flu moratoruim, extreme mountain biking/unicycling, uterine transplants, the Sweetest Day

So there's a lot happening in the virosphere these days, given Ebola and EV-68. For instance, a moratorium (no, another one) has been imposed on all influenza research that has 'gain-of-function' mutations. This is unfortunate, as it precludes a lot of important research that needs to be done, for instance, in designing flu vaccinations. i think a quote (via here) sums up the sentiments of many virologists: " "After the voluntary moratorium on H5N1 transmission studies, new regulations and policies were issued," flu researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison noted in an email. "I do not know what else is needed. We will never be able to satisfy critics who call for 'zero risk.' " ".

On a lighter note, here is a (humorous) article called "Some Fear Ebola Outbreak Could Make Nation Turn To Science" from the New Yorker.

i was looking around the other day and found this great account from a Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist who was trying to get through airport security in North Dakota after taking his Nobel medal to show his grandmother. Apparently, TSA had no idea what to make of the situation. Happily, i doubt this will ever be something i have to deal with - security just usually catches my fishing hooks and coffee grinder.

While hanging out at the family T's place last weekend, James the Formidable was streaming clips of extreme mountain biking (like this one of Danny MacAskill in the Isle of Skye); seriously impressive/scary stuff. And then i came across this video of a few folks unicycling in caves (in Bulgaria?! Where is this even close to being legal?). Worth watching; these guys are pretty talented if a bit foolish (which they address around 4:30 in the clip.)

A week or two ago, Kate and i were talking about the recent reports that Apple and Facebook were paying for female employees' egg storage/freezing campaigns, which has caused some controversy. (Human femal fertility drops off around age 37 pretty sharply; Kate, a review for fertility including that European study can be found here.) We'd discussed that even if the eggs are viable, the wombs are older, and that might also effect the child. However, it turns out that groups in the UK and Sweden have recently performed uterine transplants; a Swedish woman just gave birth to a baby following transplantation (and sorry, the paper shows surgical images of the womb) with a womb from a 61-year old woman. The (still living) donor had already undergone menopause (after having had 2 kids), but that was stimulated with exogenous hormones in the recipient, and the recipient then underwent in vitro fertilization. This is pretty cool; imagine the implications for transgendered folk? We live in the future.

At the market this morning, KellyAT asked why hot peppers crack (demonstrated here) upon maturity, but sweet/bell peppers don't. i didn't know the answer to that, but it's a super interesting question. After a little research, it turns out that that process is called 'corking'; it's basically when the peppers start growing too fast for the skin to keep up, so it forms stretch marks -tears in the skin that then heal over. This is a sign of a mature hot pepper, and usually directly correlates to how hot that pepper will be. i guess bell peppers don't tend to grow that quickly? A hot pepper forum did point out that sometimes tomatoes also do this, which i'd noticed but didn't link to peppers. Moreover, jalapenos will also turn black then red as a sign of maturity (not sun scald, that's as lesion), but i couldn't track down an exact/scientific reason why; though there is speculation that's is just part of the pepper color spectrum. So. Take home message - stretch marks correlate to hotness.

In honor of my halloween costume and the upcoming holiday, here is a video of a baby rescue bat being fed.

Today my friend Lauren introduced the term 'spargelziet'; or a German word for asparagus season. Combined with the Spargel Frau statue, i'm just going to interpret this as the German culture is incredibly serious about their asparagus.

 me:  did you know this is a thing? it showed up in my calendar : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetest_Day

 Bryan:  i did not know it was a thing

 me:  what a strange thing

 Bryan:  isn't valentines day enough?

 me:  right? not according to candymakers

and Hallmark

i'd've thought, were i to have started this, that they'd space it a little further from other candy-centric holidays

'cause people are already buying a ton of cards and candy this time of year, anyway - i feel like the market is pre-saturated.

 Bryan:  maybe so they only have to work part of the year?

who wants to work all summer?

 me:  or maybe it's starting to become pleasant to work in a hot candy kitchen this time of year?

