The curative power of the prayer

Two idiots are Jeffrey Beagley y Marci Rae. That, in principle, it would not be necessary a news but it distinguishes them as a consequence of his imbecility his 16-year-old son died. An avoidable death and essentially deliberate. While the normal people take his son to a sanitary center when there are problems of health, this Oregón couple preferred to pray to manage to treat the illness of his refusing to hospitalize it.

The history began on March 30, 2008, when an anonymous call to an institution of social services warned that a boy called Neil Beagley had big difficulties to breathe and could die if they were not attending to it quickly. An employee came to the house of the Beagley and after a pair of days it managed to see the boy who weakened in a rocking chair, said to him that he did not want to go to the doctor. Neil Beagley was still a patient and without medical treatment for weeks until on June 17 he died for a not diagnosed urinal complaint not, of course, treated.
His parents belong to the Church of Christ's Followers, an evangelical sect established in Oregón that pushes the medicine back and uses more "spiritual enough" alternative methods as the prayer and the hand imposition. The results of similar bothers have become clear.
The judgment has ended and the parents have been found guilty of murder by criminal negligence. This crime might suppose up to 10 years of jail but, on not having had criminal records, one waits for a maximum sorrow of 18 months. The judgment will become public next February 18.
Looking for information, I found a comment in OregonLive.com that gives shakes:

These are the first members of the guilty Followers of Christ of murder in a gathering with a long history of children died by medically friendly illnesses.

And the fact is that, in effect, the case is not only. In February, 2008 Ava Worthington had only one year and a half of age and it fell ill. His parents, Carl and Raylene, refused to give him medical treatment supporting that the prayer was the necessary only thing to treat his daughter. The result was that Ava died on March 2 for a friendly bacterial pneumonia with antibiotics. The father was condemned to two months of jail and a period of five years of conditional freedom. In spite of his sinister achievement they have not hesitated to open a web defending his constitutional law to the freedom of religion (and, it is supposed, to allow to die to his children if the case comes). These types were, as the first ones, members of the Church of the Followers of Christ de Oregón.
Very probably the truth is still much harder since it is suspected that approximately twenty-five children died in the last ten years of friendly ailments, "some in atrocious circumstances". In this article some cases are mentioned more with proper names: Four-year-old Alex Dale Morris, or eleven-year-old Bo Phillips.
And we have not ended since I have found any articles that do a review of these deaths due to the religious fanaticism. But today it is late and to write this has stopped without desire keeping on reading to me. Good evening.

