This is a bit of history I never knew before…..

A wild scenario? Not when you consider that there’s already been one banana apocalypse. Until the early 1960s, American cereal bowls and ice cream dishes were filled with the Gros Michel, a banana that was larger and, by all accounts, tastier than the fruit we now eat. Like the Cavendish, the Gros Michel, or “Big Mike,” accounted for nearly all the sales of sweet bananas in the Americas and Europe. But starting in the early part of the last century, a fungus called Panama disease began infecting the Big Mike harvest. The malady, which attacks the leaves, is in the same category as Dutch Elm disease. It appeared first in Suriname, then plowed through the Car- ibbean, finally reaching Honduras in the 1920s. (The country was then the world’s largest banana producer; today it ranks third, behind Ecuador and Costa Rica.)

Growers adopted a frenzied strategy of shifting crops to unused land, maintaining the supply of bananas to the public but at great financial and environmental expense—the tactic destroyed millions of acres of rainforest. By 1960, the major importers were nearly bankrupt, and the future of the fruit was in jeopardy. (Some of the shortages during that time entered the fabric of popular culture; the 1923 musical hit “Yes! We Have No Bananas” is said to have been written after songwriters Frank Silver and Irving Cohn were denied in an attempt to purchase their favorite fruit by a syntactically colorful, out-of-stock neighborhood grocer.) U.S. banana executives were hesitant to recognize the crisis facing the Gros Michel, according to John Soluri, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University and author of Banana Cultures, an upcoming book on the fruit. “Many of them waited until the last minute.”

Once a little-known species, the Cavendish was eventually accepted as Big Mike’s replacement after billions of dollars in infrastructure changes were made to accommodate different growing and ripening needs. Its advantage was its resistance to Panama disease. But in 1992, a new strain of the fungus—one that can affect the Cavendish—was discovered in Asia. Since then, Panama disease Race 4 has wiped out plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Taiwan, and it is now spreading through much of Southeast Asia. It has yet to hit Africa or Latin America, but most experts agree that it is coming. “Given today’s modes of travel, there’s almost no doubt that it will hit the major Cavendish crops,” says Randy Ploetz, the University of Florida plant pathologist who identified the first Sumatran samples of the fungus.

Also, see this. (h/t Marginal Revolution for both links)

The question is, is this real or fake? I don’t hear much about this type of explosive being used. And if it was this easy to make and this effective I would think it would be more common. I have also read a lot from people saying the threat from binary explosives is way overstated.

On the other hand, the Government seems to be honestly worried (not always the best argument I know). More importantly, Derek did a couple of posts (here and here) a while back that seemed to indicate that there was stuff out there we should be worried about. I imagine that someone with Phd in chemistry would know.

Vindication for all those paranoid types that thought that putting fluoride in drinking water was a bad idea. From Reuters….

“Some recent studies suggest that over-consumption of fluoride can raise the risks of disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland,” reports Scientific American editors (January 2008). “Scientific attitudes toward fluoridation may be starting to shift,” writes author Dan Fagin.

Sooner or later this is going to affect you personally (from News Target)…..

Nearly five percent of patients in U.S. hospitals may have acquired a particular antibiotic resistant staph infection, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).

Researchers surveyed a total of 1,200 hospitals and other health care facilities from all 50 states, and found 8,000 patients infected or colonized with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) — or 46 out of every 1,000. This suggests that up to 1.2 million hospital patients across the country may be infected every year.

Colonized patients are those who were found to be carrying the bacteria in or on their bodies, but who had not showed any symptoms of disease.

“This rate is between eight and 11 times greater than previous MRSA estimates,” APIC wrote.

The majority of the infections had originated within the medical facility; 67 percent arose in patients being treated for general medical conditions (such as diabetes or pulmonary or cardiovascular problems) and not in intensive care patients.

Judah Folkman died on Monday. If you are like me and you have never heard of the man before you can read his his New York Times obituary here. But what I found to be really interesting is this interview at Academy of Achievement. The first part of the interview is nothing special. Just the typical biographical stuff. But once you get to this point it gets pretty interesting. Here is how the real meat of the interview starts….

