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RESTAURANT REVIEW : Accent on Bargain : Mi Casita serves a bounty of inexpensive Salvadoran cuisine, from huge meat dishes to banana fritters. MAX JACOBSON, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES; Max Jacobson reviews restaurants every Friday in Valley Life! |
PARENTING : Fads a Mom Could Love : Fall forecasters say kids will be mad for plaid, girls will go for jumpers, and boys will take the droop out of their drawers. CINDY LaFAVRE YORKS, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES; Cindy LaFavre Yorks writes regularly about fashion for The Times. |
PARENTING : New School, New Worries : Making the transition means a journey into the unknown. Unfamiliar people and surroundings take some getting used to. ADRIENNE WIGDORTZ ANDERSON, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES; Adrienne Anderson is an Agoura writer. |
To Repent Is Human; Is to Err Divine? |
More than 45 cats, dogs, and other pets are looking for homes this January. Click through the slideshow to meet them all. For up-to-date adoption information from the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society in Menands, visit mohawkhumane.org/adopt. |
MENANDS — As the federal shutdown continues, the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society is offering low-cost pet care and a pet food pantry to federal employees who have been furloughed or are working without pay. |
The shelter's pet food pantry is available to anyone who needs help feeding their pets. Owners can stop by the Menands animal care center at 3 Oakland Ave. daily between noon and 6 p.m., or the shelter's Saratoga clinic, at 5255 Route 50, on weekdays between 9 a.m. and noon. |
The humane society also offers low-cost veterinary services at its Saratoga clinic. The program is income-qualifying but the requirements will be waived for federal employees during the shutdown. Call 518-886-9645 to make an appointment, or visit mohawkhumane.org/spayneuter.html. |
Makoti, I love the way you carry yourself, like an elegant lady who loves and respects herself and you are pretty too. Your wedding was lovely and God Bless you always. |
Botle fela i like Setswana Tradition it remind me of my wedd. God Bless your wedding le tshwarane ja ka marago you know what i mean ga aka bulega gotswa ma*pa. |
Mafloza you are right, that woman looks dignified shem and she is so beautiful. |
Joh! your dress Ausi, is so beautiful! You dressed like a true woman, you covered you body my sister, i think when my time comes, i’ll go for something like this. we are tired of seeing people’s breast and ampits. God bless your marriage. |
Rakodi this is beautful,well planned ,best and beautful dress, dignified women. |
Halala makoti you look great, i lyk that top. Tsa bogadi di a bowa se segolo ke thapelo. |
SCORES of sub-Saharan migrants have, in a coordinated push, broken through the Spanish border in Ceuta, Spain. |
This is the second time in the past month that migrants have managed to cross into Ceuta. |
On July 26 700 African migrants stormed the Spanish border and the border is believed to have been breached at the same point again. |
Migrants were allegedly seen in droves scaling the fences of a garage next to the border crossing point before charging as a two-hundred strong unit towards the helpless border control officers. |
Although some were evidently wounded as a result of their fence climbing, the migrants are reportedly heading towards the CETI (Centre for Temporary Migrant Stay) in Ceuta. |
The coordinated ‘border-rushing’ was allegedly pre-planned to coincide with a Moroccan festivity, celebrated today, when it is thought there is a smaller security presence manning the border. |
A trio of engineering and transplant experts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Johns Hopkins University are leading an effort to extend that time and possibly transform the science of transplantation. |
Typically organs last as little as two hours and as long as 36 hours once they are removed from the body. The researchers’ approach involves better managing the environment body parts are stored and transported in to possibly extend the window to 72 hours or longer. |
The U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command is funding the project through a three-year, $1.5 million grant. The U.S. military often pays for medical research that can benefit service members, veterans and eventually everyone else. |
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University are working to engineer single-cell organisms that will seek out and eat bacteria that are deadly to humans. |
Their work combines the fields of biology and engineering in an emerging discipline known as synthetic biology. |
The researchers hope to develop a working prototype of their so-called bioreactor in five years. |
Their plan starts with the same nutrient-infused solution used now to preserve an organ in a container once it’s taken from a body. The container is kept chilled on ice for transport. |
The researchers are developing a sensor array to monitor the solution for levels of nitric oxide, lactic acid, glucose and free radicals that indicate deterioration of the organs. The solution could then be tweaked to reduce or slow the body parts’ degradation. Other measures could be added later to improve the organs’... |
