Friday’s Find – Meme – H1N1

Posted on October 29, 2009 by Bobbie Crawford-McCoy

Friday's Find Book Reviews By Bobbie

We’ll chat about a fascinating book, audiobook, movie, blog, website, etc. It might be trendy or unpopular, old or new…it’s sure to be interesting and it’s hosted by yours truly! Please offer your thoughts on our Friday’s Find and share your own. Don’t forget to link-back to Book Reviews By Bobbie; if you leave a comment in this week’s Friday’s Find, other people will be able to stop by & read your post as well.

This Friday ’s Find is a VIRUS:

H1N1

Influenza A (H1N1) virus is a subtype of influenzavirus A and the most common cause of influenza (flu) in humans. Some strains of H1N1 are endemic in humans and cause a small fraction of all influenza-like illness and a large fraction of all seasonal influenza. H1N1 strains caused roughly half of all human flu infections in 2006. Other strains of H1N1 are endemic in pigs (swine influenza) and in birds (avian influenza).

In June 2009, World Health Organization declared that flu due to a new strain of swine-origin H1N1 was responsible for the 2009 flu pandemic. This strain is often called “swine flu” by the public media.

Swine influenza (also called swine flu, hog flu, pig flu and sometimes, the swine) is an infection by any one of several types of swine influenza virus. Swine influenza virus (SIV) is any strain of the influenza family of viruses that is endemic in pigs. As of 2009, the known SIV strains include influenza C and the subtypes of influenza A known as H1N1, H1N2, H3N1, H3N2, and H2N3.

Swine influenza virus is common throughout pig populations worldwide. Transmission of the virus from pigs to humans is not common and does not always lead to human influenza, often resulting only in the production of antibodies in the blood. If transmission does cause human influenza, it is called zoonotic swine flu. People with regular exposure to pigs are at increased risk of swine flu infection. The meat of an infected animal poses no risk of infection when properly cooked.

During the mid-20th century, identification of influenza subtypes became possible, allowing accurate diagnosis of transmission to humans. Since then, only 50 such transmissions have been confirmed. These strains of swine flu rarely pass from human to human. Symptoms of zoonotic swine flu in humans are similar to those of influenza and of influenza-like illness in general, namely chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness and general discomfort. The recommended time of isolation is about five days.

Preliminary genetic characterization found that the hemagglutinin (HA) gene was similar to that of swine flu viruses present in U.S. pigs since 1999, but the neuraminidase (NA) and matrix protein (M) genes resembled versions present in European swine flu isolates. The six genes from American swine flu are themselves mixtures of swine flu, bird flu, and human flu viruses. While viruses with this genetic makeup had not previously been found to be circulating in humans or pigs, there is no formal national surveillance system to determine what viruses are circulating in pigs in the U.S.

On June 11, 2009, the WHO declared an H1N1 pandemic, moving the alert level to phase 6, marking the first global pandemic since the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

An October 11, 2009 worldwide update by the U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO) states that “74 countries have officially reported over 399,234 laboratory confirmed cases of the influenza pandemic H1N1 infection, including 4,735 deaths.”

Already this fall, 292 deaths have been reported by the 28 states reporting laboratory-confirmed H1N1 cases to the CDC. Schuchat said the number of cases likely reflected under-reporting, but that the ages of affected patients was probably a good reflection of practice.

The age breakdown was:

* 3.1% ages 4 and under
* 13.7% ages 5 to 18
* 6.8% ages 19 to 24
* 32.5% ages 25 to 49
* 32.2% ages 50 to 64
* 11.6% ages 65 and older

Over the same Sept. 1 to Oct. 10 period, there were 4,958 laboratory-confirmed H1N1-related hospitalizations reported to the CDC by 27 states.

The ages of those hospitalized were:

* 19% ages 4 and younger
* 25.3% ages 5 to 18
* 8.7% ages 19 to 24
* 24% ages 25 to 49
* 15% ages 50 to 64
* 7.2% ages 65 and older

On October 25, 2009 U.S. President Barack Obama officially declared H1N1 a “national emergency”.

A study -conducted in coordination with the University of Michigan Health Service- is scheduled for publication in the December 2009 American Journal of Roentgenology warning that H1N1 flu can cause pulmonary emboli, surmised as a leading cause of death in this current pandemic. The study authors suggest physician evaluation via contrast enhanced CT scans for the presence of pulmonary emboli when caring for patients diagnosed with respiratory complications from a “severe” case of the H1N1 flu.

