Chikungunya, etc; Word Crimes, Papal soccer neutrality, Texas and Wisconsin surfing, Titin protein.

So, various things in the virosphere. The first case of Chikungunya transmitted locally in the US (not travel-related) has been confirmed. (Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne viral illness, known to cause painful swelling in the joints and fever, among other symptoms. There have been notable outbreaks in the French Caribbean and into South America starting this part December, and 31 US states have previously reported travel-related cases). i was talking about this with Bryan this morning, and he suggested this article as being highly informative, and it is. Also, there seems to be a 5th type of Dengue, of which i was unaware. Upon mentioning the local Chikungunya transmission report to my labmates, Ryan mentioned that recently, a Republican congressman Phil Gingery (an MD?!) recently sent a letter to the CDC in which he suggested (entirely improbably) that Mexican immigrant children and families might be bringing with them Ebola as they cross the border. This Politifact article offers a very nice synopsis of the situation and response, but just so we're perfectly clear here, how is this physician suggesting that immigrants are crossing the border with a viral infection that has never been found outside of Africa? Seriously?! This is some piece of sensationalism right there.



Weird Al put out a new album, and posted one of the songs to his youtube page. Word Crimes is a very nice parody of last summer's Blurred Lines. Another recently shared music video is this clip of R2D2 dancing to MJ songs, via LZ.

Too much else since i last posted. Germany won the World Cup, and the final match was against Argentina. i had joked around earlier that with the (soccer-fan, native Argentine) Pope on their side, how could Argentina lose? But further checking this out, it looks like others (including Brazilian fans) were concerned about the Pope playing favorites, so he apparently promised no special prayers for his home team. Also, adorably, i came across this report of the Swiss Guard inviting Pope Francis to watch the Argentina-Swiss match with them, but he declined.

i've previously mentioned seeing Transformers 4, and that it features some gorgeous footage of the Texas Hill Country, being partially filmed there. One of the characters is a (Texan) surfer, and Jack asked if there is surfing in Texas. My response was that yes, there is, but only if there's a hurricane coming. Synchronicity being what it is, Slate featured an article last week about a Texas surfing photographer, and it backed me up, " He wanted to photograph a good hurricane swell for the book, which proved elusive until Hurricane Isaac in 2012. But that didn’t bother him too much. Like many Texas surfers, he’s used to waiting. “One has to watch the weather and water conditions in order to time out the best surf in Texas. And even though the surf gets quite good at times, it usually doesn’t last that long" ".  Interestingly, that article also calls Sheboygan, WI, the 'Malibu of the Midwest', apparently with surfing occurring on Lake Michigan. Moreover, they host the largest lake surfing competition in the world, called the Dairyland Classic. Youtube has a few clips which document this, true, but those dudes are all wearing full body wetsuits - that water's cold, even in the summer.

Also, Jack and Leslie, it looks like henna tattoos 'develop'; " The color of your design will at first be a shade of orange (ranging from very light orange highlighter color to pumpkin orange). It will get darker over the course of the next 48 hours, turning anywhere from orange-brown to maroon or chocolate brown. Your design will be at its darkest after 1 or 2 days.  ". Interesting.

It's looking like i might have to do some work with on a 358 kDa protein, which is kinda larger than the usual proteins i work with. Out of curiosity, further research indicates that the largest known protein is a muscle protein commonly called Titin, weighing in at ~3816 kDa. Whoa. Also, it's IUPAC name is also the longest word in the English language, as illustrated by this 3 and a half hour long youtube video of someone reading it. (i did not listen to all 3+ hours, but did skip around the youtube clip. Humorously, the flowers wilt, and the gentleman's facial hair lengthens.)