The Cause for Gray Hair Identified!

This posted today from Discovery News:

Attention parents: It's not your kids that are making you go gray. Your hair is simply building up too much hydrogen peroxide.

Bottle-blondes may be a fan, but hydrogen peroxide, which is produced naturally in the human body, interferes with melanin, the pigment that colors our hair and skin.

The body also produces the enzyme catalase, which breaks down hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. Or at least it does for a while. As we age, catalase production tails off, leaving nothing to transform the hydrogen peroxide into chemicals the body can release.

So, as hydrogen peroxide builds up, we go gray, concluded researchers at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, who last week published the results of a study in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology'sonline journal.

[link] to the entire posting

Dog Update

It is indeed just a urinary tract infection (UTI). The doc, however, does call it a “hummer” of an infection. She identified over a half-dozen bacteria that cause UTIs in the sample we took over the weekend – a coordinated attack. Left untreated, this UTI would eventually turn fatal. So we’re glad we caught it. UTIs are common for old dogs. The vet assures us that we’ll clear this one up, and Aki will probably do just fine in the warmer weather. Looks like she’s with us for a good while longer!

Weekend Update

Dog
M and I took Aki to the ‘pet launderette’ on Saturday for a much-needed bath. We’ve been battling the smell we’ve taken to calling ‘old dog smell.’ The bath was thorough and relaxing for us all. We had fun. But, as we left the shop, Aki squatted and peed a red stream of urine. Not good.

A trip to the vet confirmed that she has a major urinary tract infection that requires nuclear powered antibiotics. She’s now taking them. What we learned is that the ‘old dog smell’ comes from the infection.

Still, this keeps Aki’s looming death at the forefront of the family collective consciousnes.

House
Open House with some visitors this week. It just didn’t seem like an Open House sort of weekend.

Family
This being Ayyami-ha, we celebrated a bit this weekend. Saturday dinner was Snow Crab and Lobster tails. Then we had family game night playing Pit.

Cleaned Up Pics

I had a chance to clean up the lighting for some of the NY pics. I’ve reposted them here rather than updating the old blog entry… mostly out of laziness. <GRIN!>

 

Finding Out That You Made A Good Decision

I found this news item in this week’s Portland Business Journal:

Planar Announces Sale of Remaining Interest in CoolSign Digital Signage Business

Planar Systems, Inc. announced that on December 26, 2008 it closed the sale, for cash, of its CoolSign Digital Signage business in fields of use outside of the gaming field to CS Software Holdings LLC. Planar previously announced that it had sold Planar’s CoolSign Digital Signage business for exclusive use within the gaming field to Bally Gaming, Inc. Further terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

As this was one option open to me for continuing my career at Clarity, then Planar, I can now say that I’m glad I followed my hunch, resisted the siren song of digital signage, and moved to Sunstone.

OhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoy

I really don’t want to get ahead of myself here, there’s a LOT still to go through, but we may have hosted the buyers for The Cottage during our open house today. The potential buyers already live in the neighborhood, and are looking to place grandma here…which would then put her a very short walk from her young grandsons.

Simultaneously, the SW house seems to have a one year lease about to be signed. If true, then we wouldn’t move back in until March 2010.

I wonder how cool a place we can find to rent short-term so as to make this all a short-term adventure? We could just pay the mortgage and let the rental income be our budget for our rental place….in theory.

Like I said, there’s a lot that still has to happen. But its nice to have some significant and measurable progress underway again!

Fed’s Prediction For The End of the Recession?

Seekingalpha.com, which bills itself as ”the premier financial website for actionable stock market opinion and analysis”, makes the following claim (excerpted):

Monday, the New York Fed released its latest "Probability of U.S. Recession Predicted by Treasury Spread," with data through January 2009 and its recession probability forecast through 2010

The Fed's data show that the recession probability peaked during the October 2007 to April 2008 period at around 35-40%, and has been declining since then to less than 10% for December 2008 and January 2009. Looking forward through 2009, the Fed's model shows a recession probability of only about 1% on average through the next 12 months, and below 1% by the end of the year (.82% by January 2010). The Treasury spread has been above 2% for the last 11 months, a pattern consistent with the economic recoveries after the 1990-1991 and 2001 recessions.

As the data and graph suggest, there is almost no possibility that the economy will be in recession by the middle of this year according to the Fed's model, which has accurately predicted the last 7 recessions, back to 1960.

The New York Fed's Treasury spread model predicts the end of the recession in 2009.

Find the full article here