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Venom from one of Brazil's largest snakes could reduce COVID's ability to multiply

Reference: Sky News: 

Covid test that doesn't use painful swabs 'better than lateral flows'

A new Covid test said to be better than a lateral flow could become the new first line of defence against the virus in hospitals — and it doesn't require a painful swab. 

Oxford University experts claim they have developed an AI-based test that can spot the virus and give a result in as little as 10 minutes without a throat or nose sample.

All that is required from a patient is a routine blood test, which is already collected for virtually everyone admitted to hospital. 

A major study of the test – known as CURIAL-Rapide – on 72,000 NHS patients found it correctly ruled out the infection 99.7 per cent of the time.

The researchers said this was a fifth more accurate than lateral flow devices, which are currently the most commonly used rapid test.

When carried out at the bedside of patients, the new test could give a diagnosis in just 10 minutes — compared to the half an hour it takes on average for a lateral flow.

In emergency departments CURIAL-Rapide produced results in 45 minutes by the time a sample was taken and processed.

This was quicker than the hour it took for lateral flows, which if negative need to be cross-referenced with a PCR.

Many large hospitals have lab facilities where they can process PCR tests — the gold standard of Covid testing — on site.But CURIAL-Rapide could make a 'particularly big difference' in small hospitals which don't have that luxury and need to send away for results, the Oxford experts said.

© Provided by Daily Mail 

Lead researcher Dr Andrew Soltan, a clinician and machine learning researcher at Oxford, said: 'Many of our patients coming to the ED are in the most vulnerable groups. 

'CURIAL-Rapide is exciting because it uses new near-patient testing to collect all the data needed for a prediction by the bedside in 10 minutes, cutting out the time for transporting samples to a lab. 

'This means infected patients are identified sooner, while patients being admitted with other conditions can be quickly and safely transferred to wards where they are less likely to be exposed.

'This technology can help hospitals run more smoothly and may make a particularly big difference for smaller hospitals where there isn't a lab on-site. 

'CURIAL is an example of how the collaborative strength of the NHS, bringing together universities with hospital groups across the country, is helping to build an evidence base for safe and responsible use of clinical AI.' 

The AI test uses routine blood tests and vital signs like heart rate and blood pressure to look for signs of viral infection.

The Oxford team are in the process of applying for funding from the Department of Health for a national rollout.  

The device was trialled at five hospitals in Oxford, Birmingham, Portsmouth and Bedfordshire between December and March. 

Dr Alex Novak, lead consultant for emergency medicine research at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said the results were 'exciting'. 

He added it had 'the power to rapidly translate into tangible benefits for patient care and optimise service performance at the frontline'.

Professor David Clifton, study co-author, said: 'The University has demonstrated that it has risen to the challenge posed to society by the Covid pandemic, and this AI-driven tool being implemented for use in Emergency Departments is a great example of how we and the NHS can work together to produce something of lasting value to patients.

'With the emphasis moving to living with Covid every year, research collaborations delivering tools such as CURIAL are the future for our field.

'Our recently-announced Pandemic Sciences Centre will be a key means of supporting such collaborations in future, with the goal of getting us to a state of advanced preparedness for the arrival of new diseases or variants.' 

© Provided by Daily Mail When carried out at the bedside of patients, the new test could give a diagnosis in just 10 minutes ¿ compared to the half an hour it takes on average for a lateral flow. In emergency departments CURIAL-Rapide produced results in 45 minutes by the time a sample was taken and processed. This was quicker than the hour it took for lateral flows, which if negative need to be cross-referenced with a PCR

Reference: Daily Mail: Connor Boyd Assistant Health Editor For Mailonline 

The Traders are Kidnapping Our People-3-King Leopold's Ghost

In other ways African slavery was more flexible and benign than the system Europeans would soon establish in the New World. Over a generation or two, slaves could often earn or be granted their freedom, and free people and slaves often intermarried. Nonetheless, the fact that trading in human beings existed in any form turned out to be catastrophic for Africa, for when the Europeans showed up, ready to buy endless shiploads of slaves , they found African chiefs willing to sell.In other ways African slavery was more flexible and benign than the system Europeans would soon establish in the New World. Over a generation or two, slaves could often earn or be granted their freedom, and free people and slaves often intermarried.

