During experiments on the axons of the Woods Hole squid (loligo pealei), we tested our cockroach leg stimulus protocol on the squid's chromatophores.

 

 The results were both interesting and beautiful. The video is a view through an 8x microscope zoomed in on the dorsal side of the caudal fin of the squid. We used a suction electrode to stimulate the fin nerve. Chromatophores are pigmeted cells that come in 3 colors: Brown, Red, and Yellow. Each chromatophore is lined with up to 16 muscles that contract to reveal their color.

Paloma T. Gonzalez-Bellido of Roger Hanlon's Lab in the Marine Resource Center of the Marine Biological Labs helped us with the preparation. You can read their latest paper at:http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/08/13/rspb.2012.1374

The nine people believed injured by stray police gunfire outside the Empire State Building were not the first to learn how dangerous a crowded street can be in a gunfight.

 Civilians occasionally find themselves in harm's way when officers use deadly force, though usually only a handful of times annually. When that happens, a rigid process of investigation is set in motion — and the police department can reasonably expect a lawsuit. The latest episode came when police say a man disgruntled over losing his job a year ago shot a former colleague to death and pointed his weapon at two police officers in the shadow of a major tourist attraction. He apparently wasn't able to fire before police killed him, one firing off seven rounds and the other nine. Bystanders suffered graze wounds, and some were struck by concrete gouged from buildings by the bullets, authorities said. At least one person said he was actually hit by a bullet. Robert Asika, a 23-year-old tour guide who was hit in the right arm, said he was "100 percent positive" he was shot by a police officer. A witness told police that laid-off clothing designer Jeffrey Johnson fired at officers, but ballistics evidence so far contradicts that, authorities said.

Tracking a Rare Tattoo-Related Infection

A Trail of Ink: Tracking a Rare Tattoo-Related Infection

An uncommon skin infection led to a doctor's investigation into tainted tattoo ink. (Monroe County Health Department)

The reddish-purple rash, seemingly woven into the tattoo on a 20-year-old New Yorker's forearm, was strange enough to have doctors scratching their heads.

This trail began when the man received a tattoo in Rochester, N.Y. in October 2011. A short while later, he noticed the raised, bumpy rash. He called his primary care physician.

Doctors initially treated the man's arm with topical steroids, thinking that the rash was allergic-contact dermatitis. But that only made the problem worse.

By the time dermatologist Dr. Mark Goldgeier saw the patient, it was clear that this was no simple allergy.

He performed a skin biopsy so he could take a closer look at the rash under a microscope. What he saw was startling: the sample was riddled with a wormlike bacterium related to tuberculosis.

"I explained [to the patient] that he had TB, and he had a look of horror on his face," Goldgeier said.

For the patient, the finding meant a trip to an infectious disease specialist to start up to a full year of treatment.

Goldgeier, meanwhile, called the Monroe County Health Department.

"As soon as biopsy came back," he said, "I knew something in the process of tattooing was involved -- the ink, the water used for dilution, the syringes, the dressings."

And so began a nationwide medical mystery.

An article published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine describes how this one dermatologist helped connect the dots in an outbreak of tattoo-related atypical skin infections.

Dr. Byron Kennedy, public health specialist at Monroe County Department of Public Health, took over the case from Goldgeier. Kennedy first confirmed the results by repeating a skin biopsy on the patient. Once again, tendrils of mycobacterium chelonae, a type of tuberculosis-related skin bacteria, showed up in the sample.

Mycobacterium chelonae is a rapidly growing bug found in soil, dust, water, animals, hospitals, and contaminated pharmaceuticals. This family of bacteria does not commonly affect healthy individuals, but in patients with suppressed immune systems -- like those with HIV or on chemotherapy -- these bacteria can cause serious disease, often resulting in death.

The finding sent Kennedy and his associates to the tattoo parlor where the patient had been inked. Everything in the clinic was sterile, which made it unlikely that the infection had arisen there. But the tattoo artist, they learned, had been using a new gray premixed ink purchased in Arizona in April 2011; he used the ink between May and December 2011.

The ingredients of the ink -- pigment, witch hazel, glycerin, and distilled water -- seemed innocuous enough. But further examination revealed that the distilled water in the pigment was the likely culprit of the contamination.

The finding raised a number of questions -- not the least of which was how the bottles of premixed ink passed U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged this gap in regulations Wednesday in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report.

"Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, tattoo inks are considered to be cosmetics, and the pigments used in the inks are color additives requiring premarket approval," the report says.

Armed gang fight breaks out in Venezuelan prison

Twenty-five people were killed and 43 others hurt in a prison battle in Venezuela as two armed gangs vied for control of a penitentiary near Caracas, authorities said on Monday.

Addiction Books For relaxation When 50 Shades of Grey doesn’t cut it.

The Science of Addiction: From Neurobiology to Treatment 

Carlton K. Erickson
312 pages 
Publisher: W. W. Norton and Company (2007)

Amazon Overview: Neuroscience is clarifying the causes of compulsive alcohol and drug use––while also shedding light on what addiction is, what it is not, and how it can best be treated––in exciting and innovative ways. Current neurobiological research complements and enhances the approaches to addiction traditionally taken in social work and psychology. However, this important research is generally not presented in a forthright, jargon-free way that clearly illustrates its relevance to addiction professionals. In The Science of Addiction, Carlton K. Erickson presents a comprehensive overview of the roles that brain function and genetics play in addiction.


The Addiction Solution: Unraveling the Mysteries of Addiction through Cutting-Edge Brain Science

David Kipper and Steven Whitney
304 pages
Publisher: Rodale Books (2010)

For decades addiction has been viewed and treated as a social and behavioral illness, afflicting people of “weak” character and “bad” moral fiber. However, recent breakthroughs in genetic technology have enabled doctors, for the first time, to correctly diagnose the disease and prove that addiction is an inherited, neuro-chemical disease originating in brain chemistry, determined by genetics, and triggered by stress. In their groundbreaking Addiction Breakthrough, David Kipper, MD, and Steven Whitney distill these exciting findings into a guide for the millions of adults who want to be free from the cycle of addiction, and for their loved ones who want to better understand it and to help.


In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

Gabor Maté
520 pages 
Publisher: North Atlantic Books (2010) 

Based on Gabor Maté’s two decades of experience as a medical doctor and his groundbreaking work with the severely addicted on Vancouver’s skid row, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts radically reenvisions this much misunderstood field by taking a holistic approach. Dr. Maté presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to an unfortunate or weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs throughout (and perhaps underpins) our society; not a medical "condition" distinct from the lives it affects, rather the result of a complex interplay among personal history, emotional, and neurological development, brain chemistry, and the drugs (and behaviors) of addiction. Simplifying a wide array of brain and addiction research findings from around the globe, the book avoids glib self-help remedies, instead promoting a thorough and compassionate self-understanding as the first key to healing and wellness. 


Memoirs of an Addicted Brain: A Neuroscientist Examines his Former Life on Drugs 

Marc Lewis
336 pages 
Publisher: PublicAffairs (2012)

Marc Lewis’s relationship with drugs began in a New England boarding school where, as a bullied and homesick fifteen-year-old, he made brief escapes from reality by way of cough medicine, alcohol, and marijuana. In Berkeley, California, in its hippie heyday, he found methamphetamine and LSD and heroin. He sniffed nitrous oxide in Malaysia and frequented Calcutta’s opium dens. Ultimately, though, his journey took him where it takes most addicts: into a life of addiction, desperation, deception, and crime. But unlike most addicts, Lewis recovered and became a developmental psychologist and researcher in neuroscience. In Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, he applies his professional expertise to a study of his former self, using the story of his own journey through addiction to tell the universal story of addictions of every kind.


The Chemical Carousel: What Science Tells Us About Beating Addiction

Dirk Hanson
472 pages 
Publisher: BookSurge (2009)

A book for anyone concerned with the care and healing of addiction, substance abuse, and the latest advances in the area of addiction science. In The Chemical Carousel, science writer Hanson takes the reader on a voyage through the heady world of addiction science, from the lab to the clinic to the junky on the street. Hanson explains the workings of common neurotransmitters and documents the direct effect drugs and alcohol produce on the reward pathways of the brain. He shows how scientists and treatment professionals have finally given us an answer to the perennial question about addiction: Why can't those people just say no?


