October is National Bullying Prevention Month.

 The book cited here costs $7.00 through Amazon (click title to entry - thank you) and a "Look Inside" (click here) can be viewed at the Amazon website.

Join the movement and unite against bullying! (click here)

MINNEAPOLIS: October is PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Month, a project of PACER Center. It’s a time when communities nationwide can unite to raise awareness of bullying prevention by using resources at Pacer.org/bullying. 

“To make a significant impact on bullying, we need people across the country to take action and join the movement,” said Julie Hertzog, director PACER's National Center for Bullying Prevention which sponsors the event. “There are 160,000 children staying home from school each day for fear of bullying, but working together, we can make a difference.”

Everyone can find a way to join the cause at PACER.org/bullying. Students, educators, families, and organizations can use the free, creative resources at the site to address bullying and help create a culture that no longer accepts bullying....

NASA should consider Cadavers (without embalming fluid) as an initial step.

If approved, (click title to entry - thank you) a proposed experiment would expose squirrel monkeys to radiation in an attempt to help determine safe levels of exposure for astronauts on lengthy missions.

This is an interesting development in the NASA Space Program and it makes complete sense.

I respect PETA.  They have helped in many instances with conservation and protections of animals.  They have had questionable members at times and their views can be extreme, especially when animals are considered disposable to research.

I also respect NASA.  A couple of years ago I heard a member of the staff at the Goddard Space Center speak at a university about the ability of humans to travel beyond the gravity of Earth.  It wasn't as though NASA could not build a spacecraft to break Earth's gravity.  The concern was the 'solar wind' beyond the protections of Earth's gravity and magnetic field.  He was very specific to state, any 'human travel' beyond the protections of Earth's own 'fields' was very questionable.  The problem to this Goddard scientist was the ability of spacecraft to actually protect humans 'enough' not to have them die of radiation exposure.

Any space travel to Mars would take years and beyond Mars could take a lifetime.  All to often we think of space travel as it appears in the movies or on television without the benefit of real facts and experiences about that space travel.  NASA knows all to well that one bad experience taints the program and they dearly don't want to simply try human travel without some knowledge to the outcomes. 

NASA has relied on primates in all their programs.  Chimps were of the first occupants in the Gemini program.  Russia did the same thing.  If these experiments were taking place in Russia there would be no doubt about the program going forward.

This is probably necessary.  The only other possibility is to send cadavers in experimental vehicles and bring them back.  That would give some indication to human exposure, but, absolutely no indication to the effects on living organisms.  The cadavers could be applied to this experiment, however, it would not provide long term effects or show the benefit of a circulating vasculature.  Certainly high levels of radiation, the type found in 'outer space' could cook the blood and end life.  So, the investigation to this is understandable.

The Mars Program has been canceled by the Obama Administration.  This may be a sincere reason why and NASA needs to prove certain facts before receiving his endorsements or funding.  Given this focus, the cancellation of the program is completely understandable.  Literally, the USA could be investing billions upon billions only to find out their first Mars shot ends up with fried occupants that could never find their way home again.

Scientists one step closer to universal flu vaccine (click title to entry - thank you)

Pandemic vaccines: promises and pitfalls (click here)

Robert Booy, Lorena E Brown, Gary S Grohmann and C Raina MacIntyre

...Researchers at Scripps Research Institute  in la Jolla, California, teamed up with Peter Palese and colleagues at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York to test a protein that works against viruses from every flu family that attacks people.

These included three pandemic viruses (H1, H2 and H3), three others that attack occasionally (H6, H9 and H7), and the H5N1 bird flu from 2004 - albeit modified to make it less deadly.

Mice were injected with this protein twice, three weeks apart, to allow their immunity to develop. Two weeks after the second injection each mouse was exposed to one type of live flu virus, as were unvaccinated mice, reports New Scientist....

Will a common protein eventually be the end of viral deaths?