Nonetheless, the fact that trading in human beings existed in any form turned out to be catastrophic for Africa, for when the Europeans showed up, ready to buy endless shiploads of slaves , they found African chiefs willing to sell.Soon enough, the slave-buyers came. They arrived in small numbers at first, but then a flood unleashed by events ac ross the Atlantic. In 15000, only nine years after the first Europeans arrived at Mbanza Kongo, a Portugese expedition was blown off course and came upon Brazil. Within a few decades, the Western Hemisphere became a huge, lucrative,nearly insatiable market for African slaves. They were put to work by the millions in Brazil's mines and on its coffee plantations, as well as on the Caribbean islands where other European powers quickly began using the lush, fertile land to grow sugar.

In the kingdom of Kongo, the Portugese forgot the search for Prester john. Slaving fever seized them. Men sent out from Lisbon to be masons or teachers at Mbanza Kongo soon made far more money by herding convoys of chained Africans to the coast and selling them to the captains of slave-carring caravels.In the kingdom of Kongo, the Portugese forgot the search for Prester john. Slaving fever seized them. Men sent out from Lisbon to be masons or teachers at Mbanza Kongo soon made far more money by herding convoys of chained Africans to the coast and selling them to the captains of slave-carring caravels.

The lust for slave profits engulfed even some of the priests, who abandoned their preaching, took black women as concubines, kept slaves themselves, and sold their students and converts  into slavery. The priests who straye3d from the fold stuck to their faith in one way, however, after the Reformation they tried to ensure that none of their human goods ended up in Protestant hands. It was surely not right, said one, " for persons baptized in the Catholic church to be sold to peoples who are enemies of the faith".A village near Diogo Cao's stone pillar on the south shore of the Congo river esturary became a slave port, from which more than five thousand slaves a year were being shipped across the Atlantic by the 1530s. By the next century, fifteen thousand slaves a year were exported from the kingdom of the Kongo as a whole.

Traders kept careful records of their booty. One surviving inventory from this region lists " 68 head" of slaves by name, physical defects, and cash value, starting with the men,who were worth the most money and ending with: "Child, name unknown as she is dying and cannot speak, male without value, and a small girl Callenbo, no value because she is dying; one small girl cantunbe, no value beause she is dying."many of the slaves shipped to the Americas from the great river's mouth came from the KIngdom of the Congoitself; many others were captured by African slave-dealers who ranged more than seven hundred miles into the interior, buying slaves from local chiefs and headmen. Forced-marched to the coast, their necks locked into wooden yokes, the slaves were rarely given enough food, and became caravans usually traveled in the dry season, they often drank stagnant water.

The trails to the slave ports were soon strewn with bleaching bones.Once they were properly baptized, clothed in leftover burlap cargo wrappings, and chained together in ships' holds, most of the slaves from this region were sent to Brazil, the nearest port of the New World. Starting in the 1600s, however, a growing demand tempted many ship captains to make the longer voyage to the British colonies in North America.Roughly one of every four slaves imported to work in the cotton and tobacco plantations of the American South began his or her journey across the Atlantic from equatorial Africa, including the Kongo Kingdom.

The KiKongo language, spoken around the Kongo River's mouth, is one of African tongues whose traces linguists have found in the Gullah dialect spoken by black Americans today on the coastal islands of South Carolina and Georgia.When the African slave trade began decimating the Kongo, that nation was under the reign of a ManiKongo named nzinga mbemba Affonso, who had gained the throne in 1506 andf ruled as Affonso 1 for nearly forty years. Affonso's life spanned a crucial period. When he was born, no one in the Kingdom knew that Europeans existed. When he died, his entire realm was threatened by the slave-selling fever they had caused.

He was a man of tragic self-awareness, and he left his mark. Some three hundred years latyer, a missionary said, " A native of the Congo knows the name of three kings: that of the present one, that of his predecessor, and that of Affonso." He was a provincial chief in his early thirties when the Portuguese first arrived at Mbanza Kongo, in 1491. A convert to Christianity, he took on the name Affonso  and some Portuguese advisers, and studied for ten years with the priests at Mbanza Kongo.

