Been looking at the Kindle book reader from Amazon, and I think they may well have produced the 'killer app' for the reading public; much like what the 'iPod' for music listeners.

It's not perfect; formatting is somewhat of a bear. For example, tables --a basic formatting tool of HTML-- are not supported, which makes me think that this is not going to go over big in academic circles (though many publishers will probably just convert their table data into a graphic images; not a solution for me, since most of my tables are generated dynamically by the programs that I write).

However, once you get the hang of things, publishing eBooks is pretty straightforward. Which is great, since I see my own future as an author veering ultimately into the realm of self-publishing, with its lack of editorial constraints. I also like the idea of a small gadget that can hold two hundred books means to the vertebrae of my two daughters, who seem to look more and more like a special forces team with their huge backpacks filled with very heavy paper books.

So... here is little gift for you all who either have a Kindle or a Blackberry or whatever. It is the Recipe Index from the www.dadamo.com website. Now you can shop by using your PDA or Blackberry or Kindle.

Just Download This File

Save it to your hard drive and upload it to your Kindle. If you have a Blackberry you can follow these directions. For other gadgets, just google you gadget with the keywords 'mobipocket' and 'prc file.' Most PDA and phone have some way of reading these files.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think of this first effort if you get it to work

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Just finished the NAP Professional Services Webstore and Learning Environment. With its completion, I've realized a long standing goal: To have NAP website that is optimized for the health professional. A few of the cool new features that I've built into the site include:

• Extensive discussions of the pharmacology and biochemistry behind the indications and actions of each product. As an extra bonus, I've created a new and distinct version of the Individualist Wikipedia which directly hyperlinks entries to appropriate NAP products.
• Access to members-only monthly 'webinars' conducted by myself and the NAP Professional Technical Staff (attendance limited to 25 seats). A key feature of an NAP Webinar is its interactive elements -- the ability to give, receive and discuss information. To sign up for NAP Professional Webinars, contact Professional Services toll-free in the US at: 877-226-8973 or by email the Webinar Desk. NAP Webinars are free to all NAP Professional Clients. I'll be lecturing at the next webinar on 'Cancer Survivorship' Monday, August 11, 2008 at 8PM EST
• NAP Professional Accounts can also participate in the new Pharmashare Professional Affiliate Program.
• Early notification of upcoming limited attendance IFHI Micro Conferences.
• Physician-to-Physician Live Help via real time chat.

If you are a licensed health professional (or IfHI certified educator) and wish to open an NAP Professional Services Account click here and fill in the details. Within 24 hours you will be sent a special password to allow you full access to the site. If you are an existing professional client of NAP you can contact Professional Services toll-free in the US at: 877-226-8973 or by email at NAP Professional Services and they'll register you right away.

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I'm slated to lecture at the New York Association of Naturopathic Physicians 2008 Conference. I plan to present on 'Verisimilitude and Malignancy.' Mimicry is an early step in the metastatic process and an important factor in the continued cancer-proneness of survivors. This lecture will discuss nutritional interventions physicians can employ to address these susceptibilities to enhance the survivorship of their oncology patients.

NYANP 2008: Balanced Health: Putting It All Together
8:30 am to 7:30 pm
American Conference Center
3rd Ave (between 48th and 49th) New York, NY
New York Association of Naturopathic Physicians Website

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I will also be lecturing at the 2008 IFHI Certification Micro Conference held by the Plateau Eat Righters on October 25, 2008 in Crossville, Tennessee. This conference is being hosted by my friend Larry Nesbit. It is an IFHI approved certification test site and they will be administering the cetification test for IfHI Fellow.

More information about the Plateau Eat Righters 2008 IFHI Micro Conference is on the IFHI site.

I had a chance to visit T. Boone Pickens website, where he has unveiled a plan to develop contingency energy policies involving a blend of natural gas, wind and solar as a sort of 'stop-gap' measure to halt the increasing importation of foreign oil.

Whereas I think he is onto something, his plan may actually not be big enough to really make a difference. I quickly did some simple calculations on the energy generating capacity of solar cell technology (per total surface area) given its placement in any environment sufficiently 'sunny' enough to power the solar cells for a minimum of five hours per day.

Based upon published data it is possible power the entire electrical grid of the United States at almost twice its current level by simply creating a 'National Solar Farm' approximately 100 miles by 100 miles (10,000 square miles) in size.

The total land space required is symbolized by the blue rectangle on the above map. Placing this solar farm anywhere in the light blue area guarantees a minimum of 5 hours of sunlight in winter, 6 in summer --very ample amounts.

Fortuitously, the majority of this area is some of the most hostile territory to be found in the continental US, so there would not be any significant displacement of people or fauna.

Solar panels are not inexpensive, and one would think that a 100 by 100 mile wide area would be prohibitively expensive. But the raw materials of solar panels (silicon and cadmium) are themselves quite inexpensive and abundant and a government effort on par with the Manhattan Project should be able to use economies of scale to drop the production costs.

