Currently I have no urge or time to put him a lot of work to create an informational entry on influenza Fortunately I have friends that if they have done and are on their blogs posts about the subject with a exceptional quality and simplicity, so we highly recommend you visit their blogs:
The first is the blog of Germain, who also have a good deslgose of publicly available scientific information is explained clearly and well you're getting into the brain and the genome of the virus chamba: http://rudimenthos.blogspot.com/search/label/Influenza
The second the Blog Luis, who works at CINVESTAV and also has a very sober and realistic analysis of the situation and explains what we have in Mexico to understand this phenomena and what are our achievements: http://ldalcaraz.blogspot.com/search/label/influenza
TRANSMIT RADIO AND TV UNAM UNAM INFLUENZA: THE RESPONSE OF SCIENCE
As an alternative to the terrible work of televised information, TVAZTECA and even CNN have been conducted on swine ripe UNAM will begin broadcasting a daily special on the topic:
TRANSMIT RADIO AND TV UNAM UNAM INFLUENZA: THE RESPONSE OF SCIENCE
* is one of the activities organized by the University Committee recently installed Care Health Emergency * be broadcast daily, simultaneously, Radio and TV UNAM, at 19:30 * Participating physicians, virologists, epidemiologists and economists, among other scientists, who will address various areas of disease
The University Committee for Emergency Health Care, newly installed, will begin its activities today with simulcast on Radio and TV UNAM, the influenza program: answers from science.
count with the presence of leading scientists and researchers from the National University will present their views and provide information on various subjects relating to this serious health problem that affects people of Mexico.
In the daily broadcast, which will begin today Tuesday 28 at 19:30 pm, involved general practitioners, virologists, epidemiologists, bacteriologists and parasitologists, as well as experts in the social and economic, among others.
will address various areas of the flu to try to guide the population, respond to concerns raised by the audience, reported on the status of the situation and the measures to be taken.
Influenza: the responses of science, will air Monday to Sunday at 19:30 hours, UNAM Radio, 96.1 FM, and TV UNAM, the University Channel, through the channel 255, Sky, channel 411 on Cablevision digital, and more than 550 cities and towns through the various cable television systems of Mexico.
The "spell" of Charles II: Genetics in aid of history.
I must admit that this post I am particularly pleased because it combines two of my passions, biology and history. It is not the first time that genetics comes to the aid of historical research, one must recall the investigations carried out in the 90's on remains of the Russian imperial family and culminated in very recent date, or trying to elucidate if the remains of Christopher Columbus are actually placed in the cathedral of Seville or rest in the Dominican Republic. This time it is the turn to English Habsburgs, the royal family during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ruled the destinies of Spain ... and half the world.
A study published a few days ago, conducted by researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela, relates to this dynasty with inbreeding caused by the large number of arranged marriages between members of the same.
Felipe I el Hermoso, Origin of the House of Austria in Spain (the name given to the Habsburgs Hispanic), along with his wife Joanna of Castile , " la Loca, daughter of the Catholic Monarchs give rise to a new royal family his arrival at the throne of Castile in 1506. Among his children was born Carlos I of Spain, that will access the new English crown in 1516 and is recognized worldwide as the Emperor Charles V to the throne of the German Empire in 1519, his descendants will reign in Spain until 1700, the year the dying Charles II "the Bewitched" without issue, leading to the War of English Succession culminating in the inauguration of the Bourbon French Famila currently prevailing.
Carlos II was dubbed haunted given the enormous amount of suffering from physical defects, had rickets, his head was abnormally large, learned to speak and walk four years to eight. He was apathetic, married twice and got no marriage desdendencia. Apparently he suffered from impotence and premature ejaculation. Blood in the urine and had sporadic episodes of diarrhea and frequent vomiting. Besides suffering edema in the feet, legs, abdomen and face. After a grueling existence died at age 39, looking like a real old man. The text of his autopsy is distressing, " the body was not even a drop of blood, the heart appears the size of a peppercorn corroded lungs, intestines rotting and gangrene, in three large kidney stones, one testicle, black as coal, and a head full of water .
Historians have liked to see in the custom of marriage consanguineous origin of the problems of Charles II. The British Hispanist John Lynch, who specializes in Hispanic Habsburg, said: " Charles II was the last, the most degenerate and most pathetic victim of Habsburg inbreeding .
Family tree of the English Habsburgs, obtained from the original article : Alvarez G, Ceballos FC, Quinteiro C (2009) The Role of Inbreeding in the Extinction of a European Royal Dynasty. PLoS ONE 4 (4): e5174. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005174
Viewing
above diagram shows how it was customary marriage between relatives, Philip II and Philip IV who married his nieces would be a good example. The data show that in the two centuries-long dynasty there were 11 marriages blood. But what are the effects of inbreeding?.