The color of the dinosaurs

One of the innovations paleontológicas more interesting than last years has been, at least for me, the assertion of that many dinosaurs had pens, including some abductors (remember Jurassic Park). There are pens of diverse type, from "protoplumas" filamentosas, not branched out, up to complex pens very similar to those of the current birds.
The first ones with protoplumas were described in 1996 (prime Sinosauropteryx) and since then they have not stopped appearing, including any groups of distant dinosaurs to the birds. I recommend for that he wants to know more of this to him the marvelous blog of the Paleofreak (he looks for "pens" and a fair amount of material appears). The innovation in the last weeks has been that it was possible to have deduced the color of some of them. How is this possible if some rest of pigment does not stay in the fossilization?
The key word is "melanosoma", a cellular orgánulo that contains melanin, the most common pigment in the skin, hair and eyes of the animals. It turns out that in very favorable fossilization conditions the structure of the melanosomas of the dinosaurs one can preserve it sufficiently well how to be analyzed by means of the electronic microscope. Since the melanosomas are present in the pens of the current birds and that his structure changes with the color that they represent, be necessary to compare them morphologically and to deduce the aspect of say to us of more than 100 million years ago.
This discovery owed to the sagacity of Jakob Vinther, who realized that the structures that were observed were not bacteria, as he had proposed up to this moment, but another very different thing. Vinther applied his intuition to fossil pens not "dinosáuricas" in a work of the titled year 2008 The color of fossil feathers (free access) to which the due publicity was not given. The later works could be done thanks to the exceptional conditions of conservation of some deposits like those of Liaoning, where there have been discovered hundreds of fossils of all kinds, many of them of more or less adorned with feathers dinosaurs.
The first results were published in Nature 10 days ago with the title Fossilized melanosomes and the color of Cretaceous dinosaurs and birds. The authors concluded that the tail of the small dinosaur Sinosauropteryx was colored in tones white and chestnut-colored, more or less like that (of what it neither is a tail, it is not even known):
Enlightenment of James Robins
The last news, of only three days ago, refers to Anchiornis huxleyi and they were published under the title Plumage Color Patterns of an Extinct Dinosaur. In this case, although the team is wide, included Vinther, the principal maker seems to have been the paleontologist Julia Clarke, teacher of the University of Texas, that "mapeó" the colors and his distribution in finished dino, of head to tail. This species was of the size of a hen and he lived approximately 155 million years ago. The artistic recreation is like that:
Enlightenment of Michael Digeorgio
In short, some colors of the dinosaurs can, with luck and enough work, be deduced of the morphology of the melanosomas that have survived in cases especially favorable of fossilization. The melanosomas only appear in pens or in protoplumas for what the aspect of the featherless dinosaurs will keep on being a stranger. The open melanosomas show target tones to black and reddish exclusively. I believe that they cannot present any more colors than these scales of gray and yellow to orange - reddish. To find blue, green or colors due to other possible pigments it will be necessary to develop different methods if it was possible.
Personally I believe that it is much more important to have confirmed the pens existence with several forms of transition in his complexity that about being able to decode the colors but it is necessary to admit that it brings the above mentioned over to us much more to the mythical bugs, it is like illuminating a scene that till now was only in half-light.

Vaccines and autism, a fictitious relation

These days there is at least two excellent news on the autism. The one that more has attracted attention of me, although not surprised, it has been the retreat of an article published in 1998 in The Lancet where the viral triple vaccine was related to the above mentioned disorder. Ten of thirteen signatories had already cut themselves off of the work years behind (why had they signed?) and three remaining ones were submitted to an investigation. His problems began when in the year 2004 a journalist started investigating and denounced that the children taking part in the study had been selected by the lawyers of a couple that wanted to demand the manufacturers of the viral triple vaccine. The same lawyers also had hired the principal author, Andrew Wakefield, to confirm the relation between the vaccine and the illness.
Immediately after these denunciations, General Medical Council of Great Britain initiated an investigation which conclusions have become public only two weeks ago. There happened problems of diverse type that led to concluding that the Wakefield conduct had been "dishonest and irresponsible". The original article can still be, if someone has curiosity, here without figures or here I complete in format PDF. The prolix report of the GMC is here.
The Lancet is one of the most important medical magazines of the world, with a factor of impact of 28, and also one of the most ancient since it was founded in 1823. Reading the article superficially there attracts attention of me the enormous aftereffect that it had (it motivated a strong descent in the vaccination in Great Britain and antivaccination served as argument for groups in the USA where this movement is quite powerful). The motive of my astonishment is, especially, the number of children that were examined: twelve. Yes, twelve, eleven of them males and a girl, with ages between the 3 and 11 years. It is supposed that these boys appeared by the gastroenterología service with a similar history: they had had an initial normal development and a strong later retrogression (that was including the loss of the language) together with diarrhea and abdominal pains. The children were put to a heap of tests: colonoscopias, biopsies, magnetic resonances, electroencephalography, lumbar punctures... From that, the authors concluded (I save a pair of paragraphs not related to the autism; the linkage and the italics are mine):

The appearance of the symptoms of behavior was associated, according to the parents, with the vaccine of the measles, mumps and German measles in eight of twelve children, with a measles infection in one more and with an earache in other. The behavior disorders include autism (in nine of the children), psychosis desintegrativa (in one) and an encephalitis, possibly postviral or postvaccination.

And in the discussion the following thing is said:

We cannot prove the association between the vaccine and the described syndrome. There are studies virológicos in march that they can help to solve this matter. If there is a causal relation between the vaccine and the syndrome might state an increasing incidence of this one after the introduction of the vaccine in UK in 1988. The existing publications are insufficient to demonstrate changes in the incidence or in a relation with the vaccine.

