0 Round Three: Lyme Disease Research Scavenger Hunt

I gave readers an extension until midnight of Friday the 23rd for participating on Round Two of the Lyme Disease Research Scavenger Hunt, and so far, no one has completed both Part A and Part B of Round Two.

Because of this, no one qualifies for Round Two and that round is forfeit. Readers playing along at home will have to compete in the remaining rounds and complete both Part A and Part B. So far, we have one winner of Round One, Rita.

(The answers to Round Two will be posted in a separate upcoming entry.)

Now I'll present those who wish to play along with our basic game instructions and round three of the scavenger hunt:

This is an online scavenger hunt to determine which Lyme disease research being conducted in which universities and colleges involves or has involved members of the 2006 Lyme disease guidelines group.

How to play:

I'm going to list Lyme disease related research either completed or currently being done in Column A, and in Column B, list the educational institution where the research was (or is) being conducted.

Match the research in Column A with the correct educational institution in Column B.

THEN determine if members of the department involved are A) currently doing research with a member of the 2006 Lyme disease guideline authors or B) have worked on any research in a past with said guideline author(s).

Write your matches and mentions of any guideline authors in a comment and submit your comment for posting.

You can use google, Wikipedia, and any on and offline tools for your answers.

Roughly two weeks after I post a round, I'll post the correct answers as well as post the next round of the game. I intend to run the game for several weeks - end date to be announced later.

If anyone wins all rounds, after that win is confirmed, the next post I write will be based on the winner's selected topic of choice and include hand-drawn illustrations by me.

Round Three: Lyme Disease Scavenger Hunt

Research Description	Educational Institution
1) Lyme arthritis is an inflammatory disease with periods of inflammation and resolution. Eicosanoids are powerful lipid mediators of inflammatory responses which may be involved in disease processes. Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) is upregulated during injury or infection and catalyzes the production of prostaglandins from arachidonic acid. Several commercially available drugs block this response (celebrex, vioxx) and act to suppress the symptoms of chronic inflammation (pain and swelling), but their effect on underlying disease processes is currently unknown. Treatment of mice infected with B. burgdorferi with these compounds does not inhibit their ability to develop Lyme arthritis, but it does prevent its natural resolution. Current experiments are exploring the mechanism for this examining: altered prostaglandin production; increased leukotriene production; and decreased lipoxin production.	A) University of Tennessee
2) iNKT cells play an important immunoregulatory role within the immune system. This function is regulated by endogenous and exogenous glycolipid antigen presentation by CD1d molecules. Thus, by using Borellia burgdorferi, the agent of Lyme disease, as the model system, we are working to elucidate the molecules involved with and the mechanism(s) of CD1d-antigen assembly. Additionally, by understanding how antigens load onto CD1d we can determine the molecular and structural features of the iNKT cell receptor-antigen interface. Elucidating glycolipid antigen processing and presentation and its recognition by iNKT cells will allow insights into how different responses are induced and how these immunoregulatory T lymphocytes function. This insight will advance our understanding of the physiological role of the CD1d antigen presentation system and iNKT cells within the context of the immune system.	B) University of Missouri
3) One major project is the development of a Reservoir Target Vaccine for the Control of Lyme Borreliosis. Borrelia burgdorferi causes Lyme disease (LD) and is the most common vector borne infectious disease in the United States. This spirochete is maintained in endemic areas of LD by cycling between wildlife reservoirs (i. e. white-footed mice, shrews, etc) and the Ixodes scapularis tick vector. Human disseminated infection can cause permanent damage to the nervous and musculoskeletal systems and currently, there is no vaccine approved for prevention of this disease. A promising method to reduce human LD incidence is to break the mouse-tick transmission cycle by eliminating the spirochete from the reservoir and from the ticks that feed on them. To accomplish this we have developed a wildlife oral bait vaccine based in OspA and are currently testing its efficacy in a field trial.	C) Vanderbilt University

There is much to learn from playing this game in and of itself that you gain something whether you win or lose. (I also have a point to make in playing it, and I'll reveal it at the end of the series... It might not be the point you suspect I'm going to make.)

This work by Camp Other is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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8 Round Two: Lyme Disease Research Scavenger Hunt

So I  began a little online scavenger hunt game here at Camp Other, and we completed round one about two weeks ago.

So far, since only one entry has been submitted by Rita - Rita, you are the winner of round one by default. I say even without competition for that round, take a bow for the work you put into researching your answer for round one.

