j7uy5 | December 16, 2006Ambidextrous More Likely To Be Bisexual; Why Do We Care, Anyway?
A new study coming from the
href="http://www.uoguelph.ca/" rel="tag">University
of Guelph.
href="http://www.psychology.uoguelph.ca/d_faculty/peters.html">Dr.
Michael Peters, a neuropsychologist, analyzed a survey of
about 255,000 people, and come up with some interesting findings about
human sexuality. Among them, is the observation that
bisexuality was significantly more common in ambidextrous
persons:
href="http://www.uoguelph.ca/atguelph/06-12-06/featureshand.shtml">On
the Other Hand
Study refutes…
j7uy5 | December 15, 2006From the
href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4401429.html">Houston
Chronicle: State Rep. Edmund Kuempel has authored a bill that
would allow legally blind people to go hunting. They'd be
allowed to use laser sights, which are prohibited for fully-sighted
hunters. They also would have to have somone who is not bling
go with them.
At first I thought this was pretty nutty. But then I
remembered Dick Cheney.
j7uy5 | December 15, 2006Since it seems to be a big deal to the New York Times (two articles in
two days), I thought I'd comment on this. An FDA advisory
panel recently voted to expand the warnings in the product labeling for
antidepressants.
Just to put this in perspective, the FDA makes many
such changes. The most recent
href="http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2006/oct06_quickview.htm">summary
page is from October of this year, and it lists changes to
the labeling for Avastin, Chloraprep, Coumadin, Remicade, Seroquel,
Allegra, Opana, Sodium Chloride Irrigation solution, Vicoprofen,
DepaKote, Heparin,…
j7uy5 | December 13, 2006Pay-for-performance is one of the buzzwords in health care financing
these days. I haven't been following it much, but Dr. Gault
has, over at
target="_blank">retired doc's thoughts.
His latest:
title="Site: retired doc's thoughts"
href="http://mdredux.blogspot.com/2006/12/ama-president-nails-p4p-for-what-it-is.html"
target="_blank">AMA President nails P4P for what it is at
AMA Interim meeting. Needless to say, the President
of the AMA is skeptical, as are many physicians. Dr. Reider,
at Family
Medicine Notes, wonders if the President's
statements reflect the overall position…
j7uy5 | December 12, 2006This
picture just cracks me up.
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/images/ypsipanty1206.php"
onclick="window.open('http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/images/ypsipanty1206.php','popup','width=500,height=375,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false">
I spent a fair amount of time growing up in
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ypsilanti%2C_Michigan">Ypsilanti,
and still have a fondness for the place. Anything that
promotes a positive image is welcome.
Somewhere, I saw a list that had…
j7uy5 | December 12, 2006Spectrolab, Inc. has announced that they have developed a way to nearly
double the efficiency of solar cells. They've done it by
creating semiconductor Dagwood sandwiches, with over 20 layers.
The basic idea is to have different layers that respond to
different wavelengths of light. This way, a greater amount of
the total light energy is captured.
The technology requires the use of a lens, or some other means of
concentrating the light. That may limit its applicability
somewhat. Still it appearto be a major advance. It
could be the one thing we needed to make solar power competitive…
j7uy5 | December 11, 2006According to a study published in the medical journal, Pediatrics,
girls and young women who visit eating disorder oriented websites may
be harmed by the activity. The funny thing is, is does not
matter if the sites encourage eating disorder behavior, or discourage
it. Persons who visit such sites are more likely to end up in
the hospital for treatment of their disorder, and are more likely to
have along duration of active illness. Furthermore, they are
likely to spend less time on schoolwork.
Although it is not possible to say that the use of such sites
exacerbated the disorders, persons…
j7uy5 | December 9, 2006So far, I have resisted commenting on the report of the Iraq Study
Group. But this is too good to pass up. From
href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/12/nothing_can_mat.html">DeLong,
who got it from
href="http://myalteregospeaks.blogspot.com/2006/12/s-r-t.html">Alter
Ego, comes a precious quote from a
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061207-1.html">Presidential
press conference:
Q Mr. President, the Iraq Study Group said that
leaders must be candid and forthright with people. So let me test that.
Are you capable of admitting your failures in the…
j7uy5 | December 9, 2006In June, I put up a post noting that open-source browsers accounted for
more than 50% of the hits at ScienceBlogs. At that time,
Firefox was 48.17%. Since then, Microsoft released IE7, which
includes a tabbed interface, and other enhancements that Firefox (and
others, e.g. Opera and Safari) have had for a long time. I
wondered if Microsoft would get some of their market share back.
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/06/scienceblogs_browser_share_fir.php">
ScienceBlogs Browser Share as of June 2006
Now, six months later, we see that Microsoft continues its
slump...…
j7uy5 | December 9, 2006Flying carp, also called Asian Silver Carp (among others), present a
significant risk to homeland security. The fish can grow to
50, even 100 pounds. Propellers on boats prompt the fish to
jump out of the water, sometimes into boats, sometimes striking boaters.
