Swobidu Health

Posts Tagged ‘long time’

The girl with the haunting gray eyes yawned. She carefully stroked the rifle she received just ten minutes ago. “This is going to be easy,” she thought. Her alluring eyes adjusted to the darkness enveloping the sleeping city of New York. She adjusted her slender body and looked down to search for her next target. With a sigh, she slowly and carefully touched the trigger. Alongside the rooftop building, she positioned herself on rested the world – renowned Grand Marmotte hotel known for hosting high – class events for authority figures and famous celebrities. An hour ago, she received an order to terminate the next heir of Jack Austen hotels, recognized for their five-star service around the globe.

Scanning around the exquisite gathering, she spotted a man with long, blonde, curly locks wearing a glimmering purple suit paired with a yellow tie. She smiled, and within seconds, she pulled the trigger. When she heard the screams, she looked up on the skies and noticed the slowly rising sun. Without a word, she packed up and left.

“Tessa! Tessa! Can you hear me?”

A hand covered with cheese waved in front of me. “Jesus, Tessa! You always do that!” A sigh came from the tiny blonde female trying to busy herself up with cheese – covered French fries. “Sorry, Bridgette. I’m still sleepy. Long night.” I blinked for what felt like a million times, hoping to wake myself up. I took a sip from the coffee Bridgette made and tried to relax myself. “Long night, huh? Lucky dog. I never get any action nowadays.” She winked, hoping to hear details of something that never happened. “You know what I mean. Homework, projects, and a long-as-life assignment due tomorrow.” I can feel the caffeine trying to kick in an effort to wake me, but insomnia seemed to be winning in this battle. “I know how you feel. Being a university freshmen sucks. I remember senior year like it was yesterday. We used to be big in high school, now it feels like I’m about to die… jeez.”

Bridgette and I had known each other since we were kids. When I was five years old, Bridgette’s father told me that my real parents went overseas to take care of business, but their plane crashed and no survivors were found, including my real parents. However, I never really felt alone because Bridgette’s parents treated me like their real daughter – they were always there for me as they were with Bridgette. Fortunately, my parents had left me a very generous amount to live life to the fullest – although I’m still being smart and try not to spend too much.

“Don’t worry, Bridd. We’ll be fine.” I smiled. She really is just like a sister to me. Since we were kids, we were always close. Thinking about the future, my plan was to finish McNally University with a PhD to become a doctor and Bridgette planned to be in the medical field as well – she wanted to be a surgeon. I used to make fun of her because I assumed her career path came from watching too much “Grey’s Anatomy,” but in the end she worked hard for her dream, and I fully respected her for that.

My sister was always quite strong in taking charge of her life, while here I am standing behind her footsteps. I never quite get myself but… I felt empty. I have friends. I have a family. I have a life. But I never felt complete. I never dated anyone, to be honest. Bridgette and I had a few arguments in high school about why I feel so “conservative” about the matter itself, but she gave up on me in the end and I just assumed I would become a nun. I laughed. I have no particular reason about not dating. I was actually quite decent – looking if I say so myself. Maybe it’s because I’m waiting for someone – a prince, maybe? I laughed again.

“You know it’s creepy when you space out and start laughing like that.” Bridget starred on with her deep brown eyes, interrupting the one-man conversation I was having with myself. “Sorry, Bridd. I’m ready. Let’s go.”

It was an unusually darker night. Bridget and I planned on escaping the horrible dinner menu the campus had set out for its students, so here we are aimlessly searching for a decent restaurant. Living on the rural area of New York has its disadvantages, after all. McNally University was known around the world as the number one medical school known for its amazing research facilities and advanced prototype medical machines, but to be honest – the food is ridiculously tasteless. When we found a good-looking Italian restaurant across the street from where we were standing, we started walking across.

Then I stopped.

It was so fast. Everything went fast. As if my eyes were playing tricks on me, everything felt so unreal. My body froze, resisting any movement. I felt my heartbeat raise.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The darkness should have covered the woman, but I had seen her. I see hiding in the darkness the woman who plans to kill me.

It happened three years ago. I was merely sixteen when I was stabbed. It was a fellow classmate, the cheerleader. It happened so fast. When I came to, I was in a strange building. And as fast as it happened, an old man in a strange black suit told me that many more will attempt to kill me because…

I was unnatural.

