August
19, 2019 A UCLA study revealed that a gene on the X chromosome may help explain
why more women than men develop multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune
diseases. Researchers found that a gene
known as Kdm6a was expressed more in women's immune cells than in
men's, and expressed more in female mice than in males. When the Kdm6a gene was eliminated in mice
that were bred to mimic a disease like MS, they had improved symptoms, reduced
inflammation and less damage to their spinal cords. Women's risk
of developing MS is about three times greater than men's, and women have
stronger immune responses in general. Previous
research has suggested that these differences may be due to differences in sex
hormones and/or chromosomes between men and women. Since women have two X chromosomes, they have
a "double dose" of genes on the X chromosome, and although there is a
natural mechanism to silence the extra genes, some genes elude that mechanism. https://www.uclahealth.org/x-chromosome-gene-may-explain-why-women-are-more-prone-to-autoimmune-diseases
Sex hormones like
testosterone and estrogen seem to be important in modulating the immune response,
says Veena Taneja of the Mayo Clinic, who studies
differences in male and female immune systems.
What's more, she says, women also have two copies of the X chromosome,
while men have only one. "The X
chromosome has lots of immune-response genes," Taneja says. While women's extra X chromosome is generally
silenced, she says, "almost around 10% of those genes, they can be
activated. Many of those genes are
actually immune-response genes."
That makes it possible, she says, that women get a
"double-dose" of protection—although it's still too soon to know
exactly how all this might play out in the context of COVID-19. Nell Greenfieldboyce https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/10/831883664/the-new-coronavirus-appears-to-take-a-greater-toll-on-men-than-on-women?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=nprtopicsscience
April 11, 2020 As British politicians invoke memories
of World War II’s “Blitz
Spirit” during the coronavirus lockdown,
and many are quietly channeling the stoic resolve their elders showed in the
face of enormous hardship, some in the nation’s baking community are taking a
more direct cue from history. Britain's
National Loaf—a nutrient-dense whole wheat bread first produced in 1942—has
been re-emerging in recent weeks. Alasdair
Lane https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/british-bakers-reintroduce-world-war-ii-bread-coronavirus-fight-n1180536
Brett Battles is an American author from Los Angeles, California. Brett Battles' first novel, The
Cleaner (2007), introduced recurring character Jonathan Quinn,
freelance intelligence operative. "The
Cleaner" was nominated for the Barry
Award for Best Thriller.
His second novel, The
Deceived (2008), won the Barry
Award for Best Thriller.
His third novel, Shadow of Betrayal, continues the
adventures of freelance operative and "cleaner" Jonathan Quinn.
Shadow of Betrayal was published in the United Kingdom under the
title The Unwanted (Preface Publishing, 2009). This fourth novel, The Silenced,
was released by Dell in 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Battles
Robert Gregory Browne is
an AMPAS Nicholl Award-winning screenwriter and International Thriller Writers
(ITW) Thriller Award nominated novelist, publisher, playwright, composer,
lyricist, designer, and rabid sample library enthusiast. His novels Trial Junkies and Trial
Junkies: Negligence were Amazon
bestsellers and his first novel, Kiss Her Goodbye, was produced by CBS Television. https://robertgregorybrowne.com/
Green beans get their
color from chlorophyll, and yellow wax beans are simply green beans that have
been bred to have none of this pigment.
So the questions are, does chlorophyll contribute to the flavor of green
beans and will you miss it if it’s not there?
We tasted green and wax beans steamed until crisp-tender and braised in
our Mediterranean Braised Green Beans recipe.
In both applications, tasters found very little difference in the
flavors of the two beans, calling both sweet and “grassy.” But wax beans did have one advantage over
green: Because they have little color to
lose during prolonged braising, their appearance changes less than that of
green beans, which tend to turn a drab olive.
So if you’re making a long-cooked bean dish and are picky about
aesthetics, go for the gold. Link to
recipes at https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/6529-green-versus-wax-beans
Poetry
has captivated physicians for centuries.
