Good job anti-vaxxers! You did it!
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Meet the woman from Perth whose super sense of smell could change the way Parkinson's disease is diagnosed.
Joy Milne's husband, Les, died in June, aged 65.
He worked as a consultant anaesthetist before being diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 45.
One in 500 people in the UK has Parkinson's - that is 127,000 across Britain.
It can leave people struggling to walk, speak and sleep. There is no cure and no definitive diagnostic test.
Joy noticed something had changed with her husband long before he was diagnosed - six years before.
She says: "His smell changed and it seemed difficult to describe. It wasn't all of a sudden. It was very subtle - a musky smell.
"I got an occasional smell."
Joy only linked this odour to Parkinson's after joining the charity Parkinson's UK and meeting people with the same distinct odour.
By complete chance she mentioned this to scientists at a talk. They were intrigued.
Edinburgh University decided to test her - and she was very accurate.
Dr Tilo Kunath, a Parkinson's UK fellow at the school of biological sciences at Edinburgh University, was one of the first scientists Joy spoke to.
He says: "The first time we tested Joy we recruited six people with Parkinson's and six without.
"We had them wear a t-shirt for a day then retrieved the t-shirts, bagged them and coded them.
"Her job was to tell us who had Parkinson's and who didn't.
"Her accuracy was 11 out of 12. We were quite impressed."
Dr Kunath adds: "She got the six Parkinson's but then she was adamant one of the 'control' subjects had Parkinson's.
"But he was in our control group so he didn't have Parkinson's.
"According to him and according to us as well he didn't have Parkinson's.
"But eight months later he informed me that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's.
"So Joy wasn't correct for 11 out of 12, she was actually 12 out of 12 correct at that time.
"That really impressed us and we had to dig further into this phenomenon."
And that is exactly what they are doing.
Scientists believe that changes in the skin of people with early Parkinson's produces a particular odour linked to the condition.
They hope to find the molecular signature responsible for the odour and then develop a simple test such as wiping a person's forehead with a swab.
The charity Parkinson's UK is now funding researchers at Manchester, Edinburgh and London to study about 200 people with and without Parkinson's.
A simple test for Parkinson's could be life-changing, according to Katherine Crawford, the Scotland director of Parkinson's UK.
"This study is potentially transformational for the lives of people living with Parkinson's," she says.
"Parkinson's is an incredibly difficult disease to diagnose.
"We still effectively diagnose it today the way that Dr James Parkinson diagnosed it in 1817, which is by observing people and their symptoms.
"A diagnostic test like this could cut through so much of that, enable people to go in and see a consultant, have a simple swab test and come out with a clear diagnosis of Parkinson's.
"It would be absolutely incredible and life-changing for them immediately."
Ms Crawford adds: "They and their professional colleagues would be able to discuss and arrange a treatment programme, be able to monitor the progression of the disease and treat it appropriately as it went on and it would potentially offer more opportunities for people living with Parkinson's to get involved in research."
It might have been an accidental discovery but Joy hopes it will make a real difference to people starting out on their own journey with Parkinson's.
4 public comments
Very interesting, I've heard of dogs that could tell when people were dying or had cancer due to the smell, (assumed) but I've not heard of a person doing this. I also wonder if since her husband worked as an anesthesiologist, if she became sensitive to smells. When people are around certain smells allot, they can have multiple reactions: getting sick, getting gas, relaxing, different reactions, but all triggered from smells. I look forward to seeing this progress, and hope they keep us informed with updates.
Anacortes: San Juan Islands
Chord choices have consequences!
This just in! According to some random dude on the Red Pill subreddit, our culture is going to hell in a little pink handbasket and it’s all the fault of you women.
Consider:
Television is all crappy reality shows and Kardashian type gossip magazine rubbish.
Every single movie has a romantic subplot forced into it, even movies “Made for men”.
ESPN spends more time on human interest pieces, Breast Cancer Awareness, and if Lamar Odom is staying with Khloe than actual sports.
Music gets more shallow, filthy(seriously, eat the booty like groceries?), and repetitive every day.
The problem? The entertainment biz is
simply giving women exactly what they want. This is the invasion of women into male spaces these liberal minded progressives clamored for.
Don’t try to deny it, ladies! You know it’s true. Because women want our entertainment to be crap. Also, entertainment consists entirely of TV, movies, sports, and music. Books do not count! They are only for women and manginas! And don’t even think about, you know, paintings and all that shit.
Women don’t care about the actual athletics behind sports. They could care less about the hardwork and dedication that goes into progress, they like the excitement and the player’s lives.
Women don’t need a “good movie”, they need a movie that makes them feel good. They need some romantic subplot that makes them feel special and hopeful and not alone.
