The etymology of the word Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera are the insects with scaly wings – the moths and butterflies, in other words. 160,000 species of moth worldwide, 20,000 butterflies. 2500 of the moths in the UK and a mere 52 butterfly species. Incidentally, the only truly distinguishing feature between moths and butterflies being that butterflies have club-like antennae and the majority of moths don’t.
Anyway, lepidoptera from the Greek “lepis” meaning scale” and “pteron” meaning wing (or feather). As in the flaky mica mineral lepidolite and the prehistoric winged reptiles, the pterosaurs.
So, anyway, here are some lep...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 27, 2018 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs
Home cooking: Healthy family meals
Family meals are beneficial for so many reasons. People who prepare meals at home tend to consume significantly more fruits and vegetables, and less sugar and fat. People who enjoy meals at home with others, sitting together and conversing, also have reduced stress and higher life satisfaction. The more frequently families with children have meals together, the more likely the children are to eat a high-quality diet, and the less likely to be overweight or obese. There are also other benefits: these children tend to have higher self-esteem and better academic performance, as well as lower risk of engaging in risky behavior...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - August 21, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Monique Tello, MD, MPH Tags: Adolescent health Children's Health Food as medicine Prevention Source Type: blogs
The evolving definition of doctor
Doctor: (from Latin docere “teach” Greek phusikḗ epistḗmē “knowledge of nature”) a specially trained and skilled person who holds an advanced medical degree and is licensed to practice the healing arts.
My definition of doctor keeps evolving. As a child, I was cared for by FPs who helped set bones, suture skin and fight infections like measles, chicken pox, and strep. Though I didn’t like going, I usually experienced healing on leaving their antiseptic-smelling office.
In sixth grade, a teacher took me to visit her neonatologist spouse. I was awestruck by the life-saving team’s battles to save the seco...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 13, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/joe-bocka" rel="tag" > Joe Bocka, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Emergency Medicine Practice Management Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 6th 2018
In this study, we analyzed FGF21 levels and alterations in the expression of genes encoding components of the FGF21-responsive molecular machinery in adipose tissue from aged individuals so as to ascertain whether altered FGF21 responsiveness that develops with aging jeopardizes human health and/or accelerates metabolic disturbances associated with aging.
We studied a cohort of 28 healthy elderly individuals (≥70 years) with no overt signs of metabolic or other pathologies and compared them with a cohort of 35 young healthy controls (≤40 years). Serum FGF21 levels were significantly increased in elderly individ...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 5, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Undoing Aging: Doug Ethell's Presentation on the Leucadia Therapeutics Approach to Treating Alzheimer's Disease
Doug Ethell has a clear and comparatively easily tested hypothesis on an important cause of Alzheimer's disease: that it results from the progressive failure of drainage of cerebrospinal fluid through one particularly crucial pathway in the skull. This traps ever greater levels of metabolic waste in the brain, such as amyloid-β, tau, and α-synuclein, and leads to the spectrum of well-known neurodegenerative diseases characterized by protein aggregates and resultant dysfunction and death of neurons.
Dave Gobel of the Methuselah Foundation backed the first work on this hypothesis a few years back, and the result is ...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 1, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
The immigrant moth
Lots of animals species migrate – buffalo, wildebeest, swallows, swifts, monarch butterflies, and of course, moths. I found two Silver Y (Autographa gamma) this morning, before the rain. This species can turn up in the thousands, according to UK Moths, it’s a day and night flyer.
Curiously, having photographed it this morning and headed back to my PC to look for an ID, I logged into the “Moths UK Flying Tonight” group on Facebook and the first moth in the newsfeed was a Silver Y. More specifically, because its “Y” is split in two it was actually Silver y “f.bipartita”. But, m...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - July 29, 2018 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs
Where Is the Boundary to Augment Life?
Cloning, CRISPR and gene editing, synthetic life forms, and longevity. The latest scientific discoveries are able to offset the natural order of human existence and meddle with sacred questions of life and death. Even so, does gaining insight into the secrets of being mean it should also be put into practice? Are we aware of the consequences? Where are the boundaries to augment life?
Life, death and the coin for Charon the Ferryman
In Japanese folklore, the Shinigami, gods or spirits of death came to the persons who were destined to die and invited them over the threshold of life and death. In ancient Egypt, Anubis, having...
Source: The Medical Futurist - July 28, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Bioethics Cyborgization artificial intelligence augmentation bioethical cloning CRISPR death future gene editing Health Healthcare life longevity research synthetic life Source Type: blogs
It's already happening
The Guardian environmental reporter Damian Carrington interviews Michael Mann, and some of his colleagues. Maybe you heard about theunprecedented heat wave in Japan, and if you caught the Open Championship on TV last weekendyou know about the European drought and heat wave that ' s threatening crops across the continent, andcaused wildfires from Greece to the arctic. And there ' s a lot more, including a particularly bad fire seasonin the U.S. Oh, this is fun: the weather forecast for Basra, Iraq.I would say that qualifies as uninhabitable.The Mueller witch hunt has already caught a lot of witches -- 5 guilty pleas and the...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 27, 2018 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Tropical Travel Trouble 011 Tonsillitis and the Bull
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
aka Tropical Travel Trouble 011
Peer Reviewers: Dr Jennifer Ho, ID physician QLD, Australia and Dr Mark Little, ED physician QLD, Australia.
