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The image above is the Hurricane Ike Interactive Map from NOAA. When you go to the page you can click into the boxes to locate and study satellite photos of damage. StormWatch is part of the work of the Johns Hopkins University/ Applied Physics Laboratory.

Remote sensing imagery and study materials abound on the internet. An excellent cluster of information can be found at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program which “is a multi-laboratory, interagency program, and is a key contributor to national and international research efforts related to global climate change. A primary objective of the program is improved scientific understanding of the fundamental physics related to interactions between clouds and radiative feedback processes in the atmosphere. ARM focuses on obtaining continuous field measurements and providing data products that promote the advancement of climate models.”

To learn scientific and technical background for the field MIT offers open couseware on Atmospheric Radiation that is “an introduction to the physics of atmospheric radiation and remote sensing including use of computer codes. Subjects covered include: radiative transfer equation including emission and scattering, spectroscopy, Mie theory, and numerical solutions. We examine the solution of inverse problems in remote sensing of atmospheric temperature and composition.”

A NASA- based Remote Sensing Tutorial provides further introduction to the field.

Stem cells have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body. Serving as a sort of repair system for the body, they can theoretically divide without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive. When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential to either remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function, such as a muscle cell, a red blood cell, or a brain cell.

Harvard Science describes how bone marrow stem cells may help control inflammatory bowel disease in “the first demonstration of their ability to suppress a broad-based autoimmune reaction and protect gastrointestinal tissue.” Science News headlines: Bone Marrow Alternative: Stem Cells From Umbilical Cord May Be Used To Treat Hepatic Diseases, in an article pointing to stories about several other uses for bone marrow stem cells.

The Learn.Genetics project at the University of Utah offers a section on Stem Cell Therapies Today with illustrated explanations and links to related tropics. The National Cancer Institute provides detailed discussions of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Transplantation.

adult_stem_cells bone bone_marrow bowel cell cure diseases harvard hepatic immune_system intestines marrow peripheral transplant utah university

The illustration for this learn node is from a Tufts University on “Emerging Infections and Agents of Biological Warfare.” The West Nile Virus transmission cycle is also illustrated in a chart at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). An interesting angle on the transmission is that protecting biodiversity of birds slows it down, as described in a Public Library of Science article:

We found there is lower incidence of human WNV in eastern US counties that have greater avian (viral host) diversity. This pattern exists when examining diversity-disease relationships both before WNV reached the US (in 1998) and once the epidemic was underway (in 2002). The robust disease-diversity relationships confirm that the dilution effect can be observed in another emerging infectious disease and illustrate an important ecosystem service provided by biodiversity, further supporting the growing view that protecting biodiversity should be considered in public health and safety plans.

This learn node points you to definitions by the Whole Grain Council, Mayo Clinic explanations of natural whole grain nutrition, and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health lectures on Popular Diets and Dietary Supplements. For learning the role of whole grains in healthy, nutrition, and anti-aging, these three excellent, authoritative sources bring together nutrition facts for natural whole grain and studies of nutrition supplements.

The image with this post is Bob’s Red Mill’s drawing of the basic whole grain anatomy: bran, endosperm, and germ, plus a slide from Lecture 6 of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health course on Critical Analysis of Popular Diets and Dietary Supplements.

Science and art devoted to the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of those workplace environmental factors which may cause sickness, impaired health and well-being, or significant discomfort and inefficiency among workers or among citizens of the community.

If you have time to listen to the complete brief video, you will get a preview on LED lighting, which this expert predicts as the future of lighting. You can also copy the code by clicking the icon on the video, and embed it in teaching, learning or other bright idea online locations.

- The microorganisms and toxins that could act as biological weapons are naturally occurring.
- The agents that could potentially be used as biological weapons are diverse and widely distributed in nature and include −
–viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa −
–the toxins produced by many microbes
-These microbes are found naturally in soils, waters, plants, and animals.

The Bioterrorism section of the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a cluster of the latest expert material for the topic, including specific bioterrorism agents. The sections about agents are superb learnodes for their topics. For example the botulism information is broad and deep concerning the disease, its prevention and treatment.

