Thursday, July 15
Wednesday, July 14
IVIG Day
Intravenous immune globulin ("IVIG") is a product made up of antibodies that can be given intravenously (through a vein).
Antibodies are proteins that your body makes to help you fight infections. Each antibody made by your body is slightly different, because it fits like a lock and key to every foreign substance (such as a piece of a virus or bacterium) that gets into your body. Over the course of your life your body makes thousands of different antibodies as you are exposed to different infectious organisms that your body considers to be "foreign."
IVIG is prepared from the blood donated by thousands of people, to make a super-concentrated and very diverse collection of antibodies against many possible infectious organisms your body might encounter.
WHY DO I NEED IVIG?
IVIG is used primarily in two situations.
One reason you might need IVIG is if your body does not make enough antibodies. This is called "humoral immunodeficiency." The IVIG simply provides extra antibodies that your body cannot make on its own. The antibodies usually last for several weeks to months and help your body fight off a large variety of infections. If you are getting IVIG for this reason, you will need to get it on a regular schedule.
A second reason you might need IVIG is if your immune system has started attacking your own body by producing antibodies directed against your own cells. Conditions in which this happens include:
●Destruction of your own blood platelets (known as immune thrombocytopenia [ITP])
●Destruction of your own red blood cells (known as autoimmune hemolytic anemia [AIHA])
●Attack on your nervous system, such as nerves that control your breathing (in Guillain-Barré syndrome) or nerves that control sensation (for example, in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy [CIDP]) SOURCE: UpToDate Patient Education
I receive monthly infusions of IVIG because my Oncologist fears that my low immunity and anemia from over a decade of cancer treatments that have included: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy, puts me in a HIGH RISK CATEGORY of contracting other life threatening illnesses.
Today, is the day that I get my monthly infusion. I will arrive at UT Medical Center around 7:00 am and finish around 10:30 am and like always will be receiving premeds to keep from my getting sick. The nurses will access my port on the right side of my upper body.
Of the two and a half hour treatment, I will probably sleep for about 90 minutes due to the premeds... it's weird at first as I feel lightheaded and weak and my legs feel restless... then, my eyes get heavy and the next thing I know I am waking up and there's about 30 minutes left.
A Lurking Cosmic Cloud
Not a galaxy, although it's of a comparable size: A vast cloud of hot, faintly glowing gas, bigger than the Milky Way, in the space between galaxies congregating in a huge cluster.
Scientists believe this cloud may have been unceremoniously stripped from a galaxy in the cluster, the first gas cloud of this kind we've ever seen. Even more surprisingly, it hasn't dissipated, but has remained clumped together for hundreds of millions of years.
This not only tells us something new about the environments inside galaxy clusters, it suggests a new way to explore and understand these colossal structures.
"This is an exciting and also a surprising discovery. It demonstrates that new surprises are always out there in astronomy, as the oldest of the natural sciences," said physicist Ming Sun of the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Galaxy clusters are, as the name suggests, groups of galaxies that are bound together gravitationally. The galaxy cluster where our 'orphan' gas cloud was found is called Abell 1367, or the Leo Cluster, around 300 million light-years away. It contains at least 72 major galaxies, and makes up part of a larger, supercluster complex.
Such environments often have a lot going on, and astronomers like to peer into them to try and figure out how our Universe is connected. In 2017, astronomers using Japan's Subaru Telescope spotted what appeared to be a small, warm cloud in Abell 1367; since its origin was unclear, they went back with more instruments to take a closer look. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...
Milestone: China's Zhurong
Sara Webb, PhD candidate in Astrophysics, Swinburne University of Technology
Rebecca Allen, Swinburne Space Office Project Coordinator | Manager Swinburne Astronomy Productions, Swinburne University of Technology
China's Zhurong rover landed safely on Mars on May 15, making China only the third country to successfully land a rover on the red planet.
More impressively still, China is the first Mars-going nation to carry out an orbiting, landing and rovering operation as its first mission.
Planetary scientist Roberto Orosei told Nature China is "doing in a single go what NASA took decades to do," while astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell described China's decision to include a rover in its maiden Mars outing as a "very gutsy move."
Where did it land?
Zhurong, named after the god of fire in Chinese mythology, separated from the Tianwen-1 orbiter and touched down close to the site of previous NASA missions, on a vast plain called Utopia Planitia. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...
Zhurong, named after the god of fire in Chinese mythology, separated from the Tianwen-1 orbiter and touched down close to the site of previous NASA missions, on a vast plain called Utopia Planitia. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...
Tuesday, July 13
Peas & Ham Soup
This soup is my take on pea and ham with a few extra vegetables. It’s a great way to get your greens and feed a crowd. Soup is ideal to have on hand as a frozen meal too, so make extra and portion it out. Discover more of our favourite nourishing soup recipes.
VEGETABLE-PACKED PEA SOUP RECIPE
Serves 8
25g butter
1 leek, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 ham hock
1 litre water
3 cups dried split peas
4 cups shredded silverbeet
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Few extra leaves of silverbeet
1. In a large pot melt the butter. Add the leek and garlic, cooking for 3 or 4 minutes (it doesn’t have to completely soften). Add the hock, water and split peas, bringing to a simmer for 2 hours. Check the water level every so often and give it a good stir. Add the silverbeet and continue to cook for another 30 minutes. Remove the hock, shaking off any vegetables, and set aside.
2. Puree the soup until smooth, then return to your pot. Season with salt and pepper. Shred the meat from the hock and add back into the soup.