Now I'll present those who wish to play along with our basic game instructions and round two of the scavenger hunt:

This is an online scavenger hunt to determine which Lyme disease research being conducted in which universities and colleges involves or has involved members of the 2006 Lyme disease guidelines group.

I'm going to list Lyme disease related research either completed or currently being done in Column A, and in Column B, list the educational institution where the research was (or is) being conducted.

How to play:

Match the research in Column A with the correct educational institution in Column B.
Determine if members of the department involved are A) currently doing research with a member of the 2006 Lyme disease guideline authors or B) have worked on any research in a past with said guideline author(s).

Write your matches and mentions of any guideline authors in a comment and submit your comment for posting.

You can use google, Wikipedia, and any on and offline tools for your answers.

Roughly one week (perhaps we should make this two?) after I post a round, I'll post the correct answers as well as post the next round of the game. I intend to run the game for several weeks - end date to be announced later.

If anyone wins all rounds, after that win is confirmed, the next post I write will be based on the winner's selected topic of choice and include hand-drawn illustrations by me.

Research Description	Educational Institution
1) Established the rhesus monkey model of Lyme disease. Discovered an immune evasion mechanism that Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochete that causes the disease, may use to cause persistent infections. Discovered that B cells produce the regulatory cytokine IFN-gamma in animals infected with B. burdoferi. Discovered that spirochetes elicit not only inflammatory but also anti-inflammatory cytokines from monocytes, thus contributing a method to control the inflammation they themselves cause.	A) Medical College of Wisconsin
2) B. burgdorferi binds to members of a family of receptors on the surface of human cells termed "integrins", which are important in many cellular processes, including inflammation and blood vessel growth.  Using a phage display library of B. burgdorferi genomic DNA, we identified a B. burgdorferi protein that mediates bacterial binding to β3-chain integrins, and have defined portions of this protein that participate in integrin recognition. Our current work focuses on determining the role of Borrelia-integrin recognition in the course of infection and the development of Lyme disease in the mouse model.  We have also studied the mammalian cell response to B. burgdorferi strains that do or do not express the β3-chain integrin ligand, and by microarray analyses, have identified several signaling/regulatory pathways that show integrin-ligand specific changes in expression. Some of these may be important to the ability of this organism to disseminate from the site of the tick bite to other tissues. We also discovered that another B. burgdorferi protein, BBB07, signals through integrin α3β1 to promote a proinflammatory response in human chondrocytes, which may contribute to the pathogenesis of Lyme arthritis.  Our phage display library was also used in vivo to identify B. burgdorferi proteins that bind to vessel walls in specific tissues such as the joint and heart, and further characterization of these proteins is underway.	B) Tulane University
3) Critical to this work has been our development of green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporters that enable us to track live spirochetes in ticks and mice. Our live-imaging studies have fundamentally changed our understanding of the transmission process. In order to reach the mouse, spirochetes disseminate through the midgut into the salivary glands in order to access the salivary stream which they “ride” into the vertebrate host. We have found that dissemination of spirochetes in ticks is actually biphasic. In the first phase, which we have termed “adherence-mediated migration, spirochetes replicate in close association with differentiating midgut epithelial cells, “working” their way as aggregates or networks to the base of the epithelium. In the second phase, they transition into typically motile spirochetes, complete the penetration through the midgut, and then move on to the salivary glands en route to the mouse. Most recently, we have found that spirochetes lacking RpoS are deficient in this process and we are developing various strategies to identify the RpoS-dependent genes involved.	C) University of Connecticut

There is much to learn from playing this game in and of itself that you gain something whether you win or lose. (I also have a point to make in playing it, and I'll reveal it at the end of the series... It might not be the point you suspect I'm going to make.)

This work by Camp Other is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution
-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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3 Round One: Lyme Disease Guidelines Research Scavenger Hunt

So, I've decided to start a little game here on Camp Other blog. It is an online scavenger hunt to determine which Lyme disease research being conducted in which universities and colleges involves or has involved members of the 2006 Lyme disease guidelines group.

I'm going to list Lyme disease related research either completed or currently being done in Column A, and in Column B, list the educational institution where the research was (or is) being conducted.

How to play:

1. Match the research in Column A with the correct educational institution in Column B.
   
2. Determine if members of the department involved are A) currently doing research with a member of the 2006 Lyme disease guideline authors or B) have worked on any research in a past with said guideline author(s).
   
