
I took this picture on a sunny fall afternoon on a prairie near Chicago, Illinois. To improve the color saturation, I blocked the sunlight with my body. The blue background came straight from the camera. The image was not altered with any editor.
BANGKOK – For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.
The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results "instilled new hope" in the field of HIV vaccine research, although researchers say it likely is many years before a vaccine might be available.
The vaccine — a combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines — cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 percent in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok.
Even though the benefit is modest, "it's the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine," Col. Jerome Kim told The Associated Press. He helped lead the study for the U.S. Army, which sponsored it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The institute's director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that this is "not the end of the road," but he said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome.
"It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result" and developing a more effective AIDS vaccine, Fauci said. "This is something that we can do."
The Thailand Ministry of Public Health conducted the study. The U.S. Army has long worked with that government and others to develop and test vaccines and medicines to protect troops and the general public.
The study used strains of HIV common in Thailand. Whether such a vaccine would work against other strains in the U.S., Africa or elsewhere in the world is unknown, scientists stressed.
Even a marginally helpful vaccine could have a big impact. Every day, 7,500 people worldwide are newly infected with HIV; 2 million died of AIDS in 2007, UNAIDS estimates.
"Today marks a historic milestone," said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international group that has worked toward developing a vaccine. Warren was not involved in the study.
"It will take time and resources to fully analyze and understand the data, but there is little doubt that this finding will energize and redirect the AIDS vaccine field," he said in a statement.
The study tested the two-vaccine combination in a "prime-boost" approach, in which the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second one strengthens the response.
They are ALVAC, from Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis; and AIDSVAX, originally developed by VaxGen Inc. and now held by Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a nonprofit founded by some former VaxGen employees.
ALVAC uses canarypox, a bird virus altered so it can't cause human disease, to ferry synthetic versions of three HIV genes into the body. AIDSVAX contains a genetically engineered version of a protein on HIV's surface. The vaccines are not made from whole virus — dead or alive — and cannot cause HIV.
Neither vaccine in the study prevented HIV infection when tested individually in earlier trials, and dozens of scientists had called the new one futile when it began in 2003.
"I really didn't have high hopes at all that we would see a positive result," Fauci confessed.
The results proved the skeptics wrong.
"The combination is stronger than each of the individual members," said the Army's Kim, a physician who manages the Army's HIV vaccine program.
The study tested the combo in HIV-negative Thai men and women aged 18 to 30 at average risk of becoming infected. Half received four "priming" doses of ALVAC and two "boost" doses of AIDSVAX over six months. The others received dummy shots. No one knew who got what until the study ended.
Thanad Yomha, a 33-year-old electrician from southeastern Thailand, said he didn't expect anything in return for volunteering for the project.
"I did this for others," Thanad said. "It's for the next generation."
Participants volunteered for the study and were told about the potential risks associated with receiving the experimental vaccine before agreeing to participate.
All were given condoms, counseling and treatment for any sexually transmitted infections, and were tested every six months for HIV. Any who became infected were given free treatment with antiviral medicines. All participants continued to receive an HIV test every six months for three years after vaccinations ended.
The results: New infections occurred in 51 of the 8,197 given vaccine and in 74 of the 8,198 who received dummy shots. That worked out to a 31 percent lower risk of infection for the vaccine group. Two of the infected participants who received the placebo died.
The vaccine had no effect on levels of HIV in the blood for those who did become infected. That had been another goal of the study — seeing whether the vaccine could limit damage to the immune system and help keep infected people from developing full-blown AIDS.
That result is "one of the most important and intriguing findings of this trial," Fauci said. It suggests that the signs scientists have been using to gauge whether a vaccine was actually giving protection may not be valid.
"It is conceivable that we haven't even identified yet" what really shows immunity, which is both "important and humbling" after decades of vaccine research, Fauci said.
Details of the $105 million study will be given at a vaccine conference in Paris in October.
This is the third big vaccine trial since 1983, when HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS. In 2007, Merck & Co. stopped a study of its experimental vaccine after seeing it did not prevent HIV infection. Later analysis suggested the vaccine might even raise the risk of infection in certain men. The vaccine itself did not cause infection.
