Melyssa-with-a-Y

Living in Austin has given me a lot of things. A great job, wonderful friends, a nice house... and allergies. Ugh, the allergies. And apparently, as soon as the cold weather goes away (and it happened early this year), and the "cedar fever" starts up, I get bronchitis. Because, you know, it's not enough to just have the cedar allergy. I get the yucky green mucus (tmi? sorry!), the pain in my chest, the coughing, and the Barry White voice. Really pleasant. I could feel it coming on, so I made a pre-emptive appointment with the doc on Wednesday. He looked at his notes and commented that he had prescribed an antibiotic last February for bronchitis. This time, he prescribed a z-pack (more antibiotics) and cough syrup with codeine. wahooo! I haven't had cough syrup with codeine in probably twenty years. Needless to say, Thursday was not a day for going to work. I slept. I took my antibiotics and some cough syrup, ate some oatmeal, and slept. And slept. Ate some so...

"...And even if the book itself isn't that sexy, the title helps: 'Sex, Science and Stem Cells.'" The Washington Post notes that Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), a chief architect of the stem cell research bill that was vetoed twice by President Bush, writes about the Bush administration's politicization of science and sex and warns that if the country elects John McCain president in November, "we'd be signing on for four more years of more of the same - the same blind faith that dogma and ideology ought to stand ahead of science and reason." ... And more government invasion of women's bodies: Ahem. The pill is not equivalent to abortion! The Bush Administration has ignited a furor with a proposed definition of pregnancy that has the effect of classifying some of the most widely used methods of contraception as abortion. A draft regulation, still being revised and debated, treats most birth-control pills and intrauterine devices as abortion bec...

I am fully aware of the fact that I work in a rather specialized part of industry/academia -- supercomputing has always seemed sort of esoteric and "out there" to most people, even though they watch the weather forecast every day (generated with a supercomputer), drive in cars and fly in planes that were designed with supercomputers, watch movies made on supercomputers (Pixar, DreamWorks Animation) ... and don't get me started about all of the Procter & Gamble products, like coffee cans and diapers and Pringles. But still, a topic that tends not to be too mainstream -- unless you watch Numb3rs. :) Here's a real-world application that, while it's a little scary, is definitely the wave of the future. One of the supercomputers here at TACC directed a laser in Houston that was doing surgery on a dog! Pretty cool, huh? Before you ask, we never found out the dog's name, and while the surgery was successful, the dog had to be put down afterwards. :(

... Dear (Old) Dad managed somehow to sprain his ankle/break something on Thursday night (well, ok, Friday morning at 1:30am) when he was taking out the trash. We're just lucky he didn't hit his head when he fell -- Mom and I wouldn't have found him until 7am when we were rushing off to a meeting! Having skipped medical treatment until Monday (unless you count Nurse Ratchett bandaging his ankle for him while I was there over the weekend), the doctor has decreed that he will be at home for a few days. He will be walking with crutches for two weeks, and have one of those big black boots for six weeks. He's learning to go up and down the stairs on his tush. Poor "gimpy". He'll accept any sympathy you want to send his way.

because apparently I have a really sweet slice! heh. Last weekend I bought a nice new chef's knife. My old one was a Betty Crocker piece of crap and I never used it -- the blade was strangely serrated, which isn't at all how a real chef's knife is supposed to be. So I got a gorgeous Kitchen-Aid one with a red handle . I never understood when chefs said the knife should be heavy and feel good in your hand, until I held this one. And boy, it works well. I cut up those green beans in a flash on Tuesday night. Cut up everything else in sight, too, including my finger! OUCH! It wasn't so much in cutting the food, it was in cleaning the knife that I did damage. Instead of wiping off the knife from the back, I had the blade facing the sponge. (My ever-supportive father said, "I thought you were smarter than that." Thanks, dad. :) ) This knife is probably sharper than any other I have ever owned -- which only makes it worse, because if that's the case I definitel...

Breast cancer impacts both men and women, although women are diagnosed with it almost 100x more than men. According to the American Cancer Society , "In 2007, about 40,910 people will die from breast cancer in the United States (40,460 women, 450 men)." So ladies, be sure you do your self-test, and go get that mammogram - especially if you are high risk, like me. Unfortunately, the mammogram itself is not particularly pleasant, what with the metal plates squishing everything and the standing x-ray and all. (...whereas "turn your head and cough" is the worst thing a man gets in a medical exam - consider yourselves lucky.) Here's a new technology that will make the whole thing much more pleasant - a quick procedure with no radiation and no squishing! It's not perfected yet - or widely available - but I'm looking forward to that day with great anticipation. Speaking of breast cancer, the National Race for the Cure is coming up on June 2 in Washington, D...

There may be a reason for that. Apparently a bunch of NIH scientists have figured out that the pain-killing effects of acetaminophen (Tylenol) or paracetamol (the UK version of Tylenol) are caused by a reaction in the brain that is similar (if not identical) to marijuana! "Although paracetamol has been used clinically for more than a century, its mode of action has been a mystery until about one year ago, when two independent groups (Zygmunt and colleagues and Bertolini and colleagues) produced experimental data unequivocally demonstrating that the analgesic effect of paracetamol is due to the indirect activation of cannabinoid CB(1) receptors." Yep, cannabinoids. The stuff that makes people "feel no pain" when they smoke marijuana* is also what kills your headache when you take Tylenol. So, if this is true, couldn't marijuana be made legal? Or, conversely, couldn't the people who get to take medical marijuana just take Tylenol instead? NORML is going to...