of hits from India. I get a lot of hits from the Netherlands," McClung said. "But my No. 1 customer is the U.S."
One of those customers is Thomas Lehmann, a 25-year-old factory worker from Cape Girardeau, Mo. Lehmann said he started researching 2012 when he was 12 years old, and still spends about two hours a day reading about the topic both online and in books. He said he is saving money for survival gear.
"Whatever happens, I'm just trying to be prepared for it," Lehmann said. "I'm just learning to be independent of the system. I mean electricity, vehicles, alternate sources of energy. I'm learning to live without gas, basically be self-reliant."
"If this stuff does happen," Lehmann said, adding, "I have a way to eat. I can hunt, I can fish and I can purify water. I think it's people in the big cities that need to be worried. People that can't provide for themselves."
But for all the hype, there is little evidence the ancient Maya ever intended for the end of their calendar to be read as a portent for disaster.
"These prophecies of doom really don't have any basis in what we know about the Maya," said Stephen Houston, a professor of anthropology at Brown University and a specialist of Maya hieroglyphic writing. "The Maya descriptions barely talk about this event."
Instead, Houston said, the Maya saw their "long count" — the longest of their cyclical calendars — coming to an end in 2012 but also beginning anew on that date, without disastrous consequences.
"Really, it's a conversion of people's anxieties about our times, and finding some remote mythological precedent or prediction of it," Houston said about the origins of the current 2012 myths. "People like to believe that ancient wisdom is somehow predicting this time of upheaval."
John Hall, a professor of sociology at the University of California Davis who is writing a book on the history of apocalyptic ideas, agreed. He said movements predicting the end of the world often reflect a much larger nervousness about the state of our society.
"Terrorism, 9/11, ecological disasters, floods and earthquakes," Hall said. "[There is] a sense that modern civilization has had its run. Those kinds of anxieties are much more widely shared than simply among people who believe in the exact date."
To Lehmann, though, those very events are warnings of what's to come.
"We had Hurricane Katrina, the recent cyclone in Myanmar," Lehmann said. "We've got major flooding in Iowa. We're always going to have natural disasters. But they are picking up quite frequently now."
Lehmann said he eventually hoped to move away from Cape Girardeau, built on the banks of the Mississippi River, to the higher plains of southwest Missouri to keep safe from the floods sure to follow the earthquakes of 2012.
Geryl and his Belgian and Dutch followers have similar intentions, though their plan will take them much farther from home. They are looking to buy a plot of land high up in African mountains, where they'll be able to withstand the monstrous tidal waves and wait out the cloud of volcanic dust that they said would block out the sun.
Geryl said the group has recently zeroed in on a location, but won't reveal his find for fear of tipping off rival survival groups in the United States and Canada. On that land, Geryl's group, whose core membership consists of 16 people but whose wait list supposedly lists hundreds, will build concrete dwellings or outfit caves for survival.
After the cloud clears, Geryl said, they will attempt to create a new, better civilization.
"A guiding principle will be to keep the world population as small as possible so as not to get into the same problems we face now," Geryl said, adding that the group is currently looking for sponsors and hopes to move to Africa in 2011. "There is too little oil, too little grain in the world now. Those are the kinds of problems we want to avoid."
One of the group's members, Jan, a 57-year-old carpenter from Amsterdam whose name has been changed because he doesn't want to be identified in the press, recently drove five hours to attend one of Geryl's meetings in Antwerp.
"I thought, if there's a chance that we can start a new civilization, I want to contribute," Jan told ABC News. "Because whether I make it or not, and there's only a small chance I will, this is important."
Jan, who has never been married and has no children, said he has lost friends over 2012.
"All the people I've ever told about this have declared me crazy," he said. "It makes people feel uncomfortable. Now I just keep it to myself."
Geryl said he found comfort in sharing his knowledge with others. Since "discovering" what the future holds, he has written three books on 2012 and maintains a Web site on the subject.
