Predicting Alzheimer's, stalling economic recovery and Toyota in court.

First look at today's news from the Bedtime Browser:
Here we go again...
A damaged protein has been identified and implicated as an early diagnostic biomarker for Alzheimer's disease in adults before the appearance of any other symptoms.  The protein, phosphorylated tau231, is a damaged protein found in Alzheimer's patients that the current study now shows is predictive of memory decline over a two year period, the length of the study.  This is all well and good for researchers looking for ways to prevent the progression in these patients to full blown Alzhiemers but what about the patients themselves, now having the knowledge that they could be on the slippery slope to nowhere if a medicine is not quickly forthcoming?  Co-author of the study, Mony de Leon, rightly says that identifying people at risk is a necessary first step to developing preventative therapies, but with such a devastating, and now for some, perhaps inevitable but untreatable disease, how should one manage the significant ethical issues that arise from patients having this knowledge?  I'd be interested in any thoughts on this from readers. It's a challenge that will increasingly rear its head as personalized medicine brings us more diagnostics to help us look ahead to the ailments that may lay in waiting.

The Financial Times talks about fizzled hopes for recovery based on slacking consumer confidence and sluggish markets.  This particular piece seems to imply the weather has something to do with it.  I think the map here, that shows the unemployment timeline in the US, tells a better tale.   Although this map is for the US, I would expect a very similar scenario in Europe.  Until the public have some financial security, and that means job security for most, then any rally in consumer spending and home building/buying is going to be related to short term stimuli such as a tax rebate, or the boost of a giving season. 



Toyota admits it lost its way as it expanding rapidly in its rise to the top, outgrowing its capacity for quality production in favor of speed and volume.  Yesterday a wronged consumer who experienced the now infamous stuck accelerator problem testified with tears and harsh words calling the situation shameful and the company greedy.  Toyota still cannot explain the cause of most unintended acceleration issues.  Personally, I'm looking forward to some serious sales on Toyota vehicles in the next couple of months.  I currently have a 12 year old RAV4 with 190,000 miles on the clock and it's still getting me around.  I would buy another in a heart beat.

Mike the Mad Biologist on budget cuts for antiobtic resistance efforts

Obama to CDC Efforts in Antimicrobial Resistance: Drop Dead : Mike the Mad Biologist

Interesting rant on the cutbacks in antimicrobial resistance research at a time when we can ill afford to give up on the struggle to combat resistance.

Tragedy

Well, today the news is dominated by the large earthquake in Haiti.  Tragic scenes on the news and the Internet show the devastation and the despair as Haitians walk around dazed and helpless, trying to comfort the injured and pull  others from the wreckage.  The earthquake was the most severe
since the 1770 and registered 7.0 on the Richter scale. My older son watched the video with me and is now asking at school to see if he can start a fundraiser. If anyone knows how a teen might initiate a fundraiser, please drop me a line.

The news from Haiti eclipses the relative triviality of the Leno-Conan fiasco, where Mr O'Brien says no the NBC's deal to offer him a 30 minutes delay on his Tonight Show. Both Leno and Conan have made the most of their plight in their monologues which have been quite entertaining.  I feel for both of them, but for Conan most of all.

A small UFO will fly withing 76,000 miles of Earth today (that's closer than the moon, see link for trajectory).  Scientists say the object is either a small asteroid or a piece of space junk (which means exactly what I wonder...).  If it should fall to Earth, it will not cause damage apparently, but by all accounts will burn up as it enters our atmosphere.

Snippet from Twitter:  Remember John Hurt in Alien?  Here's a really nasty little video of a parasite breaking out of its host.

Drug companies are under fire from the FDA for inappropriate promotion of their products. Lilly, Bay, Amylin and Cephalon are all warned about inadequate information on side effects in their marketing materials, and are saying they withdraw the offending materials.