Preserving body parts longer would give transplant professionals more time to better match organs and recipients in a larger geographic area, and create less waste, experts said. |
There are more than 116,500 people on the organ transplant waiting list, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit that manages the transplant system. |
Figures provided by UNOS show that there were 31,917 organs recovered in 2016 for transplant and 27,540 were transplanted. Some 4,377, or close to 14 percent, were discarded for various reasons including time, though more often because test results showed they were unusable. |
Dr. David Klassen, chief medical officer for UNOS, said there is a computer program for allocation that varies slightly by organ and considers time. Kidneys, the most commonly transplanted organ, last the longest and usually can even be flown across the country. That allows more flexibility and time to consider issues ... |
Hearts and lungs have four to six hours and typically don’t travel far. Livers have only a bit longer and also typically go to the sickest person nearby. |
Transplant experts say a hand or face — called vascularized composite allotransplantation, or VCA — has as little as a couple of hours and offers from donor families have been refused because of the limitations. |
There are hurdles beyond medical, however. The National Academy of Science released a report Tuesday that looked at the ethical and legal issues related to organ research. The report said such research is necessary to improve the rate of transplantation and the quality of organs. |
The report aimed to address basics such as whether studying organs from deceased donors constitutes “human research,” said Robert Veatch, a professor emeritus of medical ethics from Georgetown University's Kennedy School of Ethics who has participated in an academy meetings on the subject. Human research triggers feder... |
At the center of the debate, however, has been consent, he said. Donors and recipients would need to specifically approve of organs that had been altered somehow. Recipients also might need to consent to monitoring to determine how organs fare. |
Among the report’s suggestions were creation of a national registry, rather than state or regional ones, to communicate donor preferences and a central research repository to keep the public informed. |
It also suggested donors could consent to organ research at the same time they agree to donation, on their drivers’ licenses for example, so long as effective educational materials can be developed. Recipients could consent in principle when they are listed for a transplant and then again once a specific organ becomes ... |
Warren Grayson, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Hopkins, said such issues were not a factor in their research grant application. |
"There is a recognized need for technologies to better preserve organs and so there is more funding becoming available in this area,” he said. “Donors-donor families provide consent to donate their organs-tissues, so there is no need to obtain consent for preserving the tissues so that they can actually be used. This i... |
For the next three years under the grant, the researchers also will not use human organs or tissue. They will use the abdominal wall of a rat. |
Eventually, they plan to test the bioreactor system on human body parts. The researchers expect it would work for all kinds of organs, though the military’s interest is specifically in better preserving body parts such as hands for the complicated VCAs. Such transplant procedures — involving muscle, bone and tissues — ... |
The Defense Department created the Reconstructive Transplant Research Program in 2012 to advance the science of VCA procedures and has granted more than $8 million to a dozen projects to extend the time for transplantation. |
She said another possibility from improving the technology is preserving a patients’ own damaged tissue for late use in reconstruction. |
The ability to preserve — and someday maybe even improve — organs means more could be harvested and used, reducing the backlog of patients on the transplant waiting list, said Dr. Gerald Brandacher, scientific director of the Reconstructive Transplantation Program in Hopkins’ School of Medicine and a hand transplant ex... |
The bioreactor’s constant monitoring of the organs might make transplants safer for patients, said Brandacher, the third member on the research project. Organs now are cooled and unmonitored until they are transplanted. |
The system also can help overcome other obstacles, he said. In the case of hands, for example, an electric current could be applied to keep muscles moving and in good working order. |
More time for transplantation could allow for better matching of VCAs for size, gender and skin color. The extended window also would allow tolerance building in recipients so they might need fewer harsh drugs to suppress their immune systems and prevent organ rejection, a major goal in the transplant community, Branda... |