DS and I got our seasonal flu and H1N1 vaccination today and I’m happy that we did. It will take 2 weeks before we have immunity but at least we’ve taken the first step!

Are YOU going to get vaccinated?

Continue reading →

Friday’s Find – Meme

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Bobbie Crawford-McCoy

Friday's Find Book Reviews By Bobbie

This Friday ’s Find is a BOOK:

The Bedside Book of Beasts by Graeme Gibson

I received my finished, hardcover review copy of The Book Bedside Book of Beasts yesturday and it is so georgeous that I HAD to make it this Friday’s Find! This gorgeous book isn’t available until October 20th, 2009 but don’t let that stop you from pre-ordering a copy.

About the Book:

The Bedside Book of Beasts

“In a wonderfully diverse selection of writings and gorgeous illustrations, this stunning companion to The Bedside Book of Birds explores the relationship between predators and their prey.

The intricate, complex connection between the hunter and the hunted has defined animal life on earth throughout time. In The Bedside Book of Beasts, Graeme Gibson gathers breathtaking works of art and literature that capture the power, grace, and inventiveness of both predators and their natural prey.

The Bedside Book of Beasts presents myths, fables, poetry, and excerpts from nature and travel writing, journals, sacred texts, and works of fiction. Within these pages we encounter big cats, bears, wolves, and the small but voracious praying mantis, as well as works that bring to life the experience of more vulnerable prey. Portraits of such legendary evil beasts as the Minotaur, Grendel, and the biblical Leviathan add to the depth and breadth of the collection. An impressive array of art, both traditional and contemporary, as well as scientific, religious, and mythological drawings, paintings, and woodcuts make this volume an utterly unique gift for the holidays or any occasion.

A fascinating exploration of the chain of life, of survival and mortality, The Bedside Book of Beasts evokes a profound sense of the eternal connection between humans and the creatures they endeavor to tame.”

About the Author:

Graeme Gibson is the acclaimed author of Five Legs, Perpetual Motion, and Gentleman Death. He is a past president of PEN Canada and the recipient of both the Harbourfront Festival Prize and the Toronto Arts Award, and is a member of the Order of Canada. He has been a council member of World Wildlife Fund Canada, and is chairman of the Pelee Island Bird Observatory. He lives in Toronto with writer Margaret Atwood.

Photo Credit: Dennis Minty Photo

Friday’s Find – Meme

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Bobbie Crawford-McCoy

Friday's Find Book Reviews By Bobbie

This Friday ’s Find is a:

WEBSITE

National Geographic.com

I have been a fan of National Geographic since before I could read. As a child, I can’t count the number of times that I looked through old or new copies of the National Geographic; sometimes I found them in a Doctor’s waiting room, sometimes I would find copies at a yard sale that I just had to buy with my meager savings. The untold treasures inside always amazed me. I grew up in a rather money-scarce environment that didn’t allow for a lot of travelling or exploring to broaden my horizons, so all of the National Geographic magazines that I could get my hands on were worth their weight in gold! They took me to exotic places in far away lands and taught me about so many different peoples, races, religion and cultures…it made the world so accessable to me in my tiny world. I owe thanks to National Geographic for expanding my horizons and for helping me to explore fabulous, unknown places, right in my own backyard.

We usually have a subscription to at least one of the magazines at any given time. Our DS has the National Geographic Kids magazine and loves it! We also love buying the beautiful books and atlases from National Geographic…we just can’t get enough of it!!!

So…What did you find today?

Friday’s Find – Meme

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Bobbie Crawford-McCoy

Friday's Find Book Reviews By Bobbie

We’ll chat about a fascinating book, audiobook, movie, blog, website, etc. It might be trendy or unpopular, old or new…it’s sure to be interesting and it’s hosted by yours truly! Please offer your thoughts on our Friday’s Find and share your own.
Don’t forget to link-back to Book Reviews By Bobbie; if you leave a comment in this week’s Friday’s Find, other people will be able to stop by & read your post too.

This Friday ’s Find is:

A BOOK

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

So far, The Help has spent 24 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller’s List. I’ve seen this cover around the internet countless times but I’ve never realized what it was about, until now.