One wrote to the king od Portugal that Affonso " vknows better than us prophets, the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ, all thye lives of the saints  and all that hs to do  with our holy mother church.If your Highness saw him, You would be astonished . He speaks so well  and with such assurance that it always seems to me that the Holy Spirit speaks through his mouth. My Lord, he does nothing but study; many times he falls asleep  over his books and many times he forgets to eat or drink because he is speaking of our Savior. " It is hard to tell how much of this glowing portrait was inspired by the priest's attempt to impress the Portuguese king and how much by Affonso's attempt to impress the priest.

In the language of a later age, King Affonso I was a modernizer. He urgently tried to acquire European learning, weapons, and goods in order to strengthen his rule and fortify it against destabilizing force of the white arrival. Having notices the Portuguese appetite for cooper, for example, he traded it for European products that would help him buy the submission of the outlying provinces.In the language of a later age, King Affonso I was a modernizer. He urgently tried to acquire European learning, weapons, and goods in order to strengthen his rule and fortify it against destabilizing force of the white arrival.

Having notices the Portuguese appetite for cooper, for example, he traded it for European products that would help him buy the submission of the outlying provinces.Clearly a man of unusual intelligence, Affonso tried to do something as difficult in his time as in ours.: to be a selective modernizer . he was an enthusiast for the church, for the written word, for European medicine, and for woodworking, masonry, and other skills to be learned from Portuguese craftsmen.But when his fellow king in Lisbon  sent an envoy to urge the adoption of Portugal's legal code and court protocol, Affonso wasn't interested. And he tried hard to keep out prospectors, fearing total takeover of his land if Europeans found the gold and silver they coveted.

Because virtually everything we know about this part of Africa for the nexty several hundred years comes to us from its white conquerore, King Affonso 1v provides something rare  and valuable : an African voice . Indeed, he is one of the very few central African voices that we can hear at all before the twentieth century. He used his fluency in Portuguese to dictate a remarkable series of letters to two successive Portuguese kings, the first known documents composed by a black African in any European language.Because virtually everything we know about this part of Africa for the nexty several hundred years comes to us from its white conquerore, King Affonso 1v provides something rare  and valuable : an African voice. Indeed, he is one of the very few central African voices that we can hear at all before the twentieth century. He used his fluency in Portuguese to dictate a remarkable series of letters to two successive Portuguese kings, the first known documents composed by a black African in any European language.

Reference: King Leopold's Ghost: Adam Hochschild

Tooth DecayTooth Decay

A natural foods nutritional approach can protect teeth and prevent tooth decay (dental caries). Tooth decay is primarily a dis-ease found in civilizations where artifical, processed, synthetic, chemicalized , devitalized, refined and demineralized foods are eatin. Also these artifical foods are usually grown in soils which are deficient of minerals and synthetically treated. There are some preventive measures to take in dental health care.A natural foods nutritional approach can protect teeth and prevent tooth decay (dental caries). Tooth decay is primarily a dis-ease found in civilizations where artifical, processed, synthetic, chemicalized , devitalized, refined and demineralized foods are eaten. Also these artifical foods are usually grown in soils which are deficient of minerals and synthetically treated. There are some preventive measures to take in dental health care.

Commercial tooth powders and toothpastes contain abrasives and detergents which are harmful to the teeth and gums. Brush teeth with a soft-bristled brush and distilled or spring water. The gums should be massaged daily The total avoidance of carbohydrates such as white sugar and bleached white flour sweets and fibreless sticky foods aid in prevention of tooth decay. Commercial tooth powders and toothpastes contain abrasives and detergents which are harmful to the teeth and gums.

Brush teeth with a soft-bristled brush and distilled or spring water. The gums should be massaged daily The total avoidance of carbohydrates such as white sugar and bleached white flour sweets and fibreless sticky foods aid in prevention of tooth decay. Foods such as wholewheat, honey sparingly used), sesame seeds, millet and dry fruit are better to eat than denatured foods. An imbalanced diet rich in denatured foods can cause tooth decay and toothaches. Toothaches can be herbally treated with oil of hops, yarrow, organum and clove. 