3. Write your matches and mentions of any guideline authors in a comment and submit your comment for posting.

You can use google, Wikipedia, and any on and offline tools for your answers.

Roughly one week after I post a round, I'll post the correct answers as well as post the next round of the game. I intend to run the game for several weeks - end date to be announced later.

If anyone wins all rounds, after that win is confirmed, the next post I write will be based on the winner's selected topic of choice and include hand-drawn illustrations by me.

Round One: Lyme Disease Scavenger Hunt

Research Description	Educational Institution
1) We ask the question what genes in the B. burgdorferi genome are responsible for the pathogenesis and long-term survival, and how can these genes be identified? Our strategy is to analyze the B. burgdorferi virulence determinants by Signature-Tagged Mutagenesis in combination with Luminex®-based high-throughput screening procedures, and infectivity studies to identify genes and gene products required for infectivity in a mouse model. We are also exploring the etiology of an emerging tick-borne disease, Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness.	A) Michigan State University
2) Our laboratory studies Borrelia spirochetes and the diseases they cause, Lyme disease and relapsing fever. After transmission of Borrelia through bites of certain tick species, both Lyme disease and relapsing fever are characterized by the spread of bacteria via the bloodstream, which may lead to the infection of multiple organs such as the skin, heart, joints, and brain. While these pathogenic processes are not yet well understood on the molecular level, the involved virulence factors identified so far have been surface lipoproteins. A first project identifies lipoprotein sequence determinants, membrane protein complexes and chaperones involved in spirochete lipoprotein export.We are currently using fluorescent proteins as markers for protein localization in live Borrelia cells to determine the sorting signals for surface and subsurface lipoproteins. Using biochemical and novel genetic approaches, we are also in the process of characterizing the lipoprotein export machinery in Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme disease spirochete. These studies will ultimately help in the design of novel intervention strategies for spirochetal infections.	B) The University of Texas
3) My career goal is to help reduce the burden of human, wild animal, and domestic animal disease through improved understanding of disease systems. I approach this goal by conducting novel research to elucidate the ecology of maintenance and transmission of zoonotic pathogens, so as to identify key targets within disease cycles for interventions that will reduce disease risk.My dual training in wildlife disease ecology and veterinary medicine allows me to combine ecological and epidemiological principles, field techniques, molecular analytical tools, and medicine to address important problems in ecosystem health at the population level.Thus far, I have studied the ecology of two vector-borne disease systems in North America - West Nile virus and Lyme disease.	C) University of Kansas

There is much to learn from playing this game in and of itself that you gain something whether you win or lose. (I also have a point to make in playing it, and I'll reveal it at the end of the series.)

This work by Camp Other is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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0 Free or Cheap iPhone Apps for Lyme Disease Patients

This past weekend, I took a look at some  iPhone (also iPhone Touch, iPad) applications that iTunes had available that might be of use for many Lyme disease patients.  I went in search of ones which were rated good to excellent, free or inexpensive, and downloaded them myself to give them a try.

This is the short list of what I've looked at so far that I liked, with general descriptions supplied by the app company, screenshots, and then some comments. (All prices in USD)

1) iLog Lyme

Application Type: Medical Log

$1.99
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone,
iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later

Lyme Disease can be a debilitating disorder which may affect all parts of your body. Having the disease can be challenging to say the least, which is why iLog Lyme was developed. iLog Lyme can help you track your symptoms and hopefully your progress as you deal with the many and varied problems associated with Lyme Disease.

Features:

• Easy drop down menus - minimal typing.
• Email your symptom history using the weekly or monthly selection. You pick the start date, iLog Lyme brings up your symptom history for the correct time period.
• Medication log. You enter in your medications and dosage and it saves it. No more carrying around a piece of paper with a list of all your medications. They'll be right at your finger tips.
• Has a Common Symptom feature for entering in your daily logs. If there are common symptoms that you experience on a daily basis - just add them to the common symptoms database and turn on the feature. Then whenever you enter in a new daily symptom log, your common symptoms are already populated. (If you don't want to use the Common Symptoms feature simply turn it off for that day - your common symptoms will be still be there, they just won't pre-populate your daily log. When you are ready to start using them again, simply turn the feature back on.)
• Symptom lists cover the majority of all body systems.
• View your symptoms on your device either by day or by week. Simply choose the start date.

