04 abril 2015
Voorwerpjes in Space
Mysterious Hanny's Voorwerp, Dutch for "Hanny's Object", is really enormous, about the size of the Milky Way Galaxy and glowing strongly in the greenish light produced by ionized oxygen atoms. It is thought to be a tidal tail of material left by an ancient galaxy merger, illuminated and ionized by the outburst of a quasar inhabiting the center of distant spiral galaxy IC 2497. Its exciting 2007 discovery by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel while participating online in the Galaxy Zoo project has since inspired a search and discovery of eight more eerie green cosmic features. Imaged in these panels by the Hubble Space Telescope, all eight appear near galaxies with energetic cores. Far outside their associated galaxies, these objects are also likely echoes of quasar activity, illuminated only as light from a core quasar outburst reaches them and ultimately fading tens of thousands of years after the quasar outburst itself has faded away. Of course a galaxy merger like the impending merger of our own Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy, could also trigger the birth of a quasar that would illuminate our distant future version of Hanny's Voorwerp.
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April 4th 1841: President Harrison diesOn this day in 1841, the...
William Henry Harrison (1773 - 1841)
John Tyler (1790 - 1862)
Harrison's tomb in North Bend, Ohio
April 4th 1841: President Harrison dies
On this day in 1841, the ninth President of the United States - William Henry Harrison - died in office. Harrison was a former military officer, and saw active duty in the United States’ many wars against Native-Americans, and from this position arose to Governor of the Indiana Territory. One of Harrison’s most famous engagements during his army career was the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, which earned him the nickname ‘Old Tippecanoe’. Indeed, in 1840 once Harrison was nominated for President with John Tyler as his running mate, a popular Whig campaign song celebrated ‘Tippecanoe and Tyler too’. The Whig campaign sought to present Harrison as a ‘man of the people’, stressing his hard cider and log cabin roots. He won the election, but Harrison’s time in office was the shortest of any U.S. President, serving only 32 days. He died of complications from pneumonia which he supposedly caught at his inauguration, held in the middle of winter, as he did not want to look old and so refused to wear a coat. Harrison was the oldest President to take office, aged 68, until Ronald Reagan in 1981. In 1841, for the first time in American history, a President had died in office, and his Vice-President - in this case John Tyler - became President. Tyler’s record in office was hardly illustrious, and he so alienated voters and politicians that he left office with the support of neither of the main parties.
Interracial marriage has been legal in the U.S. since 1967. In 2008, a record 14.6% of all first...
Interracial marriage has been legal in the U.S. since 1967. In 2008, a record 14.6% of all first marriages in the U.S. were interracial marriages. Nine percent of whites, 16% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics, and 31% of Asians married someone whose race or ethnicity was different from their own.
Panel Says Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Is A Disease, And Renames...
Panel Says Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Is A Disease, And Renames It
The mysterious and complicated illness that has been called chronic fatigue syndrome has a new definition and a new name: Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease, or SEID for short.
The name change is big news because many patients and experts in the field hate the name chronic fatigue syndrome; they feel that it trivializes the condition. Another name, myalgic encephalomyelitis, has been used in Canada, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, but it doesn’t accurately describe the illness, either.
The condition, which can render people housebound or bedridden and unable to work or go to school, is believed to affect between 860,000 and 2.5 million Americans. Because there is no specific test for SEID, many people who have it haven’t been diagnosed, and health care professionals often have viewed patients as complainers whose symptoms are psychological, not physical.
But a 15-member panel of the Institute of Medicine, an independent (IOM) government advisory body with a lot of clout, says otherwise. In a report released, the panel writes that the condition “is real” and admonishes clinicians, “It is not appropriate to dismiss these patients by saying ‘I am chronically fatigued, too.’ “
The new definition, for use in adults and children, focuses on the disease’s core symptoms:
- Profound fatigue lasting at least six months;
- Total exhaustion after even minor physical or mental exertion that patients sometimes describe as a “crash” and is known medically as post-exertional malaise;
- Unrefreshing sleep;
- Cognitive impairment (aka “brain fog”) or a worsening of symptoms upon standing.
