Sentences, etc.

✈ How Microbes Defend and Define Us

It never occurred to me that poop could be used to save lives like this:

Dr. Khoruts mixed a small sample of her husband’s stool with saline solution and delivered it into her colon. Writing in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology last month, Dr. Khoruts and his colleagues reported that her diarrhea vanished in a day. Her Clostridium difficile infection disappeared as well and has not returned since.

The procedure — known as bacteriotherapy or fecal transplantation — had been carried out a few times over the past few decades. But Dr. Khoruts and his colleagues were able to do something previous doctors could not: they took a genetic survey of the bacteria in her intestines before and after the transplant.

Before the transplant, they found, her gut flora was in a desperate state. “The normal bacteria just didn’t exist in her,” said Dr. Khoruts. “She was colonized by all sorts of misfits.”

Two weeks after the transplant, the scientists analyzed the microbes again. Her husband’s microbes had taken over. “That community was able to function and cure her disease in a matter of days,” said Janet Jansson, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a co-author of the paper. “I didn’t expect it to work. The project blew me away.”

Amazing stuff.

Via Neatorama

Link ✈ Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 11:09 AM

✈ Understanding vs. Memorizing Systems Management Part 2

In 1995 my boss (and technical mentor), Tom Mann, asked me to network the office computers (running Windows 3.11 for Workgroups). He purchased Novell NetWare 3.12 and told me get the network up within two weeks. I had never done such a thing and I asked him, “Um, how do I do that?” His response will be forever etched in my mind.

“Figure it out.”

Bingo.

Link ✈ Wednesday, July 7, 2010, 1:50 PM

✈ Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

I think everyone on this two-thirds-covered-by-water planet needs to read this article in full.

There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening (source: CDC).

I had no idea. The article tells you what to look for and how little time you have to act. Read it.

Via Daring Fireball

Link ✈ Wednesday, July 7, 2010, 12:40 PM