When asked what would happen if December 2012 were to come and go without the earthquakes and tsunamis of his predictions, Geryl fell silent.
"I don't really contemplate that possibility," he said. "[My predictions] are so spectacular, they can't possibly be wrong."


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FIGURE. Pathologic findings indicating that a deceased researcher had septicemic plague, not pneumonic plague* --- Chicago, Illinois, 2009
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Fatal Laboratory-Acquired Infection with an Attenuated Yersinia pestis Strain --- Chicago, Illinois, 2009
On September 18, 2009, the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) was notified by a local hospital of a suspected case of fatal laboratory-acquired infection with Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague. The patient, a researcher in a university laboratory, had been working along with other members of the laboratory group with a pigmentation-negative (pgm-) attenuated Y. pestis strain (KIM D27). The strain had not been known to have caused laboratory-acquired infections or human fatalities. Other researchers in a separate university laboratory facility in the same building had contact with a virulent Y. pestis strain (CO92) that is considered a select biologic agent; however, the pgm- attenuated KIM D27 is excluded from the National Select Agent Registry (1). The university, CDPH, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), and CDC conducted an investigation to ascertain the cause of death. This report summarizes the results of that investigation, which determined that the cause of death likely was an unrecognized occupational exposure (route unknown) to Y. pestis, leading to septic shock. Y. pestis was isolated from premortem blood cultures. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) identified the clinical isolate as a pgm- strain of Y. pestis. Postmortem examination revealed no evidence of pneumonic plague. A postmortem diagnosis of hereditary hemochromatosis was made on the basis of histopathologic, laboratory, and genetic testing. One possible explanation for the unexpected fatal outcome in this patient is that hemochromatosis-induced iron overload might have provided the infecting KIM D27 strain, which is attenuated as a result of defects in its ability to acquire iron, with sufficient iron to overcome its iron-acquisition defects and become virulent (2). Researchers should adhere to recommended biosafety practices when handling any live bacterial cultures, even attenuated strains, and institutional biosafety committees should implement and maintain effective surveillance systems to detect and monitor unexpected acute illness in laboratory workers.
Case Report
On September 10, 2009, the researcher, a man aged 60 years with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, was evaluated at an outpatient clinic for fever, body aches, and cough of approximately 3 days duration. A clinic physician suspected influenza or other acute respiratory infection and referred the patient to an emergency department (ED) for further evaluation; however, the patient did not seek further care at that time. On September 13, the patient was brought by ambulance to a Chicago hospital ED because of fever, cough, and worsening shortness of breath. Paramedics recorded an oxygen saturation level of 92%, and oxygen was administered via mask.
Upon arrival at the ED, the patient was noted to be alert and able to converse, with a temperature of 100.9oF (38.3oC), pulse of 106 beats per minute, respiratory rate of 42 breaths per minute, and blood pressure of 106/75 mm/Hg. Examination revealed distant breath sounds, abdominal distention, peripheral cyanosis, and trace pedal edema; no lymphadenopathy, rash, or jaundice was noted. A chest radiograph revealed normal lung fields; however, the patient continued to have labored breathing and required supplemental oxygen. Blood chemistries showed renal failure (creatinine: 6.5 mg/dL; blood urea nitrogen: 73 mg/dL), incipient acidosis (bicarbonate: 17 mEq/L; PaCO2: 31mmHg; pH: 7.36), and elevated liver function enzymes (aspartate aminotransaminase [AST]: 794 IU/L; alanine aminotransaminase [ALT]: 160 IU/L). Complete blood count showed severe leukocytosis (white blood cells: 79.2 103/mL) with a left shift (22% band forms) and hemoglobin level and platelet count within normal limits. Extracellular bacteria were noted on a peripheral blood smear.
The patient initially was treated with diuretics for suspected congestive heart failure and later with intravenous antibiotics (vancomycin and piperacillin/tazobactam) once infection was suspected. At approximately 12 hours after presentation, the patient had worsening respiratory distress and was intubated. He died 1 hour later of cardiac arrest, despite resuscitation attempts.