This would have added ecological advantages. A lot of electricity is generated locally, which brings many known carcinogens into densely populated areas.

Opponents might be argue that by generating electricity from a singular, highly centralized location a lot of the juice would be lost due to overall 'low conductivity' of the majority of the national electrical grid. However, this might also be an opportunity to develop the next level of superconducting devices alongside of a National Solar Farm and reform the National Electrical Grid while we're fixing things anyway.

Although just about everyone knows something about DNA, I’d like to take a few moments to introduce you to RNA, the real power behind the throne.

Protein represents what biologists call phenotype – the living, breathing, metabolizing part of life. DNA is information. Other than acting as a blueprint and occasionally remembering to replicate itself, it doesn’t have a single real world obligation. It is RNA that acts as the bridge between DNA and protein, translating the message of DNA into the reality of proteins. All the basic functions of the cell require RNA. Copies of the desired DNA gene message are first copied onto one type of RNA, which is then read by a machine composed in part by some more RNA to create proteins by linking amino acids which are delivered by another type of RNA.

Let’s start the second part of our story with the sweet, if short life of Messenger RNA, or mRNA.

At a certain point in its life, the cell may get an urge to make some sort of protein or enzyme. Let’s say that you have developed an untidy habit, like smoking cigars. As anyone who has ever tried one can tell you, the first experience with nicotine is usually far from pleasant, with dizziness and nausea the usual end result. This reaction occurs because the new smoker has yet to habituate himself to the poisons in the cigar and has not yet developed a way to detoxify and break them down. Over time the continued smoking of cigars sends an environmental message to cells of the liver telling them that they need to make higher levels of the enzymes used to detoxify tobacco toxins. This message (“hey, he’s trying to kill us out there!”) travels to the cell nucleus, where special machinery locates the section along the DNA that contains the gene to produce these detoxifying enzymes, snips it open and unravels that part of the DNA to expose the blueprint.

At that point an enzyme called RNA polymerase comes along, reads the DNA code and makes an RNA copy by linking together similar building blocks (a stretch of RNA is similar to DNA except that RNA is almost always single-stranded and uses the nucleotide Uracil instead of Thymine). This is called “transcription” and just like a court stenographer transcribes the court proceedings, so RNA transcripts the proceeding necessary to make a protein. The RNA strand, called Messenger RNA, (mRNA) is then extensively primped and tweaked to clean it up and get it just right. From here it is about to embark on the ride of its life.

Once everything is set to go, the mRNA is shot through the one of the many pores which act as gates between the cell body and the nucleus. Once out into the cell proper it is carried to the real workhorses of protein synthesis, the ribosomes. Using a railroad analogy, you can think of a ribosome as a dispatcher in the rail yard, whose job it is to assemble an entire freight train. Each time the phone rings the dispatcher gets his next order:

“Fetch the Baltimore and Ohio flatbed with the Honda Hybrids on it. Attach it to the Union Pacific 3985 locomotive.”

“Next, locate and attach the milk tanker from Happy Cow Farms.”

And on and on, until you have one of those interminably long freight trains that take twenty minutes to pass by the railroad crossing as you desperately try to get to the airport.

Just like our rail dispatcher, ribosomes get the information from messenger RNA, by zipping along the code like an old fashioned ticker-tape, reading the code called 'codon triplets' to determine which amino acid to fetch, then linking that amino acid to the prior one, and fetching the next instruction, etc. until it gets a stop message.

In this job the ribosome is assisted by a different type of RNA called Transfer RNA which acts like a crusty old rail yard worker, bringing the appropriate amino acid to the ribosome. At some point the protein is finished up and released, and the messenger RNA decomposes back to the basic building blocks of DNA and RNA, called nucleotides, and ready to do it all over again.

From there the sky is the limit. Proteins are interesting in a lot of ways but perhaps most interesting in their folding tendencies, a molecular origami if you will. Depending on the amino acid sequence and length proteins will fold into a myriad number of complex three dimensional shapes, and it is these shapes that give them their unique powers over the environment.

For example a protein of a certain shape may function as an enzyme, taking sugar molecules and attaching them together, turning single sugars onto cellulose, an important dietary fiber. The protein that results from our string of amino acids might be an insulin molecule, helping to control the owner’s blood sugar, or even a protein that helps DNA do its job, perhaps even part of another ribosome!

As I said, the sky is the limit.

The RNA Queen is so basic to life that many scientists think that perhaps life originated with it, and not with DNA: That DNA came along later as a way to 'memorialize' the work of RNA.

Spent a lovely few days on the East End of Long Island, Montauk Point to be exact. With the kids at camp, it provided an all to rare time to enjoy life a bit with the other Queen in my life.