And it is already. That is quite. Seen today the impact of the article is incomprehensible in the society for several motives. The first one is that the study is done by a minuscule sample from any point of view. The second one is that in the article no association evidence appears between the vaccine and the infantile symptoms. The third one is that the suspicion of the causal relation vaccine - autism comes exclusively from "impressions" of the parents. Why did publish a magazine as The Lancet a work that, to all, you show, it was deficient?
In the investigation after the denunciation of the journalist worrying details appeared. For example, in the article one affirms that the problems of the children began a few days after receiving the vaccine, but a review of the files of the hospital revealed that several of the families had communicated the problems before the date of vaccination (would not it be necessary to have verified this on the part of the authors?) . Also one found that it departs from the funds they were used for ends different from the declared ones (although not for personal lucre), I motivate for which the Wakefield conduct declared itself "dishonest" and "misleading". Finally, it was confirmed that the children were put to invasive tests which justification was doubtful and for some of which Wakefield was lacking the obligatory permission of the commission of ethics of his institution. Regrettably, the investigative commission also came to the conclusion that Wakefield showed a "entire indifference for the suffering and the pain that he knew or he should have known that the children could suffer" with that one you try.
Let's finish, much more briefly, with second news on another work. In this one a slightly wider sample has been used: 4 947 935 cases. Bearing in mind that the predominance of the autism is low, this sample seems slightly more suitable than the previous one. The authors, of the University of California, did a pursuit of those almost 5 million children from his birth finding with something more about twelve thousand showed autism symptoms. The most important results were that a relation was between the ages of the parents and the predominance of the disorder. In particular, the maternal age is associated with the risk of having an autistic child, while the age of the father it is only when the mother is major than 30 years. The risk grows quickly, 18 % every five years of maternal age.
The autism keeps on being a disorder of unknown cause and also there is a discussion if his incidence is or without growing or, in his case, until point. Some studies affirm that the predominance of the disorder has multiplied for ten in the last decade in the USA. Others indicate that this apparent growth is due to the fact that the diagnosis is not always done with coherent criteria, that these are not easy to apply and that at present include under the above mentioned denomination pictures that earlier they were not considered. For lack of better numbers, I remain with those of the WHO:

The predominance of the autism changes greatly according to the method of identification of the cases, ranging between 0,7 and 21,1 for 10 000 children (median of 5,2 for 10 000), while the predominance of disorders of the autistic bogey calculates that from 1 to 6 performs the order for 1000.

Streaming The Amazing Race S16E05 I Think We're Fighting the Germans, Right? online

Some public geographical data in the Spanish CNIG

The National Center of Geographical Information (Spain) has created a portal for the free geographical data discharge, something that had promised to be some time ago but that one had not made real. The available information is subject to two types of license and is the following one:

• EGRN (Geographical Equipment of National Reference), frees and without restrictions although it is necessary to mention to the National Geographical Institute like owner of the information:
• coordinates of geodesic apexes of I GNAWED (Network of Low Order) in format PDF.
• cartographic grids (limits of the maps) of the series MTN25 and MTN50 (shapefile).
• lines limit of the Spanish municipalities (shapefile).
• Other materials with license of not commercial use:
• ortoimágenes of the PNOA (National Plan of Ortofotografía Aérea) in format ECW.
• maps escaneadosde the series MTN25, MTN50 and BCN200 in format TIF.

For my part I applaud the initiative although there are things that make me slightly disconcerted:

• the geodesic apexes are in format PDF: why not in a spreadsheet or, simply, in a text file to facilitate his use?
• the scanned maps MTN25 and MTN50 are recounted to the datum ED50 (ancient) and the ortoimágenes to the sheets MTN50 in the official datum ETRS89, with what they turn out to be incompatible. It is true that the series MTN were done when the ED50 was the official datum but, after three years from the Decree of the change, he was thinking that they might have transformed the ETRS89 and to give this way updated and useful information 100 %.
• the lines limit of municipality are that, lines, not polygons. The information about the name of the municipalities or his codes of catalog of names is integrated in a somewhat exotic way: as attributes of the lines. This information, regrettably, is not easily recoverable at the time of processing the lines to restore the polygons topology (that is his).