Book Description from Amazon.com

“Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.”

Kathryn-Stockett

I can’t wait to read a copy of The Help by Kathryn Stockett!!

This is a 4-part YouTube video series that covers Kathryn Stockett’s visit to Warwick’s Books where she talks about The Help, reads from her book and answers some questions. They are longish videos, but all 4 of them are really neat to watch and listen to!

So…What did you find today?

Friday’s Find – Meme

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Bobbie Crawford-McCoy

Friday's Find Book Reviews By Bobbie

We’ll chat about a fascinating book, audiobook, movie, blog, website, etc. It might be trendy or unpopular, old or new…it’s sure to be interesting and it’s hosted by yours truly! Please offer your thoughts on our Friday’s Find and share your own.
Don’t forget to link-back to Book Reviews By Bobbie; if you leave a comment in this week’s Friday’s Find, other people will be able to stop by & read your post too.

This Friday ’s Find is a:

BOOK

blue notebook

The Blue Notebook: A Novel by James A. Levine

This book examines a really disturbing topic but does so in an interesting way. I really want to read a copy of this book and hope that DH might take the hint and buy it for me. :) One of many fascinating things about this book is the author; he is a Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic!

“Every now and then, we come across a novel that moves us like no other, that seems like a miracle of the imagination, and that haunts us long after the book is closed. James Levine’s The Blue Notebook is that kind of book. It is the story of Batuk, an Indian girl who is taken to Mumbai from the countryside and sold into prostitution by her father; the blue notebook is her diary, in which she recalls her early childhood, records her life on the Common Street, and makes up beautiful and fantastic tales about a silver-eyed leopard and a poor boy who fells a giant with a single gold coin.
How did Levine, a British-born doctor at the Mayo Clinic, manage to conjure the voice of a fifteen-year-old female Indian prostitute? It all began, he told me, when, as part of his medical research, he was interviewing homeless children on a street in Mumbai known as the Street of Cages, where child prostitutes work. A young woman writing in a notebook outside her cage caught Levine’s attention. The powerful image of a young prostitute engaged in the act of writing haunted him, and he himself began to write.
The Blue Notebook brings us into the life of a young woman for whom stories are not just entertainment but a means of survival. Even as the novel humanizes and addresses the devastating global issue of child prostitution, it also delivers an inspiring message about the uplifting power of words and reading–a message that is so important to hold on to, especially in difficult times. Dr. Levine is donating all his U.S. proceeds from this book to help exploited children. Batuk’s story can make a difference.”
-Celina Spiegel
Publisher

About the Author:

James A. Levine is a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, is a world-renowned scientist, doctor, and researcher. He lives in Oronoco, Minnesota.

What did you find today?

Friday’s Find – Meme

Posted on August 28, 2009 by Bobbie Crawford-McCoy

Friday's Find Book Reviews By Bobbie

Don’t forget to link-back to Book Reviews By Bobbie; if you leave a comment in this week’s Friday’s Find, other people will be able to stop by & read your post too.

This Friday ’s Find is a:

BOOK

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart, Illustrated by Briony Morrow-Cribbs

I want to tell you all about that this book; it sounds FAN-tastic! Years ago, when I used to garden, I started to understand a little more about plant toxicity and the unknown dangers lurking in our gardens. When I saw this book I just knew that I had to feature it as this week’s, Friday’s Find! I really, really want a copy of this book and I hope that all of you lovely readers and gardeners enjoy this book’s informative content and gorgeous illustrations.

“A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. Stewart takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature’s most appalling creations in an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend.

Menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard. Drawing on history, medicine, science, and legend, this compendium of bloodcurdling botany will entertain, alarm, and enlighten even the most intrepid gardeners and nature lovers.”

About the author:

Amy Stewart tends a poison garden of her own in northern California. She is the award-winning author of four books on the perils and pleasures of the natural world.

Her essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Garden Design, Organic Gardening, and elsewhere. She’s been featured on NPR, Good Morning America and CBS Sunday Morning.

Stewart lives in Eureka, California, with her husband Scott Brown. They own an antiquarian bookstore called Eureka Books and tend a flock of unruly hens in their backyard.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) granted her a Creative Writing Fellowship for 2006.

She is the author of From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden, The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, and the New York Times bestselling Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers. Her newest book is Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities (Algonquin Books, May 2009).

