Lawns

My mother bought an electronic lawn mower (Neuton) several years ago, then gave it to me. I used it a few times and loved it, but my back yard is all uphill. Really. You can't push the mower up because of the angle and you can't let the mower go down because of the angle and you can't mow sideways because the mower turns over.

So I hire a cute young guy from the neighborhood to do a half-ass job of keeping my lawn mowed for $20.00 -- just enough to keep the neighbors from complaining.

This weekend mother decided she wanted the mower back for the summer, so I easily found the mower in the storage shed. But I couldn't find the two batteries, key, and recharger that went with the mower. Anywhere. I turned the house upside down, scoured the storage shed and the little back building. Even checked the trunk of my car. Could not find them.

Mother took the news well, considering there was no point in having the mower without the batteries. I offered to give her money so she could buy a new battery but she refused. I told her to look around, that her fresh eyes might see them better than mine.

We went out to the storage shed and there -- beneath the boxed Christmas tree -- was a box marked "Neuton," containing two batteries, key, and recharger. I'd forgotten that I put everything in a box and had been looking for the separate batteries.

WHEW!!!

We loaded everything into her little whore red sports car (yes, that's the color), then went inside to cool off. She began talking about how she loves true crime and court TV on cable, then started talking about some missing child named Kelly who had a psychotic liar for a mother and a suspicious grandmother.

I reminded her that I don't have cable (I refuse to pay for more TV). She said that was good because there were things on cable I shouldn't see. Now I'm 56 years old and I've seen just about everything and lived through it. I thought she was talking about sex, but no. She said, "You're too easily swayed by all those science programs."

Yes, dear readers. I'm too easily persuaded by logic and evidence. I had no idea I needed to be shielded from science.

For those who don't know my mother, this is her religious fundamentalism showing. She believes and is "easily swayed" by everything in the King James bible, but science is a different matter.

sigh . . .

Otherwise, a so-so weekend. Had a lot of quality time with certain parrots who live in my house, had M (the young college woman) over to clean said house Saturday morning, made the obligatory trip to Wal-Mart, and began packing for Vermont.

Bad Behavior

Miserably hot and humid today. Just those words don't convey what it's like to be inside, to open the door, and have the heat hit you like an open hand. Or how breathing is an odd sensation because of the hot air going into your lungs. Plus the humidity that brings out the sweat the moment you're outside.

Thank god for air conditioning.

There's a new person next door now; a big middle-aged white woman sitting on the deck and smoking a cigarette. She's a new one. Maybe she's a babysitter.

I behaved very badly this week. I had to go to a clinic within a series of clinics for a procedure. Good doctors but otherwise the place is a nightmare. My appointment was at 2:30; I got there at 2:28 because, of course, there was no place to park.

I signed in and took a seat. There was no one at the desk and maybe 12 people scattered around the waiting area. At 2:45 something told me I'd better check that someone somewhere knew I was there. The clerk was nice and said I should be waiting in another room, off to the left.

So I trot off to the other office and tell the clerk who I am. A tech came in and the clerk said, "Your three o'clock is here." And the tech took them back.

"Why did the three o'clock people get taken before me?" I asked.

The clerk continued typing. "You weren't here."

"Yes, I was," I protested. "At two thirty. Right out there." I pointed to the waiting area.

"Did you register, ma'am?"

"Yes, I signed in." I'm still calm and willing to be polite but I'm not happy that I'll probably have to wait an extra hour because the three o'clock patients got taken before me. I handed her my insurance card.

She kept typing, then took my card and made a copy. "Did you register," she repeated.

Again, I said, "I signed in when I got here at 2:30. No one was at the counter."

"Did you register out in the hall?"

"What?"

"You have to register before we can see you. The desk is outside on the left."

That's when I lost my patience. It was now three o'clock. I held up the papers they'd sent me, telling me what floor and time and so on. "This doesn't say anything about reporting outside! If you want people to go outside first, you have to tell them that. This doesn't say anything about that."