The obstacles mainly were in the very beginning, in the late ’60s, when we proposed the idea that tumors need to recruit their own private blood supply. That was met with almost universal hostility and ridicule and disbelief by other scientists. Because the dogma at that time was that tumors did not need to stimulate new blood vessels, they just grew on old ones. And that even if they could, after we showed it, the next disbelief was it didn’t make any difference; it was a side effect like pus in a wound. So if you said you were studying wound healing and you found pus, they said you were studying a side effect, it’s not important. And then after we showed it was important, which took us about five years (and we said there would be specific signals, molecules that would stimulate this, everyone said — pathologists, surgeons, basic scientists — said, “No, that’s non-specific inflammation. You’re studying dirt.” They used to say, “You’re studying dirt. There will be no such molecules.” And then when we actually proved that there was — that was now 1983 (starting in the late ’60s), we had the first molecule. They said, “Well, but you’ll never prove that that’s what tumors use.” So it was each step.

H/T In the Pipeline

From Science Daily……

Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered that lower cholesterol levels can actually reduce muscle gain with exercising. Lead investigator Steven Riechman, assistant professor of health and kinesiology, and Simon Sheather, head of the Department of Statistics, along with colleagues from The Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, have recently had their findings published in the Journal of Gerontology.

H/T Vanderleun

From The Speed Trap Exchange…..

You see them everyday, Speed Traps. The police may be out in the open, hiding behind bridge abutments, or passing overhead in an airplane. As is obvious from the traffic flow, the speed limit is grossly under-posted and universally ignored.

Traffic is moving safely and expeditiously, but not legally according to the posted speed limit. As fast as the pen can be applied to paper, driver after driver is issued a speeding ticket that results in exorbitant fines, points on their driver’s licenses and insurance surcharges.

Fortunately, you know about the speed traps on your regularly traveled routes, but what about those times you are on unfamiliar streets and highways? If only there was a way you could share your knowledge of speed traps, in exchange for the speed trap knowledge of others.

The site has lots of interesting articles relating to how speed limits are set and the latest scientific research as to what safe speeds are. And of course they have an exchange where people post information relating to speed traps all over the country. I was surprised to see that there where some speed traps that I recognized on the the list.

Whilst discussing the finer points of a recent surgical proceedure, we got to wondering why I.V.s are placed in top of the arm (forearm or back of hand). I hypothised that perhaps arteries ran along the bottom of the arm and veins ran along the top of the arm (as I had barely enough knowledge to grasp that arteries carry blood away from the heart and veins carry blood back to the heart, and it would seem to make sense they would want an in-bound lane, so to speak). So I did a very brief search on “where to insert an I.V.”, and found a step by step tutorial for it. My favorite bit?

Select a good insertion site. A 20g in the back of the hand can be a pain in the anus for the patient, especially if it is in his dominant hand. It’s fiddly and frequently occludes with dorsiflexion. There are usually plenty of veins on the forearm…..well at least have a look. And don’t forget the basilic veins hiding under the forearm.
Make sure you shave the area with a surgical shaver if he/she is a hairy fellow. The tapes will adhere better and remove easier. Don’t use a disposable razor that might damage skin integrity. Confucius say; “pulling out arm hairs of big man sure way to hear sound of one hand slapping.”

From SPIEGEL,

Strange as it may seem, the dead have quit rotting in German cemeteries — they are turning into wax-like corpses. Will the use of burial chambers solve the problem? Or is extensive soil reconditioning the only viable alternative?

Cemeteries are supposed to be the quietest places on earth. But that notion may soon have to be laid to rest: Exhumation experts are currently conducting large-scale digging operations in German graveyards, belying the very concept of eternal peace.

Corpses are no longer decaying in many German cemeteries. Instead, the deceased become waxen, an uncanny process that has become so rampant it can no longer be ignored.

Both liberals and conservatives tend to have a Euro-centric view of history. That is to say, both camps tend to view the rise of the Europeans as something that was bound to happen. This view enables liberals to avoid confronting the cultural failings of the countries that were conquered by Europeans on the grounds that Click Here to continue reading.