Remember Ogopogo's Revenge?

The search back through my archives to find the 1964 Eastern Camp pictures triggered another round of scanner activity. I'd like to have a slide show (maybe even with narration?) put together for Saturday at H&Rs' place. Some samples from 1983...Camping in the Foothills of Alberta...... and bathtime for Matthew...... and weighing the cherries? Good thing they didn't put the kids on the scales before and after! We soon learned about Ogopogo...Wonder why?

Another Farewell

I last saw Bob in 2004, at his mother's funeral, at the calling hours. It had been over 35 years since we had seen each other last. The photo was taken as we were returning from a hike to the lake; Bob was watching the softball game in progress. For that matter, I don't think I've seen Dennis since that summer in '64. The last time I saw Ed was bout 1970, and he's my second cousin (Aunt Annie's grandson). We do lose touch with people.

"Robert L. Haley I, 59, went home to be with the Lord January 15, 2008. Bob was born in Akron to the late Ruth and Thomas. He was a 1966 graduate of Kenmore High. He served in the Marines from 1969 to 1971. He was father to Robert (Debra), and Michael (Gucela); brother to Julie, Lilly, and Thomas; loving husband to Beth. Family will receive friends 6 p.m. Saturday, January 26, 2008 at The Chapel, 135 Fir Hill, Akron, with a memorial service at 7 p.m."

Enough ... for now ...

I think we have had enough worms for a while. There are more, but maybe only if I get desperate or something.

Laura Ofobike had a good piece in the Beacon on Tuesday (1-15-08) about global efforts at disease control. I am of the opinion that all "global" efforts really boil down to local implementation of solutions.

Vaccination campaigns against disease do work. Preventive campaigns work better. You do have to keep in mind that for all the faults associated with Darwinism, the basic principle he put forward, that traits which help a species survive tend to be perpetuated, is sound. We cannot forget that successful parasites do not kill their hosts. If we eradicate the most virulent forms, and vaccinate to the highest level possible to achieve our own comfort level with whatever is left, do we produce unintended side effects?

People today seem to have allergies and other immune system problems that were not observed in times past. If our immune systems are deactivated by lack of exercise against some of the "childhood" diseases, do they react in unexpected ways against other factors in life? Does an immune system with nothing else to do turn on its own body? Is there an unintended bad consequence to being entirely disease-free? Obviously, chronic illness is not a good thing, but could it be that a certain low level of disease is necessary to keep us healthy?

While we ponder that, don't neglect to wash your hands and vegetables and cook your food.

The Dog Tapeworm(one of them, anyway...)

Causal Agent: Dipylidium caninum (the double-pored dog tapeworm) mainly infects dogs and cats, but is occasionally found in humans.Life Cycle: Gravid proglottids are passed intact in the feces or emerge from the perianal region of the host [1]. Subsequently they release typical egg packets [2]. On rare occasions, proglottids rupture and egg packets are seen in stool samples. Following ingestion of an egg by the intermediate host (larval stages of the dog or cat flea Ctenocephalides spp.), an oncosphere is released into the flea's intestine. The oncosphere penetrates the intestinal wall, invades the insect's hemocoel (body cavity), and develops into a cysticercoid larva [3]. The larva develops into an adult, and the adult flea harbours the infective cysticercoid [4]. The vertebrate host becomes infected by ingesting the adult flea containing the cysticercoid [5]. The dog is the principal definitive host for Dipylidium caninum. Other potential hosts include cats, foxes, and humans (mostly children) [6], [7]. Humans acquire infection by ingesting the cysticercoid contaminated flea. This can be promulgated by close contact between children and their infected pets. In the small intestine of the vertebrate host the cysticercoid develops into the adult tapeworm which reaches maturity about 1 month after infection [8]. The adult tapeworms (measuring up to 60 cm in length and 3 mm in width) reside in the small intestine of the host, where they each attach by their scolex. They produce proglottids (or segments) which have two genital pores (hence the name "double-pored" tapeworm). The proglottids mature, become gravid, detach from the tapeworm, and migrate to the anus or are passed in the stool [1].