The oil is put on a piece of cotton, then in the cavity of the tooth. Furthermore, yarrow leaf, origanum, clove and ginger can be chewed to relieve the pain of toothache. Also, herbs such as sassafras, balm, broom, marjoram, pennyroyal, tansy, summer savory, mullein, plantain and pimpernel have been found beneficial.Tooth decay, which is bone loss, is related to calcium imbalance. Calcium imbalance causes the gradual breakdown of the tooth support (gums and bone).This is seen in periodontal di-ease (around teeth). Periodontal dis-ease is the leading cause of tooth (bone loss in adults. Besides this, bone loss occurs whether you have teeth or do not have teeth. Similarly, bone loss occurs in the skeleton and is often not visible to the human eye. Calcium is related to phosphorus.Moreover, the body must have a quantity relationship of 1 part phosphorus for each part of calcium (1 to 1 ratio). If this ratio is not maintained, bone loss results The phosphorus-calcium ratio. 

The problems with refined processed foods is that there is a imbalance of phosphorus.  Aside from this. eating animal flesh (meat) contributes to this ratio imbalance in that meat has 20 parts phosphorus to 1 part calcium.Refined cereals, bleached white flour and sugar products are about 6 to 1, and cooked potatoes 5 to 1. Also, soft drinks (soda) contain large amounts of phosphorus in the form of phosphoric acid. As a consequence of eating these denatured foodless foods, people are losing bone (teeth, jawbone, skeletal bone) at early ages.

The bone loss is caused by the body's attemps to get the proper amount of calcium  to balance the phosphorus. Calcium is taken from the bones and this results in bone deterioration. In books such as,Eating For Sound Teeth by F. Miller and Nutrition and Physical degeneration by N. Price, this is reviewed.The problem of tooth (bone) loss can be solved with natural unprocessed foods. Natural foods contain a good phosphorus-calcium balance. Interesting to note, a person short of minerals such as phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, or calcium is almost invariably short of other vital nutrients. Notwithstanding, tooth decay is a reflection of imbalance within the entire body.

In the book Nutrition Against Disease by R. Williams, this is highlighted.The body has a mind and some form of spiritual presence. Whatever foods you feed the body  or whatever nutritional imbalance is caused in the bocy also causes an effect upon the mind which can result in an effect upon the spirit. Subsequently, an imbalance (dis-ease) of the body represents an imbalance upon the mind ans spirit. Tooth decay has to be treated as part of a bodily disorder and not as an isolated dis-ease.

Tooth decay is not an isolated disorder  and has a definite pattern. It usually affects the teeth one by one. For example, if a tooth in the lower left jaw is decaying, the corresponding tooth ( the tooth on the direct opposite side) in the lower right jaw is usually decaying. The 32 teeth are related to the 32 vertebrae of the spine, and consequently relate to all major bodily organs and glands. 

So it follows, tooth decay indicates that the corresponding organs and glands are deteriorating. Some of the major tooth-organ relationships are incisor: teeth (front) and related to the respiratoy and circulatory organs; canines are related to the stomach, liver, spleen, pancreas, pre-molars are related to the excretory system and intestinal region; molars (wisdom teeth) are related to the small and large intestines and reproductive organs.

Historically, Africans chewed plants and the wodden parts of the plants in order to cleanse the teeth. Raw fibrous plants were used to cleanse the teeth coupled with plant fibre tooth brushing devices. Also, the Inca Indian civilization did not brush their teeth and they were 90% tooth cavity-free.Ironically, the American diet is the most destructive force in  dental cavities.Prevention measures, a natural diet and supplements can help restore bodily health and stop dental decay.

HERBS:

Comfrey, Horsetail, Oatstraw, Bistort, Bugleweed, White Oak bark, Goldenseal and Myrrh.

SUPPLEMENTS

Vitamin A, D, F, B6, C complex, Niacin, Bioflavonoids, Rutin  Hesp[eridin, Iron, Manganese, Calcium, Phosphorus.

HOMEOPATHIC

Kali, Mur, Ferr, Phos.AMINO ACIDAspartic AcidGlandularAdrenal Pituitary.

Reference:African Holistic Health: Llaila  O. Africa