A few tips to help get the best of an online search (2016 advice).
Air flights: Always clear the search history on your computer. Most sites use cookies to keep track of whether you've visited before and will boost the prices each time you go back. Change your country of residence to the destination - airlines often have better rates for locals. Skyscanner.net has a price alert feature to notify you when prices change on a specific route and their 'Everywhere' search tool finds the cheapest destinations for your specific date period. [Serena Guen of Suitcase magazine.]
Tuesdays are the cheapest days to book flights, and Fridays are consistently the most expensive. Generally the best fares are advertised 50 days before departure. Flights between 6pm and midnight are usually cheaper. Seatguru.com shows seating charts on all sorts of flights; details include whether a row does not recline, which seat is closest to the loo and where there is extra legroom. [Phil Bloomfield of cheapflights.co.uk]
Feature in Glamour, August 2016
Wednesday, 30 November 2016
Monday, 28 November 2016
Spices as Health Aids
Turmeric: The yellow pigments, especially curcumin, have an anti-inflammatory action. Add it dried or fresh to Asian dishes, smoothies and juices.
Ginger: Fast-acting compounds called gingerols and shogaols can calm nausea. Grate into stir fries, soups or porridge. Or ad 1cm sliced root to 500ml water for a hot drink.
Garlic: Contains germ-fighting phytochemicals allicin and ajoene. Can decrease frequency of colds. It becomes active when cut, so chop or crush first when adding to recipes.
Cinnamon: Helps regulate blood sugar, improves insulin resistance and helps metabolise fat, and studies show it helps if you have type 2 diabetes. Add a teaspoon or more to porridge, smoothies or baking. The sweet flavour makes it easier to cut your daily sugar intake.
Fennel seed: It can help with pre-menstrual symptoms. Seeds are packed with essential oils that help relax muscle spasms, so can help with various cramps, from menstrual to digestive to mucular. Drink strong fennel tea: use 1 to 2 teaspoons of seeds, crushed to release the oils.
Found in Glamour, Sep. 2016
Ginger: Fast-acting compounds called gingerols and shogaols can calm nausea. Grate into stir fries, soups or porridge. Or ad 1cm sliced root to 500ml water for a hot drink.
Garlic: Contains germ-fighting phytochemicals allicin and ajoene. Can decrease frequency of colds. It becomes active when cut, so chop or crush first when adding to recipes.
Cinnamon: Helps regulate blood sugar, improves insulin resistance and helps metabolise fat, and studies show it helps if you have type 2 diabetes. Add a teaspoon or more to porridge, smoothies or baking. The sweet flavour makes it easier to cut your daily sugar intake.
Fennel seed: It can help with pre-menstrual symptoms. Seeds are packed with essential oils that help relax muscle spasms, so can help with various cramps, from menstrual to digestive to mucular. Drink strong fennel tea: use 1 to 2 teaspoons of seeds, crushed to release the oils.
Found in Glamour, Sep. 2016
Sunday, 27 November 2016
Petition for a Second Referendum on Leaving the EU
Thr Leave campaign was not at all sure of winning the EU Referendum, and in May 2016, before the vote, one Leave supporter set up a petition on the government website calling for a re-run if certain conditions were not met, ironically by citing an EU regulation.
EU referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum. We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum.
Following the Leave campaign's narrow majority in the referendum, this was discovered by Remain voters and, since the wording made no mention of a link to the Leave campaign, decided to use it to register their anger and dismay. This became the most successful petition so far, with 3,604,489 votes registered on the 27 June (just 4 days after the 23 June vote) rising to 4,014,235 just two days later. On 9 July, with petition votes at 4,126, 424, the Goverment response was that there would be no re-run as the Referendum Act had received Royal Assent with no threshold or minumum turnout required (in retrospect a disastrous mistake).
As the petition continued to receive votes, a Parliamentary debate was scheduled for 5 September (sadly this was held in a small meeting room attended by a small number of MPs rather than a full debate by the House, and was only broadcast on Parliament TV not broadcast by BBC or ITV). The debate came to the same conclusion as the government response. At the time of the debate, votes had risen to 4,144,422 and though smaller numbers were voting each day, people continued to register their feelings about the result, so that when the petition closed on 25 November, a total of 4,150,259 people had supported the petition.
END
EU referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum. We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum.
Following the Leave campaign's narrow majority in the referendum, this was discovered by Remain voters and, since the wording made no mention of a link to the Leave campaign, decided to use it to register their anger and dismay. This became the most successful petition so far, with 3,604,489 votes registered on the 27 June (just 4 days after the 23 June vote) rising to 4,014,235 just two days later. On 9 July, with petition votes at 4,126, 424, the Goverment response was that there would be no re-run as the Referendum Act had received Royal Assent with no threshold or minumum turnout required (in retrospect a disastrous mistake).
As the petition continued to receive votes, a Parliamentary debate was scheduled for 5 September (sadly this was held in a small meeting room attended by a small number of MPs rather than a full debate by the House, and was only broadcast on Parliament TV not broadcast by BBC or ITV). The debate came to the same conclusion as the government response. At the time of the debate, votes had risen to 4,144,422 and though smaller numbers were voting each day, people continued to register their feelings about the result, so that when the petition closed on 25 November, a total of 4,150,259 people had supported the petition.
END
Friday, 25 November 2016
Changing Mobile Phones, Tablets or Computers?
