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Aug 2, 2018 • 3 tweets • 1 min read
Most of you are cannibals (well, microcannibals)

During intimate #kissing (saliva swapping) you may transfer ~80 million of your personal bacterial flora, and likely a few hundred million of your own cells. You swallow these cells, and your body breaks them down for nutrition.
I haven't been able to identify how many cells are transferred during your act of microcannibalism (it will come up at your trial, no doubt), but 80% of the DNA in saliva is human, the other 20% are bacterial, and we have done plate-based enumeration of saliva bacteria.
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More from @c0nc0rdance

c0nc0rdance Profile picture
Feb 17
The #GoogleDoodle today recognizes virologist Michiaki Takahashi, who developed the Oka strain of VZV (varicella-zoster virus), the causative agent of chickenpox and herpes zoster (shingles).

Let's take a minute to talk about why it matters. Image
Chickenpox has a low mortality in healthy children & it was highly prevalent, but in children with immune deficiencies, it was a significant cause of death.

As many as 10% of children with leukemias would survive their cancer into remission, only to die suddenly of acute VZV.
So the goal for a chickenpox vaccine, in addition to reducing disease burden and rare complications, was to increase the survivability of childhood cancers.

The Oka strain was taken from a 3 yr old boy in Japan who was otherwise healthy, then passaged (grown) many times... Image
Read 8 tweets
c0nc0rdance Profile picture
Feb 17
Houston area teen becomes first person to undergo autologous stem cell therapy for sickle cell.

Let's talk about how we could end sickle cell disease in our lifetimes! The technology exists, the trials are already underway.
click2houston.com/news/local/202…
Sickle cell is a blood disorder that usually arises from a single mutation in the beta-globin gene, resulting in sickled red blood cells.

Symptoms are peripheral nerve pain, anemia, shortness of breath, dizziness, pallor, stroke. It's a terrible disease burden for patients.
We have conventional therapy: bone marrow transplants from compatible donors transfer certain stem cells that can produce non-sickle red blood cells.

But only 20% of patients will find a compatible donor.
Read 6 tweets
c0nc0rdance Profile picture
Feb 16
Anti-mask or anti-mandate protestors see themselves as 'civil rights activists', but the more accurate comparison is to smokers' rights activists: they're fighting for the entitlement not to be inconvenienced by other people's health concerns.
Smokers' Rights Activists were all bankrolled by Big Tobacco, groups like National Smoker's Alliance (NSA) formed in 1993, one of the earliest examples of "astroturfing".

Much of the wording and arguments against public health are the same.
The difference between these "anti-public health" movements and genuine struggle for civil rights is the inherent selfishness, focusing on actions rather than identities & the meaning of "liberty".
Read 6 tweets
c0nc0rdance Profile picture
Feb 13
The smallest extant owl is the Elf Owl, no larger than a sparrow, with mean wingspan of 30 cm (11 in) and body weight of 40 grams (1.4 oz).

The Elf Owl migrates between the US Southwest (including Texas!) in Spring/Summer & Central Mexico in Fall/Winter. Image
The elf owl hunts mostly at night, and are ferocious scorpion hunters. They carefully remove the stingers before scarfing them down, like a picky roommate removing the nasty black olives from a pizza slice. Image
The Elf Owl plays dead when handled, encouraging predators to drop them long enough to escape.

If that doesn't work, they're known to McGuyver up an escape plan using a paperclip, some steel wool, and a cigarette lighter. Image
Read 4 tweets
c0nc0rdance Profile picture
Feb 13
For #SuperbOwlSunday:
Let me introduce Ornimegalonyx oteroi, the Cuban Giant Owl, which stood up to 1.1 m high (3.6 ft) and weighed between 9 and 30 kg (20-66 lb).

It went extinct about 6,000 years ago, but during Miocene, they likely hunted mammals: seal pups, large rodents. Image
Because the Cuban Giant was probably flightless (wings too small for sustained flight), they probably were adapted to run with an assist from undersized wings, or took their buddy's sweet vintage VW Bug, as pictured here. Image
Besides pouncing on prey from rocky cliffs, they also lured food items by re-enacting that scene from Titanic, and waiting for a stupid mammal to shout : "I'm king of the world!" so they can pounce on them. Image
Read 4 tweets
c0nc0rdance Profile picture
Jan 17
I'm hungry: let's talk about #hotdogs.

1880's German immigrants brought a type of pork sausages, Frankfurter Würstchen, named for Frankfurt (hence 'franks') or, if mix pork/ beef, a Vienna (Wiener) Würstchen (hence "weiner").

But how did they come to be the hot dogs we know? Image
It was widely believed that disreputable street-corner sellers made them from stray dogs. Thomas Edison even made a 19024short film called "Dog Factory" showing dogs being shoved into a machine, and sausages coming out the other side.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm…
So, a hot dog was a derogatory reference to meat contents, probably aimed at insulting the vendor... that stuck. See cartoon, if you can make it out.

So where did the bun come from? Multiple versions of story, but I'll share some. Image
Read 6 tweets

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