Before you ask, it's a brain. Wearing sunglasses. On a sailboat.
268 stories
·
7 followers

Tetanus is a Bad Way to Die

1 Comment

The following is excerpted from Dr. Jeffery Hill’s “Workshop Wound Care.” The book delves right to the heart of what you need to know when faced with common workshop injuries, from lacerations, to puncture wounds to material in the eye. Dr. Hill is an emergency room physician and an active woodworker. So he knows exactly the information a woodworker needs to know when it comes to injuries. And he presents information in a way that a non-medical professional can easily understand it. 


There are a number of diseases that, due to their being very uncommonly encountered in the modern world, seem like quaint relics of antiquity. Diphtheria? Rubella? Mumps? Rabies? What even are those? There are a few diseases that have been completely eradicated (smallpox) or nearly completely eradicated (polio) thanks to sustained vaccination efforts. Tetanus, however, is here to stay on this earth through all of eternity regardless of our efforts at vaccination.

Why? Spores, that’s why

What is Tetanus?

Tetanus is a clinical condition caused by the tetanus toxin which produced by the bacteria Clostridium tetani. Clostridium tetani possesses the relatively uncommon ability to form spores (examples of other spore-forming bacteria include Clostridium botulinum, a.k.a. botulism, and Bacillus anthracis, a.k.a. anthrax).

Spores are exceptionally hardy bits of microbiology. Composed of a hard shell and just enough reproductive matter, they are typically produced when the bacteria run into rough times. A lack of nutrients, which would typically just kill off less fastidious bacteria, triggers C. tetani to produce these spores that can survive a lack of water, nutrients, presence of high amounts of radiation, freezing weather, boiling temps and even chemical disinfectants. Spores can remain viable in inhospitable environments for tens of thousands of years. C. tetani spores are most commonly found in soil, dust and manure, but can be found anywhere in the environment.

When tetanus spores find their way back to a hospitable environment they come alive and start to replicate, along the way producing tetanus toxin (awesomely named tetanospasmin). The tetanus toxin is taken up by the nervous system, ultimately ending up in the spinal cord and brain where it acts to block inhibitory signaling pathways. Because two negatives make a positive, the end result of this action is an excess of electrical transmission from the central nervous system to the muscles and severe muscle spasms.

Opisthotonus, which can be caused by tetanus, is a spasm of the muscles causing the head, neck and spine to arch backward.

These unopposed muscle contractions lead to the characteristic clinical manifestations of tetanus. “Lock jaw” is due to contraction of the jaw muscles. Contraction of the facial muscles results in “risus sardonicus,” a fixed smile/facial expression. And contraction of the back muscles results in severe arching of the back. But the neurotoxin doesn’t limit itself to the motor system; it can also lead to seizures and uncontrolledblood pressure (both high and low) and heart rate (also high and low).

If you have ever had a charley horse where your legs cramp up, you have a little taste of how terrifically painful muscle spasms can be. Now imagine that affecting your entire body. Also, because the tetanus toxin irreversibly binds with nerve cells, the uncontrolled nerve signals and muscle spasms continue until the body can grow new nerve endings (a process that is weeks to months long). Generalized tetanus can lead to broken bones, spasm of the respiratory muscles, and aspiration of stomach contents and food into the lungs. Ten to 20 percent of patients still die of tetanus despite modern medical therapies.

What Wounds are at High Risk for Tetanus Infection?

Tetanus infections don’t just come from rusty nails. In fact, all wounds – cuts, abrasions (both to the skin and eyes) and burns – are susceptible to tetanus infection. There are certain wounds, however, that are more prone to tetanus infection and create an environment where the tetanus bacteria will produce the tetanus toxin. Wounds that are dirty, puncture-type wounds and crush injuries are most at risk.

Logically, the more tetanus bacteria present in a wound, the higher the risk of infection. As such, injuries with significant contamination with soil are more likely to result in infection.