Before you pass on or sell an old device, make sure you clear it of all pesonal information.
iPhone or iPad with an iCloud account? Sign out before getting rid of the device. Go to Settings > iCloud, then scroll to bottom and tap Sign Out. Press Sign Out again from the warning displayed on screen.
Remove SIM card (and MicroSD card if you use one). Run a factory reset; this will remove any files stored on the device, and erase any accounts such as Facebook or Twitter.
iPhone or iPad with an iCloud account? Sign out before getting rid of the device. Go to Settings > iCloud, then scroll to bottom and tap Sign Out. Press Sign Out again from the warning displayed on screen.
Remove SIM card (and MicroSD card if you use one). Run a factory reset; this will remove any files stored on the device, and erase any accounts such as Facebook or Twitter.
- On iPhone or iPad. Go to Settings > General and scroll down and press Reset. From here, select Erase All Content And Settings. If you have a passcode on the phone, you will need to enter that before the resest can take place.
- On Google. Go to Settings > Backup & Reset. From here, select Factory Data Reset, then Reset Phone on the screen displayed.
- On Windows. Go to Settings app and select System. Choose About, and press Reset Your Phone to make a factory reset.
- On a Windows tablet. Go to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery (in options on left hand side of screen). Under Reset This PC, tap Get Started, then Erase Everything from the options displayed.
Wednesday, 23 November 2016
Bacteriophages
Growing
numbers of bacteria are becoming resistant to our most powerful drugs,
evolving into new strains – often called ‘superbugs’ – that we can no
longer kill. Already drug resistance kills over 700,000 people globally
every year and could cause an extra
10 million deaths a year by 2050. A completely different approach
to killing bacteria is to use viruses.
Naturally occurring viruses called bacteriophages (from the Greek meaning ‘bacteria-eaters’) are harmless to people but lethal to bacteria. When a phage encounters its prey, it latches onto the outside and injects its own DNA inside the cell. This reproduces inside the bacterium and then the ‘daughter phages’ burst through the cell walls, before latching onto more bacteria and repeating the cycle until all the bacteria have been killed – and the infection has been dealt with.
First discovered by two different scientists – the Briton Frederick Twort in 1915 and the French-Canadian Felix d’Herelle in 1917, but it was d’Herelle who pioneered phage therapy. Abandoned in the west when antibiotics were discovered and came into common use in the 1940s. In Stalin’s Soviet Republic however, access to antibiotics was limited, so phage therapy continued and a phage therapy centre founded in Tbilisi, Georgia, became a leading centre for phage research.
Unlike antibiotics, which target a broad range of bacteria, each phage kills only one type or strain, so scientists begin by taking bacterial samples from patients and finding a phage from the lab that can kill that particular bacteria. It is much harder for bacteria to develop resistance to phages due to their diversity, their ability to evolve and their sheer abundance. Bacteriophages are actually the most abundant life form on earth – there are far more phages than there are stars in the visible universe. So if bacteria evolve to resist a particular phage, the scientists simply turn to their extensive phage library, or to nature, to find another. They also create what are known as ‘phage cocktails’ – mixtures of different phages that attack bacteria from different angles and make it much more difficult for them to develop resistance.
Currently phage therapy is not approved or regulated in the west and this is the next big challenge. The good news is that the first large scale, western standard clinical trials have now begun, so hopefully in future we see this incredible 100 year old therapy returning to Europe to help us beat the superbugs.
Related links
Could viruses called bacteriophages be the answer to the antibiotic crisis? BBC 2 Trust me, I'm a Doctor, Series 5, Episode 1 (1 Sep. 2016).
Naturally occurring viruses called bacteriophages (from the Greek meaning ‘bacteria-eaters’) are harmless to people but lethal to bacteria. When a phage encounters its prey, it latches onto the outside and injects its own DNA inside the cell. This reproduces inside the bacterium and then the ‘daughter phages’ burst through the cell walls, before latching onto more bacteria and repeating the cycle until all the bacteria have been killed – and the infection has been dealt with.
First discovered by two different scientists – the Briton Frederick Twort in 1915 and the French-Canadian Felix d’Herelle in 1917, but it was d’Herelle who pioneered phage therapy. Abandoned in the west when antibiotics were discovered and came into common use in the 1940s. In Stalin’s Soviet Republic however, access to antibiotics was limited, so phage therapy continued and a phage therapy centre founded in Tbilisi, Georgia, became a leading centre for phage research.
Unlike antibiotics, which target a broad range of bacteria, each phage kills only one type or strain, so scientists begin by taking bacterial samples from patients and finding a phage from the lab that can kill that particular bacteria. It is much harder for bacteria to develop resistance to phages due to their diversity, their ability to evolve and their sheer abundance. Bacteriophages are actually the most abundant life form on earth – there are far more phages than there are stars in the visible universe. So if bacteria evolve to resist a particular phage, the scientists simply turn to their extensive phage library, or to nature, to find another. They also create what are known as ‘phage cocktails’ – mixtures of different phages that attack bacteria from different angles and make it much more difficult for them to develop resistance.
Currently phage therapy is not approved or regulated in the west and this is the next big challenge. The good news is that the first large scale, western standard clinical trials have now begun, so hopefully in future we see this incredible 100 year old therapy returning to Europe to help us beat the superbugs.
Related links
Could viruses called bacteriophages be the answer to the antibiotic crisis? BBC 2 Trust me, I'm a Doctor, Series 5, Episode 1 (1 Sep. 2016).
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