I actually don’t have a huge amount of free time today. But I’m on a break, so here’s a quick post.

First, Arezzo: yesterday we spent a lovely relaxing day with friends (photo no. 1 is of Arezzo’s sloping and splendid Piazza Grande), which ended with a superb afternoon tea. Yes, I know, there is no traditional three-tier cake stand on the table, but there were eight of us, and we were all quite hungry, so it made more sense to arrange the food on plates and platters.

As you can see, we had four different types of homemade sandwiches, heaps of scones (lower right corner), shortbread (lower left, next to more sandwiches, and upper right), apple pie (upper left corner), one of my best coffee cakes (big hit, I’m happy to report; it’s that dark thing, next to the apple pie, going clockwise), muffins, small fruit tarts, whipped cream instead of clotted cream (we can’t get that here), homemade jams, crème anglaise to go with the pie…and five different types of tea, including an herbal one. My favorite: Simo’s traditional scones, the absolute best! 

Art left a comment on my January 19 “Cancer vaccine” post that gave me some food for thought. He’s right: dexamethasone induces MUC1. 😕

Well, without more ado, here is Art’s link to the relevant “Blood” article: http://goo.gl/bfC9m I checked PubMed briefly and, unfortunately, found that the “Blood” study is not an isolated case. Hmmm. I don’t know what to do with this info…So I’ll just leave it at that…

The other day I read an interesting Science Daily article on tears. Well, well, we learn something every day…Check it out: http://goo.gl/yPkYn Hey, too bad we can’t have those lysozymes latch their jaws onto a bunch of our blasted myeloma cells, eh!!! 😉

This is something I am still checking out…a new target = myeloid-derived suppressor cells, or MDSCs, which play an important role in immune suppression: http://goo.gl/G6C8U Not surprisingly, curcumin prevents these pesky cells from interacting with cancer cells, which is obviously a good thing: http://goo.gl/9E8iq Will I ever cease to be amazed at the extraordinary properties of curcumin? Probably not.

Now for something fun: http://goo.gl/EBKLH

Well, I am also looking at other things, but my free time is up for now. So…off I go! 🙂