Science Snippet: Breaking Down Biodegradability
Have you ever noticed plastic utensils or paper plates labeled as “biodegradable” and wondered what that meant? Materials are biodegradable when microorganisms such as bacteria can break them down into their building blocks.
Biodegradable Plastics
Plastic is everywhere: Milk jugs, grocery bags, and takeout containers are just a few examples. There are many types of plastic, but they’re all made up of long chains of repeating subunits called polymers. These polymers are designed to be durable and resistant to factors like heat, sunlight, and water, which makes them useful in a variety of situations.
Toget...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - April 17, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology STEM Education Bacteria Science Snippet Source Type: blogs
Confronting colon cancer: a daughter ’ s regretful journey
My mother. 63 years old. Colon cancer. She first noticed rectal bleeding. She made excuses. Maybe it’s hemorrhoids. She put her physician on a pedestal. He said, “You’re too young to die,” and there was no need for further tests. Her daughters, both RNs (one an ICU nurse, the other an anesthetist), pleaded with her
Read more…
Confronting colon cancer: a daughter’s regretful journey originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 6, 2024 Category: General Medicine Authors: Debbie Moore-Black, RN Tags: Conditions Gastroenterology Oncology/Hematology Source Type: blogs
Must Read
I ' m not going to discuss this or try to add to it, I ' m just going to ask you to read it.This is the McLuhan Lecture from Berlin, given by Cory Doctorow, on the subject of enshittificiation. We ' re all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in
which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into
giant piles of shit.It ' s frustrating. It ' s demoralizing. It ' s even terrifying.I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to
explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the ' great
forces of history, ' and into the material world of specific dec...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 4, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
poem
National ChampionshipThis is the game for all the marblesEveryone tunes in and watches until the endThe victor gets every single marble Which must be carried out by hand.One player, the captain, the hero —take your pickIs selected to be the marble bearer.If he drops a single marble The laugh track kicks inBut it ’s an audio loop of walruses gigglingAnd no one knows what it means. The studio hosts, retired linebackersOr whatever, stuffed into designer suits,Act like they don ’t see itAnd go back to telestrating howTo make enormous piles of moneyWithout doing anything meaningful at all.No one seems...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - January 26, 2024 Category: Surgery Authors: Jeffrey Parks MD FACS Source Type: blogs
Pretty Darned Near Absolutely Perfect Bagels
One of the challenges with making bread is that I want to bake more bread than my husband and I can eat. At best, it takes us a week to get through a loaf, slicing, freezing, thawing and toasting our slices one by one. When the sliced bread in the freezer piles up, I make breadcrumbs. Even with that, we still struggle to finish up what’s in the freezer before I want to bake bread again.
My reason for not eating as much bread as I make is that I’m always on a diet. This is not the issue for Mr TBTAM, who can eat as much bread as he wants and still weighs the same as he did the day I married him. But the brea...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - January 18, 2024 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Bread Breakfast Absolute Bagels Everything recipe Source Type: blogs
MedEssist is Helping to Transform Pharmacies into Pharmacy Health Clinics
The healthcare system in many countries is stretched thin. To help relieve the pressure, governments are starting to allow pharmacists to treat a growing number of minor ailments. MedEssist’s technology platform is helping pharmacies transform into health clinics.
Healthcare IT Today got a brief demonstration of the MedEssist platform from Joella Almeida, CEO and Co-Founder at the Collision Conference. We also asked her about the expanding role of pharmacists in healthcare.
Pharmacies Are Already in the Community
“We are focused on helping independent pharmacies,” explained Almeida. “There’s one on every bloc...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - August 16, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Colin Hung Tags: Ambulatory Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Collision 2023 Collision Conference Joella Almeida MedEssist minor ailments Pharmacies Pharmacists pharmacy health clinics Source Type: blogs
poem
Op Note XLThe first case I taught an intern how to lop off a hemorrhoid. Second case was mostly me with a third year patching up a tricky scrotal hernia. Third case another hernia. Same resident. Fourth case I guided a chief through a low anterior resection. She sees it. She ’ll be pretty good someday. Fifth case I walked my son through a multivariable algebra problem. Sixth case I sat and listened as my daughter cried. Seventh case I worked on a poem I thought was dead. Eighth case went all night. None of the sutures held. Kept having to re-do it and re-do it until t he birds began to sing and I figured out anothe...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - July 25, 2023 Category: Surgery Authors: Jeffrey Parks MD FACS Source Type: blogs
Rationing by red tape
One of the worst features of our absurd Rube Goldberg non-system of Medicine is that it buries people in paperwork in order to get the benefits they ' re entitled to. When my mother went into a nursing home, I assumed I could complete the application to get her onto Medicaid myself, but it turned out that even for a guy with a Ph.D. in Social Policy who was a full-time professor of health services, policy and practice, it was impossible. I had to hire a lawyer, and we have to pay the lawyer every year to do the required re-determination. And by the way, the only entity that ' s ultimately paying my mother ' s lawyer is the...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 28, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Earthquake
The news, and the scenes, from Turkey and Syria are horrific. There ' s nothing more to be said about that except that the response of the world community is heartening. It does remind us that the planet is knit together as it has never been before.But it ' s necessary, and I don ' t think it ' s crass, to talk about the complexities from a public health perspective. If you ' ve seen video of those multi-story apartment buildings collapsing like houses of cards, you ' ll know why the death toll is so high. This was a very powerful earthquake, but if it happened in, say, Los Angeles, which is far more densely populated and ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 7, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
What It ’ s Like Being Me
I love asking people this question: What is it really like being you?