Banks in the news again as President Obama gets a commission going to figure out what went wrong.  Regardless of what started it, the resolution has been ugly. Here is the timeline: banks in trouble, banks get tax-payer funded bail-out, banks recover partly due to ridiculous practices such as holding deposited checks for 10 business days, meanwhile bouncing and re-bouncing checks in order to charge $35 a pop, banks makes billions in profit within one year of bail-out, banks payout huge bonuses, customers (ie the tax-payers who bailed them out) still getting stiffed.  I'd like to give a personal thank you to Bank of America for opening my eyes on this one. I don't expect banks to actually be on my side, but I did think when I signed up, that certain ethical standards could be taken as read.  Live and learn I guess.

Big Mac, Big talkers, and the odd sing-song

This morning I was super tired and had only 3 minutes to gather infor before getting my son up for school (he wanted to go in early to study for a test, so I didn't want to get in the way of that remarkable behavior). So here is what the world is concerned with:
Big Mac, AKA Mark McGwire has confessed to doping.  As if we weren't all completely convinced of it anyway-just look at the guy!  I was in St Louis, at a game when I saw him hit a record (later that season he broke it) and we were all so delirious.  There were fireworks, whistles, thunderous applause and wild screaming.  So much noise that my young son (about 2 at the time) feared for his life and we had to leave. Today a Facebook debate rages on whether steroids should be legal.  I say NO.  Imagine what the kids would do with that (my son is a wrestler where beef counts for much).  They are dangerous beyond belief, and lay down the gauntlet of risk for those wishing to be serious contenders as champion sportsmen (or women).  They are illegal because they should be and the fight to keep sport clean should continue.
Other big news revolves around TV- Leno is cancelled, Conan is mulling options (but some say he is offended and will leave. I like Jay but don't blame Conan for feeling slighted) and Jimmy Fallon is just hoping to fit in somewhere I guess.  Simon Cowell is leaving Idol and bringing The X-Factor to US TV.  I'm not sure what the difference is between X and Idol; I thought they were both the same....Either way, Simon says he wants Paula back- ahhh. Sweet.  They did make a cute pair.

From Twitter: quote of the day from Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk): "The person who has no enemies has done nothing"

Final snippet for today, the Vatican says Avatar is no masterpiece, implying that it is no more than a sappy superficial distraction. L'Osservatore Romano says the movie is unoriginal, bland even.  I'm surprised that the Vatican is even interested.   Anyway. it's a cartoon (sorry, James). What did they expect?

The pleasures and pains of bedtime browsing

I go to bed at about midnight and my alarm startles me awake at 5.30 every morning.  I have precious little time to getup, get the boys up, feed them, boss them around enough that they get a shower, clean their teeth, etc, and get myself into a presentable enough shape to drive them to school by 7.20.  It's a marathon but it all gets done.   Before I even start all that though, I procrastinate for about 15 minutes using my iPhone snooze feature until at 5.45 I can justify it no longer and I am forced to rise and begin the routine.   That 15 minutes snoozing is not all lost time however.  Most mornings, I place the iPhone about 2 inches from my eyeballs (I am very shortsighted) and I start my browsing after the first snooze alarm goes off. In about 10 minutes I can grasp the essence of the day, at least from an external perspective.  I know what the world is worrying about and I can get a sense of what my be hot on the  Today Show, should I have time to tune in to that later.  My first port of call is gmail so I can check overnight messages (new alerts, desperate notes from clients, cheesy ads for department stores, and tables of contents for various journals), followed by Facebook, Twitter, and finally AP world news headlines.  If I have time, I might look at my local paper, TheDay, but usually, I leave that until after coffee and the morning walk with the dog.   So these are the pleasures of early morning browsing without leaving the cozy confines of my bed.
So what are the pains?  Just lately I have been feeling a kind of agony in my right arm as I lift it to hang laundry, or drag my handbag from the back seat of the car to the front.  It's not the first time this has happened and I usually find plenty of things to blame it on but this time, I have a feeling it is my own fault.  I do believe my wrenching arm pain is not merely a sign of growing old but rather a consequence of my early morning forays into cyberspace.  So far, it is not enough to stop me, and as long as I can stand the pain I will try to alert readers to what I deem important news of the day, albeit from the sleepy pre-dawn repose of my bed.