In any case, welcome is this possibility of discharge and let's hope that quickly one should be add more useful and compatible information with other one. Cost the previous thing as suggestion of future progress that we all would see with good eyes. For giving a pair of ideas more: 1) to include suspense metainformation or at least of scale in the municipal limits and 2) to do that the searches for place names admit tildes.
A possible process to assign attributes to the municipalities is to use the lines given here, to create the polygons topology and to "absorb" the information of an existing similar layer in Global Administrative Areas, something worse in the tracing of the lines but with attributes assigned to the municipalities.
Roman theater and amphitheater in Merida segón the PNOA
To finish, a question to the respectable one on the use licenses. The first one seems equivalent to Creative Commons Attribution and the second one to CC Attribution - Odd number commercial. Am I mistaken and there is some difference that escapes from me? I ask about it because I would like seeing these icons increasingly on the pages of the Administration.

Rains, floods and reservoirs

It rains in Spain for weeks. In January he has gathered a 95 liters average for square meter, which can seem modest but it is more 45 % of the average 1970-2000. This average also secret the changeability on the territory because an excellent percentage of the same one has received more of the double of the average while in some areas as Catalonia and Gallicia it has rained between 50 and 75 % of the normal thing.
The consequences have been good and bad. On the last ones it is necessary to mention wide areas flooded in the South, with serious damages in the properties although without fortunately without deaths. And I say "fortunately" with intention because in Spain it has been ignored that the rivers grow occasionally and has been construído in "area inundable" for decades. Mysteries of the current town planning, I suppose.
The good consequences are that with these rains an irregular period closes, with ups and downs, but during which the reservations in the reservoirs were diminishing little by little, including alarms of shortage as that of Barcelona of three or four years ago.

This image proves to be a part of the reservoir of Orellana, in Extremadura (Spain). The deep waters turn out to be black, the shallow ones in green, the vegetation in red and the areas without her in blue. To pulsate above to extend.
In Extremadura there are the biggest reservoirs of Spain, dedicated to irrigation, water supply in the population and hydroelectric generation. The maximum capacity of the system is 7723 cubic hectometers, of which 3219 correspond to the reservoir of La Serena and 1505 to that of García Sola. In whole there are 20 reservoirs with capacities between the mentioned ones earlier and 3.3 hm3 of Cornalbo, of which the wall of Roman origin survives.
These days a few friends are sending to me the water quantities that are entering all of them, information that interest sound created. It is necessary to remember that after a drought period, the first rains remain retained in the soil that, if the precipitations persist can go so far as to be saturated. The water arrival to the reservoirs is carried out by a days inertia, so much to the beginning as in the end. Now we are in a saturation situation and probably everything what rains ends up by coming to the glasses. This way it is explained that, from one day to other, the quantity of dammed water should grow about 2 % in the big sisremas since the minors are already to 100 % or more. And already, finally, the information.
In the first column they have the names and in the second one the maximum capacity in hm3. Next the occupancy rates are in only two dates (tomorrow I will put a more finished table to them). It be fixed that in the first of October Cíjara was only to 25 % while today it overcomes 95 %.
RESERVOIRS CMAX 10/1/2009 2/25/2010 E2-01 Cijara 1505.2 E2-03 Garcia Sola 554.2 E2-04 Orellana 807.9 the Entire Guadiana: 2867.3 38.0 94.7 E2-06 La Serena 3219.2 E2-07 Zujar 301.9 Entire Zujar: 3521.1 39.4 77.4 E2-08 Cancho Fresno 15.2 52.5 101.2 E2-09 Distaff 41.9 E2-11 Brave Saw 232.4 E2-12 Gargaligas 21.3 E2-13 Enclosure Entire 6.0 Distaffs: 316.9 51.5 101.0 E2-15 Mill 33.7 E2-16 Alange 851.7 Entire Matachel: 885.4 23.3 56.7 E2-20 Hornotejero 24.4 E2-21 Anchovy 5.5 E2-22 Rocky place 25.9 Whole Lácara: 55.8 54.4 109.3 E2-17 Cornalbo 3.1 E2-18 Proserpina 5.0 E2-19 Montijo 11.2 E2-24 Villar_del_Rey 130.0 50.2 96.1 E2-28 Tentudía 5.0 TOTAL GENERAL: 7723.5 37.8 82.8
The balance is that from 38 % general less than 5 months ago we have come to 83 % today which guarantees the supplying for at least three years. Except in Alange, which is still low, the rest of big preys begins to relieve like preventive measurement therefore it will not be easy that they fill much more. The minors already liberate water for days because they are full.
Update on March 1: the reservoirs of the Guadiana and of the system Lácara must be relieving since they have lowered from 94.7 89.9 in in the first case and from 109.3 to 105.5 in the second one. Alange has raised 3 % although the reservoir keeps on being the lowest of the set.