An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug, Cocaine

Howard Markel
336 pages 
Publisher: Vintage (2012)

Acclaimed medical historian Howard Markel traces the careers of two brilliant young doctors--Sigmund Freud, neurologist, and William Halsted, surgeon--showing how their powerful addictions to cocaine shaped their enormous contributions to psychology and medicine. When Freud and Halsted began their experiments with cocaine in the 1880s, neither they, nor their colleagues, had any idea of the drug's potential to dominate and endanger their lives. An Anatomy of Addiction tells the tragic and heroic story of each man, accidentally struck down in his prime by an insidious malady: tragic because of the time, relationships, and health cocaine forced each to squander; heroic in the intense battle each man waged to overcome his affliction.


How to Change Your Drinking: a Harm Reduction Guide to Alcohol

Kenneth Anderson
86 pages 
Publisher: CreateSpace (2010)

This book is the first comprehensive compilation of harm reduction strategies aimed specifically at people who drink alcohol. Whether your goal is safer drinking, reduced drinking, or quitting alcohol altogether, this is the book for you. It contains a large and detailed selection of harm reduction tools and strategies which you can choose from to build your own individualized alcohol harm reduction program. There are many practical exercises to help people change their behaviors, including risk-ranking worksheets, drinking charts, goal choice worksheets, and many more. There are also innumerable practical tips from folks who "have been there" and have turned their drinking habits around for the better. 


Rethinking Substance Abuse: What the Science Shows, and What We Should Do about It

William R. Miller and Kathleen M. Carroll
320 pages 
Publisher: Guilford Press (2010) 

While knowledge on substance abuse and addictions is expanding rapidly, clinical practice still lags behind. This state-of-the-art book brings together leading experts to describe what treatment and prevention would look like if it were based on the best science available. The volume incorporates developmental, neurobiological, genetic, behavioral, and social–environmental perspectives. Tightly edited chapters summarize current thinking on the nature and causes of alcohol and other drug problems; discuss what works at the individual, family, and societal levels; and offer robust principles for developing more effective treatments and services.

Writers On The Edge: 22 Writers Speak About Addiction and Dependency

Diana Raab and James Brown
204 pages
Publisher: Modern History Press (2012)

Writers On The Edge offers a range of essays, memoirs and poetry written by major contemporary authors who bring fresh insight into the dark world of addiction, from drugs and alcohol, to sex, gambling and food. Editors Diana M. Raab and James Brown have assembled an array of talented and courageous writers who share their stories with heartbreaking honesty as they share their obsessions as well as the awe-inspiring power of hope and redemption. Frederick & Steven Barthelme, Kera Bolonik, Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Maud Casey, Anna David, Denise Duhamel, B.H. Fairchild, Ruth Fowler, David Huddle Perie Longo, Gregory Orr, Victoria Patterson, Molly Peacock, Scott Russell Sanders, Stephen Jay Schwartz, Linda Gray Sexton, Sue William Silverman, Chase Twichell, and Rachel Yoder

WHEN YOUR HIGHER POWER FAILS YOU

It happens every time. Without fail. Without exception. I bet it's happened to you also. Just think about it. How often has your god failed you? Every single time. Every single time I have turned a human being into a god, or turned something man-made into an idol, or placed my trust, expectation, hope, and confidence in anything else but the one true God, my god has failed me. Some people are slow learners. I am one of them. I have made the same mistake countless times. And every single time, that's right, you've got it. It happens every time. Maybe I should be more careful when I place my trust, expectation, hope, and confidence in a human being. Maybe I should be more choosy with the human I choose. Not so. No matter the human, the same outcome will arise. My god will fail me. I did it again recently. I made the same mistake. But my mistake wasn't the human I chose. My mistake was the choice I made to pick a human. And guess what happened? You guessed it. My god failed me. But how can this happen, time and again? Easily. First, it happens when I fail to remember when I need not to forget. Never, ever, place what belongs to God in heaven in the hands of a human. My love and trust, my loyalty and faithfulness, my belief and confidence, my hope and expectation, must be placed in the Lord first and foremost, above all and everyone else - whether it be someone or something else, or whether it be myself. Second, it happens not because I forget, but because I don't realize and recognize what I have done. Hard habits sometimes die slowly, don't they? And slow habits die hard. It has been a hard lesson for me, and I have to be vigilant to ensure I don't unconsciously do what I have so often done. So what is the outcome of this all? My gods fail me. Every human I have ever made into a god, every person or thing I have ever turned into an idol, the result has always been the same. My false gods have failed me, hurt me, let me down, forsaken me, abandoned me, rejected me, broken me, fallen short, messed up, and a zillion other things. Seriously? Yes. Will the real God please stand up?