Word: explainer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...blood cells; far fewer people carry that variant. In the lab, Weiss found that the African-specific receptor, called DARC, or duffy antigen receptor for chemokines, also interacted with HIV: the receptor binds to a wide array of proteins that suppress the virus's replication. Intrigued, but unable to explain why the lack of the receptor increased HIV infection, Weiss teamed up with geneticists at the University of Texas and elsewhere to analyze how the gene variant impacts HIV rates in real populations...
Interestingly, among the servicemen who were infected with HIV, those who carried the gene variant lived on average two years longer than noncarriers. "We still can't say exactly why," Weiss says. And though the effect of this gene variant, if confirmed, could help explain a huge number of HIV infections, it still cannot come close to explaining the AIDS burden of Africa. Nearly 70% of all HIV-positive people in the world live in sub-Saharan Africa, and prevalence rates in adults in some African countries top 20%. What's more, the gene variant is most common in West...
...guess I had forgotten. Portland’s a haven for hippies and hipsters—not to mention lumberjacks—which helps explain the local popularity and prevalence of the beard. In the past year, facial hair has even played a minor role in mayoral politics...
...feds are disrupting one of the great niche businesses. As a private banker at UBS, Birkenfeld traveled from his home in Switzerland to the U.S. to court ultra-wealthy American clients at tennis tournaments and art fairs. He would explain, among other things, how to buy jewels and artwork using funds from their secret Swiss bank accounts while they were overseas. Once, at the request of a client, he bought diamonds with money from an offshore account and smuggled them into the States in a toothpaste tube...
...there may be something more complicated going on there. But there's not any good data [to explain why a calorie of trans fat should cause more weight gain than a calorie of something else]. It may be that on the high-trans-fat diet you're more likely to push those calories into your fat cells rather than your muscle cells - and muscles burn calories 24 hours a day. In the long run, that could make a difference in weight gain. But that's speculation. We're really not sure...