In 2003, AIDSVAX flunked two large trials — the first late-stage tests of any AIDS vaccine at the time.
It is unclear whether vaccine makers will seek to license the two-vaccine combo in Thailand. Before the trial began, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said other studies would be needed before the vaccine could be considered for U.S. licensing.
"This is a world first which proves that vaccine development is possible," Supachai said. "But this is not to the level where we can license or manufacture the vaccine yet."
Mass-producing the vaccine, plus how to proceed with future studies, will be discussed among the governments, study sponsors and companies involved in the trial, Kim said. Scientists want to know how long protection will last, whether booster shots will be needed, and whether the vaccine helps prevent infection in gay men and injection drug users, since it was tested mostly in heterosexuals in the Thai trial.
The study was done in Thailand because U.S. Army scientists did pivotal research in that country when the AIDS epidemic emerged there, isolating virus strains and providing genetic information on them to vaccine makers. The Thai government also strongly supported the idea of doing the study.
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Associated Press Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione reported from Minneapolis.
The use of graphics as a tool for educating viewers is a great approach to sharing information. It’s an effective way of composing otherwise boring information and data into an easy-to-consume and fascinating way.
In this article, you’ll discover a variety of infographics and visualizations associated with the internet. You might just learn a thing or two about the web by looking at these awesome artworks!
Click on the image to go to the larger version of each graphic.
1. Web Trend Map is a graphical representation of the top domains and personalities on the web. It maps websites and notable persons onto the Tokyo subway system as train stations with their popularity and success represented by their position and size.
2. Who Participates and What People Are Doing Online is an infographic by BusinessWeek that shows who’s online and what they’re doing. The graphic reveals that the most popular demographic on the internet include persons between the ages of 18-26.
3. Internet Traffic shows the sources of internet activity in 2008. It illustrates that China, constituting 17% of the world’s web users, is the largest source of traffic, with the United States as the second (this may change in 2012 based on growth projections).
4. Online Communities is a satirical portrayal of the communities you can find online, published in xkcd. Communities are represented as countries, with their membership size denoted by how big its country is. Take this information with a grain of salt!
5. Information creation and circulation before and after Twitter reveals how information dissemination is changing with the advent of Twitter, which breaks news and events almost instantaneously, versus up to 2 hours for more conventional news sources.
6. World Map of Social Networks depicts the most used social networking site of each country based on data gathered from Alexa and Google Trends. Facebook is the most popular in the U.S. while Orkut (by Google) is the most prevalent in Brazil.
7. The Life Cycle of a Blog Post is an interactive graphical flowchart on Wired that demonstrates the pathways of how a blog post makes its way from the blogger to the reader, and the intermediary stops along the way.
8. Repetitive Website Intros Examined exposes how the design industry tends to stick to prevailing trends by presenting data on overused keywords, readability and other tidbits of incriminating numbers in website introductions based on the sites on this article.
9. Mobile Web 2.0 is a PDF on Stanford’s site that charts development and usage trends concerning the convergence of Web 2.0 applications and mobile devices, showing a timeline between 1980 to 2010 and important events in the Mobile Web 2.0 evolution.
10. Submarine cables is a map of underwater cable systems around the world, uncovering how much the internet has grown to the point that it warrants a vast quantity of cable systems (98 of them to be exact), and expansion of 28 more of such systems by 2011.
Symptom | Cold | Swine Flu |
Fever | Fever is rare with a cold. | Fever is usually present with the flu in up to 80% of all flu cases. A temperature of 100°F or higher for 3 to 4 days is associated with the flu. |
Coughing | A hacking, productive (mucus- producing) cough is often present with a cold. | A non-productive (non-mucus producing) cough is usually present with the flu (sometimes referred to as dry cough).. |
Aches | Slight body aches and pains can be part of a cold. | Severe aches and pains are common with the flu. |
Stuffy Nose | Stuffy nose is commonly present with a cold and typically resolves spontaneously within a week. | Stuffy nose is not commonly present with the flu. |
Chills | Chills are uncommon with a cold. | 60% of people who have the flu experience chills. |
Tiredness | Tiredness is fairly mild with a cold. | Tiredness is moderate to severe with the flu. |
Sneezing | Sneezing is commonly present with a cold. | Sneezing is not common with the flu. |
Sudden Symptoms | Cold symptoms tend to develop over a few days. | The flu has a rapid onset within 3-6 hours. The flu hits hard and includes sudden symptoms like high fever, aches and pains. |
Headache | A headache is fairly uncommon with a cold. | A headache is very common with the flu, present in 80% of flu cases. |
,Sore Throat | Sore throat is commonly present with a cold. | Sore throat is not commonly present with the flu. |
Chest Discomfort | Chest discomfort is mild to moderate with a cold. | Chest discomfort is often severe with the flu. |
When creating Mind Maps, imagination and creativity are used to synthesize logically all the relevant key information in an organized way. Mind Mapping taps your whole brain, releases your brain potential and improves your memory with less work.