The patient had last worked in the laboratory on September 4. On September 10, he notified his supervisor about his illness to explain his absence from work. Whether the patient himself suspected his symptoms were consistent with plague is not known; however, existing laboratory policy called for laboratory workers with illness consistent with plague to report to the university's occupational health clinic (or to the ED). The patient's occupation was not documented in the records of either the outpatient clinic he visited or the hospital ED.
On September 14, blood cultures drawn the previous day yielded gram-negative bacilli (four of four bottles), gram-positive cocci (three of four bottles), and yeast (one of four bottles and presumed to be a contaminant). On September 15, the clinical laboratory identified the gram-positive cocci as nutritionally variant streptococci (NVS). An autopsy performed the same day identified no signs of pneumonia, bowel perforation, or endocarditis, which is often associated with NVS infection. Efforts to identify the slow-growing, gram-negative organism were under way when, on September 16, an ED physician learned that the patient had worked in a laboratory that conducted research on select biologic agents and notified the hospital clinical laboratory. On the morning of September 18, 16S ribosomal DNA sequencing performed by the hospital clinical laboratory narrowed the identity of the gram-negative bacilli to either Y. pestis or Y. pseudotuberculosis. That same day, hospital infection control staff members notified CDPH of the suspected Y. pestis case.
Epidemiologic and Environmental Investigation
On September 18, CDPH, IDPH, CDC, and the university initiated a joint investigation to determine the source of Y. pestis infection, identify any potential additional infections, and implement prevention and control measures. Because inhalation exposure could not be excluded, antimicrobial prophylaxis was offered to all staff members at the research laboratory in which the patient worked and to his close contacts. A close contact was defined as a person who had been within 6 feet of the patient or who had handled his blood or tissue samples during September 7--18, 2009. Unless contraindications existed, a 7-day course of doxycycline was prescribed for prophylaxis. All 30 coworkers were prescribed prophylaxis during September 19--20. One household contact and 64 other close contacts, including medical, laboratory, and pathology personnel, were identified, and 61 (94%) accepted prophylaxis during September 18--20. No additional Y. pestis infections have been identified.
An assessment of the laboratory environment identified no major deficiencies in laboratory engineering controls. A review of Occupational Safety and Health Administration Form 300 logs identified no recent work-related injuries or illnesses among workers in this laboratory. A review of attendance records for university biosafety training identified deficiencies in staff attendance (including the patient) at a number of required biosafety courses. The patient's family members and coworkers were asked about knowledge of any possible exposure events, such as a needle puncture or splash of liquid to the face, and none were reported. Interviews with laboratory coworkers revealed that the patient inconsistently complied with the laboratory policy to wear gloves while handling Y. pestis KIM D27 bacterial cultures.
Laboratory and Pathologic Testing
Preliminary PCR and microbiologic analyses conducted by the university research laboratory identified the organism isolated from the patient as a pgm- attenuated strain of Y. pestis (3), consistent with the KIM D27 strain with which the patient worked, and not the virulent Y. pestis strain CO92, which was used in a separate laboratory facility on another floor. The IDPH Division of Laboratories confirmed the infecting organism as Y. pestis. CDC independently isolated Y. pestis from an aliquot of one of the original blood culture bottles and confirmed the absence of the pgm locus. CDC also identified a chloramphenicol resistance gene (a common, laboratory-based resistance marker) that was not in the original laboratory stock strain, suggesting that the infecting strain had been modified as part of routine laboratory research.