And it does look to be a purely regional marketing construct. Huh.

infrared thermometers, red beard highlights, 'tie one on', old JM songs

As has been shown in pretty much every major (and minor) news outlet in the world, there are now cases of Ebola as diagnosed in Texas; one from a Liberian man who contracted it there but was in Dallas when he started manifesting symptoms, and one from a nurse who had treated him. This is an interesting NYTimes article regarding, among other things, health care workers who have contracted Ebola. However, and this is made very clear; there are many more diseases that are causing deaths for which we have vaccines and should be more concerned (influenza, pertussis, measles, etc). Reference this article and this article about NIH science funding and how budget cuts are negatively impacting our preparedness (hat tip to Kelly AT for linking that last one).

This is a very well-written article regarding the index of infectivity for several viruses, " a mathematical term that tells you how contagious an infectious disease is " based on average number of people who contract it (and i appreciate the clarification notes given).

A conversation the other day involved how airports are now starting to assay temperatures of travelers, and i mentioned that most seem to be using handheld thermometers. My apologies; i'm pretty sure i said 'laser', but these seem to in fact be infrared. According to wikipedia, the mechanism " consists of a lens to focus the infrared thermal radiation on to a detector, which converts the radiant power to an electrical signal that can be displayed in units of temperature after being compensated for ambient temperature ". Neat.

With the high temperature this week having been around the 50s, it's getting to be beard season. Several of the males i know seem to have definite red tones in their facial hair, despite being otherwise dark blond or brunet (also, side tangent, according to wikipedia, " Although brunet is the masculine version of the popular diminutive form used to describe a little boy or young man with brown hair, the use of brunet is uncommon in English. One is more likely to say of a man or boy, "He has brown hair" or "He is brown-haired", than to say, "He is a brunette" (or brunet). The term brunette is the feminine form of the French word brunet which is a diminutive form of brun meaning "brown/brown-haired", the feminine of which is brune. ") Anyhow, red beards (not Redbeard) are a common enough trait that i did a little research. Evidently, it's a genetics co-dominance issue tied to a specific gene (HCL2) on chromosome 4. If you (male) have one copy of this gene, your might have a red beard, and two copies would dictate all body hair to be red. (Other genes which are said to impact red hair are "  themelanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R), which is found on chromosome 16 ", as documented in this article among other references.)

After enjoying a bottle (or 3) of wine one night last week with Jack and Leslie (Congrats again on submitting your thesis, Jack!), the phrases 'to tie one one' and 'to tie one down' were bandied about. To tie one on usually means you're drinking, but why? Apparently, that's not well known, but might be related to the British phrase  'tie a bun on' (origins also unclear). There's a lot of speculation in the commentary found here,  including " "tie a bun on" came out of British theater. Getting drunk after performances, a drunk male might raid wardrobe and come back dressed in women's clothing. The "bun" was a wig with the hair tied in a bun. It was the theater equivalent of wearing a a drunk wearing a lampshade. ", and the necessity of needing to tie on one's night cap after a few too many drinks. Another semi-related-but-temporally-distinct idiom origin i was looking up this week is 'pop the question', which commonly, conventionally refers to a marriage proposal. Turns out, this one's not as well documented. i managed to find that the earliest mention of it dates to 1826, to English dramatisct and playwright Mary Russell Mitford. Given that date, i'd imagine the citation refers to Foscari: a tragedy. Interesting in whatever regard; probably it refers to what folks seem to hope is the surprising/startling nature of the question.

Something amusing is this pictorial representation entitled "Chart-Topping Songs".

Many of my friends are rather excellent writers. i was kicking around the other day and came across this list of Advice For Writers, by writers. Seems pretty solid, and i appreciate the Terry Pratchett one.

Kar and Roommate; Our recent rainy, chilly weather puts me in mind of the music of John Mayer, and while listening via youtube the other day, i tripped over a John Mayer/Brad Paisley dual concert (via CMT Crossroads, dated 2004) the other day online. i am fond of both musicians, and as noted, they both tend to write thoughtful music, though JM's is less witty than BP's; hearing one cover the other's songs is really weird (whoa, Why Georgia?!). Further looking into this, it appears as though they've collaborated more recently, at the 2013 AMAs . Huh. Moreover, and this is less weird, it appears that Mr. Mayer and Keith Urban have also had dual concerts - reference this and particularly this. Huh. Moreover, i found a playlist from a show he did in 1999, for which i have had various song tracks since probably 2003 (recognizable due to his on-stage patter), but had no idea their origin. You get credit for that one, Kar, given that i'm pretty sure they were originally on a mix cd from you. Anyway, nice to figure that out.

