Stuff & Things

Granitoid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Grus sand and granitoid (upper left) it derived from

A granitoid or granitic rock is a variety of coarse grained plutonic rock similar to granite which mineralogically is composed predominantly of feldspar and quartz.[1] Examples of granitoid rocks include granite, quartz monzonite, quartz diorite, syenite, granodiorite and trondhjemite. Many are created by continental volcanic arc subduction or the collision of sialic masses. Volcanic rocks are common with granitoids and typically have the same origins. However, they are normally worn away after years of erosion.

While many granitoid rocks are located in areas that have experienced crustal thickening during orogenies, others known as anorogenic granitoids are unrelated to convergent boundaries or subduction zones.[1] These anorogenic granitoids may represent the deep sources for rift volcanism exposed where erosion has removed the volcanic rocks and other evidence of rifting. These A-type granitoids may have been produced by hotspots or mantle plumes.[1]

Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley came from a German-American family in Pennsylvania. She married a barber, who enlisted in the Continental Army in 1777. Mary followed her husband as part of a group of wartime housewives who would mend and wash uniforms, cook for the troops, act as medics and nurses, and bring water for the troops in the heat of battle. She earned the nickname “Molly Pitcher” because she would always carry buckets of water to the artillery soldiers manning the cannons.

Then, at the Battle of Monmouth, her husband, a cannon-loader, was shot and wounded in battle. After tending to her husband and making sure he made it off the battlefield to safety, Mary picked up her husband’s ramrod and began loading the cannons in his place. Throughout the day’s battle, she kept at it. At one point, an enemy cannon ball sped between her legs, ripping her skirt to shreds. She shrugged the near-miss off, remarking “That could have been worse,” and just kept right on fighting.

After the battle, George Washington, who saw the spectacle of this lady loading the cannons, rewarded her by making her an army sergeant. Now that’s a tale we should be telling our children in school, if you ask me.

Information from Wikipedia

Wishing Away Warts
Posted by Harriet Hall on August 16, 2011 44 Comments

Common warts (verruca vulgaris) are more of a nuisance than a serious health problem, but they are interesting. There is a whole mythology surrounding their cause (touching toads?) and treatment (everything from banana peels to vitamin C). Many people believe they can be made to vanish by suggestion or hypnosis. I used to believe that too.

Every doctor has wart stories. Here are some of mine.

A patient made an appointment to see me because he had a wart, but when he tried to show me his wart he discovered that it had vanished! Apparently, just making the appointment cured it.
Another patient did have obvious warts and I prescribed the “wart medicine” that our pharmacy tech compounded, based on salicylic acid. He was out of one of the ingredients and had to ask my patient to return in a week. When she returned, her warts were already gone. The wart medicine apparently worked so well that you didn’t even have to use it!
I worked with a dermatologist who used a colorful laminated card with a picture of a toad to stroke children’s warts, telling them it was a wart remover. In his experience, this would frequently make the wart vanish over the next few days. Was this ethical? Was he lying and deliberately deceiving patients, or could this be excused as playing make-believe to distract the child and improve his attitude about the wart?

He was certainly deceiving himself in thinking that this foolishness was actually effective based on his own uncontrolled observations. Hypnotists claim success in treating warts with direct suggestion: they say that prepubertal children respond almost without exception, although it is less effective in adults. I was taught that if a patient had multiple warts and you treated just one of them, the others would likely vanish too. This might sort of make sense if the treatment stimulated an immune response, but I haven’t seen any evidence to support it.

What can science tell us about warts?

A new review article in American Family Physician, “Treatment of Nongenital Cutaneous Warts” by Mulhem and Pinelis provides a thorough update of the current evidence.

Cutaneous warts are epidermal proliferations caused by over 100 types of human papillomavirus. They are spread person-to-person or by contact with contaminated objects. They are most common in children. Walking barefoot is a risk factor for plantar warts (warts on the sole of the foot that that have a different appearance due to being under pressure). Nail-biting, meat handling, and immunosuppression are also risk factors. 90% of renal transplant patients develop warts.

Warts are usually self-limited. Half resolve spontaneously in a year, two-thirds within two years. Watchful waiting is an option, but patients often want treatment because of discomfort or social stigma. Two treatments have been clearly proven effective by scientific studies: salicylic acid and freezing with liquid nitrogen. There is limited evidence for silver nitrate, topical fluorouracil, and topical zinc. There is little to no good evidence for cantharidin, dinitrochlorobenzene, oral cimetidine, oral zinc sulfate, podophyllin, propolis ointment, retinoids and topical garlic extract. A few years ago, duct tape was reported to work, but subsequent studies showed that it probably does not. Warts can also be surgically removed, and dermatologists can offer specialized treatments such as intralesional bleomycin and pulse dye laser.

I found it interesting that the AFP review didn’t even bother to mention hypnosis, suggestion, or CAM.