This definition is much simpler than some previous ones for chronic fatigue syndrome and myalgic encephalomyelitis. And it doesn’t require doctors to run a bunch of expensive and time-consuming tests to rule out other causes for the patient’s symptoms before making the diagnosis.
In the 235-page report, the panel summarizes the scientific evidence it used to come up with the new definition, as well as for other aspects of the condition, including links to viruses such as Epstein-Barr (the cause of mononucleosis), and studies showing that people with the disorder have abnormal immune systems.
The condition has had all sorts of other names in the past, including epidemic neuromyasthenia, myalgia nervosa, and Royal Free Disease, after the British hospital where an outbreak reportedly occurred in 1955.
Systemic exertion intolerance disease might not roll off the tongue, but the panel chose it very purposefully, says Dr. Lucinda Bateman, a panel member who runs a fatigue specialty clinic in Salt Lake City.
"For years, nobody has been able to come up with an alternate name. We struggled, but we tried to pack each word with meaning," she said.
Rather than use a name that presumes a cause, the IOM committee decided to name the disease by focusing on post-exertional malaise, the core symptom. “Systemic” indicates that the reaction to exertion involves the entire body, while “intolerance” implies impairment. “Glucose intolerance,” for example, is a medical term used in relation to diabetes.
And, Bateman told Shots, the panel chose “disease” rather than “disorder” because “it’s a stronger word.”
Beyond encouraging physicians to take the condition seriously, diagnose patients and treat their symptoms, the panel also intends for the document to spur more research funding. As more information becomes available, both the diagnostic criteria and the name are expected to evolve. The goal is to identify markers in the patient’s blood or body tissues that can be used both to diagnose the illness and as targets for treatment. Indeed, the report calls for a re-evaluation of both the definition and the name in “no more than five years.”
"Change is not easy in any system, especially complex systems," Bateman says. "But I think we have about as good a foundation as we possibly could have to jump-start this process."
Patient advocates — some of whom were concerned about the IOM endeavor when it began over a year ago — are now cautiously optimistic. Jennie Spotila, a patient and former attorney who writes a widely read blog about the illness, tells Shots, “I think the IOM panel got a lot of things right with the new criteria. They focused on the central feature of the disease, post-exertional malaise, and limited the required symptoms to a short list.”
Spotila praised the new name both for focusing on post-exertional malaise and for using the word “disease,” although she also predicted that “SEID will be controversial, especially for the advocates like myself who argued for use of the term myalgic encephalomyelitis. … I would like to see data that support SEID as a better name.”
Asked whether she believes the IOM report will help patients, she responded, “That all depends on how widely and how accurately the criteria are implemented.”
The first Lebanese flag was drawn by hand, then signed by...
The first Lebanese flag was drawn by hand, then signed by Lebanese Parliament members in 1946.
guttmacher: In the first quarter of this year, 332 abortion...
In the first quarter of this year, 332 abortion restrictions were proposed in state legislatures around the country. Of these, 53 provisions were approved by at least one legislative chamber in 15 states, and nine had been enacted in four states. Learn more: http://gu.tt/y1spQU
911memorialmuseum:The dedication of the original World Trade...
The dedication of the original World Trade Center took place on April 4, 1973. A ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrated the completion of the Twin Towers’ construction.
At 110 stories each, 1 WTC, or the North Tower, and 2 WTC, the South Tower, provided nearly 10 million square feet of office space. Reaching over a quarter of a mile into the sky, they were the tallest buildings in NYC, and for a brief period, they were the tallest buildings in the world. As of 2001, the WTC housed more than 430 businesses from 28 different countries — roughly 50,000 workers. It attracted tens of thousands of tourists and commuters every day.
Minoru Yamasaki, the architect who designed the original WTC, said that the WTC “should, because of its importance, become a living representation of man’s belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness.”
Photo taken by Fernando Zaccaria
Did you visit the original Twin Towers? What do you remember most about them?
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