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Another Shot

Posted in bit because, as I whined about, it won't let me do it all at once--keeps saying it's a bad request and giving me error codes. Wouldn't even let me do two at once. Phbttt!

--The Wombat

Final Packet

Paper Dilemas, round 2

I had thought to use something that looked and felt magazine-like at first, but after the newsprint debacle I wasn't going to put anything else that seemed flimsy through the printer. When I went to look at actual printed journals they largely seemed to be on nice thick, good quality white paper anyway. I bought some 67 lb. white paper and printed it on that--both side of the page, then tore the left edges to make it seem as though it had been ripped from the journal. Looks pretty good.

--The Wombat

Illustrations for "article"

Journal Titles, Text for Pt.3

The third part of my packet was meant to be an article in a medical journal. I went digging around on Academic Search Premiere (accessible through SJSU's library portal page with a password) to find a real journal title that seemed likely and discovered that medical journals are completely over my head and really quite dull. But I selected a title to use and got a feel for how my piece should be formatted (headers, titles, etc.).

Here's the text for the fake journal article. I know it's not nearly long or stuffy enough to be a real journal article, but it was the best I could come up with--reading those things was bad enough, nevermind trying to make myself sound like one....

Recent Trends in Treating Musca ridere Infection In Humans

Paul Flight, Julia Pierce, and John Xi

In the twenty years since the initial outbreak of human infection by Musca ridere, popularly known as happy bugs, there has been very little variation in treatment. The accepted protocol, developed by Dr. Steven Kowalski five weeks after the first case was reported using the information in the infamous file that Lt. Col. Donal Molloy leaked to the public revealing the origins of the inexplicable illness, has remained in place because it is effective. The dual level treatment of repeated Dilipsolol injections and controlled application of electro magnetic interference (EMI) to the brain works to attack the larvae on both the biological and the technological level. It takes six days to complete the course of treatment, which must be administered in a hospital, largely due to the infected patient’s reliance on intravenous delivery for nutrition and liquids intake, and the patient has a 95% chance of being completely healed. However, the Kowalski protocol is not without its drawbacks: the CEMII (controlled electro magnetic interference immersion) machines are complicated and costly to maintain; the Dilipsolol causes physical discomfort and has a long list of fairly rare but serious side effects, (six percent of patients, mostly occurring in those below the age of five and above the age of sixty) including permanent blindness and heart complications; the treatment requires a long hospital stay which is often prohibitively expensive for those without health insurance; and it has a 5% mortality rate.

The last three years have seen increased public awareness of the problems posed by the Kowalski protocol, and a corresponding dramatic increase in the amount of funding and research being directed toward finding an improved treatment. This article seeks to examine the three new options that the authors find to be the most promising, discussing their function, merits, and hazards.

The Kowalski protocol is administered when the infection has reached its final stages and the Musca ridere larva is fully grown (fig.1) has taken residence in the hypothalamus portion of the brain. Several of the more serious complications that occur are the result of the larva poisoning or damaging the host’s brain as it dies. Finnish doctors Hinkka and Puustelli have been working on a preventative vaccine that attacks the parasites as they enter the bloodstream as they enter the bloodstream as eggs deposited by the bite of the mature fly (fig.2 &3). The drug, called Metpratenol, works by subtly changing the blood chemistry to be inhospitable to the eggs. As it currently stands it must be repeatedly injected, wearing off after 72 hours and has only proven

Figure 1. Larvae in final stage of growth.

50% effective on the very small sample population it has been tested on, but the concept is

strong. More research is being conducted into ways to make the minor blood chemistry adjustment permanent and a wider pool of clinical trail subjects is being gathered. The Finnish government is funding the research with aid from the drug company Biotie Therapies. The long term effects of changing the make-up of human blood are also a significant concern, and must be careful studied and considered at every step of the process. There has been public opposition to the research in Finland, with detractors making the claim that to change human blood on the molecular level is tampering with what it means to be human and should not be allowed.

Figure 2. Musca ridere eggs amongst red blood cells.

Here in the United States such research has been outlawed under the 2013 AntiGenetic Alteration Bill—ironically it is a bill created in reaction to the initial epidemic of Musca ridere infection that now hampers research into new ways of preventing it.

A second, and less controversial, promising avenue of research is being conducted in Canada by McGill University in Montreal. A group of doctors and scientists have created a stronger variation of the drug Dilipsolol. The new drug, called Trilipsolol only needs to be administered for three day to have the same effect, and the instances of reported muscular discomfort during treatment are greatly reduced.

Figure 3. Egg (enlargement)

However instances of seizures during clinical trials have kept the drug being approved for use and the team is conducting more research into the cause of the side effects.