Trib building facade, bike electricity, star(data) songs, pizza cake, various conjugations, homecoming mums

The very patient and dapper Nate B., recently took a trip to Chicago with his wife, and they posted FB pictures on various rocks embedded in the Chicago Tribune building, but not a picture of the bit of the Alamo that is present there. Hometown and familial pride demanded that i jokingly hassle Nate about this grievous oversight, but it brought about the question; why ARE there building pieces present on the Trib facade? Looking into it, it seems that the Tribune owner/publisher Colonel Robert McCormick requested that reporters bring back bits of pieces of places where they were stationed. There are ~149 rocks embedded in the walls, ranging from everyplace from the Great Wall of China, the Great Pyramids, St. Peter's Cathedral, etc. It's not entirely clear, though, how some of the pretty substantial chunks were acquired, but it seems like most were bits taken from remodeling and ruins, etc.

While at the market this weekend, JamesET and i were kicking around the idea of using one's bicycle trainer to generate electricity.  Perhaps not super efficient. Hmm.
i came across a clip the other day of the noises made by stars - stars emit light, which sometimes flickers due to starquakes or things passing between them and us; this flickering light can be transformed into sounds, by math ("In the sonification process, those inaudible frequencies are analyzed by a mathematical technique called fourier analysis and then scaled to frequencies that the human ear can hear") as done by folks monitoring emissions captured by the Kepler satellite. (A NYTimes article from 2011 does a nice summation). Upon mentioning this to James, a rather talented and devoted amateur astronomer, he said that he'd heard of a blind astrophysicist who devised a method of star identification, and researching that lead to this article, " Wanda uses a graph marked with Braille tags on a pegboard to plot the intensity of light versus frequency for a spiral galaxy. She can figure out the mass of the galaxy by calculating the area under the curve ".

i usually check NPR's Sandwich Monday blog posts, wherein a group over at NPR tries one specialty sandwich (or something like that:

"we've used The Neuhaus Rule: a sandwich is defined as protein encased in bread product. This definition allows us to explore the widest possible wasteland of cuisine.

But for the few foods that don't fit under The Neuhaus Rule, we also observe The Sandwich Draft Principle. We feel that if a food doesn't belong to any other food category (spoons made of chicken, 7-11 Chicken Batons), we can draft it onto the Sandwich Team."     )

 On every Monday. This week featured Pizza Cake, which is basically deep, deep dish pizza made from stacked pizzas. i was scrolling through the responses, and found a link to a site called thisiswhyyouarefat.com. Pretty remarkable, it's a collection extreme junk food, some of which looks like a wonderful idea, but maybe not others. Since we're on the subject of food, there is a tumblr called "Women Laughing Alone With Salad", documenting instances of advertisements in which solo ladies are looking joyous with salads. <insert commentary on media portrayal of solo women here.>

Something else found while checking favored blogs is this tumblr thread outlining the conjugation of the latin verb boo in relation to ghosts. Yup.

Speaking of conjugations, i was listening to Stromae via the internet (most popular seem to be this one or this one?), and wondering if he calls himself after the biological supportive structures. Turns out, no. Wikipedia states that "In 2000 he appeared as a rapper called Opsmaestro, though he later changed his stage name to Stromae (a syllablic inversion of "Maestro", a practice called verlan).". Verlan is apparently a French version of pig latin, wherein the word is inverted (second syllable spoken before the first one), the name itself is l'inverse, inverted. Because this can be done in several different ways for words, it's group-specific (you've gotta be in the know to pick it up).

Finally, something that i've learned is pretty much only a Texas thing are Homecoming mums. These are glitter-encrusted corsages with a chrysanthemum centerpiece (usually artificial, but my own mother lovingly tracked down and bought me a real one, otherwise i probably would've revolted), festooned with ribbons, bells and other garland/decorative elements. They're worn by high school-aged females (dudes get a smaller version, worn as an arm band ("garter")) at homecoming. It's a big deal, and a status thing - the bigger/tackier and more of them you are wearing, the more you are 'loved'. Apparently, they used to be a thing you bought your date, but by the time i got to high school (well over a decade ago, *sigh*), they were given by family members, teammates and close friends, as well.