The Parasite Underground (NYT)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/magazine/the-parasite-underground.html

"In the early 2000s, some multiple-sclerosis patients at a neurology clinic in Buenos Aires began showing up with parasite infections. Aware of the potential for parasites to help inflammatory disease, the presiding neurologists proposed an experiment: Don't treat the parasites, and see what happens. Twelve patients agreed, and for nearly five years the doctors monitored them. Disease progression, as measured by brain scans, slowed significantly. Blood work showed an elevation of "suppressor" cells that prevent autoimmune diseases. And when, more than five years later, the doctors dewormed four patients who complained of malaise, those suppressor cells disappeared, and the disease started up again."

Exposure to pathogens early in life is beneficial to the education and development of the human immune system

""We believe that E. coli, which lives in the infant gut in all three countries, might be one of the immune educating bacteria responsible for training the immune system early in life. But, we found that if you mix Bacteroides with E. coli it can actually inhibit the immune-activating properties of E. coli, and we suspect this might have consequences on the development of the immune system," Vatanen explains.

"In the Finnish and Estonian infants, where Bacteroides dominates, the gut microbiome is immunologically very silent," Kostic adds, and continues, "We believe that, later on, this makes them more prone to strong inflammatory stimuli."

The researchers suspect that the LPS immune activation by E. coli seen in the Russian Karelian infants is reflective of the relationship humans developed with microbiota over the course of human evolution. The prevalence and dominance of Bacteroides, in contrast, is a more recent phenomenon related in some way to improved sanitation and standard of living."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160429095038.htm

NYTimes: How China Won the Keys to Disney’s Magic Kingdom

"Plans for the $5.5 billion Shanghai Disney Resort, which opens Thursday, were in limbo until Disney dialed back its demands to the Communist Party."

There are 300 million people within a 3 hr train or bus ride of the Shanghai Park, whereas there are "only" 22 million people in Southern California.

Read More: http://nyti.ms/1UrYwf8

Yes, There Have Been Aliens - NYTimes.com

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/opinion/sunday/yes-there-have-been-aliens.html

"Specifically, unless the probability for evolving a civilization on a habitable-zone planet is less than one in 10 billion trillion, then we are not the first."

Cell phones still cause teen crashes. Can they prevent them, too? - CSMonitor.com

http://m.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2016/0601/Cell-phones-still-cause-teen-crashes.-Can-they-prevent-them-too

"teen drivers were distracted in the six seconds before an accident in 59 percent of crashes. In 15 percent of those, drivers were distracted by passengers; teens who talked, texted or browsed on their phones made up 12 percent of the crashes."