We now have a Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/App-iLog-Lyme/128260200570444

In addition, a portion of the sales from iLog Lyme will be donated to the International Lyme and Associated Disease Societies as well as the Michigan Lyme Disease Association.
http://www.ilads.org
http://www.hvcn.org/info/mlda/support.shtml

NOTE: iLog Lyme is in no way a substitute for proper medical care. iLog Lyme should not be used to diagnose or treat medical conditions as it is only a method to track symptoms that may be experienced and it should be used in conjunction with your health care professional.

Things I Liked About It:

• It is relatively straightforward to use with no complicated settings.
• Each one of these menus, such as "Musculoskeletal System" has a wide variety of symptoms listed under each to choose from. The symptoms lists really do have Lyme patients in mind.
• Each symptom can be rated using a descriptive pain scale: No Symptom, Mild, Bothersome, Restricts Activity, and Severe.
• You can create a template of all your Common Symptoms - symptoms you usually experience - and save them to apply to a different day's entry so you do not have to fill out every category from scratch.
• You can view your symptoms for a daily or weekly report to make comparisons.
• You can email a weekly or monthly symptoms report to someone else (like your LLMD).
• You can record a list of medications you are currently taking.
• Buying this app supports the patient community - something few apps can claim.

Things That Could Use Improvement:

• It does take a long time to initially get through all of the symptoms lists to check them off. I know the Common Symptoms template helps you save time, but it's still a long process.
• Viewing symptoms daily requires looking at each category of symptoms individually rather than having a report that looks like the one you would send in email, listing all symptoms. Listing all symptoms to view in the same window would be useful.
• Being able to generate a chart for each symptom - or at least to be able to select a given number of symptoms and view their scale rating over time - would be a great way to show progress and setbacks.
• The medications aspect of the app is not well integrated. There is no notification system or pill tracker tied to it, and the list of medications does not get added to the email symptoms report, either.

Overall thoughts:

I really like the symptoms list for being comprehensive and the ability to mark each symptom for pain/functionality. I think its best virtue is that you can carry the Common Symptoms list over to each entry as much as possible, so as to cut down on having to select the same long set of symptoms over and over. Its second best virtue is that you can select a range of time periods and send a copy of all your symptoms to your LLMD or another doctor.  I'm going to continue using this for a while and see how it goes... I might stick with this just for the Lyme/TBD specific symptoms.

2) Dragon Dictation


Application Type: Voice-to-Text Utility

Free
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone,
iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.

Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. In fact, it’s up to five (5) times faster than typing on the keyboard.

With Dragon Dictation you can also dictate status updates directly to your Social Networking applications (Facebook and Twitter) or send notes and reminders to yourself….all using your voice.  So when you’re on-the-go, stop typing and start speaking – from short text messages to longer email messages, and anything in between.

Dragon Dictation supports a multitude of global languages. For a full list of currently supported languages visit www.dragonmobileapps.com.

Note: Dragon also has applications Android and Blackberry users can download. See: http://www.dragonmobileapps.com/android/flex.html FlexT9 for Android
http://www.dragonmobileapps.com/bb/dragonforemail.html Dragon for E-Mail for Blackberry

Things I Liked About It:

• It is very easy to use.
• It is WAY quicker to speak the words for your Facebook status than type them. Amazing.
• It saves my arthritic wrists and elbows from extra grief. It may save yours.
• It integrates well with Facebook and Twitter.
• By default, you can set it to a few other languages if you speak them: German, Spanish, French, Italian.
• You can pull your Contacts list into the app so they are more easily recognized.
• You can set the app to detect when you stop talking so it stops recording.
• You can copy and paste the text into any app. This is one of the best parts, in my opinion.

Things That Could Use Improvement:

• The way the app works, you cannot use it to take dictation when you are not using either 3G or wifi. It would be nice to be able to use the app offline without sinking bandwidth.
• You need a strong and stable network connection or you could lose part of your post - or it may lag.
• Not needed for me, but for others: If you have an older iPod touch, you will need a headset with a microphone to use this app. This warning should be explicit on the iTunes app page.

Overall Thoughts:

I really like it. It saves wear and tear on my joints, it's easy to use, the price is right, and it is so much faster to use than my little i-keyboard. It seems to understand my speech with a high degree of accuracy. I intend to use it as much as I can - provided I'm in a private place and not using a laptop already. 

3) iHealthTrax

Application Type: Medical Log, Pill Tracker

$5.99 / Also Free (version has small ads)
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.

Remembers your illness history so you don't have to!

• Keep separate calendars for various people (great for keeping track of illness / health in your family)
• Record notes as often as every day
• Export data as email

Useful for doctor's appointments...