"You still have to register outside," she said. I'm surprised she didn't throw me out.

So I go stomping out of the office, go out in the hall, and see an Information kiosk, staffed with a young woman and an older woman. "Is this where I'm supposed to register?"

I tossed my insurance card on the counter, and the young woman took it. Then I went into my tirade about wasting people's time and if they want patients to report someplace they'd have to tell people. It's not like a state secret. I knew I was acting like an ass, but I was so angry I couldn't stop. The older woman smiled at me, and I curtly told her it wasn't funny and people shouldn't be treated like this. But both women were professional and didn't order me out of town or call security or anything. I could see on her face that I'd really pissed off the younger woman who was inputting the info, though.

Then I stomped back to the smaller waiting room and sat down and irritably picked up a two-year-old magazine.

A young man came in and called my name. "How are you today? We haven't seen you in a couple of years." After realizing what an ass I'd been I made an effort to get my blood pressure down.

"I'm not too happy right now," I told him. I waved the papers at him and went through my spiel about instructions for patients. He nodded kindly and said he understood.

I only "lost" a half hour, so it wasn't as bad as I thought it as going to be. The procedure went well and the staff were great.

I have such a low tolerance for bureaucratic bullshit -- everywhere in this place which is connected to zillions of other medical offices we have to fill out the same forms over and over, make the same copies of insurance cards, fill out the same damn histories, waiting times are usually in the hours (this clinic is the exception), and you're shuffled around like cattle. It just enrages me at all the money that flows through that place and how administration continually talks about patient satisfaction and quality care, and then treats people like an inconvenience. They treat people as badly as airlines treat passengers.

Normally I am nice to people in service areas; I know they don't make the big bucks and the systems that don't work aren't their fault.

Anyway, I feel bad about my outburst. I've got a meeting near that clinic Monday, so I think I need to stop by and apologize.

Rare St. Vincent Amazon Parrot Born At Houston Zoo

http://birdchannel.com/bird-news/2008/08/01/st-vincent-amazon-birth.aspx

Miracle in the Suburbs

Another so-so day at work.

Last night there were two extra cars in the neighbor's driveway. Either visitors or mourners; I hadn't seen the man (father) since he was driven away by EMS.

This afternoon there were three cars in the driveway and out on the street. I pulled my garbage container from my backyard to the curb (Fridays are garbage pick-up days). As I walked back to my porch, I heard, "Ma'am?"

I looked up and it was the young woman who'd made the long-distance call. She said, "My mama said she'd pay for the call."

"That's fine, " I said, "but I won't know how much it is until the bill comes in."

"And I can take your garbage out to the curb," she offered. "It comes tomorrow, right?"

"You don't have to do that," I pointed to the curb. "I've already taken it out."

"Oh."

"Well, when the bill comes in I'll bring it over to your dad." (She doesn't live there.)

"Okay."

"Is he doing okay," I asked.

"Oh yeah."

"He's home now?"

She nodded, and I smiled and said, "That's good."

She went back to her house and I unlocked my door and went in to greet my birds.

She was so polite I'm tempted to let the bill go! There may be hope for the next generation after all.

Then I decided it was a good day for bird torture. That's right -- I took each bird into the bathroom and gave each of them a spray bath. There was much fussing and struggling, but the deed is done and now I have four little wet birds preening their beautiful feathers.

PDD Update

Public release date: 29-Jul-2008
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Contact: Kristen Bole
kbole@pubaff.ucsf.edu
415-476-2557
University of California - San Francisco
UCSF researchers identify virus behind mysterious parrot disease

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have identified a virus behind the mysterious infectious disease that has been killing parrots and exotic birds for more than 30 years.

The team, led by UCSF professors Joseph DeRisi, PhD, and Don Ganem, MD, also has developed a diagnostic test for the virus linked to Proventricular Dilation Disease, or PDD, which will enable veterinarians worldwide to control the spread of the virus.