Recent honors and awards include:

NEA grant recipient, 2006

California Horticultural Society’s Writer’s Award 2005

Barnes & Noble ‘Discover Great New Authors’ Program

Discovery Channel Book Club Selection

Book translations into Dutch, Japanese, French, and Korean

Rave reviews from the New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Entertainment Weekly, and others
National Public Radio guest; frequent radio and television appearances
Lecture and workshops at the American Museum of Natural History, Northwest Flower & Garden Show, United States Botanic Garden, and California Academy of Sciences

What fun, new or exciting thing did you find today?

Friday’s Find – Meme

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Bobbie Crawford-McCoy

This Friday ’s Find is:

SPOT: Handheld Satellite Communication & Safety Device

I know what you must be thinking: why in the world is Bobbie talking about this thing as her Friday’s Find when it has NOTHING to do with books? Well, that’s a great question and you would be 100% correct! It has nothing to do with reading or books BUT it certainly looks like a fantastic product and it seems to be a relatively affordable product for campers, hikers, fishermen & fisher women, hunters, etc. My DH pointed it out to me yesterday and I just know that he wants one now! :)

DH & DS love to go fishing and they want to go camping too, but I’m such a worry-wart that I can’t stand the idea of them getting lost or injured deep in some forest where I have no idea how to get to them. This unit is pretty darn neat because it is the world’s first satellite messenger. Leveraging both GPS satellite and SPOT’s own network, the device is able to report its location to friends and family even in areas without cellular or wireless coverage. DH says I can track him on Google Maps or something of that nature. :)

Tech Junkie talks a little more about it in this YouTube video, below:

I think there is a monthly or yearly fee, depending on which option you choose. I’m pretty sure we’ll own one of these before long.

What do you think about the SPOT: Handheld Satellite Communication & Safety Device?

What did you find this Friday? :)

Friday’s Find – Meme

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Bobbie Crawford-McCoy

This Friday ’s Find is a:

BOOK

Low & Slow: Master the Art of Barbecue in 5 Easy Lessons

by Gary Wiviott with Colleen Rush

Low & Slow is the recipient of the Chicago Tribune’s Good Eating Award, 2007 and by the looks of things, it was well deserved! It should be noted that I haven’t read or reviewed this book yet (though I’m thinking about requesting a review copy). Our family, like so many others around the world…just LOVES to eat BBQ! There is nothing quite like the smell of savory meat, smoking and cooking away on a summer afternoon … creating ”neighbour envy” and inspiring others to have a BBQ that same day, almost against their will. I have always wanted my hubby to learn how to slow-cook/smoke meat, not that he does a bad job at the BBQ as it is! This book will surely be all that you, my hubby or anyone else will need to “make delicious, delicious barbecue”.

Book Blurb: “Welcome to Barbecue Boot Camp! Step away from the propane tank. Surrender all of your notions about barbecue. Forget everything you’ve ever learned about cooking with charcoal and fire. It is all wrong. Get it right with the “Five Easy Lessons” program. Includes over 130 recipes and step-by-step instructions for setting up and cooking low and slow on a Weber Smokey Mountain, an offset smoker or a kettle grill. This program is guided by a singular philosophy: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Do exactly as Gary says-don’t even think about opening the lid before it’s time.”

About the authors:

Gary Wiviott is a barbecue life coach. From the popular online tutorial that started it all to his lively cooking demonstrations and teaching diehards how to set up a smoker in Chicago’s notoriously brutal winter weather, he is committed to spreading the gospel of low and slow barbecue. He is no stranger to the most popular national barbecue forums and food communities, including TheSmokeRing.com, Slow Food USA, and the Society for the Preservation of Traditional Southern Barbecue. Gary is also the founder of LTHForum.com, the Chicago-based culinary chat site.

Colleen Rush is the author of The Mere Mortal’s Guide to Fine Dining: From Salad Forks to Sommeliers, How to Eat and Drink in Style Without Fear of Faux Pas (Broadway, 2006). She knew very little (okay, nothing) about barbecue before meeting Gary—thought nothing of using lighter fluid—but has since reformed her ways and makes a damn fine pulled pork sandwich.

You can buy a paperback copy from Amazon.com for just $13.57… it seems like a real bargain, to me. :)