• Consult with Illness Tracker to report dates of illness, fever, etc.
• Password protection (go to settings to activate)

On each calendar day, you may record the following:

• Custom notes
• Pain scale (1-10)
• Indicate that medication was taken
• Fever and temperature (Now multiple times each day!)
• Doctor's appointment
• Indicate that you are sick

Things I Liked About It:

• You can set an exact time each symptom began.
• You can create a custom symptom of your own if existing symptoms aren't enough.
• You can record the time each symptom comes up.
• You can rank your pain for an entry from 1-10 (but not Allie Brosh's awesome pain scale).
• You can mark a specific day as one you saw a doctor.
• You can record a fever multiple times during the day, using either F or C.
• You can keep notes for each daily log entry.
• You can list pulse and blood pressure in each daily entry.
• You can list medications you took in each daily entry.
• You can create profiles containing all of the above for different family members.
• Each profile contains the user's name, birthday, doctor's name and number, and additional notes.
• There is a nice visual summary you can view of more than one entry.
• You can set a password, back up your data to your desktop, email your data in text or Excel format, and send various numbers of logs from 1 week to all logs.

Things That Could Use Improvement:

• What seems to be initially a good idea, fails in the execution of what it could be. Integrating a real pill tracker into this would be very useful, but it's not there. All you have is the ability to list what medication you took today - there is no push notification or reminder, nor is there an indication of how many pills you started with and how many you have left. RxmindMe has this functionality.
• The pain scale only applies to a general pain for the entire day. You can't record changing pain levels over the day - nor can you record each symptom's pain level like you can in iLog Lyme.
• Graphing progress would be very useful. Here we are recording all this data, but there is no way to aggregate it and show either a chart mapping improvement over a given time period or to pick out high blood pressure and pulse and show trends. A visual chart generated using certain inputs would be welcome here. The closest you get to this sort of view is the summary window.
• The little box that gives you the option to mark it as "sick day" instead of a normal day is pretty laughable for Lyme patients. I think even for most non-Lyme patients, this box is extraneous... I imagine most people don't track symptoms unless they are feeling off.

Overall thoughts:

It's a good little app for what it does, and it does it for free. The paid version isn't much better - the only difference is ads. If the ads do not bother you, you may want to get the free version and see how it works for you if you don't already have a symptom and pain tracking app you love. Other apps on the market with similar features are not getting as high scores and even some paid apps lack some features this one has.

4) RxmindMe Prescription Reminder and Pill Tracker


Application Type: Advanced Pill Tracker

Free
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone,
iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later
(Android version coming soon)

RxmindMe is a prescription reminder that uses multitasking to alert you every time you need to take a prescription. We allow you to enter all your prescriptions, setup reminders, and track when you have taken them.

We can handle the most complicated of reminders, if you are having trouble scheduling a reminder - please email our support.

Current Features Include:

• NINE different types of reminders: Every "X" Number of Days, Hourly, Daily, on specific dates, weekly, on a particular day of the month, as needed, on a particular week of a month, or even just recording pills you took out of the blue
• Prescription Quantities now count down as you mark your reminders as 'Taken' will automatically update the prescription quantity!
• Export all your prescription data with ease! (Export Data in More menu)
• Take picture of your prescription (Devices with Cameras Only)
• Email Prescription History (Both email and Comma Separated Value - Imports into Excel and Numbers)
• Family Members for Medications
• The entire FDA Drug Database to search for your medications
• SECURE - All of your prescriptions are stored on your iPhone, no information pertaining to your prescription is EVER sent to our server
• All reminders are reoccurring
• Easy to use interface to turn reminders on - off - or delete them
• Historical tracking of your prescriptions and when you took them
• Now uses Multitasking to give you your notifications, allowing you to be using other applications and receive reminders.
• Input of all your prescription information (But, you don't need to input your prescriptions to setup reminders)
• Passcode to prevent wondering eyes on your phone to see your prescriptions (Don't you hate it when people ask to borrow your iPhone?)

Overall Thoughts: 

I'm not listing pros and cons here so far, because so far I think this app is really good for what it does and I have no complaint. About the only unnerving thing so far is that the software engineers have put a warning on the site saying they know there are false or "ghost" reminders that show up and they are working hard to fix the bug. 

I need to use this app over a longer period of time to see if it is buggy  - but so far I love its features.

5) We Breathe

Application Type: Relaxation & Breath Control

Free

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, 

iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.