If the tetanus bacteria is pushed deep into the tissue, infection is more likely. Puncture wounds, in general, carry a higher risk of all types of wound infection. The narrow tract of a puncture wound is apt to quickly close over bacteria and other matter pushed deeply into the tissues. And, it is much more difficult to adequately clean at the time of injury, meaning it is much more difficult to use irrigation to decrease the number of bacteria present.

Because tetanus bacteria are more likely to grow and produce toxin in “devitalized” tissue, crush injuries are also highly susceptible to infection.

How does this translate to you, the woodworker? A scratch or minor cut from a chisel or knife is less risky. A injury from an axe or froe while breaking down green wood is more risky. (Though to reiterate: Any break in the skin carries a risk of tetanus infection.)

What About the Tetanus Vaccine?

The tetanus vaccine includes a component of the tetanus toxin called a toxoid. This toxoid is coupled with a diphtheria toxoid (Td) and often an acellular version of pertussis (TdaP).

As a side note, the risks of contracting diphtheria and pertussis in adulthood are sufficient enough that the administration of the whole package of TdaP is recommended by the CDC. Pertussis (whooping cough) can be common in older adults (often presenting as mild illness) and easily spread to incompletely vaccinated infants (often presenting as a severe respiratory illness). For this reason, if you are going to be around a new baby in the family (e.g. new grandparents), you’ll likely be asked to get a “tetanus booster” (though really you are boosting your pertussis immunity). Back to tetanus…

As with other vaccines, introducing the tetanus toxoid gives the body’s immune system a “wanted” poster of what the real toxin looks like, allowing the body to create neutralizing antibodies to the toxin. The typical vaccination schedule is for three doses of the vaccine to be administered at two months, four months, and six months of age, with boosters given around six to 12 months after the third dose, and again before entering kindergarten. Following that, boosters are recommended every 10 years. In the developed world, adherence to the recommended vaccination schedule is (thankfully) high, meaning that most people are “fully vaccinated” for tetanus through their childhood. It is not uncommon, however, for adults to miss out on their regular boosters. As a result of this, most cases of tetanus are reported in patients 50 years of age and older.

Read the whole story
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
rraszews
26 days ago
reply
A lot of people get the idea that "rusty nails" specifically cause tetanus, but really it's just that a rusty nail is a thing that can cause a puncture wound that is often found in environments where tetanus spores are present, it's nothing specific to the rust or the nail.
Columbia, MD

Oddly Enough, Treating Shoppers Like Criminals Lowers Sales

1 Comment

The last few weeks have been very hectic, so I missed this (boldface mine):

Upon discovering that an item they want to buy is in a locked case, less than one in three shoppers (32%) get a store employee to unlock the case, according to a reader survey from Consumer World, a consumer advocacy website. For 55% of respondents, it’s a lost sale, because when a product is locked up, they try to buy it elsewhere. The remaining 13% try to find an alternative product in the same store that is not locked up

Dworsky acknowledged that the results might be skewing high because it was an opt-in survey that readers took rather than a random one, and said his audience tends to be “interested in consumer matters,” which may mean they have a lower threshold for consumer inconvenience….

It’s become routine to discover entire aisles transformed into untouchable product galleries armored in plexiglass,” Amanda Mull wrote about locked cases in Bloomberg in August. “The whole thing has a whiff of pawnshop, which might actually be unfair to pawnshops.”

…“If stores lock up too much stuff, they cease to be stores—they become giant vending machines with no place to insert your money,” Mull wrote. “For a lot of shoppers, those locked shelves become another reason to avoid in-person shopping and hand their business over to Amazon.”

I avoid stores, whenever I can, that lock up things I want*, and I know I’m not alone. It’s especially annoying when you have to get multiple items in different parts of the store: either you have to summon people multiple times or drag the poor worker around the store. And there’s no reason to think things are any different from pre-pandemic times in terms of theft.

What convinced me of the uselessness of locking things up is there are three CVS stores near me, each about six minutes apart on foot, and they all lock up different things. My hunch is upper management wanted to limit ‘shrinkage’ so they could wring out every last cent, and thought they could get away with this. I’m sure they’re all still getting good paychecks though.