Others who are not good candidates for transplantation could be given another chance by desensitizing them to organ-rejecting antibodies they’ve developed through past blood transfusions or transplants. |
Brandacher said he believes the bioreactor system being developed by the researchers could be a crucial advancement, and faster to the gate than other projects underway — including another farther off in his lab to freeze and bank organs for later transplant. |
A Worthing Scout has been selected to represent the UK as part of a team delivering the World Scout Jamboree in West Virginia next summer. |
Harvey Cranford, 19, will work with Scouts from nearly every country in the world to share life skills and deliver this life-changing event for more than 40,000 young people. |
Held every four years, the World Scout Jamboree gives young people the opporunity to experience international cultures and celebrate the Scouting principle, to create a better world. |
Chief Scout Bear Grylls said: “Congratulations to Harvey Cranford and all the other UK volunteers who have been selected to support Scouts at the World Scout Jamboree in West Virginia, USA. |
“While lots of people know that Scouting helps young people learn the skills they need for life they often don’t realise that adult volunteers learn just as much as our young members. |
“The jamboree is a great example of this. Over the course of the jamboree, our volunteers will be able to meet people from around the world, take part in amazing adventures and experiences, learn new skills and be challenged to think about global issues in a new light. |
The 24th World Scout Jamboree will be hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico Scouting Associations, and will take place between July and August 2019. They aim is to focus on the cultures of the new world. |
The team chosen by UK Scouting has been brought together from across the country and these adult volunteers will not only make the event possible, they will also pick up important skills for life. |
The team will help deliver all aspects of the event, such as world-leading activities, awe-inspiring staged events and the mass catering. |
Over 300 French Jews arrived today to begin a new life in their ancient homeland. Before the end of the year, more than 3,000 are expected to immigrate, a rise of 30 percent from last year. “The wave of anti-Semitism [only] enhances the Zionism of Jews in France,” said Arieh Azoulay, chairman of the Jewish Agency’s ali... |
Critical care: Foreign-born doctors play key role in U.S. |
With his polished manner, crisp dark jacket and tie and shoulder-length hair in a neat ponytail, Dr. Muhammad Hassan Majeed easily fits the part of the urbane American professional destined for one day joining the ranks of academia. |
Two and a half miles away at United Community & Family Services, married couple Drs. Rachna and Ramindra Walia have found acceptance and professional satisfaction providing pediatric care to some of the old mill city’s poorest residents, even if that sometimes comes with answering questions about their home country. |
Some patients are wary at first, Rachna Walia said, but quickly won over. |
Seventeen miles to the south, Dr. Maria Luisa Moro-de-Casillas feels especially gratified helping Spanish-speaking patients who come to her office in New London with complex neurological ailments. |
These four are among more than 200,000 immigrant doctors across the country filling a critical role in providing care to millions of patients. Nationwide, about one in four physicians graduated from a foreign medical school, then came to this country for residency or fellowship training and stayed, according to the Ame... |
The state medical society has joined with its parent organization, the American Medical Association, in raising concerns about recent immigration crackdowns and orders issued by the Trump administration affecting visa programs used by foreign medical school graduates. Lack of clarity and uncertainty created by the acti... |
There are two popular pathways for foreign doctors who come here and ultimately become citizens: the H-1B visa program for foreign workers in technical fields including medicine, and the J1 visa waiver program. That allows doctors who come to the United States for graduate-level specialty training to stay after complet... |
Dr. Gordon said recent Trump administration statements and orders, including President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday about new limitations to the H-1B visa program, are crimping the flow of foreign medical school graduates. |
The four local doctors couldn’t agree more. By sharing their stories, they hope to make people aware that immigrant doctors like themselves appreciate the opportunities the United States has afforded them, and that they in turn provide vital services this country needs. |
After graduating from medical school in Pakistan in 2007, Dr. Majeed looked to the other side of the globe for the kind of advanced training he wanted. |
After residency at Drexel University and Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia then a fellowship at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Majeed applied for and obtained a J1 waiver to stay and work in an underserved area for three years. That brought him to the Joshua Center 18 months ago. |