Each of us has a 50% chance of inheriting one of our parents either allele (our mother provides half of our heritage and our father the other half). A brother or sister happens we like, but if we see which is the probability that both have inherited the same allele, then the figure drops to 25%. How important is this?. Well, if we talk about disease-causing alleles, the likelihood of them among family members is greater, and if those relatives have offspring together, the likelihood increases further. The Wright's inbreeding coefficient (F) is used to analyze the degree of consanguinity of a population and is based on the probability that an individual inherits the same allele from his father and his mother from a common ancestor to both. Analyzing the family tree of more than 3ooo Habsburg family members as the scientists found the coefficient F increases over the years, and Philip I, the founder, has an F = 0.025 (2.5%), while Carlos II has a F = 0.254 (25.4%), ten times more, something greater than they would the children of a marriage between siblings.
The fact that the high rate of consanguinity of the last Habsburg king English has to do with his fragile health is supported by two recessive genetic diseases (which is only expressed when an individual inherits an allele simultaneously for the same in each of his parents, a fact that is reinforced by inbreeding) that apparently the monarch suffered. One of them was multiple pituitary hormone deficiency , which is the inability of the pituitary to produce some of your hormones: growth hormone (GH) , which is responsible for growth, the gonadotropins (FSH & LH) , which help in the development of puberty and fertility control, the Thyroid hormone (TSH), that control metabolism, the antidiuretic hormone (ADH ), which controls the amount of urine that is produced, and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), maintaining a good blood sugar in the blood. The deficit of these hormones lead to short stature, muscle weakness, apathy, impotence, infertility, and gastrointestinal problems, symptoms suffered by all the unhappy Charles II.
The other disease, distal renal tubular acidosis , is caused by excessive secretion of acid in the kidney, resulting in the loss of total body calcium, causing softening and weakening of bones, retarded growth in children, skeletal deformities and muscular weakness. There is also an increase in the presence of calcium in the kidney and kidney stones due to excessive excretion of calcium and phosphate through these organs. These symptoms would complete those presented by the bewitched king .
Authors concluded that although a very low probability that an individual present these two rare genetic diseases simultaneously, it dramatically increases with increasing inbreeding, a fact that we found in our protagonist.
In short, the marriage policy the Habsburg dynasty ended with the same due to the increase in inbreeding occurred, especially with the last of their monarchs Hispanic.
Finally, I leave a card Music Gaspar Sanz, contemporary musician Carlos II, and let me recommend a book of fiction fun and adventure set in the dramatic final months of this king, "King Bewitched " Jose Calvo Poyato .
Last week I went with my children to the cinema to see a children's film in which some monster players, representing a typical mad scientist, pronounced in an action scene the exclamation " by Hawking's chair! " in another of those winks that animators often have to adults in his films lately. Logically, the phrase went unnoticed for my children but after the movie tried to tell at least that was the joke and who was the protagonist. When I explained to Stephen Hawking who was remained as if they had mentioned the X-ray diffraction of DNA. British physicist trying to relate to something that was familiar to them suddenly remembered ... the Simpsons!, Indeed, Hawking appears in a couple of chapters of the yellow family, the kids automatically recognized the character I made a comment about his life and profession. Serve
anecdote to note the great importance can have among young people in particular film and audiovisual media in general when to familiarize them with something Science or scientists, at least indirectly. Hawking was not the only scientist who has gone through the Simpsons and that in their series also left other scientists, as the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and Nobel Laureate Dudley Herschbach Chemistry . The interest of the writers of the TV series by science (in fact two of them are mathematical and one physical, the three trained at Harvard) is illustrated by the fact that in 2007 the prestigious scientific journal Nature came to publish an article with scientists 10 times The Simpsons (translated into English here) that I recommend.
More famous soap operas that have made cameos these and other scientists (Hawking himself also appears in Futurama and Family Guy ). is another way to familiarize the public with the scientists, probably unorthodox and effective but will never agree with me more these apparitions provided they do not convey an image too distorted (or freaky would say one of our young ), which not forget that on the other hand has been very common in film and television.
In line with the above mention that it fits in the English television program currently El Hormiguero chain Four has a section where scientific experiments are striking, we can say that are more spectacular than teaching, but make so many boys and girls feel every night in front of the TV to watch and marvel at the Flipy experiments . It also contributes to the interest every week for the scientific and methodical treatment of the fictional book Gil Grissom, the star of the TV series CSI . who Film is perhaps a more faithful even sparing has portrayed scientists, often highlighting aspects biographical scientists towards the public interest. classic films as The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935), Edison, the man (1940) or Madame Curie (1943) have given way to new films like Galileo (1975), Gorillas in fog (1988) which portrays the life of slain zoologist Dian Fossey ; The merits of Madame Curie (1997), that playfully portrays the relationship between spouses Curie and the head of his laboratory ; A Beautiful Mind (2001) which focuses on the facet schizophrenic mathematician John Forbes Nash and already mentioned in another post on this blog on Charles Darwin.
The writers want more dramatic and sensational side of life scientists before the nature of their work or their research, however worthwhile to see them to enter in a subtle way in the exciting world of scientific research.
music card As I leave a piece of the soundtrack of A Beautiful Mind, composed by James Horner.