The most startlingly simple line of research is being conducted here in the United States at Stanford University. Rather than focusing on how to fight the infection after it has already occurred, the Stanford team is focusing their funds and energies into ways to keep the infection from happening at all. Research into chemical insect repellants and devices that could electronically repel or kill the adult fly (fig.4) is underway, although so far very little progress has been made. Figure 4. Adult Mosca ridere.

Yup--messy when pasted in, but all there.

--The Wombat

Newspaper Clipping Text#2

And here's the text for the second "clip":

Local mother arrested for child endangerment

By Will Jones

wjones@mercurynews.com

San Jose Police arrested Lisa Tyler, 41, Tuesday afternoon, responding to a report from neighbors who claimed to have witnessed the mistreatment of children in the Tyler house in the 500 block of Empire.

Upon their arrival police discovered the two children, ages 4 and 6, standing unresponsive in the front yard, clearly infected with the happy bug. Tyler was not at home and the children were taken into protective custody and rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital for treatment. When Tyler returned to the house several hours later she was immediately arrested and charged with children endangerment for having allowed the children to have become grinners and leaving them without supervision.

Tyler confessed to having infected her children purposefully, with the intention of making them more tractable.

“I just wanted them to stay still,” she said, “They never stay still and they never shut up. I just wanted a break.”

Tyler claims to have purchased the adult happy bugs from a dealer on St. James St. that the police closed down two months ago, and to have locked the children in their bedroom with the flies to infect them.

“It was one of the creepier things I’ve seen,” said arresting officer Charles Blake, “I’ve seen hundreds of grinners, but you just don’t expect to see it on tiny little kids—not since the initial outbreak. They just stood there like dolls. I don’t know how a mother could do that to her own children.”

Tyler, a nurse, did feed the children intravenously while they were infected and they are expected to make a full recovery.

Again, not pretty in this format, alas. But readable and that's something....

--The Wombat

Newspaper Clipping Text#1

Here's the text for the first "clipping":

Downtown San Jose

Drug Arrests Two men were arrested Wednesday afternoon when police officers armed with warrants raided a house in the200 block of Saint James Street. James Fraser, 23, and Ray Hunnicut, 27, both residents of the raided house, were charged with drug manufacturing and trafficking. Police seized 56 vials of viable happy bug larvae, six jam jars full of adult bugs, and one gene sequencer and incubator used to grow the insects. Fraser and Hunnicut are being held without bail for the hearing scheduled for Friday morning.

it looks much prettier in a neat, wee column, but I have no idea how how to make my blog do that....

--The Wombat

"Ahhhhhhh!"

That's the sound that could be heard coming from my room after I decided to try putting actual newsprint through my printer for authenticity's sake. It started ok, then promptly made a nasty crunching noise and died. I couldn't just pull the jammed out of the printer because newsprint is fairly delicate and it kept tearing off in wee bits instead of coming out in a sheet as normal paper is wont to do when one tugs on it. So I tore my room apart to find my toolbox that had the fancy screwdriver with the right head for the really weird screws that my printer is held together with and set to work taking the blasted thing apart. I did manage, and it even still worked when I put it back together again (a minor miracle really). The moral of the story is don't put newsprint through your cheap ink jet printer.

In the end I selected (some nicely aged) sheets of off-white/yellowish construction paper instead as my closest match. It's looks pretty good.

--The Wombat

Newspapers smell funny.

I don't usually read them these days--I've never had my own subscription and it's been years since I've had housemates who read the paper. But as two of the three pieces to my final packet were meant to be newspaper clips I went and got a few for reference and now my whole room smells like newspaper ink. Yuck.

I was particularly looking for the police blotter section of the paper--I know the Santa Cruz Sentinel has it, but I didn't come across it in the San Jose Mercury News. I ended up using the physical paper as a formatting template (what should the header look like, where does the date go, what sort of font, how many columns should a small article have, what do the article titles look like--that sort of thing) and going online and doing a google search for "police blotter" to get some content templates (what are the prime vocabulary choices for reporting a drug bust--"seized" is a good one, so was "armed with search warrants"--go figure, what sort of personal information about the criminals is provided, are there pictures, and so on).

My next step was to figure out how to print it out to look like a newpaper, but that was an adventure so it gets its own post.....

--The Wombat

Whoops.

I did the bad blogger thing. I've been keeping research notes, taking pictures, and all that good stuff but I just couldn't seem to make myself put it up online. Part of that it takes so damn long to upload anything to this site, and it seems like half of the time something goes wrong and I have to start over. Let's hope I didn't jinx myself there.....

So I'll start at the beginning with my rough draft/project idea thing (that's the picture up top--it should get bigger/readable when clicked 0n).

--The Wombat