j7uy5 | May 31, 2007I
wrote about a similar topic a bit ago, it which a relationship was
found between
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/04/depression_and_pain_in_retired.php">chronic
pain and depression in retired pro football players.
Now, there is an NTY article that reviews some findings about
a relationship between concussions and depression.
title="NYT permanent link via RSS"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/sports/football/31concussions.html?ex=1338264000&en=aa42809a8c7be226&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">Concussions
Tied to Depression in Ex-N.F.…
j7uy5 | May 31, 2007
This is a photo of Horseshoe Bend, in Arizona. It was
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Horseshoe_Bend_1_md.jpg">one
of the featured images on Wikipedia. It is from a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_featured_widescreen_desktop_backgrounds">selection
of photos that are good for use as wallpaper for widescreen monitors (16:10 aspect ratio). The original is
1231 × 821 pixels.
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike
2.5 License. It was taken by
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Moondigger">Moondigger.
j7uy5 | May 30, 2007
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Amitriptyline-2D-skeletal.png">
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">This post is
about amitriptyline, one of the oldest
antidepressants on the market in the USA. It also used to be
the
most widely-prescribed antidepressant.
I've decided to not attempt an encyclopedic style of description of the
pharmacological action of the individual antidepressants.
That is
readily available already at Wikipedia, among others. But in
order to fully understand the topic, those who are not familiar with
the pharmacology should probably go to the general…
j7uy5 | May 28, 2007
Fast
Company
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"> has an
amusing and interesting
href="http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.html">article
on
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy">pychopathy.
Being a business-oriented magazine, they ask "Is your boss a
psychopath?" But one could just as easily apply the same
principles to other important people in your life, such as politicians.
They even have a quiz useful for making armchair diagnoses.
href="http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss-quiz.html">Quiz:
Is Your Boss a Psychopath?
[1] Is he…
j7uy5 | May 28, 2007I am
on call today, so I am about to go in to the hospital for a full day of
work. But while drinking my coffee I encountered an article
that I need to get back to. Maybe some of you could take a
look at it too, if you have subscriber or academic access to Science.
href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/316/5827/996">Childhood
Origins of Adult Resistance to Science
Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg
Science 18 May 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5827, pp. 996 - 997
DOI: 10.1126/science.1133398
Resistance to certain scientific ideas derives in large
part from assumptions…
j7uy5 | May 28, 2007Sustainable
living could use more inventions like this.
href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/news/ci_5998479">Eye on
Research: Researchers develop low-cost, low-energy desalination process
Sun News Report
Article Launched: 05/27/2007 12:00:00 AM MDT
NMSU
report
A low-cost water desalination system developed by New Mexico State
University engineers can convert saltwater to pure drinking water on a
round-the-clock basis and its energy needs are so low it can
be powered by the waste heat of an air conditioning system.
A prototype built on the NMSU campus in Las Cruces can produce…
j7uy5 | May 27, 2007I
read this (Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson) when I was in fifth or sixth grade. It was a little
paperback book on my Dad's bookshelf. So it was quite a shock
to see it included as an "honorable mention" on the list of the "
href="http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=7591">Most
Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries."
class="image" title="">
alt="" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Rachel-Carson.jpg"
src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Rachel-Carson.jpg/200px-Rachel-Carson.jpg"
align="left" border="0" height="253" width="200">It
did not make the top…
j7uy5 | May 27, 2007
Who
are these people, and what are they doing? They are
Democratic congresspersons, sheepishly "caving in". Not only
did they cave on the timeline for withdrawal of military and mercenary
forces in Iraq, they failed to heed this warning:
href="http://www.upi.com/Energy/Briefing/2007/05/24/kucinich_others_want_oil_out_of_war_funds/9281/">Kucinich,
others want oil out of war funds
Ben Lando, UPI Energy Correspondent
Published: May 24, 2007 at 9:58 PM
WASHINGTON, May 24 (UPI) -- U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich is championing a
somewhat lonely push in Congress to remove Iraq's oil from…
j7uy5 | May 25, 2007
Tax cuts for the Howells. No reproductive rights for Ginger
and Mary Ann. Funding Cuts for the Professor.
j7uy5 | May 24, 2007I
noticed the incidental coincidence of these two news items:
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-zuska24may24,1,6736477.story?coll=la-news-science">Joseph
Zuska, 93; Navy doctor developed treatment for alcoholism
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10374760">Gaps
in Mental Care Persist for Fort Carson Soldiers
The
first item is an obituary for a Navy physician; the second is a NPR
news item in which they follow up on the changes that took place at a
particular military base, after an earlier news article exposed
undesirable practices in the…
j7uy5 | May 24, 2007The
Dean of the College of Tropical Agriculture is worried about the
effects that climate change could have on Hawaii, given the fragility
of the ecosystem there:
href="http://starbulletin.com/2007/05/20/news/story03.html">Warming
signs seen stressing state's growth
By Helen Altonn
20 May 2007
Hawaii will be "the canary" that alerts the rest of the world to the
damaging effects of climate changes, says Andrew Hashimoto, dean and
director of the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture
and Human Resources.