Read the whole story
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
rraszews
41 days ago
reply
Makes matters even worse that locking up products tends to happen in tandem with cutting staff, so you can't get the product AND you can't find someone to unlock it for you.
Columbia, MD

Agatha All Along Kicks Off With Mysteries to Solve and a Team to Build

1 Comment

Agatha Premiere Recap 2

Marvel's latest Disney+ series follows WandaVision breakout Agatha Harkness in her own redemption series.
Read the whole story
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
rraszews
51 days ago
reply
Maleficent isn't a witch; she's a fairy.
Columbia, MD

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Haiku

1 Comment and 3 Shares


Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
It's at its best when it interrupts a speech every twelve syllables.


Today's News:
Read the whole story
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
rraszews
59 days ago
reply
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense.
Refrigerator
Columbia, MD

Chef Admits His Smash Hit Pizza Was Invented by ChatGPT

1 Comment
A chef in Dubai used OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT to come up with a pizza recipe — and as it turns out, it started selling like hotcakes.

Everything Pizza

A chef in Dubai used OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT to come up with a pizza recipe — and as it turns out, it started selling like hotcakes.

Spartak Arutyunyan, head of menu development for the international pizza chain Dodo Pizza, told the BBC that the resulting recipe "was actually a huge hit, and it's still on the menu."

In a bid to reflect Dubai's culinary traditions, ChatGPT went all out, suggesting a wild mix of ingredients. The recipe includes "Arab shawarma chicken, Indian grilled paneer cheese, Middle Eastern Za'atar herbs, and tahini sauce," according to the report.

In simple terms, the chatbot decided to create a cross-cultural hodge podge of flavors to be thrown together on a pizza rather than anything particular original. Regardless, it seems to have struck a nerve.

"As a chef, I wouldn't mix these ingredients ever on a pizza, but still, the mix of flavors was surprisingly good," Arutyunyan told the BBC.

Image Credit: Dodo Pizza

The Menu's Rejects

Arutyunyan revealed that other ChatGPT recipes didn't make the cut, including a pizza topped with strawberries and pasta, or a pie featuring blueberries and breakfast cereal.

We've already come across several lazy attempts to cash in on the AI hype in the culinary world. Last year, for instance, a dubious "bespoke smoothie shop" called BetterBlends in San Francisco closed down after its hyper-personalized smoothie recipe business failed to catch on.

A taco shop in Dallas also dabbled with generative AI — with equally mixed results.

Velvet Taco culinary director Venecia Willis told the BBC that ChatGPT spat out some "funky combinations."

"I think AI is a great tool to use when you're in a bit of a creative slump, to get the brain going again — ‘that combination might actually work, let's try it,'" she said. "The AI can suggest something maybe I wouldn't have thought of."

Other experts were far more skeptical of the use of AI chatbots in the kitchen.

"If you can get ChatGPT to spit out something that looks like a recipe, then it's because there are recipes on the internet," outspoken AI critic and University of Washington linguistics professor Emily Bender told the BBC.

More on ChatGPT: Did AI Already Peak and Now It’s Getting Dumber?

The post Chef Admits His Smash Hit Pizza Was Invented by ChatGPT appeared first on Futurism.

Read the whole story
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
rraszews
68 days ago
reply
"Combine some things which no human would combine but which the math says is a statistically sound combination" is one of the few things AI should actually be really good at.
Columbia, MD

Turn That Frown

1 Comment

The post Turn That Frown appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Read the whole story
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
rraszews
101 days ago
reply
I learned just a few months ago that in some parts of the english-speaking world, a "frown" is understood to be an expression made ENTIRELY WITH THE EYEBROWS, and in others, it is understood to be an expression made primarily with the mouth. The concept of a frown being an "upside-down smile" is utterly alien to people from the former regions.
Columbia, MD
Next Page of Stories