A video of this is available at the NPR site,
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5542199">here.
The video shows the carp jumping into the boat, although it
does not show anyone getting hit.
Hypophthalmichthys
molitrix
The NPR story, link above, mentions that these carp are an invasive
species,…
j7uy5 | December 8, 2006Just when you thought there could not possibly be any more to say about
the subject, given the uncertainties inherent in the area, there is yet
another study. This one is from analysis of a large patient
registry in Finland. A total of 15,390 patients were included
in the analysis, over a period of 3.4 years. This study
confirms the finding that antidepressant use does lead to an increase
in suicide attempts. It also finds that there is a decrease
in actual death from suicide, and a decrease in
overall mortality.
href="http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/63/12/1358"…
j7uy5 | December 7, 2006This has been a topic at ScienceBlogs before. Now, finally,
the New England Journal of Medicine is catching up. They have
an editorial on the ethics of vaccination against Human Papilloma
Virus. It turns out that there are many facets to this issue.
The background is this: HPV is a major factor in the
development of cervical cancer. About 10,000 women are
diagnosed with cervical cancer each year in the USA, and there are
about 3,700 deaths per year from the disease.
To put that in perspective, that is more than the total number of
deaths in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. …
j7uy5 | December 6, 2006Usually, doctors post radiology quizzes with odd clinical findings, or
sometimes odd things that people have swallowed, or gotten into their
bodies through other means.
But this particular image has nothing to do with medicine, or even
traditional radiology. Rather, it pertains to astronomy and
archeology.
This is the famous
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_Mechanism"
rel="tag">Antikythera mechanism, found in the
Mediterranean Sea, discovered in a shipwreck in 1901, off the coast of
the Greek island,
rel="tag">Antikythera. That's the origin
of the name of…
j7uy5 | December 5, 2006NEJM has a nice, short article on the management of menopausal
symptoms. Usually their clinical stuff is subscription-only,
but this one is openly accessible. I'm not going to comment
on it, specifically, but mention it only because it might be something
of general interest.
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/22/2338">Management
of Menopausal Symptoms
Deborah Grady, M.D., M.P.H.
Volume 355:2338-2347, November 30, 2006, Number 22
This Journal feature begins with a case
vignette highlighting a common clinical problem. Evidence supporting
various strategies is…
j7uy5 | December 5, 2006
HT:
href="http://66.232.26.48/ee/index.php?/fist/more/fri_rdm_10_all_there_is_edition/">Liberal
Street Fighter.
j7uy5 | December 4, 2006I had to think about this for a bit before it made sense (free
registration on Medscape required):
href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/547792">Does
Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Decrease Gastroesophageal Reflux in
Patients With Obstructive Sleep Apnea?
Twenty-four-hour esophageal pH monitoring was used by Spence and
colleagues[4] to determine whether continuous positive airway pressure
(C-PAP) decreases nocturnal reflux in patients with obstructive sleep
apnea. Seventeen patients were studied on 2 different nights; 12 were
overweight (body mass index: 27.3-50.8). All…
j7uy5 | December 4, 2006This is kind of an old story, I know. Still, every once in a
while it is good to revisit these things. When the topic
first came up in 2004, it was the subject of much newspaper space and
blog commentary. But now, it has pretty much faded from the
national consciousness. Has anything more come of it?
In a recent editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry,
Gregory E. Simon, M.D., M.P.H., reviews the largest and most
informative studies on the subject:
href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/163/11/1861">
href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/…
j7uy5 | December 2, 2006I have to admit, I was started to see a Consumer Reports article on the
"Best Buy" drugs for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar
disorder. So now
treating mental illness is like buying a toaster oven?
Seriously, at first
it seemed kind of inappropriate. After all you cannot assess
pharmaceuticals the same way you assess ordinary consumer products, can
you?
First, let me say that I like the magazine. I don't
subscribe to it, but I do look at it from time to time, and I do
consult it for certain things. For instance, in 1995, when I
went to buy a microwave oven, I first went to…
j7uy5 | November 29, 2006I have not posted as much recently, compared to my usual.
That's because I've been messing with my computers, setting
them up to use Sabayon
instead of Suse. Those of you who can about such things can
guess why that is.
One thing I've noticed. If I don't post very much, not as
many people visit.
One thing I wanted to mention. This is
href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/">old
news, but apropos anyway:
style="font-weight: bold;">Ballmer: “Linux is a
cancer”
Contaminates
all other software with Hippie GPL rubbish
By Thomas C
Greene
2nd June…
j7uy5 | November 29, 2006I just love the title; it's from a
href="http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/333/7578/1129">recent
editorial (link to abstract; subscription required for full
access) in the British Medical Journal. The author, Jonathan
Waxman, argues that the medical profession should protect patients from
exploitation from the alternative medicine industry. He
points out the potential down side to some alternative treatment,
particularly in the area of his specialty, oncology:
It is estimated that up to
80% of all patients with cancer take a complementary treatment or
follow a dietary programme…