Together we must have biked about 40 miles in three days, including one great trip up to the famous 'The End' Lighthouse at the very tip of Long island.

You are a collection of cells (literally trillions of them), each with a specific design and function. However, with a few exceptions, your cells all have a basic architectural design. Most of the time they are depicted as looking like a fried egg cooked sunny side up, but in reality they are three dimensional beings, more akin to a golf ball that you’ve cut across its midline. The “white” of our cell model is the body of the cell, and here are found many specialized areas called organelles that do particular jobs, much like our own internal organs have specific jobs as well. The “yolk” of our cell model is called the nucleus, and in this compartment there lies the object of our affections, the chromosomes.

Chromosomes were first discovered at the end of the 19th century by a German biologist named Walther Flemming. Flemming was looking at cells under a microscope and got the idea to use colors to dye the cell to make it easier to see things. The idea must have worked better than anticipated since he at once began to see spaghetti looking things in the nucleus that dyed a very deep color. As is the fashion, he named these entities chromosomes which is Greek for “colored bodies”.

Chromosomes are one of the more dynamic faces of Nature; they have to be, since they are responsible for the passing on of the 'Baton of Life' that we call reproduction. The number of chromosome in the cell nucleus differs somewhat from species to species. We humans have 46 chromosomes; dogs have 78; alligators 32; cabbage plants 18.

Your chromosomes are both the governess and chauffeur of the most important molecule in your body: DNA --which is actually two molecules wrapped around each other. Like any blueprint, DNA needs to be read in order for the work order to be constructed. Now, DNA is a long, long molecule. If it were completely unraveled it would be about six feet long, yet so thin that it would be invisible, since you can easily fit one million cells on the head of a pin. If the entire DNA, in every cell of your body, was stretched out and laid end-to-end in a straight line, it would reach to the sun and back over one thousand times.

Heavy.

I think an effective way of describing the dynamic qualities of the chromosome is to use a few metaphors. My older daughter likes to knit, so we often visit the knitting supply shop in town for fresh yarn. Yarn usually comes wrapped in skeins, a length of yarn wound around a reel. Most yarn comes in lengths of 80-150 yards. One of the nice things about buying yarn this way, rather than just as one long unwound string, is that you can put it under your arm and walk to the car. This is certainly better than tying a knot to the rear bumper and pulled the unwound string all the way home. Thus, the first important lesion of chromosome dynamics; if you’re going to reproduce you’ve got to stuff that entire DNA into a very small, tight package. Chromosomes are just that: tight packages of DNA.

On the other hand, it is very difficult, if not downright impossible to knit anything if the skein of yarn still has the paper label wrapped around it. In order to use the yarn, you have to unwind it. That’s the formula: when the cell needs to use DNA to get information about how to make a protein, it has to unwind it. When it needs to reproduce, or turn off the DNA information flow, it needs to concentrate and condense it.

How this occurs is rather wondrous, and will be the subject of much discussion later on when we talk about how you can modify your genetic destiny, but for now we’ll just stick to the basics. DNA is packaged and concentrated by special proteins termed histones. This concentrated DNA is called chromatin, which is the DNA plus the histones that package DNA within the cell nucleus. Chromatin structure is also relevant to DNA replication and DNA repair.

Histones are very cool bead-like proteins that spool the DNA in a way that makes it either tighter or looser, sort of like the cardboard around which our skein of yarn is wrapped. Histones respond to changes in their structure by tightening the DNA wrap or loosening it. Whenever a cell needs to access the genetic information encoded in its DNA, the histones on the section of the DNA that is needed undergo a chemical reaction called acetylation by which a molecule called an acetyl group is stuck on the histones, causing them to relax and unravel. When business is concluded for the day, special enzymes come along and chomp off the acetyl group cause the histones to become de-acetylated, which makes them tighten up again, sending the DNA in the region back to its resting state. Think of it like this; when your DNA needs to work its histones chow down on acetyl groups for breakfast and they do yoga; when it needs to reproduce or shut down, the histones lift weights --the strain of which causes the acetyl group to pop out of their mouths.

Make sure that you’ve mastered the last paragraph, because much of the very cool stuff dealing with how you can modify gene functions pretty much requires that you know this stuff. By the way, this is very, very cutting edge material; only until recent times have we understood this mechanism, and of supremely paramount importance, that it is used by the environment to influence gene function and that influence, for either good or bad, can be passed on as inheritance.

Scientists have given each human chromosome a number, according to its size; thus chromosome number 1 is the largest, then number 2, etc. Chromosomes come in pairs, one from each parent. So there are 23 pairs, for a total of 46 in us humans. Numbers 1-22 are non-sex chromosomes called autosomes, and pair 23 contains the X and Y sex chromosomes.

In the few minutes it has taken to read up to here, this, around 400 million of your red blood cells were depleted and replaced, consistent with the set of genetic instructions contained in your DNA.