And it gets worse:
Women don’t need good chord progression, lyrics that exalt a virtue or dig deep into the cultural zeitgiest, they just want a fun beat that makes them feel good.
Screw you ladies, and your terrible chord progressions! I mean, I’ve seen it a million times. Some dude comes up and he’s all
E – B – C#m – A
And the lady is all, nuh-uh!
C – B – F
And you’re like, what the hell is this bullshit!
Now, I know what you’re gonna say: I’M A WOMAN(OR I KNOW A WOMAN) WHO LIKES GOOD MOVIES AND SPORTS AND MUSIC AND YOU’RE FUCKING WRONG!
Guess what? I know an Asian that’s tall and has a big dick, are we gonna just assume that’s the average? Grow up.
YEAH! You tell ’em wait what?
I don’t remember learning about that argument in debate club.
This is the inevitability of women in male spaces, and more importantly the economy catering to women: Women waste more disposable income on entertainment and luxury than men. Women work to buy things that make them feel good.
Of course these industries are going to cater to women because there’s just so much fucking money in it.
But what can we men do?
we’re not going to stop listening to music or watching movies. We’re not going to turn sports off. These industries know this and thus can pocket from both sides.
BUT NO MORE! WE’RE MAD AS HELL AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE.
The truth is things will never change until men are more united, until we are unified in one voice that says “We’re not paying for this shit anymore.”
YOU TELL ‘EM! No more movies with romantic subplots! We only want to see people blowing shit up! NO KISSING.
And no more music with fun beats! WE DEMAND HIGH QUALITY CHORD PROGRESSIONS ONLY! And would it kill you to throw in a Dsus4 chord every once in a while? NO. No it wouldn’t.
Unfortunately, the betas would rather shoot up schools because they’re not getting pussy.
Yeah, fuck those fucking betas, with their inability to score pussy and their tolerance of weak-ass chord progressions.
And that shooting up schools thing, that sucks too.
H/T — r/TheBluePill
This is impressive:
"An attacker sends an infected packet to a fitness tracker nearby at bluetooth distance then the rest of the attack occurs by itself, without any special need for the attacker being near," Apvrille says.
"[When] the victim wishes to synchronise his or her fitness data with FitBit servers to update their profile ... the fitness tracker responds to the query, but in addition to the standard message, the response is tainted with the infected code.
"From there, it can deliver a specific malicious payload on the laptop, that is, start a backdoor, or have the machine crash [and] can propagate the infection to other trackers (Fitbits)."
That's attacker to Fitbit to computer.
As an analyst, I told stories about complex technology, but I learned to tell them simply. When you’re trying to get your point across, that’s essential. One night in 1999 I was giving my three-year-old a bath. My kid was bright, good with language, and, like Dad, a bit of a smartass. And like many three-year-olds … Continue reading Explaining digital disruption to three-year-olds
The post Explaining digital disruption to three-year-olds appeared first on without bullshit.
A coworker, Seph Coster, tweeted:
Currently imagining what the Manhattan Project would have looked like if they had had even a single iPhone available…
— Seph (@sephcoster) October 15, 2015
My first instinct was to respond with a joke. Something like “#oppenheimerselfie”.
I think what Seph was imagining, is the computing power an iPhone represents. In terms of raw capability, the devices we carry around in our pockets (and even on our wrists) definitely outclass the vacuum-tube based computers of that era. It would have been transformative.
Except…
I don’t know what the rules of this single device time travel scenario are, exactly– but I don’t think they could have put an iPhone to much use. The iPhone doesn’t support freedom 0, “The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose“.
Even if the Project had the interest and resources to to compile their code into a form that would run on the iPhone, the iPhone will refuse to run any software that hasn’t been “signed” by Apple and distributed via the App Store. Yes, app developers can transfer their own code onto their own devices, but only if they’ve paid their yearly $100 to Apple.
Among myriad other things, both of those paths for getting code to the device require an internet connection (which doesn’t exist yet), and place a company (which doesn’t exist yet) in control of what software can run, or who is an authorized developer.
Could they have gotten around those restrictions? Maybe. Reverse engineering modern DRM systems (or figuring out how to jailbreak), with 1950’s technology, would be big undertaking. Perhaps as big as the rest of the Manhattan Project.
I haven’t brought up one particular very sweet solution yet– if they managed to reverse-engineer WiFI or other wireless protocols, and run a web server, they could theoretically run web apps. It’s a stretch, but perhaps more plausible than routing around the restrictions above.
That aside, almost any other common computing device, any mac, any PC, or phones and tablets running Android, would be more useful.