3. Serve hot with a few extra silverbeet leaves folded through and some hot crusty bread or toast.
Largest Migration Nightly
The researchers say the cover of night affords greater protection from larger predators, allowing sea life to swim more safely toward the surface, where they feed in energy-rich waters. These findings were made possible by innovative audio technology that recorded when animals migrated from the depths to the surface, and back again.
Their research documents sunset and sunrise movements of animals between the surface and the twilight zone, a layer of water that stretches from 660 to 3,300 feet deep. They explain that deep-sea creatures stay in these deeper waters during the day to avoid tuna, salmon, seabirds, and other predators that rely on sight to hunt their prey.
“Their movements are not just pre-programmed to go up or go down,” one of the researchers, Benoit-Bird, explained to Phys.org. “There’s a lot more nuance and decisions to be made night to night and even minute to minute, based on how hungry they are and how much of a risk there is.”
Scientists were able to record tens of thousands of single targets rising from the depths using the new audio technology. Analysis of that acoustic data revealed larger, more visible animals may delay their dinnertime migration up to 80 minutes after sunset. Meanwhile, smaller animals began their migration to shallower waters sooner than larger animals—just 20 minutes after sundown—and faster swimmers migrated earlier than weaker ones.
Squid, for example, are fast-swimming creatures, thanks to jet propulsion. They are better able to elude predators than many fish or crustaceans, so they are the first to leave the depths for the surface.
“The most interesting thing we found was how dramatically animals can change their migration when predators are nearby,” Benoit-Bird said, referencing dolphins as an example of predators that can immediately impact squid migration.
Their findings shed new light on why deep-sea animals embark on their massive migration each night. Studying this massive migration is critical to understanding ocean health, says Benoit-Bird, calling the migration a “biological conveyor belt” that moves energy and carbon around in the oceans.
Sign of Alien Life
In 2005, NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter discovered geysers blasting particles of water ice into space from "tiger stripe" fractures near Enceladus' south pole. That material, which forms a plume that feeds Saturn's E ring (the planet's second-outermost ring), is thought to come from a huge ocean of liquid water that sloshes beneath the moon's icy shell.
And there's more than just water ice in the plume. During numerous close flybys of the 313-mile-wide (504 kilometers) Enceladus, Cassini spotted many other compounds as well — for example, dihydrogen (H2) and a variety of carbon-containing organic compounds, including methane (CH4).
The dihydrogen and methane are particularly intriguing to astrobiologists. The H2 is likely being produced by the interaction of rock and hot water on Enceladus' seafloor, scientists have said, suggesting that the moon has deep-sea hydrothermal vents — the same type of environment that may have been life's cradle here on Earth.
In addition, H2 provides energy for some Earth microbes that produce methane from carbon dioxide, in a process called methanogenesis. Something similar could be happening on Enceladus, especially given that Cassini also spotted carbon dioxide, and a surprising bounty of methane, in the moon's plume.
"We wanted to know: Could Earth-like microbes that 'eat' the dihydrogen and produce methane explain the surprisingly large amount of methane detected by Cassini?" study co-lead author Régis Ferrière, an associate professor in the University of Arizona's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said in a statement. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...
Monday, July 12
A New Week
Some say that the new week begins on Sunday while some say the new week begins on Monday and I am sure that there are other opinions as to when the old week ends and the new week begins, but for me, I like it beginning on a Monday and ending on a Sunday.
So, here we are on a Monday and the beginning of a new week.
It is supposed to be another hot and humid day in this area so most of my day is going to be spent inside; however, this morning I am on my screened in back porch enjoying the rising sun with 2 of my 3 cats, along with my ever present YETI cup of decaf coffee with Cappuccino Mix... but only two spoons per coffee pod.
This week is uneventful except for Wednesday and Thursday where I have early morning treatments. Wednesday is my IVIG to help boost my immune system after13 years of monthly cancer treatments and Thursday is my monthly injection of Opdivo that is designed to suppress my metastatic melanoma. Additionally, I take 2-140 mg pills of imbruvica daily to suppress my non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
For a month of two, I have managed to arrange my doctor's appointments so that I have a complete 2 weeks where I don't have to go anywhere...
SIX years ago, my wife and I could not wait to go on some type of vacation at least every other month... and we did for about 3-4 years, then we got tired of it... right about the time that COVID-19 hit the US and for over a year, we went NOWHERE... and we became nowhere people sitting in our nowhere land making plans for nobody.
Damned if we didn't like staying at home... and, our cats like us staying at home as well... now we don't want to go NOWHERE or is it anywhere?
Education and Careers
However, if you decide that college is where you want to go... then consider this advice... Go to a Community College for your first two years...
Reasons:
- Much cheaper
- Your first two years are BS General Ed courses
PLUS - if you happen to live in TN, your first two years are paid for by the Government of TN as a thank you for living here. Talk about cheap...
Now, that you have your first two years out-of-the-way, any damn college in the nation (including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton) is likely to accept you for your 3rd and 4th years because the competition is less...
SECOND PIECE OF ADVICE
After you graduate, look for a job up North... and yes, it is much colder up there than in the South but the wages and salaries are much higher as is the cost of living... however, if you are not butt ass ugly and stupid, you can live relatively inexpensively for the first 10-12 years... now, you are about 35 years of age...
Transfer or relocate down South... Take your over-priced home and sell it and buy the same size house for 1/2 the price and save the rest in a tax free retirement account or open up an account in the Caymans that is not subject to US taxes.
Once you relocate, your salary may drop a little but you will still be making more than you really need, especially in East TN where the cost-of-living is 15-21% less than anywhere else (on average) in the USA...
ALL IT TAKES IS A LITTLE BIT OF FRIGGIN' COMMON SENSE AND PLANNING...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)