Horizontal Perspective 横顾天下

As a pharmacist, I was trained to adhere to the axioms ”The right medication for the right patient in the right form at the right dosage at the right time”. However, “the right dosage” is presumptive upon the physician prescribing the appropriate dosage for the patient at hand. Until recently, physicians determined the dosages based mainly on weight, (sometimes based on age), with no idea if the drug would be effective for that particular person.

This week, Forbes.com reports (Article: The Best Medications For Your Genes) that the same advances in genomics that are letting people know about their likelihood of getting certain diseases can also let doctors know what drugs, and what dosages, will be likely to do the most good.

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All the students at Luolang Elementary School (洛岚小学) in Huangping (黄坪), a prosperous town in southern China know the key rules: Do not run in the halls. Take your seat before the bell rings. Raise your hand to ask a question. And oh, yes: Salute every passing car on your way to and from school.

Education officials promoted the saluting edict to reduce traffic accidents and teach children courtesy. Critics, who have posted thousands of negative comments about the policy on China’s electronic bulletin boards, couldn’t agree less. Only inept officials would burden children with such a requirement rather than install speed bumps, many insisted.

China is hardly the only nation where local bureaucrats sometimes run a bit too free. But where many local officials are less than well trained and only the party can eject them from office, these dubious edicts by local governments are way too commonplace.  It gets so that skewering them has become a favourite pastime of China’s Internet users. Even the state-run media join in, although they rarely report who was behind the rules or suggest that they indicate a lack of competence to govern. Often, the skewering produces the desired results. (more…)

Scientists reported this week they have discovered an antibody that could minimise the major internal bleeding seen in traumas like bullet wounds and car crashes.

The team at Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) has discovered that a protein called histone is responsible for much of the damage, and that they have found a specific type of antibody that can block the ability of histone to cause damage. This could lead to new ways to treat diseases and serious injuries.

The histone protein normally sits in the nucleus of a cell, packed around the strands of DNA. It regulates the DNA, causing it to fold and form the characteristic double helix. When the cell is damaged by injury or disease, the histone is released into the blood system where it begins to kill the lining of blood vessels, causing damage. This, they believe, results in uncontrolled internal bleeding and fluid build-up in the tissues, which are life threatening.

Other researchers  had already discovered a specific type of antibody known as a monoclonal antibody that could block the histones. It had been observed that patients with auto-immune diseases make antibodies to the proteins in their cell nuclei but it was not known why.

The OMRF team have tested the antibody in mice with sepsis and it does stop the toxic effects of the histones and they recover, the researchers say. They now want to test it in primates and eventually humans.

Source: BBC NEWS – Antibody ‘fixes internal bleeds’

We have all heard of the saying “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”, and often dismissed it as a way mothers using the fear of God in us to get us to clean up after ourselves. Now it appears that mothers were right all along.

A recent study soon-to-be published (in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science), concluded that moral behaviour may be encouraged with nothing more than clean smells. The study, titled “The Smell of Virtue” was unusually simple and conclusive. They found a dramatic improvement in ethical behaviour with just a few spritzes of citrus-scented Windex.

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October 22 was the day of Windows 7 launch. The online media was so inundated with the many facets of this single piece of news you’d think nothing else happened on that day. In a departure from the traditional ads campaigns in previous launches, Microsoft has initiated many publicity events with the “seven” theme, examples:

• giveaway copies of the new OS to every resident of the Dutch village of Zevenhuizen (“Seven Houses”)
• repainted parts of the Spanish village Sietes (“Sevens”) in Windows-themed colours
• launch a Windows 7 Whopper with Burger King in Japan

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A study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry links daily consumption of candy at the age of 10 to an increased chance of being convicted of a violent crime by age 34. The researchers theorize the correlation comes from the way candy is given rather than the candy itself. Candy frequently given as a short-term reward can encourage impulsive behaviour, which can more likely lead to violence. An alternative explanation offered by the American Dietetic Association is that the candy indicates poor diet, which hinders brain development. The scientists stress they don’t imply candy should be removed from a child’s diet, although they do recommend moderation. The study controls for teachers’ reports of aggression and impulsivity at age 10, the child’s gender, and parenting style.

Study report : BJ Psych – Confectionery consumption in childhood and adult violence

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A photograph of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.  A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver. The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

Expert on Iranian Jewry said that “jian” ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews. They suggested Mr Ahmadinejad’s track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past. Mr Ahmadinejad has regularly levelled bitter criticism at Israel, questioned its right to exist and denied the Holocaust.

Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith. By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society.”

The Iranian leader has not denied his name was changed when his family moved to Tehran in the 1950s. But he has never revealed what it was change from or directly addressed the reason for the switch. Relatives have previously said a mixture of religious reasons and economic pressures forced his blacksmith father Ahmad to change when Mr Ahmadinejad was aged four.

Source: The Telegraph – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past

A 27-year-old man serving six years for stealing millions using forged credit cards over the internet was recruited to help write code needed for the installation of an internal prison TV station. He was left unguarded with unfettered access to the system and produced results that anyone but prison officials could have guessed. He installed a series of passwords on all the machines, shutting down the entire prison computer system.

It’s unbelievable that a criminal convicted of cyber-crime was allowed uncontrolled access to the hard drive. He set up such an elaborate array of passwords it took a specialist company to get it working.

Source: Daily Mirror – Jail chaos as lag hacker is left in charge of computer system

Last month I post a story about converting fat cells to adult stem cells : ‘Liposuction Leftovers’ Easily Converted To Stem Cells. Well, doctors at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center has done just that – replaced a 14-year-old boy’s missing cheekbones, partly by repurposing stem cells from his own body’s fatty tissue. (Other materials used include donated bone scaffolds, growth factors, and bone-coating tissue.)

The technique, if approved for widespread use, could benefit people who need more bone — everyone from cancer patients to injured war veterans. The group chose fat stem cells over those from bone marrow largely because of the ease of access.

One of the neat things about adipose-derived stem cells is they’re very easy to harvest. They also exist in just about the same proportion as bone marrow stem cells, which can be more difficult to obtain.

Source : Scientific American – Stem Cells from Fat Used to Grow Teen’s Missing Facial Bones

At shops in major cities all over China, pirated copies of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system went on display, a week before it officially was to go on sale. In anticipation of the demand, the shops have loaded up on huge stocks of pirated discs packed in unmarked white boxes, each expected to sell for as little as 20 Yuan (under US$3), about 1% of the list prices.

Windows 7’s ’early release’ in China underscores the perennial problem of software piracy in China, where an estimated 80 percent of software sold are pirated. The reason for this is simple economy. The typical PC owning student live on just 400 Yuan a month, an unlikely customer for a piece of software priced at over 2000 Yuan. In response to such reality, Microsoft will slash the price of its low-end Windows 7 Home Basic version to 399 Yuan, still 15 times as much as the pirated copies.

In a bid to counter the problem of piracy, last year Microsoft installed a patch from its Windows Update onto pirated versions of Windows XP that caused a black screen to be displayed every hour. That drove thousands of irate users to migrate to free software from open sources Linux distributors or domestic companies like Kingsoft.

Source: NY Times – Software Pirates in China Beat Microsoft to the Punch