Results of the study will be published in Virology Journal and will appear online in August. The findings also will be presented in full at the August 11 annual meeting of the Association of Avian Veterinarians, in Savannah, GA.

The new virus, which the team named Avian Bornavirus (ABV), is a member of the bornavirus family, whose other members cause encephalitis in horses and livestock. Working with veterinarians on two continents, the group isolated this virus in 71 percent of the samples from infected birds, but none of the healthy individuals.

"This discovery has potentially solved a mystery that has been plaguing the avian veterinary community since the 1970s," said DeRisi, a molecular biologist whose laboratory aided in the 2003 discovery of the virus causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, in humans. "These results clearly reveal the existence of an avian reservoir of remarkably diverse bornaviruses that are dramatically different from anything seen in other animals."

The discovery could have profound consequences on both domesticated parrots and in the conservation of endangered species, according to DeRisi and Ganem, both Howard Hughes Medical Investigators at UCSF. Those species include the Spix's Macaw, currently one of the most endangered birds in the world, whose number has dwindled to roughly 100 worldwide and whose continued existence is threatened by PDD.

The research was spearheaded by Amy Kistler, a postdoctoral fellow in the DeRisi and Ganem labs. Together with veterinarians Susan Clubb, in the United States, and Ady Gancz in Israel, Kistler analyzed affected birds using UCSF's patented ViroChip technology.

The ViroChip, which DeRisi and Ganem developed, is a high-throughput screening technology that uses a DNA microarray to test viral samples. The team was able to recover virus sequence from a total of 16 diseased birds from two different continents. The complete genome sequence of one isolate was captured using ultra deep sequencing.

The virus they identified is highly divergent from all previously identified members of the Bornaviridae family and represents the first full-length bornavirus genome ever cloned directly from avian tissue. Analysis of the Avian Bornavirus genome revealed at least five distinct varieties.

PDD is a fatal disease that causes nervous system disorders in both domesticated and wild birds in the psittacine, or parrot, family worldwide. The disease has been found in 50 different species of parrots, as well as five other orders of birds, and is widely considered to be the greatest threat to captive breeding of birds in this family, the researchers said.

The disorder often leads to the birds' inability to swallow and digest food, with resulting wasting; many birds also suffer from neurologic symptoms such as imbalance and lack of coordination. Regardless of the clinical course the disease takes, it is often fatal.

Scientists have theorized for decades that a viral pathogen was the source of the disease, but until now, no one had been able to identify the likely culprit.

"This provides a very compelling lead in the long-standing search for a viral cause of PDD," Ganem said. "With the development of molecular clones and diagnostic tests for ABV, we can now begin to explore both the epidemiology of the virus and how it is linked to the disease state."

###

Co-authors on the paper include Amy L. Kistler, Peter Skewes-Cox, Kael Fisher, Katherine Sorber, Charles Y. Chiu and Alexander Greninger, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Medicine at UCSF; Ady Gancz, from The Exotic Clinic, Herzlyia, Israel; Susan Clubb, Rainforest Clinic for Birds and Exotics, Loxahatchee, Fla.; Avishai Lublin, Sara Mechani and Yigal Farnoushi, of the Division of Avian and Fish Diseases, Kimron Veterinary Institute, bet Dagan, Israel; and Scott B. Karlene, of the Lahser Interspecies Research Foundation, Bloomfield Hills, MI.

The research was supported by funding to DeRisi and Ganem from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Funding for US specimen collection and veterinary care was provided by the Lahser Interspecies Research Foundation

The DeRisi Laboratory is part of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, known as QB3, a cooperative effort among private industry and more than 180 scientists at UCSF, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. The collaboration harnesses the quantitative sciences to integrate and enhance scientific understanding of biological systems at all levels, enabling scientists to tackle problems that have been previously unapproachable.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. For further information, please visit www.ucsf.edu.