Tag: Open Thread

Wednesday Morning Science Supplement is an Open Thread

1 Fears grow over oil spill off US coast

by Allen Johnson, AFP

Tue Apr 27, 10:47 pm ET

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

1 Chaos in Ukraine parliament as Russia deal ratified

by Anya Tsukanova, AFP

2 hrs 19 mins ago

On this day in 1805, Naval Agent to the Barbary States, William Eaton, the former consul to Tunis, led an small expeditionary force of Marines, commanded by First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, and Berber mercenaries from Alexandria, across 500 miles to the port of Derna in Tripoli. Supported by US Naval gunfire, the port was captured by the end of the day, overthrowing Yusuf Karamanli, the ruling pasha of Tripoli, who had seized power from his brother, Hamet Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the United States.

Lt. O’Bannon raised the US flag over the port, the first time the US flag had flown over a foreign battlefield. He had performed so valiantly that newly restored Pasha Hamet Karamanli presented him with an elaborately designed sword that now serves as the pattern for the swords carried by Marine officers. The words “To the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Corps official song commemorate the battle.

Sources:

History.com

On This Day

About.com  

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

1 Subs sent to seal leaks as US oil slick spreads

by Allen Johnson, AFP

2 hrs 48 mins ago

Drill Baby Drill.

Apr 26, 1954: Polio Vaccine Trials Begin

On this day in 1954, the Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated in the trials, which used for the first time the now-standard double-blind method, whereby neither the patient nor attending doctor knew if the inoculation was the vaccine or a placebo. On April 12, 1955, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations in America. In the ensuing decades, polio vaccines would all but wipe out the highly contagious disease in the Western Hemisphere.

Woman dies in iron lung after outage

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A woman who spent nearly 60 years of her life in an iron lung after being diagnosed with polio as a child died Wednesday after a power failure shut down the machine that kept her breathing, her family said.

Dianne Odell, 61, had been confined to the 7-foot-long machine since she was stricken by polio at 3 years old.

snip

Odell was afflicted with “bulbo-spinal” polio three years before a polio vaccine was discovered and largely stopped the spread of the crippling childhood disease.

She spent her life in the iron lung, cared for by her parents and other family members. Though confined inside the 750-pound apparatus, Odell managed to get a high school diploma, take college courses and write a children’s book.

The iron lung that she used was a cylindrical chamber with a seal at the neck. She lay on her back in the device with only her head exposed, and made eye contact with visitors using an angled mirror above her head. The lung worked by producing positive and negative pressure on the lungs that caused them to expand and contract so that she could breathe.

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

1 Thai PM vows to retake Bangkok protest site

by Thanaporn Promyamyai, AFP

45 mins ago

All my “essays” are Open Threads… lol.

I’m sick of “politics”. Put a fork in it.

My house is a wreck of a mess.

I hate most people and I dislike the rest. Except for a few choice lucky ones. heh.

Tired of spinnin’ my wheels. My focus has been shifting, since I figure about last August actually, but more and more….

Wandering off in search of food for the soul… follow…

In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Welcome to this week’s Health and Fitness. This is an Open Thread.

(Reuters) – Africa is making dramatic progress in tackling malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that has killed a million people a year on the continent and stunted economic growth, a top expert said on Thursday.

Infection rates in Zambia, for instance, more than halved from 2001 to 2008 due to widespread distribution of mosquito nets, targeted spraying of insecticides and better and cheaper diagnosis and treatment, said Rob Newman, director of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Malaria Program.

Zambia’s success augurs well for similar programs in their relative infancy in much larger countries such as Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the one with the heaviest malaria case-load, he said.

“Where we are in Africa today compared to even a few years ago is dramatic,” Newman told Reuters from WHO headquarters in Geneva. “The steepness of the decline surprises even me, and I’ve been doing this for a very long time.

(Reuters) – The World Health Organization said on Friday it had added 16 more malaria diagnostic tests to its approved list to help health workers quickly identify which patients have the disease and need immediate treatment.

(Reuters) – The U.S. government announced on Thursday it would focus part of its $63 billion, six-year Global Health Initiative plan to accelerate efforts to fight malaria, mostly in Africa and aimed at women and children.

Reuters) – Six years after the insect killer DDT was globally outlawed on grounds of environmental damage, two researchers say there are new reasons for doubting the chemical is harmful and are urging its use against malaria.

1 Thai PM rejects compromise deal to end protests

by Anusak Konglang, AFP

1 hr 48 mins ago