"If not the canary, it will be one of the canaries," he said in…
j7uy5 | May 24, 2007Only
in LA, they say, but these things could happen anywhere.
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-only22may22,0,5393460.column?coll=la-home-middleright">
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-only22may22,0,5393460.column?coll=la-home-middleright">A
wanted man who wanted to make it to court really early
May 22, 2007
For your Stupid Criminal Alibis file, consider the case of the guy
stopped by an L.A. County sheriff's deputy and informed that there was
a warrant out for his arrest.
"Yes, I know, I was on my way to court," explained the suspect,
according to…
j7uy5 | May 23, 2007
It has been a party, sure enough; more like an exercise in
Bacchinalian debauchery.
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/22/AR2007052201653.html?hpid=topnews">Changes
Spurred Buying, Abuses
By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 23, 2007; Page A01
...Congress
created the GSA's buying program in 1949 to make it easier for the
burgeoning federal bureaucracy to buy furniture, office supplies and
other products. The government sought to leverage its position as the
world's leading buyer to get the…
j7uy5 | May 23, 2007This
is in response to a
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/05/childhood_ptsd.php#comment-439606">comment
from a prior post. There are a few related questions here.
Can preemies develop PTSD, can
they be labeled with PTSD, if they can get PTSD is it fundamentally the
same as it is in adults, and if it is different, should we call it
something else????
The comment was left by Stacy, the author of a blog,
href="http://thepreemieexperiment.blogspot.com/">The Preemie
Experiment. I spent a bit of time on
href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi">Medline…
j7uy5 | May 21, 2007
One of the things that most consistently surprised me, when I was doing
the consultation-liaison rotation in residency, was how common delirium
was, and how frequently it was missed by the medical team.
Even since then, it has evolved into a pet peeve of mine. The
brain is a rather important organ, and when it shows acute signs of
dysfunction, you'd think doctors would notice and pay attention.
All too often, they do not.
Why is this so important?
A recent paper in the BMJ indicates:
Delayed
or missed diagnosis is an important issue — non-detection of
delirium in emergency…
j7uy5 | May 20, 2007This
topic (global dimming) has already been mentioned on SB twice, once on
href="http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/04/egu.php">Stoat,
once on
href="http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2006/08/what_is_global_dimming.php">Living
the Scientific Life. Others have picked up on it,
too (
href="http://oilbeseeingyou.blogspot.com/2007/05/global-dimming-global-warming-peak-oil.html">1
href="http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/05/09/veiling-our-true-predicament-part-i-global-dimming/">2
href="http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog/496/global-dimming-turning-down-the-sun/">3
4…
j7uy5 | May 19, 2007I
specifically remember a phrase from a handout I read in the second
year of med school, imploring us to not depersonalize patients by
referring to them, for example, as "the pancreas in room XXX."
That was the thought that I had when I saw a photo in the LA Times:
This
is only a part of the photo, the whole thing is unpleasnt to see.
It is from a 3-part feature on the treatment and fate of
soldiers wounded in Iraq.
I think it is a bad sign when someone writes a number on your chest
with a magic marker...
I
mean, I can see why they do it. It probably helps, in two
ways. One,…
j7uy5 | May 18, 2007Each
of the major papers has to choose one story to have the most prominent
headline. Today, USA Today chose this one:
href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-17-gas-prices_N.htm">
href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-17-gas-prices_N.htm">Drivers
cut back — a 1st in 26 years
By Paul Overberg and Larry Copeland, USA TODAY
The
average American motorist is driving substantially fewer miles for the
first time in 26 years because of high gas prices and demographic
shifts, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal highway data...
The
growth in miles…
j7uy5 | May 18, 2007
These are from the World
Wildlife Federation News blog.
Newborn:
Day 3:
Day 120:
The full set of photos is
href="http://news.worldwild.org/evolution-of-a-new-born-panda/">here.
Absolutely the most precious thing in the world.
j7uy5 | May 17, 2007
With Wolfowitz out, Gonzalez on the way, can they even be seriious
aboutthis nomination?
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/washington/18safety.html?ex=1337140800&en=41c7eca6618bb131&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">Bush
Asked to Reconsider Safety Nominee
By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: May 18, 2007
WASHINGTON, May 17 -- Senate Democrats urged President Bush on Thursday
to withdraw his nomination of a top lobbyist from the National
Association of Manufacturers to lead the Consumer Product Safety
Commission, saying the candidate was unqualified and the…