When you’re stressed, you often take shorter breaths. To teach yourself to relax, it’s important to take longer breaths. We Breathe v.1 helps you to do this.

When the balloon expands, you breathe in. When the balloon goes down, you breathe out. Simple.

Also includes a Stress Slider to set your stress level, a color setting for your balloon, and a timer to remind you when to relax during the day.

As well, your balloon will syncronise with every other We Breathe user on the planet. So, you’ll all be breathing in and out at the same time!

Things I Liked About It:

• It is WAY easy to use. Even with brain fog.
• You can adjust your breathing speed based on how much stress you are experiencing.
• You can change the color of the balloon to several different colors if you don't like the default.
• You can set up a reminder to do your breathing exercise at the same time up to 7 days a week.
• It can be relaxing or distracting once you get into just focusing on your breath.

Things That Could Use Improvement:

• The pencil button is counterintuitive for one used to change balloon color. I thought it was going to take me to an area to write notes. A palette button should be used for changing color.
• Once again, here's an app where I think being able to chart progress would be nice. How many days did I complete my exercises successfully? How many days did I blow them off? How many days did I have the slider set to high vs low stress, and when? This would be good to record and show as a graph or chart.
• It takes a while to get the balloon to contract and expand after clicking on it. Shortening this time would be nice.
• The added functionality setting a timer for a duration to practice would be good.

Overall thoughts:

It's a simple app and I didn't have many expectations out of it. It's okay. I've found another breathing app that does more of what I want, though, and will be using that over time to track my progress. Once I've used it a while, I'll review it.

6) TBD - Tick Borne Diseases (RSS reader)


Application Type: Special interest RSS reader

Free
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone,
iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.1 or later.

Tick Born Diseases (TBD) is an application that allows you to receive the last 15 publications on tick-borne diseases published in PubMed each new connection. The studies are classified according to the following order : Lyme Disease, Tick, Babesia, Tick Born Encephalitis (TBE), Bartonella, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, Rickettsiae, Turalemia, Q fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF).

Things I Like About It:

• It is pretty straightforward and easy to use. 
• It breaks down RSS feeds into different tick borne diseases so you can view them depending on interest or which coinfection you have. (... More section = more tick borne infection rss feeds )
• There is a separate section just for tick information.
• Once the abstract is loaded in the window, you can zoom in and out to view it.

Things That Could Use Improvement:

• It is another bandwidth user, and it would be nice to be able to save abstracts and view them offline as an option.
• It would be nice if it aggregated rss feeds from other peer reviewed sources outside of PubMed. It seems pretty limiting to just list abstracts from one peer reviewed site.
• It would be nice to add general science articles from Science Daily and other science sites.

Overall Thoughts:

In a pinch when I'm sitting in a coffee shop and just hankering for the latest PubMed reports, I might use it. But probably after I've already checked support groups, email, and other sites... I'm probably more likely to want to look at abstracts and full papers at home on my laptop - where I can actually read the print more easily and view any charts and tables without hassle.

7) Immunity


Application Type: Action Game

$0.99

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone,
iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.


Hordes of exotic microbes threaten to cut your tropical vacation short. Strategically command your immune system to defend your intestines from pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Immunity features 30 frantic, story-mode levels and a survival mode for endless, educational fun.

Overall Thoughts:

On the one hand, this game appealed to me, because it's about me versus these nasty bugs and parasites that are trying to drill their way into the epithelial cell walls of the villi in the intestine - and I get to stop them.  On the other hand, there isn't much here in terms of an instruction manual up front - you learn as you go along, and sometimes the process is slow.

I like the Japanimation feel to the storyboard - the story being a young man gets on a plane and takes a trip overseas, and during the course of his adventure he meets with exotic and not-so-exotic pathogens that you have to help him fight off. 

It is awesome to be able to patch together someone's villi to prevent the bad bugs from getting in, and to periodically get new immune system cells of different kinds to fend off the invaders. This is easy when it comes to the young man's travel story. 

But if you look at the first (home) screen, there is a button that says "Endless". And this is not the young man's story at all - no, this is the story of someone with AIDS or HIV, and you are in an intense battle to try to keep invading organisms out of the walls of your villi. Believe me, it is a much harder version of game play at that level.

As a Lyme patient, I recommend this for the catharsis you can feel out of defending someone against infection - go with the story for that, though, and not "The Endless". You will die too soon, and that's depressing. I also recommend that you don't expect too much out of yourself at first - it's not an easy game to play overall, and may be physically hard on wrists and fingers. 