Geographic Distribution: Worldwide. Human infections have been reported in Europe, the Philippines, China, Japan, Argentina, and the United States.
Above from : http://www.dpd.cdc.gov/dpdx/HTML/Dipylidium.htm

For some gruesome, try :

"Hazards of dogs licking humans' faces"

Or, if you have room on your wall for a trophy,A nine year-old Brazilian boy, displaying the hookworms and tapeworms he expelled when treated by the Rockefeller Foundation staff.
Above from : http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/VV/B/B/J/C/

On BEEing Important...

I found this article in Bee Culture. Makes me want to go play with the girls in the hive...
[n.b. : my bolds]
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"For many years now, my job has been to work with people who keep bees and with the bees themselves, but I actually spend more time with bee people than with bees. Don’t take this next statement as anything but positive, but I must admit that we are an eccentric lot. After all, we keep bees intentionally. Most people do all they can to get away from bees. In my experienced and confident state, I long ago embraced the fact that, as a group, we are different. So just as I was mentally recovering from the reevaluation of the hobby designation, I was shocked a second time when one of the reviewers bluntly said, 'Yep, beekeeping has an image problem.'

The reviewer continued her thought by saying that her take on our industry was that beekeepers and their bees were contributing to a vital pollination need but we kept referring to the process being a hobby. The public then, too often, sees our hobby as being the harboring of dangerous stinging insects more than the culturing of valuable pollinating insects. While so much media energy has been given to the issue of disappearing bees, presently, two Ohio communities are considering ordinances against beekeeping. Alternatively, Winnie the Pooh and the ambience that beekeeping provides is the opposing 'warm, fuzzy' aspect of beekeeping. Bees adorn nearly everything from nursery room toys to crafts and pottery. Honey is used in innumerable food and cosmetic items. The question is begged, 'Does the public generally see bees as ally or pest?'

Beekeepers are part of the problem. We consistently use the terms honey and pollination in the same breath as though somehow they are similar. Honey is only a small byproduct of pollination. If we strip away all the trappings, pollination is the fundamental relationship between bees and flowers – not honey production. The problem is that honey is so easy to quantify. We can price it per pound. We measure the sucess of a bee season by our honey crop. We invest in complicated honey processing machinery. We have a National Honey Board, but we don’t have a National Pollination Board so honey must be more important. It is as though we admire a row boat (honey) while standing by an ocean-going cruise ship (pollination).

Pollination phenomena are simply not as visually fulfilling as full honey supers. No one ever says, 'My bees pollinated over 300,000 blossoms today!' but some of us put our colonies on scales to monitor our incoming honey production. When doing pollination work, we can’t say that we charge by the apple or even the apple tree. We know pollination is important, but it is so vague – so innocuous – so difficult to measure.

The numbers I am about to present are truly general estimations, but the numbers do show the scope of the pollination value that bees provide. It has been estimated that the value of commercial crops requiring pollination in Ohio to be about $86 million dollars. Ohio currently has about 3300 registered beekeepers; therefore, each Ohio beekeeper is unintentionally contributing about $26,000 per beekeeper to commercial fruit and vegetable production1. Each Ohio colony (50,000 – 70,000) is contributing about $1200-$2400 per colony toward the production of commercial fruit and vegetables. Ohio honey production is about 50# per colony or about $150 per colony (@ $3.00 per pound)2. Importantly, these estimations don’t reflect any backyard garden pollination value, ornamental flower pollination, or pollination value ascribed to non-commercial plants of ecological importance. It could be argued that the pollination value of a 'hobby' beekeeper’s single hive equals the honey value of 10-15 hives. While I have used Ohio numbers available to me, similar estimations would be expected from any other U.S. state."

From : "The Passing Of The Hobby Beekeeper", Bee Culture, September 01, 2007
Dr. James E. Tew, State Specialist, Beekeeping, The Ohio State University, Wooster, OH 44691

Sushi Worms (Part 2)

********************************
The Fish Tapeworm!!!
30 feet long!!
Nearly an inch wide!!!
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Causal Agents: The cestode Diphyllobothrium latum (the fish or broad tapeworm), the largest human tapeworm. Several other Diphyllobothrium species have been reported to infect humans, but less frequently; they include D. pacificum, D. cordatum, D. ursi, D. dendriticum, D. lanceolatum, D. dalliae, and D. yonagoensis.

