Huntington's disease is a genetic disorder. It affects the brain and gets worse over time. This can lead to problems with moving, memory loss as well as thinking skills. Lastly, it also causes changes in behavior. Chorea is one of the main symptoms of Huntington's disease. On average, the disease leads to death about fifteen years after the first signs of the illness show. It is found in about 6 in 100,000 people. There is a 50% chance of inheriting this disease from the parents.
The disease is named after George Huntington. George Huntington specialized in medicine and psychology. In 1872, he was the first to describe the medical condition he was seeing in patients in a paper about science. In an 1908 review, an important scientist who also focused on medicine and psychology, William Osler, said about the paper: "In the history of medicine, there are few instances in which a disease has been more accurately, more graphically or more briefly described."
According to Huntington, the disease is characterized by three things: it is inherited; people who have it become cases for psychiatry (insanity and people who kill themselves); and it only occurs in adults. That was the medical understanding at that time. Of these, the last one is wrong: some children also show signs of the disease.
Symptoms of Huntington's disease usually begin between the ages of 35 and 44 years. They can, however, start in any age group from babies to old age. Also, Huntington's disease kills the cells in the body and brain.
In fact, children with Huntington's disease are often much sicker. They get worse faster. Instead of having chorea, they usually have rigidity (or stiffness) of their muscles and it is painful. Seizures (uncontrollable movements in the body) are also a common sign in children.
In 2015, there is still no treatment for the disease itself. There are medicines available to help with some of the symptoms. Tetrabenazine was approved in 2008 by the FDA. This medicine helps slow some of the restless movements of chorea. Other medicines that can help with psychiatric symptoms and movements are benzodiazepines and anticonvulsants usually taken for seizures.
Science Daily reported on May 6, 2019 that an international clinical trial has found a new drug is safe. It reported that the drug used by UBC researchers successfully lowers levels of Huntingtin protein.
Adenoidectomy
Adenoidectomy is the process of taking out a person's adenoids from the back of their throat through the process of surgery. They may be removed for several reasons, including difficulty breathing through the nose and having ear infections. The surgery is common in young kids. The procedure is usually performed using a substance called anaesthesia (Greek for "without sensation"), and the substance puts a person to sleep when it is applied. Recovery time from the operation can vary from several hours to a few days.
Adenoidectomy is usually done on young children because their adenoids were infected by a virus. If the disease was to be left alone, it would worsen. The affected person could have harder times breathing or hearing, and may possibly be killed from the disease. Normally functioning adenoids help maintain the body's healthy immune system during early childhood. They shrink when a person gets older. When a person becomes an adult, their adenoids completely disappear.
Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission
The Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission was made in 2001 to help Turkey and Armenia be closer. The main goal was to make the governments more active.
Newer Members (2003-2004)
ROT13
ROT13 (or ROT-13) is a very simple form of encryption cipher. It is a variant of a Caesar cipher. In it, the alphabet is written in two lines, of 13 characters each. Encryption, and decryption is done by simply switching the letters that are below each other. That way, "A" becomes "N", "B" becomes "O", and so on.
It is widely used in USENET forums.
ROT13 can also be used for letter games. There are some words, that will produce another existing word, when they are treated with ROT13. The longest example in the English language is the pair of 7-letter words abjurer and nowhere; there is also the 7-letter pair chechen and purpura. Other examples of words like these are shown in the table.
The 1989 International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC) had an entry by Brian Westley. Westley's computer program can be ROT13'd or reversed and still compiles correctly. Its operation, when executed, is either to perform ROT13 encoding on, or to reverse its input.
The newsgroup "alt.folklore.urban" made a word—furrfu. It was the ROT13 encoding of the frequently encoded utterance "sheesh". "Furrfu" evolved in mid-1992 as a response to postings repeating urban myths on alt.folklore.urban, after some posters complained that "Sheesh!" as a response to newcomers was being overused.
Tony Kahn
Tony Kahn is an American radiohost, narrator, and writer who has won many awards. He is the son of Hollywood movie writer Gordon Kahn.
Kahn was born in Los Angeles, California. His father was placed on a list of people with political beliefs that some people thought were not acceptable. This happened during a time in American history known as the Red Scare. The Red Scare is a term used to describe a time during the 1940s and 1950s in the United States when people were accused of (often wrongly) being communists.
Because of the Red Scare, Kahn had to leave Los Angeles with his family. They went to Mexico during the 1950s. They returned after a few years and Kahn went to school at Harvard University where he studied the Russian language. He graduated with very good grades. He then went to Columbia University where he got a masters degree -- an advanced academic degree or diploma -- in Slavic studies.
Tony Kahn is known for his work in radio. He produces and directs a radio show called "Morning Stories" for the radio station WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts. He has also contributed to other radio shows such as Minnesota Public Radio's "The World". On "The World", Kahn is sometimes the host and sometimes a reporter. He has won twelve New England Emmys, six Gold Medals of the New York International Festival and an award called the Edward R. Murrow Award for Feature Reporting.
DDT
DDT is a well-known pesticide. The abbreviation stands for Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane, one of its names. The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948, for his discovery. In the 1960s there was a study that questioned if it was good to spread large amounts of DDT indiscriminately. The study also found that DDT could cause cancer. DDT is also highly poisonous to birds and other animals further up the food chain. This is why DDT was replaced by other pesticides. The Stockholm Convention which took effect in 2004, restricts the use of DDT to vector control. The convention does not affect the use of DDT for public health issues. This is because there are very few affordable alternatives. DDT is still widely used in India, North Korea and possibly elsewhere.<ref name="DDTBP.1/2"></ref>
Nucleobase
A nucleobase is a part of RNA and DNA which may be involved in pairing (see base pair). Nucleobases are important for genetics.
They include cytosine, guanine, adenine, thymine in (DNA), uracil in (RNA) and xanthine and hypoxanthine (mutated forms of guanine and adenine). These are abbreviated as C, G, A, T, U, X and HX . They are usually simply called bases in genetics. Because A, G, C and T appear in the DNA, these molecules are called DNA-bases; A, G, C and U are called RNA-bases.
Uracil replaces thymine in RNA.
Kėdainiai
Kėdainiai is a town in the centre of Lithuania. The river Nevėžis passes by the town. More than 30.000 people live here. Kėdainiai has an old town with a lot of churches. Also, Kėdainiai is a centre of industry, especially chemistry.
Base pair