To determine whether new virulence mechanisms had been acquired or genetically inserted into the infecting strain, CDC compared the virulence of the infecting strain with that of CO92 from CDC culture archives and the original, attenuated KIM D27 stock strain from the patient's laboratory. Male Swiss Webster mice were inoculated subcutaneously with varying doses of bacteria ranging from 103 to 108 colony-forming units (CFUs) for the infecting strain and the parental KIM D27 strain, and from 102 to 103 for CO92. Virulence was measured by determining the median lethal dose (LD50). The LD50 of CO92 was ≤100 CFUs. In contrast, an LD50 was not achieved for either the infecting strain or KIM D27; <3% of the mice died after injection with doses as high as 108 CFUs. Such findings suggest that the strain with which the patient was infected was attenuated and that no new virulence mechanisms were acquired by or engineered into the infecting strain.
Histopathologic examination of the patient's lung tissue at CDC revealed preserved alveolar structure without inflammatory infiltrates that would have indicated pneumonic processes consistent with plague (Figure). Immunohistochemical tests using an anti--Y. pestis mouse monoclonal antibody revealed abundant staining of Y. pestis in blood vessels of multiple organs, consistent with septicemic plague. Histologic staining revealed abnormal iron deposits in the liver, but not in pancreatic or cardiac tissues. Postmortem testing of blood samples revealed a total serum iron of 541 mcg/dL (reference range: 40--160 mcg/dL), iron saturation of 83.5% (reference range: 14%--50%), and total iron binding capacity of 648 mcg/dL (reference range: 230--430 mcg/dL). Genetic testing revealed that the patient was homozygous for the C282Y mutation of the HFE gene, confirming a postmortem diagnosis of hereditary hemochromatosis (4). Investigators found no evidence that the researcher knew he had hemochromatosis or that he exhibited any symptoms of this condition.
Reported by
K Ritger, MD, S Black, MD, K Weaver, MPH, J Jones, MD, Chicago Dept of Public Health; S Gerber, MD, Cook County Dept of Public Health; C Conover, MD, K Soyemi, MD, Illinois Dept of Public Health. K Metzger, MPH, CDC/CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellow; B King, MPH, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; P Mead, MD, C Molins, PhD, M Schriefer, PhD, Div of Vector-Borne Diseases, W-J Shieh, MD, S Zaki, MD, Div of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; A Medina-Marino, PhD, EIS Officer, CDC.
Editorial Note
This report describes the first known fatality from a laboratory-acquired infection with attenuated Y. pestis. The last known laboratory-acquired infection with Y. pestis in the United States occurred in 1959 and was caused by inhalation of a virulent strain (5). Pathology findings for the case described in this report are consistent with septicemic plague and inconsistent with pneumonic plague, suggesting a transdermal or mucosal route of infection. However, a recent study (6) demonstrated that intranasal infection of mice with KIM D27 can result in persistent colonization of the lung vasculature, subsequent dissemination of infection, and eventual death without classic pathologic signs of pneumonic plague. Consequently, a respiratory route of infection cannot be ruled out definitively. Although the route of transmission for the infection remains unclear, deficiencies in biosafety practices, including inconsistent use of gloves, could have resulted in inadvertent transdermal exposure. The severe outcome experienced by the patient was unexpected, given that he had worked with an attenuated Y. pestis strain that 1) is widely used by laboratory researchers, 2) has not been associated with previous laboratory-acquired infections or fatalities, and 3) is excluded from select biologic agent requirements (1). Although NVS bacteremia cannot be excluded as a contributing factor in the patient's death, the clinical course, lack of endocarditis, and the visualization of Y. pestis in blood vessels throughout the body strongly support gram-negative sepsis as the cause of death.
Hemochromatosis, an iron-overload disease (7), is characterized by increased iron absorption and progressive iron storage in multiple organs. Persons with hemochromatosis are especially susceptible to infection with Vibrio vulnificus, Listeria monocytogenes, Yersinia enterocolitica, and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis (7). Animal studies have shown that the virulence of pgm- Y. pestis strains can be enhanced by the simultaneous injection of iron into experimental animals (2). Conceivably, hemochromatosis-induced iron overload might have a similar effect, enhancing the virulence of the infecting KIM D27 strain by compensating for its iron-acquisition defects (2). Although iron deposition in pancreatic tissue is known to cause bronze diabetes, pathologic examination ruled out iron deposition as the cause of this patient's diabetes. Nonetheless, diabetes is a known risk factor for increased severity and complications from bacterial infections (8).