Life Cycle: Immature eggs are passed in feces [1]. Under appropriate conditions, the eggs mature (approximately 18 to 20 days) [2] and yield oncospheres which develop into a coracidia [3]. After ingestion by a suitable freshwater crustacean (the copepod first intermediate host) the coracidia develop into procercoid larvae [4]. Following ingestion of the copepod by a suitable second intermediate host, typically minnows and other small freshwater fish, the procercoid larvae are released from the crustacean and migrate into the fish flesh where they develop into a plerocercoid larvae (sparganum) [5]. The plerocercoid larvae are the infective stage for humans. Because humans do not generally eat undercooked minnows and similar small freshwater fish, these do not represent an important source of infection. Nevertheless, these small second intermediate hosts can be eaten by larger predator species, e.g., trout, perch, walleyed pike [6]. In this case, the sparganum can migrate to the musculature of the larger predator fish and humans can acquire the disease by eating these later intermediate infected host fish raw or undercooked [7] . After ingestion of the infected fish, the plerocercoid develop into immature adults and then into mature adult tapeworms which will reside in the small intestine. The adults of D. latum attach to the intestinal mucosa by means of the two bilateral groves (bothria) of their scolex [8]. The adults can reach more than 10 m in length, with more than 3,000 proglottids. Immature eggs are discharged from the proglottids (up to 1,000,000 eggs per day per worm) [9] and are passed in the feces . Eggs appear in the feces 5 to 6 weeks after infection. In addition to humans, many other mammals can also serve as definitive hosts for D. latum.

Geographic Distribution: Diphyllobothriasis occurs in the Northern Hemisphere (Europe, newly independent states of the former Soviet Union [NIS], North America, Asia) and in Uganda and Chile. Freshwater fish infected with Diphyllobothrium sp. larva may be transported to and consumed in geographic areas where active transmission does not occur, resulting in human diphyllobothriasis. For example, cases of D. latum infection associated with consumption of imported fish have been reported in Brazil.

Above information from : http://www.dpd.cdc.gov

Clinical Manifestations : Infection with Diphyllobothrium latum is usually asymptomatic, although occasional diarrhea, abdominal pain, fatigue, vomiting, dizziness, or numbness of fingers and toes may be present. Eosinophilia develops during the early stages of worm growth.

Structure: Diphyllobothrium latum is the largest parasite of humans, reaching lengths up to 10 m and consisting of a chain of 3,000 to 4,000 segments, each up to 2 cm wide. The adult worm, a member of the order Pseudophyllidea, is characterized by a scolex with a pair of linear sucking grooves instead of suckers and hooks, and by having a rosette-shaped uterus connected to the outside by a uterine pore through which the eggs are passed. Hence, mature segments produce eggs until they die and are shed, rather than by breaking off as intact egg-filled segments, as in Taenia. Up to a million eggs can be produced daily. The developmental stages are (1) the ciliated, swimming coracidium that hatches from the egg, (2) the procercoid that develops in the copepod primary host, and (3) the plerocercoid (or sparganum), a nonencysted, nonsegmented larval worm, 20 mm or more in length, found in the fish secondary hosts. The plerocercoid develops into the adult tapeworm in the small intestine of a fish-eating final host, such as human, cat, dog, or bear.

Multiplication and Life Cycle: Diphyllobothrium latum is the only adult cestode of humans that has an aquatic life cycle. Eggs are passed in feces of an infected human (or bear, dog, cat, wolf, raccoon, or other freshwater fish-eating reservoir host). If passed into lake or pond water, the eggs develop in 2 or more weeks (varying with the temperature) and hatch, releasing the spherical ciliated coracidium that contains the oncosphere. When ingested by an appropriate water flea (copepods such as Cyclops or Diaptomus), the coracidium sheds the ciliated coat, penetrates into the hemocoel, and changes in 2 to 3 weeks into the 0.5 mm, tailed second-stage embryo, the procercoid. If the infected copepod is then ingested by a minnow or other fish, the procercoid penetrates the fish gut in a few hours and later develops into a third-stage larva, the plerocercoid or sparganum. Usually, these small infected fish are eaten by larger ones; in each new fish host, the plerocercoid penetrates into the fascia or muscles. Eventually, a large game fish, such as a perch or pike, is infected; after being eaten by a human, the fish releases its tapeworm passenger, which attaches and begins adult life. In a few months, the worm is 5 to 10 m long.

From : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=mmed.section.4713

Sushi Worms (Part 1)

Causal Agents: Anisakiasis is caused by the accidental ingestion of larvae of the nematodes (roundworms) Anisakis simplex and Pseudoterranova decipiens.
Life Cycle : Adult stages of Anisakis simplex or Pseudoterranova decipiens reside in the stomach of marine mammals, where they are embedded in the mucosa, in clusters. Unembryonated eggs produced by adult females are passed in the feces of marine mammals [1]. The eggs become embryonated in water, and first-stage larvae are formed in the eggs. The larvae molt, becoming second-stage larvae [2a], and after the larvae hatch from the eggs, they become free-swimming [2b]. Larvae released from the eggs are ingested by crustaceans [3]. The ingested larvae develop into third-stage larvae that are infective to fish and squid [4]. The larvae migrate from the intestine to the tissues in the peritoneal cavity and grow up to 3 cm in length. Upon the host's death, larvae migrate to the muscle tissues, and through predation, the larvae are transferred from fish to fish. Fish and squid maintain third-stage larvae that are infective to humans and marine mammals [5]. When fish or squid containing third-stage larvae are ingested by marine mammals, the larvae molt twice and develop into adult worms. The adult females produce eggs that are shed by marine mammals [6]. Humans become infected by eating raw or undercooked infected marine fish [7]. After ingestion, the anisakid larvae penetrate the gastric and intestinal mucosa, causing the symptoms of anisakiasis.

Geographic Distribution : Worldwide, with higher incidence in areas where raw fish is eaten (e.g., Japan, Pacific coast of South America, the Netherlands).

Above from : http://www.dpd.cdc.gov/dpdx/HTML/Anisakiasis.htm

Summary of Anisakiasis.
From the article "Anisakiasis" by J A Sakanari and J H McKerrow
Department of Pathology, University of California, San Francisco 94143.

Abstract : Anisakiasis is a zoonotic disease caused by the ingestion of larval nematodes in raw seafood dishes such as sushi, sashimi, ceviche, and pickled herring. Symptoms of anisakiasis include abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Because symptoms are vague, this disease is often misdiagnosed as appendicitis, acute abdomen, stomach ulcers, or ileitis. Endoscopic examination with biopsy forceps has facilitated the diagnosis of gastric anisakiasis. Worms can be removed and identified, and a definitive diagnosis can be made. Patients generally recover with no further evidence of disease. Worms can become invasive, however, and migrate beyond the stomach, penetrating the intestine, omentum, liver, pancreas, and probably the lungs. Surgery is often necessary for treatment of invasive anisakiasis. With the increase in popularity of eating lightly cooked or raw fish dishes, the number of cases of anisakiasis may be expected to increase.

Source : http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=358121

Wishing You a Prosperous 2008

So 2007 is a year in our past. I remember when it was only a year in science fiction.

Jim Jr. says I need to stick around another 30 years or so. We'll see. I wonder what the year 2037 would be like? Would stem cell transplants be available to rebuilt worn out body parts? Would selective memory wipes be available to make room for new neural associations ( while keeping the best memories of the past)? Will there be human colonies on the Moon or Mars? Will Jesus have returned, or will He be waiting until He can actually call His Chosen from the farthest parts of the heavens?

I keep reading obituaries of people in the 50-59 year old range, and I count myself fortunate to have seen the dawn of 2008. Will I celebrate New Years 2009? Only my Maker knows for sure.

There is always the factoid that very few people over 100 years old die in a given year.

Enjoy your New Year. I have serious doubts that parallel universes exist, or that it would be possible to transition between them, or that time travel to the past is even possible, so keep moving forward. Despite the fact that evil men and seducers will always become worse and worse, keep trying to make this world a better place for the next generation.

So for my part, I planted a plum tree today [snuck it in before the ground freezes up, as it is scheduled to do overnight]. Maybe I will live long enough to make some slivovitz. We can have a party : kobasa and slivovitz. And don't tell me I should spell it "kielbasa". Uncle Sam's and Cousin Jaroslav's recipes are nothing like the recipes I see for "kielbasa". (That's Polish sausage -- full of black pepper. I want stuff with spicy paprika). They are more like Bako Jeno's salami. Or Al's. And if you party with that stuff, the world will always be a better place. Or so it will smell.

Pozdravy!!