...Flu can kill in other ways, too, (click here) from rendering you vulnerable to bacterial infections to triggering heart attacks. Of course, most flu strains, including (so far) the 2009 pandemic virus, cause only mild symptoms in the vast majority of people. But with 10 to 20 per cent of people worldwide getting flu every year, that still adds up to a huge burden of illness - and even in a good year some half a million die....

Mind your H’s and N’s: How is the flu named and what can it mean for who’s at risk? (click here)

by Sarah V. White
Oct 21, 2010

...The most significant proteins, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, direct the flu naming system, she said.   

“Flu viruses are typed based on these surface proteins,” Strek said.  “H1N1, for example, expresses hemagglutinin 1 and neuraminidase 1.”...



Thursday 21 October 2010

Bird flu education brings mixed results  (click here)

Training scheme shows signs of success, but risky habits prove hard to quash in cities 

People who witness avian flu outbreaks in animals near them fear the disease less than those with no experience of it, and this may affect their exposure to poultry, according to a review of education campaigns for backyard farmers in Laos.

“We report a paradoxical relationship between unsafe behaviours and risk perception in urban areas,” write Hubert Barennes of the French speaking Institute for Tropical Medicine in Vientiane, Laos, and colleagues.

The findings, published online this week in BMC Infectious Diseases, also suggest that some important risk messages get forgotten. “Washing hands and other hygiene advice, messages given during the highly pathogenic avian influenza educational campaign, were not recalled.”...

...A disease (click here) that might have been highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) killed poultry across much of the United States in 1872 and closely followed a nationwide outbreak of influenza in horses, according to a historical analysis by researchers from the National Institutes of Health....

When is it in ones best interest to self destruct? When it nets $2 million US.

FOX News brought this on and Mr. Williams is happy for it.  This is probably nothing anyone will read anywhere else because it takes conspiracy theory in a different direction, but, Juan Williams didn't know he was self destructing when he stated the bigoted comment about Muslims?  He certainly showed that people of color can hate just as well as anyone else.  Certainly are fearful, biased and controlling as anyone of this peers.  I guess the folks at the Murdoch Miracle ? may ? sincerely believe what they say.

Murdoch's philosophy is 'kick 'em when they are up and kick 'em when they are down regardless of where they are and what they are doing at the time.  The philosophy came home to roost.  Basically, Murdoch's media services holds everyone responsible for their own behavior 24-7 regardless of circumstances.  In that, is the realization that 'What Juan said is what Juan is."

I am happy for NPR.  I believe they made the best decision for everyone because they would have been forced by their DONATING public to defend their commentator and it could literally destroy their client base.


Mr. Williams is not a stupid man.  He portrays himself within the Murdoch media service as a moderate.  I guess he isn't and he should feel safe to be exactly as he is now that is he guaranteed a draw of $2 million.  This could be his time to become liberated and counter to anything he has said before.  Go get 'em, Juan.

...Williams (click title to entry - thank you) – who just got a $2 million deal for three years with Fox News – said it is making him rethink his previous beliefs about the left wing....

Williams has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly the level of hatred Murdoch is capable of producing  with abandon.  Williams is hardly a professional, so much as a puppet.  But, most that realize how 'poisoned' those words are and how dangerous they could become know that MOST if not ALL that Murdoch produces is counter-culture, extreme and has no place in mainstream media. 

I mean the words Williams spewed would inspire a 'sit in' at the jet walkway or worse.  He has to know that and if he doesn't then Murdoch's tribe is more stupid than anyone assumed. 

That might actually be the case considering the 'CLASSROOM' environment that accompanies most of the commentary.  And the naive belief that the 'red phone' will actually ring.  I would love for Putin to call on those phones and tell them their coverage wasn't comprehensive enough to cover the conquest of their network and the SS was coming for them if they would just step outside the studio door.  THEN let them want to hear from the President.  I mean the stunts they pull are moronic and lack any form of realty. 

Why any citizen in the USA would want an altered history of the USA with closed minded opinion is beyond me.  Williams fits in at Murdoch's Media Palace.  Sincerely.  


BE  FREE, JUAN, BE FREE !  No longer are the chains of 'reason' binding you.