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Earlier this month, the National Athletic Trainers Association issued a press release describing their new campaign for sports concussion education. The release explains:

The Centers for Disease Control estimate that 300,000 brain injuries occur in sports each year. Of these reported concussions, an estimated 63,000 occur among high school athletes. Even though these numbers alone suggest that concussions represent a significant public health concern, it is likely that many athletes with concussions fail to report their symptoms to medical personnel.

The New York Times today is carrying the story of a new football helmet being developed by former Harvard quarterback Vin Ferrara. The football helmet in the image above is from an interactive graphic that can now be used freely online because of the NY Times new open content policy.

There is, of course, nothing new about the need to protect the human head from blows. Helmet designers have been scratching their heads for centuries to come up with a better way to prevent battering brains by external blows.

The image of the Roman helmet in the graphic above is a Helmet of a Thracian Gladiator on exhibit at the Louve Museum in Paris, France and on their museum website. In this caption the Louvre curators describe the helmet�where there is, like modern sports helmets, distinctive decoration as well as protective features:

Several examples of highly enveloping helmets of this type have been found at Pompeii. They were part of the equipment used by the most heavily armed gladiators – those from the northeast of Greece, the “Thraces” (Thracians), and those from Gaul, the “mirmillones”. The shell of the helmet is highly rounded, with a broad brim, and has a crest decorated with overlapping plumes and terminating in a griffin’s head. This mythological creature was the companion of Nemesis, the goddess of fate, who was venerated by gladiators (there was often a chapel dedicated to her inside the amphitheater). On the front of the helmet, the silver-plated head of the Gorgon Medusa stands out. On either side of the helmet are plume holders to which feathers were attached. The face and neck of the gladiator were protected by a movable visor made up of four riveted plates, two of them solid, the other two pierced.

One of the marvelous resources for open education are museums. Because textbooks must be brief and general, the helmet of a Thracian Gladiator would not survive the first round of editing battles.

Head injury in the past was invisible. A Thracian helmet designer or doctor would have been unable to look inside the skull to see the brain injury of a gladiator whose head had been struck in battle. But today, we can examine brain injuries inside the brain with methods like Computed Tomography (CT) of the head, which is also to be found among open knowledge resources online.

To venture into the future, how about a look at cloning brains in 3D animation of androids at Tufts University?

More learn nodes at: learnodes.com

This learn node illustration is from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s course on Public Health Biology: page 26 of Lecture 5 (PDF). The Johns Hopkins course is an excellent source for learning about how diseases infect us, how they make us sick. and how they can become resistant to drugs. A particularly lethal bacteria is very much in the news for its drug resistance: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). An excellent primer on MRSA can be found at the online Mayo Clinic.

We all want to know how to keep the bacteria from finding us and making us sick – or even killing us. Today the New York Times published answers to many of our questions about how to stay well as this superbug bacteria gets more resistant and more wide-spread.

As you have probably been hearing and reading, washing our hands is a key way to keep safe from the superbugs. Below are links to webpages reviewing how and why do to that. One of the things I learned from finding them is to use the towel I dry with to turn off the faucet: it protects from reinfecting my hands (makes sense).
How To Wash Your Hands (video)
The National Food Service Management Institute
Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Caught Dirty-Handed MicroWorld games

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Poliovirus Viron (left image):
30 nM diameter virion contains 60 copies each of four proteins (encoded in the viral RNA) – Viral RNA is a single strand mRNA (+) polarityi, is about 8000 bases long, and encodes 11 proteins – Viron is non-enveloped and contains no enzymes

Poliovirus: Intracellular Replication (right image):
1. Attachment to cell via specific receptor (Vpr) on cell membrane 2. Virus entry (endocytosis); extrusion of RNA into cytoplasm 3-5. Translation of viral RNA; processing of polyprotein; formation of RNA replicase protein 8-10. Replication of viral RNA 11. Continued translation and processing; formation of virion proteins 12. Assembly of (+) RNA and rivon proteins into new virions 13. Virion release into the gut

MORE POLIOVIRUS LEARN NODES:

For more about the ongoing fight against polio, the Stony Brook University School of Medicine published an open access article in Virology Journal: “Epidemics to eradication: the modern history of poliomyelitis.”

For a look at sleuths who are tracking the polio viruses as they invade our cells try this open access article from the Public Library of Science BIOLOGY: “Imaging Poliovirus Entry in Live Cells.”

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