“You are not a normal human, and you do not belong to this world. I cannot explain any further than this, but I will do my best to help you. To live, you must kill. “

Alkas Mendo, the man who talked to me after I was stabbed, told me that to kill an assassin, I must be trained to become an assassin myself. There were many times after that where several more attempted to go after my life, but Alkas had the information I needed to kill them before they could even act on it. “What do they want from me, Alkas? I don’t want to die. What have I done wrong?” I remember asking him. The wrinkles on his forehead reflected panic, but then… he smiled.

“Just wait, Tessa. One day, you will understand everything. Until then, you must try to live a normal life.”

It had been seven months since the last time I was attempted to, and now someone came. I sense their presence easily, and here I am – vulnerable, defenseless, and I have Bridgette with me.

I don’t want this. I don’t want Bridgette to die. I don’t want to die.

“Tessa! Come on! The restaurant’s waiting for us!”Bridgette called on to me; she was already on the other side of the road where the restaurant laid on. It was full of people, so I knew she will be safe. I also knew I wasn’t.

I smiled at my beautiful sister for one last time, and ran the opposite way.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She smiled at me – a gun in hand and knife at the other. We were in the middle of McNally Park, a forest lush with trees and no people to watch me die. I moved back.

“Don’t be scared, little girl. You’re too pretty to look sad.” She laughed. The assassin was wearing a midnight black overall, with knives of all sort attached to her waistband. She was happy. Very happy. And here I am, vulnerable. I was fully trained; I knew what to do when someone confronted me like this. But I was petrified. The assassins who came after my life were nothing compared to the aura this woman was putting out.

She advances.

“Your gray eyes suggest fear, yet your crimson hair suggest otherwise.” She spoke, this time she wasn’t smiling. I moved back – it was all I could do.

She advances, this time quicker.

“Goodbye, Princess.” Her words were cold. She must have been in a rush because she wanted me dead as soon as possible. I closed my eyes.

She stabbed me.

Once.

Twice.

Blood. More Blood.

I was hallucinating. I could feel myself getting weaker, but for some reason I still had the strength to hallucinate, because what my eyes were seeing cannot be real.

Out of nowhere, a tall shadow quickly bombarded the assassin about to perform her final blow ; she was knocked out cold in an instant.

I felt peaceful.

I should be scared. But I felt peaceful. The presence of the shadow showed a man. I couldn’t see him clearly, but I felt his presence – it was warm. He saw me.

As if he flew, in an instant his body was leaning beside mine. I can feel myself being lift up, his hand tenderly touching my face.

Nostalgia.

I felt it. With the little strength I had left, I gave the man a small yet sincere smile.

His grip on me became harder – as if he had no intention of letting me go.

I saw him smile as well. But he was crying.

Blue eyes. I can see his blue eyes.

They were such beautiful yet sad eyes.

“I found you. I finally found you. I’m sorry I’m late. I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I finally found you… but-”

I hear him say, and I felt his tears running down on my face.

Without warning, my hand moved and pulled his head down to my own.

His lips met mine.

He froze. So did I. It was the moment I had been waiting for a long time. A very long time.

But then… there was peace.

What exactly is the paper titled / what page number /edition is it on?

Ed – thanks, the direct link to the paper has now been added.

Robert Springer – October 25, 2011 @ 09:21 pm PDT

This research is missing the point. You cannot do that for every substance, it is a bad approach.

I accidentally discovered that orally administered antifungal medication (itraconazole) is able to suppress completely all my once serious allergy symptoms. I contacted the NIH (NIAID) with this, and though they replied, they failed to grasp the importance (also in human lives) of this serendipitous knowledge.

Not only that, fungal medication has to be taken for a long time, since fungi need long treatments. the medication will start to work after some 20 days, it seems this is the time required to switch fungi off. When anti fungal medication is suspemded after several months, symptoms of allergy will be much lower or will be cured, and they will stay so. This furhter confirms fungi as the possible cause of all allergies. When having a health problem, it should be regular procedure to tes if it is caused by a virus, a bacteria or fungi, but it seems top researchers are failing to check this, as a starting point.