In the early 19th century, John Keats abandoned a career in medicine to
concentrate on writing. Oliver Wendell
Holmes Sr. (“Old Ironsides,” “The Chambered Nautilus”) wrote poems throughout
his medical career and continued to do so long after he retired from Harvard
Medical School in 1882. William Carlos
Williams, who practiced pediatrics and general medicine for more than 40 years,
won the first National Book Award for poetry in 1950 and was posthumously
awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1963.
As doctors established modern-day medical journals in the 19th and 20th
centuries, editors and publishers started to include poetry alongside
discussions of surgical techniques and treatises on new treatments. Stephanie DeMarco Read
poems at https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-11/column-one-doctor-poets
April 7, 2020 By the time Michel de Montaigne wrote “Of
Experience,” the last entry in his third and final book of essays, the French
statesman and author had weathered numerous outbreaks of plague (in 1585, while
he was mayor of Bordeaux, a third of the population perished), political
uprisings, the death of five daughters, and an onslaught of physical ailments,
from rotting teeth to debilitating kidney stones. All the while, Montaigne was writing. From a tower on his family’s estate in
southwestern France, he’d innovated a leisurely yet commodious literary mode
that mirrored—while also helping to manufacture—the unpredictable movements of
his racing mind. Part evolving treatise,
part prismatic self-portrait, the essai,
in Montaigne’s conception, was the antidote to self-isolation, a recurring
conference in the midst of quarantine, perhaps even a kind of textual
necromancy—his best friend and intellectual sparring partner, the poet Étienne
de La Boétie, had died of plague in 1563.
“Of Experience” is about how to live when life itself comes under
attack. Because life as we’ve known it
is on hold at the moment, because sickness and confusion are everywhere, and
because one of the things books are good for is reminding us that we aren’t
alone in history or consciousness, reading “Of Experience” right now feels like
an analogue to experience; not a cold study of a distant artist’s late style so
much as wisdom lit for wary souls unresigned, as of yet, to
world-weariness. “Of Experience” is one
of Montaigne’s gravest works—“We must learn to endure,” he writes, “what we
cannot avoid”—but the writing is so vigorous, so uninterested in despair. In the end, we get the sense from the
writing that the writing
was Montaigne’s method of magnifying enjoyment. Reading him might be as good a
way as any to suspend life’s flight.
Drew Bratcher https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/04/07/sheltering-in-place-with-montaigne/ Drew Bratcher was born in
Nashville. He received his M.F.A. from
the University of Iowa. He lives in
Chicagoland.
June 28
is "Two Pi Day", also known as "Tau Day". 2π, also known by the Greek letter tau (τ) is a common multiple in mathematical formulae. Some have argued that τ is the more
fundamental constant, and that Tau Day should be celebrated instead. Celebrations of this date jokingly suggest
eating "twice the pie". Pi Approximation Day is observed
on July
22 (22/7 in the day/month format),
since the fraction 22⁄7 is
a common approximation of π, which
is accurate to two decimal places and dates from Archimedes. Link to information on Mole Day and Square
Root Day at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day
April 13, 2020 Fairy tales and facts: Siri Hustvedt on how we read in a pandemic. | Lit Hub Escape your self-isolation by exploring these
maps of
fictional, fantastical places. | Atlas Obscura “The
Lemons.” A poem by Eugenio Montale, translated by Jonathan Galassi. |
Lit Hub Sound artist
Alan Nakagawa’s “Social Distancing, Haiku and You” project is
inviting people to write and record haikus for a collaborative project with one
California art museum. | Smithsonian Magazine Why
are some readers turning to Mrs Dalloway
as a quarantine read? | The New Yorker
Silent Book Club gatherings have taken on an
entirely new meaning during quarantine. | Los Angeles Times Eight
novelists on what books are
reassuring them right now. | Vogue
https://lithub.com
WORD OF THE DAY gilder
noun One who gilds; especially one
whose occupation is to overlay things with gold. April 15 is the
anniversary of the day Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452, and is
declared by the International Association of Art to be World Art Day to
celebrate the fine arts
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2255
April 15, 2020
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