You are working in far North Queensland and encounter a 20 year old Indigenous man with tonsillitis on your ED short stay ward round. He has been receiving IV penicillin and metronidazole overnight but is deteriorating and now cannot open his mouth beyond 1.5cm, and has a swollen neck (some might say ‘Bull neck’). In add...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - July 25, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Amanda McConnell Tags: Clinical Cases Tropical Medicine antitoxin bull neck c. diphtheriae c.ulcerans DAT pseudomembrane vaccine Source Type: blogs
Tropical Travel Trouble 011 Tonsillitis and the Bull
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
aka Tropical Travel Trouble 011
Peer Reviewers: Dr Jennifer Ho, ID physician QLD, Australia and Dr Mark Little, ED physician QLD, Australia.
You are working in far North Queensland and encounter a 20 year old Indigenous man with tonsillitis on your ED short stay ward round. He has been receiving IV penicillin and metronidazole overnight but is deteriorating and now cannot open his mouth beyond 1.5cm, and has a swollen neck (some might say ‘Bull neck’). In add...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - July 25, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Amanda McConnell Tags: Clinical Cases Tropical Medicine antitoxin bull neck c. diphtheriae c.ulcerans DAT pseudomembrane vaccine Source Type: blogs
Mothley Crew
My very good friend Rob, fellow bigMouth chorister, cabinet maker, luthier, painter, photographer, and, as it turns out, amateur lepidopterist built himself a moth trap back in the mid-2000s to entertain his children. You set the trap up to do its job overnight. It is basically a sealed wooden box with a big funnel and a lamp. At night, the flying creatures are attracted to the lamp, find themselves perambulating down the funnel and into the box, which is lined with cardboard egg cartons.
There they will happily stay until dawn, when the amateur lepidopterist will pay a visit to see what lurks within, setting them all fre...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - July 24, 2018 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs
Learning from old research (digging into history)
I recently submitted a manuscript to a journal. After the usual delay as the reviewers commented on my draft, I received the feedback – one comment stood out to me: “the references are quite old”. I scurried around to find some more recent references and resubmitted, but as I did, I started pondering this drive to continually draw on recent research even if the findings of the older references had not been superseded. There is a sense that maybe journal editors and perhaps people reading the journals think that old research has no merit.
As someone who relishes reading about the history of pain and pain m...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - July 22, 2018 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Back pain Low back pain Professional topics history Source Type: blogs
Who named our bones? And what were they thinking?
All of our 200+ bones have names, which facilitates describing them when we cannot actually hold them or point directly at them. It might be easier to remember the names if they were familiar ones like Robert, Sally, and Kevin, but no such luck. Latin was the original language of science, so the bones received Latin names. Some of those were derived from Greek. All were purely descriptive and widely understood, providing that you spoke Latin. For example, the shoulder blade is mostly flat and triangular. An anatomist picked one up, pondered a bit, and decided it resembled the blade on a shovel or spade. He named it scapul...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 21, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/roy-a-meals" rel="tag" > Roy A. Meals, MD < /a > Tags: Conditions Orthopedics Source Type: blogs
How eating breakfast helps you lose weight
You're reading How eating breakfast helps you lose weight, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Have you ever been in the middle of that amazing dream where you just won the lottery and you’re about to go on a shopping spree, and then you wake up suddenly to the annoying sound of BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP? Oh yeah, you know what that sound is, it’s the sound of death, the alarm clock! Of course, you hit the snooze button enough times that by the time you actually get out of bed, your rushing around lik...
Source: PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement - July 20, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: malloryar86 Tags: diet health and fitness Source Type: blogs
Why An Upgraded Hippocratic Oath Is Needed In The Digital Era
Download the Hippocratic Oath 2.0
The Hippocratic Oath is the most famous text in Western medicine and constitutes the ethical basis of the medical profession. For centuries, it has provided an overview of the principles of this noble mission and doctors’ professional behavior. At the dawn of a new era in medicine, it is high time to rewrite the Oath so that it would reflect the state of technological development, changes in social structures and in general, the requirements of the 21st century.
The Hippocratic Oath in historical perspective
The medical profession adopted the Oath of Hippocrates as its ethical code of co...
Source: The Medical Futurist - July 18, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Bioethics Future of Medicine Medical Education code of conduct digital health Healthcare hippocratic oath med student MedEd technology Source Type: blogs
