Thursday, September 21, 2006
All Kinds of Cool Stuff
As if you needed another reason to quit smoking: it seems that smoking increases the risk of getting HIV. Something else you know you should do, but may need help doing: it seems that eating fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, herring) once a week may reduce risk of kidney cancer. I love mackerel, so any excuse will do.
You probably also already know that the US spends more on lower-quality health care, but yet another study confirms it: the US ranks near the bottom on many quality measures, while on top for costs. And all those people talking about how the French system doesn't work? Well, actually they got top the marks for preventable death prevention.
And sometimes, you forget; Alzheimers Disease makes forgetting worse. And worse yet, some research suggests that AD may be self-propagating, like prion illnesses. I wonder about this in context of the amount of necrosis you see in AD brains - all that free lysozyme can do much damage, and I'm not sure why you need Beta-Amyloid to self-propagate. Interesting though.
Also cool, paleoanthropologists have unearthed an extraordinarily well-preserved 3-year-old A. afarensis (like 'Lucy') fossil in Ethiopia. A fantastic find!
As my brain continues to fry, I really wish I had the time or energy to really process all of this. So much cool stuff in just one week!
You probably also already know that the US spends more on lower-quality health care, but yet another study confirms it: the US ranks near the bottom on many quality measures, while on top for costs. And all those people talking about how the French system doesn't work? Well, actually they got top the marks for preventable death prevention.
And sometimes, you forget; Alzheimers Disease makes forgetting worse. And worse yet, some research suggests that AD may be self-propagating, like prion illnesses. I wonder about this in context of the amount of necrosis you see in AD brains - all that free lysozyme can do much damage, and I'm not sure why you need Beta-Amyloid to self-propagate. Interesting though.
Also cool, paleoanthropologists have unearthed an extraordinarily well-preserved 3-year-old A. afarensis (like 'Lucy') fossil in Ethiopia. A fantastic find!
As my brain continues to fry, I really wish I had the time or energy to really process all of this. So much cool stuff in just one week!