If somebody with a lab or research potential is reading this, please try it, it is too important to the lives of so many to just let it be forgotten (again). the medicines are already there it is simpler than usual to test this.

All the best to you all

JayDay – October 26, 2011 @ 03:25 am PDT

JayDay, I have many decades of experience with various allergies and strategies. What you most likely experienced is the cumulative inflammation effect. When you are stressed by one or more significant allergic reactions, it lowers your tolerance for others. Your fungal immune reactions could have made you more sensitive to your other more minor allergies. This is a response that I have much experience with.

I have also had experience with an allergy treatment that placed a small dose of the allergin under the tongue — which put it directly into the blood stream. the dose was individually tailored to turn off the reaction. it was a smaller dose than turned it on. it worked along the lines of when an infection was being cleared by the immune system, at a certain low level, the immune system turns off. This is what happens when the fever breaks and you suddenly feel well in an instant.

What the researchers have done here though is fantastic for its potential. just think about all the poison ivy sufferers who get a systemic reaction. Many people could benefit from this once it is fully developed for human use.

see3d – October 26, 2011 @ 10:05 am PDT

see3d, I don’t think what you suggest is the case. When I stumbled upon this, I was avoiding all known allergens, I was free from allergy symptoms and it was in the winter, so there were no pollens, which I was very allergic to. Since the fungal treatment went on for several months well into the spring, I realized with big surprise that spring I was not suffering hay fever anymore, and that was very evident to me as my symptoms were very evident every spring. I became free of any allergy symptoms even if I walked into the park in the middle of the spring. that would have been completely impossible before the antifungal treatment.

Curiously enough, I reproduced the same effect while on antibiotics. but contrary to antifungals, allergies would be worst than at the start of the treatment. My guess is that antibiotics didn’t kill fungi but freed them of competitors, and fungi used this antibiotic treatment time to spread without competition. I think this is also why allergies can be kickstarted after an intense and long tratment with antibiotics.

I think what happens is that some fungal pathogen is releasing some specific glycoproteins into the bloodstream to tweak the immune system to their benefit. Glycoproteins are used by the immune system as messengers. Fungi are altering the communication within the immune system, so that they keep it busy. This way the fungi can spread more easily: the immune system will be responding weakly to fungi for having to deal with too many things at a time. if somebody is taking antifungal medication, that will freeze fungal activity after a number of days, about 20. if this frozen state is kept long enough, the immune system will eventually be able to clear the fungi and allergies will be cured. if the treatment is not long enugh, allergies will improve.

Your approach may also work, but some people are allergic to dozens or hundreds of substances. some people don’t even know all the substances they are allergic to. You’ll still have to prescribe a treatment for each substance. IMO it makes little sense all that trouble if you can end it all quickly and easily by taking a single antifungal agent. the simplest solutions are often the best, they’rre more likely to be addressing the root of the problem, and that’s just what I think is happening with antifungals in this case.

JayDay – October 26, 2011 @ 03:03 pm PDT

JayDay, the treatment see3D decsribed, sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) is commonly called allergy drops. They are a form of desensitization and in that they are similar to the techinique in the article. there are no commercially available sublingual treatments for food allergies yet but there are allergy drops for most airborne allergies.

Allergy drops have been successfully used in Europe for decades and are endorsed by the World Health Organization. They are being adopted rapidly in the US.

Allergy Specific – October 26, 2011 @ 04:44 pm PDT

JayDay, Perhaps you did not realize that Winter has some of the worst pollen levels. Windborne pollens from trees are spread in Winter. I know.

I underwent anti-fungal treatments to no effect before I started SLIT treatments for aerosol and food allergies 25 years ago from the pioneers in the field. I got a lot of relief, but it was an ongoing process of adjusting doses every season.

The thing that finally got rid of most of my allergies was cleaning up my diet to get rid of grains and other high GI carbs and striving for low inflammation through balancing proteins, fats, and low GI carbs, along with EPA/DHA and other supplements. that cleared up almost all my many allergies. that evens out blood sugar, which to your point, also makes a less favorable environment for fungus to grow long term.