“We’re going where American doctors don’t want to work,” he said. “It’s a very fair trade-off” for being allowed to stay in this country. |
Ultimately, he said, he’d love to become a citizen, but expects he’ll first have to obtain an H-1B visa and then a Green Card through a sponsoring employer. A frequent contributor of letters and articles to academic journals, including a March 2 letter in the New England Journal of Medicine asking the U.S. government t... |
While he has felt welcome for most of his time in this country, he and other immigrant doctors with work visas are now feeling insecure about their futures in the United States. Closing the door on immigrant doctors, he said, would hurt both them and the vulnerable patients they serve. |
Today, the Walias are comfortably ensconced as upper middle-class professionals in Norwich. A lot of hard work and sacrifice got them there from New Delhi some 20 years ago. |
Growing up, both attended Catholic schools where they were required to learn English, a skill that has served them well in their careers. In 1996, four years after they married, the Walias came to this country for pediatric residency interviews that ended up getting canceled due to a snowstorm. He returned home to Indi... |
Though both recently became naturalized citizens and feel secure in their status, they believe the visa programs they used when they first came to America worked well, and should be preserved. |
“The vetting process is pretty good in this country,” Ramindra Walia said. |
But doctors and others with H-1B and J1 visas already have been vetted, and shouldn’t have to worry about losing their status, they said. |
Like other immigrants doctors, Moro-de-Casillas and her husband came to the United States after medical school in their home country for training in their chosen specialties, she in neurology and he in colorectal surgery, at institutions including Brown and Case Western Reserve universities and the Cleveland Clinic. Th... |
“We have always felt welcome here, though it has been hard work,” said Moro-de-Casillas, 46. “But if you work hard, you do have the opportunity to succeed and do what you really love to do in the U.S." |
When they first came to this country, she said, they hadn’t decided whether they’d try to stay permanently or return to Mexico. |
“But the doors kept opening for us here,” she said. At her New London practice, which is part of the Northeast Medical Group and affiliated with Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, she is proud of the unique skills she offers patients — not just Spanish language skills, but also expertise in movement disorders, Parkinson’s d... |
“I’m providing a subspecialty the community wouldn’t otherwise have,” she said. |
She and her husband live in Norwich with their 11-year-old daughter, and visit family in Mexico twice a year. With the lengthy and involved process of becoming a citizen still fresh in her mind, Moro-de-Casillas is empathetic toward the doctors now here on work visas, worried they’ll get caught in legal limbo if the ru... |
In this world, it is often dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, said Henry Kissinger in 1968, but to be a friend is fatal. |
The South Vietnamese would come to appreciate the insight. |
So it is today with Aleppo, where savage reprisals against U.S.-backed rebels are taking place in that hellhole of human rights. |
Yet, again, the wrong lessons are being drawn from the disaster. |
According to The Washington Post, the bloodbath is a result of a U.S. failure to intervene more decisively in Syria’s civil war: "Aleppo represents a meltdown of the West’s moral and political will – and … a collapse of U.S. leadership. |
"By refusing to intervene against the Assad regime’s atrocities, or even to enforce the ‘red line’ he declared on the use of chemical weapons, President Obama created a vacuum that was filled by Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard." |
But the blunder was not in staying out of Syria’s civil war, but in going in. Aleppo is a bloodbath born of interventionism. |
On Aug. 18, 2011, President Obama said, "For the sake of the Syrian people the time has come for President Assad to step aside." Western leaders echoed the Obama – "Assad must go!" |
Assad, however, declined to go, and crushed an Arab Spring uprising of the kind that had ousted Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. When the U.S. began to fund and train rebels to overthrow him, Assad rallied his troops and began bringing in allies – Hezbollah, Iran and Russia. |
It was with their indispensable assistance that he recaptured Aleppo in the decisive battle of the war. And now America has lost credibility all over the Arab and Muslim world. |
How did this debacle come about? |
First, in calling for the overthrow of Bashar Assad, who had not attacked or threatened us, we acted not in our national interests, but out of democratist ideology. Assad is a dictator. Dictators are bad. So Assad must go. |
Yet we had no idea who would replace him. |
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