Research using animal models of hemochromatosis (9) is under way to better understand susceptibility to infection with bacteria attenuated as a result of defects in iron acquisition. Researchers working with attenuated Y. pestis and other potentially infectious material should always use at least biosafety level 2 practices (10), and laboratory managers should ensure that staff adheres to recommended biosafety practices. Institutional safety committees should implement and maintain effective surveillance programs to identify and monitor acute illness among laboratory workers, and health-care providers should routinely inquire about occupational exposures when evaluating patients.
- US Department of Health and Human Services, US Department of Agriculture. National Select Agent Registry: select agents exclusions. Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, US Department of Agriculture; 2010. Available at http://www.selectagents.gov/select%20agents%20and%20toxins%20exclusions.html. Accessed February 18, 2011.
- Jackson S, Burrows TW. The virulence-enhancing effect of iron on nonpigmented mutants of virulent strains of Pasteurella pestis. Br J Exp Pathol 1956;37:577--83.
- Perry RD, Fetherston JD. Yersinia pestis---etiologic agent of plague. Clin Microbiol Rev 1997;10:35--66.
- Andrews NC. Disorders of iron metabolism. N Engl J Med 1999;341:1986--95.
- Burmeister RW, Tigertt WD, Overholt EL. Laboratory-acquired pneumonic plague: report of a case and review of previous cases. Ann Intern Med 1962;56:789--800.
- Lee-Lewis H, Anderson DM. Absence of inflammation and pneumonia during infection with nonpigmented Yersinia pestis reveals a new role for the pgm locus in pathogenesis. Infect Immun 2010;78:220--30.
- Khan FA, Fisher MA, Khakoo RA. Association of hemochromatosis with infectious diseases: expanding spectrum. Int J Infect Dis 2007;11:482--7.
- Joshi N, Caputo GM, Weitekamp MR, Karchmer AW. Infections in patients with diabetes mellitus. N Engl J Med 1999;341:1906--12.
- Huang FW, Pinkus JL, Pinkus GS, Fleming MD, Andrews NC. A mouse model of juvenile hemochromatosis. J Clin Invest 2005;115:2187--91.
- US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Institutes of Health. Biosafety in microbiological and biomedical laboratories. 5th ed. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Institutes of Health; 2009. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/biosafety/publications/bmbl5. Accessed February 18, 2011.
What is already known on this topic?
The last known laboratory-acquired infection with Yersinia pestis in the United States occurred in 1959.
What is added by this report?
This case report describes the first reported fatality from a laboratory-acquired infection with an attenuated strain of Y. pestis.
What are the implications for public health practice?
Under certain environmental and host conditions, infection with attenuated bacteria might result in severe disease. Researchers always should adhere to recommended use of personal protective equipment. Unexpected acute illness in a laboratory worker should be reported to the institution and health-care providers so that the differential diagnosis can be expanded to include diseases occurring as a result of occupational exposures.
* Investigators compared lung pathology images of a patient with primary pneumonic plague (top, left), with that of the deceased researcher (top, right). Lung tissue of the patient with primary pneumonic plague shows extensive inflammation and no open air space. Postmortem lung tissue from the deceased researcher shows open air spaces and preserved alveolar structure, indicating the deceased did not have pneumonic processes consistent with plague. Magnification of postmortem lung tissue (bottom) revealed gram-negative bacteria (red, rod-shaped) in the lumen of a pulmonary blood vessel. Subsequent immunostaining with a Yersinia pestis antibody confirmed Y. pestis only in blood vessels of numerous tissues, consistent with septicemic plague.
Alternate Text: The figure above shows pathologic findings indicating that the deceased researcher had septicemic plague, not pneumonic plague, in the fatal case of laboratory-acquired infection with an attenuated Yersinia pestis strain in Chicago in 2009.
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