Salicylic acid preparations are available over the counter for self-treatment. They are well tolerated and produce a 73% cure rate in 6 to 12 weeks. Cryotherapy with liquid nitrogen is equally effective but is more expensive, requires multiple office visits, and can cause pain, blistering, pigment changes, and other complications (tendon or nerve damage, scarring), especially if used too aggressively. A combination of cryotherapy and salicylic acid may give the best results. If a treatment caused permanent scarring, that would be worse than the disease.

To take a page from Mark Crislip’s job description, the patient has the mindset “Me have wart. You cure wart. Me go home.” The health care provider can re-frame the issue as “You have wart. Me educate. You think. We discuss.” Since warts are benign and self-limited, the option of not treating should always be on the table.

What about CAM?

Warts provide a fertile field for CAM. Various CAM modalities (chiropractic, acupuncture, homeopathy, energy medicine, etc.) have been claimed to cure warts. Acupuncturists have claimed a 90% success rate in only 1-3 weeks. PubMed lists a recent article about treatment with “sparrow-pecking” moxibustion that sounds intriguing, but no abstract is available. When warts follow their natural history and resolve, CAM is happy to take the credit. When they fail to resolve, CAM can continue treatments and continue to generate income. It’s a cash cow and ideal CAM fodder. Since warts are so common, potential clients are plentiful.

I used to believe that warts could be wished away. Now that I am older and wiser, I think warts vanish because of the natural course of the disease, not because of suggestion. Observers have reached false conclusions due to the post hoc ergo propter hoc (correlation is not causation) fallacy. Warts that went away after suggestion didn’t go away because of suggestion. The many folk remedies, like banana peels, were perpetuated by similar errors in reasoning. No matter how much we wish mind-over-matter worked, warts can’t be wished away: that’s the truth, warts and all.

Certainly the most uncommon duo of Brazilian artists to have a solid international career, Los Índios Tabajaras was formed by the brothers Antenor Moreyra Lima (Muçaperê) and Natalício Moreyra Lima (Erundi). In the U.S. they had success in the early '70s with "Sakura-Sakura," and their biggest hit was the fox trot "Maria Helena," which won second place at the American charts and sold over one-and-a-half million copies. Their 48 LPs also sold millions of copies worldwide, and they toured South, Central, and North America, Asia, and Europe before settling in the U.S. Their eclectic act gathered Rimsky-Korsakoff, Chopin, De Falla, and Villa-Lobos with folk tunes and originals, performed in tuxedo and also half-naked with Indian ornaments. In the '60s, they also performed successfully at the San Remo Festival (Italy). Both self-taught musicians, they took their first contact with the violão (guitar) during their journey through the hinterlands of Cariri, Ceará, but had to give it away for a pound of beans. Having both studied music later, Muçaperê was accompanied in the recording of his "Their Very Special Touch" by a full symphonic orchestra and vocal choir.

Indians from the Tabajara tribe, they left Ceará with their people in 1933, traveling on foot the almost 2,000 km to Rio de Janeiro. During the three years spent on the journey, they collected a number of regional musics. In Rio de Janeiro they were registered and baptized by the lieutenant Hildebrando Moreira Lima, from whom they took their Christian names. Their first public performance was in 1945, at the Rádio Cruzeiro do Sul (Rio de Janeiro), when they were introduced as Índios Tabajaras, having been hired by the outing. In 1953, they recorded an album through Continental with the baião "Tambor Índio" and the galope "Acara Cary" (both by Muçaperê). In the next year they had success with the polka "Pajaro Campaña" (public domain). After recording several other albums, they left in 1957 for a tour through Argentina, Venezuela, and Mexico. Having both studied music in the latter, Erundi wrote several classic pieces for guitar during that period . Moving on to the U.S., they performed for three years in that country, and returned to Brazil in 1960. They continued to move around, but ended up back in Brazil in 1968, where they recorded an album of Hawaiian songs; they moved to the U.S. soon afterwards.

Musiperi and Herundy (Ceara, Brazil) were sons of a Tabajaras Indian chieftain of an isolated jungle tribe. The story circulated by their publicist stated that they found guitars mislaid by European explorers, and taught themselves to play. Next, they travelled to Rio de Janiero to perform South American folk in the city’s clubland where they were noticed by an agent who polished both their act and cultural education. As ‘Natalicio and Antenor Lima’, they toured other South American regions including Mexico before a trip to Europe where they proved particularly popular in Italy and Spain. It was, therefore, hardly surprising that, as Los Indios Tabajaras, they began recording principally for the Latin market in 1943. After 20 years, however, their instrumental revival of Jimmy Dorsey’s ‘Maria Elena’ - dedicated to the wife of a Mexican president - was issued in the USA on RCA Records where, with no obvious precedent, it was a huge hit. In Britain and Australia too, it reached the Top 10, but its ear-catching sound was regarded as a one-off novelty and the duo made no further impact on charts in English-speaking territories.