These things are as multi-faceted as individual immune systems.

see3d – October 26, 2011 @ 08:23 pm PDT

Allergy Specific, SLIT is a possibility, but it seems to me far too cumbersome. the number of possible allergens is very high, in the hundreds or thousands of substances. is like having no money and having to “desensitize” every shop in town about that fact, so that they will still sell you things despite your being broke. We don’t even know the number of shops in town, and it could be you really need something from a shop you didn’t know that existed or you were not able to desensitize.

Wouldn’t it be better just having an adequate income, a solution that fits all shops once and for all?

JayDay – October 27, 2011 @ 11:14 am PDT

see3d, my allergies were serious enough as to realize for sure if there were airborne pollens or not. the difference was dramatic enough to say that it wouldn’t go unnoticed.

Maybe your antifungal treatments were too short, non-systemic, or low dose? even topical treatments improved my allergies, in fact I realized about this after a topical treatment, then a friend doctor suggested me to try a systemic treatment. My experience is that you’ll need to take antifungals for at least 20 days to put fungi to sleep. then treatment should go on for three to six months.

It is interesting what you say about nutrition, blood sugar levels could definitely be a hint.

Sure there is an individual aspect to this, but if I’m right, antifungals should work just about the same way for everybody with allergies, just like antibiotics work approximately fine for everybody in other conditions. the key here would be a long enough systemic treatment with the right dose.

JayDay – October 27, 2011 @ 11:33 am PDT

You are amazing to keep going but life is worth living no matter what comes your way. I too am a Multiple Meloma patient that was diagnosed with stage II in July 2008. I have been on Dex and Revlimid. my doctor says I have responded well to that treatment but has never had a patient that has yo-yo’d so much I took treatment treatment of the drugs for 7 months and my numbers were low enough that he gave my body a rest. I was okay for 17 months then he put me back on treatment. Two months later I had to start treatment again. I have had two relapses. and my numbers are going back up again. Soon I will be on my 3rd relapse.

I work full time and have only missed a day of work since 2008. I think God everyday for the time I have to spend with my husband of 48 years, my 2 childred, and 4 grandchildren. Tomorrow is a great day because it is my 69th birthday.

Thank you and your wife for all you do to keep us informed, God bless you and I wish for a speedy recovery and it will last a long time.

Advertising methods are always up for review because new ways to advertise come about all the time. although advertising with business magnets has been around for a long time, many people are just now catching on to their many uses.

Business magnets work in many ways but the most popular form of advertising with these magnet types is by simply creating an actual business card magnet. Most companies use the same design for the magnet as they do for the card. this makes design costs lower and keeps consistent with what customers expect. There are two main reasons why people might choose magnets over the traditional business card.

1. They will not rip like cards- no matter how strong the cardstock used on cards is, they still will wear down after prolonged use. some cards even start to lose their luster before they even get into the hands of the potential client.

2. They provide a use – even if the person receiving the magnet has no use for the services being advertised, they will still use it as a fridge magnet most of the time. even when they do not realize it, they are still being advertised to.

As alluded to above, many people do not know they are being advertised to- and that is the best form of advertising Business magnets possess a great feature in the fact that they are indeed useful and can come in handy for many situations. When a company’s advertisement is on a magnet, they are able to advertise to multiple people many times a day. Common situations are when the magnet is on a fridge, filing cabinet or at a commercial location.

Another reason why business magnets are a great tool for advertising is because they come in many forms. some popular choices include calendar magnets, frame magnets and shaped varieties. In addition to including company information, companies can choose to offer their customer something in return. Not only is a magnet used for holding things in place on a metal surface, it can be used to track dates, frame a photo or even add a fun element to a fridge by creating a unique shape. The advertising choices are endless when it comes to utilizing business magnets.

In perspective, many of the old advertising methods have worked for years and continue to fair decently in today’s market. The problem is average performing advertising and promotional tools are just not cutting it. The competition is fierce in almost every market and niche out there. this means that money spent on branding a company name, promoting a sale and more need to have a higher return on investment.

Business magnets are just the tool you need and more Not only do they garner immediate results, they also stick around for a long time and continue to work- even when you are not this form of advertising is very affordable so companies really have nothing to lose by trying it out.

Michigan State UniversityLovely but lethal: an adult emerald ash borer.