If you bow out of this one, there is always Centipede Ultra... You can pretend you are blasting the shit out of spirochetes there.

---

One app I can definitely mention in closing here that I did not include was Tick Doctor. Most Lyme disease patients will find it of little utility and may experience some level of disgust from its full color photos of ticks and notes on how to identify them. They also mention some of the illnesses they carry and mention a few symptoms - but I think the information is limited, is outdated, and is so much less than the average Lyme patient knows by now that it is of no use.

So, these are my reviews for now. More coming in a future edition.

This work by Camp Other is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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0 Quiz Time: Logo Answer Key

So though I know many of you viewed the new Camp Other logo, you didn't take up the challenge of commenting on the quiz post. So I have provided the stumped with an answer key - as long as this logo is in use, you can look here to find out who is in it and what odd touches I added...

I wonder what a party would be like if we had all these guys under one tent... Too bad that some of them are dead as of this writing - we'll never know. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall of this tent if it were ever a reality. Anyway, below is a list of who is who - plus the three objects I mentioned in the last post about this logo.

1. Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for "for fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles". Physicists and physics students will understand that more than anyone else. Outside of his Nobel prize, Feynman was memorable for his physics classes at Caltech, his work on The Manhattan Project, his testimony on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, for his skill as a drummer and artist, his interest in genetics, and for his attempts to visit formerly Soviet-controlled Tuva.
   
   One thing I really liked about Feynman: Feynman has been called the "Great Explainer". He gained a reputation for taking great care when giving explanations to his students and for making it a moral duty to make the topic accessible. His guiding principle was that if a topic could not be explained in a freshman lecture, it was not yet fully understood.
   
   
2. Bill Nye (The Science Guy) is a science educator, comedian, television host, and mechanical engineer. He is best known as the host of Disney's science education show, Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993-1997). He began his career at Boeing and developed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor still used in the 747.
   
   
   
   
   He went on to do aerospace consulting, was a comedian on the show, Seattle, Almost Live!, created The Eyes of Nye PBS science show for adults, has been a lifeline expert on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and had clips of his show in the popular (over 2 million hits!) Symphony of Science series.
   
   See Bill Nye, Carl Sagan, and Richard Feynman clips in this Symphony of Science mashup, We Are All Connected:
   
   
   
3. Susumu Tonegawa 利根川 進 is a Japanese scientist who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for his discovery of the genetic mechanism that produces antibody diversity. Tonegawa is best known for elucidating the genetic mechanism in the adaptive immune system. To achieve the diversity of antibodies needed to protect against any type of antigen, the immune system would require millions of genes coding for different antibodies, if each antibody was encoded by one gene. Instead, as Tonegawa showed in a landmark series of experiments beginning in 1976, genetic material can rearrange itself to form the vast array of available antibodies.
   
   
4. Wayne Rogers (as "Trapper John McIntyre") is an actor who is best-known for playing "Trapper John", a doctor on M*A*S*H who was tent mates with Alan Alda's "Hawkeye Pierce". Many years ago, Wayne was asked to sign a contract agreeing not to engage in "objectionable behavior" while working on the set of the show or otherwise risk being fired, and refused to unless the directors and production company were held to the same standard.
   
   
5. Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) was the 1983 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, was an American scientist and one of the world's most distinguished cytogeneticists. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927, where she was a leader in the development of maize cytogenetics. Her work was groundbreaking: she developed the technique for visualizing maize chromosomes and used microscopic analysis to demonstrate many fundamental genetic ideas, including genetic recombination by crossing-over during meiosis—a mechanism by which chromosomes exchange information. She produced the first genetic map for maize, linking regions of the chromosome with physical traits, and demonstrated the role of the telomere and centromere, regions of the chromosome that are important in the conservation of genetic information.
   
   
6. Carl Sagan (1934-1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science popularizer and science communicator in the space and natural sciences.
   
   
   
   During his lifetime, he published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he advocated skeptical inquiry and the scientific method. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
   
   Sagan became world-famous for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote. A book to accompany the program was also published. Sagan also wrote the novel Contact, the basis for the 1997 film of the same name.
   
   
7. Elizabeth Blackburn is an Australian-born American biological researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the telomere, a structure at the end of chromosomes that protects the chromosome. Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere. For this work, she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing it with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak. She also worked in medical ethics, and was controversially dismissed from the President's Council on Bioethics.
   