We can see how people speak and behave on the outside, but what do we know of their interior perspective?
What I love about this question is that it invites real intimacy and empathy. It’s an invitation into trust. I feel honored when someone does their best to answer honestly. It’s fascinating to discover how someone frames and experiences their interior world, at least to the extent they can articulate it.
I thought it would be interesting to answer this question too, if only to see what comes through when I try to answer it.
Ce...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - January 1, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Steve Pavlina Tags: Emotions Lifestyle Relationships Values Source Type: blogs
How to Take Charge of Your ADHD Voicemail Hell
Ever find yourself missing important messages because your voicemail box is filled with half a decade of unlistened to calls? There might be a solution for that.Adult ADHD is almost like the Baskin Robbins of the mental health community. There are so many flavors of ADHD, you can be forgiven for questioning if they’re all from the same diagnosis. Some adults with ADHD daydream. Others are chronically late. Some run their mouths off with their feet in the way. Others never stop talking. Some forget why they went to the store. Others forget who they just called because something distracted them after they dialed. There...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - November 11, 2022 Category: Psychiatry Tags: ADHD Goodreads Source Type: blogs
Maximize Value and Efficiencies with Effective Content Management
The following is a guest article by Tom Romeo, General Manager of Healthcare IT at Quest Diagnostics.
Effective content management can help hospitals, health systems, and large ambulatory groups turn piles of paper and digital content into actionable data. The best document management systems drive improvements by not only storing digital healthcare data, but by also ensuring data is easily accessible enterprise-wide. Leveraging data can improve workforce efficiency and decision-making across all clinical and business departments. Quest Diagnostics is pleased to share an overview of some of the resources available that can...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - November 3, 2022 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Analytics/Big Data EMR-EHR Healthcare IT IT Infrastructure and Dev Ops Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring cloud solutions Content Management Tools Digital Assets Digital Transformation DMI DMI Platform DMI System Document Managemen Source Type: blogs
poem
TiredWe ’re all tired nowEvery soul worn downGnawed to the boneWe work dawn to darkWe don ' t take breaks No one notices the moon On the droned drive homeNo one believes in stars anymoreSo the constellations fall apartThey sound like needled sleetAgainst the windshield glassAll we ever do is build firesAnd melt piles of iceWe remember PrayerBut we ’re done with prayersOur knees hurtAnd we kneel for no oneBut our own noble exhaustions.Nevertheless we don ' t sleep at homeWe save sleeping for the daySo our grayed waking life becomes A dazzling bright dream We can only escapeBy falling asleep fro...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - October 25, 2022 Category: Surgery Authors: Jeffrey Parks MD FACS Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Jumping Ahead
As we have seen, the Chronicler has no interest in chronological order. He ' s wandering through time and space. Now he jumps ahead from David ' s years as a guerilla leader to the early years of his kingship, skipping entirely over the theft of the Ark by the Philistines, its recovery (a tale involving golden hemorrhoids, as you may recall), and David ' s ascension to the throne, to David ' s decision to move the Ark to Jerusalem fromKiriath Jearim, where it happened to land after the Philistines sent it back. This chapter is largely derived from 2 Samuel 6, either with some light rewriting, or based on an alternative ver...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 16, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Weekly Overseas Health IT Links –24th September, 2022.
This article makes the case and explains what will be required to make it happen.We hear a lot about “digital health” these days. As data about our health piles up — thanks to sources like electronic health records, personal fitness apps and gadgets, and home genome test kits — weshould understand a lot more than we used to about what ’s wrong with our health and what to do about it. But having a lot of data is not enough. We have to be aware of what we have, understand what it means, and act on that understanding. While the challenges are in some ways more acute in the United States because of its fragmented sys...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - September 24, 2022 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David G More MB PhD Source Type: blogs