I took it personally the first time I saw a Barney trap hanging from a tree in Delaware County where my family has a cottage. it brought to mind the time, about 20 years ago, when I transplanted a sapling that I found growing behind a shed to a spot near the stump of a century-old butternut tree that had fallen victim to wind and rot.

I proudly showed the sapling to Bob, an old farmer who often came by to see what we were up to. “How long till this one has butternuts?” I asked him.

Bob looked at me with the gimlet eye of a gambler who thinks he’s being bluffed. “Long time,” he said. “It’s an ash.”

How was I to know? I was brought up in the city, and even now, so many years later, an ash looks just like a butternut to me. that sapling is now about 35 feet tall, a beautiful tree, straight and strong, and one I’d hate to lose to the emerald ash borer, the Barney trap’s intended prey. as I write in Tuesday’s Times, the big-eyed little buggers have already killed millions of ash trees since they were first spotted in the United States in 2002, and each season the onslaught pushes farther east toward us.

Department of AgricultureStates reached so far by the emerald ash borer.

Environmental officials think it may be too late to eradicate the pest because it’s already spread so far, so fast. Initially discovered near the Detroit airport, it is now found in 15 states. the federal Forest Service’s principal strategy against the emerald ash borer is to slow its spread, which they hope will give natural predators a chance to catch up while also buying time for scientists to figure out the best way to fight back.

As in any war, the first task is to know your enemy. but how do you get in the mind of a glittery beetle about the size of a penny? Victor Mastro, director of the Department of Agriculture’s Pest Survey Detection and Exclusion Laboratory in Otis, Mass., took time to explain to me how it’s done.

It turns out that entomologists like Mr. Mastro and the scientists in his laboratory know how to get the truth out of buprestidae; that’s the scientific name of the family of wood-boring beetles with metallic-looking shells that the emerald ash borer belongs to. He said they use the insect equivalent of a lie detector, an electroretinogram.

If you can imagine it, an entomologist attaches one electrode to the retina of a penny-size ash borer and the other to the bug’s brain. After colors are tested out in the field, they are flashed before the wired-up bug’s eyes. an instrument measures the electrical impulses to see which colors elicit the greatest reaction.

Department of AgricultureBrian Deschu, a U.S.D.A. employee, hangs a Barney trap on an ash limb.

The deep purple for which Barney the dinosaur is known turned out to be the winner, much to Mr. Mastro’s surprise. He thought for sure it wouldn’t attract any attention because there is no purple on the surface of an ash tree. but it turns out that when you scrape the bark off an ash tree trunk, the layer underneath has a purplish tint, and that may trigger some reaction in the ash borer’s little brain that lures it into the Barney trap.

The other way that Mr. Mastro knows what the ash borer is thinking is through the use of an electroantennogram. again, picture a scientist hooking one electrode to the tip of a beetle’s antenna and the other to the base. certain scents are then passed over the insect while scientists watch the pattern of the electric impulses. That’s how they found that manuka oil, the same stuff that costs a bundle in aromatherapy spas, can put emerald ash borers in just the right mood.

It’s amazing stuff, and I hope it works. Bob the farmer is no longer with us, but I know he’d be following this story carefully and checking the ash trees on his property for the telltale D-shaped holes the emerald ash borer makes when it burrows out of its host tree.

And he’d probably check the butternut trees too, just to be sure.

If you’re one of the brave souls who dares follow me on the Twitters, you probably know exactly where this post is going. I haven’t been able to shut up about this thing for over a day.

As someone who writes about shiny electronic things for a living and just generally spends far too much time rummaging around the Internet, I’ve come to be wonderfully adept at spotting up-and-coming awesome crap that no one really needs trends. When three unrelated individuals from all walks of life all started talking about this little $20 RC helicopter (the Syma S107) within a few days of each other, I figured it was something worth looking into.

It arrived yesterday. any time it’s left my hands since, it because it had either run out of juice or had been commandeered by someone else. it is, without a doubt, the coolest little gadget I’ve nabbed for under $20 in a really, really long time, and I fully intend to convince AOL we need a fleet of these for the office.

Insanely Easy To Fly all metal chassis, with a surprisingly high build quality Charges over USB, making it a killer office toy It’s sub-$20! Replacement parts are equally dirt cheap

You’ll only get about 7 minutes of flight per charge, but that’s not really a surmountable issue; current battery tech is just too heavy for anything that lasts much longer.