   
8. Alan Alda (as "Hawkeye Pierce")  is an American actor, director and screenwriter. A five-time Emmy Award and six-time Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was viewed as the archetypal sympathetic male, though in recent years, he has appeared in roles that counter that image. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Stony Brook University School of Journalism.
   
   Alda's prominence in the enormously successful M*A*S*H gave him a platform to speak out on political topics, and he has been a strong and vocal supporter of women's rights and the feminist movement. He co-chaired, with former First Lady Betty Ford, the ERA Countdown campaign. Alda has also played Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in the play QED, which has only one other character. Although Peter Parnell wrote the play, Alda both produced and inspired it. Beginning in 2004, Alda was a regular cast member on the NBC program The West Wing, portraying Republican U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Arnold Vinick, until the show's conclusion in May 2006. It was not until 2004, after a long distinguished acting career, that Alda received his first Academy Award nomination, for his role in The Aviator.
   
   In 2005, Alda published his first round of memoirs, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I've Learned. Among other stories, he recalls his intestines becoming strangulated while on location in Chile for his PBS show Scientific American Frontiers, during which he mildly surprised a young doctor with his understanding of medical procedures, which he had learned from M*A*S*H.
   
   
9. Ada E. Yonath עדה יונת ( pronounced [ˈada joˈnat]) is an Israeli crystallographer best known for her pioneering work on the structure of the ribosome. She is the current director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly of the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 2009, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome, becoming the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize out of nine Israeli Nobel laureates, the first woman from the Middle East to win a Nobel prize in the sciences, and the first woman in 45 years to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. However, she said herself that there was nothing special about a woman winning the Prize.
   
   Yonath focuses on the mechanisms underlying protein biosynthesis, by ribosomal crystallography, a research line she pioneered over twenty years ago despite considerable skepticism of the international scientific community. Ribosomes translate RNA into protein and because they have slightly different structures in microbes, when compared to eukaryotes, such as human cells, they are often a target for antibiotics.
   
   Additionally, Yonath elucidated the modes of action of over twenty different antibiotics targeting the ribosome, illuminated mechanisms of drug resistance and synergism, deciphered the structural basis for antibiotic selectivity and showed how it plays a key role in clinical usefulness and therapeutic effectiveness, thus paving the way for structure-based drug design.
   

The three objects/items I mentioned, from left to right:

1. Behind Richard Feynman is a sepia-toned photograph of Lida Mattman near her microscope on the tent wall.
   
   Lida Mattman (1912-2008) graduated with a M.S. in Virology from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. in Immunology from Yale University. Mattman has taught Immunology, Microbiology, Bacteriology, Virology and Pathology. She worked for 35 years in these fields at various schools and institutions including Harvard University, Howard Hughes Institute, Oakland University and Wayne State University. Mattman developed a new method for culturing B. burgdorferi from patients with chronic Lyme disease. In 1998 she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. She authored the book Cell Wall Deficient Forms: Stealth Pathogens.
   
   
2. On the floor in front of Bill Nye is an oscilloscope modified so one can play Tetris on it. Yes, it is real!:
   
   
   
3. On Alan Alda's head is a yellow finch that is one of the finches Charles Darwin identified in the Galapagos Islands.

I was hoping for more participation in comments, and I intend to quiz you in future posts about "what is in this picture" - however, I warn you that those quizzes may prove to be more challenging than this one!

Carl Sagan should have been the obvious one to answer even if you wrote nothing else, since I have mentioned him a number of times on this blog. Since it's The Swamp from M*A*S*H, I thought at least some of the old school would get Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers.

Well, you'll have another chance in the future to participate in other game posts - provided I am well enough to keep writing. Hope you learned something interesting from this one!

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0 Quiz Time! Who's in the logo?

Edit: I'm really surprised you folks are quiet on this one... I'm going to delay releasing my next post and give this another 24 hours for you to guess who's in the new Camp Other logo. 

Okay, the old logo just wasn't working for me... This one might need a little tweaking, but I think it's mostly the right idea for this blog.

Say goodbye to the old beach tent...

And hello to the new logo above.

So... just for fun: Who is in the new logo?

I'm going to leave this up for 24 hours and see how many of you can identify any or all of the people in The Swamp (that should be a clue, right there - I can't imagine that you won't get at least three right off the bat).

Extra bonus points for noting three items not normally found in The Swap which were added to this image.

On your marks... get set... GO!

HAVE FUN!

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