HAVE YOU WASHED YOUR HANDS?

On the BBC there is an article from America that is likely to make hospital administrators in Australia sit up and take notice.

It may also start a devastating slide in the performance of soap and detergent companies on the stock market

Lately there has been a campaign in Australia to remind staff and patients and indeed visitors alike to WASH YOUR HANDS when you are in the hospital to ensure that the spread of bacteria and viruses is minimized and hygiene preserved.

I am taking the liberty of reproducing some parts of this article to try and assist all those who may have some habits that they need to change to live in hope that maybe, just for once, there really IS a technological solution that does NOT involved them once again having to change their behaviour.

Adding a special "spiky" coating to surfaces can kill bacteria and viruses, research suggests.

US scientists found painting on spike-like structures kept the surfaces infection-free.

The spikes, they believe, rupture bacteria and virus particles on contact, inactivating them.

The team, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest their findings could help to fight the spread of diseases.

The researchers painted glass with long chains of molecules, called polymers, which anchored to the surface to form tentacle-like spikes.

When the team then applied the surfaces with E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus (both common disease-causing forms of bacteria) and the influenza virus, they found the coating killed them with 100% efficiency within minutes

Of course an English kill joy:-

Professor Ian Jones, a microbiologist from Reading University, said: "This is an interesting paper, from the point of view that it is a new and simple approach to fighting infection that seems to be effective against both bacteria and viruses."

However, he said he was less convinced the spikes were piercing the particles and thought another, more chemical, mechanism could be at play.

"The other thing that is important to find out is the longevity of the effect. If a toilet door handle, for example, is coated with this material, would it last for days, hours, weeks? It would be vital to know how often it needs to be applied."

So, while we wait - it is important to keep asking - HAVE YOU WASHED YOUR HANDS?

Social work in the naughties!

I am afraid that I cannot attribute this little story either, as it was sent to me in memory of the place I used to work and a profession I once practised.

A guy walks into the local welfare office for his fortnightly cheque. (The computer system having failed - AGAIN!)

He marches straight up to the counter and says, "Hi, you know, I just HATE coming in here drawing welfare month after month. I'd really much rather have a job."

The social worker (who just happened to be) behind the counter says, "Your timing is excellent.

We just got a job opening from a very wealthy old man who wants a chauffeur cum bodyguard for his nymphomaniac daughter.

You'll have to drive around in his Mercedes, but he'll supply all of your clothes.

Because of the long hours, meals will be provided.

You'll be expected to escort her on her overseas holiday trips.

You'll have a two-bedroom apartment above the garage.

The starting salary is $200,000 a year."

The guy says, "You're bullshitting me!"

The social worker says, "Yeah, well, you started it."

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

S. H. I. T.

I have no idea where I saw or heard this item so I am afraid that attribution is simply not possible - for this I apologise. However since it is the end of the year I thought that a "history lesson" would be good for all of us.

Subject: History lesson

Manure:  In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship and it was also before commercial fertilizer's invention, so large
shipments of manure were common.

It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but the
process of fermentation began again, a by product being methane gas. As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and
did) happen.

Methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern, BOOOOM!

Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was determined just
what was happening

After that, the bundles of manure were always stamped with the term "Ship
High In Transit" on them, which meant for the sailors to stow it high
Enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would
not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane.

Thus evolved the term "S.H.I.T " , (Ship High In Transport) which has come
Down through the centuries and is in use to this very day.

You probably did not know the true history of this word.

Neither did I.

I had always thought it was a golf term

Vale 2006 - well, not quite!

As the year winds on to a close so too do the lives of some people who have actually had a major impact on the world as well as those who are there merely to make up the numbers

The death of former President Gerald Ford of the USA was announced today - he was 90+ years old.

Some will remember him as:

• the only president never to have been elected;
  
• the person who granted Tricky Dicky Nixon an unconditional pardon;
• the person who finally ended the Vietnam war;
  
• the person who tried to restore some dignity to the Presidency;
  
• someone who used to be a good athlete and yet had a history of stumbles when he was in office
  

Whatever the memories, another of the living US presidents is no more.

This day was also the day when the situation in Somalia got some action happening. In the past I have written about this disaster area where some of the Islamic Militia have been waging a war against the established government and creating a flood of refugees. Nothing seems to have been done in the past to either support the government in this country or to abandon them. Now the Ethiopian troops have taken a hand and the militia has fled abandoning all of the conquests that they have achieved to date.

Will this be the end of the situation? I suspect not. Indeed what is more likely is that Eritrea which is a neighbour and has reputedly been arming the militia will react, the African Union will probably want to take a hand now that things are happening and with any luck someone will notice that Ethiopia has a strong background to do with Christianity and so the conflict will be painted as a war of ideologies again.

It is interesting to speculate what finally tipped the Ethiopians into this conflict in a full scale assault and no doubt there will be speculation about the hand that was played in the conflict by one power or another.

Another major event of the day was the fact that the USA finally recognised the Polar Bear as being endangered by the melting of the polar ice cap, its native habitat. In doing so the USA has opened the floodgates for those ecologists who will use this small opening to wax lyrical about the USA's excessive use of energy, its lack of concern about the environment and create the thin edge of the wedge in moving their political agendas forward.

One item that has not yet surfaced in this discussion is what sort of effect the melting ice caps will have on the rest of the world. I wonder for example whether the massive increase in the amount of fresh water being injected into the world's oceans will have an impact on marine life, whether the rising water levels will mean doom for many low lying communities (those islands in the Pacific that are barely above water level now come to mind as well as a lot of coastlines around the world including those of England and the Netherlands and Bangladesh). I also wonder whether the fact that massive shifts in mass from the poles to the oceans combined with the earth's rotation and spin effect will create some issues for that rotation and if so what impact this will have in terms of earthquakes, tidal waves etc.?

2007 promises to be yet another interesting year and one in which yet another subject will absorb some of the interest of the world - this being the larger than 100% increase in top executive salaries while the rest of humanity is becoming more and more divided into the very rich and the very poor. I suspect that yet another 'correction' will be taking place.