Incarnation

The vaishnavas consider God to be a person. They believe that he, whom they call Vishnú, shows in the Earth by means of ups and downs, that is to say, embodiments in human form.
Two big Vishnú ups and downs have been Krishna and Râma Chandra. These lived in a very distant antiquity although some of his faithful doubt that they have had really a historical existence.
Au coeur give Himalayas, of Alexandra David-Neel, 1949.

This is the origin of the word incarnation, today rescued of the negligence for a movie. I do not refuse to write the curious and realistic justification of a supposed recent incarnation called Chaitanya that they told to Alexandra David-Neel:

God is far from us. Râma and especially the kind and tender Krishna they are closer. As for Chaitanya no doubt can appear with regard to his reality. He lived, we know where and how. He is a God but at the same time he is a man, like us. Loving him our love thirst can be satisfied, then, to God.

Alexandra David-Neel was the first European woman who managed to visit Lhassa, somewhere near 1924. The said book narrates his trip for Nepal in the winter 1912. He died in 1969 to 101 years of age.

One more step in the struggle against the tuberculosis

They already know that I like commenting here turned out really promising in the medical field although occasionally it should be necessary to give also bad news. The today case is of the good ones and it serves to us to revise the basic facts of an illness that yes is a pandemic.
We know that a third of the world population is infected by tuberculosis but the illness only will show if the bacteria manage to multiply, something that happens when the immune system loses form for any cause. The result is that between 5 and 10 % of these persons will develop the illness in some moment of his life, which translates for itself finally in almost two million deaths a year (that 1.8 millions are known registered in 2007, 4900 average deaths a day).
The bacterium of the tuberculosis (in yellow). Seizure of Flickr.
Four effective conventional medicines exist against the illness but if they are administered badly or if the treatment gives in before time it is facilitated that the called tuberculosis appears multirresistente. Against this one it is already necessary to use the called medicines of "the second generation", more expensive and with more side effects. If these other medicines keep on administering badly it can appear, if it was small, a so called variant "extremely fármacorresistente" whose treatment is already almost impossible. The appearance of resistant vines becomes more necessary still the investigation on the bases of the infection to discover new ways of catching the illness.
This is exactly what the PNAS have published a few days ago in:

Blair R. G. Gordon, et to. 2010, Lsr2 is to nucleoid-associated protein that targets AT-rich sequences and virulence genes in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. PNAS, published online (free access).

In this article about undecipherable title he communicates to himself that two things have been obtained: the first one has been to identify a mechanism by means of which the bacterium of the tuberculosis avoids the immune system; the second one was to locate a compound that blocks the aptitude of the bacterium to survive in the guest.
Both discoveries are very important because they suppose opening new ways not only in the comprehension of the illness but in the search of new ways of fighting it. Regrettably, these investigations, if they are demonstrated valid, will be late years in be reflecting in real treatments. In spite of these debts there is no any more remedy, although the espectativas are distant, that to go ahead of the resistances development in the bacteria because, very probably, these resistances will appear earlier that it is late. Things of the evolution and of the selective pressure that some of them say that they do not exist.