Nature Podcast: 14 August 2014
This week, piles of rubble in space, a caution about epigenetics, pregnancy and blame, and the anatomy of an earthquake. (Source: Nature Podcast)
Source: Nature Podcast - August 13, 2014 Category: Science Authors: Nature Publishing Group Source Type: blogs
Its a sad day
Robin Williams died from an apparent suicide yesterday. But I smiled after reading some of his most famous quotes. Here are some of my favorites:"Goooooooood morning Vietnam! It's 0600 hours. What does the 'O' stand for? O my God, it's early!" - Adrian Cronauer, Good Morning Vietnam (1987)[Mork picks up an egg] "Hello? Hello? Anybody in there? Little hatchling brothers, you must revolt against your oppressors. You have nothing to lose but your shells.""You're only given one little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."You can read the rest here.But the sad thing is that he committed suicide after dealing with de...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - August 12, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: death humor Source Type: blogs
Japan Moves Closer to Defending Itself like a Normal Country
Doug Bandow
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has begun to transform Japan into a normal country. Tokyo plans to take a more active role internationally. Eventually it should take over responsibility for defending itself.
As military occupier after World War II, the United States imposed Article Nine of the Japanese constitution, disarming Tokyo. But in recent years, Washington has pushed Japan to do more militarily.
So far, Tokyo simply has revised its interpretation of Article Nine. Japan’s “Self Defense Force” will be allowed to cooperate with other countries in combat.
Overseas the response was mixed.&...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 11, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind's made up
That seems to be the basic attitude of Americans toward the affordable care act according to Harvard pollster Robert Blendon. The linked Bloomberg article piles another brick onto the now solid wall of Obamacare success -- specifically, that hospitals are seeing fewer uninsured patients and getting paid for their services. That's great for the profits and stock price of for-profit hospitals and for their presumably mostly Republican executives. The percentage of Americans who are uninsured is now 13.4%, probably the lowest ever. And health care cost increases have slowed nearly to the rate of inflation.The law is actually ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 31, 2014 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
5 ways health care IT must improve
Health care information technology has of course grown exponentially over the last decade, as electronic medical records (EMRs) and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems have become ubiquitous. It’s funny to think that not so long ago, physicians and nurses had to trawl through piles and piles of paper charts to search for the information we needed — whether it was lab results or patients’ notes.
Continue reading ...
Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 29, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Suneel Dhand, MD Tags: Tech Health IT Hospital Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - 4th week of July 2014
Just as running a winery isn’t all romance, art, and elegance, running a farm is not all romping with your animals, a joyful harvest, and making a profit from the fruits of your labor.Farming is hard work year round, during the hot humid days of summer, the wet days of Spring/Fall and the chill of winter. There’s always maintenance and always unexpected tasks.Some of my farm related posts gloss over the details of day to day operations. This week, I’ll give you a taste of the kinds of things that require attention.Our 1.5 miles of trails, our mushroom operations, and manure management all depend on the Te...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - July 24, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Improving Lysosomal Function is a Good Thing
Lysosomes are recycling units inside cells responsible for breaking down damaged cellular components and unwanted proteins. Lysosomal function declines with age in important long-lived cells, such as those of the nervous system, as they accumulate metabolic waste products that they are unequipped by evolution to destroy. They become bloated and inefficient, and as a consequence garbage piles up in their cells harming the surrounding tissues. This is seen in diseases such as macular degeneration, in which cells of the retina are overwhelmed by certain types of metabolic waste.
The SENS rejuvenation research approach to thi...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 2, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - Second Week of June 2014
My wife and I did not think it was possible for a duck to hatch guinea fowl, but this week it happened.Guinea fowl are horrible parents.They lay their eggs in piles throughout the forest and then abandon them. Even if a “designated layer” sits on the communal egg pile, the young often get wet and chilled after hatching and do not make it back to the coop.A few weeks ago, the guineas decided to lay a few eggs in the duck house. Five of the ducks instantly began sitting on the eggs in shifts, keep them warm and protected.Our sense was that dry guineas offer a very different humidity environment than c...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - June 12, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Sleep Your Way to Better Health
I once heard a great Irish proverb that has stuck with me throughout my life, ‘A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything.’ These days Americans are getting less and less sleep every year. Currently only 40 percent of the U.S. gets the recommended eight hours, on average receiving only 6.8 hours per night. While a short-lived bout of insomnia is generally nothing to worry about, long term sleep loss can really throw a dagger in your overall well-being and health. This month I would like to challenge you all to get a good nights rest. If you think you’re in need of some shut eye, joi...