Doesn’t work outside (Too light for even the slightest of breezes, sun kills infrared signal) No wall charger included

Now, this isn’t my first trip to the ol’ air show. while I’m not about to be crushed to death by the weight of my helicopter collection or anything, I’ve picked up a flyer or five in my days. From Air Hogs, to the pricier $200-$300 Walkera choppers, to one random little junker that we quite literally bought up out of the back of some dude’s van, I’ve flown (and totally wrecked) more of these things than someone who doesn’t consider himself a hobbyist probably should.

If only in terms of learning curve, the S107 is king. of the five people who have blasted this thing all around my office since it arrived yesterday, not a one took more than a minute or two to figure out the basics. Sure, you’ll crash plenty. Yeah, you’ll probably get your directions reversed and send this thing spinning toward your face at LEAST five times on day one. but, like a good video game, the difficulty comes from things inherent to the act itself (that is, flying a friggin’ tiny helicopter around your house) rather than things introduced by poor design.

When we first opened it, our goal was to fly from a table to an ottoman without careening into a wall or clipping a ceiling fan. By the end of the day, we were launching from the desk and landing on an iPad case (that we convinced ourselves looked just like a landing pad) across the room. for a group that was mostly made up of ne’er-flyers, that’s one heck of a nice learning curve. Hell, I took the above super-classy photo while I was flying (Note the camera lens hiding in the nook of my elbow.)The controller has three primary parts: two control sticks and a central knob. the leftmost control stick accelerates the propeller, sending you up or down. the right control stick allows you to lean forward or back, or turn left or right. the center knob can be twisted left or right to cancel out any subtle but constant turning tendencies — if your Chopper always seems to be turning slightly to the right, for example, you can bump the center knob to the left to compensate.

Though it’s simple enough for anyone to learn, I’d still consider this something of a big-boy toy. the plastic blades don’t hurt too bad when they clip skin (it’s like stopping a battery powered hand fan), but they’re by all means sharp enough to at least scratch the hell out of a bare eyeball. Add in the fact that animals seem to be incredibly intrigued by this terrifying little creature flying around the living room and that a brief skimming of the ceiling will send it hurdling toward whatever’s below it, and it’s probably best to keep this one to sober/supervised play time.

It’s also worth noting that the S107 cannot be flown outside. It’s light enough that even the slightest gust of wind will send it spinning out of control, and the Infrared-based control system doesn’t play friendly with sunlight.

For $20, I completely expected to open the box to find a wonky, styrofoam-core piece of junk. Nope.

Though the blades and body are plastic (“Thank God”, says my skin and every other surface that we clipped with a propeller last night), the inner construction of the helicopter is all metal.

The only thing that feels a bit chintzy? the provided USB charging cable. Speaking of which..

As with most helicopters of this size, you don’t get a ton of flying time out of each charge — but that’s really just a limitation of current battery tech. Batteries are heavy, and spinning a motor fast enough to get something off the ground and keep it there takes a good amount of juice. You’ll get around 7 minutes of fly time for every 40 minute charge. there are apparently mods that can get you around 30% more fly time in exchange for a $7 replacement battery and a bit of solder, but I can’t speak to how well they work.

There are two ways to charge the S107: via the provided USB cable (which rocks if you’re using this thing as an office toy), or, if you’re on the go, through a pull-out cable built into the controller. the controller itself requires 6 AA batteries, which seems pretty steep. the USB cable feels reaaaally cheap — which is too bad, because it’s not a very common type. Lastly, it’s a bit annoying that they don’t include a USB wall charger. It’s acceptable at the price-point, but sacrificing a USB port isn’t always convenient. Fortunately, most phones these days come with USB wall chargers so it shouldn’t be too much of a bother to track one down.

If you have kids that you want to introduce to the basics of aerodynamics and physics, buy this. if you’ve tinkered around with other wallet-friendly RC helicopters and were left disappointed, buy this. if you’ve got $20 bucks to burn and have ever wanted to experience the joys of sending a little spinning chunk of terror screaming around your house, buy this.

At just 20 bucks on Amazon, this is going to be my go-to stocking stuffer of 2011.