XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Friday 20 September 2013

Man's gut fermented food into alcohol, making him drunk all of the time, case study finds - 



Most beer guts are the result of consuming fermented brew, but a new case study describes a rare syndrome that had one man's gut fermenting brew, not consuming it.
It's called gut fermentation syndrome or auto-brewery syndrome, and it's "a relatively unknown phenomenon in Western medicine" according to a study published in July's International Journal of Clinical Medicine. "Only a few cases have been reported in the last three decades" according to Dr. Barbara Cordell, the dean of nursing at Panola College in Carthage, Texas, and Dr. Justin McCarthy, a Lubbock gastroenterologist, the study's authors.
The most current case comes courtesy of an unnamed 61-year-old Texas man who for five years seemed to be drunk -- all of the time.
His wife, a nurse, began to give him breathalyzer tests. Even when he hadn't been drinking at all, his blood alcohol content was as high 0.40 -- five times the legal driving limit -- according to the study.
But the medical community was largely unaware of Gut Fermentation Syndrome then, so the patient wasn't always believed. In 2009 he was admitted into an emergency room on a day he hadn't had a sip of alcohol and blew a 0.37.
"The physicians were not aware of any way that a person could be intoxicated without ingesting alcohol and therefore believed he must be a "closet drinker," the paper says.
Finally, after a 24-hour observation period at a gastroenterology practice in 2010 -- one in which he saw no visitors and underwent a battery of tests -- doctors figured out what was ailing him: His stomach was turning food into booze.
"The underlying mechanism is thought to be an overgrowth of yeast in the gut whereby the yeast ferments carbohydrates into ethanol."
After a regimen of antifungal medication, his yeast was in check, and he was registering zeroes on the breathalyzer.
The authors conclude their paper by imploring their colleagues in the field to take gut fermentation syndrome seriously.
"This is a rare syndrome but should be recognized because of the social implications such as loss of job, relationship difficulties, stigma, and even possible arrest and incarceration," the authors write.

Read more - 

iPhone recognizes cat's pawprints... -

iPhone recognizes cat's pawprints... - 



Everyone’s feline good about the new iPhone.
Tech-industry watchers who got advance copies of the iPhone 5s gave thumbs-up to its new fingerprint ID feature — which allows users to unlock the phone just by touching a sensor.
But a techie Web site discovered that even a cat’s paw can do the trick.
Cats have fingerprints just like humans, TechCrunch said, and blogger Darrell Etherington found he could register the paw of a colleague’s cat on a 5s.
The cat was repeatedly able to unlock the phone using that paw, but not with the other paw, he said. A video of the cat’s deed went viral Thursday.
Meanwhile, human tech junkies camped out in front of the Apple Store in Midtown — some saying they had slept in lawn chairs for weeks — to score new iPhones on Friday.
Apple fans claimed it’s worth crashing in sleeping bags to be first to snag the new iPhone 5s, which comes in the color gold and features a new fingerprint security scanner.
“I’ve been out here 14 days. The Apple Store is open 24 hours, so I use the bathroom there . . . We love this whole experience,” said Joseph Cruz, 20, of Staten Island.
His cousin Brian Ceballo, 19, a musician living in Downtown Brooklyn, said the wait was great.
“I’ve never slept so good on the floor before,” Ceballo said.
“I’m not really giving up anything . . . I’d just be home doing my music,” he said.
Numbers eight and nine in line were German tourists, who said camping out is part of their New York adventure.
“I would never do this in Berlin — that would be strange and crazy. But this is the city of the iPhone,” said Anna Prymak, 18.

Read more - 

Contractor that ran background check on Navy Yard Shooter also vetted Snowden... -

Contractor that ran background check on Navy Yard Shooter also vetted Snowden... - 



USIS, the Falls Church government contractor that handled the background check for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, said Thursday that it also vetted Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis for his ­secret-level clearance in 2007.

The company, which is under criminal investigation over whether it misled the government about the thoroughness of its background checks, said earlier this week that it had not handled Alexis’s case.

USIS spokesman Ray Howell said the company got new information Thursday.

“Today we were informed that in 2007, USIS conducted a background check of Aaron Alexis” for the Office of Personnel Management, Howell said in a statement. “We are contractually prohibited from retaining case information gathered as part of the background checks we conduct for OPM and therefore are unable to comment further on the nature or scope of this or any other background check.”

USIS, which was spun off from the federal government in the 1990s, has become the largest private provider of government background checks. With 7,000 employees, the company handles about 45 percent of all background checks for the OPM, congressional staffers say.

Despite the investigation, there was no indication that USIS did anything improper when it vetted Alexis.

A statement late Thursday by the OPM division that handles security checks for most federal agencies said that the OPM has “reviewed the 2007 background investigation file for Aaron Alexis, and the agency believes that the file was complete and in compliance with all investigative standards.”

The statement by Merton W. Miller, associate director of OPM’s Federal Investigative Services, acknowledged that Alexis’s background investigation was carried out “with support from a Government contractor, USIS.”

“OPM’s involvement with matters related to Aaron Alexis’ security clearance ended when we submitted the case to the Department of Defense . . . for adjudication in December 2007,” Miller’s statement said. The DOD “did not ask OPM for any additional investigative actions after it received the completed background investigation.”

Read more -