Source: Balanced Health and Nutrition Rebecca Scritchfield's Blog - June 4, 2014 Category: Nutritionists and Food Scientists Authors: rebeccascritchfield Tags: adult health eating healthy exercise food life nutrition 30 day challenge sleep Source Type: blogs
The YoYo Effect
Up. Down. Up. Down.Such is the flow of life with type 1 diabetes,and it can be wearing at times. Especially as the days turn to months,the months turn to seasons,the seasons turn to years,the years turn to decades."Are we there yet?"We are a long way from being "there", a long way from anything resembling a cure. Slamming the door on hope is a hard thing to do,but I think we can at least hope that things will get better in our lifetimes.(in terms of diabetes treatments) And maybe,a cure. But having another condition for which most of the world has never heard about let alone have any interest in,the concept of having that ...
Source: The D-Log Cabin - June 1, 2014 Category: Diabetes Authors: HVS Source Type: blogs
Years Worth of the Stuff
This time last year I mentioned a particularly disturbing-looking compound, sold commercially as a so-called "selective inhibitor" of two deubiquitinase enzymes. Now, I have a fairly open mind about chemical structures, but that thing is horrible, and if it's really selective for just those two proteins, then I'm off to truck-driving school just like Mom always wanted.
Here's an enlightening look through the literature at this whole class of compound, which has appeared again and again. The trail seems to go back to this 2001 paper in Biochemistry. By 2003, you see similar motifs showing up as putative anticancer agents i...
Source: In the Pipeline - March 20, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: The Scientific Literature Source Type: blogs
The “Punch” Line
Q: How do you get a room full of little old ladies to all use obscene language at the same time?
A: Yell “BINGO!”
When elderly patients blurt out obscenities, most of the time it takes everything I can do not to laugh out loud. No offense intended. I just get flashbacks of my mom sitting and putting her fingers in her ears while watching scenes in certain movies or seeing her gasp in shock if an F-bomb catches her off guard. I don’t expect to hear obscenities from someone who just rolled by me with a walker. For example, a while ago I posted a story about one lady from a nursing home who caught me off guard with an M...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - March 19, 2014 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: WhiteCoat Tags: Patient Encounters Source Type: blogs
Factoid to factette
Words ending with “oid” often have their root in the Latinized form of the Greek -oeides, from eidos meaning form and so the suffix is used to suggest that something is like something else but isn’t actually the thing itself. Viz: ovoid means egglike, android mean manlike, humanoid means like a human. There are lots of examples in medicine and science: opioid, cannabinoid, haemorrhoid, paraboloid etc etc. Then, there’s factoid…
…now that’s a funny one. Most people use the word factoid to mean a neat little fact, but that would be factette, surely from the French-derived suffix ...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - March 12, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
A Tale of Two Clients
On the one hand, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data;" on the other, I believe that these two clients' recent experiences with the ObamaTax Exchange may be illustrative of a broader set of problems:Client Number 1 recently lost his employer-based health insurance (the employer made the perfectly sensible decision to cancel the increasingly expensive group plan altogether), leaving himself and his family to fend for themselves on the Exchange.After fiddling with the Subsidy Calculator, they determined that they were eligible for about $200 a month in subsidies ("premium discount"). That's a lot of cash to leave on the tab...
Source: InsureBlog - March 11, 2014 Category: Medical Lawyers and Insurers Source Type: blogs
Sunday AM
The snow piles are down, but we had a 4-5 inch refresher in our neighborhood overnight. That places us at 6 feet of snowfall this winter, still about 15 inches shy of the record, but combined with the cold weather, it's been one hell of a winter. Noon update, March 2. Ridiculous. (Source: Dr. X's Free Associations)
Source: Dr. X's Free Associations - March 2, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: DrX Tags: Chicago Photos Front Page Local Photos Source Type: blogs