请珍惜我们的生命
缺席的新郎----大家一定要看看,祝大家永远健康!
我痛恨自己没有在醒来的时候叫醒他,我心疼的让他再睡一下,他就
我们一起在广告公司玩设计,他的创意、我的完稿、
Almost all cultures of the word from Japanese to Australian and African to Aborigines believe in reincarnation. Whether it’s a Wiccan or a Hindu, every religion believes that all of us have lived in the past as different people and that past life has made us what we are today.
What you are now and who you believed you are now is an influence of your past life including your health, your mental well being, and your social interactions are all influenced by your past life. This is why it is important to know yourself, who you are and what you are in the past, to be able to make yourself better and stronger in this current life.
Past Life Regression - How can you tell you have a past life? You may not be able to, but in many cases you will have disturbing dreams, or memories while you’re awake that do not belong to you. Many people who believe in reincarnation believe that we all have past lives (though if you do the math, it’s more probable that there are at least some new souls!) Other indications:
* Are you strongly attracted to a specific culture or place that does not hold any place of importance in your present life? For instance you may be crazy about Mesopotamian art but not really understand why. Delve further into the aspects that interest you about that art and the time period you are interested in. If you can zero on a narrow range, we may have some clue.
* Unusual reactions or peculiar response to a historical event that happened centuries ago. This reaction may be explained by the involvement you might have in your past life.
* Some inexplicable fears which have no bearing in the present life and are not connected to your childhood. Allergies and physical problems may also be connected with your past life.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and just the fact that you have one of these indicators does not mean you are remembering a past life. Look for patterns in your life, ranges of things that attract you for no good reason, and you may start to home in on similarities that will help you piece together an idea of what your past life or lives may have been.
Self-hypnosis can help you to access the past life you once had. If you can not do it, ask for somebody to help you through hypnosis. Most of the therapists who do past life regression are specialists as well in helping people know their past life. They usually do it by using a form of deep hypnotic procedure.
If you are planning to use self hypnosis then try to use something that can deeply relax you. First learn to relax deeply and then only attempt regression.
In terms of safety there is nothing significant to worry about. What should happen is that you experience a past life vividly as if you were actually back in time. Although it may not be this intense you should still be able to experience ‘shadows’ and ‘feelings’ of a past life.
As you recall your life in the past, it will generate after effects in your feelings. If you feel good, your past life could have been good. If you feel bad after the process, your past life could have been bad as well. Although some memories and past life events are not good for you, it does not mean that you will have the same bad fate in the current life. It is only a recollection of your past life for your benefits.
It is the remembering of this past life, which is important; and once you have remembered, you can start to move on. It is only the subconscious suppression of these memories which causes problems. By understanding and accepting what happened in the past you can start to experience this present life with a totally different outlook.
There is a theory of ‘Karma’ which says that, if we were good people in one life, and committed kind and positive acts, then we will have ‘good Karma’ and subsequently, we will receive ‘good’ in all future lives - unless we change and become ‘bad’ people! If that happens, personal Karma changes and negative events will hound us throughout future lives until we have suffered enough to atone and revert back to being a ‘good soul’.
However, there is often confusion by people over this interpretation. We are not destined to be bad or deserve to suffer because of a past life. With each new life we are literally born anew and it is our own choice to do the things you do. Once you realize that a certain memory is from a previous life, and you are not a ‘bad’ person now, then you can go on to have a ‘good’ life in the present.
明眼穴 - 重要又好用 | |
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